All Episodes
Previous Next
May 4, 2016 - Sean Hannity Show
58:24
Last Man Standing

With the news today that Governor John Kasich will follow Senator Ted Cruz in suspending his campaign, Donald Trump is positioned as the presumptive nominee. Sean has a few ideas for what Trump will need to do if he wants to reunite the GOP party.   The Sean Hannity Show is live Monday through Friday from 3pm - 6pm ET on iHeart Radio and Hannity.com. Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

| Copy link to current segment

Time Text
This is an iHeart Podcast.
This is the Sean Hannity Show podcast.
I'm not sure what I'm going to talk about today.
Slow News Day.
Anything happening out there, Linda?
Anything newsworthy?
Anything worth talking about?
Anyway, glad you're with us.
Sean Hannity Show, write down our toll-free telephone number.
We'd love to hear from you today.
800-94-1.
You want to be a part of the program.
Let me start, because I am I'm taking this seriously because I know a lot of you today are disappointed.
I know a lot of you are upset.
I know a lot of you are angry.
I know a lot of you feel frustrated.
I I get it.
I I pay very close attention to what my audience says, and uh I want to address this head on.
I want to start in Indiana.
You know, um, I and I've got to say it the amount of effort that people have put into their decision to choose a candidate is beyond admirable.
I don't question anybody's motives here.
You know, I I have friends, we have listeners to this program that supported any one of the 17 original candidates.
I understand firsthand because I hear from people every single solitary day how you feel about things, and I I take it all to heart.
I understand how strongly many of you supported Ted Cruz who got out of the race last night.
I'm watching what some people are saying that up, this is the end of the Republican Party.
Others saying they're not going to vote for Trump.
Uh the Never Trump people.
They're going to stay home.
Others pledging to vote for Hillary.
I am extraordinarily appreciative and sympathetic to how you're feeling and appreciative of the amount of effort that you have put in to picking candidates.
Some of you have literally, you know, when your candidate lost or got out of the race, you would switch to another candidate.
That candidate loses, you go to another candidate.
And it's it's the fact that you're so involved and care so much about the direction of the country is what we probably all agree on, even regardless of which of the 17 people maybe originally you were supporting.
Now, I have watched upfront and close and personal what it takes to run for president.
I have beyond um just respect, a deep abiding respect for what it takes for somebody to put their hat in a ring to vote in the case of Senator Cruz over a year of his life.
It takes courage, it takes commitment, it is a blood sport.
It is an ugly, ugly profession by every stretch.
Ted Cruz ran as hard.
He ran as tough a campaign as any candidate I have ever witnessed.
In the end, he was taking risks.
I love risk taking.
He played the ground game better than anybody else.
He was thinking ahead.
And he just by the by the end of the day, he concluded he couldn't get to where he wanted to be, and he fell short.
That doesn't mean that Ted Cruz is out of the presidential race uh or presidential running business forever.
One of the things that's so impressive, I can go back and make the case, I think a compelling case for all 17 of these guys from the very beginning.
Now, I want to take you back.
If you want to understand, how did we get to this point?
How did Indiana why did Indiana vote the way they did yesterday?
If you want to understand this election, there's only one way to do it in my mind, is you got to go back to day one.
You got to go back to the conditions on the ground, people's perceptions.
How did this become a massive insurgency year?
I've said it many, many times.
We look the stage was set.
The two finalists in this election, Donald Trump and Ted Cruz.
You've got two very different people, both outsiders, both hated by the establishment, and together, they were able to blow away very solid seasoned politicians, I think what was the strongest Republican field in my lifetime, and the largest, and literally they crush some wonderful people.
I stand behind a statement I've I've made many times on this program.
I think Rick Perry would have been a great president.
Bobby Gendal is an intellectual rock star.
Scott Walker has done miracles in the state of Wisconsin.
John Kasich, same story.
Nikki Haley didn't run, but same story with her.
Then you've got senators that have done a fabulous job, starting with Senator Ted Cruz.
The reason Ted Cruz has done so well in this election is he had the strength and courage, and I said it many times in interviews with him to stand when the rest of those Republicans were too weak and timid to follow up and take seriously the promises they made to you, the American people.
But the question here is how do how did a guy that has zero political experience like Donald Trump defy all conventional political gravity and beat sixteen of the best Republicans in the country?
How did that happen?
What happened here?
What's what's been going on here?
Now I'm reading some comments that are rather shallow and uh interesting, but you know, some blaming talk radio, some blaming Fox News.
By the way, I wish I had the power some of you think that I had, because if that was the case, I promise you, Barack Hussein Obama would never have been elected the president of the United States.
I wish I had that much influence.
I don't, and by the way, neither does anybody else.
And frankly, that analysis is so shallow and frankly predicated on a belief system, a premise that people are stupid, that the people of Indiana must have been stupid, that they were bamboozled, that you know they have no clue what they're doing.
They have no idea what they're voting for.
I'm not buying that for a second.
I don't believe that for one minute.
This is and has been a voter rebellion, probably unlike any we will ever see in politics again in our lifetime.
And I really believe that.
In other words, do you really think the people that were in Indiana yesterday, again, another record state, record numbers, voting for Donald Trump, Do you think they had no clue about Donald Trump's, you know, many controversial statements or flaws if you want to call them flaws, or that he was unconventional?
You think they didn't know that?
Do you really believe they didn't see these things?
You really believe they didn't see his mistakes.
You know, all of these things were talked about in in detail, minutiae, on a regular basis throughout the whole campaign.
So the voters, let's just stick with Indiana for a second.
But it was other states as well, but the voters still chose him.
And we've got to ask a question that very few analysts, media types, are asking, because they've been wrong from the beginning on all of this.
Why?
Why did the voters choose him?
There's got to be a reason.
Well, it's the media's fault.
No, it's not the media's fault.
The media, if anything, they didn't want Cruz or Trump.
The establishment didn't want Cruz or Trump.
Now, I contend that the voters of Indiana knew exactly what was at stake last night.
They knew it was do or die for Senator Ted Cruz.
They knew that they had more influence in deciding whether this was going to be a contested convention or Republicans in Indiana allowing Trump to go forward, probably with the nomination.
So the question is, well, why did they vote that way?
Well, I'm going to try and answer that question because I have a theory.
I have said from the very beginning, if you look at the Trump phenomenon, an outsider, no experience, a businessman, etc., He is a direct result of what I would describe as the institutional failure of Republican and Democratic governance, especially Obama's governance, if you even want to call it that.
All the things that I have laid out for the Republican Party as of late 2013.
I suggested Republicans run on ideas, run on a vision.
I suggested that they secure the borders first.
I suggested that they adopt the penny plan and challenge Obama's reckless spending and building up of our nation's debt.
I suggested that they advance and help people understand what health care savings are about.
I suggested that they use the power of the purse.
I suggested at the time that they also stick with their promises, which was to at least defund parts of Obamacare.
They resisted.
They resisted every step of the way.
And as a matter of fact, they Republicans facilitated the Democrats and especially the Obama agenda because they were too timid and too weak and too afraid, and they were they were so paranoid they would be blamed for a government shutdown that essentially they conceded every single solitary step of the way.
More recently, they took a stand against the president's Supreme Court nomination.
I'm shocked they haven't caved on that yet.
That doesn't mean they won't.
So they've lacked an agenda for a long time.
They've shown nothing but weakness.
They've allowed Obama's entire radical agenda to be passed.
They cared about their own power.
That's why they wouldn't shut the government down.
That's why they wouldn't use the power of the purse.
That's, I think the final straw that broke the camel's back was the 2014 promise on executive amnesty.
I think that was the straw that broke the camel's back.
What have I said every day that this election is going to be about?
We now know that 20% of American families do not have a single member of that family in the workforce, not one.
How many times have you heard me say 95 million Americans are out of the labor force?
That is a 45-year high.
It's ridiculous the amount of people that can't find a job.
How many times have I mentioned 50 million Americans in poverty?
46 million Americans on food stamps.
And then when Republicans given the power of the purse, what did they do with it?
Nothing.
They ended up being complicit and racking up under John Boehner nearly five trillion dollars in new debt.
They didn't fight for fiscal austerity.
They didn't fight for balanced budgets.
They didn't fight, you know, Republicans didn't want the wall built.
Every single exit poll from every single state, including Indiana last night, showed that people care about jobs and the economy.
They care about trade deals that have hurt American manufacturing and taken away American jobs.
They care about illegal immigration that has allowed what, 14 million people in the country, which are who are all competing for American jobs and driving down wages.
And the truth is, Republicans, let's be honest here, they never wanted a wall.
You know why?
Because they cared too much about appeasing their business buddies that donate to their campaigns that thrive on cheap labor.
Democrats, they just want a long-term demographic shift that's going to keep them in power for generations.
Now, fundamentally, all of those millions of people are fed up.
They're disgusted collectively.
They're angry, they're frustrated, rightly so with Washington, D.C. Every poll, exit poll showed between 55 and 65% of Republicans feel betrayed by D.C. Republicans.
And to be honest, Americans, the hardworking American people, have been screwed royally.
And this primary, why you saw record numbers, why you saw an outsider chosen is because the only real interpretation that you can get is people have had enough.
You can add to this the wars.
They we send the sons and daughters of of children in Indiana to go fight and bleed and die only to have another war politicized and and then gains of Mosul and Ramadi and Fallujah and to Crete, and then we give it back to even a worse enemy.
Just like Vietnam, 58,000 people.
How in God's name could we ever do this again?
You've got a you know, huge wealth job creation, market sitting there.
It's called energy.
Hillary wants to put the coal business out of out of business.
She doesn't allow fracking.
We can't drill anywhere.
You know how many millions of jobs could be created as America became energy independent.
We don't do it.
You know, shut down because of government bureaucrats and regulation.
We have schools that just suck.
We play more, we pay more per capita per student with the worst results.
A health care system destroyed and a Republican Party that wouldn't use any political capital to stop it.
Inner cities destroyed.
You know, add to that, a government that gives 150 billion dollars to the number one state sponsor of terror.
And I think what happened here is simple.
People have just said, with full knowledge of who Donald Trump is, they said, screw it.
We'll take our chances with him, with an outsider, with a non-politician, with a successful businessman.
After all, what do we got to lose?
Even with his imperfections.
People chose him, and they chose him knowingly, and they chose him in the biggest numbers we've ever seen in a Republican primary.
Now, there's a reason for all of this.
And for those that say, Oh, Trump's not a conservative, Trump's not well, let's go.
I'm going to go over the many interviews that I've done with him, and I'll tell you what his agenda is.
What he's told me.
Can I vouch for his sincerity?
No.
But I can tell you what he's promising versus what Hillary's promising.
A couple of bits of news here.
Trump has tapped Ben Carson to help with the VP search.
Hillary Clinton, guess what?
She outspent Republican candidates, all of them, to stop Trump.
In other words, they spent 5.2 million on ads with anti-Trump messages.
Wow.
Already, here we go.
The billion, the trillion, the uh they'll spend a billion dollars trying to uh with negative ads.
None of them work so far.
Judicial watch may get the green light to grill Hillary before the FBI.
That's an interesting development, and I think one we ought to pay attention to because I think a lot of people have been ignoring it.
Sanders supporters are starting a movement to dump Hillary.
That's interesting.
Uh you got a pro-life group applauding uh Trump's new hire.
You got Huckabee says he's all in to help beat Hillary.
Scott Walker endorses Donald Trump and Bobby Gindle has jumped on board.
Joining us now with his uh unique analysis.
You're gonna be mad at me in a second, and I don't really care because it's just the way our relationship works.
You get mad at me, and I just keep going.
You want to know you want to know you want to know what it's about?
Oh, I'm I'm reasonably certain I can guess, but go ahead.
So I put your name on a poll at Hannity.com.
I put you, Marco, Ben Carson, other, Ted Cruz, John Kasig, Mike Huckabee, Chris Christie, Sarah Palin, Bobby Gendal, Rick Scott, Rick Santorman, Rick Perry, in terms of who should be Trump's VP.
You want to take a guess who's winning?
Um Scott Walker.
Scott Walker has hang on.
That would be the wrong answer.
Not Scott Walker.
Okay.
Why don't you tell us?
Uh, Newt Gingrich.
This is a sign that my sisters have been calling in and voting over and over and over.
But they didn't even know it was up there.
I just put I didn't even announce it yet.
So anyway, if anyone wants to vote, they can.
Well, it's it's it's it's very flattering and a long way from where we are right now.
Well, you that's maybe very flattering.
You want to know why I actually like the idea?
Can I tell you?
And you not get all that.
Other than that we're very, very close friends.
It's not that it's not has nothing to do with friendship, although that would be maybe a small part of it.
I can't deny that.
But there's two moments where conservatism advanced in a great degree and was most successful.
The the the regular in our life in my lifetime anyway, the Reagan presidency, and when you became the Speaker of the House with a contract with America, and you ended welfare as we knew it.
The era of big government ended.
You gave us surpluses when we had deficits as far as the eye could see when you first became Speaker.
And I just think that you know how to get the job done and you know how to fight, and I think you could do the the spying transplant that Republicans need.
Well, I think Trump's gonna do a lot of the spying transplant.
I'm I'm uh very impressed with the way he's handled this whole thing so far.
But but uh you know you raise an an a different question though, which is I have been thinking about this, I'm gonna write about this in the near future.
You know, I I've been thinking about I was very privileged as a very junior congressman to be part of the Reagan uh takeover in nineteen eighty one.
And then obviously as Speaker of the House, I was given the great opportunity by the American people to be part of the takeover in ninety five.
And I've been thinking a lot about we have this extraordinary opportunity which which nobody in the elite media understands yet.
But you could have a Trump title wave by November that increases our our votes in the Senate, increases our votes in the House, has a president whose message has resonated, and uh strengthens us at the state legislature and governors level.
And the question then is, given everything we learned out of nineteen eighty-one and nineteen ninety-five, what is the maximum amount of change you could get by Easter of two thousand seventeen?
And how would you go about doing it?
Because when I look back, Reagan accomplished a lot, the House Republicans accomplished a lot, but we never really quite broke through.
I mean, the the bureaucracies and the unions and the lobbyists all managed to slow everything down to a point where uh we didn't quite get the scale of change we should have in those two moments.
And so I began to really think a lot about if we could win a great decisive victory in November, how do we maximize our impact so that by Easter we really have put America on the road to being great again, and we really have put America on a road to creating jobs and and helping the poor and really creating a new era of optimism and opportunity and positive thinking.
You know, I've asked you if the the statistics I give out are too insurmountable, the debt, the deficits, the number of people out of the labor force in poverty on food stamps, and you always say no, and I sometimes I uh it's the numbers to me are so overwhelming.
Sometimes I I I go through I vacillate back and forth.
Can this really happen?
Can it really be fixed?
I don't really know the answer.
I think it can.
Well, of course it can.
When when we came in in ninety-four, uh everybody thought you were gonna get deficits forever.
It took us four years to turn it around with John Kasich's leadership at the budget committee.
Uh by nineteen ninety-nine, Jack Lew, who is now the Secretary of the Treasury, was then Clinton's director of the Office of Management Budget.
And Lou in August of ninety nine holds a press conference and says, at the rate we are currently going, we will pay off the national debt by two thousand and nine.
Now that would that's a fact.
That's that's not a theory.
Right.
Uh we know how to do this.
With a leader like Trump, we can actually get it done.
If if you take the amount he saved on on the woman's skating rink, which he got done in uh literally such a short period of time, and for so little money that if you took that exact same formula and applied it to, for example, building a high speed train from Washington to Boston, not under federal bureaucracy programs, but under entrepreneurial programs.
You could afford to do things that that are unimaginable with the federal bureaucracy because they make everything five times more expensive than they should be.
I talked a lot about how did we get here?
I think a big factor in Trump's success has been the failure of Republicans in DC.
All these exit polls and all the states and territories all say the same thing.
Republicans feel betrayed by DC Republicans.
Do you think that's a big and Obama's failure obviously is a part of it, but they didn't stop the Obama agenda.
Do you see it the same way?
Yeah, look, there's no question that uh you don't get an insurgent like Trump unless you have people really angry, and you don't have people really angry if they think their leadership is effective.
So what you've had building starting in two thousand ten is a steady increase year after year of this sense that Washington is totally out of control.
I I'm working on a on a project to uh take back Washington uh and looking at what would it really take, not not just to win the presidency or to win the House or Senate, because we're all sick and tired of being promised things and having them not happen, but if you really wanted the American people to run their national capital again,
if you really wanted to bring under control the corrupt and in some cases criminal bureaucracy at the Veterans Administration, if you really wanted to bring under control uh the State Department, which so often does not represent American interests, you know, these are really big changes, and I think we need to have a program for this fall of the size of change, and then we need to remind everybody all the stuff you're really sick of are the people who support Hillary Clinton.
There's an idea that I'm gonna I'm stealing right out of your playbook that I think it would be wise for Trump to use and Paul Ryan to use, and every Senate candidate and every House member to use, and that is because the trust level is so low, if Republicans want to accomplish these things, they gotta get re-elected.
You gotta have a Republican House, Senate, and a Republican president.
But why not put those ideas down on paper?
In other words, promise to build the wall, promise to reform immigration, that if the director of national intelligence says ISIS will infiltrate the refugee population, you don't let him in until it's safe.
Repeal and replace Obamacare with health savings accounts, that you'll negotiate better trade deals, pursue a policy of energy independence within four years, work towards a balanced budget, how you're gonna deal with ISIS, how you'll rebuild the military, how you'll make a commitment to veterans, uh undo the the Iranian deal.
Why not put it down uh support the second amendment?
You know, Trump is gonna name the justices of which a pool of justices which he chooses for the Supreme Court, do that.
Why not do this ahead of time and then check off the list?
You did it, it worked.
Why not do it again?
I I would I think I would do it in two phases.
I would do it first, taking the kind of list you're describing.
Uh I would build it into a platform that is really dynamic and really exciting and really forward looking and pass it in Cleveland, and then I would take the ten biggest ideas, the ones that move the most votes, the ones that that build the most momentum, and I would turn those ten into a contract, and sometime in late September I would bring the entire federal party together, House Senate president, and say, look, you this is what our first hundred days is going to be like.
And I think that would galvanize the country.
And if you do it right, you draw a stunning contrast with Hillary.
I mean, there's an article out today about the uh veter the Federal Employees Union browbeating the Senate into eliminating all of the key reforms in the new veterans administration bill, because the the the government bureaucratic union is dedicated to protecting criminals and people who are failing to do their job and people who are failing to serve veterans,
and they're clearly putting bad bureaucrats above saving the lives of veterans.
Now, that ought to be an example where you you ought to be able to draw a sharp line in the sand and say, look, Republicans believe veterans are more important than bad bureaucrats.
And we think you ought to replace the bad bureaucrats to make sure that the veterans are getting served.
Let Hillary side with the government employee union on behalf, literally, in the case of of Puerto Rico, on behalf of criminals who are being employed by the Veterans Administration.
What do you make?
How do you unite the party?
You said to me in a in a previous interview some weeks ago that it's up to the nominee to do that.
How would you recommend Trump reach out to people that you know, frankly, he was extraordinarily tough with during the campaign?
Well, I hope, if not today in the next day or two, he's going to call and talk to Ted Cruz uh and have a very positive conversation.
And if John Kasich drops out, as everyone expects him to this afternoon, I hope he'll call John.
I mean, I think you start with human personal touches.
Uh there are one or two guys who keep attacking him, and he probably should wait for a while on them.
But I I would just get get the list and call all of them.
I mean, including Jeb Bush, and you know, you name it.
I mean, there comes a moment when you got to say, this has been a really tough fight, but now we got to put the country first, and I need your help to put the country first.
Do you like the idea of a team of rivals tapping into the the I think it was the strongest Republican field of candidates I've seen in my lifetime?
I think absolutely there are you of course you're referring to uh the the book about uh Abraham Lincoln's camera of rivals, right?
Yeah, and and I think um, you know, you look at the there's some first rate people who ran for president who who would do tremendous jobs.
I mean, uh Ben Carson, obviously at Health and Human Services.
Um I think you could put Scott Walker almost anywhere in a major position, and he would do a superb job.
He's just that good a guy.
I personally, I'm gonna go out on the limb here.
I personally think that Ted Cruz would be an extraordinary Supreme Court justice and would actually be the right guy uh to replace uh Antonin Scalia because he had By the way, I said the same thing.
I think I think that would be for the single greatest impact beyond the presidency for generations that Senator Cruz could have.
I agree with you.
Senator Cruz is so young that his potential to serve for forty or more years, and then the power of his intellect is so great, and he's such a good constitutional scholar, uh, that I think he would be uh just an extraordinary example of what we're talking about.
And you you start down this kind of a list and you look at these guys, frankly, I'm I'm not sure that they could get him to take it.
But the fact is that Jeb Bush would be a very good Secretary of State.
Uh he's a very sophisticated guy.
Uh, he would be accepted almost everywhere in the world, uh, and he's a very patient person, and that's a key.
One of the keys to being Secretary of State is going into rooms with people you don't like and being pleasant while they're miserable.
I I gotta I gotta run here, but uh would you consider a position yourself?
I think I think no citizen can say in advance that they would refuse to serve the president of the United States, and and that's just a straight matter of patriotism.
if I have to sum up everything I was saying in the last hour, Republicans betrayed their own base.
Every single solitary exit poll prove that.
Now, what is the impact on conservatism?
Well, conservative governors, those that govern conservatively, like Rick Perry and Bobby Gendal and Rick Scott and Kasich and Walker and Haley and others, they've done just fine.
They had no problems, nobody feels betrayed in those states by their governors.
Things are actually going swimmingly in spite of what's happening on, you know, Obama's, you know, just horrible.
Republicans were elected to the House and Senate to stop the Obama agenda.
They ended up facilitating the Obama agenda.
And that's exactly where the frustration has come in.
Now, Indiana, I contend, knew damn well what they were doing yesterday and last night.
People of Indiana, like the rest of the country are smart, they're hard working, they have suffered greatly as a result of horrible trade deals and carriers leaving and everything else that they've been going through.
They have suffered.
I think they watched like most people, this is the most watched presidential election in my lifetime.
That's it.
So they knew what what the what the consequences of their vote were last night, but they went anyway.
Trump got more than fifty percent of the votes cast.
Seven state in a row that he's now done that.
He won by almost seventeen percentage points.
He likely, I don't know what the final count is.
He may carry all fifty-seven delegates available in the state.
It was winner take most.
He won most, if not all demographic groups, income, ideological groups.
I think the only place that I saw that he lost were people with postgraduate degrees and those that described themselves as very conservative.
Ted Cruz won that.
I don't think there's any doubt that having Bobby Knight's endorsement was important, and Lou Holtz's endorsement was important.
I don't think the Cruz Kasich non-aggression act worked.
I think it probably backfired.
Carly Fiorina, great woman.
I think unfortunately, just I said it from day one, I don't think people vote for vice presidents.
And Trump found a way to appeal to more people than anybody else here.
I can't say enough good things about Ted Cruz.
He ran an incredibly impressive campaign.
He articulated his solid conservative constitutional beliefs.
He was disciplined.
He was a great debater.
He fought hard.
You know, he is while he was never about, he never broke out with the exception I'd say in Wisconsin.
That almost became a huge game changer.
He was the last serious candidate left standing.
But he, like Trump, is hated by the establishment.
So it's interesting, isn't it?
Look at the names that we're talking about here.
Scott Walker, Chris Christie, Bobby Gindle, Rick Perry, Mike Huckabee, Rick Santorum, Jeb Bush, Marco Rubio, Ben Carson, Carly Fiorina, Rand Paul, George Pataki.
I'm kidding.
Lindsey Graham.
And so Donald Trump, who led first led in the polls of July of 2015 has now secured the nomination.
An extraordinary moment, even the New York Times recognized in American political history.
You know, it's you want to take it another step.
He's going to be the first standard bearer of the Republican Party, having won more primary votes than any other candidate in the history of the Republican Party.
Since Dwight Eisenhower, he'll be the only guy not to have served in political office, and Ike was a five-star general.
He was the commander of the Allied forces in Europe during World War II.
And I would say that Trump beat the most impressive Republican field in three and a half decades at least.
He won by spending a fraction of the amount of money that his opponents did.
He did it without polsters.
He did it with a skeletal, a skeleton campaign only recently as he made some significant hires.
It's frankly a political achievement remarkable.
I'm not saying it wasn't without costs.
He was extremely rough to the to his opponents.
I would assume he'll be the same with Hillary.
I think it's up to him now to unite the party and reach out to those people that he was fighting with and uh start a general election contest.
You know, except for recent polls, he had been behind Hillary Clinton, the latest Rasmussen has him up by three.
The battleground last week had him dead even.
Hillary's a weak candidate.
We don't know what James Comey is going to come up with.
But those are the those are the facts.
I think this is this campaign, what you have now participated in and what you have now witnessed is going to be studied a hundred years from now.
It's that unpredictable.
So, and I would argue if anybody tells you which way this general election is going to go with any certainty, they don't know what they're talking about.
They just don't.
And uh, you know, I think if I'm the sum it up the Republican establishment, by the way, they wait and watch.
You're gonna have some of them begging and pleading to, you know, jump on the Trump train, et cetera, and be on board.
They'll the first time Trump's under fire, they'll be the first people off the train, which is always the case.
But deeper than that, the Obama failure, which is massive, is the Republican establishment, the Republicans we elected to fix this and stand up to this, didn't do their job.
They didn't get the job done.
And that's why, you know, and their hatred is pathological towards both these these leading candidates.
It just Was.
You know, why so much hatred towards Ted Cruz?
Why?
Because he embarrassed them.
He stood up when they wouldn't stand up.
He was going to fulfill the promise they all made.
You know, they didn't want Cruz.
Okay.
Half of them did, half of them didn't.
You know, you never knew where anybody was.
Cruz isn't going anywhere.
Cruz might be president of the United States one day.
Cruz might be a Supreme Court justice one day.
Cruz might be part of the Trump cabinet.
He may be vice president for crying out loud for all I know.
You want to know where the blame lies in this.
Look at the Republican Party itself.
You know, all of these guys love their country.
You know, you can hear it in Ted Cruz's voice last night.
I've seen it in his eyes as I've been out on the campaign trail with him.
He sees what I see, America in decline.
He's a very religious individual, a person of deep faith.
You know, he um the things said about him are just unbelievable.
I don't know.
I think a lot of this is rooted in Republicans not repealing Obamacare, not stopping executive amnesty, the gang of eight.
Gang of eight killed Marco Rubio.
Anybody that tells you any differently is just not analyzing it correctly.
So let me just move on and just add this.
Um I have some unsolicited advice for the Trump campaign.
Well, who you think you are, Hannity.
As I just said, I think we had the strongest bench, the strongest group of people in over three decades running for this presidency, running for this nomination.
And if I was Donald Trump, I know the first person that he'll name is going to be his vice president, but he also has really important jobs like Secretary of Defense, Secretary of State, Department of Homeland Security, Health and Human Services.
And as I look at the list that I just named off to you, Scott Walker and Gendal and Christie and Perry and Huckabee and Santorum and Jeb Bush and Marco Rubio and Carly and Ben and Rand.
It's an opportunity for him to tap into the best and brightest, especially the governors, because they have shown that conservatism, some people declaring conservatism is dead, it's not at all.
Conservatism, when actually practiced, if it was practiced by D.C. Republicans, this election year would not have unfolded the way it did.
That's just a fact.
So that team of rivals is not a bad idea.
A team of ten solid, strong, conservative, wise, successful politicians that actually got jobs done.
Is anybody better than Rick Perry for crying out loud?
No.
Rick Perry's a rock star.
He would have been a great president.
Scott Walker's a rock star.
Would have been a great president.
Said this now for weeks.
I have one other suggestion here.
I would put these promises, I think people are so fed up, so disgusted, so untrusting, feel so betrayed, that I think it's time to go back to a very simple yet profoundly successful effort made in 1994.
And that's put these ideas on paper.
Make a pledge, a vow, a promise that you'll do the things that you'll say you're doing.
Now I know that the general media narrative is Trump didn't give specifics.
Well, actually, he did.
And I know because I interviewed him as much as I interviewed Ted Cruz.
I could tell you what Ted Cruz's specifics were too.
Ted Cruz would have been a great president.
If it was Ted Cruz today that beat Trump, I would be saying, great, I'm all in for Ted Cruz.
I don't I do not have the contempt that some have out there for the how the people voted, or that somehow the people were bamboozled, or that somehow the people were ignorant, or that somehow the people didn't make informed decisions.
I think just the opposite.
I think the people in Indiana knew darn well what was going on last night.
But, you know, obviously Trump should put on at the top of the list, he will build a border fence to stop illegal immigration.
That's what I would say.
Unless and until we can actually vet the radical Islamists that James Clapper and James Comey and General John Allen said will infiltrate the Syrian refugee population.
We are not taking risks with American lives.
Put it down on paper.
Donald Trump has told me many, many times.
He wants to repeal Obamacare.
He likes health care savings accounts.
It's up on his website.
Go take a look at it.
So I would put that, I will repeal Obamacare.
And I will replace it with health care savings accounts.
I am going to stop illegal immigration.
He will renegotiate the trade deals of obviously an important issue he's brought up again and again so as to prevent people from losing jobs because manufacturing, I mean, the fact that Carrier goes to Mexico, it is an unbelievable story.
Because they want cheap labor.
They're not paying people in Mexico a lot of money.
It's ridiculous the wages they'll pay down there.
And then they want to bring their their air conditioners back here.
It's outrageous.
I'm willing to pay more for an air conditioner if it means an American gets to keep his job.
I'm willing to pay a little bit more for a car if the manufacturing is done here in the United States.
I don't buy foreign cars.
Even though you can argue that even them have made abroad too.
Trump has said to me numerous times he wants America to be energy independent.
Put it on paper.
Trump has said he likes the penny plan and a balanced budget that we can't continue to put the burden of debt on our kids.
Put it on paper.
Put on paper that his plan to defeat ISIS.
He said he'd bomb the living sh out of them.
Okay, but he's not going to telegraph.
He said he'll do everything he can do to confront Iran, although they probably will have the hundred and fifty billion if they don't have it all now.
He wants other countries to step up and pay.
He said he'd protect the second amendment.
He said he's going to give a list of judges that he would appoint to the Supreme Court, and it's only those names that he will, that pool of names that he would use, put it down on paper.
And the reason I suggest it is because people don't trust those people running for office.
So if he were to put together all of those specifics, every piece of which I think I name there is a conservative principle that he's run on.
And if he put it down as a pledge, a promise, a solemn vow, and then he could persuade people, some of the best deepest bench we've ever had in the Republican Party to join him, then I think there might be an effort and a consolidation.
The first person I'd make a phone call to is Senator Ted Cruz.
The next person would be John Kasich.
The next person after that would be Marco Rubio.
And everybody else on that list of people that have lost over time.
If he hasn't talked to them already, I have no idea if he has or hasn't.
I just don't know.
Because what's the alternative?
Hillary's not building a wall.
Hillary's not repealing Obamacare.
Hillary's not appointing justices that are going to be in the vein of Scalia and Thomas.
Hillary's not going to become energy independent.
She just said, no more coal.
Sorry, sucker.
By the way, I have that coal miner that confronted her is on my TV show tonight.
Yep.
Poor guy.
Losing a job.
I'm we're going to put coal out of business.
Well, she said the same thing about fracking.
She's also against, she's not going to balance the budget.
You really believe she won't even recognize radical Islam exists.
What did she do in Libya?
What did she do with Iran?
What has she done to improve relations with Israel?
So that's my advice.
That is my do if I was Donald Trump today.
I would try and, you know, absolutely put these things down, and then there's something that we can that I think a party that has been rudderless, visionless, that has disappointed, that is betrayed, can hopefully regain the trust of the people that put them in power.
And maybe he can do a tr uh spine transplant for the people in Washington that have been weak and timid and feckless and visionless.
But that's something that every Senate candidate, every House candidate could run on.
See what they do.
They didn't listen to me in 2014, did they, Linda?
Not one of them.
Paul Ryan said six months ago on this program we're gonna have a contract with America.
Well, maybe there it is.
I just spelled it out for you.
Why wouldn't they support what I just laid out?
Joining us now.
Somebody that really stepped out on a limb and supported Donald Trump very early in the process.
Uh he is the president of Liberty University, uh Jerry Folwell Jr.
Uh welcome back to the program.
How are you?
Great, Sean, how are you?
You took a lot of heat for this endorsement.
I did.
Are you getting a lot of heat now that Ted Cruz has gotten out?
No, it's only been one day, but it's uh you know, it's it's a good thing.
Yeah, give it some time.
Don't worry, I my hate mail is instantaneous now in the day and age of uh Twitter and Facebook and Instagram.
But anyway, go ahead.
Well, you know, I think social media is the reason that the establishment um can't get can't get a candidate elected anymore because it's impossible to to fool the people because they're all talking to each other constantly.
But it's it's uh and I think that's a good thing.
But it's uh but at Liberty, you know, we've uh we've uh we're Liberty doesn't support candidates because it's a non profit, but we've had um a a commencement in two weeks.
We have thirty-four thousand people that'll be in attendance, and we're honoring alumni who one was the top official with uh Ben Carson's campaign, and another was uh is uh another Liberty alumni that we're honoring with an honorary doctorate, like the one you got when you were here years ago is um Penny Nance who heads up Concerned Women for America.
She's been an outspoken.
She's a rock star.
I like her a lot.
She's really she's a good thing.
We're looking forward to her being she's gonna um receive an honorary doctorate.
She's been an outspoken Cruise supporter.
Tim Lee, who's uh on our board who lost both of his legs in combat in Vietnam.
He's been on our board since nineteen ninety one.
He headed up the organization Veterans for Cruz after I introduced him to r to uh Raphael Cruz, Ted's father, and he uh just just now sent me an e uh uh text message that he's putting on Facebook urging all of the uh conservatives and the Christians to unite behind Donald Trump and he's he's explains that while he's not the perfect candidate and he you know he he he uh might not be his f he may w wasn't his first choice.
He's he in this em in this text he details why Hillary Clinton would be so much worse.
And you know, just the Supreme Court issue alone.
It you know the the courts at stake, it's it's um some people I don't have any question that Trump will appoint, you know, the right people, but some voters do have concern about that, but there's no question who Hillary would appoint.
Well actually Trump Trump is gonna release the names of the pool of people that he would cons uh the only people that he would consider for the Supreme Court.
By the way, uh you know his name I would put in there?
I'd put Ted Cruz's name in there.
I'd put Mike Lee's in name in there.
I would I think Ted Cruz would be a great Supreme Court justice, and uh you know, it it's just uh it's just so important that conservatives and Christians not be so idealistic.
It's time to be a little bit pragmatic.
And I mean, think back over your lifetime, how many presidents are aligned one hundred percent with what you believed or what with with what any voter believed.
I mean, it's just not it's not how the system works.
We have to we have to give and take and um go with the candidate that we believe is electable and is that is c mo most most closely aligned with uh with our beliefs and I really believe Donald Trump is um is uh is the right man for this for this time in America's history.
I think we need somebody tough.
I think we need somebody who'll fight, and he certainly will do that.
And it's uh I was so honored and humbled by the comments he made in the in the victory speech last night about liberty and about um about the role we played, and it was uh just just kind of him to remember us, but but anyhow, it's a you were you you told me at the time you endorsed, I remember interviewing you that you were torn and and you like Ted Cruz and you like Donald Trump.
You like them both.
Ted Cruz and Ben Carson and uh Donald Trump.
I told you those were my three my three choices, and and we we're given another honorary doctorate to um George Rogers, a ninety-six year old World War II veteran who survived the baton death march, and he was he's uh he was a big supporter of Ben Carson.
So we're trying on campus here, most of the students supported Marco Rubio, but there's always been respect for other people's opinions here and I hope the rest of the conservative conservative world will uh will emulate what I've seen here at Liberty and uh and unite.
It's the only only hope for this country.
I just don't know I agree with you.
I don't see how we'll survive another another four years of Obama type leadership.
Uh I gotta tell you I I think Hillary's four more years of the same and and I know that people are disappointed today if if they were supporting Ted Cruz or John Kasich.
I get it.
I've seen this all throughout my career.
People put their heart, their soul uh the the very essence of who they are on the line it's a brutal, brutal uh process from the get go, and uh they do it because they love their country and in the end there's only going to be one candidate.
And and then you have an issue of whether or not people will unite.
I know the Never Trump people have expressed their desire to stay on the sidelines or maybe vote for Hillary and that's their choice.
I think it's a bad choice and uh we'll see what happens.
Maybe time, you know, even Bill Crystal is reconsidering Never Trump.
So we'll see what happens.
Well the Republican evangelicals have been going for Trump what sixty, seventy percent, does that sound right?
And there's there's a there's a smaller group, there's a minority of evangelicals that are a lot of them are in the Never Trump movement, but but they um you know I I think they will come a I think they'll come across.
I think they uh when they start to compare what Trump will do as president with what with what Hillary will do and uh that's the group that that we're gonna be I'm gonna be talking to and and uh Tim Lee is what that's why he wrote this post today and it's it's just uh it's just time to to unite for the good of the country and and I hope I hope conservatives will do that.
you know, liberals have been a lot better at being pragmatic and sticking together.
And I hope conservatives will take a lesson from what the liberals have done over the last few decades and start working together instead of fighting each other.
And, you know, maybe it'd be good if Donald Trump apologized to some of the candidates that he had to attack to get his message across.
And one other thing, Sean, you know, I just wonder if for, a VP choice if it wouldn't make sense for for Trump to choose a business person, some an outsider like himself who is not not a not a career politician.
I mean that's that's what's gotten him where he is already well actually we we're doing a poll right now on Hannity dot com and believe it or not Newt Gingrich is in the lead at twenty percent.
Marco Rubio seventeen Carson sixteen other which is what you're saying thirteen cruise eleven.
And that rounds out the top five um well those are all good choices but I just wonder if um if it's if it would fit with his campaign to to do a to choose a non a nonpolitical person to to be his running mate.
It seems like that's what people are gravitating towards right now.
I have no idea who that person would be but it's uh it's just something that's just something to think about.
All right, Jerry Falwell Jr, who is the president of Liberty University, thank you sir as always.
We uh I think the call for unity is appropriate.
I think it's gonna take some people time.
I think these wounds are are pretty wide open right now and we'll see how things work out.
Always good to be with you Sean.
Alright appreciate it eight hundred nine four one Sean if you want to be a part of the program.
All right let's get uh to our busy phones Atlanta news talk WSP Shelley is next.
Shelley hi how are you glad you called Hi, I'm doing great.
Thanks I'm so excited to talk to you.
Thank you.
Um I think that like the media and politicians are still trying to stumped by Trump's success and and still a little bit wrong and in understanding why he has succeeded.
And I think that the religious right has held the Republican party hostage for a really long time.
It kind of rem reminds me of what uh happened here in Georgia that um I heard about one time after nine eleven when uh Cynthia McKinney was making just crazy statements.
And the people in that district knew that she th that district would always go re uh Democrat.
So the only way to affect the vote was for Republicans to register as Democrats and elect the other person in the in the primary.
Um just anyone except Cynthia McKinney.
And it seems like the religious right kind of has that philosophy.
They're like 10% of the population, but they control the primary.
And every four years, they put forth the same person in different clothes.
And they pound...
During in between elections, people want to talk about being con fiscally conservative, fiscally conservative, fiscally conservative.
But come primary time, they have to kowtow to anti-abortion, like pro absolutely strictly pro-life.
Let's um repeal legislation.
I mean, repeal of uh uh Roe v.
Wade, that's like 40 years old now in Main Street America.
I said over and over again, no, we don't want to repeal it.
But they get so focused on these on legislating morality and everything like that that they don't put forth successful candidates.
Well, Americans can't.
Let me add to this, because every exit poll in Indiana showed this last night.
Jobs, the economy, number one.
I've always said peace and prosperity drive elections.
Americans are out of work, government is out of control.
Obamacare is a failure.
There's no appetite to to rein in spending.
There's no appetite to build a wall, there's no appetite to become energy independent.
There's no appetite to fix a broken educational system.
There's no appetite to to really take on in a serious, significant way, radical Islam.
There's no appetite to balance the budget, there's no appetite to to get better trade deals, and all of these things combined.
You know, everyone's been saying, Oh, Trump's not specific.
I I beg to differ.
As somebody that's interviewed him a lot.
I can tell you where he stands on all of these things.
But you raise some good points.
Now it's it's really look, this primary was in the hands of the people.
The idea that the people weren't informed is absolutely bogus.
The idea that the people won't be informed in in November is equally bogus.
And if the country is moved that far to the left that it'll take on Hillary Clinton as its president, then you get the government you deserve, and you'll get the predictable results of the failure of liberal ideology.
You know, I think I think it was Newt that actually describes Trump the best.
He he may do more to shatter.
He's he's not the conservative that Ted Cruz is, but he does see instinctively how liberal government, the bureaucracy, the workings of government are failing dramatically the people.
And both parties, frankly, share the blame in a lot of this.
Anyway, appreciate it.
Uh Sarah is in Pennsylvania.
Sarah, hi, how are you?
You're on the Sean Hannity show.
Oh, hi, Sean.
Thank you very much for having me on.
We are just so appreciative of the education and the knowledge that you've given us and expanded in this program.
We're in our 60s.
We are Democrats and we are going for Donald Trump.
And it's partially because a lot of some of you media people have given us such um education, it's really appreciative.
But the main thing that I'm calling about today is I'm really, really saddened and disgusted how a lot of these medias push that women are against Trump.
I don't know where they're getting this.
I really do not know where they're getting this because I'm going to give you an example, sir, of a wrestler.
A wrestler is taught when he goes on that mat, If it's a man or a woman, you wrestle them down.
If they get to takedown, then you pounder back.
Now, that's what he does.
His own wife explained that.
So why is it that some of these women that were demeaning or got him in these situations at times, whether it was back in show business, it doesn't matter.
That was a long time ago.
But where are they getting this poll that women don't like him?
▲
Export Selection