Donald Trump, age 77, often mocks President Joe Biden as “Sleepy Joe,” yet reporters in the courtroom for Trump’s New York City hush money trial have repeatedly observed Trump appearing to fall asleep during the trial.
The disgraced former president’s MAGA media propagandists are so in the tank for him that they’ve been praising him for repeatedly falling asleep.
- Fox’s Sean Hannity said, “By the way, I think I’d fall asleep if I was there.”
- Charlie Kirk praised Trump’s sleeping, saying, “That’s exactly how all of us would act in, like, the ‘Intro to Gender Studies’ class at the University of Missouri.”
- Newsmax’s Greg Kelly said, “Did Donald Trump nod off for a moment? Good for him. These things are boring.”
According to a Media Matters review, Sean Hannity hasn’t mentioned the House Republican impeachment inquiry into President Joe Biden in more than five weeks on Fox News. It’s a stunning reversal for the man who used his prime-time show to serve as a clearinghouse for bogus smears of Hunter Biden and a promotional vehicle for impeachment efforts.
No one worked harder to turn Biden’s son into a political liability than Hannity. Going back to 2018, Hannity teamed up with Rudy Giuliani and other Trump cronies to kneecap Biden’s presidential bid via a disinformation campaign that led to Donald Trump’s first impeachment. In 2023 alone, his Fox show aired at least 325 segments about the president’s son. But when House Republicans tried to substantiate Hannity’s absurd allegations, they proved only the stupidity of following the Fox host’s lead.
By February, House Republicans began leaking that their probe was unlikely to result in an impeachment vote. Later that month, Hannity promoted dozens of Fox segments to an FBI informant’s claims that a Ukrainian oligarch had paid the Bidens millions of dollars in bribes. But on February 16, the Justice Department announced that the informant had been charged with federal crimes for fabricating that tale. By March, the GOP impeachment effort was clearly in shambles.
Meanwhile, Rep. James Comer (R-KY), the top impeachment investigator who appeared on Hannity’s show dozens of times to talk about Hunter Biden in 2023, has not been on the program since March 12. Comer recently told a colleague he is “ready to be ‘done with’ the impeachment inquiry.”
In terms of Fox News as a whole, Hunter Biden was mentioned on the network at least 13,440 times since January 3, 2023 (when Republicans took control of the House of Representatives). The numbers peaked in July 2023 with 2,356 mentions but have drastically fallen since then, especially this year. So far in April, there have only been 60 references to Hunter Biden on Fox.
As Donald Trump’s criminal trial in Manhattan proceeds, we’ve seen MAGA voices on Fox News and elsewhere zero in on jurors, going after them personally and urging pro-Trump people to get on the jury specifically to sink the case.
- Jesse Watters launched attacks on jurors, saying that any juror who claims to be unbiased in the case is a liar. He also cited Trump’s legal team as having uncovered potential jurors who were “undercover activists.”
- Steve Bannon cited Watters’ remarks as a reason that Trump’s team should move for an immediate mistrial.
- Fox Corp. personality Clay Travis publicly urged Trump supporters to “do everything you can” to get on the jury and acquit Trump.
This attack on jurors should be seen as part of the MAGA anti-democracy push. As Media Matters’ John Whitehouse writes: “This coordinated attempt to use chaos to undermine public confidence in Trump’s trial should be understood as part and parcel of Trump and his supporters’ attack on democracy — and their media allies are fully on board.”
