It took repeated attempts by Seth Rich’s family to let their son rest in peace, as well as a retraction statement by Fox News to finally get Sean Hannity to back off from perpetuating an internet hoax about Rich’s 2016 murder.

Then there was the campaign to get sponsors to boycott Hannity’s show. It was the same campaign that successfully made Bill O’Reilly a liability, before the network decided to release him.

Hannity, however, is now saying that none of that had anything to do with his decision to finally shelve his efforts to promote what amounts to slander against a man who is not here to defend himself.

On Wednesday, Hannity explained his decision.

“I did it out of my own heart,” Hannity said in an interview with HuffPost. “Nobody tells me what to say on my show. They never have and frankly they never will.”

“I’m not that type of person you can say, ‘Go on air and say this.’ That’s been the beauty of Fox News all these years,” he continued. “They leave me alone.”

His own heart?

The family had been pleading with him for weeks to stop. Others had pressed him to give the family a break for weeks, but he was combative and arrogant, refusing to even consider.

Now he wants us to believe he had a sudden epiphany, or some move of grace for a hurting family?

Ok. Whatever.

Speaking of Media Matters for America’s call to boycott sponsors of his show:

“There’s nothing that I did, nothing that I said, except they don’t like my position politically,” he said. “They’ll try to ratchet up the intensity of their rationale. It does not justify an attempt to get me fired. And that’s what this is. This is an attempt to take me out. This is a kill shot.”

I have no doubt that politics is the reason, but there’s no need for pearl-clutching. The very reason for Hannity’s sudden quest for “justice” for a murdered Democrat staffer was, by his own admission, an attempt to save President Trump from the Russia probe.

Honest question: How many feel Hannity and those who have clung to his every word on this matter on Twitter, further perpetuating the hoax, would want to be Seth Rich’s best friends and defenders, were he alive and tweeting out his political views?

Hannity says nobody convinced him to stop the nonsense.

He says nobody tells him what to do, and he’s backing off because of his own “heart.”

That’s awesome. I hope something was able to penetrate the shield of Trumpism he’s built up around himself. It would be nice to think that the repeated calls for decency finally had an effect.

He lost seven sponsors on Wednesday. It’s a far cry from the nearly 100 that O’Reilly lost before being dismissed, so maybe his sudden bout of humanity will save him to fight another day.