Fox News turned to Sean Hannity, the Donald Trump political operative who hosts a weekday prime-time show, to help the president sell his new war with Iran, airing two hours of special coverage after Trump’s Saturday night announcement that the U.S. military had struck three Iranian nuclear strikes. The wildly unethical choice emphasized Fox’s role as a Trumpist outlet whose primary mission is propagandizing its audience to support the president’s actions.

Bret Baier, Fox’s chief political anchor, broke the news on the network’s airwaves at 7:52 p.m. ET, minutes after Trump posted about what he deemed the “very successful attack.” Baier and his guests provided overly credulous coverage that nonetheless resembled a normal news broadcast. But just under an hour into that coverage, an on-screen bug revealed that Hannity would be taking over the network’s coverage live beginning at 9. 

Fox executives, knowing that Trump intended to speak at the White House at 10 p.m., made the conscious decision to ensure that for the hour before and after those remarks, the network’s coverage would be guided by Hannity, not its “news side” team. 

Hannity spent the last decade shattering every possible ethical norm on Trump’s behalf: He has appeared in and even scripted his campaign ads, spoken at a campaign rally, and advised presidential decisions on staffing, communications, and policy — all while regularly interviewing Trump himself on his Fox show. He has also advocated for a U.S. military strike on Iranian nuclear sites for more than a decade. 

Hannity predictably used the opportunity on Saturday to shower Trump with praise and host a parade of shills who touted the president’s decision to bomb Iran.

“I just spoke to the president of the United States,” Hannity said at the top of his broadcast. “I have some new information and breaking details to share about tonight's, what is [an] historic air campaign. Now tonight, Iran's nuclear ambitions, they are officially dead. It appears the United States just completely obliterated Iran's top secret Fordo nuclear facility.” Hannity added that two other Iranian nuclear sites had been “wiped out.”

“This is a huge development tonight, and I believe the world is a much safer place,” he concluded.

“Maybe it's a little early to go there, but this will go down in history as one of the greatest military victories — taking out the No. 1 state sponsor of terror,” Hannity later added. “They've been responsible for hundreds of thousands of missiles between themselves and their proxies being fired into Israel. They have threatened to wipe Israel and the U.S. off the map, and that threat has been removed tonight.”

“There is no doubt we are watching history tonight,” Hannity said after Trump’s address. “There's no doubt that — I agree with the president — this is one of the most skilled, important, imperative peacekeeping, peace-through-strength-keeping operations in the last 40 years, and certainly the reign of terror in Iran, whether they know it or not, is coming to a quick end.”

Hannity turned to Mark Levin, the hawkish Fox weekend host who reportedly counseled Trump to back Israel’s strikes on Iran over lunch at the White House earlier this month, during both hours of coverage. 

Levin praised Trump as “a historic figure” and screamed at Fox’s audience that they could now “go to bed peacefully tonight” because Trump had stopped “these Islamo-Nazis [who] were building nuclear weapons to attack us with ballistic missiles.” 

“This mission was never going to fail under this commander in chief,” he ranted. “This is historic, he is historic, the United States military is historic,” Levin continued, comparing the strikes to those of “Reagan and Thatcher defeating the Soviet Union.”

“It's about time we rally around this president, rally around our United States military, [and] accept the fact that this is a high point in American history and world history,” he later added, claiming Trump “protected the entire Earth from these barbarians” and “prevented World War III.”

Fox viewers also heard from Arkansas Sen. Tom Cotton (“I commend President Trump for his resolute and strong action”), Oklahoma Sen. Markwayne Mullin (“peace through strength is what President Trump has been talking about from Day 1”), Fox contributor Katie Pavlich (“God bless President Trump, God bless the U.S. military, and God bless the Israelis for paving the way so the mission could be as successful as it was tonight”), and Texas Rep. Ronny Jackson (“the world heard the president speak tonight and that’s what leadership looks like, that’s what commander in chief looks like”). 

Hannity returned to Levin for the “last word” of the night. Levin took some credit for the strikes, praised Trump for going through with them, and engaged in score-settling with unnamed figures who had opposed them.

“To be perfectly honest about this, there were a handful of us who encouraged this night, who said that we needed to take military action to bring about this result. It is not so much that we had to convince President Trump — he knew what to do, he instinctively knows what to do, he is a brilliant, brilliant man,” Levin said. “But there are other people. I was laughing because they are now believers, and they are now talking about what a fantastic night this is.”

In the hours since Hannity signed off, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Dan Caine effectively contradicted Trump’s Saturday night statement that Iran’s nuclear sites were “completely and fully obliterated,” saying it was still too soon to fully assess the damage; U.S. officials acknowledged that Iran had may have moved its supply of enriched uranium to an unknown location before the attack; Trump floated a goal of “regime change”; and The New York Times detailed how “the president was closely monitoring Fox News, which was airing wall-to-wall praise of Israel’s military operation and featuring guests urging Mr. Trump to get more involved,” in the days leading up to the strike.  

If Trump tuned in to his favorite network on Saturday night, he heard a host who functions as his chief propagandist showering him with praise for following through. That’s apparently exactly what the Fox executives wanted. And that bodes ill for how the network will handle a war against Iran based on obvious lies and featuring rapidly shifting aims.