Exclusive: Sean Hannity Speaks Out on Trump, Elon, Jan. 6 and Fox News in Rare Interview
“Legacy media is dead.”
That’s a bold claim, and one which Fox News host Sean Hannity has been making for years. But now, after President Donald Trump stormed back to the White House in 2024 — winning 77 million votes despite intense media opposition — Hannity is really starting to believe it.
“Journalism is dead because all those people who claim they are journalists are talk show hosts like me,” Hannity told Mediaite editor Aidan McLaughlin on this week’s episode of Press Club. “It’s palpable, their rage and hatred toward Trump.”
“Fifteen years, and they don’t even try to understand the guy,” he added, during a wide-ranging interview from his studio in Florida. “None of them cared about the injustices. As far as I’m concerned, they all owe him an apology for how they treated him and the lies and conspiracy theories they peddled.”
Hannity has been on Fox News since its launch in the late 1990s, and on talk radio for even longer. That makes him one of the last stars from Fox’s original cast, and one of the few personalities in news who has spent three decades speaking directly to a large and loyal audience. In 2025, he’s averaged 3.6 million viewers and nearly half a million in the advertiser-coveted adults 25-54 demographic. On radio, Hannity speaks for three hours per day to millions of daily listeners; he is the most popular talk radio host in the country.
Of course, many would scoff at Hannity’s claim the legacy media is dead, given the two mediums that made him a star — cable television and radio — are as traditional as they come. But in many ways the personality driven opinion commentary that Hannity pioneered makes him a progenitor of the kind of independent voices that surged during the 2024 election and have since been coronated as the future of news.
So it made sense when earlier this year Hannity launched Sean, a long-form interview show on the streaming service Fox Nation. The program, created in the mold of The Joe Rogan Experience and recorded at a studio near Hannity’s home in Florida, features mostly apolitical conversations with major names. Guests have included Sylvester Stallone and his wife Jennifer, Mike Tyson, and Stephen A. Smith.
Part of Hannity’s omnipresence in the political discourse and dominance in the ratings is owed to his role as a major — if not the major — voice of the Trump movement. That’s a position he’s long held thanks to unapologetic support for, and a close personal relationship with, the current president.
In Trump’s second term, that role helped Hannity land the first Oval Office interview with Trump. And the Fox News host was back at the White House soon afterwards after for a joint interview with Trump and Elon Musk.
In a rare and wide-ranging interview with Mediaite, Hannity revealed how those interviews came together, opened up about the future of the media business, and gave his thoughts on the chaotic start to Trump’s second term in office.
Watch the full interview here, or listen to it on Spotify or Apple. Read a transcript of the conversation below, edited for length and clarity.
Aidan McLaughlin: Sean Hannity, welcome to Press Club.
Sean Hannity: What was I thinking when I said yes to this? I don’t do a lot of interviews. But actually it’s great to see you in my studio.
This is the studio for your new podcast. Tell us about the show.
It’s different. I love long-form. I’ve wanted to do long-form for a long time. If you look at television, they break down ratings minute by minute, and you can just examine it to death. When people are looking for news at night, I do a more hard-hitting news show covering the news of the day. My goal every day—whether on radio or TV—is to provide news, information, and opinion in an entertaining way that I don’t think you’ll get elsewhere. It’s less political. I rarely even talk about politics, except maybe with Stephen A. Smith, who I love. It’s fun. We’ve had Sly and Jennifer Stallone on, and if you haven’t watched it, it was really fun. At one point, I sat back and asked, “Are you guys always like this?” because they were bickering amongst themselves in a playful, loving way. Sly said, “I’d be nothing without her.”
One of the common themes that have come out of this—and some episodes have aired, and some have not—is whether it’s Stephen A. Smith, who grew up dyslexic and look how gifted and talented he is, or Sly had an abusive father, or Jillian Michaels, if you can believe it, who’s been in the studio, she was heavy— she’s about five foot two— when she was young. And the impact that things, when they occur in one’s life, I just sit back and I’m like, wow, everybody has their stuff. And it’s not interruptive. Like, if I have an interview with the president, I’m like, “You got 20 minutes.” So you have to maybe be a little more interruptive than you like. And my audience doesn’t like it. They’re very communicative. And I just like to be able to sit back and listen and learn about their life experience. And so for me, it’s more enlightening and it’s fulfilling. I’ve been doing radio for 35 years. I’ve been on Fox since day one, 29 years. And I feel like the luckiest guy in the world. I get to do what I love, and doing more of it is fine with me.
For the last three decades, you have been doing three hours of radio and an hour of television a day. That’s an extraordinary amount of talking. What made you want to do more?
The opportunity was presented to me first for Fox Nation. I did a series—we actually shot it where the movie Tombstone was shot—called Outlaws and Lawmen. It talked about the outlaws and the lawmen who went after them. I’ll give you a little preview—we have a follow-up to that called Wanted: Dead or Alive, which talks about some of the most notorious criminals, bank robbers, and so on. I like it from an informational standpoint because I learn a lot. I love history. And it’s different. Occasionally, I just like to do something different.
This is obviously where the media industry is going, these sorts of longer-form podcasts in a digital space and streaming.
Well, partly. It’s going partly there and partly not.
The two mediums that made you a star — radio and television — are under threat. People are generally morose about their future.
I’m not.
You’re not?
Not at all.
Why?
Well, first of all, it’s a blessing because, when I think back, it was either 1987 or 1988 when I started in radio. I have to go back and check. There were only about 200 to 250 news talk stations in the country. Now, my radio show is the biggest in the country. We have 750 stations, and I’m on SiriusXM, and we podcast it. Audience measurement is much harder to really get a hold of than in the past, but we know it’s over 20 million on radio. You see ratings every day—Fox is on fire, and a lot of the other networks are struggling. After this election, I made a declaration. Let me backtrack. In 2007, I declared that journalism in America is dead. This is about media. You want to talk about media?
Yeah.
Okay, journalism is dead. And I said after this election, legacy media is dead. They’re dead, but they don’t know it yet. What do I mean by that? They threw everything, including Mediaite, they threw everything they had at this man—everything. I actually made a list and wrote it down, which I never do for interviews because the list is so extensive. I’ll go over it with you—what they’ve gotten wrong and how it’s been corrupted. Most people on these other networks—the three major networks, two cable channels, The New York Times, The Washington Post—what did Jeff Bezos lose? How many hundreds of thousands of readers?
250,000.
The New York Times is not exactly as relevant as it used to be. There’s a reason they’ve lost people. Just to jump ahead—and I’ll backtrack—if you’re going to be a content provider and you want to be successful, you better tell your audience the truth, news, and information they’re not going to get anywhere else. You have to become a value add in people’s lives. At the end of the day, that’s the conclusion—if you want to be successful, whatever format you take on. When they threw everything they had—including the weaponization of justice, the FBI being weaponized, and 51 former intel officials who knew nothing about Hunter’s very real laptop—and the coordination between the FBI and social media executives. Mark Zuckerberg, before the election, said he was not going to get involved in the election. Then he wrote a letter to House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jim Jordan admitting to all of it. The Twitter Files—and I wrote about it in my interview, though I didn’t get too deep into it with Elon, what they showed in terms of government overreach, suppression, their ability to influence should scare everybody in media. And I think they failed spectacularly.
So I agree with you that the election was the biggest repudiation of the media imaginable.
So Sean Hannity is right.
On this particular issue, I agree. I think the media spent a lot of time trying to convince Americans that Trump was bad and should never be president again, and then upwards of 80 million Americans turned around and said, “We don’t care. We care more about other things.” On the other hand, I think that it is bad that the legacy media is been has been repudiated.
Why?
I think it’s an important —
But if they got it right, they wouldn’t have been repudiated.
I hear that argument from Elon Musk a lot, that legacy media is dead and that you have to get all your information from X. But there is so much more false information on a social media platform like X. There are no guardrails, no accountability. If The New York Times gets something wrong, if they publish something false, they correct it.
If I get something false, I get the crap kicked out of me.
I know.
We should do the same to fake news CNN and MSNBC. And by the way, this week, Rachel Maddow didn’t tell the whole story about Elon Musk. Let me just give you this background. Because I was starting to tell you—I started on the ground floor of new media. Talk radio was new media. It exploded. There were 200 to 250 stations, and now there are 5,000. It’s the number one format on radio. I started at Fox News in the beginning. I promise you, nobody gave us a shot. Nobody thought we’d be successful. And within a couple of years, Hannity & Colmes was beating Larry King—the long-established show on CNN. And I liked Larry.
What you’re missing here—or maybe not you necessarily, but what people are missing, and what I would argue legacy media is missing—is that they lied to the American people. Did they tell the truth? Did Kamala Harris and Joe Biden tell the truth to the American people when they said the border is secure? Did they tell the truth when they said inflation is transitory? Did they tell the truth about Joe’s cognitive state? Before the 2020 election, I started playing clips of Joe saying, “We hold these truths to be self-evident. All men and women are created by the—uh, you know, the thing.” That was my favorite. I played that one a lot. I tried to play it a lot so it was etched in people’s memory. It was significant cognitive decline. Then Kamala Harris went on The View and said she wouldn’t do anything differently. She wouldn’t do interviews, and that was another problem—there’s a reason she couldn’t do interviews. All right, let me ask this question. How is it possible that Kamala Harris, for example, the media loves to cover January 6th, right? But how much attention was given to the summer of 2020?
Fox News covered it.
Okay. Legacy media?
There was coverage of it.
Not a lot.
It certainly wasn’t covered as much as January 6th, but that I understand. January 6th was worse.
You understand that? Really? What do you know about the summer of 2020?
There were a lot of riots.
How many? I know the exact number of official riots. 574.
That’s a lot of riots.
How many dead Americans? 24. How many injured cops pelted with bricks, bottles, rocks, Molotov cocktails? Thousands. How much in property damage? And how much video did we have of all those people involved in those riots? Now, my question—how is it possible that legacy media, not one time that I know of, ever asked Kamala about when she went on The Late Show with Stephen Colbert and said, “The rioters aren’t going to stop. They shouldn’t stop, and we’re not going to stop.” Now, if that had been Donald Trump, do you think it would have been the equivalent of a January 6th committee?
I think that the connection between Donald Trump of January 6th is far stronger than the connection between —
So you’re against rioting?
Yes. Rioting is bad.
You’re against insurrection?
Yes.
So what’s the difference? We have two dozen dead Americans, thousands of injured cops, billions in property damage, and a ton of evidence.
One was directly the consequence of Trump saying that the election was stolen.
Are you sure of that?
Yeah. Come on. Why were they there?
All right, then we’re going to do a little quiz. What is your knowledge of January 6th?
Fairly extensive.
Okay, then tell me, in the days leading up to January 6th, how many people are on record confirming that Donald Trump authorized the use of guard forces? I can tell you because I have four of them on tape. Donald Trump himself, Mark Meadows, his chief of staff, the acting defense secretary Miller, Kash Patel, the other person in the room was General Mark Milley, who just got a preemptive pardon. He was written on record as confirming it.
Isn’t that all kind of irrelevant though?
Why is it irrelevant?
Because the entire reason the mob was there was because Trump said the election was stolen.
And he also said, “Many of you all peacefully and patriotically march so your voices will be heard.” And they did, and they got prosecuted. Let’s take it to another step here. Do you believe in equal justice under the law?
Yes.
Do you? Do you believe in equal application of the law?
Of course.
Okay. Then why did the Justice Department only go after those rioters? Why?
There were arrests made in the riots of 2020.
Not a lot. And by the way, they didn’t spend any time in jail like the ones on January 6th. I said at the time—I condemned it in real-time. I was on the radio. Go back and listen to the tape. I stopped my show on TV that night and said, “If you are a conservative and you support Donald Trump, this is not who we are.” Those people all got punished. The Justice Department went after them hard—deep in the paint. Why didn’t they do it for the summer 2020 rioters? We had all the video evidence. How did Kamala not ever get asked why she supported the rioters? How did she not get asked why she said, “They’re not going to stop, they shouldn’t stop, and we’re not going to stop?” Do you think that question needed to be asked? ‘Fair point. Hannity.’ I’ll answer for you.
So I did want to ask you about January 6th, because I think something that I find interesting is how —
But you’re avoiding my question. Don’t you find it outrageous?
I think that January 6th is distinctly different.
So a vice president who later becomes a presidential candidate gets to go through a whole campaign and not get asked why 574 riots have killed, people, injured cops?
I don’t think those rioters were rioting because of Kamala Harris.
No, she went on Colbert and supported them. “They’re not going to stop, they shouldn’t stop.” Let me ask you this. If I went on the air and there were riots and I said they’re not going to stop and they shouldn’t stop, what happens to my career?
It would not be good for you.
It would be over.
Yet Trump got re-elected.
Well, Trump got re-elected because those people did get punished. There’s a very big distinction. All right, here’s another question. How is it possible for a presidential candidate like Kamala Harris to support taxpayer-funded transitions or sex change operations for illegal immigrants—who, according to her, weren’t even coming into the country? They lied for four years. And convicts. And how many times do you recall she got asked that question?
So, back to your original question. That’s why legacy media is dead. They don’t know it yet because they don’t tell the truth. They lied about cognitive state, immigration, and the economy. And then I have my list. Forgive me, because I usually don’t write stuff down. But did they get the Russia hoax right? No. Did the media care enough to look into the fact that four FISA warrants were signed and that they were based on dirty Russian disinformation, which turned out to be paid for by his opponent, Hillary Clinton? James Comey, Mr. Higher Honor himself, signed three of the four warrants against Carter Page—backdoor into the Trump world, the Trump presidency transition team, and candidate Trump. Or, is there a double standard when they raid Mar-a-Lago, but Hillary Clinton had more top-secret classified materials on her servers? She deleted 33,000 subpoenaed emails with BleachBit and destroyed devices with hammers. Why didn’t her home get raided?
This seems like stuff that you have an issue with someone like Hillary Clinton on, but not Donald Trump.
No, I have an issue with the media. We’re talking about the media. This is Mediaite, right?
Say it again into the camera please.
If you’re looking for conservative reason, I’ll backtrack a hair. I digress a little. I love Tim Russert—he was probably the best at his craft. I used to do debates with James Carville, and we had the most fun ever. There were times he’d come into my radio studio, do my TV show, and call me to ask why, as a conservative, I held certain opinions. You know who else did that? Peter Jennings. You know who else came on my show back in the day? Tom Brokaw. You know what? These people—if you ever watch these interviews—Margaret Brennan got slaughtered by J.D. Vance and Marco Rubio recently because she’s so biased in her opinion. But back to my list, if you don’t mind. So, they didn’t go after Joe Biden for his top-secret classified information found in four separate locations. Now, the secret document raid. I believe in equal justice, and you said you do too. That’s not equal justice. Then we have Mar-a-Lago. Did anybody in the legacy media ever bother to correct the valuation of Judge Engoron, about $18 million for Mar-a-Lago?
I can point to a bunch of things that, let’s say, conservative media or independent media have gotten wrong.
Like what?
The 2020 election is a good example. Boosting Trump’s claims that it was stolen. The election wasn’t stolen. We all know that.
I have problems with the 2020 election.
Everyone has problems with every election. Doesn’t make it a stolen election.
But do you know who the biggest election deniers in the country have been? Hillary Clinton. Stacey Abrams.
Democrats have certainly raised questions about elections before. Donald Trump was a different story. I don’t want to get caught in the weeds on those particular issues. What I’m saying is, is the independent media any better or conservative media any better than the legacy media?
You raise a good point, which is that a lot of what we all read—I have a fact-checking team. I don’t go with anything until I fact-check it. I can tell you where I learned not to rush to judgment in my career if you’re interested. I was a local radio host in Atlanta from ’92 to ’96, and I’m very proud of it. The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, in its year-end edition in ’96—you can check it, I have a copy somewhere—said, “1996 was a great year. The Olympics came, and Sean Hannity left.” I’m kind of proud of that; I don’t know why. When I left Huntsville, they had a headline saying, “Goodbye to the Talk Show Host from Hell.” I don’t know what you guys will write when I one day leave Fox, which I hope is not anytime soon.
What I learned is that I was on the air when the news broke that Richard Jewell—the AJC put out that he “fits the profile of the lone bomber.” You read the article: he lives with his mother. Maybe he’s trying to save money. I was on the air, and I was skeptical. I said, “That does not mean he’s a terrorist,” because that’s what they were accusing him of. Little did I know that Richard Jewell was listening to my show at that time. He later told me, and he did one of the first interviews he ever gave after the truth came out. He was a hero. He died young, according to his lawyer, because of all that happened to him and the media frenzy around it. I learned then that I’ve got to do my work and I’ve got to get it right. It doesn’t mean I’ll always get it right. And this is something Elon said in our interview—you know, we’re not going to get it right every time, but we’ll fix it really fast. And I try to operate that way.
He’s not great at that.
Elon?
Every day I read ten tweets from him that are just totally made up. They get community noted. He removes the community note, moves on, and doesn’t even bother deleting them. But anyway, continue.
I’m not sure what you’re referring to. I know there were 1 or 2 things that I read that were not correct. There’s a lot that he got right. And we can talk about Elon.
$50 million in condoms for Gaza.
My understanding is that’s not been proven. That’s not on my scroll that I put up on TV. And I’ve been putting a lot of stuff up there about DOGE. If you ever care to go back and look beyond the Russia hoax, beyond FISA abuse, beyond the double standard and weaponization, I’ll go through my list once more—the valuation of Mar-a-Lago, the FBI’s involvement in social media, or the 51 former Intel officials, the FBI was meeting weekly with social media before the election. They confirmed the authenticity of the laptop in March of 2020. So they knew it was true. Why were they meeting with social media? Sounds like election interference to me.
But this was under the Trump administration, right?
Yeah, but okay, that’s where the term “deep state” comes from. If you believe in a deep state, why would the FBI, if they knew it was true, not say so? After the laptop story came out, Twitter and Mark Zuckerberg both contacted the FBI, asking if this was the disinformation they had been warned about or if it was true. The FBI knew the answer and didn’t tell them. That sounds like putting cement blocks on the scales of an election to me. And our country deserves better. I used to see the FBI as the world’s premier law enforcement agency, and I want it restored to its former greatness. I want our intelligence community to be the best on the face of this earth to protect the American people. I don’t want FISA to be weaponized with political material against the American people and spy on them. Nobody in the media seemed to care when thousands of my personal text messages were released, or Paul Manafort during the January 6th hearings with a predetermined outcome. And I didn’t even finish my point. The person who, in writing, denied the National Guard troops that Donald Trump authorized was Muriel Bowser. The other person who was begging for troops was the Capitol Police Chief, Steven Sund. If you really believe Trump was planning an insurrection, why would he authorize troops?
I don’t think he was planning an insurrection. I think he had no idea that it was going to happen. And it did. And he sat around for hours and did nothing.
Okay. That could be a legitimate criticism. He should have acted earlier and gotten out there. Fair enough. But he’s been beaten to death. And Kamala got a pass.
I think his sins are far greater here. There’s a reason why, after January 6th happened, everyone said this was horrible and should never have happened. A lot of Republicans even said Trump should never be president again. I had Vivek Ramaswamy on the show, and I asked him about a book he wrote two years ago, where he said Donald Trump was a danger to democracy. He wrote that. In the same book, he also said Stacey Abrams was a danger to democracy because she denied her election. He made the same argument about Trump. When I asked him about it, he said, “Well, that’s ancient history. I don’t want you to ask me about ancient history.” But he wrote the book just two years ago. Everyone thought January 6th was horrible. And I think most people thought that Donald Trump was to blame for it. Somehow, over the next couple of years, people revised that history. And I think that was a mistake.
I think you’re too dismissive of the Kamala part, but that’s just my humble opinion. I’m not going to argue with you about it, but I will say this—the American people had an opportunity. What they didn’t bring up in those hearings? The fact that Trump authorized the National Guard, the fact that Muriel Bowser denied it, the fact that Capitol Police Chief Steven Sund was begging for it, and the fact that Trump said “peacefully and patriotically.” That never played that. That context adds a lot of texture to the discussion. And the fact that you don’t see a moral equivalent—that, to me, is one of the failures of legacy media. This is where legacy media fails on a spectacular level and why they’ve lost the trust of the American people. If you want to be successful—and I say this to anyone coming up—I get asked by young people all the time: You better do your homework, and you better tell the truth as much as you possibly can. And if you get it wrong, own it. That’s it.
I read once that you told Jesse Watters that the key to success in media is longevity.
Partly. That’s part of what I told him.
It was presented as, “Don’t say things that are going to get you in a huge amount of trouble and get you fired.”
Don’t say stupid shit.
Now, Jesse sometimes takes that advice, sometimes not. You’ve been on the air for 30 years at Fox, so you’ve clearly done a decent job of that.
Well, I want to be clear. My success or failure isn’t based on other people’s success or failure. It’s not a zero-sum game. And I also believe that a rising tide lifts all boats. So, if Jesse does well, that helps me. If The Five does great, we all benefit. If Bret or Laura do great, that only helps me. But throughout nearly 30 years on Fox, I’ve been in the top two, three, four, or five—one of the top shows in the country every month. Monday Night Football hurts a lot because a lot of my audience loves football. And I do take a lot of pride, and people will hate the fact that I’m telling them to go back and actually look at those stories I mentioned—because they got them wrong. Where’s the apology from NBC for allowing lies and conspiracy theories? Or CNN? The New York Times won a Pulitzer for its Russia coverage, they won two—so did The Washington Post. Return them. Trump’s not wrong, and that case apparently is moving forward. So, that’ll be interesting to watch.
Trump’s victory has also established his power over the media in a way that we haven’t seen before. I think the best example of that is Joe Scarborough and Mika Brzezinski going down to Mar-a-Lago for a meeting with him. What did you make of that?
I thought it was funny. I used to get along with Joe. I call him Liberal Joe affectionately. I have names for a few people in the media—Humpty Dumpty, Oliver—these people.
You don’t talk to Joe anymore?
No, we haven’t talked in years. I’d be nice to him if I saw him at a restaurant. I’d buy him a drink, a bottle of wine. I’m cordial to everybody. I have no personal animus against anybody, but I do try to call out their BS. They’re in a constant state of feigned, phony outrage. It’s like the media has not learned a thing. Joe Rogan made this observation—there’s been no introspection, no change of course. They went through a period of denial about the election, leading to the next stage of grief, which was depression after the election. And now they’re right back to where they were—rage after the election. Calling him the D-word, “F Donald Trump,” screaming and yelling. If they get power again, they’ll impeach him five more times. It’s as predictable as the day is long.
Meanwhile, they don’t care to spend the time to understand him. I’ve known the guy 30 years—I understand him. If he talks about tariffs, he’s negotiating. If he says all hell will break loose in the Middle East, he means it. And you see the speed at which he’s working. He has the opportunity if Congress will get their act together. My message to Congress is: You got elected because of the Trump agenda. That’s on borders. Now it’s about getting our budget in order and stopping stealing from the American people—the waste fraud abuse, energy dominance, deporting illegal immigrants, restoring law and order, and ending the madness of defund, dismantle, and no-bail laws. Those are all things that, as a conservative, I want.
There was some reporting this week about James Murdoch. I’m sure you read it.
I didn’t.
James Murdoch did an interview with The Atlantic. He’s been critical of Fox News. He seems to be politically to the left of his brother, Lachlan, who runs Fox Corp, and his father, Rupert Murdoch. There is eventually going to be a succession battle that will determine the fate of Fox News. You don’t pay attention to it?
I didn’t read it. I have no idea what it is.
But do you have any thoughts about the future of Fox? Are you concerned about it?
How am I going to have thoughts on something I didn’t read?
The concerns predate the article this week.
I just know I am very grateful. Fox, I believe, will be studied for decades to come—what happened with Fox and the impact it still has to this day. And to be a part of it, you mentioned longevity earlier—I was lucky in the beginning, and I got smart. This is where I want to be. Other people chose different paths, and I really only wish them the best. I have no animus toward anybody in media. Even people who say crazy things on the left—I don’t really care. I’m not paying that much attention to it anyway. But my success is not predicated on their failure, so why would I wish anybody ill? I’m happy with my career choices and what I do. I’ve had a great partner in Fox, and I’m very, very grateful for that. They’ve treated me great.
Let’s talk about the Elon and Trump interviews. You got the first Oval Office interview with Trump.
I did.
How did those come together? You pitched it, and it happened?
No, actually, it was before the election. I said to Trump, when you win, I want the first interview.
I hope you put some money on him winning.
That wouldn’t be good. No, I’m not a big bettor. Just for kicks and giggles. But no, I said, you’re going to win. It was funny because I don’t know if you remember Election Day. I don’t know if you watched a lot of Fox that day.
I was on with Dana and Bill Hemmer at 9 a.m. as their first guest, and I said, “We start out this Election Day, and Kamala has a serious math problem.” This information was available. The only one I know in the media who was talking loudly about it was Mark Halperin, and I thought he did a phenomenal job. I started using him on my radio show, and what he was reading was the same as what I was reading. Every day, we got early voting numbers from every swing state. For example, on Election Day, Kamala Harris started out down 700,000 votes from where Joe Biden was in 2020, and he didn’t even win that state by 100,000 votes. So, she would have needed massive turnout in the Philly suburbs and Allegheny County.
All day, I stayed on the phone calling my sources on the ground. They told me, “Nope.” They have three universities in and around Philly—Temple, Lehigh, and Penn State—with a total student population of around 42,000. Temple had the biggest turnout, and MSNBC was showing that line. I was calling my guys on the ground: “How’s turnout in the rest of the area?” There was nothing there to make up the difference. They would have needed a historic turnout day for that to happen, and so I knew it was done. In Wisconsin, they had a deficit of 45,000. Similar stories in North Carolina and Georgia. There is a little bit of a science to this. It’s not 100% accurate, but you know where the Republican areas are, you know where the Democratic areas are, and the campaigns get reports on who voted. They know who voted.
Susie Wiles, who ran the Trump campaign, was a genius. For four years, I was telling my audience, “Get over your reluctance and resistance to voting early and voting by mail.” In my home state, the free state of Florida—not your non-free state of New York.
Excuse me. You left two years ago. You can’t disavow Long Island.
I’ve lived in six different states. I sold my house. I had a list of 65 items that my lawyers and accountants said I had to accomplish to cut hard.
To fully leave?
Yeah, because they don’t let you out.
Did you ever live in New York City?
I did live in the city when I first started at Fox. But I’m not a city person.
Where?
Upper West Side, 92nd between West End and Riverside. I used to go to Riverside Park. I had a dog.
Let’s talk about the Trump-Elon interview. What were they like off-camera? One of the questions you asked that I found interesting was about this very transparent attempt to drive a wedge between them, with all the speculation that Trump is going to get sick of Elon because he’s getting a lot of attention.
President Elon.
Right, and it’s very obvious what is the attempt there. But what were they like off-camera?
Fun.
Do you think there’s any chance that there is tension that could lead to a fallout?
None. Well, there’s always potential.
But you didn’t sense anything?
As you saw last week, at one point, I brought up this question and then I brought up the conflict question. If I didn’t ask it, Mediaite would have gone crazy.
We would have lost our minds.
You would have lost your mind. And they gave a very good answer to the conflict question, as you know. At one point, he just opens up his jacket—he’s got a T-shirt that says “Tech Support,” and that’s how he views it. Now, this is a phenomenon, too. If you listen to all these people who say they’re journalists, they’re full of it—they’re not. You know my description of my job. When I say I’m a member of the press, you don’t dispute that, do you?
No.
Okay. I can produce thousands and thousands of hours of straight news coverage. Whether it’s 9/11 or Hurricane Katrina, there’s no opinion in those moments when I’m doing straight news. Or when they recently released a hostage from Russia, I covered that—I ended up staying on air for two hours. Greg Gutfeld’s audience rightly got mad at me for being there. But I can do that. I’ve also done investigative reporting that the rest of the media doesn’t do. Obama’s radical associations—we spent three years on the Russia hoax. I had a small ensemble cast—John Solomon, Gregg Jarrett, Sara Carter—and we unpeeled every layer of the onion. While the rest of the media got it wrong, we got it right. Our sources were impeccable, and we worked those sources. Catherine Herridge at the time was part of it. I’m going to misname people, so I’ll stop there. I don’t know what to say. We work really hard to get it right.
Regarding Elon, it does seem a little bit absurd that the richest man in the world is now basically the most powerful unelected bureaucrat in the history of America.
Why does everyone keep saying unelected?
He wasn’t elected.
Was any member of Trump’s cabinet elected?
They were elected by the president, confirmed by the Senate.
Okay, what about the people who don’t need confirmation?
It seems like an extraordinary amount of power, particularly for someone who has billions in contracts with the US government.
You mean by Joe Biden and the Biden administration, the $400 million…
Yeah! But they didn’t hire Elon Musk to gut the federal government.
Okay. They didn’t. But if you watched my show all last week, I played repeatedly Bill Clinton, Al Gore, Joe Biden, Barack Obama, all of them saying we have to eliminate waste, fraud, and abuse. You could take that back to Clinton and Gore.
I think it’s an enormously popular thing to do.
It’s only going to get more popular.
They’re trying to do is slashing at a pace that no one has ever seen before…
I brought a gift for you.
Let’s see it. But at a certain point, aren’t services going to break down because they cut too close to the bone and then Americans are going to turn around and say this was a disaster?
Well, as you know, I asked them very specifically about Social Security and Medicare because there’s a lot of fear-mongering. You heard their answer. President Trump could not have been any more firm—no, not touching it. Now, they might make improvements. Elon Musk, last week, found on the list, we don’t know if they’re getting paid, we don’t know if family members are getting paid, but they did discover names of people who were 130 years old on the administration list. So we should have an answer in the next few days. But that’s not really what we’re talking about here.
So these are these are your notes from the interview?
These are my notes from the interview.
We’re already down $838 billion this year. We have $37 trillion in debt in this country, and we’re on pace to reach nearly $40 trillion. This is still the Biden-Harris economy until reconciliation hopefully changes that, so they own it. Here’s the problem: the debt-to-GDP ratio is going to exceed World War II. Another problem is that it doesn’t help with interest rates. And another problem is we’re stealing from our children and grandchildren. There’s something so morally corrupt and reprehensible about that. You have kids?
No.
Okay, one day you might have kids. Do you think the United States of America should spend $20 million on a Sesame Street show in Iraq?
But these are all miniature compared to…
I have 12 pages of this.
Right. But $20 million is a drop in the bucket.
The problem is, these millions now are adding into billions.
But if they don’t touch the Defense Department…
The waste, fraud, and abuse—yes. But we still need the next generation of weaponry. I believe future wars will be fought in air-conditioned offices—like this air-conditioned podcast studio and not on battlefields. I really believe that. But let me continue. Hear this through the ears, because Democrats have been calling Trump names, “F Trump”, calling him a male body part, singing and chanting about him. Chuck Schumer is out there saying, “We will win!” You just lost, you idiot. What are you talking about? Now, the average American makes $66,000 a year. Have you ever lived paycheck to paycheck?
I have.
I have too. It’s not fun. I don’t live paycheck to paycheck anymore and I’m glad. I remember because, for a number of years in my adult life, I lived it. I remember buying a $200 work van when I was a contractor. I remember buying a $350 Ford Maverick. I remember painting my own cars, repairing my own cars, everything. Those days stayed with me because I couldn’t afford to send it to a mechanic. So I’d be changing alternators, changing starters. And if I didn’t know how to do it, I had friends who would help me. I’d just find the cheapest way to do it and keep the thing on the road. So through the prism of the average American who makes $66,000 a year, and through the prism of us heading toward $40 trillion in debt—you may not think it’s a big deal, $20 million for Sesame Street in Iraq. Okay, fair enough. But $56 million to boost tourism in Tunisia and Egypt—how does the American making $66,000 feel about that? Hang on—$40 billion to build schools in Jordan. How are our schools doing? Not too well. $11 million to tell the Vietnamese to stop burning trash.
There was a time when people like Marco Rubio were supportive of these initiatives because they helped with soft power abroad.
Marco Rubio?
He wanted to give more funding to USAID.
But there was a certain level of deception in all of this. Now, if the if the legacy media really wanted to do its job, I would argue, why didn’t they find it?
But I don’t know that there’s that much to find.
They’re going to find trillions. They’re going to find hundreds and hundreds of billions. It’s already in the billions.
I keep seeing people say that this is rampant fraud. It’s not rampant fraud. You just don’t agree with the expenditures.
Okay, now you’re forcing me to keep going. And again, through the prism of the average American—$45 million for DEI scholarships in Burma, really? $520 million for consultant-driven ESG investments in Africa. $1.5 million for DEI in Serbia’s workplaces. We’re paying for DEI musicals in Ireland, transgender operas in Colombia, transgender comic books in Peru. $44.8 million in economic assistance for Venezuelan illegals in Colombia.
Have you been to an Irish DEI play though?
No, because it was in Ireland. It’s a musical. You’ve got to get it right, Aidan. And $24 million for green transportation and logistics in Georgia. $7.4 million to enhance efficient, inclusive, accountable government in northeast Syria. $29 million for an agricultural trade diversification program in the country of Georgia.
Every American agrees that the federal government is —
Then why are you mad at Elon Musk? Why is everyone mad at him?
I don’t think he’s doing it in a responsible way.
What’s irresponsible?
Shutting down the entirety of USAID in one fell swoop. He has 20-year-olds running around emailing people from nongovernmental accounts to fire them.
That’s not why they’re mad at him. They’re mad at him, number one, because he likes Trump. And they’re mad at him, number two, because he exposed this corruption. They didn’t identify specifically where this money was spent. That, to me, is fraudulent.
When you look at the first couple of weeks of the Trump presidency, I take it you’re enjoying it so far?
Shock and awe.
There are a couple of things that he has done that I think have shocked even people who expected him to come in hot. The pardons of the January 6th rioters for example. You’ve long been a supporter of law enforcement. Cops got beaten that day. Four police officers committed suicide in the months that followed. It was a horrible attack. What did you think when he said that he was pardoning them? Nobody thought he was going to pardon the violent rioters. J.D. Vance was on television two weeks before, saying we would never do that. And then Trump does it.
I’m willing to have that conversation and say, should they have spent more time in jail? I think there’s a legitimate argument on your part. Fair enough.
At least for the sake of the cops that were there that day.
But here’s the difference. You just dismissed the thousands… hold on. You dismissed it! You, in friendly banter, pretty much dismissed 574 riots, thousands of injured cops, dozens of dead Americans, and billions in property damage.
I didn’t dismiss it. I just don’t think it’s as bad as January 6th.
Those people did not get prosecuted. There was no systemic effort to go after those people.
They hunted lawmakers. They tried to lynch Mike Pence.
As I said at the time, they all got punished.
Yes, rightfully so.
And we have all of this video of all these other people, who Kamala said they shouldn’t stop, they won’t stop, and I’m not going to stop. Nothing happened. Where was that committee? Now, to me, you should show the same level of outrage. Those people that you’re describing, they got punished. We have people on video burning down stores of owners that they put their life’s blood into.
But if Biden pardoned those 2020 rioters, you would annihilate him on the air every night.
I will tell you right now, what Biden did with his family… The legacy media, I’m telling you, they’re dead, and they don’t know it. That’s my promise. And journalism is dead because all those people who claim they are journalists are talk show hosts like me. I do investigative journalism that they don’t do. I do straight news. I do opinion. I’m honest about it. I say I’m a conservative. I tell you who I’m voting for—I’m voting for Donald Trump. I do sports. I do culture. So I’m like an entire newspaper as part of the press. They claim they’re journalists— the people on CNN, and MSNBC. I even think the conspiracy theorist Rachel Maddow thinks she’s a journalist. Do you think she’s a journalist?
I think she’s a journalist, yes. She’s an opinion journalist, for sure.
Seriously? An opinion journalist? So she’s a talk show host like me?
Yes.
Okay, so that’s not a journalist. She’s a talk show host. A journalist is fair and balanced.
You don’t consider yourself a journalist?
I’m a talk show host. A talk show host and a member of the press. I have all of those functions. Take a whole newspaper— I’m the news section, the opinion section, the sports section, the culture section, even the gossip section. I’m all of it. And they claim that they’re journalists. They don’t claim to be talk show hosts. They’d be offended if you called them a talk show host. That goes for most of the people on CNN. It’s palpable—their rage and hatred toward Trump. They breathlessly report, “Trump…” and then it’s like, “I hate Trump.” “No, no, I hate him more than you.” “I hate him so much. I triple hate him.” It’s getting old. Fifteen years, and they don’t even try to understand the guy. None of them cared about the injustices. As far as I’m concerned, they all owe him an apology for how they treated him and the lies and conspiracy theories they peddled.
Putting aside your issues with the legacy media, are you concerned by Trump’s attacks on the press? Elon Musk tweeted this week that 60 Minutes staff should be given long prison sentences for how they edited the Kamala Harris interview.
He said it about that, but there’s other context to it. They did a report on him, if I’m not mistaken, and they got something wrong.
Either way, he shouldn’t be threatening prison sentences against the press. This isn’t China.
CBS has a broadcast license. Cable is very different. Your podcast—you can say whatever you want. And listen, people will be discerning. I have faith in people. It’s like, “The truth will set you free,” right? They know truth when they hear it, and they know when they’re being lied to. Some people want to be lied to. There was a moment during the campaign when Mark Halperin said, “If you want to watch MSNBC primetime and get fed your daily dose of lies about where this election is headed, go for it. But you’ll be sorely disappointed.” He was right. I give him a lot of credit. Honestly, I don’t think he has any political opinion that I know of.
Should Trump lay off The Associated Press?
Why?
They’ve been banned from a series of White House events.
Do you want me to advocate for The Associated Press?
When Fox News got blocked from an event back in 2014 under Obama, all of the broadcast networks banded together, Jake Tapper came out in support of Fox.
I would argue that a lot has happened since then. You think the media landscape has changed dramatically.
Radically.
If you want to be successful, you’ve got to tell people truth. You better have truth. You better do your homework.
But all The AP is doing is referring to it as ‘The Gulf of Mexico’ because they are an international organization. They’re not going to change the name on a whim.
Did they get Russia right? Did they get FISA right? Did they get the valuation of Mar-a-Lago right? At some point, they have to be held accountable for getting everything wrong. And I would argue—going back to where we started today—this is why legacy media is done. It’s over. They killed themselves, and they don’t even know they’re dead.
What does the media industry look like in four years, at the end of Trump’s term?
I think Fox is still dominant in cable. I think talk radio still has a far bigger influence than people think. I think people will seek out content providers who tell them the truth and provide news, information, and opinion that others won’t. Look, I don’t like Bill Maher, and I don’t think he likes me. Fair.
But when he was kicked off the air on Politically Incorrect, it was people like me, Rush Limbaugh, Mark Levin that defended him and said ABC should not do that. And Jon Stewart. He doesn’t like me either. I was on his show once. With Alan Colmes actually. But there’s something about them—there’s a reason they stand apart right now. And you guys cover them extensively. It’s like a promo for those guys every week. When am I going to get my promo? Maybe this podcast—is this my one shot? But one thing I’ve got to tip my hat to both of them for is that they tell some truth. And they’ll go into it—you’ll dismiss the list, but it’s so extensive. In the end, it’s going to be trillions. And I’m willing to take whatever bet you want—I’ll wear a ‘Mediaite’ shirt on air.
Where is Sean Hannity in four years?
Right where I am, God willing.
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