Fox reprimands Sean Hannity for his 'unfortunate distraction' of campaigning with Trump

Sean Hannity with Donald Trump.
(Image credit: Ethan Miller/Getty Images)

Fox News on Tuesday issued a statement saying it "does not condone" the participation of show hosts Sean Hannity and Jeanine Pirro in President Trump's Monday night campaign rally in Missouri. "This was an unfortunate distraction and has been addressed," the statement said, not detailing what consequences the pundits were handed.

Before the rally, the network and Hannity alike insisted he was there in a journalistic capacity, but at the event he went up on stage with Trump and, pointing to the journalists present, told the crowd: "By the way, all those people in the back are fake news."

Hannity said in a tweet midday Tuesday his appearance on stage came as a surprise:

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He also said he believes fellow Fox News staff are an exception to his "fake news" declaration:

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Some Fox staff may not feel so kindly toward Hannity himself. "It's just embarrassing that Hannity is allowed to play by his own rules," an unnamed Fox staffer told The Daily Beast, "and that management is so hapless that they either can't or won't do anything about it."

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Bonnie Kristian

Bonnie Kristian was a deputy editor and acting editor-in-chief of TheWeek.com. She is a columnist at Christianity Today and author of Untrustworthy: The Knowledge Crisis Breaking Our Brains, Polluting Our Politics, and Corrupting Christian Community (forthcoming 2022) and A Flexible Faith: Rethinking What It Means to Follow Jesus Today (2018). Her writing has also appeared at Time Magazine, CNN, USA Today, Newsweek, the Los Angeles Times, and The American Conservative, among other outlets.