President Donald Trump fawned over “wonderful” pundit Sean Hannity, who as a Fox News host has frequently allowed Trump’s baseless claims about the 2020 election being stolen go unchecked, during a recent trip on Air Force One.
“I’ll say this,” Trump told Hannity during the interview, which aired Wednesday. “Look, we had an election, you were so wonderful to me. You were really an amazing professional. You did it for the right reason, you didn’t do it for the wrong reason, but you were so professional.”
“We won every swing state,” he continued. “We won the popular vote by a lot. We won everything. We won a thing called, that people don’t like, districts … thousands of districts. We’ve got 2,750 districts versus 525 districts. Think of that.”
Social media users have since trounced Trump for his effusive flattery toward Hannity.
“‘You did it for the right reason’ yeah, like propping up a wannabe dictator on primetime,” wrote one user on X, formerly Twitter, with another commenting: “Sean works for State Regime TV so of course he gets compliments! Sean spreads the Bullshit!”
A third wrote: “Trump praising Hannity like he’s awarding a participation trophy is peak ego inflation. ‘You did it for the right reason’—translation: you were the best at kissing my ass on live TV. Congrats on mastering the art of professional brown-nosing. Pulitzer? Not quite.”
Trump spoke earlier in the interview about the state of the Democratic Party following his victory over former Vice President Kamala Harris.
He appeared to credit his win to the “radical” party’s support of transgender rights and undocumented immigrants.
“It would be harder to beat them if they were normal and things,” he said. “It shows that they’re almost insane.”
Trump naturally accepted the results of last year’s election, but remains adamant that the 2020 proceedings involving former President Joe Biden were rigged against him. Hannity promoted the baseless claim on his show and frequently hosted fraud proponents of it. During a 2022 deposition, however, he testified that he “did not believe it for one second.”
Elsewhere during the interview, Trump justified getting a “free” $400 million jet from Qatar, despite the Constitution specifically forbidding U.S. officials from receiving gifts from foreign nations without congressional approval.
His televised love fest with Hannity, meanwhile, spawned similar outrage on social media.