The puffy face and raspy voice that had Fox News viewers worried on air that month came down to a nerve injury picked up in training — likely his martial arts practice — and the steroid prescribed to treat it, host Sean Hannity said on Wednesday, June 24, 2026.
In a post on X, Hannity, 64, one of Fox News’ longest-serving hosts, said a pinched nerve in his neck had grown painful enough to require prednisone. The corticosteroid brings down inflammation, but it also commonly causes fluid retention and puffiness in the face and throat.
“Thanks to everyone who has checked in,” Hannity wrote on X. “I’ve already addressed this several times on my radio show, but while training, I developed a painful pinched nerve in my neck.”
Social Media Chatter Prompted a Public Statement
What pushed the host toward a statement was the speculation that took off online once clips from his June 23 broadcast began making the rounds. An account called @BadFoxGraphics placed January and June screenshots side by side and asked whether Hannity was all right. Left-wing commentator Kyle Kulinski chimed in on X: “Why does Sean Hannity look like he’s drunk, high on Percocet and 60 lbs heavier?”
Comedian Josh Johnson, a host on “The Daily Show,” joked on social media about the host’s visibly enlarged cheeks. Political opponents and worried viewers alike responded, and the commentary crossed partisan lines.
Radio Listeners Heard It First
Long before the X post, by his own account, Hannity had gone over the subject more than once on “The Sean Hannity Show,” his weekday nationally syndicated radio program. On Monday, June 22, he asked frequent co-host Lynda McLaughlin whether his voice was sounding better. “I am, and I think America is excited that you’re not dying of a stroke,” she replied, drawing laughter.
The sequence he laid out on the radio that day differed slightly from the version he would publish two days later. Listeners were told a bad sinus infection had led to the laryngitis, and that he had been reluctant to start prednisone at all, describing it as “this crappy medicine.” His X post put it the other way around, saying the drug itself was what “led to laryngitis and some puffiness, which is normal for this medication.”
He did start the course of treatment in the end. Much of the inflammation cleared, but the visible side effects arrived with it — the ones viewers were pointing at by the time his June 23 show aired.
A Steroid With Cosmetic Side Effects
Doctors reach for prednisone, a corticosteroid, to control inflammation, and its cosmetic side effects are well documented — among them fluid retention that can produce noticeable swelling in the face and neck. Hannity acknowledged both, pinning his raspier voice and significantly puffier appearance directly on the drug rather than on any underlying condition.
Recovery was going well, he told his audience, and he had not stopped training. Then came the dry aside: a few weeks on the medication had somehow attracted more attention than 30 years of ratings success.
Not everyone weighing in had been expressing concern, and Hannity had a line for them too. A pinched nerve, a raspy voice and a puffy face, he wrote, were not, in his words, going to take him out anytime soon — including for those in what he called “the left-wing media” who had weighed in.
The Interview That Drew Attention
The episode that generated the most notice had Hannity interviewing Stephen Miller, senior Trump adviser and White House Deputy Chief of Staff, against a backdrop of rising midterm tensions. Candidates endorsed by New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani had swept New York’s Democratic House primaries the day before, on Tuesday, June 23, and Miller used the airtime for a sharp attack on the party, asserting that a vote for any Democrat empowered a party intent on dismantling the country’s security and way of life.
For his part, Hannity wondered aloud how two ideological camps so far apart could ever be reconciled.
A staunch supporter of President Donald Trump, Hannity hosts both a primetime Fox News program and a podcast that frequently features administration allies. That prominence — he ranks among the network’s most recognizable and longest-tenured on-air personalities — combined with his visibly changed appearance to send the health speculation racing well beyond his usual audience before he finally addressed it directly.
Where Hannity Stands Now
Two months on, neither Hannity nor Fox News has revisited the subject, and he has not brought up his health again on air or online. His 9 p.m. slot has been his throughout, and the audience has stayed put: “Hannity” averaged 2.55 million viewers in July, fourth among cable news programs, in a month Fox News led the category.
So have the combative interviews. Democratic socialist congressional candidate Chris Rabb, a Pennsylvania state representative running in the state’s 3rd District, opened his August 5 appearance by thanking the host as “Scott.” “My name is not Scott. My name is Sean, but that’s okay,” Hannity replied. On August 13, with former New York Mayor Bill de Blasio defending Maine Senate candidate Troy Jackson, the host cut him off mid-answer and closed the segment with, “Alright, I gotta go” — a moment critics seized on online.
Scrutiny of a different kind has followed his war coverage. Hannity interviewed Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on July 28, then went roughly three weeks without an extended segment on the Iran war — a stretch in which the liberal watchdog group Media Matters counted 46 minutes of WNBA coverage across 11 segments on his program. He came back to the topic on August 19. “By the way, it never gets credit — Iran will never have a nuclear weapon thanks to Donald Trump,” he said. “Does anyone ever give him credit for that?”
