Fox News host Sean Hannity claimed on Monday that Americans are worse off now than they were four years ago. But several major data points prove that just isn’t true.
“[Harris] can’t run on whether or not this country is better off than we were four years ago, because—for a very simple reason—by every measure, we are far worse off,” he said during his prime-time show “Hannity.”
On Oct. 21, 2020, exactly four years before this episode of his show aired, the U.S. death toll from COVID-19 hit 213,964 as 1,051 deaths were added to the staggering figure in a single day. By the time Donald Trump left office, more than 396,800 Americans died from the virus.
The Trump administration’s COVID response was completely chaotic from start to finish. He initially dismissed concerns about the virus and argued that it would go away when the temperature increased. Trump went on to fume about masking policies, promote medical quackery, and fight with Democratic leaders as they questioned why medical equipment and protective gear weren’t being distributed effectively (did we mention that he tasked his son-in-law Jared Kushner with coordinating that bumbling, crooked effort?).
Hannity should remember all of it, because during that same period he was among several Fox News figures who promoted ineffective medical treatments for the virus.
Unlike Trump and Hannity, the Biden-Harris administration took the virus seriously and the nationwide deployment of the COVID-19 vaccine began after Joe Biden was sworn in as president in 2021. Approximately 81% of the population has received at least one dose of vaccine, while 70% are considered fully vaccinated.
During his monologue, Hannity alleged that crime has gone up during Biden’s term. But in reality, crime is down. Murders increased nearly 30% between 2019 and 2020 when Trump was president, as did the overall rate of violent crime. Under Biden and Harris, those rates have begun to fall. According to data collected by the FBI, violent crime declined in 2023 to the lowest level since 1969.
Joblessness has also declined under the Biden-Harris administration. In October 2020, the U.S. unemployment rate was 6.8% after reaching a peak of 14.8% in April 2020—the highest in decades. The current unemployment rate is 4.1% and more than 15 million jobs have been added since Trump—who presided over a net job loss during his term—left office.
On October 22, 2020, the Dow Jones Industrial Average closed at 28,308. Just hours before Hannity’s monologue on Monday, the average closed at 42,931, a 51.6% increase in four years. The Dow, Nasdaq composite, and S&P 500 have all seen record highs during the Biden-Harris administration.
Hannity’s dishonest characterization of the current state of the world is part of a pattern of behavior. Under sworn testimony in 2022, Hannity admitted that he never believed the myth that Democrats stole the 2020 election from Trump. But on his Fox News program, Hannity promoted conspiracy theories about the election results. Ultimately, Fox News paid a nearly $800 million settlement to Dominion Voting Systems for airing lies about the company’s purported role in election theft.
The conservative news network has long operated as a propaganda arm of the Republican Party, constantly airing falsehoods about Democrats, liberals, and social causes while ignoring basic factual data. While serving this function on air during his prime-time show, Hannity has also been a friend and adviser to Trump and has even been called his “shadow chief of staff” by Trump insiders.
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