Sean Hannity Show - Bad for America - 3.27

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March 28, 2017 - Sean Hannity Show

01:39:19

Bad for America - 3.27

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	I know I'm bad for America.
	That's one of our top stories today.
	800-941-Sean, you want to be a part of this extravaganza.
	Also, it is not the Freedom Caucus's fault that healthcare didn't pass on Friday.
	It's just not.
	It is the leadership's fault, as I have been saying.
	This was a horrible rollout.
	It was terribly managed.
	They weren't ready to lead.
	After seven long years, eight years of promising, they're going to repeal and replace Obamacare.
	We'll get to that.
	We also have the latest on surveillance.
	Pat Buchanan will weigh in on that today.
	What is the answer to healthcare?
	Rand Paul is on the program today.
	And our top story has to be Ted Koppel.
	Let me just back off and then we'll play the cuts here.
	You know, if you'd missed it over the weekend, I don't know how you missed it because it's been everywhere.
	Why are you laughing at me?
	What's so funny in there?
	I know you're going to say, told you so.
	I told you not to do the interview.
	You and I, I told myself not to do the stupid interview, but I did it anyway.
	You know, for some reason, I have a soft spot in my heart for Koppel because I loved watching America Held Hostage.
	I was obsessed with that program.
	And I think at the time, he did a really good job.
	Now, do I know he's a liberal?
	Yeah.
	Do I know that he doesn't like what we do?
	Yeah.
	But, you know, he's Ted Koppel.
	So I said, all right, I'll do it.
	And I don't, how many interviews do I do?
	Very few now.
	Very, very few.
	I just, and how many requests do we get?
	Too many.
	Way too many.
	And I mean, you spent half your day saying no to people.
	I spent a lot of my day saying no to people today.
	That's true.
	All right.
	So why are you?
	Go ahead, gloat, and then I'll get to the internet.
	I keep telling you, you know, don't do the view.
	Don't do Ted Coppel.
	You came in.
	You said, oh, you know who I'm going to go do an interview with, Ted Koppel.
	I said, like, you have that much time out of your day to give to this man.
	Why?
	He's not going to air the truth.
	And the view.
	And it was two weeks ago.
	It took him two weeks to edit it the right way.
	Whoopi Goldberg took shots at me today on The View.
	You know, I don't have anything nice to say about her, and you told me I'm not allowed to say mean things, so I'm not going to say anything.
	I've always liked her.
	All these people turned up.
	I don't like her anymore because she's transformed into whatever it is she is now.
	But Jeddah Diabila was very nice.
	So I got to give them credit.
	The people on Fox and Friends this morning, I watched them.
	They were really awesome to me.
	And all right, so let me, if you missed it, let me bring you up to speed.
	At the end of the day, we have this exchange.
	So Ted Koppel comes about two weeks ago into my studio at Fox against the wishes of Linda, who told me not to do it.
	My own instincts told me not to do it.
	Anyway, so I agreed to the interview.
	The interview lasts anywhere between 45 and 55 minutes.
	It was just under an hour.
	And so, and we got into it.
	And I'm going to tell you right now, the exchange was a really, really good, substantive give and take.
	It was not a bad exchange.
	And I think, frankly, worthwhile for them to release the entire hour, but I'll tell you why in a second, why they're not going to do it.
	And so I agree to it.
	And he said, well, probably only four or five minutes may end up making it.
	No, 70 seconds.
	We finally added it up.
	70 seconds made airtime of the interview of the nearly hour I gave Ted Koppel.
	70 seconds.
	And it was edited in a way just to make him look good.
	Now, first of all, I'm most angry about the fact that I wasted nearly an hour of my time for 70 seconds of airtime.
	It's not like I need any more airtime.
	I'm on four hours a day.
	That's enough airtime for anybody.
	So that's point number one.
	Point number two, it was a substantive exchange.
	And that's the problem with this.
	You know, if I give him nearly an hour and he cuts it down to 70 seconds, and the headline out of the interview is, Ted Koppel lectures Sean Hannity how he's bad for America, then I just call that edited fake news because that was not representative in any way of what this interview was.
	And this, everybody over the weekend, saying, oh, you really took a cheap shot at you.
	And I'm like, no, you're reading this the wrong way.
	This, more than anything, I have been saying journalism is dead in America.
	That did get in the interview.
	I have been saying we have an information crisis in the country.
	I have been saying that thank God there's websites and blogs and drudge and talk radio and Fox News because without it, you only get one side of the story.
	And I'll explain that in more detail.
	But this, to me, was an opportunity.
	This is great.
	The Dan Rather network lecturing me that I'm bad for America.
	Why?
	Because I give my opinion, because I give information and news that CBS would never dare report on.
	If you don't believe me, ask Cheryl Atkinson, who had so many reports spiked.
	And you have to wonder about, well, Ben Rhodes, close friend of working for the president in a high position.
	Yeah, I know.
	Ben Rhodes working in a high position.
	And David Rhodes, who used to at one time worked at Fox, he's now the head of the CBS News Division.
	All right, so let me play what the, let's play the 70 seconds.
	We got 70 whole seconds here of me with Ted Coppel on Sunday morning, CBS Sunday morning.
	Go ahead.
	Sean Hannity's television program on Fox has a nightly audience of 2.9 million people.
	Actually, more, but he has from the first promoted Donald Trump and a highly partisan agenda.
	Honestly, I think liberalism has to be defeated.
	Socialism must be defeated in a political sense.
	This is not a, we don't want a revolution in this country.
	Well, where do you go on?
	You got the White House, you got the House, you got the Senate.
	Okay.
	And then we have Angry Snowflakes, and then we've got a Democratic establishment.
	I say the press in this country is out to destroy this president.
	We have to give some credit to the American people that they're somewhat intelligent and that they know the difference between an opinion show and a news show.
	Yeah.
	You're cynical.
	Look at that.
	Yeah, I am cynical because, you know.
	You think we're bad for America?
	You think I'm bad for America.
	Yeah.
	You do.
	In the long haul, I think you and all these opinion shows.
	You're all sad, Ted.
	No, you know what?
	That's sad.
	Because you're very good at what you do and because you have attracted a significantly more intellectual.
	Let me finish the sentence.
	I'm listening to that.
	With all the rest of the world.
	You have attracted people who are determined that ideology is more important than facts.
	Ideology more important than facts.
	What he's really saying there is I'm a liar.
	That's what he's saying.
	And I don't lie to my audience.
	And you know something?
	If he has any specific examples where I'm wrong, I want them.
	Now, what I'm calling on CBS to do now is release the entire tape.
	If you're only going to release 70 seconds of an interview, he wasn't really just saying that I'm bad for America.
	My first part of my question was to him.
	So you're saying we're bad for America.
	You're saying I'm bad for America.
	And he's saying, yes, he's talking about opinion shows.
	Now, the funny thing about this is Mr. Journalist, now I make no pretense.
	I am a conservative with an opinion.
	Everybody knows who I am.
	And he doesn't even give enough respect to the audience to distinguish between opinion, the editorial page, and real hard news.
	Well, I give the American people a lot more credit than that.
	He apparently doesn't do it.
	But the great irony of all of this is he doesn't like the, he's saying that opinion is bad for America, and he's giving his opinion while saying it.
	By saying that I am bad for America.
	So that's number one, flagrant hypocrisy.
	You know, the sad thing about this is I call this edited fake news.
	We've talked a lot about fake news recently.
	You know, the former home of Dan Rather of all places, where Cheryl Atkinson had her story spiked.
	The only thing bad in the interview is the dishonesty, the bias, and his hypocrisy here.
	And I really was trying to be respectful, as you can tell in that clip.
	He wanted to finish his thing.
	Okay, why didn't he include my response?
	I gave substantive example after example of media bias.
	And he didn't want that.
	He came in with a predetermined narrative that was written long before he ever got into the studio with me.
	And after 50 minutes or so, they run 70 seconds of this.
	This type of edited fake news, this is a trick that 60 Minutes, the networks have been playing for years.
	That's not journalism.
	This is just a cheap shot agenda-driven attack.
	And he's as guilty as I am by giving his opinion with that answer and running it and not giving my rebuttal.
	And I put more liberals on my shows than I think any other show on TV for crying out loud.
	That is really, it's just me and Tucker.
	For many years, it was me alone, the only conservative that has a news program in the country.
	Now, I have some questions for Ted.
	You know, Ted, have you ever said any place anywhere that I can find that what Dan Rather at your network did to George W. Bush was that bad for America?
	Did you ever stand up for Cheryl Atkinson and the fact that her stories were spiked?
	Was that bad for America because they were negative towards President Obama?
	Did you ever wonder if the stories that she had researched and investigated were spiked because the head of the news division at CBS once worked at Fox, David Rhodes, the brother of Ben Rhodes, high-ranking official for then President Obama?
	Did that have any influence?
	Is that a conflict of interest, Ted?
	And the other thing is, you know, Ted, I will take my body of work, my 21 and a half years at Fox, and I'll say, how about the last 21 years on radio, although it's 30, and I'll compare it with the work of your colleagues at CBS?
	Did CBS, Ted, ever ask Obama about his friendship, starting his political career?
	Imagine instead of coming down the escalator at Trump Tower, Donald Trump announced he's running for president in the home of an unrepentant domestic terrorist, two of them, Bill Ayers and Bernadine Dorn.
	If that was, you know, would CBS have ignored the issue if it was Donald Trump?
	Because I can't find a single instance where anybody at CBS asked about Bill Ayers.
	He gave speeches with him, sat on boards with him.
	Ted, would you hang out with an unrepentant domestic terrorist?
	I don't think so.
	You know, did you ever delve deep into what black liberation theology and the church of GD America, Reverend Wright, 20-plus years in the pews?
	You ever dig into Obama's comments?
	White folks' greed runs a world in need?
	Do you ever dig into after eight years of Obama's presidency, did CBS ever show the numbers that I've shown about the millions more in poverty on food stamps out of the labor force, the worst recovery since the 40s and the lowest home ownership rate in 51 years and a doubling of our national debt?
	I never saw that on any CBS news program.
	Did CBS ever put up all the laws that Hillary Clinton likely violated with her email server in a bathroom of her mom and pop shop closet so she could avoid congressional oversight?
	Did CBS ever connect the dots when Hillary Clinton signed off as Secretary of State to give away 20% of America's uranium going to Russia of all places and the donations of people tied to that deal to the Clinton Foundation or the money that Bill made in speeches in Russia?
	Do you ever do that?
	Did CBS ever expose that Hillary Clinton lied about Benghazi?
	Did CBS ever cover in any detail how many in the media were colluding with Hillary Clinton's campaign this election cycle?
	How much time has CBS devoted to this phony Russia conspiracy story without a shred of evidence?
	You know, I honestly did.
	I liked watching Ted during Nightline Days.
	I loved America Held Hostage.
	I learned a lot.
	It broadened my desire to get into opinion journalism because that's what I am.
	I'm an opinionated journalist and a talk show host.
	But the difference, Ted, respectfully, is I'm honest with my audience.
	You're not.
	You pretend to be fair and balanced.
	I don't.
	And if you really cared about truth and journalism, how do you work for a network that is so abusively biased with the history that it has?
	How can I be bad for America when I offer the American people news and information your network will never touch because you have an agenda?
	I'm proud of the work I do on radio and TV.
	We have a team that works hard every single day to bring people news and information.
	Now, if you're going to suggest I'm lying to people and I'm putting ideology ahead of facts, I want your examples.
	And I'll say one last thing, and then I got a break.
	Ted, release the whole tape.
	That was a cheap, cheap shot on your part.
	I gave you 50 plus minutes of my time.
	You aired 70 seconds to make yourself look good.
	Release the tape, Ted.
	And when we come back, I'll tell you why he won't release the tape, why CBS won't release the tape.
	I'll give you the behind the scenes of why.
	All right, Linda's dying because I wouldn't tell her during the break why I don't think they're going to release the tape.
	Because, so we sit down to start the interview.
	I think we had to do the first question over.
	I don't know why.
	Some reason.
	That happens occasionally.
	I'm not complaining about that.
	I'm not even complaining.
	I think this is an opportunity to expose what edited fake news is.
	But he asked me a question, the first question of the interview.
	I give a thoughtful, substantive answer.
	As soon as none of that is going to air, I'm like, well, why am I sitting here if you don't want my real answers?
	So he would be showing the American people exactly what goes on.
	I mean, when I say edited fake news, you get me for 50 minutes, you air 70 seconds, you can turn it into anything you want, which is what he did here.
	And then so all throughout the rest of the interview, I said, hey, Ted, you really need to keep this part in about what I'm about to say here.
	Keep this in because this is really important.
	He didn't keep any of that in.
	And I was almost taunting him the entire time because of what he said after the first question.
	None of that is going to make air.
	I am very deliberate in the things I say.
	I'm dead, Coppel.
	This is nightline.
	I'm like, really?
	Why am I, why?
	And I walked away.
	I'm like, why did I just waste an hour of my life?
	And you may say, oh, Hannah, do you think you're too important to waste your hour?
	If you only wanted 70 seconds, come in.
	I'll give you 70 seconds.
	What do you want to write down what you want me to say?
	Is that it?
	So in other words, you have a predetermined narrative.
	It's interesting other sidebars here.
	I don't think he wants out him saying that I'm not going to air that.
	I don't think they want out me taunting him to keep this in and keep that in and keep this in and keep that in.
	Because it became clear in the course of the interview.
	I guess I should have walked out, but I just, I'm too respectful, too nice.
	Anyway, well, more on me being bad for America.
	Why did this repeal-replace bill fail and the latest on surveilling Trump?
	Straight ahead.
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	You know what this reminds me of with this Ted Koppel on Bad for America thing?
	If you're just joining us, let's play again.
	So I gave, I think it's over 50 minutes.
	I said 45 on Twitter just to be just in case it wasn't 50.
	I asked after the interview, I said, how long was that?
	They said 50-something minutes, but I just said, all right, I'll be conservative.
	And they ran 70 seconds of the interview.
	70.
	And this is it, if you missed it.
	Sean Hannity's television program on Fox has a nightly audience of 2.9 million viewers.
	First Air Hamiltonian.
	Promoted Donald Trump and a highly partisan agenda.
	Honestly, I think liberalism has to be defeated.
	Socialism must be defeated in a political sense.
	This is not a, we don't want a revolution in this country.
	What more do you want?
	You got the White House, you got the House, you got the Senate.
	Okay.
	And then we have Angry Snowflakes, and then we've got a Democratic establishment.
	I say the press in this country is out to destroy this president.
	We have to give some credit to the American people that they're somewhat intelligent and that they know the difference between an opinion show and a news show.
	Yeah.
	You're not.
	You're cynical.
	Look at that.
	Yeah, I am cynical because, you know.
	You think we're bad for America?
	You think I'm bad for America?
	Yeah.
	You do.
	In the long haul, I think you and all these opinion shows.
	No, you know why?
	That's sad.
	Because you're very good at what you do and because you have attracted a significantly more intelligent American.
	Let me finish the sentence before you do that.
	With all due respect.
	Yes.
	You have attracted people who are determined that ideology is more important than facts.
	That's a nice way of saying a back-handed kind.
	You're so good at what you do.
	I mean, I don't know what to say.
	He's basically saying I'm a liar.
	Ideology over facts.
	That's who I've attracted.
	So if I'm attracting them, you know, I just defy him to give me the examples.
	I spent quite a bit of time.
	I actually do a lot of research on this show.
	And, you know, for example, back, I guess this was in 1999, leading up to the 2000 election, and he did a nightline story how the vast majority, noting that the vast majority of Americans don't find it important that George W. Bush may have used cocaine.
	And Koppel didn't allow this to dissuade him from then devoting a half hour to the unsubstantiated rumors.
	And he editorialized: why not accept his one-size-fits-all declaration that when I was young and irresponsible, I was young and irresponsible?
	Perhaps we might, perhaps we might say, because he has never accepted youth and irresponsibility as a legitimate excuse for illegal behavior.
	Both as campaigner and governor of Texas, he said, if anything, toughen the rhetoric, blah, blah, blah, blah.
	Well, okay.
	Why didn't Koppel ever devote?
	And who was this that picked it up, I guess, media research?
	They say that Koppel never devoted a single nightline episode to Juanita Broderick, to Juanita Broderick's allegations from the night.
	This is in the 90s now when it was breaking news about Bill Clinton.
	Why didn't he cover that?
	Isn't that an allegation, too?
	Koppel never devoted a nightline when Bill Clinton admitted using marijuana.
	I did, but I didn't in hell.
	1990, Koppel covered Maryam Berry's arrest, but apparently he was citing many of his supporters in the community feeling the prosecution was racist.
	Wasn't that the case where he actually was on video?
	And in the video, he said the B set Me Um.
	Isn't that the same case?
	Well, he's on videotape.
	I mean, I guess, you know, when he joined, you know, on April 9th, 1992, he joined ABC's investigation employing anonymous California state police to charge that while he was governor, Jerry Brown allowed drug use in his home.
	Why wouldn't he have done it in the other case?
	You know, look, there's so many other examples here.
	You know, in 1989, remember Al Michaels?
	Remember that it was in San Francisco, the earthquake?
	Remember the bridge that was destroyed?
	It was horrible.
	Right as the baseball game was getting started, horrible earthquake, 1989.
	I remember it like it was yesterday.
	I remember Al Michaels did such an amazing job that day.
	I remember meeting him once.
	I met him at Rush Limbaugh's wedding, and I said, I brought that up to him because it was such an incredible job that he did that day.
	And Coppel asked after the earthquake, you know, if this couldn't be blamed on tax-cutting conservatives.
	Any instances where the money was not spent because of rollback of Prop 13 where money would have made a difference?
	Conservatives?
	Really?
	February 1990?
	Well, he devoted a whole show on how the U.S. would normalize relations with the Sandinistas after they defeated Violetta Chamorro in a free election.
	Almost certainly the Sandinistas will still win, apparently he said.
	And look, I can go on.
	I'm making my point here.
	He has an agenda.
	He's not unbiased.
	He's not fair.
	He's not balanced.
	And, you know, I just say that this is such an example.
	60 Minutes has lived off of this game of edited fake news for decades where they go out and they film you for hours and hours and hours.
	Recently, there was a reporter, I don't remember who, Fox asked me if I would allow this guy to follow me for 24 hours.
	I'm like, I don't like anybody for 24 hours being around me.
	I don't even like anyone in this studio when I'm doing my radio show.
	Well, we tolerate it occasionally.
	If it's Jonathan Gillum or our liberal friend Rick Unger, we like him around because he's funny.
	He's fun.
	I don't know.
	It's just to me, it is the stories they don't cover, the conspiracies they do cover, the Russian case, collusion.
	You know, I list all these stories on purpose because what I'm offering is not what CBS offers.
	I will, you know, if Donald Trump started his career in Bill Ayers' home, I promise you, it would have been huge news.
	There was only one time in the mainstream media, once, that then Barack Obama candidate was asked about his relationship, starting his political career in the home of an unrepentant domestic terrorist that bombed New York City police headquarters, the Capitol, and one other building and other instances.
	And then of all days, 9-11, 2001 was quoted in the New York Times saying he wished he had done more.
	The only reason the one time it was asked is because the day before a debate, George Stephanopoulos, I fed him the question and he had never even heard of it.
	Listen.
	There are two questions that I don't think anybody has asked Barack Obama, and I don't know if this is going to be on your list tomorrow.
	One is the only time he's ever been asked about his association with Bill Ayers, the unrepentant terrorist from the Weather Underground, who on 9-11 of all days in the New York Times was saying, I don't regret setting bombs.
	I don't think we did enough.
	When asked about it by the Politico, David Axelrod said they have a friendly relationship and that they had done a number of speeches together and that they sat on a board together.
	Is that a question you might ask?
	Well, I'm taking notes right now.
	September 11th, 2001, of all days, there was an article in the New York Times, and there are a number of quotes about Bill Ayers, and the Politico had in there the comments.
	All right, you get the point.
	So then he ended up asking the question.
	It was the only time.
	Well, we vetted the relationship.
	Nobody else in the media did that.
	We vetted what black liberation that so inspired Obama.
	We vetted the whole thing about what black liberation theology is.
	How do you sit in the pews of a guy that says GD America the Sunday after 9-11 and America's chickens have come home to roost?
	White America, US of KKKA, America's chickens coming home to loose.
	No, no, no.
	Not God bless America.
	God damn America.
	God f America.
	CBS handled what black liberation theology is.
	Did you inform your news audience there?
	Now, this is an important question.
	All right, back to the Ayers issue.
	So I tell George Stephanopoulos the day before the debate, I feed him the question.
	He hadn't heard about the issue at all.
	Here's him asking Obama that night, the next time.
	On this issue, general theme of patriotism in your relationships, a gentleman named William Ayers.
	He was part of the Weather Underground in the 1970s.
	They bombed the Pentagon, the Capitol, and other buildings.
	He's never apologized for that.
	And in fact, on 9-11, he was quoted in the New York Times saying, I don't regret setting bombs.
	I feel we didn't do enough.
	An early organizing meeting for your state Senate campaign was held at his house, and your campaign has said you were friendly.
	Can you explain that relationship for the voters and explain to Democrats why it won't be a problem?
	This is a guy who lives in my neighborhood who's a professor of English in Chicago, who I know and who I have not received some official endorsement from.
	He's not somebody who I exchange ideas from on a regular basis.
	And the notion that somehow, as a consequence of me knowing somebody who engaged in detestable acts 40 years ago when I was eight years old, somehow reflects on me and my values doesn't make much sense, George.
	This kind of game in which anybody who I know, regardless of how flimsy the relationship is, somehow their ideas could be attributed to me.
	I think the American people are smarter than that.
	They're not going to suggest somehow that that is reflective of my views because it obviously isn't.
	Yeah, really?
	Just some guy in the neighborhood.
	I just started my political career in his house and I give speeches with him.
	I sit on boards with him.
	Now, here's a question for Ted Compel.
	If that was Donald Trump, how many times do you think your friends in the media would have asked him that question?
	If it was Donald Trump saying white folks' greed runs a world in need, how many times do you think they'd ask about that?
	How many times do you think, you know, if Donald Trump ends up with the horrific failure numbers of Obama, how many times do you think CBS will post that?
	If Donald Trump set up an email server in a bathroom closet to avoid congressional oversight and checks and balances and separation of powers, do you think the media would make a big deal about that and talk about the laws, the crimes committed?
	They'd impeach him if he did it.
	Or that if Donald Trump signed over 20% of America's uranium and then we find out that all the people involved in the deal gave millions and millions and millions to the Donald Trump Foundation, that's what Hillary did with the Clinton Foundation and Donald Trump got $500,000 speaking in Moscow, twice his normal fee, like Bill got at the same time.
	What if Donald Trump lied about Benghazi with that flimsy, ridiculous excuse that turned out to be proven wrong, and they knew it was wrong on day one?
	You know, what if Donald Trump didn't offer after it was requested all the different times the assistance to secure that compound?
	You know, how about the media?
	Have you talked at length about how the news media in this country is so corrupt that they were caught colluding with the Hillary campaign this last election?
	You see, Ted, those are stories that I do.
	I know I'm bad for America, but when I offer people news and information your network won't give them, I'm the balance.
	I'm the fair part.
	You just, you know, the only difference between me and you, my network and your network, is I'm honest about who I am and what I say.
	You know, and that's why, you know, when this happened this weekend and everybody's saying, wow, I'm like, this is a great opportunity to educate people, not only on fake news, but on the manipulation of news.
	Because they can manipulate news by the stories they select or the stories they don't select to cover.
	That could be agenda-driven from the get-go.
	And then they can take, in my case, 50-plus minutes of tape and cut it down to 70 seconds and make the host look great like you did to me this weekend.
	And by the way, I don't care one bit about it, not one single bit.
	No, I don't.
	I really don't know.
	But it's such a great opportunity to expose to people that what they think they're watching is often not real.
	It's manipulated.
	You can't have a substantive discussion.
	Now, I will stand by this, that the exchange we had was very good.
	It was a substantive give and take.
	It wasn't all me.
	It wasn't all him.
	It was good.
	As a matter of fact, he asked me at one point, Hannity, give me examples where he's compared to Hitler.
	I said, I can't think of him off the top of my head.
	You know what I did the next day?
	I sent him a list of examples.
	Thank you very much.
	So, Ted, if you have the courage, release the tape.
	CBS News, David Rhodes, maybe you can check with Ben and see if he'll let you release the tape.
	And the reason you're not going to release the tape, because America will figure out this fake news, this edited fake news game that you guys in the media have been playing for way too many years and getting away with.
	You know what the difference here is?
	By the way, I have more than 2.9 million listeners.
	If you add the ratings lately, coupled with the rerun, it's about 5 million.
	And then we're not even talking about hits on YouTube or my websites.
	So it's a lot more.
	And we have about 14.5 million radio listeners.
	15?
	I don't even know what it is now.
	It's 17.
	17?
	All right, whatever Linda says.
	Is that what the latest talker said?
	So, you know, release the tape.
	Let people see how you really operate.
	This is a learning moment for so many people.
	I didn't plan on spending that much time on this, but, you know, I think it's worthwhile.
	You know, all these networks have gotten away with playing these games and taking people down with this edited fake news or story selection or stories ignored game that they play, but it is a big part of their institutional bias.
	And the difference, they made a mistake here.
	And the big mistake is, you know what?
	They messed with somebody that has the ability and the desire to fight back.
	From what I hear inside of CBS News at this very hour, they're going through convulsions over this.
	All right, when we come back, Rand Paul, what to do for health care, the latest on the surveillance issue with Pat Buchanan and much more.
	All right, hour two Sean Hannity show.
	Write down our toll-free telephone number.
	You want to be a part of the program.
	We'll get back to our top story from earlier today.
	Of course, Ted Koppel saying I'm bad for America.
	And Joe Concha is going to join us.
	Also, we have Pat Buchanan at the bottom of this hour.
	All right, so the health care bill, they didn't have the votes in the House.
	And here is the president's reaction and Mark Meadows of the Freedom Caucus' reaction to this on Friday.
	Listen.
	I think you know I was very clear because I think there wasn't a speech I made or very few where I didn't mention that perhaps the best thing that could happen is exactly what happened today because we'll end up with a truly great health care bill in the future after this mess known as Obamacare explodes.
	So I want to thank everybody for being here.
	It will go very smoothly, I really believe.
	I think this is something that certainly was an interesting period of time.
	We all learned a lot.
	We learned a lot about loyalty.
	We learned a lot about the vote-getting process.
	We learned a lot about some very arcane rules in, obviously, both the Senate and in the House.
	So it's been, certainly for me, it's been a very interesting experience.
	But in the end, I think it's going to be an experience that leads to an even better health care plan.
	You know, George, you have a long history in the White House.
	You know how this works.
	To put a stake in it today would not be accurate, and nor would it be the narrative that this is a great failure for the president.
	He's done more in 65 days than any president in modern history.
	And so let's put it in real perspective where we are.
	Well, Congressman, I'm not the one putting a stake in it.
	I think it's the president who's put the stake in it right there by saying he wants to move on, move on to tax reform and other issues.
	Chairman of your energy.
	And I do.
	And I plan to help him with tax reform.
	I can tell you that he's got his team working on tax reform right now.
	And in terms of government funding, I heard your panelists talk about that.
	There's not going to be an issue there.
	This is about one thing.
	It's getting premiums and making sure people are covered.
	It's making sure that we fulfill our campaign promise.
	And ultimately, that's where we're.
	All right.
	Joining us now is somebody that predicted this bill would not pass.
	And he's offered an alternative bill along with the Freedom Caucus in the Senate.
	And that is Senator Rand Paul of Kentucky, who, by the way, is not John McCain's good friend.
	How are you?
	Hey, Sean.
	Thanks for having me.
	McCain has like gone off.
	He's jumped the shark.
	What has gotten into him lately?
	You know, I thought the old McCarthyism thing got kind of old, calling people communists, calling people friends of Russia.
	I thought that was so 1950s, you know, so I really thought we were kind of beyond that.
	But no, I take it pretty seriously because when somebody in the Senate calls another senator basically a traitor to their country, you think that somebody ought to be able to do it.
	I'm watching it.
	It seems like him and Lindsey Graham are just obsessed 24-7 to go after the president and make themselves relevant.
	I actually want to start a poll.
	Which one's going to jump to the Democratic Party first?
	Yeah, neither one of them have been willing to accept the fact that the massive intelligence community that we have, the massive surveillance state that we have, could have possibly been picking up President Trump and or his staff members through targeting foreigners and reverse targeting Americans.
	That probably happened.
	I don't have the facts, but my guess is it probably happened because about a million Americans are having their phone calls listened to on a routine basis if they talk to foreigners.
	Well, I know that, but if you listen to guys like Bill Benny, who was an NSA whistleblower for 32 years, he served his country with the NSA, and he claims every call, every text, every email is being surveilled.
	Do you believe that?
	Well, they're collecting the data on everything.
	There were reports like the entire country of Italy was having their metadata, which means who you called and how long.
	And some people say, oh, that's not that big a deal.
	But what you find out, if I know who you call and how long, I can tell 80% of the time what your religion is, 100% of the time who your doctors are.
	I can most of the time figure out by looking at things like visa bills, all kinds of things, what medicines you take, what diseases you have.
	A lot of very personal information is on your visa metadata and your phone metadata.
	And I think they should only be looking at people for whom they have suspicion and a judge's warrant.
	I don't think we should be collecting everyone's data.
	Well, what they did to General Flynn is a national disgrace, and it is a felony, and we haven't gotten to the bottom of that.
	I also think these new revelations that there was surveillance of Trump Tower, both at the server and the president or president-elect himself, is beyond disturbing.
	But, you know, you've got these idiots in the mainstream media that say, well, President Trump said he was wiretapped.
	So the other day I was on Fox and I held up my phone and I said, there are no wires attached to phones anymore, guys.
	When he said wiretapped, he means eavesdropped upon, and that is an older word.
	Surveilled, right?
	Wiretapped, surveilled.
	Yeah, eavesdropped, wiretapped.
	It means the same thing.
	But nobody's crawling into your house with a bug anymore, but they are attaching things digitally to cables that connect the world or even through cellular phone communications.
	They are tapping into all of this, and they are mining data by the millions and millions.
	And now we're seeing that they would use that data to bring someone down.
	People can have their arguments one way or another about General Flynn, but the bottom line is the intelligence community through illegally releasing his phone call brought him down.
	And that is something we shouldn't let stand in our country.
	I totally agree.
	All right.
	You predicted this health care bill wouldn't work.
	It didn't work.
	And I know there are efforts to revive it and fix it.
	And I would suggest that the reason this failed is that nobody saw the bill before they rolled it out.
	I think that was a mistake by the leadership.
	And even before it came out, you were getting rumblings because you were on the show talking about, well, I hear this is in it, and I hear this is in it, and I hear this is in it.
	And lo and behold, things that you feared were in the bill.
	So there was no coalition building and consensus building before the bill was actually released.
	And then there was a lot of bullying going on by leadership.
	And I'm like, this is not the way to manage.
	You've had eight years to get your act together on this.
	I think if I had 30 minutes with the president and with the House and Senate leadership, I think I could fix it in 30 minutes.
	And here's what I would do.
	I would put a chart up in the room and I would say, let's check off the things that everybody agrees on.
	All 237 Republicans in the House and all 52 Republicans in the Senate.
	Let's check off the five or ten things we agreed to, stick them in a bill, and it won't be perfect.
	So people are wrong in thinking that the conservatives are purists.
	We know the bill may not be perfect, but we want to put in it what we all agree on.
	The things we don't agree on, let's put them in a separate bill called replacement, and then they either pass or fail depending on more of a 60-vote majority.
	But on the simple 51-vote majority, let's put in the five or six or seven or ten things that we all agree on and check them off.
	Ask the moderates, do you agree to cutting the taxes?
	Yes.
	Ask the moderates if we agree that we can get away from some of these terrible mandates.
	Check.
	So I think there are several things we could.
	Let's make the bill as skinny as it needs to be to pass, and let's get it done.
	Well, I think that's a pretty good strategy.
	Why can't you get the 30 minutes with the president?
	I mean, look, I got to give you credit and some of the other candidates credit.
	You know what?
	You wanted to be president.
	You lost.
	And you know what?
	You moved on.
	You know, I'm reading Jeb Bush's comments, McCain's comments, and John Kasich's comments and Lindsey Graham's obsession with the president.
	What is it with these people that they can't get over that they lost?
	Yeah, and the interesting thing for me is the way I've looked at it is I think this is the best cabinet.
	This cabinet has so far exceeded my expectations.
	Even some who I am now having some disagreements, I think they're better than Reagan's cabinet.
	I mean, I think he really has picked a conservative cabinet.
	I think he wants to govern in a conservative way.
	But I think the status quo people, the establishment Republicans, got his ear on this health care thing, and they said, oh, it's a piece of cake.
	Everybody's for my plan.
	When in reality, it was Obamacare Light, and most conservatives were never for that plan.
	And nobody asked us until they stuck the thing out and said, take it or leave it.
	So it offended every conservative in the land.
	And all they had to do was sit down and ask us, do you agree with all of these things?
	Are these the things conservatives want?
	We would have told them no.
	Yeah, well, I mean, that's the part of consensus building.
	I mean, you know, it seems to me after seven or eight years to roll it out this way, I am stunned.
	But see, I'm convinced.
	I am still convinced that you can put the leader of the moderates in the room, leader of the House caucus, leader of the Republican Study Committee, and then the voted-on leadership, Speaker of the House, majority leader in the Senate, and all the leadership team, put them in there and say, all right, we can't agree on everything.
	We're not going to get everything, but we're going to put them in one at a time.
	Here's a basket.
	What things will you agree to?
	Will you agree to cut the Obamacare taxes?
	I think that's 100% yes.
	Will you agree to get rid of the individual mandate?
	I think that's 100% yes.
	If that's all we agree to, that's not perfect.
	Still, insurance rates aren't going to go down, and I still won't be happy, but I will vote for that if it has things that everybody agrees to.
	But if you stick in it a new entitlement program, or if you stick in it a new tax, then those are new things you have to get everybody to agree on.
	And what we mostly agreed on was repeal.
	Our disagreements are on replacement, but you could still put forward replacement bills the same day as repeal, and then everybody gets to vote.
	And you tell the people who have they want to keep Medicaid expanded in their state, you're going to get a vote on that.
	You will honestly get a vote.
	We're just not guaranteeing that you get victory, but you will get a vote on that.
	And I think that's the honest broker thing we need instead of sticking everything in one bill and then trying to force everybody to agree to stuff they don't agree with.
	You know, I got to tell you, it just seems to me that this is far more simple than they've made it.
	And I understand that the Republican Party, just like the Democratic Party, is a coalition party.
	But if you have moderates and you have the Tuesday, Sunday, Monday, Wednesday, Thursday groups, and you have the study group and the caucus, the Freedom Caucus, you know, nobody's going to get everything they want.
	I think it's a good idea to start with all the things you agree on.
	And then after that, build out from there.
	What can you accept?
	And this is what I've been saying all along.
	If you separate repeal from replace, we all agree on repeal.
	We all voted on repeal last year.
	Let's do the repeal.
	And then the moderates say, oh, I'm not doing repeal unless we get replace.
	So we do a replacement that includes the chance that they can vote to keep Medicaid expansion.
	If that's what they want, they can vote to keep it.
	But we have the vote that day, and it'll probably be a super majority.
	It'll probably be like traditional legislation, and it'll be simple majority for repeal.
	And then the replace will be like a traditional bill, and it may or may not pass, but everybody will get a chance.
	I have a free market bill that doesn't have any mandates in it and doesn't have any extra subsidies in it, just the free market competition buying groups.
	And in fact, here, Sean, this is the most amazing thing.
	Last week, Paul Ryan in the House passed my bill, most of what I wanted.
	The replacement bill that would allow buying groups and co-ops, it would allow NRA to have their 10 million people could buy health insurance in one group.
	It passed in the House.
	There wasn't one news story on it.
	Why were they busy fighting amongst ourselves instead of saying we passed part of replacement last week?
	And why is the Senate not taking up the buying groups this week?
	The House passed it last week, and to my knowledge, there's no plans to bring it up in the Senate.
	All right.
	Stay right there.
	Ram Paul, I have a couple more questions before we leave, and just stay right there.
	Then we'll also get to our news roundup information overload, Pat Buchanan coming up, and the top story of the day.
	Yes, I am bad for America.
	And as we continue with Kentucky Senator Ram Paul, not only about the health care bill, look, if they don't learn in the House from this mistake, which is they didn't build consensus before they rolled out the bill, I mean, is it possible they make that mistake on the president's economic plan?
	And is it possible they make the same mistake on tax reform?
	Well, here's the thing they need to understand.
	All Republicans are in agreement on lowering tax rates, but not all Republicans want to vote for a budget that never balances.
	So in order to get to tax reform, they're going to have to pass another budget.
	And as you'll recall, when they went to Obamacare, I was the only one that voted against the budget because it never balanced.
	So I'm telling them now, I've told them from the beginning of time, I'm not voting for a budget that never balances.
	So if you want to have tax reform, you're going to have to pass a good budget.
	What about the trillion dollars they're talking about for infrastructure?
	That scares me if it's not pay-as-you-go.
	Although I did like the answer that I got from, I think it was Elaine Chow when she was on the program, and she's talking about public-private partnerships that the trillion dollars is not going to be all federal funds by any means.
	Well, here's the problem is, and I'm for building some infrastructure.
	I just think we should do it by letting some of the American profit come home.
	There's two trillions of dollars of American profit overseas.
	That's the repatriation.
	It's taxed at 35%.
	You lower its tax to 5%.
	You get a couple hundred billion dollars in tax revenue.
	A trillion dollars in money comes home.
	And you could finance a lot of infrastructure with that.
	But with regard to the budget, people need to realize, and I know your listeners know this, if you do not look at entitlement reform and you just eliminate all the other spending, the budget still never balances.
	And so right now we're looking at, you know, the McCain wing of the party wants to increase $60 billion in military spending.
	So does the president.
	To do that, to balance things, you never get to balance.
	But even to keep things where they are, which is adding several hundred billion in debt every year, even to keep that, what you find is that you'd have to cut programs dramatically.
	And here's my prediction.
	The military increase will stay, all the cuts will fall away, and the debt will go up.
	And I just can't say that.
	I mean, all the talk of significant cutting for these departments is not going to happen.
	Well, I'm not saying the president's not sincere.
	I'm saying Congress is not sincere.
	Republicans and Democrats are unified in one thing in Washington, and that's to continue to spend money.
	I promise you that the loud voices for more military spending will get it.
	And then those of us who say you should cut to offset that will lose because they will make a deal with the Democrats.
	The deal is always that the military hawks make a deal with the Democrats, Democrats get welfare, and the military buildup gets their money as well.
	So the only way they get it is they trade with the liberals to get more spending programs, and the debt will get worse.
	Well, what's the point of having the majority if you've got to make deals with the Democrats and you don't need to?
	Don't get me started on that, Sean.
	Isn't it time, by the way, to just do away with cloture and do away and use ⁇ like, for example, the Democrats are delaying a Gorsuch vote.
	I mean, do you think we'll get to cloture in the Senate or no?
	I think what everybody's been saying is that Neil Gorsuch is going to be the next Supreme Court justice, and we're sort of leaving it at that at this point.
	We'll see how it happens, but I'm predicting that he will become a justice.
	But I think we should take that same attitude with Obamacare.
	And, you know, Ted Cruz convinced me of this more and more, that the person in the chair gets to decide what can be included in the budget.
	So those rules about the regulation saying we can't include them, we should ask the vice president, and this is part of the leadership that I want to come from the White House.
	The White House should tell both Senate and House leadership, we are going to repeal the regulations.
	Mike Pence is coming down to the Capitol.
	It's in the Constitution.
	He can sit in the chair, and the chair makes the decision over what is included in the budget.
	I like that idea a lot.
	All right, Ram Paul, good ideas.
	Thank you.
	Thanks, Sean.
	This is a different way to do things for sure.
	800-941-Sean, toll-free telephone number.
	When we come back, Patrick J. Buchanan joins us in our top story, how I am bad for America.
	Straight ahead.
	As you know, our practice is not to confirm the existence of ongoing investigations, especially those investigations that involve classified matters.
	But in unusual circumstances where it is in the public interest, it may be appropriate to do so, as Justice Department policies recognize.
	This is one of those circumstances.
	I have been authorized by the Department of Justice to confirm that the FBI, as part of our counterintelligence mission, is investigating the Russian government's efforts to interfere in the 2016 presidential election.
	And that includes investigating the nature of any links. between individuals associated with the Trump campaign and the Russian government and whether there was any coordination between the campaign and Russia's efforts.
	As with any counterintelligence investigation, this will also include an assessment of whether any crimes were committed.
	Because it is an open, ongoing investigation and is classified, I cannot say more about what we are doing and whose conduct we are examining.
	At the request of congressional leaders, we have taken the extraordinary step, in coordination with the Department of Justice, of briefing this Congress's leaders, including the leaders of this committee, in a classified setting in detail about the investigation.
	But I can't go into those details here.
	I know that is extremely frustrating to some folks, but it is the way it has to be.
	Director Comey, I want to begin by attempting to put to rest several claims made by the President about his predecessor, namely that President Obama wiretapped his phones.
	So that we can be precise, I want to refer you to exactly what the President said and ask you whether there is any truth to it.
	First, the President claimed, quote, terrible.
	Just found out that Obama had my wires tapped in Trump Tower just before the victory.
	Nothing found.
	This is McCarthyism, unquote.
	Director Comey, was the President's statement that Obama had his wires tapped in Trump Tower a true statement?
	With respect to the President's tweets about alleged wiretapping directed at him by the prior administration, I have no information that supports those tweets, and we have looked carefully inside the FBI.
	The Department of Justice has asked me to share with you that the answer is the same for the Department of Justice and all its components.
	The Department has no information that supports those tweets.
	All right, there you have James Comey.
	That goes back to last week, and what we have been talking about repeatedly on this program is, oh, he'll say the investigation into Trump and Russia's going on, but he doesn't comment on ongoing investigations.
	Okay.
	Are you going to investigate the leakers?
	Well, I can't comment on that.
	What a double standard.
	Anyway, our friend Patrick J. Buchanan is with us.
	He has a great column out about this.
	Will RussiaGate end up backfiring on the left?
	You know, Pat, more and more, especially because of the reporting of Sarah Carter and John Solomon, I mean, these are two veteran investigative reporters.
	They're not part of our right-wing conspiracy, you know.
	And also Devin Nunez's revelation, it proves, I think, Trump was, there's no doubt at this point in my mind at all that he was surveilled and surveilled pretty intensely.
	Well, that's, you know, that's my belief and my suspicion and belief because of what Chairman Nunes has said.
	We have been told, Sean, that in the course of legitimate intelligence surveillance, Trump people's names and Trump people's conversations were picked up.
	It looks as though they were transcribed, and then they were spread through all the intel agencies, unmasking the individuals.
	And subsequent to that, all these leaks come out from intelligence sources about what the Trump people were saying and doing.
	And it looks like a series of crimes have been committed in there.
	First, the unmasking.
	Secondly, the leak, for example, the leak that brought down General Flynn.
	That's a de facto felony.
	And the key question is, is the FBI investigating these leaks, some of which may be coming out of the FBI, because here you've got real crimes, whereas as yet, after eight months, we've got Clapper, DNI Clapper, and the head of the CIA, saying we haven't found any connections.
	Well, it's Clapper.
	And also, you know, I can play it, but the same thing was said about Comey.
	And the same thing was, there's no evidence at all.
	I haven't got a link, and the three suspects, so to speak, are Roger Stone, Paul Manafort, and Cardinal Page, they've all said, look, we'll testify publicly about any connections with the Russians.
	In addition to that, Sean, I can't figure out what the crime would be.
	I mean, President Trump, as candidate Trump, said, hey, Vlad, put out those 30,000 emails if you got them.
	I mean, maybe that's collusion.
	Was that a crime?
	Of course not.
	Listen, I mean, I think he was doing it just to put pressure on Hillary, which was a smart thing to do.
	It was a joke.
	Frankly, you know, people don't get how funny he is, but the more important issue here is what we're discovering and what the media is not reporting.
	And the big story is for eight long months, Pat, I call it the alt-left propaganda destroy Trump media.
	They just want to destroy this man.
	How do you sustain a story for eight long months in the media without one shred of evidence?
	Well, the reason they're doing this, with due respect, is why has the FBI taken eight months to learn whether or not, I mean, Paul Manafort or Roger Stone or this other fella talked to the Russians and did something wrong?
	Have they been brought in by the FBI?
	Have the grand jury been impaneled?
	I mean, why does it take eight months to learn a simple fact like that?
	And the reason all these people can get away every day with saying the Russian connection and is Putin running the American government and did he elect Donald Trump and all the rest of it is because the FBI is sitting there under Comey and won't clear the air on these things.
	And they really ought to be given a deadline and told, look, Fisher cut bait.
	Well, they should be, but, you know, I can't figure Comey out for the life of me.
	I mean, Comey seems to have just been politicized, and he seems like he's twisted in pretzels about everything that he's doing and doesn't know he can't make decisions.
	From what I understand, it's almost impossible to get rid of this guy.
	What would be so bad if Trump said, you know what, you're not doing a good job.
	Get out of here.
	Well, you know, I think, and I don't know whether the Attorney General can do it, but I think you call him in and say, look, you're going to have to, I mean, let me know what you've got, and you've got to bring this to some conclusion because you've not only put a cloud over the election of the President of the United States, leaks are coming out left and right from what look like illicit activities on the part of investigators to damage the Trump administration and to sabotage it.
	And it looks like, quite frankly, that either the Attorney General authorized the distribution of this unmasked material, or maybe the president did.
	Are you going to look into that as well?
	I think what we get to the bottom of this and where this is now headed in my mind is that somebody very high up in the intelligence community is going to be found responsible for leaking this information.
	Now, then it raises questions about who knew what, when, and where, and how high up did it go?
	Did the president know?
	You know, were they using, for example, legitimate surveillance of foreign entities as a ruse to really surveil Donald Trump?
	Well, exactly.
	And did they pick up this and they say, aha, you know, let's just transcribe this and then unmask the individual or have it obvious who the individual is and then spread it through the intel committees or community.
	And then, but when it leaks, that amounts to a real solid felony there.
	And all these intelligence, Mark Levin reported on all those, you know, intelligence sources, said this, that, and the other.
	All of those are leaks which appear to me to be crimes.
	By the way, you're talking about Levin.
	That's Mark Levin, the great one, we call him.
	Come on, give the guy his due.
	He's a buddy of mine.
	Yeah, look, he did a great job in terms of outlining the timeline.
	I think this was total vindication, too, for Trump.
	Now, the media will say, well, he said that Obama wiretapped him.
	Well, Pat, you tell me, what's the difference between wiretapping and surveilling?
	Is there much of a difference?
	Well, it's exactly.
	I mean, if you took the specific exact verbiage and said, well, that wasn't ordered.
	The FISA court would have to order it.
	But we have not heard from Attorney General Loretta Lynch or the President of the United States.
	And the simple question would be, are you aware of any surveillance that was done about the Trump people, their connections with the Russians?
	And did you authorize it?
	Did anybody bring to you that information?
	Because look, if I were Comey, and I've got this, you know, I see all this Trump stuff in Trump Tower, and there are guys, say, Flynn, talking to the Russian ambassador.
	You know, before I move that around or move further in that, I go to the Attorney General and say, look, we've got something here, and we're going to pursue it, and I think you ought to know it.
	And so the Attorney General, and the President, I think, would have to sign off on that.
	Because can you imagine, suppose you were caught, FBI surveying, and Trump...
	Well, according to John...
	The president didn't know it?
	I wouldn't believe that in any way, shape, matter, or form.
	Now, there was one FISA warrant, John Solomon and Sarah Carter reported, that was given just before the election in October.
	But there was also a separate warrant.
	And neither one was really specifically against Trump.
	But on an ancillary level, they did actually surveil Trump Tower's server.
	Yeah, and also they surveyed all these Russian contacts, which are legitimate.
	And if these individuals mentioned something about Trump and his people, or they talked to Trump people, this automatically is picked up, and the conversation and the names of the Americans are supposed to be masked.
	Well, what about John Podesta's contacts?
	If they unmask them, that's a serious problem.
	We already know a bigger crime.
	And what about John Podesta's connections to the Russians during the campaign?
	Number one.
	Number two, look at this whole Uranium-1 fiasco while Bill Clinton, Hillary Clinton's Secretary of State, he's giving speeches in Russia, getting paid twice what he normally gets paid.
	They get for the Clinton Foundation hundreds, literally millions and millions of dollars sent to the Clinton Foundation.
	Hillary herself has to sign off on the Uranium-1 deal, where Russia literally controls 20% of American uranium.
	Well, exactly.
	All of these things were revealed.
	But the question is, who will investigate the investigators?
	I mean, I saw, I think it was in the post this morning or one of the papers.
	They said, look at these, they're trying to divert the attention away from the Russia connection to the Wicca leaks and to the getting into the DNC and podestophiles to this other thing.
	But look, I'm not against doing that, going into the Russian connection, if it's there.
	But after eight months of investigating and you've turned up, you can't even say who talked to who.
	It's ridiculous.
	All right, Pat, stay right there.
	Want to ask you about health care and the rest of the Trump agenda when we get back.
	Fighting the Trump hating liberal media one day at a time.
	As we continue,
	Patrick J. Buchanan is our guest.
	All right, so they didn't have the votes for health care.
	A lot of people slamming the Freedom Caucus.
	Here's my take, Pat.
	I don't like the way they rolled out this bill.
	They kept it secret.
	Everyone kept complaining.
	They heard this was in it, that was in it.
	They're fighting on TV before it ever gets released, but nobody in Congress saw it.
	And then there's all this intramural fighting after it's released.
	Wouldn't it have been better to build the coalition of all the disparate groups within Congress and the Republican Party and agree to a bill before you actually bring the bill out and then have people publicly fighting on TV and then ultimately not having the votes for it to pass?
	You know, undeniably, you should have had all the ducks in a row or you don't roll this thing out.
	And I, you know, I'm inclined to agree with you on this, that the Freedom, as I'm writing tomorrow in the lead, I said, did the Freedom Caucus pull the Republican Party back off the ledge before it jumped to its death, you know, with that bill?
	Now, if the bill had passed there, everybody would be on the line.
	It would go to a Senate where it faces even greater opposition.
	And then if it went down to the White House and the president signed it, they're saying 14 million people would be dropped off the health care rolls.
	And, you know, in addition to that, all manner of things would take place, and only 17% of the people wanted the bill.
	So in a way, they really didn't get it all together.
	There's no way to defend a failure like that.
	But I'm not sure full blame can go on the Freedom Caucus.
	I mean, they were doing what they believe was right.
	Although this now is the situation.
	Look, Donald Trump, one of the great things he had going for him, and I talked to people who did disagree with him and dislike what he had said, didn't like him personally.
	But what they said about him, he said, you know, the guy gets things done.
	Whether it's at, you know, skating rink in Central Park or the buildings go up, he gets things done.
	And that's what's needed.
	And that brought him through an awful lot.
	And what is perceived now, I'm afraid, is that this was a debacle.
	This was a debacle.
	But I don't think it was Trump's debacle.
	I think it was.
	Listen, for eight years, these people, meaning Congress, have been saying they're going to repeal and replace Obamacare.
	In eight years, you can't build a consensus bill one.
	Exactly.
	Where is the legislation?
	I mean, if they couldn't, you know, where was the legislation?
	You ought to be able to roll that right on through, get all your people in order.
	I mean, and so there's no defending that they, I mean, when you get something right to the end and you're ready to go, then you have to pull it back like that.
	It's like climbing down off the high dive.
	All right, Pat Buchanan.
	Appreciate it as always.
	We'll have you back soon.
	We appreciate your insight.
	800-941-Sean, our toll-free number.
	We're going to get to your calls in the next hour.
	Joe Concha from The Hill is going to weigh in on how I'm so bad for America and everything else, you know, with the cheap shot that CBS gave me.
	We'll cover those details again if you missed our opening monologue at the top of the show today.
	And your calls, 800-941-SHAWN, next.
	All right, News Roundup, Information Overload.
	We'll get to your calls this hour, 800-941-Sean, toll-free telephone number.
	Back to our top story today, and that is how abusively biased the news media is.
	And look, if you didn't follow it this weekend, it was pretty much everywhere.
	Linda's like saying then and then I told you so, I told you so.
	I told you not to do that interview.
	Well, I've known Ted.
	This is not personal with Koppel.
	I don't dislike him.
	I actually used to love Nightline during the American, the Iranian hostage crisis time.
	I watched all the time.
	And, you know, Ted Koppel talks with great authority, and he does it very slow, and he seems like he's fair and balanced.
	Anyway, so why do I waste 50 minutes of my time?
	Probably over 50 minutes.
	Why do I waste all that time?
	And they just added it up at Fox for like a minute of the interview that's aired.
	And then, of course, it has to end with Ted, you're bad for America.
	And I'm like, all right, so that was the headline.
	Ted Koppel tells Hannity's bad for America.
	Well, it would be nice if the other 49 minutes of my commentary got in the piece, so it would have been fair and balanced.
	So what I'm calling this is edited fake news.
	And you have all of these news organizations, 60 Minutes is notorious for it.
	They'll tape you for 20 hours, and then they will take whatever they want, build the story, the narrative that's been predetermined, and it doesn't matter what else you say.
	They are going to do what they want.
	You give anybody 20 hours of tape and you can make them look stupid.
	So there is edited fake news I'm adding to the lexicon here.
	And anyway, here's from this weekend, CBS Sunday morning.
	Sean Hannity's television program on Fox has a nightly audience of 2.9 million viewers.
	I'll give a take.
	He has from the first promoted Donald Trump and a highly partisan agenda.
	Honestly, I think liberalism has to be defeated.
	Socialism must be defeated in a political sense.
	This is not a, we don't want a revolution in this country.
	Well, what more do you want?
	You got the White House, you got the House, you got the Senate.
	Okay.
	And then we have Angry Snowflakes, and then we've got a Democratic establishment.
	I say the press in this country is out to destroy this president.
	We have to give some credit to the American people that they're somewhat intelligent and that they know the difference between an opinion show and a news show.
	Yeah.
	You're cynical.
	Look at that.
	Yeah, I am cynical because, you know.
	You think we're bad for America?
	You think I'm bad for America.
	Yeah.
	You do.
	In the long haul, I think you and all these opinions.
	You're sad, Ted.
	No, you know why?
	That's sad.
	Because you're very good at what you do and because you have attracted a significantly more intellectual.
	Let me finish the sentence.
	Honestly, you do that.
	With all due reason.
	Yes.
	You have attracted people who are determined that ideology is more important than facts.
	That's it.
	He edited it.
	No answer, no response.
	Unbelievable.
	Joe Concha is with the Hill.
	He's the media reporter there.
	He's probably the only one that's not part of the coffee clutch of, like, you have all these media people.
	They all tweet each other all day long.
	And I don't think Joe's a member of the club because they're all, you know, single-minded in their obsession about Russian conspiracies.
	What's up, sir?
	How are you?
	You're talking about the CNN New York Times politico circle of trust.
	Yeah, the circle of trust, exactly.
	As a matter of fact, all the people that you just mentioned were caught colluding with Hillary Clinton in the last election.
	Well, give me your take on this.
	Did you bring that up, by the way?
	The whole collusion with Hillary Clinton in WikiLeaks was, was that mentioned during the speech?
	Well, I said earlier in the program today, you know, look, I'm honest about who I am.
	I am a talk show host.
	And part of being a talk show host, well, sometimes I do straight news.
	Sometimes I do contentious debate.
	Sometimes I just give monologues and opinion.
	Sometimes I put liberals on the show and we go at it.
	I mean, it's multifaceted.
	I don't think anybody in America has any question that I'm a conservative.
	I've been now 30 years on talk radio and 21 and a half years on Fox.
	I don't think it's a surprise, but you tell me if I'm wrong.
	You've never said that you are a journalist.
	You've never claimed to be.
	And sometimes I see editorials saying, you know, Sean Hannity thinks he's a journalist.
	No, you've always said I am not.
	And you've been very clear about that.
	Let's go back to Koppel first.
	All right.
	You have your job because of Ted Koppel.
	And I'll tell you why.
	Because ABC's nightline, when they did that Iran hostage update every night, that's what inspired cable news to take off.
	That's what inspired Ted Turner to do CNN, and eventually Fox News and MSNBC come along.
	So I'm not going to attack Ted Koppel in terms of his resume as a journalist.
	Listen, I'll take it a step further.
	I actually, I think that was some of his, I think that was his best work.
	I was riveted to the coverage.
	It's not personal what I'm saying today about Ted.
	I just think if you're going to interview me for about 50 minutes and only air a minute and cut it off the way he did, that is what I'm calling it, and that is edited fake news.
	It's just not it's not representative of what happened in that interview.
	Yeah, and that helps me segue to my next point, which is in the old days, you would do an interview like this where it's taped and they edit it down to X amount of time because they say they have time constraints, which they do, and that's fine.
	I get that.
	But now, in the era of internet streaming, where it's a great experience, you can now take that entire interview, whatever it was, 45, 50 minutes, and put it online, put it on CBSNews.com and let everybody see the full interview and exactly what all the give and takes were.
	Because what happened was with that interview, when they edit it down like that and Koppel makes his final statement and then you don't have a rebuttal.
	You probably didn't in real time, but you didn't in the edited time.
	That's an old sports radio trick where you cut off the caller and then you lecture him for the next 30 seconds and it sounds like you got the last word and they're so stunned into silence that they can't respond.
	So by the way, what CBS has to do, Sean, they have to put the entire interview on 60minutes.com.
	And I'm going to tell you why they're not going to do it.
	Because so we're doing the interview, and this is the behind the scenes that I think the context and texture to this.
	He asked me a first question, and I give him a lengthy, substantive answer.
	And he goes, none of that is going to make the cut.
	Right after the first question.
	And I'm like, well, why am I here, Ted?
	What's the point?
	And then all throughout the rest of the interview, you know what I kept saying?
	Ted, what I'm saying here is really important because you shouldn't cut this out.
	Ted, whatever you do, don't cut.
	You're going to cut this part out, right, Ted?
	Because it makes my point, right?
	And I was taunting him the entire interview.
	And they're not going to air that interview because they don't want that scene.
	They don't want the, in other words, it's like making the sausage.
	So what this would expose if they released that full interview unedited, and I mean unedited, when he asked a question, and then he went back and asked the first question again.
	And I'm like, well, why am I here?
	So they're not going to reveal that he said to me that's not going to make it.
	They're not going to reveal that I kept taunting him by saying, oh, you're not going to put this in either because it makes a good point.
	You're not going to put this in either.
	I was defending my positions with substance.
	And that just gives the people that talk about fake news and talk about slick editing and talk about trust in media.
	This will give them one more, and I'm one of them, one more notch, one more something to throw out as ammunition when you don't release the full transcript and you don't put the entire interview online.
	It sounds like it would be compelling, by the way.
	So it probably would get a lot of money.
	Well, let me say this.
	It was honestly a really good give and take.
	I thought it was a substantive give and take and frankly worthwhile to see in its entirety.
	And, you know, so it's not like he didn't get his points across.
	He did.
	I don't care that he thinks that I'm bad for America.
	I don't give a flying rip what he thinks.
	It's a shame.
	And by the way, he wasn't really just saying it about me.
	If you noticed the part of my question, I said, so you're saying we're bad for America.
	Saying, I'm bad for America.
	He was really saying all opinion shows.
	Now, the media, you know, the headline was: Coppel, you know, tells Hannity to face, but he's really saying about, and that was it.
	I actually defended, you know, I said the average person knows that Rachel Maddow is a liberal.
	They're not stupid.
	And I give the American people a lot more credit than he does.
	Rachel Maddow, though, does say, and she said in a recent interview, that she is just there to explain the news, that she isn't there to offer her opinion.
	Are you serious?
	That's just a lie.
	You could go look at it.
	Lacking self-awareness there or something.
	Yeah, so let me get back to Koppel's whole argument around how opinion journalism is destroying the news.
	It's an analog argument in a digital world.
	And here's what I mean.
	On my iPhone, I could find out what happens with XYZ throughout my day, even if I'm walking somewhere, I'm on a train.
	I know the who, what, when, where, why, right?
	Maybe I don't know the why, but I know the who, what, and when.
	I have the basic facts.
	What cabled news does at night, not just Fox, it happens on CNN, happens on MSNBC, it doesn't matter.
	That's the opinion side of the presentation for those channels because people are coming there for perspective.
	They want to get different viewpoints.
	They want debate.
	They already know what happened.
	So he's making this argument that while opinion journalism is killing journalism, well, guess what, Ted?
	It's been around since 1690.
	The first editorial ever was in a paper called Public Occurrences, and it was about mistreatment of French soldiers by the British.
	And the British government immediately shut it down because they said, you need a license.
	You can't just print this stuff without our permission.
	So opinion journalism has always been a part of every news journal.
	Well, it's called advocacy journalism, and you're right.
	And you have, even in the early days of this country, you had different editorial pages based on different newspapers.
	Here's the great irony in all of this: when he says I'm bad for America, and opinion shows are bad for America, he's giving an opinion, Joe.
	He's doing the exact thing that he says is bad.
	Yeah, well, and at that point, he's not supposed to be doing that because was that supposed to be Ted Koppel being Ted Koppel and just asking questions, you giving answers?
	In other words, I'm trying to understand his role now at CBS because that isn't the type of interview he would give when he was on ABC and Nightline.
	So you're exactly right.
	You destroy your own argument when you ask a question, then give it an opinion about how bad opinion journalism is by giving your opinion.
	I know that sounds like a riddle, but it's true.
	The other irony in all this is he's doing this on CBS.
	And I'll get to that when we get back.
	800-941-Sean, our toll-free telephone number.
	Joe Concha is with us from The Hill.
	He's their media writer.
	And then we'll get to your calls at the bottom of the hour.
	All right, as we continue, top story, Ted Koppel saying, I'm bad for America.
	We continue with Joe Concha from The Hill.
	He's their media reporter and writer.
	And he actually gives opinions too, but that probably means he's bad for America.
	Now, let me make sure I got this right.
	So he gives an opinion while saying opinion shows are bad for America, which is a little hypocritical.
	And I wonder, has he ever commented that you noticed on Dan Rather and what Dan Rather did to George W. Bush?
	Is that bad for America?
	When CBS spiked Cheryl Atkinson's stories against Obama, is that bad for America?
	Is there a conflict of interest when David Rhodes, the head of CBS News Division, his brother's Ben Rhodes, highly ranked official in the Obama administration?
	And the only thing I would say in my defense, not that I feel defensive, is that if I'll put my body of work on Fox, for example, or on this radio show, and I don't think CBS ever explored the friendship with an unrepentant terrorist by the name of Bill Ayers and Bernardine Dorn.
	I doubt they would have ignored the story if it was Donald Trump, you know, or black liberation theology and the church of GD America and Reverend Wright and what that means and how that influenced Obama.
	I don't think they ever showed the American people Obama's failures after eight years.
	I don't think they ever put up the laws that Hillary Clinton probably violated with an email server in a bathroom closet.
	I doubt they ever told or exposed the lies of Benghazi.
	I doubt they ever exposed Hillary Clinton signing off on 20% of America's uranium going to Russia while all these millions of dollars went to the Clinton Foundation.
	But how much time did they devote to this phony Russia conspiracy story?
	I doubt they talked about the media collusion with Hillary in the last campaign.
	Do you get my point?
	I mean, there's so much they don't cover that I do cover.
	Your old boss had a saying, which is that he's found the niche audience.
	That's half the country.
	And that's what Fox covers, covers stories that other folks don't want to touch.
	I've seen that this week with the Maryland rape of a 14-year-old girl.
	There's been a virtual blackout on CNN and MSNBC and other outlets not covering that story.
	And it's just remarkable, Sean, that that's happening because as a parent, and I have a three-year-old and I have a one-year-old now, my wife, who's apolitical, stopped in her tracks when she heard that.
	So, wait a minute, these were illegal immigrants that they put back into a school.
	They're 18.
	They put them in with 14-year-olds as freshmen, and then this poor girl was raped and sodomized, and no one's covering that.
	She goes, how is that not a story?
	I go, of course it's a story, but it's about the bias of omission, and people don't want to cover that at those networks because they're afraid that they're going to paint all illegal immigrants as rapists.
	And that's not the point at all.
	The point is that this was something that could have been prevented if people followed the letter of the law and they didn't.
	And the school board should be held accountable.
	And it's a story that absolutely should be covered heavily.
	And it is not because that's how political things have come.
	We cherry-pick our outrage now.
	And with Koppel, I think he cherry-picked his outrage here when he really, you know, it should be a criticism of all journalism that we've seen in the media and why media trust is so low.
	It seemed like here he was just trying to grandstand for the sake of grandstanding.
	And now I see everywhere this story about him telling you that you're bad for America.
	So apparently whatever he was trying to do, he achieved in terms of getting attention.
	Well, I'm fine with the cheap shot.
	And by the way, it's not the first time.
	It's not my first rodeo.
	I'm actually very cool with that.
	But I actually think at the end of the day, he makes my point.
	At the end of the day, he is hypocritical.
	At the end of the day, he gave me an opportunity to expose what edited fake news is.
	You know, if you take 50 minutes of tape and just air one minute of it, it is not representative of the interview, which is why they won't release it.
	Now, your television program, he said $2.9 million.
	Lately, it's been more in the $3 million range and above.
	By the way, that doesn't include my rerun either.
	We should count that, but that's a different story.
	Right.
	You have a rerun later that has like 1.5 or whatever, right?
	So by the time enough people watch that, you're getting close to 5 million people, right?
	Probably more, because I think there's one in the middle of the night as well.
	So all that said, are you going to talk about that tonight on your television program?
	It's my opening monologue tonight.
	Okay.
	So 5 million people now will, and then we're not even counting also the replays and YouTube, and it goes viral, and the media picks it up and so on, and people see it there and other places pick it up.
	They're going to learn that CVS refuses to put out the unedited transcript and video from this.
	So while they're getting some short-term benefit out of it now, I wonder if this hurts their reputation and everybody's reputation.
	It's pretty bad at this point in big time.
	Where do you see it?
	Because it looks like they're trying to hide something, Sean.
	It's not something you want to do as a news organization.
	Well, it also shows that it was a cheap shot.
	And, you know, so they got their cheap shot in.
	Now I get to retaliate.
	And I get to tell the truth.
	What happened?
	Are you going to do your copper limitation?
	Because I have to say, it's better.
	I'm Ted Coppel.
	This is pretty good.
	It is nightlight.
	Yes.
	Very authoritative.
	All right.
	Thank you, Joe Concha.
	800-941, Sean.
	We'll get to your calls when we get back.
	Sean gets the answers no one else does.
	America deserves to know the truth about Congress.
	The epidemic of malicious fake news and false propaganda that flooded social media over the past year.
	Our religious leader disputes the man's claim that his mother died because of President Trump's travel ban.
	A Muslim woman who claimed to be attacked by Trump supporters in New York is now under arrest.
	Yasmeen Sawyed is now accused of making it all up.
	Police in Louisiana say a Muslim woman who reported a Trump-inspired attack made the whole thing up.
	Monday Night Massacre.
	President Trump fires the acting attorney general for refusing to enforce his travel ban.
	What Donald Trump did is actually nothing at all like what Nixon did back in 1973.
	When Nixon fired someone that he had hired, Archibald Cox, who was investigating Nixon's role in the Latergate scandal.
	A local high school is responding to a report that the new Supreme Court nominee founded a group called Fascism Forever.
	The report comes from the Daily Mail.
	Georgetown Prep, where Neil Gorsuch attended, released a statement saying no such club ever existed at the campus there in North Bethesda.
	Press Secretary Sean Spicer ripped the press for a false report that President Trump had removed the bust of MLK from the Oval Office.
	The Washington Post reports that the entire senior level of management officials resigned from the State Department today.
	The mass resignations of nearly all senior staff at the State Department on Thursday were not, in fact, resignations, but a purge ordered by the White House.
	A highly critical article in the New York Times loomed over the hearing, the one we told you about yesterday.
	The paper faced plenty of backlash and drew scrutiny over its sourcing, including the claim that Perry didn't really understand that the Department of Energy had purview over maintaining America's nuclear arsenal.
	He installs Steve Mnuchin, right?
	This Wall Street CEO who foreclosed on a 90-year-old woman who got her paperwork mixed up and was 27 cents short.
	Last week, a group of prominent computer scientists and election lawyers said they'd found persuasive evidence that results in Wisconsin, Michigan, and Pennsylvania may have been manipulated or hacked.
	It's now clear that so-called fake news can have real-world consequences.
	The fake news, yeah, there's a lot of fake news in America today.
	A lot of it's on CBS, too.
	And one of the ways that you can expose fake news, or, you know, for example, one of the techniques they use is what I was a victim of this weekend, edited fake news.
	Dan Rather was never a journalist.
	He was an activist.
	Cheryl Atkinson was one of their best reporters who couldn't get her material on the air because management wouldn't approve it on Benghazi and other issues.
	So they spiked her stories for political reasons.
	You don't think it's a little odd, a little incestuous, a little bit of a conflict of interest to have, you know, President Obama's one of his top aides, Ben Rhodes, in the White House, and his brother is running the CBS News Division.
	Anyone ever talk about that conflict of interest, especially as it relates to Cheryl Atkinson?
	You know, do you really think that if Donald Trump didn't come down the escalator, but began his political career in the home of an unrepentant domestic terrorist, yet you think he would only be asked one time during the campaign about it?
	You think if Donald Trump ends up with the results, 13 million more Americans on food stamps, 8 million more in poverty, worst recovery since the 40s, lowest labor participation rate since the 70s, lowest home ownership rate in 51 years, and doubles the debt, you don't think CBS News will cover that extensively?
	Of course they will.
	You know, really?
	Church of GD America, did CBS ever investigate black liberation theology?
	Did they ever investigate Hillary's Benghazi lies?
	Did they ever investigate the laws Hillary Clinton violated felonies she committed with her email server in the bathroom closet of a mom-and-pop shop to avoid congressional oversight?
	Seriously.
	Did they ever cover the media collusion with Hillary Clinton's campaign this election cycle?
	You know, but how much time do they devote to this phony Russia conspiracy story, not without a shred of evidence?
	I don't care that Ted has opinions, and I don't care that his opinion of me apparently is not too high or the opinion of opinion shows, but in the process of being critical of opinion shows, he's given an opinion.
	It's ridiculous.
	It's the whole thing is, you know, so people this weekend were writing me and they're saying, that was a cheap shot.
	That was a cheap.
	And I'm like, this is an opportunity.
	You guys are seeing this all wrong.
	This is an opportunity to point out how the news media, one of the tricks that they have used for decades.
	And that is, you know, going into an edit room with 50 minutes of tape, slicing and dicing it down to one to try and put the worst possible spin on the person that they're interviewing.
	And that's what he did, to make himself look good.
	And so for me, this is an opportunity to just advance a narrative and a case that I've been building.
	Journalism in America is dead, Ted.
	It's dead.
	And we have an information crisis.
	And all the stories that I just mentioned, well, I'm the one that did their job.
	And I'm proud of what I've done.
	Proud of my work.
	I stand behind all of it.
	Anyway, MJ is in Florida.
	MJ, hi, how are you?
	And we're glad you called.
	Hey, SemperFi, Sean, how you doing?
	I've been trying to reach you since November 9th.
	Wow.
	Always faithful.
	SemperFi.
	What's going on?
	SemperFi.
	Well, first of all, I had to call my mom to make sure I could talk to you since you're so awful for America.
	And now she gave me permission.
	Thank you.
	And I was like, this morning I was like thinking, all right, so you're the James Dean, you're the James Cagney, you're the Marlon Brando.
	But then you know what I thought?
	I said to myself, your new name, I'm calling you Morpheus from The Matrix.
	Wow.
	Because what you've done is given America the choice between taking the red pill, i.e., GOP, or the blue pill, i.e. the Liberal Party.
	And so now you're calling me a drug dealer.
	First, I'm bad for America.
	Now she's calling me a drug dealer.
	I'm giving out pills.
	Go ahead.
	No, no, no, no.
	Morpheus from The Matrix.
	Oh, I'm teasing.
	I'm teasing.
	I know.
	But I'm saying the red pill was truth of reality in escape in The Matrix versus the blue pill, which was blissful ignorance of illusion.
	Ted Coppel, I grew up listening to him.
	I grew up listening to whatever was on on those few channels we had in New York growing up and trusted everything they said and respected him.
	And what's so funny is that he was actually accused of being biased towards the Conservative Party with that whole fairness and accuracy in reporting.
	And they did a whole study on him.
	So like he's just trying to be relevant.
	But you know, if you're bad for America, well, I don't want to be good.
	You know, back in 1989, remember the San Francisco earthquake killed hundreds of hundreds when the bridge collapsed?
	I remember Al Michaels did a phenomenal job that night covering that when he was covering the baseball game.
	And Coppel asked.
	I think I was in boot camp.
	He asked if this couldn't be blamed on tax-cutting conservatives.
	And, you know, thank goodness Al Gore wasn't talking.
	He would have blamed that on, you know, freaking climate change.
	Yeah.
	He once devoted a show in 1990.
	By the way, you're like my favorite.
	You get the caller of the do we have any more of those Trump pens?
	And we're going to send you a Trump pen.
	Stay on the line every day.
	Woo-hoo!
	All I'm saying is I'm not saying Trump is exactly Neo, but what's been going on right now is he he's Neo.
	And the the Matrix and the journalists are all the agents and they're the Smiths.
	And they keep trying to keep us plugged in with that big old thing stuck in the back of our neck and trying to keep us quiet and asleep.
	And they have just poked the bear once too many.
	And I applaud you for everything you have done.
	And I just cannot thank you enough because even my kids, who are younger, they walk around with your talking points, which are fact-based.
	Thank you.
	Every one of them, by the way, I write them.
	And I do my own research.
	And the funny thing is that they don't ever challenge me on my substance.
	They go, he's a liar.
	Okay, tell me where I lied.
	I'll correct it.
	I'll say I'm sorry.
	I'm not above making mistakes.
	And you have always represented yourself as who you are.
	You have never been a poser or any saying you were like some sort of like always come out and said, you know, release like, hey, you know, I know this guy or I'm with that guy, blah, blah, blah.
	And forget about it if you had like an English accent or an Irish accent.
	You're just like, forget it.
	You're going to be one of those bad boys, sexiest man of America now.
	All right.
	We bit of the Irish.
	MJ, stay on the line.
	You're awesome.
	Thank you.
	800-941 Sean, Palm Beach Gardens, Florida.
	Bianca's next.
	What's up, Bianca?
	How are you?
	Hi, great.
	Thanks.
	Listen, Paul Ryan needs to go.
	This is a man that's a conservative in name only.
	This is a man that wrote the omnibus bill funding Obama's Mideastern immigration and putting the safety of Americans at risk.
	He needs to go.
	This is the man that is the best friend of Mitt Romney.
	This is a man that has been acting as if he supports Donald Trump, and he does not.
	He wants Trump to fail, which is why he wrote this bill, which I'm sorry, the Republicans had seven years, seven years to put together a new health care plan, and they failed.
	And Paul Ryan knew it, and I think he set Trump up to fail.
	But instead, I think he made himself look bad.
	And hopefully people see it and call for him to step down, or hopefully he is fired.
	I said last week, I'm not calling for anyone to get fired right now, but I will tell you this.
	This was so poorly mismanaged after eight years.
	To me, it's just inexcusable.
	I mean, and look, I've told you I'm holding them accountable, and I'm giving you my honest take.
	To not have built a coalition bill in seven, eight years and not be ready for this moment, there's no excuse for this.
	And that bill, look, we all know that the Republican Party, like the Democratic Party, is a coalition party.
	And you know, no Democrat's going to support anything the president wants to do.
	He'll probably never get a vote ever in the House or Senate.
	Maybe Joe Manchin once in a while.
	I mean, the Democrats now delaying the Gorsuch vote.
	But listen, you've got to understand these guys, they need to get their act together, and they've got to be prepared.
	And you don't roll out a bill if you don't know the bill's going to pass, especially at this point.
	And they rolled it out.
	Nobody saw it until after they rolled it out.
	Nobody had any input then because if they did, they would have made their criticism known in private.
	Now, I think they can hit the reset button and get back on track, but they better get going.
	All right, 800-941-Sean, toll-free telephone number, Grand Rapids, Michigan, Wood Radio, Ted, next, Sean Hannity Show.
	Hello, Sean.
	Good afternoon.
	Good afternoon, sir.
	I just wanted to give you a little bit of a disclaimer that my last name is not Coppel.
	Yeah.
	That's fine.
	I'm bad for America.
	You know, I'm really a horrible person.
	Well, I heard that, but I think I know better now.
	Before I get started, I just want to say that I think you grossly underplay the effect that you had on the 2016 election.
	What you did and how fairly you were and the way you presented every point.
	And I have to tell you, on Election Day, I was a poll challenger for the Republican Party, and I was driving home, and I listened to your impassioned plea to the panhandle of Florida, and I yelled at the top of my lungs, God bless Sean Hannity.
	So I think you need to give yourself a little bit more credit than you are.
	Listen, I'm going to tell you what, I'm going to tell you my take on, and this is my honest view, my take on my role or anybody's role in this campaign.
	You know, to get a wheel to go around, you need a lot of spokes, right?
	I used to, when I was a kid, I'd be working on bicycles all the time.
	We used to make our own motorbikes and stuff.
	But anyway, you need the spokes in a wheel.
	And the center of the wheel was Trump.
	He was his own best advisor.
	He followed his own instincts more than anything else.
	So he gets the credit for being gutsy and courageous and putting himself out there.
	And then whatever role any of us played, and I don't care if you just went out and voted that day, that's a big role.
	You are spoke in the wheel.
	So we're all spokes.
	You know, I've heard too many people trying to claim credit for, oh, he couldn't have won without me.
	And I'm like, baloney.
	You know what?
	Donald Trump was, you know, now our job is to help him keep his promises.
	He's doing a good job so far.
	I'm not really upset at all about what happened on Friday.
	I just think it's a minor setback, and I think they'll get their act together and pull it together.
	And if they don't, we'll be screaming bloody murder for them to get their act together.
	All right?
	I think the biggest part of this is that the Republican Party needs to learn what loyalty is.
	The Democrats, as much as I despise what they stand for and what they do and how they project themselves, they are painfully loyal to one another.
	Yeah, that's true.
	By the way, and I don't think it's a bad thing that you have checks and balances within the Republican Party.
	It's not this monolithic group of people's group think.
	I mean, there is greater diversity than they've ever gotten credit for.
	So I don't think that's necessarily a bad thing, right?
	Right, exactly.
	All right.
	Exactly.
	All right, Ted.
	Thank you, my friend.
	God bless you.
	Ted, not Ted Koppel.
	Okay, got it.
	I'm Ted Koppel.
	This is nightline.
	All right, let's go to Don Light Granconkimo.
	What's up, Big Don?
	How are you?
	Hey, Captain Hannity, permission to come aboard.
	Come aboard.
	Yes, I am bad for America, Don.
	Welcome aboard, sir.
	I'll tell you, that CBS 10-minute segment with Ted Koppel was this weekend, and that was really eye-and-ear opening.
	You know, they said that you attract people.
	This is the final.
	You attract people who are determined that ideology is more important than facts.
	And the segment was cut, and no explanation for that comment.
	I'm telling you, the fake news comes in.
	I know, listen.
	What did I talk about this whole election?
	Well, what was this election about for me?
	It was about the forgotten men and women, the millions in poverty on food stamps that can't buy a house that have been suffering under the bad policies of statism, liberalism, socialism of Obama.
	And I said all of this, if they ever release the interview, you'll get to see it.
	Well, not only, like I said, not only did he insult you, Sean, but your laws as well.
	And I couldn't get over it.
	He never explained that comment.
	Don, we're a bunch of Yahoos, don't you get it?
	We are.
	We're a basket of deplorables.
	We're a basket of deplorables.
	We are irredeemable deplorables.
	And that is an elitist group think.
	Anyway, Don, thank you, my friend.
	Don has been a friend of this program for the whole time we've been in New York.
	He's been awesome.
	Great guy.
	I got to meet him, too.
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