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A guide to Sean Hannity’s role as Trump’s chief White House propagandist

Written by Matt Gertz

Published

Fox News host Sean Hannity — President Donald Trump’s pick to provide his first Oval Office interview, which airs tonight — shattered every imaginable ethical standard during Trump’s first term as he transformed his program into a nonstop White House propagandafest.

Hannity, long a consistent mouthpiece for GOP talking points and naked partisan cheerleading, became the sitting president’s confidant and adviser. The Fox star became known within the West Wing as Trump’s “unofficial chief of staff,” shaping policy outcomes and widespread conspiracy-minded counternarratives through both his private conversations with the president and his public program, which Trump regularly watched. Hannity’s on-air propaganda and unethical actions drew outrage from his colleagues, but his bosses were largely unconcerned with his dual role as network host and Trump political operative.

Hannity didn’t stop propagandizing on Trump’s behalf when he left the White House in disgrace in 2021. The host worked tirelessly to help the president fend off his legal problems, return to power within the GOP, smear Democrats, reposition for the general election, defuse potentially damaging critiques, and ultimately win the presidency again.

Trump theoretically crossed a red line for Hannity with Tuesday’s pardons of hundreds of January 6 insurrectionists charged with violent offenses such as assaulting law enforcement during Trump’s 2021 coup attempt — a decision Trump claims to have made after determining that some of them “love our country.” But knowing the Trump/Hannity relationship means understanding that the Fox host will either ignore the move or do everything in his power to help Trump sell it.

Below is a timeline of the Trump-Hannity relationship during the president’s first term — including a sequence of ethical morasses that would lead to the termination of a host at any remotely credible news outlet.

Jump to year

  • 2016

    • Hannity “provided a private jet” for Fox contributor Newt Gingrich “to fly to Indianapolis to meet with Donald Trump about being vice president on the Republican ticket.”
    • Trump and onetime campaign chair Paul Manafort “talked to Sean Hannity in their offices often” during the campaign, Rick Gates, Manafort’s former deputy, later told the FBI.
    • Hannity endorsed Trump in an official Trump campaign video, drawing a Fox statement that he “will not be doing anything along these lines for the remainder of the election.”

  • 2017

    • Hannity reportedly “strategized with the Trumps about how to keep” news of Donald Trump Jr.’s Trump Tower meeting with Russians offering “dirt” about Hillary Clinton “from coming out, and what to say if it did.” He then hosted Trump Jr. for a softball interview about the incident.
    • Trump reportedly backed off a deal with Democrats that would have secured legal status to “Dreamers” after “Hannity made clear in a phone call and on his show that Trump must draw a harder line on broader immigration enforcement as his price” and “Trump sided with Hannity” over his then-chief of staff, John Kelly.
    • Conservative lawyer Jay Sekulow agreed to join Trump’s legal team responding to special counsel Robert Mueller’s Russia probe, reportedly due in part to Sekulow’s “relationship” with Hannity, who had previously retained Sekulow and regularly hosted him on his show.
    • While using his show to regularly denounce Mueller’s probe, Hannity began serving as a “back channel” between Trump and associates like Manafort whom Mueller was investigating, according to text messages released later. After the FBI raided Manafort’s home, Hannity privately urged him to “stay strong.” 

  • 2018

    • Hannity became “so close to Trump that some White House aides have dubbed him the unofficial chief of staff,” The Washington Post reported. The Post further reported that “Trump is known to cite Hannity when he talks with White House advisers” and that in regular phone calls several times a week, the pair “discuss ideas for Hannity’s show, Trump’s frustration with the ongoing special counsel probe and even, at times, what the president should tweet.”
    • Hannity was revealed as a secret client of Trump’s longtime lawyer Michael Cohen, a fact the Fox host had not disclosed in his commentary on Cohen’s case.
    • Hannity convinced Trump to hire his longtime friend and former producer Bill Shine as White House deputy communications director. Shine’s exit the next year for a campaign role reportedly came in part because Trump “feels he was sold a bill of goods by Hannity.” 
    • Hannity appeared on stage and spoke at a Trump political rally on the eve of the 2018 midterm elections — after Fox and the host had both said he would not be attending to campaign for Trump. Both responded to the ensuing firestorm by neither admitting fault nor promising that it wouldn’t happen again. 

  • 2019

    • Trump reportedly sought strategic advice from Hannity after shutting down the government in a ploy to garner funding for a border wall in December 2018, and subsequently cited Hannity's influence in declaring a border “emergency” to obtain the money.
    • According to a pool report chronicling Trump’s January 2019 border tour: “Sean Hannity has special access here. He huddled with Bill Shine and [Homeland Security] Secretary [Kirstjen] Nielsen and is following along on Trump’s tour, only standing with the staff and federal officials as opposed to the press corps.”
    • Trump’s campaign credited Hannity after the Justice Department launched a criminal investigation into the Mueller probe in pursuit of the Fox host’s “deep state” conspiracy theories.
    • Hannity was a central figure in the Ukraine disinformation plot that triggered Trump’s impeachment by the House of Representatives.

  • 2020

    • After Trump “briefed” a vacationing Hannity on the U.S. airstrike that killed Iranian General Qassem Soleimani, Hannity then “called in to his own show to recite what Trump had told him.” Hannity regularly served as a mouthpiece for Trump in this way, attributing the sitting president’s statements to “sources.” 
    • Hannity’s claim that the emerging COVID-19 pandemic was a “hoax” by the media and Democrats aimed at the president became a Trump talking point early in the response.
    • Hannity reportedly scripted an ad for Trump’s reelection campaign. (It aired only once, on his Fox program.) 
    • Hannity sought, received, and carried out marching orders from the Trump White House on what to say on Election Day 2020, text messages with then-chief of staff Mark Meadows revealed. 

  • 2021

    • Hannity, who zealously supported Trump’s lies that the 2020 election had been stolen, texted Meadows a warning in the lead-up to the January 6, 2021, insurrection: “I do NOT see January 6 happening the way he is being told.”
    • Hannity texted Meadows during the January 6 insurrection, urging Trump to make a statement asking his supporters to leave the Capitol.
    • Hannity texted with White House press secretary Kayleigh McEnany after the insurrection, providing what McEnany called a “playbook” for how to manage Trump and prevent more “stolen election talk.”
    • In January 10, 2021, texts with Meadows and Rep. Jim Jordan (R-OH), Hannity said, “We have a clear path to land the plane in 9 days. He can’t mention the election again. Ever. I did not have a good call with him today. And worse, I’m not sure what is left to do or say, and I don’t like not knowing if it’s truly understood.”