Gabriel Sherman revealed last night that his sources indicate that Sean Hannity will probably not be leaving Fox News. This contradicts other reporting that we wrote about. Updated.
As I posted yesterday, The Daily Beast reported that Hannity was likely to follow his buddy Bill Shine out the door. Shine, the former co-president of Fox and “longtime lieutenant” to scandal-ridden ex-CEO Roger Ailes, resigned yesterday after being implicated in the tsunami of sexual harassment and racial discrimination lawsuits that have plagued the network.
But Sherman told MSNBC host Chris Hayes last night that Hannity is likely to stay.
HAYES: Other people are reporting that he’s [Hannity] eyeing an exit from Fox News.
SHERMAN: By all accounts, that’s not true. Hannity is likely gonna stay at Fox.
For what it’s worth, my money is on Sherman. However, Shine’s departure clearly does not sit well with Hannity. Sherman called it “a blow to loyalists like Hannity who see their rabbi, in Shine, leaving.”
Sherman also said that more lawsuits are on the way. While discussing reporter Diana Falzone’s lawsuit, Sherman saw no light at the end of the tunnel for Fox:
SHERMAN: This case and others, which will be coming, that I understand, in the weeks to come, is a scandal that’s just not ending and for me, as a reporter, you wonder where the story goes and it’s hard to know how the Murdochs can get themselves out of this because Roger Ailes, for 20 years, created a culture that was a reflection of him. And you can’t just remove a few pieces and think that it changes. I mean, this has to be a wholesale housecleaning and a reformation of a culture that was very entrenched.
Watch Sherman below, from MSNBC’s May 1, 2017 All in with Chris Hayes.
UPDATE (3:14 PM): According to Politico, Hannity called a rare staff meeting for everyone working on his television show.
UPDATE (6:08 PM): Apparently, the meeting was a pizza party where Hannity told staff he's not negotiating leaving. Query: is the phrase "not negotiating leaving" parsing? According to Sherman, Hannity has a "key man clause" in his contract that would allow him to quit. Maybe there's nothing to negotiate?
🚨 🍕 from source at meeting @seanhannity staff pizza party - where he told them he's not negotiating leaving, thanked them for their work pic.twitter.com/tQBIVKIFdk
— Hadas Gold (@Hadas_Gold) May 2, 2017
One thing I wonder is whether he’s contemplating leaving NYC for someplace like Texas, which is entirely doable while staying at Fox, and which he’s mused out loud about doing for years now. It is possible there’s been some talk at Fox about that which led the DailyBeast person to misunderstand. Leaving NYC does not mandate leaving Fox, and there would certainly require some o’ those “negotiations” to carry it off.
He was, I thought, suspiciously happy on Monday night, just hours after losing BFF Schine. So I bet something is up.
