“Hannity’s experiencing a renaissance. It’s his network now”

Since Hannity embraced Trump, his daily radio show, long the second-most popular in the country, trailing only Rush Limbaugh’s, has also surged in popularity. “Hannity is more important than he’s ever been in his career,” says Michael Harrison, the founder of Talkers Magazine. “He’s neck and neck with Rush Limbaugh at the top of the talk radio mountain.” Hannity uses his radio show, TV perch, and Twitter to take a crack at anyone who criticizes one of his friends, political allies, or the president. Among other insults, Hannity has called CNN’s media reporter Brian Stelter a “pipsqueak”; David Simon, the creator of The Wire, a “malicious asshole”; Jeff Zucker, the head of CNN, a “stenographer”; and MSNBC host Joe Scarborough an “elitist snob.”

Hannity, who for years was diminished in comparison with O’Reilly on-camera, began to benefit from comparisons with O’Reilly off-camera. On April 3 attorney Lisa Bloom held a press conference in which Wendy Walsh, a former Fox News commentator, alleged that O’Reilly had propositioned her romantically and then ostracized her from the network after she turned him down. At one point, a reporter asked about O’Reilly’s suggestion that anyone in his position is an easy target. “It’s simply not true,” Bloom said. “Other successful, wealthy cable news hosts have not been the subject of public sexual harassment claims. I haven’t seen any against Sean Hannity, for example. I don’t agree with the guy on anything. But he’s got a great reputation as a family man.”

On April 21, during an interview on KFAQ, a commercial AM radio station in Tulsa, Debbie Schlussel, a former Fox News guest, accused Hannity of twice asking her back to his hotel following an event in Detroit more than a decade ago. Afterward, according to Schlussel, he stopped inviting her on his show. Hannity responded in a statement that her comments were “100 percent false.” By April 24, Schlussel, a lawyer by training, appeared to be downplaying the accusations, saying in an interview with the website LawNewz.com that she would never accuse Hannity of sexual harassment in the legal sense. That night on Fox News, Hannity furrowed his formidable, load-bearing brow and unleashed on Schlussel and the media outlets that had hyped her “ridiculous, completely untrue claims,” suggesting it was part of a broader plot by “liberal fascists” to silence “every outspoken conservative in this country.”

With Trump now controlling not only the White House but also its TV remote controls, Hannity’s TV show has entered a new phase of influence—not just interpreting the administration’s daily message, but also, at times, appearing to shape it.