ABC News chief legal analyst and Mediaite founder Dan Abrams spoke with Sean Hannity today on his new SiriusXM program The Dan Abrams Show on the P.O.T.U.S. channel.

And they really got into it on the subject of Hannity being an unapologetic supporter of President Donald Trump.

Abrams asked at the outset, “Do you view yourself as an advocate for the President?”

Hannity said he takes on “varying roles” as a talk show host, saying he can be a straight-up reporter, pointing to investigative work he did on Barack Obama, acknowledging “I also give opinion,” and adding, “Sometimes I talk about sports.”

“Under the umbrella of being a talk show host, I would argue I am the entire newspaper,” Hannity said.

Abrams pointed out, “But it seems to be you never criticize President Trump ever.”

Hannity said that’s “not true,” but instead of getting into what minor issues he has with Trump, he instead said this:

“Donald Trump was not elected to be your typical president. He was elected to be a disruptor and he’s doing the job that the American people hired [him] to do. That means he is never going to be the establishment figure that people in the media want or expect him to be. He’s not going to conform. But I’ll say something else––is the media does a pretty good job of bashing him pretty much every second, every minute of every hour of every day. And what I pride myself in doing is something different than what they do. There’s plenty of Trump-bashing on radio and TV and in the newspapers. My criticisms are far more nuanced because I think I have a better handle on the Trump audience than anyone else in the media.”

They got into a back-and-forth about the media’s critical coverage of Trump, with Hannity continually pointing to Trump’s successes and how he’s really celebrating America.

At one point, Abrams said the media clearly makes a “great villain” and conceded there’s a lot of negative coverage of Trump on other cable news networks, but that “one cable network in primetime simply celebrates” Trump.

Hannity did offer some criticism of Trump’s tweets, saying that he’s advised Trump against some of the tweeting in the past.

You can listen to the exchange above, via The Dan Abrams Show.

[image via screengrab]

from Mediaite https://ift.tt/2yKCIpX