A Fox News host compared Donald Trump’s treatment by “crooked cops” to that of George Floyd during a bizarre segment in which he repeatedly said he wasn’t saying exactly what he was very clearly saying.

Sean Hannity, an avid supporter of the president who has appeared alongside him on stage during campaign events, delivered the monologue during his show on Tuesday evening.

Dredging up an unsupported “deep state” conspiracy theory that members of the FBI conspired to stop Trump being elected, he said: “We exposed how corrupt high-ranking law enforcement officials tried to rig an election and destroy Donald Trump at all costs.

“Overturn an election. Even the President himself, it is not the same thing as what happened to George Floyd, but it is horrific.”

After comparing Trump’s treatment to that of Floyd, who was killed when a white police officer knelt on his neck for almost nine minutes last month, Hannity again insisted he wasn’t making comparisons.

He said: “He was a victim of crooked cops. Now, again, not the same circumstances, I’m not making any comparison.”

He then once again made the comparison, adding: “A bad cop is a bad cop and by all means, by the way, the damage was real to the country.”

Just to hammer home that he wasn’t comparing Trump and Floyd, he once again compared Trump and Floyd later in his show, saying: “There’s no comparison in the case. Very different circumstances, I’m not comparing them.”

He then compared the two, outlining Floyd’s death at the hands of police before adding: “But for three years I’ve seen one bad cop. Look at what happened, look at what happened as a result.

“There was an attempted coup to undo an election.