Best of Sean Hannity: The Future of the Conservative Movement - 12.30
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It was a mistake to have a personal account.
I would certainly not do it again.
I make no excuses for it.
It was something that should not have been done.
But the real question is the handling of classified material, which is, I think, what the implication of your question was.
And for all the viewers watching you tonight, I have a lot of experience dealing with classified material starting when I was on the Senate Armed Services Committee going into the four years as Secretary of State.
Classified material has a header which says top secret, secret, confidential.
Nothing, and I will repeat this, and this is verified in the report by the Department of Justice.
None of the emails sent or received by me had such a header.
All right, we now all know that that was the latest incarnation of a lie that Hillary has been telling about classified information on her email server.
You know, this is as Andy McCarthy put out today: no classified information does not always come with a header, and Hillary knows it.
So she thoroughly has been discredited with the whole, well, I never sent or received classified information.
I never sent or received anything more classified.
And now she says it doesn't have a header.
Well, this arose last night during this big debate, and it raises a lot of questions about Hillary's emails, what has been discovered, what is yet to be discovered.
And joining us right now is somebody that probably knows more about this than anybody else in the world.
And that's Julian Assange.
He is the founder and the editor-in-chief of Wikileaks.
He's an Australian computer programmer.
And how are you, sir?
Welcome to the radio program.
I'm good.
Thank you.
I appreciate you being here.
All right, let me first start with, let's go back to the beginning.
Because for 10 consecutive years, you have never gotten anything wrong that I can find, and you stand proudly on that statement.
Is that true?
It is true.
It's an enormous reputation to try and keep up.
And that's why.
By the way, I've gotten things wrong, and I have to apologize and correct.
A lot of people in the media don't like to do that, Julian.
Well, unfortunately, we've been quite successful in never having got it wrong.
So that's why we have to spend time vetting our material before we publish it to keep that perfect reputation.
Now, I've got to be perfectly frank and blunt with you.
At one point when the whole WikiLeaks story and what it was was being revealed, I was as an American citizen, I got to be honest, very nervous and I was very critical of you and even at one point thought that you were waging war against the United States.
And that's how I felt at the time.
And I also worried, Julian, that, all right, where does this hacking end as a big believer in privacy?
I'm thinking, all right, there's no end to this.
This is going to go after every American citizen, every single person, every text, every email.
And, you know, as somebody that believes in the right to privacy, especially for individuals, I was concerned.
What I didn't factor in at the time, and I will admit my mistake, is that I think you have done the United States of America and the world a great service.
And let me tell you why.
I think, number one, you showed a vulnerability that as a country we needed to know about.
You told me the other night it was simple for you to break in and get American records.
Is that true?
Well, not for me.
In general, computer security is incredibly weak.
Right.
So for all sorts of organized crime, other states, teenagers in their bedroom, sure.
So I think on that level, I think making the United States of America aware of that vulnerability is a really good thing.
Because now hopefully they can hire the right people and fix it.
Would you agree with that?
Yeah, but if we go back a bit, there was a lot of false statements.
You know, we've published most famously, we've published a lot of things from a lot of countries over the last decade that have put guilty people in prison, released innocent people from prison, led to international settlements, including against the largest ever international settlement against Russia in the UCOS case.
So, you know, we publish serious things.
But under the Obama administration, when we published Hillary Clinton's cables, her reaction, because it was very embarrassing that she didn't protect them, was to try and kill the messenger.
And as part of that, they launched a PR campaign to try and suggest that our publications had caused people to come to harm U.S. soldiers and others.
That's false.
In fact, the Pentagon had to admit under oath in 2013 that they could not find a single person who had been physically harmed by our publications.
But that false messaging was assumed, because it came from the government, to be true at the time.
And of course, a lot of people were understandably angry in the United States.
But that was false, and they had to admit under oath that it was false.
You see, this is where I think that my thinking, and over time, number one, you made America aware of a great vulnerability, and that is that if we don't have cybersecurity, America doesn't have secrets.
And I think that any country in a day and age of ISIS and radical Islamists and those that would bring harm to innocent men, women, and children anywhere around the globe, I think that's enormously important, especially from a national security standpoint.
And I think the other thing that has had a pretty profound impact on me, and you mentioned a number of examples where WikiLeaks has literally led to truth, I think you exposed a level, a deep level of lying, of a corrupt government, deeper than even me as a staunch critic of government was kind of shocked by.
Does that make sense?
So in that sense, I think you have done the American public a service.
Well, that's that the purpose of our organization is to try and bring the truth to the public, which is otherwise suppressed, either because of media bias, and we've seen a lot of that in this election, where actually a lot of the Democrat-aligned media like MSNBC, Politico, Washington Post, we expose as acting against journalistic ethics and taking marching orders from the DNC,
checking, in the case of Politico, their copy with the DNC before even their own editors managed to see it.
So unfortunately, there has to be a place where whistleblowers, consultants, and yes, even computer hackers who care about the truth have a place to publish it, which is verified, where people can trust what's published, because we put our entire reputation on the line to make sure it is trusted.
The thing that I asked you the other night that also had a pretty profound impact on me is I asked you, okay, you obviously have the ability to hack into government records around the world.
Would you ever use it against individuals?
And you are an emphatic no, that's not the purpose of your organization.
It's not the purpose of our organization, but also we're just not interested.
We don't hack.
We're a publisher.
We encourage whistleblowers to come forward by campaigning for them, by co-founding the Courage Foundation, which supports whistleblowers.
Yeah, and showing that when people publish with us, they have a big impact.
If you look at the DNC publications, there had been some other publications by The Hill, which is not a bad publication for Washington, D.C., Gawker and so on, documents from the DNC, PDFs, but they had no impact.
But when we published the DNC emails, there was enormous impact.
The top five people the DNC had to resign, including the President Debbie Wasserman Schultz.
And that's because, A, we're really trusted by the public and by journalists.
And B, we have a philosophy of making our material available to the people equally so they can check that what it is claimed to say, it really does say.
They can find what's been buried by the press or missed by the press, either just by accident or lack of resources or because of political bias.
You know, it's interesting because I know that a lot of people say, well, Hannity, you changed your views on Julian Assange, and I'm just looking at this very objectively.
These are the same people that, you know, they know I don't want Hillary Clinton to be the next president.
That's a fair and true statement, and I would certainly understand people jumping to that conclusion.
What they will negate to tell people is there's nobody the last number of years that has been more fiercely critical of Republicans and how weak and timid and feckless and spineless and visionless they are and how they allowed Obama's agenda to go through.
They never challenged him.
They never used their constitutional enumerated powers to stop him.
And I've been far more critical of them.
For me, it's not about politics.
It's about the truth and what's right.
And when Republicans are weak, I call them out, which I don't see the Democrats do.
Let me ask you this.
Well, there's good and bad people in both parties.
I'm sure.
I agree with that.
I agree with that.
I agree.
I think there are well-intentioned people.
And I also think there are people, as you have learned, I mean, you know, one of the things that amazed me about the whole DNC hacking is here you had racism, anti-Semitism, misogyny, you know, gay slurs.
And I'm thinking, wait a minute, that is the narrative, the false narrative that I as a conservative fight back against that is used by the Democrats every election season.
And by the way, it pisses me off.
And talking about Hispanics as taco bowls.
Right.
Right.
And no one really paid attention to that.
That took my breath away.
And that got covered up.
Let me ask you I found the most serious email in the DNC collection is actually, to my mind, not the most salicious.
It is an instruction through the chain of command of the DNC to plant false stories about Bernie Sanders supporters committing violence with a number of outlets and to, quote, not have their fingerprints on it, unquote.
So if you look at the DNC charter, it says explicitly that in a presidential primary, they are meant to be strictly neutral and impartial.
Yeah, I think that's extraordinarily well said.
Let me ask you specifically about Hillary.
When you were on TV with me the other night, I brought up a quote that you had given recently to the New York Times, and you accused the press in America of supporting Hillary Clinton.
You said the American liberal press is falling all over themselves to defend Hillary Clinton.
They're erecting a demon that is going to put nooses around everyone's necks as soon as she wins the election, which she is almost certainly going to do.
What did you mean by that?
What I meant is this kind of, you know, the Democrats are always speaking about how terrible McCarthyism was, and it was in many ways.
But at least the USSR actually existed then, and there were actually Russian influence campaigns in the United States which were serious.
What we're seeing now is Hillary Clinton and her campaign trying to whip up a neo-McCarthyist hysteria where she claims that effectively Donald Trump is an agent of the Russians,
that Wikileaks is an agent of the Russians, and where her campaign has also implied that Jewel Stein, the Greens leader, is a Russian agent, and that The Intercept, another U.S. publication, are effectively Russian agents.
So what do we have here?
We have, let's look at it objectively, we have the ruling party's preferred successor running around calling the opposition leader, in fact, multiple opposition leaders, and the critical press foreign agents.
By the way, isn't that the very terrible climate to permit?
And what kind of press climate is going to exist afterwards, especially if Hillary Clinton is elected?
It will be perceived to be a validation of that hysteria.
And so the press afterwards will be cracked down upon, and online publishers and people on social media, you know, will lead to a very harsh climate where the First Amendment will be very significantly eroded.
You know, what we're talking with, we're discussing the issue of WikiLeaks, its founder, its editor-in-chief, Julian Assange, is with us.
We're going to take a quick break.
We'll come back on the other side a lot more to ask him more specifically about what he's discovered about your government, how he got started in all of this.
What specifically, to the extent that he'd be willing to share, what batches of information does he think he'll be releasing before the election?
We'll get to that.
Also, we'll get to your phone calls coming up and much more.
800-941-Sean is a toll-free telephone number as we continue.
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Sean, if you want to be a part of the program, we continue our discussion here with the founder, the editor-in-chief of WikiLeaks, and that's Julian Assange is with us.
You told me that you have batches, what you call batches and batches of information that you're continuing to vet, specifically related to Hillary Clinton, that you have said numerous times you believe will have a profound or could have a profound impact on this election.
What else can you tell us about that?
I said significant.
Profound is possible.
It depends on how the stuff is taken up.
But we saw a very good take-up last time with the DNC leaks, so I'm hopeful.
I can't scoop ourselves before we publish, but we have tens of thousands, possibly as many as 100,000 pages of documents of different types related to the operations that Hillary Clinton is associated with.
They're from several...
I don't want to speak about sourcing, but let me put it this way, that in response to DNC publications, a lot of people have been inspired by the impact and so stepped forward with additional material.
So you are currently putting all of this together.
Where in the process are you?
Because I know that it's important to you to maintain your perfect track record in terms of not getting information wrong.
In terms of a timeline, we do have an important election in just 61 days.
Where are you in terms of that process?
I'm quite confident now on the initial batches in terms of vetting them, that they are accurate, they are what they say they are, that our sources are not lying to us about what they say they are.
But it's quite a complex business to sort things, to index them, to make sure they're presentable, to try and see what the top initial angles are that come out.
And we're a small shop.
We're working around the clock.
We understand very much the time pressures that people have and how significant it is to try and get that out.
We worked like hell to get the DNC publication out before the DNC.
We did get it out the day before the DNC.
I am very confident we're going to get this material out long before the day before the election.
Now, as a result of your interview with me on TV, the Clinton campaign sent out a message associating you with Roger Stone, who's not even involved in the Trump campaign.
Does that have any impact whatsoever on your decision to make these batches available?
And when you say batches, that's plural.
How many batches would you say you have?
It's a question about how the first batch is digested, but there's some natural batches, so we're talking at least three or four natural batches.
But as we see how the publications progress and what particular angles people decide to run with, you know, what the public finds are most interesting, then we might extend that or we might contract it.
A lot of this is resource bound as well.
We're, you know, a small investigative publisher, so there's huge weight on us to get it all done.
It's hard work.
How would you describe, tell me the adjectives if you feel that the batches are relevant in terms of what would interest the public and the electorate?
What are the adjectives that you would use or you would want used after you release some of these batches to describe the information that you're going to pass forward?
What would you want people to say?
Devastating?
I'm not going to scoop myself on your show, Sean.
Well, you absolutely can.
We're on 550 radio stations right now all across the country.
I have no idea if you even know who I am.
We're a diligent, careful organization.
Yes.
I don't want to go there.
I am confident it is significant.
This is what you said to the PBS.
So there's a lot of different angles.
You said what we have is a significant amount of information.
The information itself is significant, and it pertains to Hillary Clinton's campaign.
And we will be releasing it in several batches, and we will be finished as we are finished with our journalistic work on each batch.
Yes.
It seems like there's no end to this.
We have been doing this for 10 years.
Yeah.
That's a good point.
Almost like a job security.
Did you get, would you answer this question, did you get all 33,000 deleted emails that Hillary Clinton deleted?
I'm not commenting on what we have other than to say we have significant material about the campaign.
We will be releasing it as soon as we possibly can, as soon as the journalistic formatting presentation work is done.
If people want to speed that up, we're tax deductible in the United States.
That'll allow us to hire more presentation people and more researchers.
But, yeah, otherwise, I don't want to scoop our publications before we are ready to present them to the public.
Let me ask you about the personal impact in your life.
You'll never give your location.
I won't waste any time asking you.
But you are hidden away and you have been for a significant period of time.
There was an attempted break-in at apparently what they describe as your embassy home.
Ecuador has questioned London's inadequate response.
On top of that, it was revealed yesterday Sweden's Court of Appeal is debating this week whether to grant you an open court hearing in your campaign to rescind an arrest warrant against you.
The appearance is related to sexual assault charges that you're facing in Sweden.
Do you claim all of this is false?
And is this as a result of the work that you're involved in, do you believe?
Well, I'm not facing any sexual assault charges.
I haven't been charged with frequent misreportage.
In fact, in that Swedish case, we have a lot of cases, but in the Swedish case, I haven't been charged.
Well, the appearance that you took back in 2010 was related to that.
I've already been cleared by the chief prosecutor of Stockholm.
The thing was resurrected after the involvement of a politician, a guy by the name Claire Sporgstrom, back in 2010, in the middle of our kind of conflict with Hillary over the publication of the cables.
The United Nations, this year, after 18 months of litigation and review, on February 5, made a formal finding that I am being illegally detained and I should be immediately released and compensated.
So that's the facts on there.
What we're trying to do in Sweden is enforce that determination.
Let me ask you this.
Get the Swedes to make it themselves.
At the age of 16, this is fascinating to me, you broke into the systems of NASA and the U.S. Pentagon.
You were busted on 25 counts of hacking.
You're 16 years old.
Which, you know, I guess the question I think my audience would most want to hear from you is this.
In all of these years that you have read all of this relevant information from the bowels of our government, what should the average citizen know that they don't know about America's government?
And more particularly, I would argue, under this president, but any president that you want to share?
That's a very interesting question.
It is an interesting experience to be a very young person trying to understand the world and educate yourself.
And as an Australian, you know, Australia is a long way from anywhere else, but you can kind of get out with your mind, which is what I and some other Australian teenagers were doing, exploring the world, trying to understand it.
And that, of course, includes the U.S. government.
I would say that some things to understand, even the worst institution has good people in it.
The people at the bottom are usually pretty good.
As you go up, people become more duplicitous.
We can talk about some big structural things here.
They're quite explained.
Over all these years, you've been accused of being a rapist, an enemy combatant, a CIA covert operative, a Mossad agent for Israel.
All of these things.
Yeah, I mean, listen, I've got to be honest, I'm a big supporter of the military because I think the world is a very evil and dangerous place.
I really do.
I believe in covert operations, too.
But I know that you, you know, in 2010, in April, with the release of Collateral Murderer, you showed an American helicopter in Iraq opening fire on unarmed civilians.
That's not what I want my military doing.
I don't want them.
There might have been one or two that were armed.
Actually, we say that explicitly in the video.
But yes, the majority not armed, not engaged in combat, and two were Reuters journalists.
Later on in that video is the serious incident, the real serious incident, where there's a Reuters journalist wounded crawling along the gutter.
Good Samaritans turn up in a van with two kids on the way to school.
They go to collect him off the street, and then the helicopter opens fire on that van, which is just collecting the wounded.
So then there's a cover-up.
And in some ways, the cover-ups are more serious because they're systematic corruption.
You can have one event or another event, but the way the system heals itself is by, you know, being accountable for when things go wrong.
That's how you – Do you agree with my worldview, though, that there is evil in this world?
Do you agree with my worldview that unfortunately human beings haven't all fallen short of the glory of God, to quote a great book, that we are dealing with some evil people and they don't respect human life and human dignity and there have to be steps to protect innocent people?
Yes, I've dealt with and seen very bad people.
I mean, friends of mine have been assassinated.
I've had calls for my assassination.
There are a lot of bad people in the world.
There's a lot of good people as well.
So go back to my original question then.
What would you tell the American – oh, I'm sorry.
Go ahead.
Finish your thought.
No, I was about to say, I think that, you know, you've got basically 10% of people are really very fine.
2% of people are psychopathic liars and actually enjoy causing suffering to others.
That's true across nearly every society.
It varies a little bit between societies.
And then the people in the middle, they kind of go either way.
They take their leads from examples that they see.
Back to my original.
Back to my original question.
Well, based on what you just said to me, let me ask the question this way.
Based on your classification of people, with many being good, many being in the middle, and 2% being psychopathic, and based on all the information you've been able to read and glean from things that Americans don't have the opportunity to see, except that you're sharing it, how would you classify Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton?
Obama's hard to understand.
There's a clear transition in Obama as he gets into government and then starts to identify with the authority that he has.
And as far as we can see, starts to become more abusive in his exercise of authority because he identifies too much his own ego with what has happened in relation to various parts of the government.
The president should be someone who forces accountability on the government rather than someone who tries to hide when the government gets it wrong.
And Hillary?
Hillary Clinton, I mean, I'm not that interested in a personal assessment.
But you're able to, let me say this.
You're able to glean things that others are not.
Like, for example, in the DNC case, you were able to glean racism, sexism, homophobia, all things Democrats say.
They're the champions of women's rights.
They're the champion.
Like Hillary Clinton takes money from the Saudis.
The Saudis practice Sharia, treat women, they kill gays and lesbians, and there's no religious freedom for Christians or Jews.
I find that repressive.
And she takes their money.
I find that the height of hypocrisy.
So my question to you is: does she fit into that 2%?
She's a does-what-it-takes kind of person.
The question is, how has she gotten where she is now?
What is her who are her kind of supporters, her cronies, the people that she relies upon to propel her and her working methods?
Listen, I know you've given us been very generous with your time.
Can I ask you a question?
Would you be able to stay one more segment?
Yeah, sure.
You know, because I honestly, I don't want to interrupt your questions, but I have so many others, and I don't want to interrupt your answers, so I have so many other questions because I really want you to speak freely.
And that's why my list of questions is very long, and I've read a lot about you, and I'd like to share a lot of it with our audience.
So if you can stay one more segment, Julian Assange is with us.
He's agreed to stay, founder, editor-in-chief of Wikileaks.
We'll pick it up right where we left off here about his worldview, what he's been able to glean from the documents that he has seen and is now sharing with the world.
As I said, I believe there are two major benefits for you, the American people, in all of this.
Number one, that we have, it's been revealed how unsecure our computer systems are, and there is no cybersecurity within government, none whatsoever.
And number two, also a level of corruption that I think should shock the conscience of any law-abiding, constitutional-loving American.
And frankly, citizens of the world.
We'll continue more with Julian Assange.
We'll also get your calls in, 800-941-Sean.
Tollfrey telephone number will continue.
All right, news roundup information overload here on the Sean Hannity show.
We continue with Julian Assange, the founder, the editor-in-chief of Wikileaks.
I want to go back to, again, you've been able to see things from within the deep bowels, not only of our government, but other governments as well, and information that you've gleaned that others have not had access to, although you put it together and you share it with the world.
And I know you've come under great criticism.
As a matter of fact, you know, did you say earlier in this interview, I'm just paying attention to you here because I think you've had friends assassinated because of your work?
Yes, in Kenya.
Can you expand on that?
What happened?
Well, we were involved in a process where more than 1,500 people, it's quite a complex domestic thing in Kenya, but had been killed by some elements of the Kenyan police and the Kenyan Human Rights Commission was investigating this.
The guys were being originally shot, then garrotted to hide the wounds and then chucked into rivers and buried in landfill, etc.
And guys we were working with two lawyers were going to the Kenyan Human Rights Commission to present their results and then they're in their car in the afternoon and the van pulled in front, van pulled in behind with AK-47s and they shot through the windows and killed them.
Sad, isn't it?
It's really, there's so much evil in this world.
It's so horrible sometimes.
You asked a question before, Sean, about, which I struggled to answer a bit about what is my worldview after being in the bowels of institutions for a long time.
I guess it's as you get, as you see people near the top of the institution, what they say internally to each other, it's basically a contempt for democracy, a contempt for the public, and self-confidence in that contempt.
Can I ask you to expand on it in this way?
Through the prism of the DNC and those emails, again, which showed racism, sexism, misogyny, anti-Semitism, gay slurs, et cetera.
You talk about a contempt for we the people in the case of the United States.
That showed real contempt and real hypocrisy.
And I want you to go into the broader question, and you have free reign to go anywhere you want in terms of what especially related to our election.
Would you think the American people have a right to know about Hillary Clinton based on the bowels of documents that you have read that maybe we have not?
I'm not going to scoop our upcoming publication, Sean.
You've got to give me credit for trying.
I mean, you don't expect me not to try.
Jeez.
As far as the DNC leaks are concerned, I mean, you know, everyone knows the big takeaway.
The DNC acted against its own constitution to try and rig the primary process against Bernie Sanders and for Hillary Clinton.
And then afterwards, immediately afterwards, Hillary Clinton said that Debbie Wasserman Schultz is, you know, her best pal, literally two hours afterwards, her best pal and would become the honorary head of her campaign and be her surrogate, etc.
Basically saying, hey, don't worry, all my cronies, as long as you do something corrupt for me, you'll be taken care of.
And it's very interesting that she feels that she must make that statement because obviously politically, it doesn't help her to make that statement with the American people.
It obviously doesn't help her to make that statement with the Bernie Sanders guys and girls.
So who is that statement for?
It's for her cronies and allies, which she wants to reassure, don't worry, I'm going to look after you.
If you help me in a corrupt manner, you're going to be taken care of.
And that's a very bad sign.
So she's corrupt.
She is a corrupt behind the scenes when nobody's looking.
She's a very different person than what she portrays publicly.
Fair statement?
Yes.
Is she a fair statement?
Yeah, go ahead.
Sean, can I go into some of the FBI report and our cables about Hillary Clinton that we've published?
Yes.
Because I think this is something that really needs to be focused on because it's undeniable.
So in the FBI interview with Hillary Clinton, I have it here.
I'll just quote from it.
Where are we?
So this is about the C in brackets on a document.
Now, everyone who has a security clearance or has been in the Senate or is an investigative journalist, and frankly, a lot of people have been in the, most people have been in the military know what a C in bracket means next to a paragraph that means classified.
An S in bracket, classified confidential.
An S in bracket means classified secret.
A U in brackets means unclassified.
And T S in brackets means top secret.
So in her interview, which is reported by the FBI, when asked what the parenthical C meant before a paragraph within the captioned email, Clinton stated that she did not know and could only speculate it was referencing paragraphs marked in alphabetical order.
Yeah, there's no A and B. There's no A and B. There's no D either.
We have something much stronger than that, much stronger than that, which we published her cables, all of her 2009 cables and some of her 2010 cables.
So that's her first year as Secretary of State.
And there are literally thousands of examples on her website where she has signed off the cable with her own name, Clinton, and the paragraphs above that have this C in brackets.
She has been using that C in brackets thousands of times while she was Secretary of State.
Now, if Hillary Clinton turned around and said, oh, but, you know, I just dictated that cable, someone else put these brackets in, which I don't believe happened all the time.
But anyway, she turns around and says that.
We also have thousands of cables that we've published that were sent to her that had this C in brackets.
So the original I never sent or received classified information was always a lie.
That was always a lie, but she is intimately familiar with this C marking.
We have published proof of her writing it using it.
Let me add one other thousands of times.
There's one email thread from June of 2011 that included Hillary telling a top aide, his name is Jake Sullivan, to send secure information through insecure means.
And in response to her request for a set of since-redacted talking points, he writes, well, they've had issues sending secure facts and they're working on it.
And she responded, well, if they can't, turn it into non-paper, meaning email, with no identifying heading and send non-secure.
Now, why is that important in light of what happened last night?
Because last night was the first time she mentioned there's no heading.
You don't need a heading.
And it shows there was a heading there.
She was aware of headings, and she was aware of the importance of removing these headings.
So there is a concerted effort to defy the law, defy security, do whatever she pretty much damn well pleases, and then she lies with a bandit.
Now, you were talking about three personality types in the last half hour.
Said 2% are psychopathic.
That kind of seems to me to fit into that category, and you didn't want to go there.
I don't want to make a personality assessment.
In some ways, it doesn't matter.
She does what she does, and that's she does what she does, and she has the allies that she has, and that's going to define her as a president, just like most political candidates.
And that, to some degree, is unalterable.
Well, then, let me ask you about America's media, though.
You put out all the things that you're saying.
Well, a good person doesn't matter, you know?
She's going to act like that.
If you read The People of the Lie, though, I don't know if you've ever read The Road Less Traveled or The People of the Lie.
I mean, lying in and of itself is an act of evil.
There's a certain dishonesty, and when you do it with a calculated purpose to advance one's career, I think it becomes even more pronounced.
But the American lied.
That's a concrete example of her lying.
How many times do you think you've caught her lying based on your analysis of what you found?
Well, I think there's dozens of incidences.
So she lies with regularity.
This particular one that I just gave, this is something that everyone can see.
You can go to wikileaks.org slash plus D, P-L-U-S-D, and just put in Clinton in the search term, select the classification as confidential or confidential, no-forn, or secret, and you will see those cables.
Let me ask you this question.
Everyone can prove it.
How do you assess America's media?
Now, I started at the beginning of this interview, and I admitted I think I was wrong about you.
And I apologize, by the way.
I didn't do it the last time, but I will now.
Because I think you have done a great service for the country, and I really worried.
And my rationale at the time, I actually stand by it, was I really thought you had compromised the security of Americans, and that's where my focus was.
So I did have a rationale, but it turns out that I was wrong.
But in this instance, you know, how do you assess American media where you're doing all the work for them?
And I know that even the New York Times criticized you, which kind of made me laugh somewhat.
Bill Keller at the Times at the time, you know, attacking you personally and then stealing everything that you put out.
I mean, it's hilarious to me.
But, you know, my question to you is, how do you assess the American media?
You lay out all this information.
They're not informing the American people to the extent they should, are they?
There's some good journalists in the American media.
There are.
But if we're talking about institutions in this election cycle, I mean, it's really embarrassing.
I mean, some of that's come out through DNC emails, but there's a full-blown, there's a rapid partisan, sorry, there's increasing bias in the media, much more than there was four years ago.
I'm not sure why.
I think it's probably because Hillary Clinton's network has grown so large and is intermingled with a lot of that media.
You look at the Daily Beast, for example.
Its parent organization has Chelsea Clinton on the board.
Those sorts of connections exist in MSNBC, Washington Post, Politico, etc.
Basically, they're all in bed with each other, aren't they?
Well, they're in bed with each other, but you could be, you know, have friends or allies or relatives, but you might have ethical principles.
Well, I criticize Republicans, and I never get credit for it.
I beat the crap out of them.
Let me ask you this question based on your knowledge.
Do you think that Hillary's email server issue potentially led to the death of innocent people?
Like, for example, like Benghazi or the Iranian scientist or any of those issues?
Hillary Clinton's emails, a lot of people have had them.
If you read carefully the FBI report, you see that all her emails from her private server, private server, in her lounge room, there were three, were sucked out to a cloud run by some contractor.
She says illicitly.
Yeah.
They were also pushed into Gmail.
They were put on a laptop, which they posted to themselves and then immediately lost the whole laptop, they say.
I think it's an interesting question as to whether they lost the laptop with all the emails of the United States top diplomat on it or whether this is a quite elaborate and frankly clever way to make a laptop disappear when you're expecting a subpoena.
I think we know that use bleach bits.
We know the answer.
15.
13.
Yeah, 15 phones.
Break it, bust it up with a hammer.
15 phones.
They destroyed at least five with a hammer.
Only two could be found.
But she only used one device, Julian.
She told us she only used one device.
That was a lie.
That was a lie.
And also she had an iPad and emails were being received on that iPad.
So there's emails that we have published where you see her sending emails from her iPad or her staff are talking about her receiving emails on her iPad.
I'm a privacy believer.
I just have this belief that we ought to be able to, individuals ought to have a right to privacy.
Governments are very different for me, except for covert operations, military secrets that I think every government does have a right to have in an evil world.
Like I, for example, use an iPhone.
It's supposed to be encrypted.
How easy would it be for you to bust into anybody's iPhone?
And I ask this on behalf of my audience that probably, like me, is concerned about their own privacy.
Well, I'm not a computer hacker.
I was one as a teenager.
I became a security expert, an analyst and publisher and so on afterwards and fighter for the freedom of the press and the First Amendment and so on.
But of course we have to study all this in order to know how to protect our own organization.
WikiLeaks is constantly attacked by state parties, by Mafia and so on.
Everyone.
We were banned by China as early as 2007.
So we've had this ongoing war trying to protect ourselves for more than a decade.
This is going to make a great movie one day.
Is there anybody you want to play you in the movie?
Well, no.
No, nobody.
You want to do it yourself?
I'd rather like there to not be such things.
All right, just one more question.
Final question for Juliana Assange, who is the founder, editor-in-chief of Wikileaks.
When we get back, also your reaction to all of this, 800-941 Sean, if you want to be a part of the program.
That and more coming up straight ahead.
All right, we continue.
Final question now for the founder, the editor-in-chief of Wikileaks, Julian Assange.
Yes or no?
I really want an answer from your best analysis and your understanding.
Do you believe Hillary's email caused the death of anybody?
I don't know.
As I was saying before, they circulated very widely on lost on laptops in the posts, copied to remote servers, copied to Gmail, flowing over the internet.
So that's kind of great from a WikiLeaks perspective because it means such a wide number of sources.
Yeah, it's great from WikiLeaks perspective.
But we are talking about the emails of the top U.S. diplomat.
My philosophy about secrets, military secrets and so on, is yes, I believe that there are genuine secrets for a period of time.
For example, our sources, we obviously keep them secret, otherwise they would be harmed.
But it's the amount of time.
I don't think there is any secret in government that must be kept secret forever.
And that if there was such a secret, it would lead to unaccountability.
What we're talking about with Hillary's emails is whether there was a military operation that was important, say, to save a hostage, for example, held by ISIS.
And could that information come out near the time that that was happening or CIA officers knocks without official diplomatic status if their identities came out and they were in a very difficult situation in the Middle East?
That could lead to harm.
I do think there's something here that we need to pay attention to, and I'll just leave this thought with you as you go to your dinner, is that the skills that you and your team, and I know you consider yourself a journalist, have accumulated over these many years, potentially could be used to hack into whatever electronic devices ISIS is using and save innocent lives.
There is a potential for great good that can be accomplished here.
You know, maybe just informing the American people what a pathological liar Hillary Clinton is, because you've seen it for yourself time and time again, is a wake-up call.
And at least people go in with the full knowledge of what they're doing when they vote on November the 8th.
But I wish I had more time.
I really thank you for your time, and I appreciate you taking the time to be with us and share this information.
Thank you.
You're welcome.
Thanks, Sean.
Bye-bye.
All right, be safe, by the way.
I think a lot of people are out to get you.
Yeah, they are.
All right.
800-941-Sean or Tofree.
Telephone number.
You want to be a part of the program.
You know, it's pretty amazing.
I find this guy fascinating.
And I'm not sure I believe anything that anybody says about the guy.
And I know they brought a lot of charges.
I asked him about, I don't know what to believe.
I know this, that when you hit governments this hard as he has, and by the way, effectively, he's gotten people out of jail and had a lot of positive impact.
I know that the media narrative, the media matters of the world, which are obsessed with me and tape four hours a day because they hire losers in their underwear and all over the country to monitor every word that I say.
And they go, oh, this is political.
Well, I asked Julian last night, well, what if it was stuff on Trump?
He said, well, the problem with Trump is he says everything he thinks.
He's not a phony.
So there's no pretense with him.
But back to my original assessment, I remember when this first broke, the assessment was pretty clear that this probably was the worst damage to national security in the history of the country and would result in people's death.
And based on that, I'm like, wow, this is espionage.
This is a crime.
So I did say that.
I will say this.
Now that WikiLeaks has a 10-year perfect record, and again, as a privacy person, I kind of, I don't want people being hacked the way they're being hacked every five minutes.
It's not how I operate.
But with that said, there is a great public service that has been performed here.
Now, I want you to think about this.
This never happens, and yet all of these foreign countries have the capability of Julian Assange as the founder and editor-in-chief of WikiLeaks.
So they're getting all that information.
The only difference is they're not telling us that they have it.
So now we know we have a huge cybersecurity safety problem.
Number two, you know, as corrupt as I've always known instinctively that government is, he has also done a great service exposing just how deeply, fundamentally corrupt and dishonest your leaders are and your government is.
I take, for example, the DNC email hack.
So the same people that accuse conservatives every election season of being racist, they use racist language themselves.
They do it.
They're guilty of what they accuse conservatives of.
They're anti-Semitic.
They are misogynistic.
They make gay and lesbian slurs and much more.
What a public service to get to see the deep.
Now, I know the media has ignored all of this because they are the willing accomplices of Hillary Clinton, just like they were Barack Obama.
So I'm just, I'm telling you right now, this is a good service.
You remember Elise Jordan was married to this guy, Mike Hastings?
It was Michael, right?
I like her a lot.
She is a lovely girl.
She's best friends with Elise.
She used to work for me.
They're best BFS.
They go on vacation, send me pictures.
I'm like, gee, I wish I had all the time Elise has.
No, I'm just kidding.
We're proud of her.
She's doing great work, and she's got her own TV shows she's put together.
So many people have left working for me and done great things, haven't they?
And Linda's stuck with me, you know, stuck like glue.
Ever hear that song by Sugarland?
Anyway, Hastings became a vocal critic of the surveillance state during the investigation of reporters by the U.S. Department of Justice in 2013, referring to the restrictions on freedom of the press by the Obama administration as a war on journalism.
His last story, Why Democrats Love to Spy on Americans, was published by BuzzFeed.
Hastings died in that high-speed, really bizarre, questionable automobile chase in Los Angeles back in, what, 2013?
That was Elise's husband.
Remember calling her at the time, and just devastated.
And I spoke to her recently.
She's actually doing really well.
We're really proud of her.
She's engaged, too.
She's, you know, she's in a good place.
So that's what I think.
I'd love to hear what you say.
Vanessa's in New Mexico.
Vanessa, you're on the Sean Hannity show.
Hi.
Hi, thanks for taking my call.
I just wanted to say that when he talked about what the Democrats are really, really about, and it shows with what's being leaked, that's what stuck out to me is that they portray themselves as the political party that really, really cares about people.
And we've got your back.
And the truth is just the opposite.
And the truth is coming out because he and his organization have not only the skills, but the courage to expose it.
And like you've said, to me, it's exposing the fundamental darkness and evil that is in the hearts and minds of our leaders, which drives them to do the things they're doing.
And with Hillary Clinton, the arrogance of that party to think that they can be exposed and still have the likability of people in America.
It's just, it's like her audacity to even run for president when she is responsible for the death of four Americans and then calling those families liars.
It's even amazing to me, even though I have a realistic view of how the timing of having Julian on today, I think, was perfect in light of this town hall last night.
I just thought it was amazing.
Thank you, Vanessa.
I'm interested in what everybody has to say here.
Janelle is in Georgia, Waycross, Georgia.
How are you, Janelle?
Glad you called listening to News Talk WSP.
Hey, Sean, it's good to be with you.
I'm excited to get to talk to you.
I listen to you every day, watch you on Fox at night.
Thank you.
You're just a great patriot.
Well, God bless you.
I appreciate your kind words.
There's a lot of people that hate me right now.
It's nice to get a little bit of reassurance occasionally because I don't get much.
I've got a lot of support, I promise you.
Thank you.
Especially in Georgia.
Thank you very much.
I wanted to say about Julian Assange.
I'm looking forward to seeing what he has to offer, what he has to put out there that he says he has on Hillary, because while his tactics may be a little bit questionable in how they go about gathering this material, she is a criminal.
And she's not been held accountable for anything she's done in 30-plus years, Sean.
I'm sick of it.
I want something to stick.
She needs to be held accountable for all that she's done.
I agree.
I think the fact that I honestly, though, believe that there's at least 40% of your fellow citizens that we could get her on video murdering somebody, shooting them in the head at point-blank range for no reason, handcuffed behind their back, and they'd still defend her.
That's a problem we have.
Half the country's nuts.
It is.
I don't understand it.
It's crazy to me.
And in Georgia, where I live, I can't believe I don't know anybody that's voting for her.
And I can't believe that, you know, that she's up in Georgia.
That to me is embarrassing.
I'm going, I don't know anybody that's voting for her.
But it's let me tell you, they're out there, and these people write me regularly so I know what they think and how they feel and everything else.
Anyway, thank you, Janelle.
All my best to my friends in Georgia.
Joni is in California.
Joni, hi, how are you?
Glad you called.
I'm fine.
Thank you.
I've been thinking about Assange as well, and I'm hoping that he can blow a bomb of an October surprise that can hopefully bring Hillary down because she's truly the head of the Clinton crime syndicate.
And then I'm wondering, like as you just said, whether the mainstream media would even care.
Because it's anyway, this goes into the electoral conversation.
You know, everybody's going to think the only reason Hannity likes Assange now is because he's going to make this document dump on Hillary, which, by the way, I'm not going to lie.
I mean, sure, absolutely.
But here's what I've come to realize that's even bigger and more profound.
Although this could have a profound effect and an altering effect on our election this time.
But I think the fact that we better pay attention to cybersecurity.
I mean, the fact that he says it's easy to hack into the Pentagon, the fact that he did it at 16 years of age, it's mind-blowing.
The second thing, the fact that our government is so corrupt and they've been exposed as such hypocrites.
And the third thing that was kind of reassuring from the guy, I thought, was he's not after private citizens.
He's after governments that are corrupt and exposing corruption.
Well, that to me is fundamentally what journalism should be about.
So I kind of like the gutsiness of it.
I am sure that if it was against George Bush, that Democrats would love the guy.
But it's not.
It's against Hillary, and I think that they're scared to death.
I am told within Democratic ranks, they are literally in their pants over this whole Julian Assange issue.
They're scared to death.
Yeah, it's happening in their pants.
They're blanking their pants, pooping their pants.
I'm saying it nicely.
Why do you push me?
You push me because you want me to say it.
You push me because you want me in trouble.
I get in trouble.
I get fired.
You lose your job.
That really makes a lot of sense.
So for your own self-preservation, Miss, I use the drop an F-bomb every five seconds.
Maybe you could be a little bit nicer to me to preserve and protect so I can put food in the mouth of that beautiful baby you have at your home who looks as Irish as the days long.
Did you tell Lenny I said that?
That kid has got reddish hair.
He's got an Irish face and Irish skin.
How did that happen?
Tell him I said that.
He's going to laugh.
Justin, Portland, Oregon.
What's up, Justin?
How are you?
Yeah, hi, Ashan.
Thanks for taking my call.
I think that Julian Assange has done a good public service.
I think he's proved just how not transparent Hillary and the Democrats have been.
But I want to highlight one other thing that I haven't heard quite yet, and that's the issue of her avoiding responsibility of handling the confidential information.
She keeps saying, I didn't know.
I can't remember.
Listen, if I go as a concealmentary permit holder, if I go to another state, I need to know that.
Oh, you better remember.
Oh, yeah.
And you can't.
And you can't say, well, I had a concussion in 2012.
I just forgot my gun was in my pocket.
That's a good thing.
No, it's not going to apply.
Even just driving, if I drive in another state, listen, get the file with the cake because you're going to need it.
You'll be in jail, handcuffed, perp-walked, and fingerprinted.
And what do you call that mug-shotted?
Robin O'Calla, Florida, next, Sean Hannity Show.
What's going on?
Yeah, hi, Sean.
I'm going to change the topic a little bit.
Sure, what's up?
I was saying, my daughter was your server at the U.S. Open on Saturday.
Wait a minute.
Your daughter was.
Was your server?
You mean when I was eating at the restaurant?
Yes, yes, sir.
Wait a minute.
Is she a real Christian girl?
Absolutely.
We had, I was with some friends of mine from TV, my producer, Porter, and others, and we had the biggest discussion with her and another guy all about faith and religion.
That's what we were talking about the whole dinner.
That's what she shared with me.
She said, you made her day.
You made her weak.
Yeah, I was asking them to sit down and join us, but then the owner of the restaurant came out and I said, Can they join us?
I actually asked him, and he said, I guess so.
You know, he wants them to work.
But she, by the way, is a lovely, lovely girl.
And the guy she works with, I loved him too.
Well, thank you so much.
Well, she just shared that story with me.
She was telling us, we were sitting there talking about, you know, salvation and God and having a long discussion because I was raised a Catholic and others were raised different denominations.
And your daughter weighed in.
She was so smart and so she was amazing.
I loved her.
I gave her a hug when I left, you know.
Yeah, that's what she said.
She said that and she said, and if anyone ever doubts how generous Sean Hannity is, you can tell them he's more than generous.
Oh, you mean I left her a big tip?
Okay.
Yes, sir.
I always do that, by the way.
That's not uncommon.
But not only that, she said that you were just, she said you saw her as a person.
And she said, when you're in her particular job, so many people look through them and over them and around them and don't see who they are as people.
I've experienced that.
You know what?
I spent years washing dishes by hand.
I didn't have a machine.
I was a cook, busboy, waiter, bartender for 10 years of my life.
Believe me, I know everything that your daughter's doing.
I did them all myself.
Yeah, and she's a single mom working hard.
Really?
Well, I should have given her a bigger tip then.
Oh, no, you did fine.
She was ecstatic.
She said you were awesome.
The people you were with were awesome.
She was awesome.
We had such a good time.
I mean, I honestly, that discussion, I love talking about it.
I could talk about that all day and night.
And she added so much to the discussion.
I was very impressed with her.
And we all walked away.
We were all talking about how great she is.
And one of her, I forget the waiter's name, too.
He was a good guy.
Well, thank you for sharing that.
Please tell her she's in my prayers.
God bless her.
And I really enjoyed meeting her.
She was a very special girl.
You should be very proud as a mom.
I am.
She is a lovely girl.
Here's what we're working on with respect to immigration: securing our border, enforcing our current laws.
He talked about criminal aliens.
That's just enforcing laws for people who came here illegally, who came and committed violent crimes.
We should enforce those laws.
But really, what we're focused on is securing our border.
Well, Trump said he was going to build a wall.
Yeah, I think conditions on the ground determine what you need in particular areas.
Some areas you might need a wall, some areas you might need double fencing.
My own view on this is whatever kind of device or barrier or policy to secure the border is necessary to secure the border, then do it.
Abdul Razak Ali Artan, the man police say deliberately rammed a car into a group of pedestrians, then got out and started slashing people with a butcher knife.
According to federal law enforcement officials, Artan was an 18-year-old Somali citizen living near the university as a legal permanent resident.
ISIS is now claiming responsibility for inspiring the attack on the Ohio State University campus.
Sometimes when I'm talking to young interns of the White House who are still immunizing themselves from the cynicism that's so chronic in this town, I remind them if you had to choose a moment in history to be born and you didn't know ahead of time who you were going to be, you choose now.
Because the world has never been less violent, healthier, better educated, more tolerant, with more opportunity for more people and more connected than it is today.
I have no idea who he's talking about.
None of what country he's talking about either.
Anyway, news roundup and information overload hour here on the Sean Hannity show.
Toll-free our telephone numbers, 800-941-Sean, if you want to be a part of the program.
As I mentioned earlier, the thing that is concerning me the most in what I see Congress and their priorities and what they're laying out.
Now, of course, they hope to adjourn for the year by the end of the week.
And we're told that the continuing resolution budget is unveiled along with a final deal on water resources and that bill.
But what concerns me is after January 20th, you got a top ally of House Speaker Paul Ryan outlining the GOP leadership strategy to, in the beginning, isolate and block President Donald Trump's populist campaign promises, which include some of his immigration reforms.
For example, what they're saying is, and this was quoted by Bill Flores, congressman from Texas, we all agree that some of the president's proposed policies are not going to line up very well with our policies.
Let's do the things we agree on.
Let's do tax reform.
Let's do Obamacare.
Let's replace Obamacare.
Let's start dealing with border security.
Let's rebuild our national security.
And then on those areas where his agenda is not exactly aligned with ours, we'll figure out the rest in the next six months.
The GOP congressional leadership, in other words, they want to pass all their priorities, but they don't want to pass Donald Trump's priorities, which means Donald Trump, I'm sure, at some point is going to figure out that there might be typical Washington maneuvering in place here.
And I hope that he is aware of what's going on.
Congressman Dave Brad is from Virginia, and Representative Congressman Brian Babbin is from Texas here to talk about this.
Some of the few congressmen that actually come on this program anymore.
Congressman Brad, how are you?
Hey, doing great, Sean.
Feeling good with the new momentum we have.
And you're right.
The election year issues, this seismic shift everyone felt was due to precisely these issues that affect the forgotten man, right?
The immigration issues, the trade issues, the cleaning the swamp.
Paul Ryan's better way agenda has some great stuff in it, right?
Tax reform.
We're all going to get to that.
But we've got the issues that won this election for us in Ohio, Michigan, Pennsylvania, et cetera, are the issues we've been fighting for.
I came in the week of Obama's unconstitutional amnesty, and Boehner said we're going to fight tooth and nail on that, and we didn't lift a finger, and then there's been executive action ever since.
And then my good friend Brian Babbin from Texas will tee it up, but he's had the great bill on the refugee cleanup, which he can explain to you.
And he's had the vetting stuff before it was cool.
And so we've had bills in the hopper.
We have five bills that have passed out of Goodlatt's Committee of Judiciary on Immigration.
And Goodlatt is a very rational chairman.
These are not hair-on-fire bills.
These are just five immigration bills that will make this country a safer place.
And we have not, our leadership has not moved these bills.
And so that's the issue.
These five bills have to go.
Well, I agree with that.
I mean, look, for example, I mean, they have funding over the government that Obama's demanding $3.9 billion for refugee resettlement.
That's a 250% increase over the current year funding.
And I'm saying, well, Congress has the power of the purse.
The last time I checked our Constitution, does that still exist?
Or did we have an amendment that I didn't know about?
Brian, you want to weigh in?
Sure, I will.
Sean, how are you?
Great to be back with you.
Great to have you back, sir.
Yeah, and good to be on with my friend Dave Brad as well.
It's the continuing resolution negotiations that are going on right now.
I've had an op-ed out.
I've talked to the conference.
I've talked to a lot of my colleagues, including Dave, and he understands this.
We cannot add and increase the budget of the ORR or the Office of Refugee Resettlement and the refugee program.
We did that last December in the omnibus.
We increased it by $100 million.
And we must, we absolutely must prevent increasing the budget because we know, as you just said, Sean, this president is trying to get an end-of-the-year gift of $2.2 billion to his refugee program.
Well, we know, absolutely, on the heels of this Ohio state attack, a Somali refugee, we have got to stop the program until we can vet these people.
And we need to stop it from these hotbeds of Islamic terrorism.
And this refuge, this whole refugee program has been just taken over by this president.
You know, this bill started in 1980, this law.
It was sponsored by Ted Kennedy, none other, and signed by President Carter.
It was funded at 200 million, and now it's approaching $2 billion.
I mean, I think one of the reasons, and I keep arguing, that the Republican Party created Donald Trump is because they don't keep their promises.
They had show votes to repeal and replace Obamacare, but they'd never used the power of the purse.
Ted Cruz became a pariah because he tried to.
And then when it comes to an issue like this, they don't want to fight before they go home for their Christmas vacation.
And then I look at their priorities.
Well, let's only do the things we agree on first.
And that, to me, is Washington speak for we're not going to do the things that you really want and that you promised, Mr. Trump, which tells me that Trump better get his negotiating hat on and go in there and say, well, if we do what you want, we're also doing what I want.
We must, we must support this president-elect's agenda.
And immigration is one of the, if not the top, plank in his platform.
And so this is why I think that my bill or any of the other bills that would stop this program, as Dave mentioned a second ago, has got to be followed through with.
Well, Dave, do you see what I'm seeing here?
You know, for example, every time you're told from Washington that you're going to get a spending cut or a tax, you're going to get the tax increase, but you're also going to get a spending cut.
You always get the tax increase up front.
Ten years later, you never end up getting that spending cut ever.
If you offer amnesty, you always get the amnesty.
You never get the wall.
That's the way Washington works.
I'm tired of that game.
I'm tired of Republicans playing that game.
Yeah, no, you got it right.
I'm on the budget committee, and I think everybody knows that Trump just won because we've had a vacuum here when it comes to fiscal responsibility.
The debt's at $20 trillion.
The unfunded liabilities, Medicare, and Social Security are insolvent in 12 years.
And we have a $100 trillion bill, and the kids won't get those programs.
And so for the last six years, instead of doing a budget, we don't do a budget.
We do an omnibus right before Christmas, loaded up with every toy imaginable that adds to the debt and then go home.
And for some reason, the American people, we had a huge outsider wave this year, right?
With Trump and Cruz and all the good guys.
The outsider wave is only what it is.
It is what it is, but the reality is we all know gerrymandering has rendered 90% of politicians' seats safe.
Let's be honest.
Look.
Yeah, and money.
And money.
Well, and the problem is, like, I know they're talking about $1 trillion in infrastructure spending.
And Democrats love it, and Republicans love it because they're thinking it's going to work the same old way it's always worked, which is, okay, I'll give you this number of dollars for the project in your district.
You give me this number of dollars for the project in my district.
It runs through the Washington bureaucracy.
You get 50 cents on the dollar.
Rather than having a guy like I had on in the last hour, Joe Max Higgins, the guy that was featured on 60 Minutes this weekend, a guy that has figured out how to transcend the bureaucracy, incentivize businesses to build in the golden triangle in Mississippi, and he's creating thousands of jobs.
If we were to duplicate that success, that paradigm, that model, and take Washington, like for example, if we're going to spend $1 trillion in infrastructure, how are we going to pay for it?
Paul Ryan didn't answer that question Sunday night.
He was asked it.
He just went right around it.
Now, there are ways to pay for things.
I would prefer infrastructure, spend as you go, and take it out of the hands, with all due respect to you guys, of your 533 other congressmen and senators that have agendas that basically, the top agenda being them being reelected.
Am I wrong?
Well, that's right.
Money's in the circle there, and it's run in the city, and everybody knows that.
And so the key is, can Trump set up some new capital pool where the money goes directly to shovel-ready jobs and bypasses the federal government network of cronies, right, where we dole out to our buddies and the state senators and the U.S. senators or whatever.
And that's the challenge going forward.
I think he's up to it.
I mean, he's been brilliant so far in the first few moves here.
It's looking good, but that's everybody, all of a sudden the Democrats found the debt clock hiding somewhere back in the closet.
And the press is on our case, and the Democrats are on our case, and it's almost comical.
We're being held up to all these standards and on ethics reform and the walling off Trump from his money after the Clinton Foundation has $2 billion and no press reports at all.
I watched Congressman Babbin this morning.
I saw this article.
Donald Trump tweeted out, the president-elect tweeted out, that he wanted to cancel the building of a brand new 747 Air Force One for future presidents because he said they were going to spend $4 billion.
And he later spoke to reporters at Trump Tower saying the project is ridiculous.
I think Boeing is doing a little bit of a number.
We want Boeing to make a lot of money, but not that much money, he said.
They issued a statement saying that the company is currently under contract for $170 million to help determine the capabilities of these complex military aircraft that serve the unique requirements of the President of the United States.
Did we really spend $4 billion on an airplane?
I mean, did we really spend that much money?
It certainly has the appearance of that, Sean.
And, you know, as far as this is the man who, when they're talking about Trump, this is the man that's not even going to take a salary.
These are the kinds of things that I believe show a great example.
He is determined to drain the swamp.
As Dave said, he has made some great appointments already for his inner circle as far as his cabinet goes.
And we must, by all means, as a body in the Congress, both House and Senate, support this man and his agenda and push it through.
Okay, so now my next question, Congressman Babbin.
Are you getting any indication from Speaker Ryan, who said on 60 Minutes that he talks to Trump almost daily, that Speaker Ryan is also going to look at Trump's priorities, not only the things, quote, that are on his agenda?
Well, you know, we have a better way agenda in the House, and Trump's got his agenda, and there's quite a bit of overlap there.
I mean, there's some really, really good stuff.
And right before the Speaker for our conference, when we were going to talk about leadership, I talked to Speaker Ryan on the phone in a private conversation.
I asked him, point blank, are we going to push?
Will you be pushing the President-elect's agenda?
And he said he would.
It really jives with our better way, and I really do agree with that.
Well, why do I think?
Why does the suspicious side of me, and maybe I'm too cynical.
I've only been on radio now 30 years.
Maybe I've seen too much.
Maybe I've become too big a skeptic.
Why do I think Donald Trump better trust and verify and make sure the drain the swamp part of the agenda, the building the wall part of the agenda, the deportation part of the agenda?
Why do I think that has to be done up front?
Well, I agree with you 100%.
We're in the process of negotiating this continuing resolution, and the proof's going to be in the pudding.
And if we can't stop the increasing of the budgets of our refugee program and the immigration, monies being funded to build new infrastructure and housing and monies to spend on unaccompanied minors pouring across the Texas border, these are the things that Americans stood up and had a revolution at the ballot box to stop.
Well, I just hope, look, apparently Ryan's going to remain Speaker.
I just hope that Ryan is cognitive of the fact that Americans are fed up with the old way that Congress works, and this is an opportunity to reform Congress, get rid of the bureaucracy, drain the swamp, all those things that we've been talking about.
And if he's unwilling to do so, then I guess, you know, maybe a Freedom Caucus member will have to challenge him.
But if he says he's willing to follow through on it, I guess the proof, as you said, will be in the pudding.
But I hate to rush you guys off.
I wish we had more time, but we don't.
I appreciate you both being with us.
By the way, are you both members of the Freedom Caucus?
Yes.
Yep, absolutely.
Sean, yeah, and on this on the speaker vote, I did lay out my position in Newsmac.
If your folks want to Google Bratt and Newsmax.
Yeah, you're not voting for Ryan, right?
You're not voting for Ryan?
Yeah, I didn't last time, and so far he has not met my criterion for the vote yet.
And so, and it's tied to what you're talking about.
There are five bills out of the house: mandatory you verify, strong interior enforcement, refugee program, Babbin's bill, asylum reform, and an end to Central American unaccompanied lines.
I gotta run.
But you know what?
It is interesting.
The only people that will come on my show now are Freedom Caucus members.
You're the only people that like me.
It's interesting the other people won't come on anymore.
All right.
We love you, Sean.
All right, Sean.
Thank you for what you do.
All right, I appreciate it.
Well, in fairness, Kevin McCarthy said he'd come on the program when I talked to him fairly recently before the election.
When we come back, your calls, your comments, your intuitive, God-given insight, straight ahead.
My father thought it would be good for discipline reasons.
That's a pretty extreme thing to send your kid away to upstate New York.
What kind of discipline problems were you having?
Well, I was just somebody that was rebellious.
Did you resent your dad when he sent you?
No, not at all.
I understood.
Did he sit you down and say, here's why?
Well, he said, I want to shape you up.
My understanding is business school was not your first choice.
Well, I wanted to be in a business that you're very familiar with.
I wanted to make motion pictures.
I absolutely did.
I was going to apply to USC.
What was it about?
I mean, that's shocking.
Why?
Well, he just was it that literally was going to make you break from what your dad did and start a career in film?
I just liked it.
I always liked it.
I liked the glamour of movies.
Freddie is standing in the middle, though.
Right.
He died at 42 really from alcoholism.
I've never had a drink because of my brother.
Does it worry you that you might have that gene, something inside of you that if you took a drink, you wouldn't stop?
You might turn into what happened to Fred, and does it scare you?
All right, that was from the, well, I guess you'd call it a documentary.
It was called The Objectified about Donald Trump, and it was hosted by TMZ's Harvey Levin, and it was on the Fox News channel, and the ratings are in.
And it was a breakout, huge, massive hit, even beating many of the big networks.
Harvey's been a longtime friend.
He joins us now.
How are you?
I'm good, Sean.
How are you?
I got to tell you, first of all, I'm so proud of you.
The special was just riveting.
You know, I've interviewed Trump all of these times, but when you're in a campaign, you don't have the time to get into the nitty-gritty of the person.
Like I was doing a lot of town halls.
You did something that nobody else in the media did in this campaign, and you showed a side of Trump that I think a lot of people didn't know.
Yeah, I mean, look, the campaign was about issues and attacks, and there was very little room to get reflective on who somebody is.
It was all about what they said that day.
And what we set out to do was to say, let's ignore all of that.
And let's go back to, you know, from childhood on using objects in his life that mean something to him that he can kind of relate to and become a touch point.
And then kind of get to know who the guy is that maybe will help you understand why he does what he does today, who he is today.
You know, what got him here.
And that was really the point of this.
And, you know, I hope it gave that kind of insight.
I mean, I don't know if it's a good idea.
No, it definitely did.
I mean, the stuff that you were talking about that we just played about him being sent off to boarding school to shape up by his father.
I mean, that was a big part of his life.
His brother dying at 42.
I thought his answer about not wanting to beat himself.
And if somebody beats him, that's fine, but he doesn't want to beat himself shows a winning attitude.
There's so much I got out of this.
And a very.
You know what?
His guard was down.
That's what I felt.
Well, that's the thing.
Sean, and you know him really well.
And I got to tell you, I think you know him better than me, but I do know him.
Especially during the campaign, you know, Donald Trump rarely would show weakness.
And I'm not saying this is weakness.
He would rarely show vulnerability.
And I didn't know going into this thing.
You know, everybody has weak points to their character, strong points.
They're vulnerable.
And I didn't know if he was so pre-programmed to not showing any of that that I could get anything.
I mean, I knew I wanted to try and I knew where I wanted to go, but I was a little bit surprised at how much he opened up.
How well did you know him before this?
And by the way, I've watched even some of your coverage on TMZ.
By the way, your show is the funniest show on TV.
I want to talk about that in a second.
It is the modern-day reality show meets camera candidate camera moment every day, and it's hilarious.
Well, thank you.
Did you have a relationship?
Because that's what I wanted to know.
I knew him over the years, but I knew him as a reality TV star and businessman, and we would cover things from time to time.
And I would talk to him in the phone occasionally, and we had a friendly relationship.
But, yeah, I mean, that was kind of it.
Yeah.
Because, look, I mean, Hollywood's not exactly the business out there in Los Angeles known as a conservative bastion.
But I didn't feel you had any political motivation at all.
As a matter of fact, as somebody who was supporting Trump very openly, I had wished that that aired before the election.
It was, as you said, it was reflective.
He let his guard down.
He was, in a way, I felt a vulnerability.
He would not give me.
Yeah, and I mean, look, I haven't really talked about this, but we asked, I talked about it a little bit, but we asked Hillary Clinton as well to do it, and she declined.
And after we shot it, we kind of collectively said, look, we don't want to do this to influence the election.
It wasn't meant to be a partisan thing.
And we chose not to air it.
And, you know, I didn't do this to get him votes, to make him lose votes.
I did it because I really wanted to get this thing.
I wanted to kind of understand who he was.
But when we kind of looked at what we had, we thought, you know what?
This really does show a dimension, and we don't want to do this as a partisan thing.
And we shelved it.
And, you know, when he won, it became a different situation because now it's not about him winning or losing an election.
It's about understanding who the president is.
And it just made more sense.
Yeah, but I think you got a lot out of him that nobody else saw.
You know, it's funny.
His approval rating today is up nine points from Election Day.
And I think, like, we saw him meet with Mitt Romney.
Mitt Romney, who called him a fraud and a huckster.
He's meeting today with the heads of networks.
He met earlier today.
Right.
You know, with the head of CNN, Jeff Zucker, and Phil Griffith from MSNBC.
These were networks pretty much dedicated to defeating him from my perspective.
Well, that's his clear view.
And, you know, I would love to have been a fly in the wall with Zucker, especially.
Me too.
By the way, I wish the TMZ cameras were there.
Yeah, me too.
By the way, you know what I'm really thankful for in my life that because I don't go out a whole lot, I've never had a TMZ camera in my face.
Ever.
Ever.
Because you catch all these people coming out of restaurants, and Hollywood is the funniest thing I've ever seen.
It's not, it's, it's, it's, it's funny.
No, they're always nice.
That's the thing.
And the dopey actors and actresses, they just say, hey, Harvey, how are you?
Hi, TMZ.
But they're so stupid.
They get so uptight.
And like then the security guards come around and a fight breaks out.
It's hilarious.
We got to get you to Medeo in L.A. because you would be awesome to be on the show.
I'd love that.
Oh, that's where I need to go to Medeo in Los Angeles.
That's really a great place for Hannah to be.
I don't even know.
I've never heard of the place, Harvey.
Okay, I'll give you the list before you come out here.
But no, whatever the list is, that means I'm going to Ruth's Chris Steakhouse.
That's what the list will do for me.
Okay, well, if that's your place, we're there.
I would love to get you in the show.
Listen, I'd do your show anytime.
You're a friend.
Well, let me ask you, this is a personal question, and I'm not.
Look, you've got a job that's very different than my job.
You don't give opinions, and I don't want to ask you what your political views are.
Because I don't even think it's fair.
I just love the special, and you got a lot out of him that I don't think anybody else could have in a way that nobody else had.
So I guess my question to you is, how differently did you feel about him after that interview, which was very personal?
I mean, the truth is, this is more the Donald Trump I've known over the years than the guy who we've seen over the last 16 months.
That when you, look, I went back there three or four times before we actually shot it.
And I was in the building, and we were setting this thing up and everything.
And, you know, you talk to an elevator operator or somebody who works and his staff, you know, housekeepers or whatever.
And they've been there for a long time.
And they really like him as a person.
I mean, that's one of the things that really struck me.
That there, you know, a lot of times you can kind of really get to know somebody or know who they are by, you know, how they deal with the elevator guy or whatever.
And they like him.
They actually love him because I've been over to Trump Tower interviewing him a bunch.
They love their boss.
They do.
And so you got to think, okay, wait a minute.
You've got a guy who can be really polarizing on stage.
That's not the way he could possibly be with all these people in that building.
And almost, in fact, to a person, they were all just like volunteering how much they liked him and the family.
And so, look, what I've known over the years is this guy who can be funny on the phone, and he can be, you know, insightful.
Yeah, but I also love – you know something, though, Harvey?
This is the world and the environment of politics today.
He did not plan, obviously, his entire life to run for president.
Because if you're planning to run for president, you're not going to go on Howard Stern's show.
Yeah, I mean, and he wasn't given scripted, phony political answers.
Listen, he even told me, I wasn't that into politics.
And so he sort of was finding his gut and his instincts, which I think are naturally conservative, and then fine-tuning it over a lifetime of dealing with government bureaucracy.
And he realized, hey, look at all these people that are getting screwed over by government.
Look at all these jobs we could be creating if we do A, B, and C. You know, I think what you said is central to how he's going to do, because the one thing I think everybody acknowledges is he's not this political animal who calculates everything he says and does.
And I think to me, at least, that's one of the key reasons for his success.
Now the question is, how does he channel that?
Because it tends to be, you know, because it's less calculating, it's got to really be well thought out.
And I think that's the question is that, you know, when you become president, obviously you make decisions that you've never had to deal with before.
And the good part of that is he's not this calculating guy.
Now the question is, how is he going to channel it?
How is he going to, you know, absorb all of this and then turn it into policy?
And I think we just got to see.
Don't you think the early signs are, look, I even tweeted out earlier today.
I couldn't be that gracious or magnanimous and invite Mitt Romney and the heads of networks that wanted me to get crushed.
I don't know if I'd be that gracious.
I think that is probably a part of him that really, I guess, sees that the country is really divided.
There's a poll out today that shows it's more divided than it's ever been and that he wants to bring the country back together.
And I think he's reaping the benefits of reaching out to even the people that hated him the most.
I think that's true.
That said, I will tell you, I have problems with a couple of the people he's appointed.
And, you know, I'm not as, you know, I'm not going to, you know, say this is going to be fantastic.
I don't know.
I do have some problems just in terms of views.
And ultimately, I mean, the good part is, is that I think he keeps his own counsel to some extent.
But I am a little worried about a couple of the people.
It's bothersome to me.
I don't like people who I believe, you know, make overtly anti-Semitic remarks.
I don't like, you know, the idea of being a gay man.
I don't like the idea that there is some intolerance.
But I can tell you on both of those issues, you know, look at the people that have come to Steve Bannon's defense, even guys like Alan Dershowitz and Joel Pollock, very prominent Jewish Americans.
This headline bothers me, Sean.
I got to tell you.
Yeah, but I don't know what quote you're referring to, but I have not seen a direct quote from him.
I've heard there's a speech that he gave that he talked at length about his support of Judeo-Christian values.
And I think Donald Trump is probably like me and most conservatives in the country where I'm fairly libertarian.
Why do I care what other people do?
That's none of my business.
Well, and that's what I'm saying, that when I say he keeps his own counsel, I'm just being really honest with you.
There are a couple that bother me, but I do think, it's funny because I do see him more as a libertarian.
And he's always struck me as the kind of guy where it's like, if you're not hurting somebody else, you know, go live your life.
And that's kind of the way I've always thought of him.
I think that's accurate.
And by the way, I think most Americans are that way.
Even strong conservatives like me.
You know what?
We're all Americans here.
We need jobs.
We need to protect the homeland.
And we need to keep the world safe.
That's what we got to do.
To me, it's really that simple.
Yeah.
I mean, look, I do think that's been his compass.
And, you know, and look, we'll see.
You know, I think every here's the thing, and I think you're right, where all of a sudden you see his poll numbers go up.
I do think that people are, you know, they're looking at, you know, a guy who at least seems to not be poisoned by politics because that's been the big complaint about Washington is that people are just so poisoned by it, they lose their humanity, they lose, you know, emotion, and it all becomes, you know, am I going to gain votes or lose votes?
And I think a lot of people are saying that's not him and that's a good thing.
But now the issue is what does he do?
And I think time's going to tell that.
Listen, I want to work out.
I want him to hold him to his promises.
I want him to take on radical Islam.
I think we've got to vet refugees from countries, speaking of gays and lesbians, where they kill them and that women are treated horribly and told how to dress and told they can't drive or told if they can go to school or work, where Christians and Jews are persecuted.
So I think we've got to, that's why I support extreme vetting.
I think if he builds the wall, if he follows through on his economic growth plan, free market health care savings accounts, energy independence, education back to the states, I think the country's going to be infinitely better off because I believe those ideas work.
I think Kennedy and Reagan both proved it.
Yeah, I mean, look, again, you know the way this happens.
And it's like, you know, it's funny because my training is in law.
And I look at, you know, some Supreme Court justices where presidents were so sure that they were going to do one thing and they go a completely different way.
Souter and Roberts.
I've always kind of been tempered by that.
I mean, I look at Earl Warren and David Souter.
And you just never know until they assume the office.
Congratulations.
The ratings were massive, and that was great to have you on Fox News.
And we hope you'll do more.
I really appreciate it.
And Sean, thank you so much for all your support in this.
Oh, you bet.
I thought it was spectacular.
Loved it.
Really appreciate it.
All right, my friend.
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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