Fox News’ ‘Hannity’ Lets Donald Trump Preview Next Week’s GOP Convention; Incumbent Takes Over Airwaves In DNC Counterprogramming Move
“In just moments, the President of the United States, Donald Trump, he will join us live,” proudly announced Fox News’ Sean Hannity at the top of his show as the final night of the 2020 Democratic National Convention kicked off.
Actually was past the bottom of the hour before the former Celebrity Apprentice host showed up on the phone for what was a rambling half hour love-in. An encounter Trump made sure to advertise to his social media followers in order to pump the ratings he so loves to quote:
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“We’re going to get his take on what I see as the worst infomercial on the face of the Earth,” the primetime host continued over footage of Trump at the top of the hour. “A lot of hate” and a “ridiculous situation” is what the poll slumping POTUS eventually said of the bits of the DNC that he admitted to watching over the week.
Initially ignoring the roasting he received from his predecessor Barack Obama last night, a stilted Trump offloaded rather lamely on his current rival Joe Biden.
“We’re for law and order, we’re for safety and security, and Biden is not,” the race baiting 45th POTUS said of the ex-VP who aims to be the 46th POTUS. “It’s just incredible, they’ve talked him into things that nobody would have thought possible and he’s not in a position to fight back.”
While admitting he’ll watch Biden give his acceptance speech tonight, the Obama obsessed Trump couldn’t ignore the 44th POTUS for long.
“He was a terrible President, he was a very divisive person,” the current Oval Office occupant said about 15 minutes into his meandering chat with Hannity. Then it was on to vague assertions about voter fraud and bragging about how good the stock market is doing as unemployment is at its worst since the Great Depression of the 1930s AKA Trump 101.
Trump casually mentioned that the virtual GOP convention next week will be more live that the hybrid DNC. But then he once again turned to the Obamas, accusing Michelle Obama of being full of “a lot of hate, a lot of anger” in her August 17 DNC speech that pulled him over the coals.
Behind in the polls, the reelection campaign has pinned a lot of its hopes on setting up Biden as a puppet of the so-called Deep State and “extremism,” which are two very very different factions to everyone but Trump.
“This will be the most fraudulent election in history,” Trump proclaimed as he railed against mail-in voting in a time of once again rising coronavirus cases and a potential second wave coming this fall. With little apparent notion of the consequences, Trump said in a near offhand way that law enforcement at the polls in November checking people’s ID before they can vote.
With zero push-back and even implied encouragement from Hannity, Trump went on to falsely claim that Biden has never left Delaware during the coronavirus pandemic and hasn’t taken questions from the media. “Something’s going on, very strange,” Trump said, with no obvious sense of irony.
Speaking of strange, with a tiny mention of public health crisis, Trump said he asked Obama if he ever spoke North Korea’s Kim Jong-un to “before going to war.” What war?
In typical flattered fashion, Trump also told Hannity that he would treat California well because Gov. Gavin Newsom “has treated me very well.”
Full of criticism of Trump, Newsom made a revived stint at the DNC earlier on Thursday via what looked like an iPhone from a wildfire zone. It should be noted that the Democratic Governor of the Golden State and Trump have a bit of a unique family connection. Newsom’s ex-wife and San Francisco’s former First Lady Kimberly Guilfoyle is engaged to Donald Trump Jr.
As Trump gave brief responses and snippets of his stump speech to Hannity’s monologues masquerading as questions, the lower third on the screen editorially read “President Trump On Biden’s Job-Killing Climate Agenda.” It should also be noted that the muted postage stamp sized live feed of the Democratic Convention that had been playing for some of Hannity’s show completely disappeared to be replace by a headshot of Trump and a graphic of a phone while the incumbent was on FNC tonight.
Unveiled to almost no one’s counter programming surprise last night, Trump’s call-in to his best TV friend’s show on Thursday came as CNN, MSNBC and good old C-Span all went live at 9 PM ET with the DNC shindig, as they have the past three nights.
Pulling out the GOP bullet points even before Trump called in, the high rated Hannity took early potshots at the “ever forgetful, corrupt Joe Biden,” the ex-VP’s “sketchy” son Hunter (expect to hear his name a lot more over the next week) and the Barack Obama “fawning” media’s supposed “unyielding anti-Trump rage induced psychosis.”
The other cable newsers went full screen with the DNC’s short videos on their candidate, short speeches from Andrew Yang and others and introduced today’s moderator Julia Louis-Dreyfus. On the other hand, as we mentioned, FNC’s Hannity had the virtual convention reduced to a muted postage stamp on the bottom righthand side of the screen. Granted, at least the convention of “hardcore Marxist left” got some visual air time in real time on FNC tonight. The past three nights had seen the first hour of DNC’s self-described “unconventional convention” reduced to silent video wallpaper on Hannity.
Then again, the Rupert Murdoch-owned outlet literally handed it airwaves over to showing parts of an anti-Biden ad by the Trump campaign at one point, which is pretty standard stuff for FNC so far this election – like tonight’s Trump appearance and next week at the GOP convention.
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