Fox announced on Friday that Donald Trump is scheduled to be interviewed before the Super Bowl by Fox News host Sean Hannity, one of his biggest fans and supporters. The network said the interview will take place at the White House and cover “an array of topics.”
Trump sat down last year with CBS News’ Margaret Brennan and made a series of outlandish claims, including suggesting migrants were invading the country, claiming he ‘knocked out’ ISIS almost completely, and dismissing concerns about ISIS’ return by saying the U.S. military had “very fast airplanes.”
Trump skipped a Super Bowl interview in 2018, when it ran on NBC, but in 2017 he agreed to be interviewed by then-Fox Host Bill O’Reilly in 2017, the last time Fox broadcasted the game.
Now, Trump is back in the safety zone of his preferred television network — and a friendly interviewer. Hannity often devotes considerable airtime on his nightly prime-time show to extolling the virtues of Trump’s presidency despite ongoing scandals and poor approval ratings. Hannity has also spent hundreds of hours attacking Trump’s political rivals and news outlets for reporting on Trump’s missteps.
Trump recently complained that Hannity hasn’t won a Pulitzer Prize for his work on the network.
Hannity has been described as Trump’s “West Wing adviser” and “shadow chief of staff” for his closeness to the administration. A report from last year said the two men speak to each other on the telephone “virtually every night.”
Hannity even appeared with Trump on stage at a campaign rally before the 2018 midterm elections and attacked media covering the event using Trump’s term, “fake news.”
That closeness led to Hannity’s name coming up during the House investigation of Trump that led to his impeachment. Former U.S. Ambassador to the Ukraine Marie Yovanovitch testified that as part of the Trump administration’s efforts to remove her from her position, Hannity was attacking her on his show, echoing smears from Trump’s personal lawyer Rudy Giuliani.
After Yovanovitch testified before Congress, Hannity called her a “self-important very narcissistic diplomat snowflake.”
Hannity also found himself involved in another Trump-related scandal when it was disclosed that lawyer Michael Cohen had him as a client. Cohen for years worked as Trump’s personal lawyer and orchestrated payoffs to porn star Stormy Daniels in exchange for her silence about her affair with Trump before the 2016 election.
Trump shouldn’t have much to worry about for this Super Bowl interview, which follows close on the heels of his impeachment trial.
Published with permission of The American Independent.
