President Donald Trump will give his first nationally televised interview with a broadcast network in seven months this Sunday when he appears on Fox Broadcasting Co. before the Super Bowl. While the prospect of the president facing detailed questions about the abuse of power scandal that triggered his impeachment by the House of Representatives should place him in political peril, no one at the White House will lose sleep over this weekend’s sit-down. That is because Trump will be interviewed by Fox News host Sean Hannity, a loyal sycophant with deep ties to his administration who has no interest whatsoever in trying to elicit damaging information from the president.
Presidents George W. Bush, Barack Obama, and Trump have all sat for pregame interviews with the network hosting the Super Bowl (the game rotates between CBS, NBC, and Fox, the NFL’s three primary broadcast television rights holders). Because those interviews receive massive ratings, with a viewership generally between 10 to 20 million, they are showcases for each network’s talent. For NBC and CBS, that has meant calling on the star anchors of their morning, evening, and Sunday political talk shows to interview the president. Fox, on the other hand, traditionally gave the slot to conservative opinion host Bill O’Reilly, their “king of cable news.”
But this year’s Super Bowl offered Fox the opportunity to decide who would represent it in a new era, as Sunday marks the first time the network has hosted the Super Bowl since O’Reilly’s 2017 firing. If Fox executives had wanted to showcase their much-touted “news” side, they could have put forward someone like anchor Chris Wallace, who has occasionally made news for challenging interviews with Trump officials. Instead, they are sending Hannity, who is so sympathetic to Trump that he effectively functions as a White House spokesperson. Continue reading.