Senator Rand Paul of Kentucky joins Sean to lay out the GOP Senate Majority's plan to stay in office for four more weeks to avoid President Obama making any recess appointments to his administration or the courts. He also weighs in on the conversation surrounding the Senate Intelligence and Armed Services committees process for reviewing any issues of Russian involvement in the 2016 presidential election. 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.
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So, like many of you, I used to suffer from insomnia.
No matter what I did, I just couldn't get a perfect night's sleep.
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Let not your heart be troubled.
You are listening to the Sean Hannity Radio Show podcast.
All right, glad you're with us.
Write down our toll-free telephone number.
You want to be a part of this extravaganza.
It's 800-941-Sean.
You want to be a part of the program?
I urge you for our next hour.
I want to ask you in the spirit of Christmas to do something really, really nice.
It doesn't cost you any money, but you can help out a family of an American hero that has been sentenced to 20 years in jail, Clint Lawrence.
Now, my team, my staff, has put together an incredible video.
As a matter of fact, Lauren, on her own initiative and her brother, stop telling me not to talk about you.
I get to do my show my way.
Okay?
This is my show, Sean Hannity Show.
I get to share with the audience what goes on behind the scenes.
Well, Lauren and her brother, her own initiative, she never asked for a plane ticket, didn't even tell me about it.
She went down to see Clint Lawrence's mother, Anna Lawrence, and her attorney.
And the father, I think, was there, right?
Okay.
And Congressman Duncan Hunter has been a big, big help in this.
And so, long story short, she produced a video.
And the video is now on Hannity.com.
And so, what you could do, here's a guy that after so many motorcycle attacks that killed Americans, other forces, NATO forces, and other armies, IED attacks on motorcycles.
I got a list of them in front of me.
I'll get to them in the next hour.
And they put this guy in jail when he took over this particular platoon because two motorcycle guys were coming down and just like a week earlier had killed people the same way.
So the rules of engagement were in his favor.
And they have since found biometric evidence.
In other words, they have like a DNA print that puts the people that ended up being killed and ties them to other IEDs that were set.
They lost 10% of their platoon to enemy attacks for crying out loud.
It was his job to protect them.
Now this guy's been in jail up to what, three years now?
He's got a 20-year jail sentence.
So there is a petition.
Over 100,000 people have signed it to get this guy a pardon.
And we put it up on my website, Hannity.com.
You don't have to pay anything.
I just ask that you look at the video.
Just look at it.
It's on Hannity.com.
If you are inspired to do so, when you hear the story, you can sign the petition.
It's all linked on Hannity.com.
You'll hear from Clint's mother, from their attorney, and from Congressman Duncan Hunter in the next hour, and maybe that'll be the one good thing we can do for Christmas this year because we're all going to be home with our families.
We're going to be celebrating.
Many of you will be drinking heavily.
Many of you will be opening gifts you hate.
But Clint Lawrence is going to be in jail.
And his mother's going to be home crying because she wants to be with her son.
And this guy was an American hero, by the way, fighting for us.
So it's pretty much a disgrace.
All right, we have John McLaughlin, our favorite pollster, says Trump's approval rating is 48% now.
It's 48.41, which is pretty good from where it was and not having been president.
60% versus 33% of those polled a McLaughlin online poll.
It's called McLaughlinOnline.com, actually, if you want the website.
60% to 33% want to repeal and replace Obamacare.
Only 39% want to continue Obama policies.
52% want change and to move in a new direction.
60 plus 1% said the election was fairly conducted.
Only 26% say no.
68% say that Obama and Hillary should urge protesters to accept the election result.
We'll get to that in a minute.
61% say it's wrong to have mass protests at the inauguration.
52 to 20 say Schumer's endorsement of Keith Ellison, who worked for Farrakhan, is wrong, you think?
51 to 22 want Trump to tear up the Iranian deal due to the lack of U.S. inspections.
62 to 27, the majority would cut off federal funds to cities that refuse to turn in criminal aliens.
I'll just giving you a state of where the country is right now.
Donald Trump has picked this guy, the CEO of Exxon, Tillerson, for Secretary of State.
There are some GOP senators expressing concern.
Our friend Jamie Dupree reports today.
Jamie says from his vantage point, it's still a good chance he'll be confirmed.
It only takes a few defections, though, on the Republican side.
Jamie's rule of thumb is there's always one nominee of a new president who gets run over the coals and could be stopped by the Senate.
He says he's not sure it's Tillerson, but he will get a workout on the issue of his ties to Russia.
But he did big deals with Russia, which was his job.
I mean, Exxon, you know, is a much bigger economy than most countries for crying out loud.
Donald Trump goes on his Thank You America tour again tonight.
He's going to be in Wisconsin.
Speaker Paul Ryan will appear with him.
Trump has four of these rallies in the next five days.
Newt Gingrich said in D.C. today that he thinks Trump should keep doing the rallies because it keeps him in touch with the people who elected him.
I agree with that.
And the GOP in Congress will probe questions of what the Russians knew about the DNC and the Podesta email hacks through regular committees.
Democrats wanted an independent probe, but that seems unlikely, which, by the way, they only want it because they want to politicize all of that.
We have top intelligence officials today rejecting the Democrats' Putin Gate conspiracy theory.
Now, this is what you're not going to hear today.
This is what they're not going to tell you.
Because, well, because this is where the media is today.
I have a whole pack in front of me.
The Daily Beast, you have a columnist there declaring 2016 the presidential outcome a hoax.
Well, why is all of this happening to Donald Trump?
Why is what Hillary Clinton said never has happened before?
Why is she involved in this?
Why is she now jumping in with John Podesta, our spokesperson, radical leftist that he is?
Remember what she was saying during the debates and during the campaign about Donald Trump and questioning the integrity of the elections.
That is not the way our democracy works.
We've been around for 240 years.
We've had free and fair elections.
We've accepted the outcomes when we may not have liked them.
And that is what must be expected of anyone standing on a debate stage during a general election.
And then he's gone out and talked about rigged elections, and he's tried to rile up all of his supporters and his rallies.
It's really painful to see this.
But in that last debate, he said something truly horrifying.
And that was that he wouldn't say he would accept the results of the election.
This is his final target.
Our democracy itself.
Okay.
And it's the same thing that Barack Obama.
Remember in October, Barack Obama was laughing at the idea that somehow these elections aren't going to be honest.
They're just laughing at Donald Trump.
They're mocking him for this position.
And this is now their position.
And Obama was out there telling us, well, it's impossible for our elections to be rigged.
Oh, come on, Donald Trump.
Are you serious?
So you go and you look: all right, so the Daily Beast columnist declaring the presidential outcome a hoax.
You got CNN saying Trump win is a national emergency.
That's the position of the Clinton News Network.
Then if you were wondering if the liberal news media, the alt-left radical news media, was going to change their ways and learn from their failures, forget it.
The New York Times goes out and hired the very reporter who sent stories to Clinton staffers for approval before he sent them out.
Just like the New York Times did.
He fits in perfectly there.
And then you've got the New York Times media columnist.
I wasted an hour on the phone with this guy, Jim Rutenberg.
He didn't put one quote of mine in his article.
Wasted my time.
He's now lecturing TV news that they must stop going easy on Trump.
I'm thinking, what are you talking about?
You know, are you serious?
I mean, maybe he should be focused on, oh, Martha Radditz shouldn't be moderating debates and then crying when Trump wins.
Maybe he should be critical of CNN giving questions to Hillary before debates.
Maybe he should be critical of his own newspaper for giving editorial opportunities to the Clinton campaign and hiring political reporters to do the same.
Maybe he should be critical of news organizations, alt-left radical news organizations, that seek out questions from the DNC.
I mean, it never ends here.
And I'm telling you, this is not good.
This is a war against Donald Trump.
And I've said it before, and I'm saying it now.
What you're seeing is the emergence of the delegitimizing of Donald Trump, and their campaign is not going to stop.
And they're going to do everything they can do to destroy Donald Trump every way, shape, matter, and form that they can.
And this is not going to get stopped.
It's going to be, it's going to be, what was the name of that woman that was parked outside of George W. Bush's ranch in Texas?
You know, it's going to be Code Pink all over again.
It's going to be all of the radical leftists.
You can see out in Hollywood, John Voigt on Sunday, was up for a 2016 Critics' Choice Award, best supporting actor in a drama series, because of his role in Showtime's Ray Donovan.
But anyway, he was booed in the middle of an audience frenzy.
I mean, because they mentioned him and he's a conservative in Hollywood.
Then you got the ladies of the view saying it's time for Trump to step down before he turns our flag into a communist symbol.
This is how insane they've gotten.
You got Paul Krugman over at the New York Times, you know, calling it a tainted election, an outrage we should never forget.
You've got to be kidding me.
And it goes on from there.
You know, you have commentators on MSNBC saying that it's frightful Trump's cabinet positions.
They're ignoramuses.
They're billionaires.
They're generals.
Really?
Being a general is a bad thing, being a billionaire.
Don't you have to be kind of smart to make a billion dollars?
I never made it.
I don't know how to make a billion dollars.
You have to be kind of smart.
On CBS, you know, they're saying, well, yeah, this was an illegitimate election.
And then you turn it into the whole Russian hacking story.
And then you've got, you know, this is nothing but left-wing fake news.
There's no new information leading the CIA to their conclusion.
I told you this yesterday.
And I quoted the New York Times yesterday saying the exact thing.
All they've done is analyzed old information and put it through a political prism, which is not new for leadership at the CIA because they advanced the false story about Benghazi in a spontaneous attack.
Now, also, the FBI disagrees with the CIA, claiming that the information they've gathered is just inconclusive.
You can't come to that conclusion.
There's no new evidence in the case, everything that we've known.
We've known for 10 years.
I'll do a whole timeline on TV tonight.
We've known for 10 plus years about the vulnerability in hacking.
Nobody seemed to care about it before.
Nobody cared about Hillary's emails.
As a matter of fact, Obama went on 60 Minutes and pretty much exonerated Hillary from passing on information.
Now we know that there's a 99% certainty that Hillary was, in fact, her email server hacked by five foreign intelligence agencies.
No evidence at all that Russia was involved.
You even have Julian Assange saying that Russia wasn't involved.
We know that the Obama administration has a history of manipulating intelligence for their political benefit.
We know they manipulated everybody on the sale of health care and then bragged about it.
We also know that an underreported scandal, Joe Pollock over at Breitpart pointed this out, was the CENTCOM scandal in which it emerged that senior U.S. Central Command CENCOM leaders manipulated intelligence assessments in 2014 and 15 to make it appear like Obama was winning the war against ISIS.
And there's even more reason to doubt the selective leak because they lied.
They manipulated it.
I mean, you got foreign interference in elections, by the way, is nothing new.
How do we know?
Because Obama's entire team went over to Israel to manipulate the election and defeat Netanyahu.
So let's be real here.
And we know your tax dollars was spent.
300 grand went to a pro-peace Israeli group, which then paid political activists whose goal it was to unseat B.B. Netanyahu.
Oh, so it's okay that we do it, but not okay that the Russians try and do it if they did.
And who's been saying we ought to be listening to Julian Assange and all the warnings about cybersecurity and learn the lesson that we better beef it up?
It's me.
It's not been the left.
It's been me and a few other conservatives.
You know, so it's all a big sham and it's all a big lie.
The House Intel chair tells the Democrats they can pound sand on this, knowing that they want to politicize this.
So we'll get into all this in the course of the program today.
Also, have social conservatives, some of them not thrilled with the Tillerson appointment.
Obama says those who favor welfare cuts are racist.
He also claimed America still hasn't overcome slavery.
So we'll get to all of that in the course of the program today and much more.
800-941 Sean is our toll-free telephone number if you want to be a part of this extravaganza.
We'll get to your calls coming up next half hour.
Now, first we have the hack, the oh, we've got a recount.
First, we've got to have a recount.
Well, Donald Trump's victory in Wisconsin, he went up 162 votes.
Didn't work out in Pennsylvania.
It's not happening there either, and it's not happening in Michigan.
So to delegitimize Trump, now they have all jumped on this bandwagon about hacking, including the president.
But what is not getting as much play, and I got a call from my buddy Bill Cunningham.
Sean Hannity, it's Bill Cunningham.
We've got a problem in Ohio.
I'm like, Bill, what's the problem?
Sean Hannity, the problem is huge.
We have electors here that are being intimidated.
I said that's happening everywhere.
He goes, no, but it's really bad here in Ohio because a lot of the people might be swayed.
So I have informed the Trump campaign of what's going on or the Trump transition team, but it shouldn't surprise you.
So the very thing that Hillary said Trump shouldn't do, maybe I guess the media made a big mistake.
Mike Walsh had a column in the New York Post today.
You know, win-lose, you got to accept the results of the election.
Trump said, I'll keep you in suspense, later adding that he would accept if I win.
Remember that?
And then, of course, naturally, Democrats went, this is horrifying, Hillary said.
He's taking down our democracy.
And I, for one, am appalled, she said.
On the wake of their loss, Democrats now, well, they started with the recount.
Then the recount became hacking.
And what they're really doing behind the scenes while they're making you look at A and B is behind the scenes, all these activist Democrats.
You know, they're also planning the inaugural disruption through Michael Moore.
But what's really working is the Daily Caller points out, the PR firm that is working behind the scenes with electors is rife with ties to prominent Democrats like Obama and twice-failed presidential candidate Hillary Clinton.
The group is called Megaphone Strategies.
Their stated mission is to, quote, use PR as a tool to diversify progressive movements, typically working with progressive causes like Black Lives Matter.
Now, the firm is representing a handful of, quote, faithless electors trying to keep President-elect Donald Trump from winning the Electoral College vote, which would take place, what, a week from yesterday.
And the firm, by the way, is co-founded by Van Jones.
You know, the former green job czar.
A lot of good that Green Job Czar did, didn't he?
Solyndra, all the money poured down the toilet.
You might as well just take in $1,000 bills, throw them down the toilet because that's what they did with it, just to basically enrich all their buddies and friends, talk about pay-to-play.
By the way, can I ask why Van Jones is now the head of a company that is trying to undermine electors and he's still working at CNN?
I mean, can CNN be any more biased than they are now?
Saying that the Trump win is a national emergency?
That's news on CNN?
Those that colluded the most with Clinton's campaign, that's news.
Well, anyway, Van Jones, by the way, he's the founder of this company, co-founder, former green job czar failure in the White House of Obama, resigned after it was revealed.
Signed a statement questioning whether the Bush administration had a role in the September 11th attacks, as the Daily Caller points out.
Marilee High, Megaphone's co-founder and president, worked for Obama in the 2008 presidential campaign, and Molly blames the Republican Party's, quote, racist, misogynist, xenophobic fear-mongery for Trump's rise to power.
Anyway, it turns out that one of the firm's four listed board members headlined a Hillary Clinton fundraiser hosted last September by pro-Clinton environmentalist organization Cleantech Party.
And this woman serves as the director of another Van Jones endeavor, Green for All, an environmentalist organization that received $200,000 of cash infusion from George Soros through his Open Society Foundation as recently as 2010.
And Soros recently met with other liberal mega donors to plot their opposition to Trump, as first reported in the Politico by Ken Vogel.
Do you see what's going on here?
Delegitimize Trump before he ever gets there.
Delegitimize him as quickly as possible.
First, we'll start the recount, then we'll claim without any new intel that the Russians hacked the election in favor of Donald Trump.
There's no proof evidence at all.
The FBI totally disagrees with the assessment.
And now, despite the fact that our top intelligence official, James Clapper, National Director of Intelligence, has debunked this myth that 17 intelligence agencies say Vladimir Putin stole the election for Trump, we still have some electors, now no doubt Hillary supporters, who want an intelligence briefing on this phony made-up scandal.
And it's being pushed by John Podesta on behalf of Hillary.
And they got media hacks like Joy Behar and CNN complicit with them.
You got from the Hill, 40 members of the Electoral College signed a letter demanding an intelligence briefing on Russian interference in the election ahead of their December 19th vote.
Ten electors originally signed the letter when it was published Monday.
30 more have since added their names.
By the way, this open letter was led by Christine Pelosi.
Yeah, that's right, the daughter of House Democratic leader Nancy Pelosi, urging James Clapper to give a detailed briefing on President-elect Donald Trump's ties to Russia.
We further require a briefing on all investigative findings as these matters directly impact the core factors in our deliberations of whether Mr. Trump is fit to serve as president of the United States.
The Clinton campaign applauds the effort.
They applauded it.
They're supporting it, just like they supported the recount, just like they support this conspiracy theory, and just like they're up to their eyeballs in what is now massive intimidation of electors, apparently, around the country, as we now reported a couple of weeks ago, starting in Florida, and has now made its way through other states like Ohio and elsewhere.
Anyway, despite our protesting, this matter did not receive the attention it deserved by the media in the campaign.
Clinton chairman John Podesta said, We now know the CIA is determined Russia's interference in our elections was for the purpose of electing Trump.
That is a lie.
What he is saying is an outright lie.
What the media is repeating is an outright lie.
They have not.
There's no new information, none, zip.
Nada.
Not one bit.
This should distress every American.
No, it shouldn't.
Anyway, the signees of those that signed this are all Democratic electors except for one.
Sounds political to me.
Looks political, if it walks like a duck, quacks like a duck, it's a duck.
Whereas, you know, just see it for what it is.
They have their fingerprints all over this electoral college thing.
By the way, Bill Gates compared Trump to JFK.
He said that Donald Trump's potential to bring innovation to the U.S. resembles that of JFK and his campaign that pledged to put a man on the moon.
I think he's right in a way.
It's visionary.
Let's fix the mess.
Let's get America working again.
So top intelligence officials have rejected this conspiracy, Putin Gate theory of the Democrats because there is no new information and the FBI disagrees with it.
On other issues, we have social conservatives seem not to be thrilled with Tillerson's appointment.
Rex Tillerson is the Exxon CEO that was named as Secretary of State.
Overall, he's getting high marks.
One important segment of Trump's conservative coalition is less than thrilled, and that's evangelical leader Tony Perkins has raised some concerns about him, calling him the greatest ally liberals would have in the forthcoming Trump administration due to the oil and gas executives' stances on social issues.
The only problem, and I love Tony, I really do.
There's nothing that a Secretary of State is going to do on social positions.
You know, that Tillerson apparently had open advocacy to allow gay and lesbian kids to join the Boy Scouts of America and made donations by ExxonMobil and to Planned Parenthood.
I just don't see how that's going to impact his position as Secretary of State.
I don't.
Obama says those who favor welfare cuts are racist.
Really?
Really?
Racist?
We're going to go there.
The headline on the Drudge Report right now is, Obama farewell.
America still has not overcome slavery.
My general theory is that if I was clear in my own mind about who I was, comfortable in my own skin, and had clarity about the way in which race continues to be this powerful factor in so many elements of our lives,
but that it is not the only factor in so many aspects of our lives, that we have by no means overcome the legacies of slavery and Jim Crow and colonialism and racism, but that the progress we've made has been real and extraordinary.
If I'm communicating my genuine belief that those who are not subject to racism can sometimes have blind spots or lack appreciation of what it feels to be on the receiving end of that,
but that doesn't mean that they're not open to learning and caring about equality and justice and that I can win them over because there's goodness in the majority of people.
I always felt that if I really knew that and I just communicated it as clearly as I could, that I'd be okay.
You know, America did elect America's first black president with great enthusiasm and ignored so many flaws, so many warning signs that he was not fit to serve in this office, and he was not.
And his record proves that I was right and everybody else was wrong.
That he stuck by his radicalism, his Frank Marshall Davis, Acorn, Alinsky disciple, radical views, his Church of GD America, his ties to Arizona, and he got elected.
And he leaves behind a legacy of just failure and debt.
80% of Obama's eight years is going to be wiped out in three hours.
Three hours just by signing away.
Donald Trump's signature will wipe it away.
Then he's going to wipe away Obamacare.
That's 90%.
The 10% we're going to be left with is the legacy of his debt and the 100 judges he appointed.
That's it.
It'll be like it never happened.
It'll be like because we made no progress.
We went backwards by every objective measure as a country.
He is the worst president in modern times, but for bin Laden, which, by the way, he really didn't do.
He only gave the go-ahead.
But I'll give him credit for it.
But for that, I can't think of a single thing, a single objective measure where I can say, you know what?
He did really good here.
I just can't.
The country's more divided.
We have more debt, more poverty, more people on food stamps, more people out of work, the worst recovery since the 40s, lowest home ownership rate in 51 years.
There's not a single place on earth.
Afghanistan was a disaster.
Iraq, Syria, disaster.
Benghazi, Libya, North Africa, disaster.
Supporting Mohamed Morsi, disaster.
The Russian reset, a disaster.
China, a disaster with their territorial ambitions.
I can't think of a single one.
Well, now he's trying to undermine the Electoral College with Hillary, even though top intelligence officials reject all of this, even though the FBI rejects it completely, even though there's no new evidence.
We had an armed Trump hater arrested at Trump Tower.
This does not surprise me.
You got the left whipped up into a frenzy.
By the way, you can blame Democrats for whipping them up.
Recount.
You know, Putin influenced this.
Going after threatening, intimidating electors.
Who's doing all that?
Is that Van Jones' group?
Anyway, an armed Trump hater was arrested at Trump Power, 19-year-old college student.
He probably didn't get his crayons and his Coco and his Play-Doh and his pet, his little kitty, a little puppy.
Anyway, Secret Service agents checked his backpack.
They got a large knife, handcuffs, water pistol, M100 firecracker.
Is that like an M80?
Is it an M100?
Anyway, and other things.
A weapon used to strangle a person was in there.
Department of Energy is now stonewalling the Trump transition team as if that's going to work.
Anyway, they have a list of 74 questions and they can't get an answer.
A crowd.
Well, that's another story for another day.
All right, 800-941 Sean, I promise we'll get to your calls.
I want you in our break, if you have time, to go look at a video that my staff put together on Hannity.com.
And I want you to share the link, if you can, all over social media.
You can retweet it from my Twitter account.
It's up there now.
And it's a plea to pardon Clint Lawrence, his mother, his lawyer, and Congressman Duncan Hutter are coming on next.
You can tweet about this at POTUS because this poor man is going to spend 20 years in jail for defending his platoon and doing his job.
It's really that simple.
When you hear the rest of the story in the next hour, it should shock your conscience.
And he said, please call all the family and have everyone to pray that I can bring all of my soldiers home.
He didn't care if he lost his life.
Hi, my name is Anna Lawrence.
This is my husband, Tracy Lawrence, and we're the proud parents of Lieutenant Clint Lawrence, who is currently serving a 20-year sentence at Fort Leavenworth Prison.
President Obama, I would like to ask you, please, please, please give my son a full pardon and send my boy home.
President Obama, to date, you have shown mercy and granted presidential pardons and commutations to over 600 Americans who made poor choices and ended up in prison.
With all due respect, sir, my son didn't make a poor choice.
The only choice that he made was to serve his country.
Mr. President, you've acknowledged that those that you have helped have taken full responsibility for their actions, and they deserve a second chance.
Our son, too, deserves that second chance.
Mr. President, if I could speak to your heart for a moment, parent to parent, I would like to tell you a little bit about who my son is.
My son is a very, very outstanding young man that loves his country and willingly and proudly chose to serve his country.
The day of his court martial, he was able to walk from the courthouse with his shoulders squared back and his head raised high, leaning on the fact and his strength coming from the fact of knowing that he did what he had to do and he left none of his soldiers behind.
To him, that meant more than anything.
Sir, I asked you to please, please bring my son home.
He is an outstanding young man that fought willingly for his country.
My son made the decision.
I'm very proud for the decision he made because today I still have my son instead of a folded flag.
Actions that you have taken have shown me that you believe in second chances.
And that's all I'm asking you for, is a second chance for my son.
Thank you.
That was Anna Lawrence, mother of First Lieutenant Clint Lawrence.
She joins us on our newsmaker line.
John Mayer is the attorney for Clint Lawrence.
Lawrence, Congressman Duncan Hunter is also with us.
Let me just tell you how this all came about.
Well, I just happen to have a very motivated staff and Lauren, who works on the show, her and her brother, they flew down to Texas.
We've been following this story for some time now.
And the Lawrences now are asking that their son, who is going to get, who is now spending 20 years in prison for doing his job and protecting those people that worked under him as a soldier, protecting our country, doing his job every day, is now suffering at a very high level.
Anyway, in 2013, he was convicted of murder, sentenced 20 years in prison for ordering his men to engage three men of military age on motorcycles that were speeding towards their patrol in Afghanistan.
Ultimately, they killed two of the men.
Now, the prosecution claimed the Afghan men were innocent civilians.
Sadly, the Army withheld evidence that proved the military-aged males were biometrically linked to IED events at Common Grid Coordinates like linked to other IED makers and linked with American paratroopers who've been killed in action.
And since taking office, Obama has now commuted the sentences of 1,023 people, many that have drug and gun convictions.
To date, the president has granted commutations to more prisoners than the past 11 presidents combined.
He's also granted 70 pardons.
Maybe for once, it would be nice to pardon or commute the sentence of, you know, an American hero.
Far as I'm concerned, as you get into the details of all of this.
Anyway, they join us now.
Anna Lawrence, I know you met Lauren, who works on our team, and I know you've talked to Linda many times on our team.
And where, you know, it's nice to be able to spend some time in dealing with real problems of real Americans.
And I ask everybody listening to this program, just put yourself in the position.
If this was your son, that was facing jail of 20 years, a sentence of 20 years.
Welcome back to the program.
How are you doing?
I'm doing fine, Sean.
Thank you for asking.
Today, my son is spending his 32nd birthday in prison.
Ask Clint's mother, this infuriates me.
How long has he been in prison now?
He's been in for a little over three years.
So, and he's got a 20-year sentence.
What's the earliest he can get out for good behavior?
I'm not sure on the date that he can get out.
Here's what I want you to tell people.
Now, the issue of these three men of military age and their motorcycles, this is relevant because how many days prior to your son who was leading this patrol, how many days prior were there guys on motorcycles that killed Americans the same style?
I know my son had only been there two days, and this activity was happening prior to that.
That's the reason why my son was sent in as a replacement to the lieutenant that had been blown up.
Because from what I understand, as you look at the timeline, there was, let's see, June 22nd, 2009, a motorcycle IED killed at least six people.
March 22nd, 2010, suicide bomber on a motorcycle killed 10.
March 2011, an insurgent on a red motorcycle detonated an IED.
August 17, 2011, a motorcycle bomb killed eight.
In December 30th, my birthday in 2011, NATO soldiers dismantled a motorcycle IED.
In October 2012, Afghan motorcycle bomber killed 14, including three NATO troops.
May 14, 2013, a motorcycle bomb killed three and wounded seven.
June 3rd, 2013, an explosives attacked with a motorbike killed two U.S. troops.
June 12th, 2013, Afghanistan motorcycle bomb killed at least two and wounded 15.
In February of 2014, two Afghan civilians were killed by a motorcycle bomber.
February 24th, 2014, motorcycle attack, injured four.
Was it days before in the same exact area that people on a motorcycle?
I'll ask your attorney, John, soldiers were killed in the same exact area where Clint Lawrence was leading this patrol.
Yes, Sean, that's correct.
As you've just articulated, it's a common TTP, a tactic of our opponent, where they use red motorcycles to test and scout and to actually detonate themselves as suicide bombers.
And one thing that I didn't hear you mention was just about a year ago today, December 15th, 2015, at Bargram Air Base, a lone motorcycle rider approached six airmen who were conducting a foot patrol outside Bargam Air Base and detonated himself.
And none of those airmen protected themselves.
They didn't fire, probably because they didn't notice sufficient hostile intent under the rules of engagement.
So this is a very common tactic that our opponent uses to capitalize on exposure points in our rules of engagement.
And with regard to Clint, on the morning that he gave the order to fire, I think it's important to know that he never fired his weapon, and he never even saw the three riders on the single motorcycle.
Instead, he relied upon a paratrooper who had been on the battlefield for the previous six months and was a former police officer in civilian life who called out the threat and testified that he perceived the threat and he was entitled to protect himself and his platoon pursuant to the rules of engagement.
So if you have compliance with the rules of engagement, that's evidence that there's no murder.
Instead, it's a justified killing.
Then add in the fact that the government claimed that the military-age males that were killed were innocent civilians, and we now know that they are biometrically linked to IEDs, which means hostility against the United States.
Explain what biometric links are for people that don't know.
Sure.
Biometric links are a type of evidence that General Petraeus has lauded that the United States has invested, quite frankly, billions of dollars to develop databases which are kept on servers throughout Afghanistan for the combined joint area of operations.
And you're able to identify it's a tool to use to discern the civilian population from the enemy.
And it helps us to target high-value targets and to make sure that we're not exercising any sort of collateral damage.
What happens is it's a DNA evidence that is taken from IED components and matched to individuals who have been enrolled through the FATS system, a BATS system, the biometric enrollment tool.
And then when you do a tactical site exploitation where there's an IED event, there's a match normally that can occur if you take the component parts, either through detonation or just diffusing the bomb and then matching it to what's already in the database, you can then link the individual to the bomb, link the individual to grid coordinates, link those grid coordinates to casualties.
And here, quite simply, in Clint's case, unlike the thousands of individuals who have been pardoned, if you have compliance with the rules of engagement and the result was actually the enemy being killed, there can really be no murder, which is really why Clint should be deserving of a pardon.
Why is the military acting this way, and they're not even moving forward with an appeal that you can have?
Well, Sean, I think that the military, candidly, is right on time.
The appellate process is a slow, arduous process, and it's a detailed process.
And some elected and appointed officials are reluctant to engage in to that particular process because the result we seek could actually occur.
But the evidence here is unlike evidence we've seen in other cases because it's DNA evidence, which is ultimately trustworthy and reliable, coupled with rules of engagement compliance, which means there's no crime, no murder.
So what corrections philosophy or what national interest is being served by Clint's continued incarceration?
Well, let me bring in Congressman Duncan Hunter.
Clint relied on the threat analysis of his platoon intelligence soldier and that the rules of engagement authorize the use of deadly force.
Yeah, hey, Sean, I'm dying listening to this because while the lawyer is totally correct in everything he said, as far as I can tell, this is war.
It sounds like we're describing a CSI Las Vegas case where we're trying to figure out if the people had the right DNA evidence.
You have motorcycles coming at your patrol position, and you have the choice to either shoot them or not.
If this motorcycle had been an IED and had detonated, Clint would have gotten a Silver Star.
But because he acted first, which he should have done to protect him and his men, and shot it, didn't shoot at them, just gave the order to kill him, now he's in jail for 20 years.
This is not CSI Miami.
This is...
John, if I can...
I'm terribly sorry.
You have people getting killed all the time.
Let me ask, Congressman, let me ask you this.
I'm trying to understand why every single Congressman, Democrat, and Republican just does not get on board and get their ass in gear and get this guy out of jail and demand that Obama fix this or demand that this guy at least have this biometric evidence that has come up be put forward in a courtroom so he can get home to his family.
Because the Army comes and talks to him.
We're in Congress, right?
The Army comes in.
They have gray ribbons.
They look very nice in their uniforms and they say, hey, here's what happened.
He acted out of bounds.
This is the way it is.
And by the way, we've been on the ground too.
But the Army documents paint a glowing picture of this guy.
His evaluation reports, his recommendation for awards, his 2006 evaluation, 2008 evaluation, his officer evaluation summaries, his service school academic evaluation report, his officer evaluation report in 2012.
An outstanding squadron leader, officer.
You know, his maturity, knowledge, initiative allowed him to assume roles of higher responsibility without needing supervision.
His dedication to standards and his commitment to his profession is unmatched.
That's what it says.
I'm reading it.
Sean, if I could add to what Congressman Hunter just said, one of the main flaws, I think, in how the Army and the military justice system is looking at cases like this is precisely what Congressman Hunter said.
We are not evaluating whether or not Lieutenant's conduct is happening on Main Street, USA, in New York City, Chicago, or San Diego.
Instead, we're examining what happened in a combat zone on a combat patrol in a volatile, uncertain, unfolding environment where the wrong decision or a tardy decision results in death.
That's how we should be looking at these particular cases.
So, in other words, if it turned out to be any one of the other incidents that I mentioned with motorcycle bombers and IED bombers and all these other people that have been killing Americans and NATO troops, then if it would have happened, he would have been blamed.
So, he's blamed either way.
So, in other words, there's a no-win situation for this poor guy.
No, I think, no, Sean, this is Duncan again.
I think he would have gotten the Silver Star.
If these guys had a vehicle-borne IED and they had explosives on them, he would have gotten the Silver Star for saving his men.
But because he acted preemptively and they didn't at the time have any proof, again, back to CSI Afghanistan, didn't have any proof of being bad guys on him.
Instead of getting the Silver Star, he's now going to jail for 20 years.
Let me say this to my audience, because we're running out of time here.
We put up on Hannity.com, we have a link of a video that my producer Lauren put together and Linda put together asking Obama to pardon Clint.
Now, you can tweet the president at at POTUS, P-O-T-U-S.
You can call your congressman or the switchboard in Washington, which is 202-456-1111, 2024's 202-456-1414, 202-456-1414.
You can tweet him at at POTUS, and you can go to my website right now.
We have a link of the whole story because, and it's a disgrace that we're going to all enjoy our Christmas.
Go to Hannity.com and you'll see it all, and we're going to enjoy our Christmas in this family.
This poor guy's now been in jail three years.
I'm going to add also that there's over 100,000 written petitions through an organization called United American Patriots that are being sent to the president as well.
And we'll put a link so people can sign that petition.
We'll help.
But Anna Lawrence, I know that this is horrible for you and horrible for your son, and it's frankly a national disgrace that we don't help him.
And I hope you get the pardon that he so deserves, or at least expedite the justice system so the new evidence can be presented.
And I'm so sorry you and your family are going through this.
Thank you, Sean.
I thank God for the choices that my son made that day because my hero came home and he left no one behind.
I don't have a folded flag today.
I can still go see my son, but I want him home where he deserves to be.
I know, I know.
I'm so sorry.
I am so sorry.
We'll do everything we can do to help you, I promise.
We have the best audience in the world.
I'll ask everybody to go to Hannity.com, help Anna Lawrence, help her son Clint.
And all you got to do is sign up.
Look at this video, and if it doesn't motivate you, I don't know what will.
Some of the best work that my team has ever done here.
But you understand, do you believe that the Russian government was intentionally trying to sway this election to Donald Trump?
Manu, as I indicated, the reason I read that statement is I think that pretty thoroughly covers what I'm prepared to say about that issue.
And you said you talked about an investigation.
Do you support a separate bipartisan investigation, a commission in any way?
Or do you want to do this through the intelligence committee?
Would you oppose a bipartisan commission?
To follow the regular order.
It's an important subject, and we intend to review it on a bipartisan basis.
You embedded in your statement there a critique of the Obama administration reset with Russia or attempt to warm with Russia.
Does it likewise concern you the signals that are coming from the new administration, at least from the top of it, of a different attitude, orientation, and more friendliness toward Russia?
We're through appointments and statements.
Well, let me just speak for myself.
The Russians are not our friends.
They invaded Crimea.
Senator McCain and I and some of our Democratic friends met with the delegation from the Baltic countries just this past week to say that they're nervous about the Russians, to put it mildly.
Let me also say, as I said last year, and NATO's important, we intend to keep the commitments that are made in the NATO agreement, which I think by any objective standard has probably been one of the most, if not the most successful military alliance in world history.
And I think we ought to approach all of these issues on the assumption that the Russians do not wish us well.
All right, that, of course, Mitch McConnell, the Senate Majority Leader, speaking out about issues that are going to be coming before the Congress.
800-941 Sean, if you want to be a part of the program, 25 now till the top of the hour.
Joining us now is Senator Rand Paul to talk about the Senate staying in office now four more weeks to avoid Obama making any recess appointments, which I think is very key and smart by Senator McConnell.
How are you, sir?
Very good, Sean.
Thanks for having me.
And by the way, you were one of the Republican presidential candidates that actually kept your word, unlike people like John Kasich and Jeb Bush and Lindsey Graham.
And I personally cannot believe how they treated Donald Trump after he won the nomination.
Can you?
Well, there's also much to like about what Donald Trump is proposing as opposed to what the establishment in Washington wants.
Donald Trump's for tax cuts.
I remember when Republicans used to be for tax cuts, but now you're hearing all of the Republican establishment say, oh, we're for revenue-neutral tax reform.
And I tell people all the time, if that's what we're for, I'm going home.
I want to cut taxes.
I want government to be smaller.
I want to return money to the people.
And that's how you stimulate the economy, leave more money in the private sector.
Well, I've talked to Trump at length, and from what I understand, when this guy Munchin was announced, they sent out a sheet on him that said he supports the Penny Plan, for example, which I know you've been a supporter of for many years.
Look, there's only one thing that alarms me in a big, big way right now about going forward with the new administration and the new Congress.
It seems everybody's all hyped up about one thing: a trillion dollars in infrastructure spending.
Now, I think we all agree the infrastructure is crumbling.
We have many projects that we can work on, but you and I both know the worst way to spend any money in Washington is throw it through the bureaucracy.
535 people, vultures, fighting for their share of the prize.
And I think that's the worst way to spend money.
It's not the way to prioritize infrastructure.
And I'd also like to see on that specifically a pay-as-you-go plan.
And until we have the revenue with $20 trillion in debt and $120 trillion in unfunded liabilities, we don't have the money for it.
Well, just about an hour ago, I met with the Secretary-elect Mnunchin that Donald Trump has appointed for Treasury, and we talked specifically about that.
I have a bill with Barbara Boxer to actually bring more money in for infrastructure.
And the way we would do it is we would lower the tax on American profits coming home to 6.5%.
We'd make it voluntary, but we would take the revenue that would come home, that would flow home voluntarily.
Is this the revenue and put it into the infrastructure?
Is this the repatriation of the millions, the trillions of dollars overseas?
Yes, it's a lowering of that tax, but then it's taking that revenue and putting it into a fund for infrastructure, be completely paid for by lowering a tax rate, but that it increases revenue.
Right now, no revenue comes home.
That money's been building for over a decade since the last time we lowered the rate.
And I would lower the rate, and I would just let that be a continual funding source for highways.
We'd lower it to 6.5%.
I've got Democrats on board that would support it.
Why not the 10% rate that Trump said?
Well, the one difference I have, and I'm not positive exactly what Trump's proposal will be, I'm against it being mandatory.
Some people want to make it mandatory that they get taxed whether you bring it home or not.
I want to make it still voluntary, and we have an economist that says even when it's voluntary, over a trillion dollars will come home to stimulate our economy and about $100 billion in revenue.
So it's a 6.5% rate.
It's voluntary.
All that would be open to negotiation, what the rate is.
But I think it should be a voluntary tax so companies can decide whether to bring the money home or not.
Did you see the 60 Minutes piece with Paul Ryan in it?
Talking about repatriation?
No, no, no.
Did you see 60 Minutes when Paul Ryan was on, not this past Sunday, but the Sunday before?
I did not.
Okay, there was a guy on after him that is from the Golden Triangle area of Mississippi, and his name is Joe Max Higgins.
And Joe Max Higgins, we actually ended up having him on this program.
And here's a guy that was able to work with local officials, government officials.
They were losing all of these jobs.
The unemployment rate was going through the roof.
So they very smartly built infrastructure.
They built sewers and roads to nowhere.
But they did it with the idea that he would fly around on a helicopter, and he would identify areas where they can build industry.
In one case, he built a power grid so he can go and fight and bid for a steel mill to be built in the Golden Triangle.
So they build the roads, they build the infrastructure, they build the grid, they get the steel mill plant, they get a tire planned, they get a drone planned, they get an engine planned, and they get a bunch of other businesses to come in.
And the revenues that they had projected at, what, $250 million for one company over the course of a couple of years, they ended up getting $1 million.
I'm sorry.
Yeah, $250,000.
They got $1 million instead of $250,000 a year in tax revenue, which more than paid for their initial investment.
Well, you know, we're a rich country, Sean, and we can do things like this.
But if we want to do nation-building here at home, which I'm for, we've got to remember that we can't do it everywhere else.
I agree with you.
Nobody wants that.
We've spent $100 billion nation-building in Afghanistan, building their infrastructure.
Donald Trump is with me on this.
He says he doesn't want to do nation-building.
But this is also why I've been very loud and clear on the Secretary of State or Under Secretary of State that we can't have someone there who wants to do nation building abroad and regime change because it's extraordinarily expensive, but it also hasn't been good for national security.
And this is why I've come out against John Bolton being anywhere near the State Department because he's a big, unabashed believer in nation building and regime change.
Well, look, I like Bolton in a lot of different ways.
I know what the Trump doctrine is because I kept asking him throughout the campaign what he wanted.
And he doesn't want.
Look, first of all, we can't fight wars anymore and ask Americans to fight, bleed and die like they did winning cities like Baghdad, Mosul, Ramadi, Tikrit and Fallujah.
only to pull out because Washington politicizes that war.
And then after 5,000 people die, it ends up in the hands of ISIS.
And then if you're the father or mother of one of those kids, you have to say, why did we do that?
Or if you're one of the mothers or fathers of 58,000 kids that were killed in Vietnam, which similarly became politicized.
If you're going to fight a war, you better fight it, win it, and hold the win.
So with that said, I don't think Washington has the stomach to do any of the above, so I agree with you.
Yeah, and I think we have to learn from this is because, see, this is still the debate in Syria.
Is our goal to topple Assad and get a new government, and what kind of government will it be?
You know, Hillary Clinton was a big proponent of this in Libya.
She wanted to topple Gaddafi, but what we got was ISIS and chaos and people that hate us worse than Gaddafi did in charge.
And four dead Americans, and even though we had been warned that this was coming.
You're right.
Absolutely.
Mistake after mistake.
And that's all I ask for.
You know, I've been very supportive of really every pick that Donald Trump's put in his cabinet.
I just want him to make sure that with this foreign policy, whoever's in charge of diplomacy, I want it to be somebody who truly understands the world look like us.
Do you like the Exxon guy?
You know, I'm open.
I'm open to him.
I've reserved my judgment because I don't know yet enough about him.
The questions I will ask are the same ones we've been going over.
Is he for regime change?
Does he understand that nation building, we don't have the money for it and it hasn't worked?
Those kind of questions are answers that I will want to get first.
All right, let's go over the Trump agenda.
So I assume you support extreme vetting of refugees, right?
Absolutely.
I assume that you support originalists to the Supreme Court.
Absolutely.
I think the list is a good one.
I think you support seven rates to three, correct?
Say the last one.
Seven tax brackets to three.
Oh, yeah.
The fewer and definitely reduce the tax rates.
Okay, and I assume you support a 15% corporate tax.
Absolutely.
All right, and tax cuts across the board.
Right.
And the big fight we have to do is make sure that we are going to be for tax cuts as a party and as a Congress and not just for shifting the burden around through revenue neutral, mixing it up in the tax code.
All right.
So, and I assume you support eliminating Obamacare and replacing it with health savings accounts.
Absolutely.
You support energy independence and you want Trump to go in there on day one and get rid of 80 percent of Obama's presidency by executive fiat?
Yeah, all the regulatory burden, I'm excited to see that get swept away by Trump in his first days in office.
And I suppose you support building the wall?
I think we have to have security.
Some of it's going to be wall, some of it's going to be other forms, but we should have a border that says we have zero tolerance for people who want to break the law and come in illegally.
And I think you would support education back to the states as a constitutionalist.
Very much so.
All right.
So, you know, what I've been saying to both on-air and off-air, and anybody that will listen to me, is Donald Trump has a mission.
He has an agenda.
This is what he said he's going to do.
Are you confident the people he's appointed are capable of doing those jobs?
Some of the picks are better than any Republican president has ever picked in recent history.
Scott Pruitt at EPA will be better than anyone either Bush picked or Reagan.
I mean, that's how good he's going to be at the EPA.
Okay, who else do you like?
One more time.
Who else do you like?
Well, you know, Betsy DeVos I haven't met with, but I've met her before.
I think she'll be good at education.
She's conservative, and I think she's for decentralizing education.
Well, I did see some people in Michigan are mad at her because apparently at some point she might have supported Common Core, but changed their mind.
Yeah, some of these groups were kind of for it at a state level, if not mandated by the federal level.
I think she's never been for mandating it from the federal level.
It becomes confusing when you talk about are you for any kind of standards?
You know, I'm not against national testing.
I took national tests when I was a kid, ACTSAT, but also California Achievement Test, Iowa test.
So having standards is not something that we should all be opposed to.
I'm just opposed to the Department of Education telling every state how they have to do their educational tests.
All right.
Harry Reid set a precedent with the nuclear option.
How do you feel about Mitch McConnell, your fellow Kentucky senator, doing the same?
You know, I think we'll wait and see what happens.
People have used good judgment in the past to not filibuster the Supreme Court.
You know, Clarence Thomas, I think, is the best Supreme Court justice we have, and he passed 5248, and they didn't filibuster him.
I'm hoping that's what the Democrats will decide to do.
But you're right.
Harry Reid's opened the door for other ways if they choose to do a filibuster.
Yeah.
All right.
Last question.
What do you think about this whole Russia spying influence in the election, even though we now know the CIA has no new information.
In other words, new information that they didn't have before the election.
The FBI disagrees with their assessment.
Do you see this as politics?
Or do you agree with me?
We should have fixed cybersecurity 10 years ago when we first saw we were so exposed.
Well, you know, two things.
I think there is some sour grapes in there trying to delegitimize the election.
70% of eastern Kentucky voted for Donald Trump because they were against the regulatory war on coal that's cost us jobs.
Had nothing to do with the Russians.
Russians didn't influence people in Kentucky to vote the way they did.
So yes, some of it's political.
But on protecting our nation's secrets, we do have to be aware, and nation states are doing this.
There's a dozen nation states that spy and try to spy and try to interfere.
Russia and China do it.
We do need to protect ourselves.
So you're right.
We have to spend some money, but also figure out how we can keep our data and our communication secure.
Well, listen, I just appreciate that you're there.
You know, by the way, you have some very nervous Nelly people around you.
Do you know that?
Why is that?
All right, so Sergio calls me at one point, and he goes, would you come down and do a show with Rand?
And I said, of course, I'll do anything I can do with Rand.
I said, what's the matter?
And he goes, oh, it's really close.
Really, really close.
And I said, well, how close is it?
What are the polls?
Well, he's only up by 18.
And I literally said to him, I said, seriously, you're going to make me go to Kentucky for nothing?
No, we were going to let you come to Kentucky, Sean.
I know, I know.
We're going to let you come.
You need to come down to the Kentucky Derby sometime.
It's a lot of fun.
Listen, if you needed help, I told him I'll be there.
But you're up by double digits.
Let me focus on things that matter.
Yeah, yeah.
You know how elections are.
You've got to run as behind an FS5.
I know, but how many did you win by?
You know, we just barely won by like 17.
So, I mean, you know.
All I said to him is I said, you're a nervous Nelly.
If it gets close, call me.
All right.
Thanks, Randy.
Well, we appreciate it, Sean, and thanks for letting me come on.
All right, my brother.
God bless.
800-941-Sean is our toll-free telephone number.
I noticed that your wife is disgusted by the sight of you lately.
Would she rather get a root canal than see you naked?
Well, you shouldn't have voted for Trump, okay?
One therapist calls it the Trump backlash because her clients have lost their sex drive since Trump won.
So here's my question.
Is Trump causing electile dysfunction?
I think women feel the need to assert their authority and their power because I feel like they saw this guy come to power.
They feel, yeah, you know, they feel like this guy came into power who didn't respect women.
And, you know, sex for women, I think, is a vulnerable experience more than men.
I think they feel vulnerable, and I think it's their way of sort of lashing out, not at their man, but at society at like, wait a minute, no, you do have to respect me.
I am in control.
I can still be in control of my life, even though this guy is in power now who's running the country, who has said some things about women that concern me and that make me a little insecure about where I'm going to be, where I'm going to be with my job, where I'm going to be, am I going to be respected the same way?
What's going to happen to me?
And I think they go into their bedroom and they face their man, and it's like a power dynamic that they're kind of working through.
I get it.
Remember, we talked about the fact that women after the election were going out in droves to get an IUD.
Oh, yeah, because they thought that their overlay control would be taken away from them.
Well, yeah, we're impacted politically by this.
Profoundly by it.
But I think that the sex drive does die.
And, you know, we are building a wall around our vaginas.
Because, yeah, I voted Trump on that one.
I already had a couple of walls.
Because the guy, the guy says he wants it's okay if he would grab a woman by her, you know, what.
Yeah.
And women are either a 10 or a 1, or this one's fat, or blah, blah, blah.
And you voted for that, schmuck?
You voted for that?
I'm not sleeping with you.
It's going to get a little more attention when people start opening their envelopes and seeing those letters about their insurance dropping them because they're losing their what we call Obamacare.
And boy, is that going to be, I just had a friend who got this, and she has her kid, and doctor sent a note and said, oh, we're not going to be able to cover you anymore, so sorry.
And she said, well, I've got a little money.
I can do this.
And they were like, no, you have to sort of get this kind of coverage.
Coverage she can't afford.
So this is going to be really interesting, Donald.
I can't wait till people start sending you their letters and tweets about that.
I'm period now.
But it's all going to hit the fan very shortly.
Well, it's hitting the fan now.
People are starting to get it.
People are starting to get those emails and letters saying, oh, by the way, you know, we're not going to be taking care of this anymore because we basically don't have to.
And then she said something, and I don't know, I don't know about it, so I'm going to ask you.
She said she thought she had read that they were losing the head of household deduction.
Tax deduction.
Tax deductions.
I don't know.
So we have to look that up because she said she wasn't sure.
And that scared her.
Yeah.
You know, somebody I was talking to last night because it was at this Robert Kennedy benefit for Ripples of Hope, it's called.
And there were so many smart people there.
And one smart person said that they think that what's going to really happen is the Republicans are going to turn on him because he's against big business a lot and they don't like that and other things that he's doing.
They're not going to be happy with him.
And he has enemies in the Republican Party.
And Pence will eventually start doing the presidency.
What do you think about that?
I mean, it was just a guess.
Watch your uterus.
That's all I'm saying.
Watch your uterus.
You voted for that schmuck.
I'm not sleeping with you.
We're going to build walls around our vaginas.
We have purchased political IUD's electile dysfunction.
News Roundup Information Overload Hour.
We had her on last week to discuss this.
I don't think we've ever gotten more response to one guest in recent memory than DC McAllister saying that there's a war against masculinity in men.
And we invite her back to the program, but also for one other reason.
Linda, how often is there anybody out there that ever defends me in the media?
Very, very rarely.
Right?
I mean, not that we need anybody's help, but, you know, much to my surprise yesterday, these people over at Red State, the Never Trumper group of people, you know, they borrow from the left.
I had retweeted a picture on Twitter that had, I guess it was somebody rubbing their face in Cheetos.
And I just had enough said.
I didn't even read.
They used a term.
I don't even know what the term is, never heard.
And somebody claimed, well, that's a term of the alt-right that's racist.
Well, DC McAllister actually put the person straight and said, no, your definition is wrong.
Number one, here's what the real definition is.
Number two, you're supposed to be a conservative website and you're using the exact same tactics of the radical alt-left, and that is to accuse everybody of racism, sexism, xenophobia, homophobia, Islamophobia, and just lash out and smear and besmirch and destroy people's character.
And DC McAllister, unbeknownst to me, was defending me.
And so we really appreciated DC.
I was shocked.
I was very appreciative and very humbled.
Well, of course.
You're welcome, but I was curious because it's that labeling of our own side.
I mean, we've been dealing with the left for years, labeling conservatives as racists.
And it's been a battle.
And now, ever since this election, it started in the primary to defeat the Trump supporters because they couldn't do it any other way.
They had to do it through labeling.
Well, they're all a bunch of racists.
You know, and when they came down on you and said because you retweeted this tweet that said cuckservative, which is a pejorative for rhinos, basically.
Only in the dark underbellies of by the way, that's the only understanding of that word that I've ever had in my life.
I don't know about you.
Help me out here.
I had never heard alt-right to like the middle of this election.
Did you ever hear of it?
Well, no one had.
I mean, because they're new, and it came out of Gamergate and all kinds of other things on the internet.
And they're a mic bag.
And that's the thing.
I mean, even alt-right is being blanketed as being racist because they do have a racist fringe, but they're a mixed bag, just like the terms they use and the memes they use on the internet are all are all mixed bags.
And, you know, this conservative thing has a couple of different meanings, but the one everyone, like you, me, and most everyone uses it during the election season, was about rhinos.
It means you guys are all emasculated and you're all giving to the left instead of actually standing for conservatism, conservatism.
So you are all a bunch of cucks conservatives.
But the people at Red State wanted to manipulate.
They wanted to label you a racist.
And so they used the definition that's the darkest one that's in the darkest places on the internet.
It has to do with racism.
But you didn't mean it as that at all.
And I never, listen, I never heard of that term being used that way.
And I'm going to even tell you one other thing.
I never even saw the word when I retweeted it.
I saw the video.
The Cheetos.
Cheetos.
The Cheetos.
That's rubbing your face in Cheetos.
And I thought it was, all right, enough said about crazy never Trumpers.
That's all I was doing.
That's all it was.
And I, you know what bothered me about it?
And then I got into this little bit of a Twitter war with this.
I don't even know who this person is.
I have no idea who this lady is, except she works at Red State, which is owned by Salem Media.
And I'm frankly shocked that they own this website because they have really good radio conservative hosts and properties.
And I'm shocked that they support this nonsense, this smearing and slander.
But, you know, my only point was, so I said to this lady, I look at my whole body of life's work.
I was in Atlanta.
I know Joe Lowry.
I knew Maynard Jackson.
I knew and had on often Andrew Young and Hosea Williams and all these other civil rights people.
And even though we disagreed politically, I have nothing but admiration for those people that risked their lives during the civil rights movement.
Those people that had rocks thrown at them, fire hoses turned on them, dogs turned on them.
And I have spent my whole life speaking out about how evil and repugnant racism is.
And so this lady, in typical Hillary Rodham Clinton Democratic Party fashion, this is how she wants to attack me because I supported Donald Trump.
And I'm like, really?
This is how low you've sunk?
Because it really is, it's slander.
I mean, if I had time, money, and resources, I'd sue her, but I don't have the time, money, or energy for this.
Well, and it is that slandering, and you should not even be in a position where you have to tell anyone I'm not a racist.
You're right.
You should not have had to even just say what you just said.
We all know that.
The people at Red State know that.
I know these people too.
They used to be good conservatives.
They've gone crazy.
And they know you.
They know you're not a racist.
They know most of the people who voted for Donald Trump aren't racist.
You know, your relatives, your grandmothers, my mother who voted for Trump is not a racist.
We know that.
But they're so angry that they're gravitating to these methods from the left to deceit and malign.
And so it's just very frustrating to see that these tactics are being employed against people on their own side.
And you should never be put in that position.
No, but you know what?
Here's the thing.
I don't like to be lied about.
And this would have been easily researched by this woman.
But she's too lazy like everybody else in the media.
And it's too simple to go with the slanderous attack.
And so, look, I know my audience knows me.
She said, oh, I've listened to him for years and I watched him for years.
Then she would know.
And the fact is, knowing she did it anyway.
And so, look, my only point is I feel at times that I don't do it often, but I feel certain times motivated to defend myself.
And I rarely have anybody ever come to my defense, and you did, unbeknownst to me, and I very much appreciated it because, you know, one of the worst things, if you want to shut somebody down in a debate or an argument, all you got to do is call them a racist because it's the most despicable, disgusting thing you can call somebody.
Exactly, and that's what they're doing.
And that's what they were trying to do.
And to do it from one retweet, you know, to define a man's entire reputation on one retweet is disingenuous, despicable, dishonest.
And they should be ashamed of themselves.
And that's why I felt like I had to write it.
I mean, I don't usually come to the defense of people in the media either.
Yeah, so you really don't like me that much, but you did it because you were bored and you had to get a column out in a certain period of time.
I get it.
I understand.
I do like you.
But it's bigger than you.
I do kind of like you, but it's really bigger than you.
I mean, it has nothing to do with you, Hannity.
I mean, we really, as a matter of fact, I probably made a mistake now that I'm looking back on it.
I'm kidding.
I'm teasing you.
No, yeah.
No, I totally support you.
And it's just that there is a bigger, bigger issue here going on.
And it's happening everywhere.
I am seeing it constantly from people a lot in the Never Trump community who are angry about the election, fellow conservatives who are attacking people on their own side, people we know are good people.
And they're so angry and they feel helpless and powerless.
And when you feel that way, you gravitate to these kind of tactics.
And what I want to say is that this is only going to hurt us in the long run.
It's only going to hurt conservatives in the long run.
Because either all the people who voted for Trump are going to turn on them or they're going to help the left mine everybody on the right and give power back to the left.
Look, it's all true.
Here's my argument against the Never Trumpers.
Now, when I first met you, I didn't know you.
And you were first on this program on a regular basis debating Michael Cohn and supporting Ted Cruz.
Exactly.
And that's probably why it makes me so angry at this point.
It's because these are people I work with.
These are people I know.
These are people I care about.
These are people I disagree with.
Do you know this lady?
Do you know this woman?
I don't know her, but I know people at Red State.
And I have a lot of respect for these people generally.
You know, we were on the same fighting side.
We all were.
And even before this election, Sean, all of us, you, all of us were on the same side.
It's like we've gone through this horrible divorce.
And people are fighting each other.
And we've forgotten who we are.
And we've also forgotten who the real enemy is.
It has not changed.
The real enemy is still the Marxist left.
The Marxist.
You know, I want to say this.
And, you know, I could spend more time.
And I actually promised before the election, win, lose, or draw, I said, I'm going to be after these people.
But the reality is this, D.C., if Hillary won, they would own, they would be partly responsible for.
They would have facilitated allowing her to make Supreme Court decisions and bringing in unvetted refugees and continuing the failed foreign policy of Obama and raising taxes, which would stifle the economy and keeping Obamacare and stifling energy and dependence on our own production of energy, the lifeblood of our economy.
And they never would have built a wall to secure the border or they never would have been rethinking education and sending it back to the states.
They would have owned all of that.
I don't understand their logic.
Okay, Donald Trump's not perfect.
Neither is Sean Hannity.
Probably you are.
I'm not.
They believed the rhetoric.
They fell for a lot of the propaganda and the fear.
And there are concerns about a Trump administration.
There are concerns about any president who has power.
But they just went off the deep end when Cruz lost in the primary.
And so they resorted to all these tactics to defeat him.
They forgot, again, who the real enemy is.
And it's the left.
They're the ones who want to undermine the very foundation of our institutions.
And they're already active.
Populism from the Trump side is such a threat.
Yeah, but that's not in all of our institutions.
All of our institutions are riddled with political correctness.
Look at this.
When Donald Trump makes a Supreme Court appointment, when Donald Trump cuts taxes and builds the wall, when he is able to undo many of the regulations burdening business on energy production, all I'm going to say is, okay, you are wrong.
Because all of those things I believe in my heart are going to happen.
And if they don't, I will be his loudest critic.
I promise you.
Exactly.
And hold him to account.
Exactly.
And let's do that.
You know, and he's not even president yet.
He's building this cabinet, you know, and we need to have the hearings and seeing how we're going to be vetting them.
But I'm not going to get histrionic over every little thing that happens.
And this is what happens on social media, and as an example, with your tweet, is that one little thing happens.
And suddenly that one little thing becomes the defining label of that person.
And we lose sight of the truth.
I guess I'm going to have to retweet every I'm going to have to tweet every day.
A retweet does not necessarily reflect my views or values in any way, shape, matter, or form.
I mean, it's so ridiculous that people don't understand that.
I didn't even read it.
All I did was saw the Cheetos picture.
That's all I saw.
And now it's common sense in Twitter world that you know that when people retweet, that it doesn't mean that they're endorsing the original tweeter.
We don't even often know who they even are.
Well, there's so many, there's old people fake.
I gotta run, but I do appreciate your defense.
You're right on the merits.
You're right on the points.
I don't think these never Trumpers are going to change.
If Donald Trump does everything right, they're still going to hate him.
But anyway.
Well, I hope not.
I hope not.
We get some unity if they can just, let's be at peace and remember what our goals are.
All right, T.C. McAllister, thank you.
800-941-Sean toll free telephone number.
And he said, please call all the family and have everyone to pray that I can bring all of my soldiers home.
He didn't care if he lost his life.
Hi, my name is Anna Lawrence.
This is my husband, Tracy Lawrence, and we're the proud parents of Lieutenant Clint Lawrence, who is currently serving a 20-year sentence at Fort Leavenworth Prison.
President Obama, I would like to ask you, please, please, please give my son a full pardon and send my boy home.
President Obama, to date, you have shown mercy and granted presidential pardons and commutations to over 600 Americans who made poor choices and ended up in prison.
With all due respect, sir, my son didn't make a poor choice.
The only choice that he made was to serve his country.
Mr. President, you've acknowledged that those that you have helped have taken full responsibility for their actions, and they deserve a second chance.
Our son, too, deserves that second chance.
Mr. President, if I could speak to your heart for a moment, parent to parent, I would like to tell you a little bit about who my son is.
My son is a very, very outstanding young man that loves his country and willingly and proudly chose to serve his country.
The day of his court martial, he was able to walk from the courthouse with his shoulders squared back and his head raised high, leaning on the fact and his strength coming from the fact of knowing that he did what he had to do and he left none of his soldiers behind.
To him, that meant more than anything.
Sir, I asked you to please, please bring my son home.
He is an outstanding young man that fought willingly for his country.
My son made the decision.
I'm very proud for the decision he made because today I still have my son instead of a folded flag.
Actions that you have taken have shown me that you believe in second chances.
And that's all I'm asking you for.
Is a second chance for my son.
Thank you.
All right, just a reminder: we have on our website a video you must see, and it's about Clint Lawrence.
He was defending his platoon, and now he's been sentenced to 20 years in jail.
And we had his mother, Ann Lawrence, Anna Lawrence, on the program earlier, and their attorney and Congressman Duncan Hunter.
You got to see this video.
It's up on Hannity.com.
All right, let's get to our busy phones toll-free.
It's 800-941 Sean, if you want to be a part of this program.
Don't forget, by the way, Hannity tonight at 10.
All right, let's get to our phones.
Lynn in Dallas, Texas.
Lynn, you're on the Sean Hannity Show.
What's going on?
Hi, Sean.
How are you?
Good.
What's happening?
Good.
Well, yesterday you were talking to Ami Horowitz about the denial of the refugees and the rapes in Sweden.
And, you know, I live in Dallas, and we don't have the same issues, but we do see the same level of denial.
Do you remember last year when Mayor Mike Rawlings was talking about how we need to accept the refugees?
We need to be, you know, as Christ followers, we need to welcome them, right?
Right, of course.
Yeah, so we do that.
And of the 7,000 refugees coming to Texas, 1,000 of them are settling in my area.
We have traded basically a refugee problem for a crisis for a homeless problem.
So that's all in the news right now in Dallas, is the homeless crisis that we have.
So where do you think the refugees live when they come here?
They live in our low-income housing.
Well, here's the biggest problem.
Let's be very blunt here.
If every single top national security official says that we can't possibly vet them, and we know that they say ISIS will infiltrate the population, and the percentage of Muslim refugees that we take in is about 99% of the total and 1% are Christian, even though, as Naren and Weya has pointed out many times on this program, there is a Christian genocide going on in the world right now that we are not paying attention to, except, of course, on this program.
So, why, even when Hillary was discovered in WikiLeaks, she revealed herself that she didn't think we could possibly vet the people coming in.
Her public position was very different.
So, my attitude about refugees is simple: let's support people where they live.
We can create safe zones with other countries.
They can bear the burden of the cost, and we can provide a safe area, food, water, medicine, supplies, baby formula, cots, blankets, pillows, whatever else they need.
And then, when the Civil War is over, they can go back to their homes.
I completely agree.
We don't have any idea who these people are and where they're coming from.
And, you know, at our high school, we have 100 refugees that are coming.
Some of these guys are 18 years old or older.
You can't tell how old they are.
You don't know.
And so they're coming to our high school, and we have no room in our high school.
We have to pass these $400 million bonds to build more space for overcrowding.
How are we going to educate all these kids?
That's such a good point.
We're not going to be able to.
Look, this is the problem about illegal immigration.
We pay, I forget the exact figure every year, whatever billions of dollars, billions, when you look at the criminal justice system, the health care system.
If you look at the impact of illegal immigrants, illegal immigrants on education, we're paying for all of this.
We are a country that is on the verge of bankruptcy.
We can't afford it.
And on top of that, we've got no jobs for Americans.
So those people that come here illegally are competing for jobs with Americans and driving down the wages that Americans would otherwise be getting.
It's a simple issue.
Control your border.
As a matter of fact, just follow Mexico's lead because Mexico controls their border.
And if you're from Central America, El Salvador, Honduras, Guatemala, wherever you happen to be from, and you go to Mexico illegally, they throw you out or they throw you in jail.
And to get lectured by former President Vicente Fox is a bit of a joke about how we're lacking in compassion.
Now, if the people of California want to secede from the union and they want to open up and maybe team up with Mexico, they can do whatever they want out there in la-la land.
And they can pay for all of it.
But the American taxpayer, hard working Americans, can't afford this anymore.
Bottom line.
Let's go to Robin in Phoenix, KFYI.
How are you, Robin?
I am doing excellent.
Thank you.
Enjoying our weather and wish you guys could be out here.
I just wanted to call and talk about this whole deal with Russia hacking the emails to help out Hillary or rather to help out Trump go against Hillary.
Did anyone use any common sense to think that Russia would rather have a weak Democratic Party in office as well as all of our enemies?
They don't want a strong leader in office.
So why on earth would they collude to help a strong leader get in office?
Well, I actually made that same point yesterday.
I mean, they got everything they wanted out of Obama, and they know they'd get everything they want out of Hillary.
And Obama had a deal going on.
We all saw it on tape for ourselves four years ago when he announced, just wait till I get back in office, and then we could do whatever deal it was that they were thinking about.
Why don't people use common sense?
I think America has a very bad Alzheimer's problem, and they forget so easily what they just heard months ago.
No, I think you make a lot of good points.
I really do.
Look, I've said this before.
They are going to try and destroy Donald Trump.
This is part of the process that has already begun.
It started with the recount, delegitimizing Trump.
I played Hillary earlier in the program.
I'll play her again.
And this should apply to her also.
That is not the way our democracy works.
We've been around for 240 years.
We've had free and fair elections.
We've accepted the outcomes when we may not have liked them.
And that is what must be expected of anyone standing on a debate stage during a general election.
And then he's gone out and talked about rigged elections, and he's tried to rile up all of his supporters and his rallies.
And it's really painful to see this.
But in that last debate, he said something truly horrifying.
And that was that he wouldn't say he would accept the results of the election.
This is his final target.
Our democracy itself.
Oh, well, it's only if you're a Democrat.
Hillary does it as perfectly fine.
Well, they're doing it on a level we've never seen before.
Maya is in Kansas City in Kansas.
How are you, Maya?
Glad you called.
Hi.
I'm going to try and do two things here.
One, I wanted to address the Common Core issue.
My concern right now is that all of the states that are claiming or are saying that they are rejecting Common Core are unaware that these same states are also pushing or still pushing it, but from the back end, they're creating programs and opportunities for people to get free education or teaching credentials and licensures.
If they go into this program, they don't have to pay.
But what's happening is they're being taught Common Core standards and teaching.
They're just calling it different names.
And so I wanted to share that because we're also fighting that here in Kansas.
And it's kind of scary because I decided to go back to school and to get a degree in American history because I really believe that we should be looking at civics 101 and start getting that back into the classroom.
And so when I applied and I was looking into opportunities, I had all of these people sending me information saying, if you do this through this particular program, you won't have to pay a dime.
Oh, look at what you're going to learn.
And almost 90% of it was common core based.
All of this can be fixed literally with one smart decision that Trump ran on.
Send education back to the States.
We send it back.
You know, let people, look, you sound like a brilliant woman.
And nothing, I know you are.
Nothing would be better than somebody like you running your local town, in your local city, in your local area, and education in the hands of parents.
What's going to happen?
Look, competition does amazing things.
It brings out the best in people.
So if parents now have the authority, the voucher, the money that they can allocate for their child to the school of their choice, what school do you think the parents are going to choose?
I think they'll choose the school that puts kids in uniforms, where kids have to say yes, ma'am, no, ma'am, yes, sir, no, sir, where there's no violence, no drugs, where reading, writing, math, literature is front and center, and that those kids are going to get an education.
And education means to bring forth from within, and that we'll bring the best out of those children.
And then when they grow up, they're going to contribute greatly to society.
I think we have a much better chance with you handling it than some idiot in Washington that knows nothing about your town, your challenges, your community, the problems that exist where you are.
I ran a healthcare organization for 10 years, and I did things that initially angered people.
I was offering health care that was free, but I was requesting that you gave something, whether it was a dollar, whether it was $2, because I had come to reach the conclusion that most of these people were walking into my organization carrying cell phones that I could not afford, smoking cigarettes that were clearly $4 and $5 a pack,
and started trying to find ways of making people who came through our office accountable for the things that they were doing.
I was attacked for that in the beginning, but within a year's time, everyone was doing it.
And so it becomes a question of: are we going to continue allowing our people, young, old, whoever, to seek the free and die, or are we going to teach them how to stand and walk and survive?
If we would institutionalize people like you, it'll be a grand slam.
But we just need involved people that are smart, engaged, and believe that we can do so much better.
In other words, throw out the old failed system that has led to mediocrity.
We spend more money with the worst results.
And hopefully now we'll spend less money and even have better results because you, the local people, are involved.
You want smart political talk without the meltdowns?
We got you.
I'm Carol Markowitz.
And I'm Mary Catherine Hamm.
We've been around the block in media and we're doing things differently.
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