Today, Explained - There's something about Sean

Episode Date: April 30, 2018

Sean Hannity is curiously close to President Donald Trump — so close that some say he may as well have a desk in the Oval Office. In recent weeks, the Fox News host has gone from covering the news to being in the headlines. Nicole Hemmer, author of “Messengers of the Right,” explains how the man near the top of the conservative media’s totem pole might influence the president. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Hello? Is this Roshan Karman? This is Roshan Karman. So you're a friend of mine who I've heard through the grapevine is having mattress problems? Yeah, actually I am. I was wondering if I could hear your mattress problem for a new segment we're doing over here at Today Explained called Mattress Problems. Sure, I'd love to tell you about my mattress problems okay great well before you do that i'm just going to tell you that you can go to mattress firm.com slash podcast

and use the coupon code podcast 10 to get 10 off a mattress that sounds good okay nicole i want to play play like a little free association game. You down? I mean, I love free association. I say a name and you just say the first thing that comes to your mind, like one word. All right, I'll try to keep it to one. Okay, cool.

Here we go. Start with a big one. Rush Limbaugh. Kingmaker. Ann Coulter. Immigration. Glenn Beck. Conspiracies.

Bill O'Reilly. Loud. Laura Ingram. Guns, actually. Tucker Carlson. Populism. inspiration glenn beck conspiracies bill o'reilly loud laura ingram guns actually tucker carlson populism or bow tie but he lost the bow tie that's right that's right that's why i had to go with populism and saving the best for last sean hannity loyalist Since Donald Trump was elected president, Sean Hannity has become much more than just the host of Hannity on Fox News. Yeah, well, he has a desk in the Oval Office, if you will believe the way that other presidential advisors talk about him. When she's not teaching at the University of Virginia, Nicole Hammer watches a lot of Fox News. And then she writes about it.

That image of him sort of being part of the internal close advisors to the president, that's the image that he has now, that he has Trump's ear, that he has Trump's eyes when it comes to the primetime programming at Fox News. When you have the president's ear, when you're one of his closest advisors, there's a lot more scrutiny on the stuff you do, like the real estate holdings you have. A detailed report released by The Guardian says Hannity spent the last decade buying homes in seven states. More than half of the money Hannity borrowed came with help from the Department of Housing

and Urban Development. Or the lawyer you use. Cohen only has three clients, one of whom we've learned today is Sean Hannity. And that's why it's important to understand where Sean Hannity comes from. So I think one of the things that we see with Hannity is that while he is a self-described conservative, and sometimes I think he really does think that he is an ideologue at heart, what we've seen with his career is that he attaches himself to powerful Republican men. And while in the 1990s and much of the 20 aughts, those men were conservatives, we've seen with the Trump era that that's not necessarily the most important thing to Hannity, that power might actually be more important.

Where does Sean Hannity come from? Another planet? California? Um, so his early days, and I actually think this is important, are in New York. He grew up, I believe, in Long Island. And he grew up in kind of the same outer borough environment that Donald Trump did. And he was more or less like a blue collar guy growing up, which made him a little different from Donald Trump. Okay. And then he went out to Santa Barbara to host a show on a college radio station. He ends up getting fired from that because he made some pretty offensive, even for the 1980s, comments about gay men and women. Aren't you married to a woman, by the way? Yes, I am. Okay, we just want to get that out. Gene, there's a show on here.

It's called Gay and Lesbian Perspectives. And this lady just had a child. Do you know how they do that now? Yeah. Well, that's also a really disgusting remark. I feel sorry for your child, but do you want to make any more? And then they wonder why they have so many diseases, you know? I don't understand it, but they won't let you say that they have a disease. They won't let you say it's a gay disease and they won't let you examine the practices that have caused. Just to be clear, is that something Sean Hannity would not say in 2018? He would not say it in 2018. In fact, he has now said that he's really a libertarian when it comes to gay rights. So again, like this shifting with the times, but also,

you know, he's a very wealthy New Yorker who runs in both conservative and liberal circles. He runs in elite circles. And you just can't get away with that kind of rhetoric anymore and still be granted access to those places. After he gets fired, he goes to the South, where his schtick is a little more accepted. And he winds up in Atlanta. And he's a big Atlanta radio host in the early 1990s. And he makes connections with another famous conservative Georgian, Newt Gingrich. I will tell you that there is no brighter philosopher, no greater conservative voice in this country than Newt Gingrich. Right on. And this is right around the time Newt's about to become Speaker of the House?

Right. And this is really important for his kind of entree to power. In fact, the first place we kind of see Hannity popping up in national Republican circles is as the emcee for Newt Gingrich's victory party in 1994. And so is that to say also that this is the first time his sort of like his maybe burgeoning loyalty ideology sort of pays off for him? I think that's exactly right, right? Gingrich wins the election and now all of a sudden Sean Hannity is connected to possibly the most powerful conservative politician in America at the time. There were kind of two huge conservatives in 1994 when it came to the Republican Revolution.

It's Newt Gingrich in the Congress and it's Rush Limbaugh on the radio. This is kind of the environment in which Sean Hannity is coming up. And then he attaches himself to another very important conservative figure, Roger Ailes. And so two years after Newt Gingrich wins that election, Sean Hannity is one of the sort of tentpoles of this new conservative television cable news station, Fox News. Good morning. Welcome to Fox News Channel. This is Fox News Now. All the news you need in 15 minutes. Good morning, everyone. I'm Alison Kosterini.

When does Fox News debut again? It debuts in October of 1996. And Hannity's there on day one? Hannity is there on day one. In fact, in sort of the prospectus for Fox News, his show was Hannity and Liberal to Be Determined. So they see it as kind of a face-off show. They hire Alan Combs, who I guess counts as a determined liberal. Does Combs decide that he's no longer into it?

Or is he just removed because they decide like, ah, why even make the effort to say that we're like trying to keep this thing as a forum for two different ideologies? Holmes actually leaves because like Sean Hannity, he has his own radio show, he goes off to do his own thing. And then they realize that like, they don't actually need to replace him. Hannity is a much bigger star by then because in 2001, Hannity's radio program goes national. And very quickly, he becomes the number two conservative talk show host in the nation. And so by the mid 20 aughts, he is on his own a major conservative personality in a way that he just wasn't in 1996 when Fox first starts. And that's number two, of course, to Rush Limbaugh.

That's right. He has remained ever since number two to Rush Limbaugh. He was always the number two guy. Remember on Fox News, Hannity wasn't the star. Bill O'Reilly was the star. And so he was consistently in somebody else's shadow. So Combs leaves the Hannity show. Hannity has the second most popular radio show in the country.

How does his TV show then become one of the most popular news shows in the country? Yeah, so his television show was fairly popular for a cable news show early on, right? Because he's sort of dragging off of O'Reilly's audience. He was second to O'Reilly, but then Ailes is forced out in 2016. O'Reilly is forced out in 2017 for reasons of sexual misconduct, like many other people at Fox News. Hannity sort of begins to fill that void in a way. The vacuum of having O'Reilly leave actually gives Hannity some more breathing room, but that's a very recent development.

You say Sean Hannity's radio show is number two to rush Limbaugh's. What did you call Limbaugh up top? The word I chose for him was kingmaker. And Hannity was the loyalist. I wonder how those two guys really compare. That's a good question. I mean, there are two different things to kind of tease out here. One is their style. Limbaugh is just a funnier, stickier kind of guy. So he'll do these song

parodies. You need to fix your corruption and you need to help yourselves and be great. He would say that here, but that's not what he's saying here. Here's what he's saying here. Every breath you take. Every sign you make. This is ridiculous. What kind of news show does parody songs? And at escape, I may be his actual personality, but he definitely layers on this kind of egotism to his personality as Al Rushbow.

So he has much more of an entertainer's soul in a way, where Sean Hannity doesn't. And so you would expect more innovation and kind of more interesting stuff coming out of Limbaugh. But the Kingmaker versus Loyalist thing has more to do with their perceived relationship to the Republican Party. So let's go back to 1994. In 1994, Hannity is invited to celebrate the Republican victory, but Rush Limbaugh was credited with delivering it. You understood, Rush, where America was before November the 8th. Many in the liberal media establishment told us that we couldn't win, that we wouldn't win, and that we shouldn't win. And I'm speaking about the whole class. But you knew that we shouldn't win and I'm speaking about the whole class but you knew that we could you knew that we would and our hats are off to you. I have also to present to you a contract with the men. He was seen as

you know the guy who was the majority maker which was one of the the labels that he was given by the incoming republicans. And we as the freshman class would like to nominate and make Rush Limbaugh an honorary member of our freshman class and present to him today a pin that all the freshmen got called the majority maker because surely he helped us become the majority. So he was seen as someone who had real influence and real power and could make and unmake people. And whether or not that was actually true, Republican politicians since the 1990s have acted as though Rush Limbaugh could destroy them. Right. So they won't cross him. If they do cross him, they immediately apologize. And that dynamic does not exist at all with Sean Hannity.

Like there's no sense that like, if Sean Hannity says something negative about you, your political career is over. You make Hannity sound sort of inconsequential compared to some of his peers, at least. So why is his presence on Fox News so important? We know that Donald Trump watches a lot of Fox. So the fact that Sean Hannity is on television matters a lot. And also that he is on the phone with Donald Trump, the president, like that is that's pretty big influence and I think has really changed the way that Sean Hannity is perceived and has actually really changed his importance in the conservative media landscape. If you're someone who has regular access to the president's ear, then you've suddenly become an incredibly powerful person because you're working on someone who is easily shaped on any number of issues. After the break, Hannity's gone from covering the news to becoming it.

This is Today Explained. Okay, Roshan, tell me about your mattress problem, please. My mattress is so bad, when I get into bed, the springs let out a resigned sigh. It craters so bad in the middle, you'd think it killed the dinosaurs. On the plus side, I can't wait to get out of bed in the morning. It's kind of a workout in itself. My abs have never looked better. I'd sleep in, but I'd get more rest standing up on the subway.

My mattress is terrible. It does this little dip thing in the middle, and I kind of roll into it. Rolling off of it would be a step up. I have to wrestle for space for my dog. My back hurts. You really do have mattress problems, Roshan. My wife and I keep talking about getting a new one. So we're actually on the market for a new mattress.

We just don't know where to go. Tell you what, when we get back, I'm going to tell you where you should go. I don't want to give anything away, but I also just want to mention that you can go to mattressfirm.com slash podcast to find a new mattress and use the code PODCAST10 to get 10% off. It's Today Explained. I'm Sean Ramos-Firm, and I'm talking to Nicole Hemmer about the curiously strong connection between Sean Hannity and President Donald Trump. The connection, I think, was probably psychic in some way early on, because as we know, Trump was a big consumer of Fox News. And these two guys grew up not together, but in the same environment in a lot of ways as outer borough guys. But by like 2010, 2011, in that era, as Trump is becoming himself more of a

political commentator on Fox News, he's appearing regularly on Fox and Friends, but he's also appearing on Hannity Show. And so I think looking back 2010, 2011, especially as the birther controversy is growing up. That's when you're seeing much more of Trump on Hannity's show. So how does this change when Trump starts talking about running for president? So back in 2011, 2012, Hannity occasionally was kind of boosting Trump as a presidential candidate. But it's really as the campaign is taking off, Hannity becomes a big backer of Trump fairly early on,

which made him different from other people at the network. As you'll remember, in early 2016, there was a lot of friction between Fox News and Donald Trump, particularly around Megyn Kelly. You know, you could see there was blood coming out of her eyes, blood coming out of her wherever. And Hannity during all that stays a Trump loyalist. And what you see is

reporting that comes out in the summer of 2016 tags Hannity as an informal advisor to the Trump campaign. And in a way, that's maybe not surprising because that's also the same time that, you know, as Roger Ailes is pushed out, we start to get reports that Ailes is advising Trump as a kind of a debate coach. If you think about the powerful men in Sean Hannity's

life, they're all kind of coming together by the late summer of 2016. The other big thing that Hannity does in this period is he actually appears in a campaign ad endorsing candidate Trump at the time. One of the reasons I'm supporting Donald Trump this year is, number one, he's going to put originalists on the Supreme Court, people that believe in fidelity to the Constitution, separation of powers, co-legal branches of government. He's a guy that will vet refugees to keep Americans safe. And of course, he's going to build up. This is wildly inappropriate. And in fact, even for the opinion section of Fox News, violates their standards, which they do have some. And endorsing a presidential candidate like this is seen as well outside what someone should do.

So he does get a slap on the wrist over that. Fox News hasn't slapped his wrists for sharing a lawyer with the president or not disclosing it when covering the Cohen investigation. What exactly is Hannity's relationship with the president's personal lawyer, Michael Cohen? So based on the reporting that's come out in the last few weeks, Michael Cohen is a lawyer who doesn't have a ton of clients. He has, as far as we can tell, three. And one of them is Donald Trump and one of them is Sean Hannity. And the reason this became a particularly big story is when this third client was announced in the news, it was that Cohen, Trump's lawyer, had a third with either Playboy models or porn stars and needed those relationships hidden. And so it became obviously like this point of curiosity as to who this third client would be. And then it came out in court that it was Sean Hannity. And I think that the reason that was such a big story was, A, it was so unexpected.

Like in some liberal reporter's wildest dreams, that client is Sean Hannity, right? That's right. You couldn't imagine that would actually be Sean Hannity. Right, exactly. And it's not just that it indicates a real closeness with Donald Trump, right? I mean, you and one other person share a lawyer with the president. That suggests a fairly tight relationship. But also that, you know, Cohen was in the news because he was being investigated for his role in the Stormy Daniels affair. Hannity had been covering that and he had been bashing the investigators who were going after Cohen. Tonight we have an explosive new chapter in Mueller's partisan witch hunt. Now, we have now entered a dangerous new phase, and there's no turning back from this. It is clear, as I have been warning,

Mueller is out to get the president, and it appears at any cost. Here's what happened. So he had been covering this news story that he was secretly a part of. So does this pattern of not disclosing your involvement in the things you're covering lead us to this ongoing Hannity real estate scandal? What's that about? So basically the story is that Hannity ended up being the person behind a couple of shell companies who have bought up in the course of the last 10 years or so over 800 different pieces of property from high-end mansions to low-income rental properties. And some of these were housing and urban development properties or that needed sign-off from housing and urban development properties or that needed sign off from housing and urban development. And Hannity is both friends with the head of housing and urban development, Ben Carson,

who was an erstwhile presidential candidate, sometimes Fox News personality. And so he has personal connections in HUD, but also covers HUD on his show, generally in pretty unfavorable ways, as you can imagine, for a department that helps with low-income housing. So there's also this kind of question of how much was he covering something that he himself was involved in without disclosing it? Does it say something about our particular political moment that, you know, the leading opinion pundit on Fox News and the President of the United States are really close? I think that it is the natural endpoint of a relationship that has been growing closer and closer over the past 20, 30 years of conservative media sort of taking up

a space within the Republican Party and serving kind of a party function of grooming candidates and bringing them into the spotlight and testing them and backing them. In many ways, it's taken over that role for the Republican Party and has become really empowered in that way. So I do think that that close relationship is part of it. But I think that the other part of it is, I mean, Hannity in a way stands in for the Republican party more broadly in that here we have someone who is loyal to power. And one of the things that we've seen over the past few years is that the Republican Party, purportedly a conservative party that looked like it was really doubling down on the conservative ideology with the rise of the Tea Party, has become a party who's

much more interested in power than in those principles. And Donald Trump has really highlighted that in so many different groups, from the conservative base to white evangelicals. And so Sean Hannity is sort of an avatar for that abandonment of purported principles. And at this point, it seems like the only person in the Republican Party who has a vision, is articulating that vision, is the president himself. Nicole Hammer wrote a book called Messengers of the Right, Conservative Media and the Transformation of American Politics. I'm Sean Ramos for him. This is Today Explained. of the right, conservative media, and the transformation of American politics. I'm Sean Ramos from This Is Today Explained. Our executive producer is Irene Noguchi. Our editor is Bridget McCarthy. Our engineers, Afim Shapiro, Luke Vander Ploeg, and Noam Hassenfeld produced the show. And the Honorable Breakmaster Cylinder makes music for us.

Shout outs to Ruth Morris for lending a hand on production this week. And shout outs to you for rating and reviewing Today Explained on iTunes. My name is Nolan Tucker. I am 11 years old. Follow Today Explained on Twitter at today underscore explain. Rojan Karman, you've told me about your mattress problems. I want to tell you about a mattress solution. It sounds like you could use a bigger mattress. And it also sounds like you could use a new one

because of the dent in the middle of the mattress you were talking about. Not to mention the springs roughing you up and giving you perfect washboard abs. It is odd that it's only on my side of the bed. I would recommend you go to mattressfirm.com slash podcast and use the coupon code podcast10 to get 10% off your next mattress. Normally I'd say let me sleep on it, but I think I'd like to sleep on the mattress that I get when I actually do go get a mattress.