Fox News host Sean Hannity became emotional Sunday reflecting on his conversation with Horace Lorenzo Anderson Sr., the father of a 19-year-old black man who was shot and killed last month inside Seattle’s Capitol Hill Organized Protest (CHOP).
In a raw and honest interview with Fox News host Harris Faulkner during ‘The Fight for America’ special that aired Sunday night, Hannity opened up about his conversation with the grieving father and discussed the impact of his powerful words as a father of two children.
“I wondered how this father of color sat with Sean Hannity and you were able to pull so much out of him, it felt like, and then we learned about you,” Faulkner said during the segment, delving deep into the state of race relations in the U.S.
“It wasn’t about race to me, it was father to father.”
— Sean Hannity, ‘The Fight for America’ Fox News special
“I’ve been at this since Fox went on the air in October 1996, and I’m not gonna lie, that was a very hard night for me personally,” Hannity responded. “It wasn’t about race to me, it was father to father.
“He lost his precious 19 -year-old son and he is like ‘my son is not coming back and I don’t get to hold my son,'” Hannity said. “My son is 21. My daughter is 18,” he added. “Children are America’s national treasure.”
Horace Lorenzo Anderson Sr. caught national attention after he publicly pleaded for answers on “Hannity” earlier this month, in a painful interview during which he shared that Seattle police and Seattle Mayor Jenny Durkan failed to reach out to him in the days following his son’s death.
The younger Anderson was killed early on the morning of June 20, when shots rang out near Cal Anderson Park on 10th Avenue and East Pine Street inside the CHOP zone. A 33-year-old man was wounded in the shooting.
FATHER OF CHOP SHOOTING VICTIM SPEAKS OUT IN EMOTIONAL ‘HANNITY’ INTERVIEW
Anderson Sr. broke down in tears as he recalled learning of his son’s death.
“The only way I found out was just two of his friends, just two friends that just happened to be up there and they came and told me,” he told Hannity at the time. “They weren’t even from Seattle. Now, mind you, I haven’t heard — the police department, they never came …
At one point in the interview, Hannity became visibly emotional as Anderson described the daily trauma of waking up to the realization that his son is no longer alive.
“I wake up in the morning … I look for my son in the morning. He’s not there no more. You know I’m saying? It’s like I go in there, I’m kissing a picture. He’s not there,” Anderson said.
Before the interview concluded, Hannity’s phone began “blowing up,” he told Faulkner, with messages along the lines of “‘I’m crying, I’m crying, I’m crying, this is heartbreaking,'” he said.
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“The mayor never called that man. He didn’t get to identify his son’s body until, he said, days later and I’m like, what? This should not have happened,” Hannity told Faulkner.
“But,” he continued, “if you are living in Chicago or living in New York or living in or allow anarchists to take over the top autonomous spaghetti pop dinner ‘summer of love zone’ as the mayor, — I’m so angry at that mayor — zone and people are not safe and secure in their home, their city or their neighborhood, you have no opportunity starting right there to pursue happiness.”
