Trump cheerleader failed to bare his journalistic teeth, saying at one point ‘ I wanted to ask every question I could think of, I can’t think of any more’

David Frost versus Richard Nixon it was never going to be.

When Fox News host Sean Hannity interviews Donald Trump and his family, it is usually about as hard-hitting as the BBC’s questions for prime ministers in days of yore: “What is your message for the British people?”

This time, the world hoped, Hannity would bare some journalistic teeth as he quizzed Donald Trump Jr over his meeting with a Kremlin-linked lawyer last June. Trump Jr had published an email chain on Tuesday revealing that he was told the Russian government was behind efforts to damage Hillary Clinton.

Donald Trump Jr posts emails from Russia offering material on Clinton: 'I love it' Read more

Alas, even when handed a smoking gun, Hannity fired blanks. “Look, this is an opinion show but I wanted to ask every question I could think of regarding this issue,” he admitted halfway through. “I can’t think of any more, in all honesty.”

How about this one: why, Trump Jr, did you not report this potential subversion of US democracy by a foreign adversary to the FBI?

In dark suit, white shirt and blue tie, Hannity, 55, sat in his customary, somewhat garish blue and red studio. On the backscreen was a gleaming “Hannity” shield, as might be emblazoned on a superhero’s chest, along with shooting stars, rotating lights and a big glowing cauldron. On his black-topped desk there was a broad pile of papers plus six individual pages.

One of the the president’s biggest cheerleaders, Hannity kicked off with a monologue of about 10 minutes. “For all the members of the ‘Destroy Trump’ media that have to tune into my show tonight, get out your pad and your pen, you may actually learn a thing or two and we have a message for you, so maybe you want to take notes,” he chided. “And we’re going to lay out the real scandals that you are not covering that you should be covering. If you were actual journalists, you would be.”

Democrats and the mainstream media are “hysterical” over the story, he added, warning darkly of “an information crisis. Overpaid, lazy, rigid leftwing ideologues.”

The preternaturally tanned Trump Jr, with black hair slicked back and bushy eyebrows, wore a pink shirt and spotted tie. He sat forward in his chair with lips pursed and looked calm and relaxed, doubtless aware that he was not in for a Paxmanesque grilling.

He shook Hannity’s hand and said, “Good to be here,” then quipped: “I didn’t know there was any time left.” Hannity laughed a little too enthusiastically and said: “I’ve been told that before but they’re highly rated opening monologues.”

Trump Jr explained he had met British “talent manager” Rob Goldstone through an event at a golf course and had a “casual relationship” with him. It was Goldstone who sent Trump Jr the fateful email proposing a meeting with a lawyer who could provide information to “incriminate” Hillary Clinton, “part of Russia and its government’s support for Mr Trump.”

Trump Jr wrote back: “If it’s what you say, I love it.”

On Tuesday night he conceded to Hannity: “In retrospect I probably would have done things a little differently. Again this is before the Russia mania, this is before they were building it up in the press. For me this was opposition research: they had something you know maybe concrete evidence to all the stories I’d been hearing about, probably under reported for years not just during the campaign so I think I wanted to hear it out. But really it went nowhere and it was apparent that wasn’t what the meeting was actually about.”

It actually turned out to be about Russia’s adoption policy, he said, which was altered to bar American families from adopting Russian children in retaliation for the signing of the Magnitsky Act in 2012. It lasted about 20 minutes: Kushner ducked out after five or 10 and Manafort was on the phone “pretty much” the whole time.

Hannity wondered if Trump Jr had told his father anything about it. The 39-year-old businessman said no. “It was such a nothing, there was nothing to tell... It was literally just a wasted 20 minutes, which was a shame.”

The host asked if Trump Jr ever met any other person from Russia. He replied: “No, I don’t even know. I’ve probably met with other people from Russia, not in the context of an actual formalised meeting or anything like that because, why would I?”

A rhetorical question.

Hannity disdainfully ran clips of Democrats condemning Trump Jr and whispering treason. Trump Jr promised to hand over all documents to investigators. Hannity was clearly impressed. “As far as you know, as far this incident is concerned, this is all over?” Trump Jr: “This is everything. This is everything.”

Then Hannity queried: “Anybody else at any other point in the campaign say, ‘Oh, I’ve got information about Hillary’, that you remember.”

Trump Jr replied monosyllabically and not entirely convincingly: “No. No.”

At last, Hannity asked what Trump Jr would have done if the meeting had produced any illegal or compromising information, anything amounting to collusion. He answered: “100% I would bring it to the proper authorities. There’s nothing that I would do to ever endanger this country.”

But Hannity never asked why Trump Jr failed to report it in the first instance.

Having dispensed with the unpleasantries – like Trump and Putin in Hamburg last week – Hannity and Trump Jr then bonded over their disdain for the media. The president’s son said: “Look at the attacks on Ivanka. I was pretty vocal about that stuff this weekend. If she was anyone else’s daughter, she’d be a feminist icon, just this incredible, brilliant, well spoken woman, and they to belittle her at every chance.”



