Sean Hannity is the cover story of this Sunday’s New York Times Magazine, online now.
For the 3,700-word story, Hannity traveled back to his hometown–and his old home–in Franklin Square, NY (pictured as a baby with his three sisters, aunt and grandfather). The Fox News host talks about his start in radio and his current unwavering support of Pres. Trump, even at the expense of Hannity’s base of mainstream Republican politics.
Here are 8 things we learned in the profile:
- As a kid Hannity says he was “an [expletive]” (we’re guessing he said asshole, but it’s the New York Times.) “Honest answer. Not on purpose. I just wasn’t that interested in school. It bored me to tears.”
- He clashed with the nuns in elementary school and by high school, at St. Pius X Preparatory Seminary, he was skipping class to smoke with friends.
- After two years of college, at New York University and Adelphi University, Hannity and his sister moved to Rhode Island and opened a wallpaper and design business.
- Hannity says he “deserved” to be suspended for his “ignorant and embarrassing” remarks on his first radio show in 1989 at Santa Barbara, CA station KCSB:
Hannity took a call from Jody May-Chang, the host of a KCSB show called “Gay and Lesbian Perspectives.” Hannity asked if it was true that May-Chang had a child with another woman. It was, May-Chang said. Hannity shot back that he felt sorry for the kid. “I think anyone that believes, anyone listening to this show that believes homosexuality is just a normal lifestyle has been brainwashed,” Hannity concluded.
- In the run-up to the 2016 campaign Hannity chartered fights himself, spending almost a million dollars in travel expenses, so he could interview the GOP candidates first. “I’d take friends, my staff, whatever. I’d always fill the seats.”
- Hannity has thoughts on Megyn Kelly‘s question to Trump at the first GOP debate in August, 2015: “I say this just very objectively: I thought the question was patently unfair.”
- Hannity continues to “exchange messages with Kim Dotcom, a New Zealand-based fugitive internet entrepreneur,” about the unsolved murder of former DNC staffer Seth Rich.
- Hannity pays for his own focus-group surveys of his radio and television shows.