Hannity Doesn’t Care What Fox Colleagues Think About His Trump Advocacy
The New York Times profiled Fox News ahead of Chris Wallace moderating of tonight’s final presidential debate, exploring issues within the network at large and some tensions that have recently surfaced.
And while the biggest story out of Fox this year is the ousting of Roger Ailes, arguably the second biggest concerns ongoing tensions at the network over Donald Trump, most exemplified by chief cable news Trump cheerleader Sean Hannity.
Not only has Hannity basically turned his show into pure advocacy for Trump, but it’s led to him getting into public feuds with prominent conservatives and his own primetime colleague.
Fox executive VP Jay Wallace emphasized to The New York Times how much Chris Wallace’s recognition by the debate commission shows they’ve bolstered their news division despite how much people have “glommed onto O’Reilly and Hannity and the opinion part of the news channel.”
But when he was asked about Hannity’s outright advocacy for Trump, Wallace simply said, “It is nuanced.”
As for Hannity, he called his Times interviewer a “hippie,” complained about how the paper won’t give him a fair shake, and said this in response to a question about internal tensions:
“My bosses have only given me nothing but support and appreciation for the high ratings I get,” Mr. Hannity replied, as a makeup artist fussed with his hair. “As far as my colleagues? I don’t mean this to be disrespectful, but I don’t care what they think. They’ve got their role, and I’ve got mine.”
And while Hannity did praise the news side of Fox, he said the network’s success is due in part to “people like me” because “you take away what I do, and what Bill O’Reilly does and what others do, you lose the flavor that makes us different, and then we’re just basically the same as everybody else.”
[image via screengrab]
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