To ensure a profile about White House aide Stephen Miller included all sides of the story, the Trump administration told Bloomberg reporter Joshua Green to contact Fox News host Sean Hannity for his opinion.
Green wrote that the right-wing radio and TV host "made himself available for this story at the suggestion of the White House." It was a small caveat in an otherwise lengthy story, but the disclosure revealed just how close Hannity is to the new administration.
Salon reached out to the PR departments of Fox News and Bloomberg to confirm that Hannity had volunteered his time at the behest of the White House. While Fox News did not respond to the email inquiry, Bloomberg said that Green had been talking with the White House staffers while reporting for this story when they "suggested" he speak with Hannity about Miller's talk radio roots.
Miller is currently in a position that Hannity must find familiar: Liberals are outraged by his politics. Hannity told Green that the murmurings about Miller's fall from grace after the executive order he authored was blocked by a court are "bullshit."
"All that noise that the media's making, 90 percent of it is pure bullshit," Hannity told Bloomberg. "Anybody writing or saying anything about him, including these dumb cable hosts — they have no idea of the relationship between the president and Stephen Miller, [who has] the president's full support. It's an art form, what Steve does for Donald Trump."
The profile about Miller focused on talk radio's role in the immigration debate. Miller's former boss, Jeff Sessions, told Bloomberg last year that he knew immigration was a major issue in the U.S. from the frequent radio interviews he did.
"He's 1,000 percent right," Hannity said about Session's comment. "I've been down reporting from the border at least a dozen times, from the Rio Grande to San Diego. You know why? It kept rating. People wanted to see it. My audience was learning from it."
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