Sean Hannity Show - The Battle Continues - 3.14

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March 15, 2017 - Sean Hannity Show

01:40:38

The Battle Continues - 3.14

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	You want to be a part of the program, topic one, two, and three today.
	We're going to spend a lot on the deep state and we're going to spend a lot of time on finding common ground on this health care bill.
	Apparently, I'm told earlier today that the Freedom Caucus is very happy and Rand Paul is very happy with the negotiations they've had with the president, but they are not happy with the few discussions they've had with leadership.
	We're going to break format today and instead of our opening monologue, we have room and are always welcoming the Vice President of the United States.
	And that is Mike Pence, who joins us now, hopefully to shed some light on this and other issues.
	How are you, sir?
	I'm great, Sean.
	Great to be back on.
	Thank you.
	Well, it's an honor to have you, as always.
	I asked you the last time you were on.
	In the lead up to the rollout of the bill, a lot of people, including these conservative groups, Club for Growth, Heritage Action, Americans for Prosperity, Cato, FreedomWorks, et cetera, senators like Rand Paul, Mike Lee, Tom Cotton, Marco Rubio, Mike Lee.
	I mean, all these guys were against it.
	The Freedom Caucus was very critical, and they rolled it out anyway.
	And I guess maybe I don't understand the sausage-making process, but it seems like it would have made it a lot easier on the president had they at least negotiated with these groups ahead of time because now the president apparently has had to take this upon himself to do all the negotiation.
	And I'm wondering if it could have been done better and differently instead of this intramural fight we keep seeing.
	Well, I actually think there's something very refreshing about it.
	Remember, Obamacare back in 2010 was literally written in the back rooms.
	And with all due respect, and I just came from Capitol Hill and I was with Senator Cotton and Senator Paul and others who I greatly respect, and they're great, great conservative leaders.
	I think it's very healthy to have all of this happening in front of the American people.
	You know, the president is a great negotiator.
	He is committed to driving forward on his promise to repeal and replace Obamacare.
	And the framework of this first step, which is what this first bill is, followed by what Secretary Price will do at HHS and followed by a second bill that will end finally and forever the last vestige of Obamacare, I think is it's a fight worth having.
	It's a promise worth keeping.
	And I think the American people welcome all of that happening in broad daylight and in the improvements in the bill that have already taken place.
	And I think we'll continue to as a result of that process, Sean.
	Well, I can tell you that I spoke earlier today with Freedom Caucus members, a number of them, and they were ⁇ I'll quote Mark Meadows.
	He gives the president an A ⁇ in terms of a willingness to talk, negotiate, get to a consensus and make a deal.
	But he feels that the House leadership is offering only a binary choice, which is our bill or nothing.
	And so there seems to be at least there are odds there, but I would imagine that if the president is telling the leadership that you got to include these guys and include some of the changes that they're offering to make it a better bill, that that would be in everybody's best interest, right?
	You know, nobody respects Congressman Jim Jordan and Mark Meadows more than I do, and more than the president does.
	They love you too.
	But they're unhappy with the leadership in the House.
	I can tell you that.
	Yeah, but I'll tell you what, because of conservatives, the bill actually changed before it was unveiled.
	I mean, there were actually modifications because of what House conservatives weighed in on.
	And then since then, I would anticipate as this bill goes through the committees this week, goes to the floor next week, that you're going to see it continue to improve, continue to evolve.
	But at the end of the day, the CBO report, which I think gets the whole enrollment issue wrong, just like they got it wrong under Obamacare.
	But the CBO report says even just with this first step, within two years you're going to see premiums start to decline, I think is a very encouraging piece of news for all of us.
	The deficit savings, the elimination of $500 billion in taxes, the expansion of health savings accounts, giving states flexibility to reform Medicaid so it's better for the most vulnerable.
	These are all things that conservatives have been championed for a long time.
	And I think they're going to continue to drive and to make the kind of changes in this bill that will be a win for the American people.
	You know, I think it is important because I agree with you.
	I have a great respect for these guys in the Freedom Caucus.
	And I think they're kind of more representative of fighting for what was promised in terms of the bill.
	But it is a little bit shocking that the president kind of was put in the position that he's got to come in and clean all this up because it seemed to be released a little premature to me.
	But on the negotiating side of it, they're ecstatic with the president listening, taking time, talking it over, getting to the bottom of it.
	And I know he met, because I met some of the people last night when I was in D.C., that he met with business owners, talking to real people, what the real-life consequences, specifically the challenges they're experiencing when it comes to Obamacare.
	And we all agree it needs to be repealed.
	One of the concerns is this, that it's not full repeal.
	Is that because of the reconciliation process?
	And another big concern is, are we creating a new entitlement?
	Well, I think on the first count, there's no question that we are limited in a budget bill like this.
	You use the big word for it, reconciliation.
	It only requires 51 votes in the Senate.
	But in this bill, we can do several things that I think are historic.
	Number one is we can repeal all of the taxes and penalties of Obamacare.
	I mean, $500 billion in taxes on the American people has put an enormous weight on our economy.
	And that, in addition to that, by being able to send Medicaid to the states and allow states to innovate and reform, this afternoon I'm going to swear in the new head of Medicaid, the Center for Medicaid Medicare Services, Seema Verma, who is going to partner with all the states around the country to allow states to redesign Medicaid so it works better for people, you know, for underprivileged families in states across this country.
	So being able to do those things in the first step, there's some limitations on what more we could do.
	But I think what, you know, you know the president.
	I mean, he's someone who wants to get it done.
	He wants to get it done now.
	I appreciate the sentiment of House Conservatives.
	We're going to continue to look for ways to drive this bill.
	But at the end of the day, the President's vision is very simple.
	We want Americans to have the choice to be able to buy health insurance across state lines at lower cost, the health insurance they want, not the government mandates.
	And we want states to be able to reform Medicaid in the way that will work best for their most vulnerable.
	So you don't agree with Paul Ryan that this is a binary choice.
	He said, quote, if we don't pass my bill, the system is going to collapse.
	But does his bill necessarily represent the one that he released or the one that will be negotiated?
	Now, I know it goes before the budget committee on Thursday.
	That's the next hurdle in this bill.
	Would you support the idea of not having amendments either in committee or on the House floor?
	I would assume you want the amendment process to work its way through.
	Is that true?
	Absolutely.
	And I think it is working its way through.
	And in fairness to the Speaker, one of the reasons why the CBO report was delayed a little bit was because they made changes.
	And I give conservatives a lot of credit for this.
	The conservatives in the House pushed for some changes that were made even before the bill was initially dropped that were very good improvements in the bill.
	I would fully expect, you know, it's up to the members of the Congress to decide this.
	I fully expect you're going to continue to see amendments, continue to see improvements.
	And then when it moves to the Senate, we'll continue to look for ways that we can improve this.
	But remember, for your millions of listeners all over the country, this is step one, where we repeal the taxes.
	We essentially take the teeth out of Obamacare's mandate.
	We send Medicaid to the states.
	We expand health savings accounts.
	We do a number of things that are truly historic.
	CBO even says it's going to result in lower health insurance premiums.
	Step two is at the same time, Dr. Price is reforming the regulations so that states can begin to innovate and can actually begin to create a national marketplace.
	Step three is when we wipe away the last vestiges of Obamacare, do medical malpractice reform, and all the kind of things that we know are going to result in a better, more vibrant health care economy for decades to come.
	The CBO report, this is the same CBO that praised Obamacare and was off by $115 billion, You know, panning the GOP health care, saying that there'll be, you know, 14 million more uninsured, et cetera, et cetera.
	And I'm looking at the writing of this, and I've said, when have they ever been right?
	They're always way off base and really wrong.
	Yeah, but the CBO's estimate on enrollment under Obamacare was about $8 million off for last year.
	But here's the fundamental: it's almost like it's apples and oranges here.
	I mean, Obamacare mandates that every American buy health insurance or pay a tax penalty if they don't.
	Under President Trump's vision, we let Americans choose.
	We put into effect the kind of reforms that will lower the cost of health insurance, and we give them assistance with regard to credits on their taxes to assist them in purchasing that.
	But it's all the American people have the freedom to choose to have health insurance or not have health insurance.
	I think that's the CBO has such a hard time making an estimate here because ultimately it comes down to the choice of tens of millions of Americans, and frankly, that's where it should be, Sean.
	At the end of the day, if this bill passes, and after speaking with you and those Freedom Caucus members and Rand Paul and Tom Cotton and others, that every time they talk to the president, they're confident they're going to get to a deal.
	And if it happens, I would argue it's because of your negotiating skills and the president's negotiating skills and your willingness to listen to the conservative improvements of the bill.
	And I've got to applaud you both for that.
	Let me ask you one question about this deep state, these leaks, about, for example, the intelligence leaks that we've been seeing so much of.
	Sarah Carter and John Solomon, you know John Solomon, 20-year veteran of the AP, they wrote a blockbuster column last week and they've been doing a lot of follow-up, and she'll be on the program later today.
	And basically, what they have said is there was a Pfizer warrant in October before the election, but it wasn't on Trump, Donald Trump, or his campaign.
	As an ancillary side note to it, it was basically about potential Russian interference in the election.
	Whenever the Trump campaign came up, they report there was zero evidence of any collusion and it was all dismissed.
	But yet you have network after network after network continuing to amplify what they're saying has been debunked.
	And I wanted to get your thoughts on it.
	Well, President and I are very confident that the congressional committees that are looking at all of these issues will get to the facts and they'll make that information available to the American people in a bipartisan forum.
	But look, you had the former director of the National Intelligence, James Clapper, say a couple of weeks ago that when he prepared a report on all these allegations about Russian collusion in the course of the campaign, he used the phrase there's no evidence to support that.
	And look, but we'll let the committees do their work.
	But on the larger issue of your point, this business of people within the government leaking classified information, leaking national security information, compromises the security of this country.
	And President Trump has made it very clear that that will not be tolerated and that we expect individuals who break the law by leaking classified and sensitive information to be held to the strictest account.
	Mr. Vice President, as you well know, it's a felony what they've committed.
	Even in the case of General Flynn, putting aside any issue of any advising he was given to any other country.
	The fact that they did what they did to him and then leaked that information is a violation, I believe, of the Espionage Act and Act and every other attorney.
	Can you give us a timeline when you think you can get the Freedom Caucus, get the leadership, get the Senate, get this health care bill done?
	Because obviously there's a lot of other heavy lifting to do, not the least of which is to get the economy going, a budget.
	Well, I think, Sean, the objective is to continue to drive forward.
	And you're very kind about always toward me, but I'll tell you what, the President is pulling all the voices together on this.
	We'll have senators back in the building later today.
	We continue to interact regularly with members of the Congress.
	The President is on the phone.
	I'm on the phone.
	And I would fully expect that we'll continue to move this bill forward in the House.
	The goal would be to pass the bill by the end of next week and hopefully to have gone through the process and passed it out of the Senate before Congress adjourns for the Easter recess.
	To your point, we have a Supreme Court justice who has hearings coming up a week from today.
	The President also is determined to do an infrastructure bill to focus on rebuilding the military.
	We're going to be building the wall.
	We're focusing on Homeland Security.
	And, of course, we've got a tax cut coming this spring.
	And so I think the President is absolutely determined to take this first step to repeal and replace Obamacare, even while Secretary Price is going through the process of putting in the kind of policies that will free up a national marketplace.
	And then we'll be back this spring to finish off Obamacare once it falls.
	This is a historic step back in the direction of freedom, allowing the American people to choose the health insurance that they want, health insurance that will be more affordable because we've introduced free market forces to lower the cost, allowing states to have more flexibility to redesign Medicaid in ways that will benefit them.
	And I'm going to work toward that vision.
	There's a really great doctor in Wichita that I keep putting on radio and TV, and his name is Dr. Umber.
	It's $50 a month for unlimited care for an adult.
	It's $10 a month unlimited care for kids.
	He negotiates 90% off of x-rays, 90% off of pharmaceuticals that he dispenses directly.
	And then people can get catastrophic plans that are very inexpensive in case, God forbid, they got cancer or have a heart attack or have a bad accident.
	There are so many new paradigms.
	And the President said this yesterday, and I was really, you know, that to me is the answer.
	The free market is going to be the answer.
	And guys like Dr. Umbrey, he's actually taught like a thousand other practices how to duplicate his model.
	President Donald Trump believes in the free market.
	He believes in the capacity of the American people to face any challenge if they're given the choice and the flexibility to be able to come up with real solutions.
	And the President's whole vision here is give Americans more choices, a national marketplace that lowers the cost, makes sure that people among the most vulnerable population have the support in Medicaid and that states can innovate Medicaid.
	You do those two things, and we're going to lay a foundation for not only a better health care future for the American people, but also really just a brighter future for American families and businesses.
	If you get these guys on board, I will call it a modern-day miracle, and certainly will show the ability of the President to negotiate because these guys have been pretty pissed off the last number of days.
	But, Mr. Vice President, it's always an honor to have you.
	Thank you for being with us, sir.
	Thank you, Sean.
	Appreciate it.
	It's a must-win moment.
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	We'll continue.
	Sean Hannity.
	All right, we're going to stay on this health care issue.
	We went along with the vice president when we get back.
	I'll give you some of my thoughts, some of the news of the day, some of the negotiations and background information I'm getting, not the least of which is Donald Trump, the president, expected to negotiate with House Speaker Paul Ryan later today.
	We'll tell you about that straight ahead.
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	All right, Steve Scales is the House Majority Whip.
	He'll join us.
	He thinks he's got the votes in the House.
	I'm not so sure based on conversations I had earlier today, so we'll do what we did last week.
	We'll put on one side, we'll reverse it.
	Last time we put on Ram Paul, and then we put on Paul Ryan.
	And it was like living in the Twilight Zone hearing two completely different interpretations of the same bill.
	It's insane.
	And then we'll do the same thing today, except we'll reverse it.
	We'll put Steve Scalese, who supports the bill, on, and then we'll put the House Freedom Caucus members, Jim Jordan and Mark Meadows, on, and we'll get their take on all of it and so much more.
	All right, so I want to just stay focused here for just a second.
	The Hill is now reporting that President Trump will meet personally with Speaker Ryan today and pitch the changes to him what the conservatives want on the bill, Congressional Conservatives.
	Everything here to me is just ass backwards.
	It really, especially after talking to the vice president, the vice president's meeting with the Freedom Caucus.
	He's meeting with senators.
	He's meeting with conservatives because when you look at the list that opposes this bill, it is daunting.
	These are really smart groups.
	The Cato Institute, more libertarian, but remember, they're the ones that wrote the book, the Musgrave and Goodman book, Patient Power.
	And that originally advanced the whole idea of healthcare savings accounts.
	It was innovative in its time, and the time is now, the opportunity has come to pass it.
	They're against this bill.
	Heritage Action, Jim DeMintz Group, Heritage Foundation, they're against this bill.
	Club for Growth, Steve Forbes' group, they are against this bill.
	Freedom Works, they're against this bill.
	Americans for Prosperity are against this bill.
	The most conservative, libertarian members of the Senate.
	You lose two senators, you probably lose the Senate.
	And we all understand it.
	These people are not stupid.
	They understand the challenges of reconciliation.
	And even the 2015 bill really didn't fully, completely repeal Obamacare because of the way that they passed it.
	There's a way to do this, get ostensibly full repeal that it could never be brought back under any circumstances.
	That's what you're looking for, and using the budgetary process known as reconciliation.
	And you do that, you only need 51 votes in the Senate rather than the 60 votes to get a cloture vote and get the bill on the Senate floor.
	Although you could just take the Harry Reid solution, which is just make it a simple majority on anything.
	I guess we can do that.
	We'll end up doing that, I'm sure, on Neil Gorsuch.
	Anyway, so now the White House said that they're working with House leadership on changes to the Obamacare bill.
	And Sean Spicer said the White House is in talks with the House leadership about the content, noting that the president is going to speak with Paul Ryan and Kevin McCarthy to talk about the ideas that the Freedom Caucus needs to get on board to get the bill done.
	Now, I'm all in favor of the president doing this.
	I mean, but he really didn't have any choice.
	The president also said and confirmed yesterday, and we played this yesterday, that he's negotiating with everybody.
	I heard, I spoke with earlier today, and he'll be on the program today, Mark Meadows.
	He said it was an A-plus-plus negotiation with the president and that the president agrees with the changes that the Freedom Caucus needs to get this bill passed.
	Now, if they get to that point, this whole thing can get done.
	But the reality is that these criticisms about new entitlements, about some of the Obamacare taxes still in the bill with a different name, that the fact that I don't really give a flying rip what the CBO says because the CBO was off $115 billion and off by like 8 million people this year alone that would be on the Obamacare plan, which was doomed to fail because that number was never going to happen.
	And they thought they could tax and penalize everybody into doing it.
	So the president is saying that they're negotiating with everybody on the replacement.
	Now, before I get to Joe Bastardi real quick here, I want to say one thing.
	Had they not gotten the cart before the horse, had they gotten all of these groups, had they gotten the Freedom Caucus, the study group, these five senators, including Tom Cotton and Mark Orubio, along with Rand Lee and Cruz together before they rolled out the bill, maybe they would have saved a lot of work and a lot of headaches and a lot.
	You know, it looks like after eight years of saying repeal, repeal, replace, replace, replace, it looks pretty stupid that they're fighting themselves over what the replacement is.
	Doesn't mean that they all have to agree.
	It's just that their better strategy would have been to negotiate all of this behind closed doors.
	And now basically this whole thing has now been dumped on the president's lap.
	And now he's got to go in and take all these fractured sides and intramural squabbling, and he's got to resolve it.
	And I just think that Congress, you know, if this is going to be the way they do every bill, and that means every budgetary bill, and the speaker told me they've got, what, two budgets this year, and they're going to do tax reform this year, and they're going to lower the corporate tax rate and go from seven brackets to three and all the other plans the president has laid out.
	I mean, this is going to be never-ending.
	And starting next Monday, Neil Gorsuch's hearings begin and that whole big Supreme Court fight is going to take place.
	It's beyond frustrating after eight years.
	This is what we get, and this is now we all have to be at each other's throats.
	Never underestimate the Republican Party's stupidity when it comes to strategy and tactics and appearances before the American people.
	This is the big moment they've been asking for.
	This is their signature bill for eight years, and they look like the gang that can't shoot straight.
	Now, I think in the end, they're going to get it straightened out.
	And if it happens, it's probably going to be because of President Trump and Vice President Pence in spite of a really bad rollout plan.
	Just unbelievable to me.
	Joe Bastardi is the official meteorologist of the Sean Hannity Show, and he's with Weatherbell.com.
	And, well, I didn't get the 18 inches you promised me yesterday.
	I got maybe eight.
	At 6 to 12 on the island yesterday, I downgraded it if you were listening when we were talking, remember?
	I'd just like to give you a hard time because you did downgrade and you did say it was moving west.
	What was the biggest snowdrop?
	Two feet or so?
	Yeah, well, so far, I mean, it's not over yet.
	But now, Sean is exactly right.
	When I first started emailing him on this a week ago, I thought it was a 12 to 18-inch storm there.
	And I said, we'll pull it, you know, I'll adjust as we get closer.
	So, you know, we had a lot of people warned that there was going to be a big storm.
	And this is a major, major storm for mid-March in the northeast.
	But as usual, what happens is, and one of the things that's going on here is this redefinition of a blizzard.
	A blizzard now is not the same thing as when we were kids, Sean.
	You had to have temperatures down the teens and low 20s with a blizzard and wind chills down near and below zero.
	Now, they're using, this would have never happened under the old definition because not only is there the change of sleet and rain, parts of the area that have had the blizzard or had a blizzard warning are up to 45 degrees now on the eastern end of the island, but you would have never issued the blizzard warning except back where the blizzard is actually occurring, where it is very, very cold.
	And what happened again and what we've watched so much, and this is why I am against all these models being anything beyond tools.
	A lot of folks rode the U.S. generated models, which kept the storm far enough offshore to just dump in New York City, just jumped on that model.
	It did a great job with that blizzard last year that came up the eastern seaboard.
	U.S. models did a great job.
	But what happens is, if you're sitting there picking and choosing models, rather than going back and looking at past tracks and past analogs, this is how you could get burned.
	Now, I know that when I see storms cut inside of Cape Hatteras that are coming up out of the south, there's trouble around New York City and Long Island.
	There's going to be at least a fight with a changeover.
	And that's what you saw go on today from New York a little bit northwest.
	Once you get back into North Jersey, I mean, there's 17, 18 inches across Orange County already.
	And Worcester is getting blasted.
	But Boston, Providence, Philadelphia, New York City, the island, all these places have been spared the blizzard, so to speak.
	Yeah, so it went more westward, like you predicted yesterday, and we did pretty well.
	You know what drives me crazy?
	So I got up early this morning, as I always do, and I put on the local TV stations, and I'm watching local TV.
	As you can see, the snow is really not snowing that bad.
	We advise you to absolutely stay inside and don't move.
	And if you come outside, make sure you come out naked.
	And if you're driving, drive 100 miles an hour.
	They act as though we are so stupid.
	It drives me insane.
	And the reporting is pathetic.
	The other thing, too, is, again, the bigger picture, I wonder if this blizzard criteria being softened the way it was.
	Because we would have had a lot more blizzards when we were younger.
	It doesn't matter how much snow falls.
	The temperature, the visibility, and the wind have to be.
	And so if you get a six-inch storm and it's a blizzard, right?
	Back in the old days.
	But remember, around New York City, to have temperatures at actual blizzard levels like we had in 96 or 67, 78, they're relatively rare.
	I'm wondering if it has anything to do with you get a chance to issue more blizzard warnings.
	I would hate to think that's the truth.
	If that's the case, then what do all these weather service offices have to do to maintain a perspective so I don't hear that there are more blizzards today than there were 30, 40, 50 years ago because of global warming, which is people say that.
	Oh, it's worse because of more snow.
	Isn't there more ice in the Arctic now than there's ever been in its history that you know of?
	In Antarctica?
	Let me tell you something.
	Antarctica is below normal.
	The Arctic's below normal.
	Listen, I'm sort of like my friend Jim Jordan.
	I'm friends with Jim Jordan in that I'm just going to, you know, how he's standing out and saying, no, no, no, I don't want it.
	This is the way it's supposed to be with the Obamacare, right?
	I'm telling guys on my side of the issue, you guys, you got to quit.
	You got to understand the globe is warmer now than it was, and the Arctic sea ice is lower.
	But what you should be doing is explaining to the public the true regions, which are cyclical in nature and not all the other stuff going on.
	And I see it just as bad on my side, just like you see this stuff going on within the entire political.
	All right, so I got to run.
	So give me the bottom line.
	When does it end?
	Well, there's going to be backlashing tonight into tomorrow.
	And of course, here's the problem.
	You ever try to shovel six, eight inches of snow and sleet together when it's frozen up?
	So it's a.
	You got to do it now when it's falling, or else if you try and do it tomorrow, good luck.
	Yeah, well, if you try to do it, the cold air is coming rushing back into New York City.
	This was a for mid-March is a very cold storm.
	But what happens is it continues moving northeast across southeastern New England.
	The center's coming right up I-95, so Boston and Providence is basically raining rest of the way in with a strong northwest wind coming in.
	But if you start having to travel 40, 50 miles northwest of the big cities with the backlash that's going on, the wind, the blowing and drifting, there's where your true blizzard is.
	And I don't have to.
	I got more trouble with snow as a kid than you could ever imagine.
	Taking snowballs on the bus and throwing them at cars, that got me in trouble.
	Skitching got me in trouble.
	No, I can imagine.
	Sneaking out of the house and having snowball fights got me in trouble.
	Snow was nothing but trouble for me in my life.
	It just, I got more beatings for snow-related issues than anybody in the history of snowstorms.
	So my favorite was.
	Well, not really.
	I still do the same thing.
	I just throw them out of my car as I drive.
	All right.
	Thank you, Joe Bistardi.
	Some liberal snowflake is going to say, Hennett, he says he takes snow in his car and throws it at other cars.
	Unbelievable.
	By the way, thank God, President Trump told the State Department to cut more than 50% of U.S. funding to the United Nations programs.
	Thank God.
	Why do we have to foot the bill for them?
	I'm so sick of it.
	Andrew Napolitano put forward an idea.
	We have Sarah Carter later on the deep state purging, which I didn't cause, and also this whole issue: there is no evidence on this Russian collusion, and she's now has it backed up three different ways.
	He said that some of the intelligence sources have informed Fox News that the president, President Obama, went outside the chain of command.
	He didn't use the NSA or the CIA or the FBI or the Justice Department that, in fact, this British intelligence that dropped the dossier could, in fact, be responsible for some of the surveillance.
	That's different than what Sarah Carter and John Solomon are reporting.
	I don't know.
	You know, here's something: as we talk about healthcare, you know that the U.S. death rate jumped significantly after Obamacare's implementation.
	Not only the cost, but the implementation literally, the death rate went up.
	63% of Americans can't afford even Obamacare's deductible.
	I mean, all of this is unbelievable to me.
	It is just the classic screw-up of government in every way imaginable.
	All right, 800-941, Sean, if you want to be a part of this extravaganza.
	Sean Hannity.
	The thing that this thing does is it takes power out of Washington, takes power out of the bureaucracy, and puts it back to doctors and patients where it belongs.
	The promise was very clear.
	We're going to repeal Obamacare.
	President Trump ran on, we're going to repeal Obamacare.
	And we all voted on a full repeal of Obamacare.
	And all Republicans voted yes in the House and the Senate a year ago.
	And so now the voters are just learning what's going on.
	And it turns out we're not going to repeal Obamacare.
	I think we're moving a little bit too quickly on health care reform.
	This is a big issue.
	We're going to live with health care reform that we passed forever.
	This plan says we're going to repeal Obamacare, but we're going to keep the Obamacare taxes in place.
	It says we're going to repeal Obamacare, but we're going to take the Medicaid expansion and extend it.
	And it also says we're going to repeal Obamacare, but we're going to keep in place this mandate in a different form.
	Lower costs, more competition, more choice.
	And most importantly, get Washington out of the business of being a nanny state, of micromanaging and running health care into the ground.
	Get it back to patients, get it back to doctors, get it back to states.
	That's what this does.
	This is monumental, exciting conservative reform.
	I've been working on this for 20 years.
	This is exciting.
	This is what we've been dreaming about doing, and we know it's going to make a positive difference in people's lives in this country.
	I think amidst the horse excrement, we can find a pony around here somewhere.
	This is the Obamacare replacement plan that everyone has been asking for.
	It's also a culmination of years of dedicated work and careful thought by Republicans to find a replacement that will best undo the damage that's been caused by Obamacare while ensuring that all Americans have peace of mind during this stable transition period.
	These are the principles for which conservatives have been fighting for for years.
	Our job is to do what we told the voters we're going to do.
	In my judgment, looking at the document, reading the document, this does not do what we told the voters we were going to do and what they elected us to do, what they sent us here to do, for goodness sake.
	We had an election in 2010, 2014, 2016, where this was a central issue.
	And every one of those times, we said we were going to repeal it.
	You said you have no doubt that you will get the 218 votes necessary to pass this bill.
	What gives you that certainty?
	What are you seeing on the ground?
	I have no doubt we'll pass this because we're going to keep our promises.
	Every House Republican, I think every Republican in Congress made a promise to the American people.
	And the promise we made to the American people is we're going to repeal and replace Obamacare.
	Because we made that promise, I am confident we're going to make good on that promise.
	There is not 218 votes today.
	We had a meeting last night, and I can tell you, I don't know that there's 218 votes of consensus around any bill today.
	The House plan is Obamacare-like, keeps subsidies, keeps taxes, actually keeps an individual mandate, and bails out the insurance companies.
	You know, I like Rand, but I think he's looking for a publicity stunt here.
	What's happening is the committees of jurisdiction are drafting legislation and getting feedback from their members.
	That's exactly how legislation is supposed to be written.
	The things he described are just not accurate.
	Donald Trump, I obviously stand by that statement.
	His comments are not anywhere in keeping with our party's principles and values.
	There are basically two things that I want to make really clear as for myself as your speaker.
	I am not going to defend Donald Trump.
	Not now, not in the future.
	As you probably heard, I just invited him from my first congressional district GOP event this weekend, a thing I do every year.
	And I'm not going to be campaigning with him over the next 30 days.
	Look, you guys know I have real concerns with our nominee.
	I hope you appreciate that I'm doing what I think is best for you or the members, not what's best for me.
	And so I want to do what's best for our members, and I think that this is the right thing to do.
	All right, that, of course, were the comments that were revealed by Breitbart late last night, which has kind of taken Washington, D.C. by storm.
	And obviously, before that, the intramural battle over the health care bill continues.
	And I still don't see the numbers that get to where they need to be for a bill that's going to be supported.
	And joining us now is Steve Scalise.
	And he is the House Majority Whip, and he represents Louisiana's first congressional district.
	Congressman, welcome back to the program.
	How are you?
	Sean, good to be back with you.
	I have not talked to one Freedom Caucus member yet that's going to support this bill.
	They say they have enough members to stop it, and it might be stopped in committee.
	Why are you so optimistic it's going to pass?
	Because I'm talking to all the members in our conference.
	Obviously, I'm talking to Freedom Caucus members have been extensively for weeks now on some of the things that they're interested in seeing changed in this bill that we're working with them on, as well as other groups.
	You know, we've got the Tuesday group and we've got the Republican Study Committee, which I used to chair as well.
	And if you look at the areas that members want to see changes from all three of those different caucuses in our conference, we're not that far apart.
	I mean, if you look at what we had last week, we had a committee meeting, two committee meetings, frankly, with members of all of those conferences.
	So we had Freedom Caucus members, RSC members, and Tuesday group members on energy and commerce and ways and means.
	Every Republican voted to get our bill out of committee and move it forward.
	Every Democrat, by the way, voted against it.
	So it's actually good to be in the middle of that fighting committee for 27 and a half hours where we were fighting liberals on whether or not we should keep Obamacare, whether people should make their choices for themselves in health care or not, and which is the right approach.
	And all the Republicans chose to go this route.
	The Democrats wanted to keep Obamacare.
	So when you look at where we are.
	Well, everybody agrees on repeal and that Obamacare has to go.
	The difference is the replacement.
	And there's a lot of talk that it may not get out of committee on Thursday of this week.
	Is there any truth to that?
	No, I feel good about where it is in the budget committee.
	Each step of the way, we're talking to members about differences.
	But let's use a football analogy.
	You know, if you're Obamacare, we were pinned up on the one-yard line, and we had 99 yards to go when we got the House, Senate, and the White House, and we said we're going to repeal and replace Obamacare.
	If you look at this bill where we are right now, everybody could write their own bill.
	You could write a health care bill that you might like better.
	I could surely write a bill that I would like better, but you've got to get 218 votes.
	We're probably 80 yards down the field in full agreement.
	And now we're in the red zone, and there's those final items that we're working through.
	But if you look at what's in the bill that every Republican agrees on, look, we're going to defund Planned Parenthood in this bill.
	You don't hear anybody arguing against that.
	We're going to zero out the individual mandate, the employer mandate.
	Those are two major victories.
	Everybody's in agreement.
	We're actually giving Medicaid back to the states.
	We're actually letting governors and states run the Medicaid program.
	Conservatives have been pleading for that kind of reform for over 50 years.
	Listen, those are all good things, but I can tell you that I have not talked to a single Freedom Caucus member that is going to support this bill yet.
	There are a lot of members.
	I think there are actually that are.
	But look, I'm talking to others that aren't there yet but are close.
	Can you tell me the names?
	I'm not going to share that right now because we're having a lot of individual conversations, and it's all in good faith.
	And by the way, President Trump is right in the middle of this negotiation.
	He talked about it again yesterday.
	Listen, I liked what he said yesterday.
	The thing that is frustrating to me, and maybe I'm just naive congressman, and maybe the fact that the way I do business isn't the way Washington works, but we knew all this opposition existed before you rolled out the bill.
	Why wasn't it straightened out behind the scenes?
	And why wasn't a bill, a consensus bill after eight years built before you rolled it out, and now you're having this intramural party infighting on TV every night.
	Well, look, we did this two years ago.
	We brought a bill to Barack Obama's desk to cut Obamacare.
	Go back and look.
	There were some of the same people saying they would never vote for that bill.
	There aren't going to be the votes to pass that bill.
	And, of course, we passed that bill, and it got to Barack Obama's desk.
	If it doesn't pass, if you can't get a consensus, it is going to be horrible for the Republicans.
	Oh, I agree.
	I think failure is not an option.
	That's why you're seeing a lot of good faith negotiation.
	And ultimately, we're very close on the final details.
	But look, I mean, everybody's got their own way that they would do it, but nobody's got the luxury of just having their own bill.
	I mean, Rand Paul, you've heard from him.
	I don't know if he has two co-sponsors on his bill.
	You need 51 in the Senate.
	In the House, we need 218.
	And we're talking to all of those members about the things that will get them there, and we're not far from getting a final deal.
	What are going to be the changes?
	Because the biggest arguments I hear are there's still mandates, and it would be to the insurance company, not to the government, that there is a new government entitlement program.
	This is what they all tell me, that it doesn't fully repeal Obamacare because of the reconciliation process.
	They wanted to go to the 2015 bill and then offer the replacement, and that some of the taxes remain under a different name.
	Are any of those things true?
	Because I had Paul Ryan on last week, right after I had Rand Paul on last week, and they both completely gave very different versions of what's in the bill.
	And if I'm confused and I follow this in great detail every day, you know, somebody's got to be right and somebody's got to be wrong, and I want to get to the bottom of it.
	A lot of the criticisms that I had heard were actually the CBO score confirmed.
	People were saying, oh, you know, what about the taxes?
	CBO just confirmed we're cutting over $800 billion in taxes.
	So you're talking about American workers all across the country that are about to get an $880 billion tax cut in our repeal bill.
	That's a really big deal to families who are struggling.
	If you talk to people about lowering costs, CBO said once this is implemented, it's going to lower costs by over 10 percent.
	There's a lot of other look, full repeal.
	We've always seen you need 60 votes in the Senate to do full repeal, which is why the bill we put on Barack Obama's desk guts the law.
	Clearly, it guts the law, but it allows you to do it with 51 votes in the Senate.
	So we're going to move through, and again, you've got a few minor issues that we're working on on Medicaid, on work requirements, on some pro-life.
	There's major pro-life protections.
	We're extending the Hyde Amendment language to things that have never been applied to health care before.
	That's going to be a huge win for the pro-life campaign.
	Well, there are definitely some good things in there, including the Planned Parenthood defunding.
	What do you make of the CBO?
	Now, let's go back in history.
	The same CBO that scored this bill praised Obamacare, and yet they were off by $115 billion.
	And now they say $24 million more will be uninsured, a $337 billion deficit cut that they're talking about in the coming decade with the GOP health plan.
	Wouldn't part of the reason be that the mandate is gone and some people are going to choose not to be insured at all?
	Yeah, and Sean, I pointed this out yesterday when I read the report.
	What's interesting, CBO said 14 million people are going to lose their health care benefits.
	And I looked at it and I realized that's not, nobody's losing anything there, 14 million people, according to their estimate, because we're giving you freedom now.
	You don't have to be on Obamacare.
	They're saying 14 million people will choose to get off of Obamacare.
	Well, that's like saying if the government was telling you you have to buy a car and it has to be a minivan, if you said, you know what, I want a pickup truck, then the CBO is saying, oh, well, you just lost your minivan.
	Well, you never wanted it.
	I want to get back.
	We'll continue with Steve Scalise.
	He is the House Majority Whip.
	And we're talking about the health care bill.
	We'll get back into how this comes to some type of conclusion in a minute.
	Fighting the Trump hating liberal media one day at a time.
	All right, as we continue talking about the health care bill,
	Steve Scalise is with us, and he is with the 1st Congressional District out of Louisiana.
	This bill is going to be very different.
	For example, is this going to be a bill in the Senate that Rand Paul is going to support, Ted Cruz is going to be supporting?
	I think in the end you'll see them support it because it encompasses all the conservative principles that we've run on in terms of giving people their own choice to buy whatever they want in health care, lowering the cost, lowering the deficit, cutting taxes, all of those things that are in the bill plus defunding Planned Parenthood.
	So everybody's going to have a choice to make, but everybody's part of this conversation.
	I mean, if there's something that somebody wants to do a little differently, bring the idea, but make sure it's an idea that doesn't have just you and one other person.
	You need to be able to bring the votes to pass the bill.
	And frankly, a lot of members are bringing good ideas that we are pulling in and have already pulled into the bill at this point.
	But Sean, let's go back to the point that some people are saying, just do repeal.
	Just bring the bill we put on Obama's desk a year and a half ago.
	That's not what President Trump ran on.
	President Trump, and I think one of the most refreshing things about President Trump is he's repealed and replace.
	And I think it's very important that we follow through on that promise because it's not just about getting rid of Obamacare.
	It's put in place a better system where you can make choices and you can actually pay less for a health care plan than you can.
	Were you surprised at the opposition that emerged after you rolled out the bill from the Freedom Caucus Study Committee?
	All these senators, the Club for Growth came out against it.
	Americans for Prosperity, they all came out dead set against it.
	Were you surprised?
	For some people that haven't been through it, maybe so.
	But look, I was here a year and a half ago as the majority whip when we said we were going to put a bill on Barack Obama's desk to gut Obamacare, not replace just to do the repeal elements.
	A lot of those same people were against that bill, and ultimately it passed overwhelmingly.
	The only Republicans that voted against it were people that had concerns about us defunding Planned Parenthood.
	So we had an overwhelming Republican vote for that bill, even though at the beginning people said, oh, it's not going to pass.
	The votes aren't there.
	And they all gave their best ideas.
	Well, great.
	Give your best ideas.
	But at the end of the day, if you campaigned on being for repeal and replace and standing with Donald Trump on doing this and following through on that promise, this bill does it.
	We're working with members, our most conservative members.
	Will you take the best parts of Rand Paul and the Freedom Caucus' bill and add them to this bill?
	Is that the way you get them to support it?
	Don't Paul and his bill has refundable tax credits.
	This bill has refundable tax credits.
	I'm sure Rand Paul wants to defund Planned Parenthood.
	We do too.
	But I mean, if you look, this is the accumulation of years of work, a lot of bills that have passed individually.
	Bolstering Health Savings Account, Sean, you know that that will help lower cost and give families more control of their health care decisions.
	That's in this bill.
	Medicaid block granting, decades Republicans have been talking about doing it.
	We finally put it in this bill and it's going to pass.
	And you don't view that, those that criticize that as a new entitlement, they're not accurate?
	Well, it's not a new entitlement.
	Frankly, it's conservative orthodoxy.
	People from Jim DeMint to Tom Price, who's now HHS Secretary, I think most people when Tom Price will endorsed.
	Has Jim DeMint endorsed this bill?
	Has Heritage endorsed it?
	We're still talking to all of those groups and they're giving good ideas, but we're also talking groups like National Right to Life and Susan B. Anthony and other conservative pro-life groups that love the language we have that extend hyde protections and defund Planned Parenthood.
	All right, last question.
	At the end of the day, you think you will have a bill that Rand Paul, the Freedom Caucus, the study group, Ted Cruz, Tom Cotton, Mark Orubio, Heritage Action, Cato, Americans for Prosperity, Freedom Works will support.
	You think you're going to get there by amending the bill?
	I don't deal with the Senate, but in the House, we have a strong majority of members that want to do this, and we're going to have a majority 218 that ultimately support the repeal and replace elements that are in the business.
	And believe Mark Meadows, Dave Bratt, Mark Meadows, Dave Bratt, and Jim Jordan will support it.
	We're having good conversations with all of them.
	And, you know, while they're not at yes, I think they're very close on a number of those items.
	Not every one of them, but most of them are very close to being there, and we're working with them on the final elements.
	Okay, then that's the first thing that's going to be.
	And President is thinking great about working with us, too, because he wants to go to the bottom of the street.
	I will say this.
	I mean, I give Trump a lot of credit.
	I think this should have all been done behind closed doors before it was ever rolled out.
	But if you do it later than sooner, I guess I can't complain as long as you get it right.
	All right.
	Congressman, always good to talk to you, and can't wait to go back to your home state.
	I love it down in Louisiana.
	Thank you, sir.
	A great place to be from.
	Great food down there, too, but great being with you, Sean.
	We welcome you back anytime.
	Thank you, sir.
	Sean gets the answers no one else does.
	America deserves to know the truth about Congress.
	All right, 25, now till the top of the hour, toll-free.
	Our telephone number is 800-941-Sean.
	You want to be a part of the program?
	All right.
	Like we did last week, we put Rand Paul on, and then we put Speaker of the House Paul Ryan on, and it was almost like living in the Twilight Zone.
	You get such a different perspective about the state of the health care bill.
	We just had on Steve Scalise.
	He is the House Majority Whip, and he is convinced with all the conversations that have been ongoing that the Freedom Caucus and the study group and Rand Paul and Ted Cruz and Tom Cotton and Marco Rubio and Mike Lee are all going to support it.
	And all these varying conservative and libertarian groups that have opposed the bill that will end up supporting it also, as the president, I guess, is now taking control over bringing the differing factions together.
	Anyway, I'm not sure if they were listening because I'm sure they're very busy men, but from the Freedom Caucus, we have Congressman Jim Jordan of Ohio and Mark Meadows of North Carolina.
	And welcome both of you to the program.
	And I don't know if you were listening the last half hour.
	Any chance that you heard your colleague Steve Scalise?
	Well, I did.
	This is Mark.
	I did hear Steve.
	And, you know, it's interesting as we start to look at this when we talk about taking health care premiums down.
	It seemed like the debate got to, well, we're giving American citizens a tax break.
	The only break they want is a break on their premiums.
	And I can tell you, we're having great discussions with the White House here in the House, not as much, Sean.
	And so in other words, the president has been far more open in terms of listening to your ideas and incorporating them into a final bill.
	He has.
	He's been extremely.
	I give him an A. Let me tell you, he is recent, and not just to the Freedom Caucus, to everybody.
	And we understand why he is such an unbelievable negotiator because he's willing to listen and willing to make the tough calls.
	So I applaud him.
	He's trying to bring everybody together.
	And in the end, it's going to be his bill, not Speaker Ryan's bill that we end up voting on.
	And I'm encouraged by that.
	Well, I'm encouraged by you saying that.
	So the Freedom Caucus and Rand Paul, you guys partnered together with your own bill.
	And I've had you on multiple times, all of you talking about the criticisms.
	I brought all of them up with Steve Scalise.
	He seemed confident that the Freedom Caucus will end up voting for it.
	Rand Paul will end up voting for it.
	And Congressman Jordan, did you hear any of the interview?
	I did.
	And here's the concern.
	Why is every major conservative organization in the country opposed to it?
	Why are every major conservative health care policy expert having concerns with this bill?
	Why are there five conservative senators who don't like it?
	And why are there so many conservatives in the House who don't like it?
	Because it doesn't fully repeal Obamacare.
	Now, I like Steve, but he talked about the tax cuts.
	And yeah, they are cutting some taxes, but they're not cutting all taxes.
	And they're bringing back the Cadillac tax in the year 2023.
	So that's not what we told the voters we were going to do.
	It has an insurance subsidy in here.
	We didn't tell the voters we're going to repeal Obamacare, but keep some insurance subsidy in here.
	And we certainly didn't tell them we were going to keep Medicaid expansion and extend it for several years.
	All right.
	I don't like the way the bill was, I don't like the way the bill was rolled out.
	To me, it was asked backwards, if you don't mind me saying so.
	And, you know, considering it's government, it doesn't shock me.
	And everybody knew I had had all of you in the Freedom Caucus on this program and many senators on and a lot of these groups on right here on this radio program and on my TV program.
	And they were all angry at the fact that they didn't get a chance to see the bill before it came out.
	Paul Ryan's argument is, well, everyone was invited to the different meetings that took place and everybody had a chance to weigh in on it.
	But, you know, I would have built the consensus that all of you like together, and I would have had the president announce it with a joint Republican Senate and Congress, and this is our replacement.
	Why didn't they do it that way?
	Well, in hindsight, they sure should have.
	The bill was rolled out six days ago, was taken to committee.
	No amendments were allowed to be offered.
	No amendments will be offered in the budget committee on Thursday.
	And then they're going to bring it to the floor and expect us all to vote for it.
	That's not how the legislative process works.
	Are you saying when they bring it to the floor, there's not going to be an opportunity for amendments now?
	When you hear people say it's a binary choice, it's this way or no way.
	That's not how it's supposed to work.
	And that's not fair to the three-quarters of a million people that Mark Meadows represents, to the 750,000 people I represent, and to every member of the United States House of Representatives, and frankly to all the senators.
	You have to be able to have a real legislative process.
	That's not taking place right now.
	And when you look at this bill, it doesn't fully repeal Obamacare, doesn't lower premiums, and doesn't unite the party.
	So that's why we've been working on this.
	And Mark Reid.
	The White House has been great to reach out with us.
	But we're trying to make this thing consistent with what we said.
	Okay, so you've had how many meetings with the President, both of you?
	Jim and I met with the President last week and actually had a couple of conversations with the President.
	Then we've had probably no less than four additional conversations with members of his staff at different levels.
	And I can tell you that they are all extremely engaged and willing to listen, but not only willing to listen, willing to make some concessions.
	And I think that that's ultimately where we get to is we find ways.
	Steve Khalees said that some Freedom Caucus members are telling him privately that they support the bill.
	Well, and there may be a couple of them that support the bill privately, but if he wants to whip it today or if he wants to bring it to a vote today, I encourage him to do so.
	I can guarantee you there are not enough votes to pass it on the floor today as it stands if it doesn't change, Sean.
	Will it get out of the budget committee on Thursday?
	I believe it'll get out of committee just like it got out at the Energy and Commerce and the Ways It Means Committee, Sean.
	But that's the difference.
	In fact, some members may have voted for it on the committee, realizing that they wanted to continue to work and not slow the process down with the idea that they still reserve the right to vote against it on the floor.
	That's happened many times.
	But the real test will be on the floor of the House of Representatives.
	And if the Freedom Caucus stays united, you have enough votes to stop this by a long shot, correct?
	Yes, we do, but our goal is to actually change the bill so it's consistent with what the voters expect us to do.
	That's our goal.
	We don't want to just go ahead and take a look at the business.
	Okay, so you're making progress with the president, and you're saying you're not making any progress with the House leadership.
	Why?
	Well, I think they've said, Sean, that it's kind of this is the bill.
	It's going to be the bill.
	Take it or leave it.
	And in this particular, if that's the binary choice, I think it's a false binary choice.
	Jim Jordan said it right.
	That's not the way the legislative process works.
	But if that's the binary choice they're going to have, then they need to bring it to the floor.
	They will find out very quickly they do not have the votes.
	And then the president can put it back together.
	But I would prefer, like we have been, negotiating in good faith over the last several days and trying to come to some consensus where they don't have to worry about it, where we can all get together and applaud the president for putting this together.
	But to suggest that it repeals all of Obamacare is not accurate.
	I mean, and that's what everybody keeps saying.
	This repeals all of Obamacare.
	The most fundamental part of this are the insurance regs and the essential health benefits.
	Those two things affect prices more than anything else, and they're still in.
	Paul Ryan told me last week that the 2015 bill didn't fully repeal Obamacare.
	Was he right?
	And that is accurate.
	That is a factual statement.
	The difference is what we're doing here is we were willing to use the 2015 bill as the floor and say, okay, this is the worst case scenario.
	But now what we've done is we use 2015 and then we add back things.
	We add back things to Medicaid.
	We add back taxes.
	And so we're not even doing, we're not putting on President Trump's desk equal to what we had on President Obama's desk.
	And the American people don't understand that.
	Quite frankly, neither do I. What about the reconciliation issue and needing only 51 votes versus getting out of cloture and needing 60 votes, getting a cloture vote?
	How big an issue is that?
	An obstacle is that for the Senate?
	And on top of that, the Senate can't afford to lose two people.
	I mean, if they lose three people, this bill's done.
	It's dead.
	Even if they use reconciliation, right?
	All the more reason to do what we did before, because they all voted for it then.
	And we were able to get rid of everything in Obamacare except those critical regulations that Mark just talked about.
	And we could frankly put those in and have a real challenge to what the parliamentarian may rule on that.
	But all the more reason to do what we did just a year ago because they all voted for it and we all voted for it.
	And that passed and got over 50 votes.
	Why not do that, just like Mark is talking about, put the same thing on President Trump's desk that we put on President Obama's desk.
	Unbelievable.
	I'm just the fact that we're at this point and there's a risk that this thing doesn't actually succeed.
	What do you absolutely have to have in the bill as a caucus, the Freedom Caucus, to go along with this replacement plan?
	What do you need?
	Well, Sean, we've given five recommendations to the White House on what we believe are important improvements to the bill that would actually pass the bird test, wouldn't put it in jeopardy over in the Senate.
	And so one of those is that we believe there should be a work requirement for Medicaid.
	20 hours a week, if you're able-bodied adult, single adult, that you need to, there should be a work requirement.
	And if we're going to provide a safety net, then we want to make sure that we're working hand in glove with those that were providing protections.
	That's one of them.
	But the other key is if we can get to the insurance regs, and Jim said it well, we've never had it adjudicated in the Senate.
	And so it's time that they get the parliamentarian and say, can we get rid of these essential health benefits and give insurance companies the ability to provide cheaper insurance?
	We think the Senate needs to go ahead and rule on that this week.
	Hopefully they will.
	And if we can get there, we're 90% of the way.
	The rest of it becomes just trying to perfect the bill.
	Do you think you've convinced the president to agree to that?
	You know, I don't want to speak for the president.
	I can say this, that if my conversations are any indication in the way he's negotiating on the health care bill, any indication of the way he negotiates on other things, I think we're going to find some common ground.
	He's not going to go against all the conservatives and all of the members who actually campaign for him on the campaign trail and just ignore us completely.
	I think that we'll find something that works for my district and Jim's district, but also the more moderate districts as well.
	We recognize the difference, and that's part of negotiating in good faith.
	And Jim, that's your feeling as well.
	Do you feel the president is meeting you more than halfway?
	Yeah, I think the White House has been very good about reaching out in that specific issue on the regulations that are driving up the costs for middle-class families right now.
	When we discussed that issue with the president, he seemed very open to that.
	So that's a key factor because look, the CBO yesterday, and there was mixed signals about the CBO and whether you take what they say with much weight or not.
	But the truth is they said premiums go up if this bill passes a Speaker's bill.
	Premiums go up for the next three years, and then they decline 10%, but they don't decline 10% from where they're at.
	They decline 10% from where they're projected to head under Obamacare.
	So when we say premiums are not going to go down, that's because those insurance regulations that drive up the costs are still there.
	And that's what we have to get to in this bill if we can.
	If not, then the smartest thing to do is what United Republicans just 15 months ago, the same thing we put on President Obama's desk, put that on President Trump's desk, and then deal with this replacement.
	And if phase three is really accurate, then we can do that.
	Frankly, we can do that now.
	But let's have the fight on that then.
	But let's do what unites Republicans if we can't get those insurance regs in this first bill.
	All right, guys, stay right there.
	We've got to take a quick break.
	We'll come back.
	We'll continue with Jim Jordan and Mark Meadows of the Freedom Caucus straight ahead right here on the Sean Hannity show.
	Ready to repeal and replace Obama's executive orders?
	And you've come to the right place.
	The Sean Hannity Show.
	All right, as we continue, Congressman Jim Jordan, Congressman Mark Meadows, both of the Freedom Caucus here on the Sean Hannity Show.
	Why is the leadership in the House not spending time with you?
	I mean, that surprises me.
	We meet with them tomorrow morning.
	We do have a meeting I saw scheduled, or excuse me, on Thursday morning.
	Mark and I are now meeting with some folks on Thursday morning.
	So, you know, there's conversations going on all the time, Sean.
	This is the way Congress works.
	You're talking with your colleagues all the time on trying to get the bill that you think is going to help the families you get to represent.
	Yeah, well, I mean, it seems to me that the president was handed the House bill.
	They could have probably saved him a whole lot of headaches and negotiation and moved on to the budgets.
	And apparently, we're going to do two this year, and certainly tax reform and things that we need to get the economy going.
	If, in fact, this had gotten done sooner.
	I think the frustrating thing for me is you guys have been talking about this, and I don't mean you personally, but Republicans have been saying this for eight years, and they still didn't build a consensus pill.
	That is beyond frustrating to me.
	Yeah.
	Well, I will tell you, six weeks ago, the RSC and the Freedom Caucus, we put out a statement saying that the bill we passed a year ago that we put on then President Obama's desk, that should be the basic.
	That should be the base bill.
	That should be the floor.
	And we should go with that.
	And unfortunately, that's not what was rolled out by leadership.
	And Mark Meadows, we'll give you the last word today.
	And what do you think the odds are this gets done?
	Well, I think the odds are if leadership's willing to negotiate in good faith, there's two other willing partners, the Freedom Caucus and the President are willing to negotiate in good faith.
	And so if they're willing to come to the table and negotiate in good faith, then I'm optimistic that we can get there.
	The president, you know, if you've got the busiest guy, the most powerful guy in the world, willing to negotiate in a personal way to get this across the finish line, then the least that all of us could do is invest the same kind of capital.
	I'm committed.
	Jim's committed.
	And hopefully our leadership's committed to finding that sweet spot for the American people.
	All right.
	I really appreciate both of you being with us.
	We obviously have to stay on this.
	To me, failure here is not an option, but a bad bill is not an option either.
	So I'm glad to hear.
	I'm not surprised at the president.
	This is what he does.
	He's a good negotiator, and he's trying to bring the factions together, and I give him a lot of credit for that.
	And I just think they got the cart before the horse releasing this, rolling this out before they had built the consensus.
	And I think they could have saved themselves and the president a lot of headaches by doing it differently.
	But what do I know?
	I'm just a private sector guy.
	You're spot on, Sean.
	Bottom.
	I only run 16 businesses, so I don't know a thing, I assume, right?
	All right, Congressman Jim Jordan, Congressman Mark Meadows, thank you both for being with us, 800-941 Sean.
	If you want to be a part of the program, Sarah Carter, the latest on the deep state at the top of the hour, and you won't believe what Project Veritas has released.
	Tape will shock you, and it shows and reveals a lot.
	When we come back, News Roundup Information Overload Hour is straight ahead on The Sean Hannity Show.
	The president has said there will be a bloodbath in 2018 if this isn't passed through the House and Senate.
	I do believe that if we don't keep our word to the people who sent us here, yeah.
	I've talked to the president, I think, three times on Obamacare, and I hear from him that he's willing to negotiate.
	You know what I hear from Paul Ryan?
	It's a binary choice, young man.
	But what does a binary choice mean?
	His way or the highway.
	Holding them accountable.
	Sean gets the answers no one else does.
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	We're burning down the mashing bullets at the moon, baby.
	This is how we do it.
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	More behind-the-scenes information on breaking news and more bold, inspired solutions for America.
	Coming up next, our final news roundup: an information overload hour.
	It is an unusual time in the United States to see an intelligence agency so prominently involved in domestic politics.
	As a sort of level of principle, that's quite problematic.
	There are numerous press reports in the New York Times and Washington Post, some in Politico, that people close to President Donald Trump had been monitored in a counterintelligence activity, possibly by some parts of the U.S. government, possibly FBI.
	FBI had been mentioned, NSA had been mentioned.
	On the other hand, it seems that many of the leaks to the media are coming from the Central Intelligence Agency based upon how they're described.
	There are a number of collaborations that are evidenced by the material that we publish between the FBI and CIA, National Security Agency, and CIA.
	So I think there's a real question whether that technology is being used or has been used in these types of investigations.
	And here's something that I don't mean to freak you out with, but I think is true.
	Even our memories are not absolutely private in America.
	Any of us can be compelled in appropriate circumstances to say what we remember, what we saw.
	Even our communications with our spouses, with our clergy members, with our attorneys are not absolutely private in America.
	In appropriate circumstances, a judge can compel any one of us to testify in court about those very private communications.
	And there are really, really important constraints on law enforcement, as there should be.
	But the general principle is one we've always accepted in this country.
	There is no such thing as absolute privacy in America.
	There is no place in America outside of judicial reach.
	That's the bargain.
	And we made that bargain over two centuries ago to achieve two goals: to achieve the very, very important goal of privacy and to achieve the very important goal of security.
	Widespread default encryption changes that bargain.
	In my view, it shatters the bargain.
	All right, that was the FBI director James Comey.
	No such thing as absolute privacy.
	And then, of course, before that, there was talk, and this was part of the less than 1% of the CIA WikiLeague stump by Julian Assange talking about the malware capability of the CIA along with other capabilities they have developed, which, by the way, in many ways, I think is a good thing for national security, but being able to use malware and attribute some hacking to a foreign country raises questions about, well, all this Russian narrative that doesn't appear to be true at all.
	There's been no evidence of it.
	Is there any possibility that the deep state from within was able to use these malware techniques and put the fingerprints onto Russia when maybe it was an inside job?
	Paranoia, conspiracy, Twilight Zone, X-Files?
	I don't know.
	Joining us now is Sarah Carter, senior national security correspondent for circa.com.
	And John Solomon and her have debunked all these theories on Russia and Trump.
	And she has the latest in terms of an update.
	And Sarah, welcome back to the program.
	How are you?
	I'm doing great, Sean.
	Thank you so much for having me on.
	I was really interested in what you just said.
	And, you know, there still needs to be an investigation.
	I mean, we're not sure where all of these pings between Russia and Trump came from.
	And that part is something certainly the administration is interested in, as well as lawmakers.
	I mean, they want to find out where did this all originate and why.
	Well, I mean, I think that's the whole thing here.
	I mean, where did this all originate?
	In other words, in your, let's go backwards.
	Let's start with your initial investigation.
	So you were the first people to confirm that there was an October FISA, but it was not against Donald Trump, you say.
	It was a FISA maybe dealing with the larger issue of is there a foreign entity following the paradigm model of Obama trying to influence our election.
	And then this particular FISA warrant, specifically looking at any Russian connection.
	Is that a fair assessment?
	That's a fair assessment.
	Yes, that is correct.
	Okay, so then the overall assessment.
	And then the other part that we discovered, both John Solomon and I, was that there was an investigation into a server that was registered to Trump Tower, not in Trump Tower location, but a server that was registered to Donald Trump's businesses.
	And that was a traditional FBI investigation.
	And that investigation was very short-lived.
	But they did go into that server because they were told, they were warned, the FBI, that there were pings between Trump's server and Russia.
	So somebody went to the FBI and said, hey, you need to look at this because we see some kind of movement between then, you know, candidate Donald Trump's server and Russia and a Russian bank.
	And that is when the FBI chose to, at that point in time, open a traditional investigation into the server and looked into the server.
	And I got to tell you, they immediately, according to very high-level sources, they immediately shut down that investigation when they found absolutely no collusion, any evidence of criminality, is better to put it that way, between Donald Trump and the server that was supposedly pinging back and forth to Russia.
	Wow.
	That's unbelievable to me.
	The whole thing is unbelievable to me.
	So in other words, even though the FISA warrant was not about Trump or surveilling Trump, in the course of their investigation into Russia, they did look into aspects involving Trump.
	Is that correct?
	Okay.
	And they came up with absolutely nothing.
	That is correct.
	That is what we have been told and verified.
	Yeah.
	Okay, and you verified it.
	So, okay, so the Pfizer warning, the Pfizer warrant was not about Trump.
	They did it as part of their investigation at different times as it relates to this particular bank, if I'm not misunderstood.
	They did look into any connections.
	They found nothing whatsoever.
	This has been going on since November.
	There's no media outlet that I know that has brought any evidence forward of any collusion.
	Have you seen any?
	No, I have not.
	And I think that that's what's so concerning is that there was such an emphasis from the media and from many politicians as well that there was this collusion between Trump's team and the Russians, but there was absolutely no evidence brought forth, no solid evidence that proved that.
	And I think that became the overall concern with investigators as well.
	And this is why people chose to speak to us.
	We had sources that were willing to talk to us and confirm the story that we reported.
	And that's where the biggest concern is, because as you know, Sean, once it's out there, it's out there.
	And then everybody starts jumping on a bandwagon and looking at it and saying, well, what did Trump do?
	What did his associates do?
	What kind of collusion was going on with the Russians?
	And when in all actuality, if you look at the stories, one, nobody was arrested and nobody has been arrested to date for any kind of collusion.
	And two, when you look at the stories, there was no evidence in any of those stories that there was any collusion.
	It was always, he said, she said, but no evidence was provided.
	That is an amazing development here.
	And you also found that there was a non-FISA warrant.
	Was that directly aimed at Trump?
	That was part of their traditional investigation.
	And that's where, you know, I'm going back.
	They said it was a traditional investigation, according to the sources that we spoke with, into the Trump server.
	But then that raises the question, what happened that pushed the FBI to look into the Trump server?
	What type of evidence or information was provided to the FBI that they felt compelled to open an investigation into the server, which was a traditional one.
	It wasn't under the FISA, look into the server and eventually realize with less than, you know, in less than two weeks that they were in there, that there was no evidence of any criminality between Trump and his associates and a server in Russia.
	So that, I think, is the big question.
	And going back to what you said when you first opened the segment and you talked about how Comey said there's no more privacy.
	There's, you know, I remember talking to General Hayden a year and a half ago, and he said, for any American who thinks that they have complete privacy or any privacy at all, they're sadly mistaken.
	There is no more privacy.
	I mean, the capabilities of going into emails and looking at listening, looking at transcripts of telephone calls, all you have to do is have a need-to-know access.
	You don't even need a FISA.
	And I don't think people get this.
	You don't even really need a FISA for an investigator on a need-to-know basis with the U.S. intelligence community to go into the raw data and look at the raw data, which would reveal names and times and who was on those calls or whose emails they were looking at.
	And those would not be masked.
	So people out there know who's talking to who.
	And this does not require a warrant, Sean.
	So there, and you have confirmed that, in fact, another warrant was issued.
	And we don't know what the purpose of it was.
	We don't know how it got initiated.
	We don't know what precipitated it.
	And could it have been political?
	Perhaps maybe somebody.
	Because if we go back before the election, Hillary Clinton was suggesting there was collusion, as was Harry Reid was saying, a big blockbuster coming out about Trump and Russia.
	You know, the only thing that seemed to garner the attention, the hysteria, was this ridiculous dossier that was put out.
	And that Donald Trump, they might have had compromising video of him having sex with hookers in Moscow and the Ritz-Carlton with hookers urinating on the bed.
	And that turned out to be false.
	And the other thing that came up was that in his performing his duties as a senator, Jeff Sessions, yeah, he did meet with the Russian ambassador, as did so many others.
	And it was not about the campaign.
	He was not a campaign operative, and he answered directly Al Franken's question.
	Correct.
	I mean, and if you look back, even with the leak on the dossier, right?
	I mean, this dossier was also supposed to be classified and not be out in the public because, in fact, U.S. law enforcement, U.S. intelligence officials had not cooperated hardly anything in the dossier.
	There was very little in the dossier that they had cooperated.
	It was almost like, you know, Christopher Steele, who had put this dossier together, was given two little bits of truthful information that amounted to nothing.
	And then, according to some of the intelligence officials that I spoke to, given a lot of malars that could never be corroborated.
	Now, that doesn't mean that in the future something won't be corroborated, but right now, according to U.S. intelligence officials, that dossier, there's not much to it.
	They weren't able to corroborate a lot of the evidence or a lot of the claims, let's say a lot of the claims that were made in that dossier that was put together by, you know, apparently very well respected in the past, MI6 operative from England.
	So it's strange.
	You see these leaks and you have to.
	How much were they willing to pay that guy?
	That's the guy that came up with the dossier, and they were going to pay this guy and put him on the payroll.
	Stay right there.
	I also want to ask you what this means for the media, what it means going forward, and where this may end up.
	Bringing jobs back to America and getting America back to work.
	This is the Sean Hennerty Show.
	All right, as we continue, we have with us Sarah Carter, and she is a senior national security correspondent for circa.com.
	And she, along with John Solomon, her colleague, have debunked any theory, any collusion on Russia and Donald Trump.
	But the media keeps breathlessly, hysterically reporting that it keeps going on.
	Are these guys in the media that are not listening to your blockbuster report, are they going to end up with a lot of egg on their face?
	You know, I can't say if they're going to end up with egg on their face, but according to the sources that we've spoken with, that is a good conclusion.
	I think what's disappointing is that despite what anybody feels politically, you have to tell the truth.
	You have to get the truth out.
	I mean, this cannot be a partisan investigation into Trump.
	It has to be very unparalleled.
	You know, they have to look at each subject and be able to tell the truth about what's happening.
	Whether that reveals that there was no collusion, I mean, that's a fact.
	And now, you know, they're going to keep digging, and we've seen that.
	They keep moving forward, keep digging for more evidence to try to prove something that, according to U.S. intelligence officials and senior sources that we've spoken with, does not exist.
	So when does the intelligence community or law enforcement community come out and say this isn't true?
	I mean, I know that Clapper said it, that they had no impact on the election, but that hasn't stopped anybody.
	And it's like it's almost become a narrative.
	You repeat a lie often enough, and everybody seems to believe it.
	So when does this ever get resolved to the public to hear, oh, that never happened?
	I think that a lot of answers will come forth at the March 20th hearing.
	So I believe the House Intelligence Committee's hearing, they are going to be asking a lot of questions.
	I know that, you know, probably some of those questions will deal with, did you find any kind of criminality, any connection between Trump team and Russia?
	Was there any collusion?
	And, you know, they will have to answer those questions.
	We know that former director John Brennan will be testifying, as well as current FBI director James Comey.
	Sally Yates is another one.
	I'm very interested in seeing she will be testifying as well at this hearing.
	And remember, she was the one that went to the White House and it said that Flynn could possibly be blackmailed by the Russians based on some evidence that they had regarding his telephone calls.
	So there are a lot of people that are going to have to answer a lot of questions to the American public as well as to lawmakers as to what really happened in this investigation.
	And it's going to be up to our lawmaker, Sean, to ask the right questions to get the right answers and not just bury this and let it go.
	Is there any chance that Democrats could be the ones that initiated this before the election as a means of getting intelligence or law enforcement to help Hillary Clinton?
	I think that is something that definitely needs to be investigated.
	And sure.
	I mean, until we know the answers, that's always a possibility.
	How do we not know?
	One of the things, the questions that needs to be answered is who initiated this investigation into the Trump team?
	What evidence did they have to initiate this investigation?
	And was that evidence provided by people that were partisan to Hillary Clinton?
	I mean, that's something that needs to be looked at and needs to be looked at diligently by those involved in asking those questions, which are our lawmakers on the Hill.
	Well, I got a run here, and it's getting interesting.
	Sarah Carter, great work.
	We appreciate it.
	800-941 Sean, when we come back, a blockbuster investigation that exposes a teacher union attorney getting off a known pedophile somebody admits committed rape against children.
	You represent the teachers who like have sex with the kids The ten-year teachers who can't get fired, who like are like giving those kids in class and things like that.
	Yes, that's basically that in the paper.
	But I don't.
	But that's not a lot of cases.
	I mean, that's what you read about in the post.
	Yeah, but you represent.
	And then it's all true.
	Most of it's true.
	What's the craziest one that you've heard, though?
	That's like where they were definitely guilty where they are still teaching, where you're like, that guy's, or that girl is like a total scumbag and you shouldn't be teaching.
	I've had a lot of them.
	Really?
	What's the craziest one?
	What's the craziest one?
	We're like the craziest scumbag teacher who like you drive by the school and you're like, ew, like, there's a pedophile teaching there.
	There's a Jim Ruggie teaching there.
	Well, I had a sorry.
	And it was alleged that he like invited students up to his house.
	Was he a principal?
	No, teacher.
	No.
	Elementary school teacher?
	He was a junior high school teacher.
	Okay, and he invited students up to his house.
	He was like giving them stuff like mail.
	Oh, so he was gay.
	I don't know if he was gay, but it was male.
	He was giving male male.
	It was mostly male teachers.
	And the charges were that they brought him up to that, because this is what the students reported.
	They like took a knife to their neck.
	This is what he was charged with.
	That he had to take a knife to their head to give him a f.
	Okay.
	So he was putting a knife to the kids' head to give the kids.
	For the kids to get it.
	Yeah, so he was forcing the kids to give him a with a knife.
	Right.
	That's what the charges were.
	Oh my God.
	It's like, right?
	And there were several allegations like that.
	And so it was the kids' word against the teacher's word.
	And I had the teacher take live detector tests.
	Okay.
	He passed the live detector test.
	So I don't believe in live detector tests.
	Okay.
	And I said to him, Mike, how did you pass the likes?
	What's his name?
	His name was Mike.
	Okay, I don't even remember his last name.
	Okay.
	But it was like, how do you pass the lie detector test?
	And he said, every time they asked me, like, did I force to have sex with the kid, it wasn't forceful.
	It was voluntary.
	So he, in his mind, believed that it was okay because it was voluntary.
	But it really wasn't voluntary.
	Oh.
	Okay.
	I mean, they were all.
	Psychological.
	Okay.
	But that's how he passed the lie detector test because he got to say, no, because they were asking, did you force to have sex with a kid?
	And the answer was no.
	And that was, in his mind, technically true, although legally, when you're young, you can't have that.
	So anyway, you know, he passes the lie detector test.
	And I go to him, dude, you know, you're going to go to jail if this goes bad because this is like forced sex with like a minor.
	This is like his word, you know, as bad as hell.
	So then he didn't know this, but they secured his phone records.
	And believe it or not, don't ask me how this is, but the kid, who's a high school kid, called his girlfriend from Mike's house.
	So Mike's phone number had the girlfriend's phone number.
	And he says, Mike, how did I have the girl's phone number?
	You know, on your house.
	And at that time, he broke down.
	He admitted he had a problem.
	And he resigned.
	Thank God.
	He admitted he had a problem as MIT force.
	He did it to me.
	So I advised him, you know, with all of this circumstantial evidence that they could identify the house, the name of his parent.
	But you're going to tell them that, like, you know.
	No, I can't.
	It's like attorney client.
	I can't tell him what he's doing.
	Oh, my God.
	But does he still teach?
	No, he resigned.
	He resigned.
	But if he wanted to, he still could.
	He's not registered as a sex offender?
	No, because he wasn't convicted.
	He resigned.
	I mostly work in the city, but it was somewhere in the city.
	Yeah, I couldn't tell you where.
	I want to say it was around Penn Station around here, actually.
	I want to say that because, believe it or not, about two years later, I ran into him in the street.
	So he was still living in New York.
	We got this.
	He was running the city council damning out quiet.
	All right, that was a new video audio tape of James O'Keefe, Project Veritas, an ongoing investigation into the teachers' union.
	In this particular case, you have the attorney for the United Teachers defending a teacher that his own lawyer is admitting has a problem and admitted to actually having sex with minors and cheating a lie detector test, admitting he has a problem by putting a knife to their throat to have oral sex.
	James O'Keefe is with us.
	Another blockbuster tape that I'm sure the media will ignore.
	How do you ignore this and how deep is this problem?
	And I'm hearing this and I'm thinking, now, if there's one guy that belongs in jail, it's the client of the teachers' union guy.
	Yeah, yeah.
	I mean, Sean, thanks for having me on.
	I was going to tell your audience to fasten their seatbelts because this is beyond shocking.
	This is about as bad as it gets.
	This is horrific.
	This is the head of the teachers' union in New York, New York State Teachers Union, basically bragging about how broken the system is, describing, you just heard all that.
	He was describing how one of his teachers was raping a child and forcing oral sex with a knife.
	Horrific.
	And he admits the system is broken.
	And this is very important.
	We have Betsy DeVos is our current education secretary now, barely got in.
	The treatment of Betsy DeVos during that hearing, by the way, is itself unconscionable.
	And now we have these types of things.
	And apparently, this teacher, who we attempted for months to try to get this teacher's last name.
	We could not obtain his last name.
	There's just too many people named Michael in New York.
	But he's at large.
	He was never convicted.
	And this was all done under seal so that nobody knows about it.
	This person you heard, this official in the teachers' union, is breaking privilege by bringing this up because it's so outrageous, even to him.
	Well, how did it come up?
	I understand it was a holiday party in December of 2015 when you got the original recording.
	And this had happened some time ago.
	It's a 16-minute video.
	This guy, as an attorney, speaking so openly about the guilt of a teacher and a client about such a horrific and evil crime is breathtaking in and of itself, but he admitted pretty much everything.
	And I guess the more shocking part of it is this guy is walking the streets of New York today, apparently.
	Yes, it was at a holiday party a little over a year ago.
	And then so we began the process of doing what we do.
	Sometimes it takes us forever to track these people down.
	He said he ran for city council, this rapist who's at large, and who, by the way, the teachers' union, he also says this guy, he says, we always protect the teacher.
	It's never about the child.
	So he's laughing while he's describing how broken the system is.
	And these guys are never held accountable in his life.
	They're sort of drunk with power.
	They don't ever defend the child.
	But anyway, so this happened over a year ago.
	And then about seven or eight months later, just this past year, we met up with this guy again under an assumed name, under a cover.
	And he repeats the exact same story.
	We again say, you know, what's the last name of the teacher?
	And he says, I can't give that to you.
	And that's in the full video on our website.
	Why was he so willing to talk to your operative?
	So I called him today, Sean.
	I called this guy, Mitchell Rubenstein, for official comment.
	I've started doing that.
	And he says, and this is what Rubenstein said to me on the phone.
	But he says, I was trying to impress girls, is what he said.
	In other words, I said— Impress girls by saying you get pedophiles?
	It's— It's sick.
	It's sick.
	He says, I'm trying to impress girls by telling them this.
	I was like, who impresses a girl by telling them this horrific, awful story?
	But in any event, he's not a good person.
	We do.
	We're going to be putting it out.
	And as the teachers' union, are they going to comment on this?
	Because the New York Post had a long article.
	There are literally, last time I checked, dozens and dozens and dozens and dozens of teachers that are still on the payroll of accusations as severe as this one that just continue to get paid and they don't even work.
	Exactly.
	That is exactly the point, Sean.
	There's these rubber rooms.
	I mean, Betsy DeVos went through a grueling confirmation where she was accused of hating children, not wanting to help poor kids.
	This is an example of how – I mean, this is disturbing.
	And these teachers, are they so powerful?
	Are these teachers' unions so powerful in New York that they can conceal and condone crimes against our kids when they're in their care?
	And are the rights of the teachers' union so absolute that these children are forced to have sex with a knife at their throat?
	And we can't do anything?
	I mean, and anyone who blows the whistle is attacked.
	So I think this video, my hope is that this video starts an important conversation now that we have someone in government who can actually reform the system.
	You know, I just can't, for the life of me, not understand why a teachers' union is not in the business of protecting children against predator teachers.
	And if, as in this case, they're going to have their lawyers arguing for somebody they admit they know is a guilty predator and laugh about, brag about for purposes of meeting girls.
	Is that his defense that it was an act, that it was a lie, or that he's such a good attorney that he could even get off pedophiles that force kids into oral sex with a knife to their neck?
	We just got the recording of my conversation with him, and he says a couple things that contradict.
	He says, well, I'm trying to impress a girl.
	I have no comment.
	He was obviously caught.
	It's clear that this man has been blowing the whistle now, and he's been caught admitting, bragging, gloating about how broken the system is.
	But this is no low-level guy.
	This is the head counsel for the New York State Teachers Union.
	So your question, what does the Teachers Union have to say?
	Well, we've been tweeting at Randy Weingarten.
	We were going to call the office as soon as I got the phone with you.
	We're going to put out the statement by Mitchell Rubinstein.
	And it's just so damning.
	There's no way to say it.
	I've had people tweet at me, say, I suppose.
	I think the main thing you need to tweet out is how many other teacher predators have gotten off.
	And what are you, Randy Weingart, what are you going to do about it?
	And what is the teachers' union going to say about it?
	And when are they going to fire this attorney?
	All those senators, all those senators who viciously attacked, viciously attacked Betsy DeVos.
	Betsy DeVos, that's a good point.
	What about that?
	You know, this has become such a big problem.
	And even though it's been exposed, they still don't change.
	There's been expose after expose in the New York tabloid showing these things are happening, and they end up remaining on the streets, number one.
	And then some of them even eventually get back in the classroom.
	Yeah, it's horrific, but never before, and this is the powerful thing about Veritas, if I can plug what we're doing a little bit.
	Veritas, we show the real behind-the-scenes video.
	We show the snideness.
	They're above the law.
	Well, the arrogance on the video is breathtaking.
	They've never been held accountable in their lives.
	No one calls these guys out.
	I mean, we did a few stories last year that were local stories in New York and Westchester County.
	And one of the head union officials, the president, Patricia Paleo was her name.
	She was charged by a Democrat inspector general when she's told a child pedophile to lie about what he did.
	And the undercover work we're doing, by the way, Sean, Veritas is in the process of hiring 12 more undercover reporters.
	Recruiting at Project Veritas.com.
	If you're listening to this broadcast and you want to do what we do, I will pay you to go undercover to expose this stuff.
	It's recruiting at Project Veritas.
	Just send me your resume and why you want to.
	And by the way, you should warn everybody, this is dangerous work.
	It is dangerous work, and it's not for everyone.
	And it requires a level of personal sacrifice and courage.
	But a lot of people, Sean, out there message me.
	I get hundreds of messages wanting to help out in any way beside give money.
	So I just wanted to throw that out there, recruiting at Project Veritas.com.
	Well, you know, maybe sometimes you can get people that would volunteer their time and get involved in individual projects and just contribute to the cause that way.
	I mean, that to me would be a pretty special thing to do if they had the time and the inclination to do so.
	But you better have nerves of steel because you've got to literally go in undercover.
	You've got to make sure that you check all the legal ramifications about taping people and all that stuff, which, by the way, I know you have an army or a battery of attorneys that does that for everybody.
	We have a dozen.
	We have a dozen attorneys.
	We have just as many attorneys as reporters about.
	But yes, but I wanted to throw that out there because people see this stuff.
	They see this attorney.
	They see this teachers' union out of control, out of touch.
	One New York Post columnist said they've lost their minds as well as their souls.
	And people see this thing and they say, I just want to do something.
	I think that was Andrea Piser who said that, right?
	I think it was Goodwin.
	The column?
	Goodwin.
	But I think people see this content and they want to either donate or get involved or help.
	So it's important that the citizens of this country, and I know this is something, Sean, you have said many times, we have to do it ourselves because no one else will do it.
	Well, we've linked, see, you have to see the video.
	It's more powerful than even the audio that you just heard.
	We put up a link to Project Veritas on Hannity.com.
	And when you watch this, it will anger you and it'll shock you.
	It should outrage you and motivate you to get these Teachers Union and the unholy alliance with Democrats, you know, broken forevermore.
	But great work again, James.
	And now I know why so many people hate you.
	Thank you.
	Because you're doing good work.
	Thank you.
	And I hope we get these predators off the street.
	Scary.
	Thanks, Sean.
	Thanks, Sean.
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