Fox News host Sean Hannity, who has been informally advising Donald Trump’s presidential campaign while serving as its primary media cheerleader, has effectively turned his nightly prime-time show into Trump’s second campaign headquarters. According to a Media Matters analysis, Hannity’s program has given Trump what amounts to more than $31 million in free advertising in the form of dozens of fawning interviews with the candidate since Trump declared his candidacy in June 2015.
Hannity has devoted just over 22 hours of airtime to broadcasting interviews with Trump since the launch of Trump’s campaign….These numbers only count the amount of time Hannity spent airing interviews featuring Donald Trump — they do not include the countless time Hannity spends carrying the Trump campaign’s water without the candidate present, including similarly fawning interviews with Trump family members, surrogates, and supporters.
This correctly gets across the point that Hannity has been so obsequious in his support for Trump that he practically counts as an arm of the Trump campaign. It’s embarrassing to watch. At the same time, I suspect the real value of Hannity’s shilling is reasonably close to zero, since I doubt that his show reaches more than a handful of truly undecided voters. Basically, he’s just preaching to the choir.
Now, I suppose this could help goose turnout among the true believers, but the Hannity audience probably already votes in large numbers. Realistically, then, Hannity is prostituting himself for hardly any gain. I doubt his $31 million in free advertising is keeping the Clinton campaign up at nights.
