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Why?
Benghazi, the truth became a web of lies.
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All right, so it's gonna be a filibuster, and it's probably gonna end with the nuclear option, but Neil Gorsuch will be on the Supreme Court.
A good thing.
Because at the end of the day, the Democrats are never gonna play fair, ever.
And then the this this will end the era of borking and high-tech lynching, as in the case of Clarence Thomas.
And I don't because Republicans know that Sonia Sotomayor and Elena Kagan and Ruth Bader Ginsburg are radical leftists that are gonna alter the court.
And they lost the election.
And so they they couldn't lay a glove as hard as they did try on Neil Gorsuch.
So now they're gonna move forward with what has never been done.
And that means Chuck Schumer and company.
They're going to filibuster a qualified Supreme Court nominee with the highest ABA re rating for the first time in over 200 years.
And they are going to force the Republicans to do what needs to be done.
And that's just end this closure.
And end any idea that the Democrats can ever be fair.
And you're gonna say, well, Hannity, what's gonna happen when they they did it anyway.
Harry Reid set this precedent.
And what precedence?
Why we even w why is there even a ruse here in any way?
That just let's not act like this is something that it's anything other than what it is.
All right, it appears some good news, and that is that healthcare is hopefully back on track, and my understanding is is that those negotiations are going to be ongoing.
I did like what Ryan said.
You can't put a timetable on this, because one of the things that I think it was so poorly mishandled by the House the last time in leadership, maybe when they get a final bill, they can let everybody see it, make sure there's consensus, make sure it has the votes to win, and then let the president unveil it.
And uh my sources in Washington say the president's up to his eyeballs himself personally reviving these talks and trying to get things done, but I, you know, what details are we have will be forthcoming.
Um I have no idea where that came from.
That's pretty funny, though.
Anyway, now I don't need wet stop.
Do you think I'm Hillary Clinton?
You think I can't talk through a little coughing fit here?
It was one quick second.
It's over.
I feel better.
My my team in there is like, why are you panicking?
I I can handle it.
I'm just making sure you have what you need, boss.
That's all.
You know, I just kind of inhaled the wrong way.
Sometimes it happens.
Excuse me.
Just one second here.
Very healthy, though.
All right.
But our top story today is everything we have been covering and telling you is turning out to be true.
I need a new cutlass, by the way.
And that is, you know, all last week I was telling you about Evelyn Farkas, and what Evelyn Farkas was well, the reason I was so upset last summer, I was getting winks and hints from inside that there was something really wrong here.
Evelyn Farkas admitting that there was unmasking.
Evelyn Farkas corroborating that Donald Trump was right.
Evelyn Farkas even talking, ah, trying to get this information to our friends on the Hill.
What are they talking about?
Intel.
You can't spread intelligence.
Anyway, so, you know, we had a bombshell report come out of the Fox News channel last weekend, which the fake news democratic press is now desperately trying to ignore.
Now I'm going to make a prediction based on everything we have built up until this point.
People, very high level people, at some point are going to be indicted.
There will be people going to jail.
It is absolutely a necessity.
Now, Evelyn Farkas, I have it on pretty good authority, and I predicted this last week.
She's going to be called before the House and Senate Intelligence Committees.
Why did you say all of these things that you knew about surveillance back in July, that you knew about unmasking, that you wanted to get this information to your friends on the Hill?
Well, we might we're learning enough now that it might even be bigger than that.
Anyway, so the media's going to try and ignore this, just like they went after Devin Nunes Nunes and tried to attack him.
You notice that Adam Schiff, I mean, the most dangerous place to be in the last three weeks was between a microphone or a television camera and Adam Schiff.
He's been living on TV, living on attacking Devin Nunes.
Well, now that he went over to the White House and actually saw the evidence, he's been awfully quiet lately, and the things he is indicating seem to think that he actually came to the same conclusion as Nunes.
Anyway, so what we learned over the weekend, which the news is going to try and ignore, the alt-left propaganda destroyed Trump media, that if, and by the way, when this turns out to be true, it will be the biggest political scandal in American history, bar none.
And it means the Obama administration was using America America's intelligence and the intelligence gathered.
And I'm not talking just about intelligent, I'm talking about raw intelligence.
Like their own personal East German seeker police force to spy on their political opponents and go after enemies, which is, by the way, if it's right into the way the Obama administration used the IRS to go after political opponents and shut them down, especially in the lead up to different elections.
And on top of that, Fox News, their investigated reporters, Adam Housley and Malia Zimmerman, they actually corroborated a bombshell revelation from Evelyn Farkas, which she made not to NBC on March 2nd,
but in that February 16th interview that I uncovered at Vox.com, which we broke exclusively on TV on Friday night, and according to Evelyn Farkas, and now Fox News, the surveillance of Donald Trump wasn't merely of his transition team, which meant it would have been that would have started after the election.
The surveillance of Donald Trump actually began well before he was elected during the height of the presidential campaign.
Now stop and think about you have a sitting administration literally surveilling an opposition party candidate.
And according to Evelyn Farkas and now Fox News, that that in fact happened.
That would mean that the Obama wiretaps weren't just designed to undermine the Trump presidency, but that became the fallback strategy only because Hillary lost.
But if this surveillance was going on during the campaign, and Sarah Carter and John Solomon broke that story right here.
It means it was designed to steal the election from Trump.
It means that there was an attempt here to gather intelligence.
And by the way, they're very they're a little clever in this, and as much as they're using usual intel methods.
But here's where it gets very, very interesting is that the national security chief.
Remember last week, what did I say?
Pay attention to these words.
Surveillance, unmasking, and intelligence leaking.
Those four words were key all last week.
Eli Lake, who's going to join us at the top of the next hour, wrote a blockbuster report on Bloomberg News that White House lawyers last month learned that Obama's national security advisor and BFF, Susan Rice, requested the identities of U.S. persons from the raw intelligence reports on dozens of occasions that were directly related to the Trump transition and campaign.
You know what this means?
This never happens.
Let me explain.
When are intelligence agencies, for example, let's say they're spying on somebody from Russia, China, Iran, wherever, it doesn't matter.
And in the course of legitimate surveillance, there is an American that is caught up in that surveil.
Well, there's no Americans have constitutional protections, Fourth Amendment rights, First Amendment rights.
They have protections against unreasonable search and seizure.
So if you don't have a warrant, either Pfizer or criminal or otherwise, and in the course of surveilling some foreigner, an American is caught up in it because they're talking to the foreigner, i.e., General Flynn, as a perfect example.
Well, then what they're supposed to practice what's called minimization.
Minimization is they're not supposed to expose or really listen to what the American is saying because that's not lawful because they don't have a court order or a Pfizer warrant.
So that surveillance against the American is highly sensitive and illegal.
And in the process, when they write up reports, standard operating procedure is they never mention the American by name.
They'll usually say an American.
That's how they handle that.
And then they usually minimize the part that the American is talking about.
That's what made what happened with General Flynn.
Not only did they surveil illegally, then they unmasked illegally, and then they leaked the intelligence and he lost his career over it.
That's a felony.
That's a crime, that's a violation of the espionage act.
Anyway, so what we discovered is Susan Rice frequently requested the identities of U.S. persons that were caught up in legitimate eavesdropping.
Do you understand what I'm saying?
In other words, if in the case of Flynn, they're surveilling the Russian ambassador.
Well, in comes General Flynn, who's doing his job and he's getting ready for his new job, and he's reaching out to his Russian counterpart, our intelligence agencies are surveilling it, but they don't have a warrant to go after to go after General Flynn.
So, number one, his name never should have been revealed, and minimization processes should have been put in place, and he certainly shouldn't that intelligence, raw intelligence never should have been leaked.
Anyway, we've now discovered that Susan Rice had numerous requests.
It was now discovered in National Security Council review of the government's policy of unmasking the identities of these individuals in the U.S. who are not targets of electronic eavesdropping.
They're not allowed to be surveilled as a matter of course.
And in February, the National Security Council senior director for intelligence, Ezra Cohn Watnik discovered Rice's multiple requests to unmask U.S. persons in intelligence reports that were related to the Trump transition team.
Who were they talking to?
Why were they talking to them?
And he brought this attention to the White House counsel's office.
White House counsel's job is to follow the law, anyway, who then reviewed more of Rice's requests, instructed him to end his own research into the unmasking policy.
The intelligence reports were summaries of these monitored conversations, primarily between foreign officials.
That's why Devin Nunes said that they were legal, and as much as, yeah, we're allowed to surveil our enemies, but it bothered him greatly because we were unmasking the identities of Americans.
Anyway, one U.S. official familiar with the report said they contained valuable political information on Trump and on the Trump transition team, and who Trump and the team was meeting, and the views of Trump's associates and foreign policy matters and plans for the incoming administration.
Now Rice had no business to ask for that unmasking.
And then who knows who was responsible for the felony committed against Lieutenant General Flynn.
Now Susan Rice was in an interview back when in March March 22nd with Judy Woodruff.
And when we come back, she actually lies and denies knowing this, even though it's now reported she purposefully asked for it.
This is really bad.
And you want to know why it's bad?
Because you have a right to privacy as an American, and you don't want your government surveilling your phone calls, your emails, your text messages, because then it can all be used by people without any scruples or morals to destroy innocent people's lives.
That's why it's illegal.
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This is Susan Rice lying on March 28th.
She's acting like she knows nothing about this when she was asked about Devin Nunes that the Trump transition teams, including the president, were swept up in surveillance of foreigners.
Now, again, we now know as Eli Lake and Fox and others are reporting, she was asking for the unmasking.
In other words, the identities of Americans that never should have been surveilled.
Listen to her not tell the truth here.
I know nothing about this.
I was surprised to see uh reports from uh Chairman Eunice on that uh count today.
I mean, let's back up and recall where we have been.
Uh the President of the United States accused his predecessor, President Obama, of wiretapping Trump Tower during the campaign.
Nothing of the sort occurred, and we've heard that confirmed by the director of the FBI, who also pointed out that no president, no White House uh can order the surveillance of another American citizen.
That can only come from the Justice Department with the approval of a Pfizer court.
So today, uh, I really don't know to what uh Chairman Nunes was referring, but he said that whatever he was referring to was uh a legal, lawful uh surveillance, and that it was potentially incidental collection on American citizens.
And I think it's important for people to understand what incidental means.
That means that the target was a either a foreign entity or somebody under criminal investigation.
And that the Americans who were talking to those targets may have been picked up.
Nobody's saying that the surveillance of, for example, a Russian or some Chinese operative or Iranian operative is illegal.
But the fact is she is asking for the identities of the Americans that were not the target.
And when she says I've never heard anything about this, well, that now has been contradicted, and that she herself was asking that Americans in these instances where there was surveillance of Trump Tower.
Now remember, Sarah Carter, John Solomon confirmed a Pfizer warrant was issued in October, as was a criminal warrant.
Not nothing to deal do with the with Donald Trump, but as an ancillary part of the investigation, remember the pings to the Trump server led investigators to surveil the server and other things.
Yeah, wiretapping is the wrong word.
It should have been surveillance.
This is the same woman that lied about Benghazi and what happened there on the five Sunday shows.
She's not exactly a person that I put my faith, hope, and trust in, or believe could be capable of honesty.
We'll get to more of this on the other side.
This is potentially massive.
the biggest case ever.
Yeah, it's me.
I guess I'm bad for America.
Like, maybe I'm bad for liberal America.
Maybe I'm bad for fall flawed failed government.
Yeah, I'm bad for that.
So let me just summarize here.
So now we have Susan Rice now caught as the person that is trying to unmask people that are not the target of surveillance.
And that in fact surveillance took place against then candidate Trump and then President elect Trump and the entire transition team, which has been confirmed for November, December, and January.
For what earthly purpose would Susan Rice be unmasking the names of those people that were caught up in legal legitimate surveillance, except to advance the narrative.
Now it explains Evelyn Farkas's comments last week in total.
Apparently a lot of people knew that this surveillance had taken place, and she was corroborating and confirming it.
Now the question is, did it really go back as far as July?
How long did the surveillance take place?
Who knew what, when and where?
That's a pretty fascinating development.
You know, now we've got Adam Schiff.
Adam Schiff was whining and complaining, and the media was whining and complaining all last week.
Devin Nunes had no business at all being the person uh to go over to the White House and and get this information.
Well, we now discovered what happened in this case.
And this was in Eli Lake's column from earlier today.
And that is that, well, the White House counsel became aware that in fact this intelligence existed.
Well, what's the White House Council supposed to do at that point?
White House Council is supposed to, okay, well, let's make aware those people that are in the intelligence community, and that would be, okay, the House intelligence community uh chairman.
Now, here's, you know, multiple sources now have confirmed to Fox, for example, that national security advisor under Obama, Susan Rice, she personally made the request to unmask out of the surveillance, legitimate surveillance of Russia, China, other countries, any time there was a conversation with anybody on the Trump transition team.
And the unmasking of names and and people associated with Donald Trump were then sent to the entire NSC and some at the Department of Justice.
And James Clapper saw it, and John Brennan saw it.
Basically, the people at the top, including the former deputy national security advisor, Ben Rhodes.
So I want to know what all these people saw.
And I want to I want to ask, why didn't anybody see a red flag because you're not supposed to unmask or surveil Americans, especially an opposing political party, which is what happened here.
All these names from the Trump campaign were part of incidental, what they call incidental Electronic surveillance, but it ended up also being surveillance of a candidate, the president-elect, and people close to him, people part of his transition team, also including family members, it could have been going on up to a year.
Up to a year, it's possible, Fox reports.
Now, when the names of Americans are incidentally collected through legitimate surveillance, as now explains Devin Nunes' comment that it was a legal surveillance, but it bothered him because the people on the other end, the Americans' identities are supposed to be protected.
Because you don't have a warrant to surveil an opposing political party.
Then it raises huge questions about whether or not intelligence gathering, legitimate intelligence gathering, was used as a ruse to really surveil the main target, which was Donald Trump and his transition team.
You see how bad this gets?
Now think about this.
When the names of Americans are in incidentally collected, which is what Nunes said, they're supposed to be masked.
In other words, their names and identities as a matter of standard operating procedure are redacted from reports.
Doesn't matter if it's international, domestic domestic collection.
Let's say there was, you know, a legitimate warrant or a target of an American.
It doesn't matter.
The person that is not the target, their identity is supposed to be protected.
That should be for obvious reasons to ensure the privacy of the American people, and yes, presidential candidates, especially.
Especially if you're talking about an administration that's so deeply opposed to an opposition candidate.
Anyway, so those names are supposed to be redacted when reports are written at standard operating procedure here, they don't even name the American.
Even if they recognize, for example, let's say, let's say they were surveilling China, and I called somebody in China, and that call was being surveilled.
Okay, legal surveillance, fine.
You don't write, and then Sean Hannity called, and Sean Hannity said this.
That would be illegal because they don't have a search warrant to go after Sean Hannity.
Now, let's say I said something on the call, and let's say Susan Rice, who hates Sean Hannity because Sean Hannity doesn't like Barack Hussein Obama, and then let's say they unmask my name and then they leak it to the press.
Whatever way they want to spin it.
You got it?
You can't do it.
You you subject every American to a police state and a police state tactics.
You understand how dangerous this is?
And let's say, well, well, let's say that um Donald Trump in the transition was flirting with some old girlfriend of his.
Okay, it's nobody's business.
There's real danger in surveilling innocent people.
That then could potentially be used to blackmail them.
Oh, I don't want my wife to find out I was flirting with that girl or this girl or whatever.
I'm just using that as an example.
Whatever it happens to be.
But you get you get the point.
So anyway, they're supposed to be redacted names when Americans are incidentally surveilled, whether it's international or domestic collection, it doesn't matter, unless it's an issue of national security.
Now, if they heard me say to some guy in Russia, oh, God forbid I would never say it, of course, obviously.
I want to blow up this or that.
Okay, at that point, then they have every right to keep listening.
Because now national security is in play.
Or I'm gonna rob a bank.
Okay, now they have a right to listen because a crime is is being contemplated.
But there are very strict, stringent rules and procedures that are to be followed.
In other words, if their security isn't threatened in any way.
Now, there are loopholes, there's a way to unmask people through back channels, and this is what Susan Rice was asking for, as it relates to any surveillance, quote, incidental surveillance that took place and that was connected to anybody in the Trump team.
Well, there had to be tons of surveillance because their job, there were their incoming job was to meet with and talk to counterparts all over the world.
And every one of those calls could have been surveilled legally.
Anyway, so, you know, if you go through back channels, even then Americans are supposed to be protected from incidental collection.
It's a process known as minimization.
You minimize what it is that you know about the American that is incidentally picked up in any type of surveillance.
You protect their identity.
Now, this all comes in the wake of Evelyn Farkas and her ridiculous comments on Liberal Joe, where under the, you know, former Secretary of Defense under Obama saying, Oh, wow, I was urging my former colleagues and frankly speaking, the people on the Hill.
It was more actually aimed at telling the Hill people, gather as much intelligence as you can before Obama leaves office.
Hello.
That would be leaking intelligence.
Who are the who are our colleagues she's going to leak it to?
That's what it sounds like to me.
And in the meantime, we're told that the House Intelligence Committee chairman, Devin Nunes, knew about the unmasking and the leaking back in January, well before President Trump tweeted in March that he'd been wiretapped.
By the way, probably used the wrong term.
What he was saying is, I was surveilled.
They were gathering intelligence on the president elect and the candidate as well.
Do you see how dangerous this is?
Do you understand the magnitude of this?
Anyway, sources are telling Fox now, the intelligence agencies slow rolled Devin Nunes.
They did it on purpose because they knew what had really gone on.
In other words, he could have seen the logs at other places besides the White House, but it had been already a few weeks, so he went to the White House because he could protect his sources and he could get the logs.
So it was smart for him and perfectly legal, as I told you last week, to do what he did.
And then the Democrats, they don't want to focus on the fact that a presidential, not only an incoming president, a president elect and a presidential candidate was being surveilled by the current administration during a major political campaign.
They'd rather focus in on, well, why did somebody why did Devin Nunes go to the White House?
Because the White House counsel told him to go there.
That's why.
And he was brought into it specifically.
Now keep in mind as the Obama administration left office, then it gets into 123, the executive order that I've been talking about for weeks.
What's executive order 123?
It was the amendment that the president signed, and apparently others in the administration, including the intelligence people like Brennan and Clapper and I'm sure Loretta Lynch all signed off on that allowed 16 other U.S. intelligence agencies to have access to the raw data.
Well, that makes it harder to find out who leaked it.
Hmm.
Hannity, you're believing in conspiracy.
Well, one of the things that's fascinating is Adam Schiff, who couldn't couldn't you couldn't get him off of TV or radio.
Now all of a sudden he's clamming up.
All of a sudden shift's nowhere to be found.
And uh he actually said, I can't say whether anything was masked or unmasked properly.
Because he knows damn well that what Susan Rice apparently was requesting here was not good.
And Susan Rice now has By the way, this is an announcement.
If anybody knows Susan Rice.
We're not saying she's guilty of anything, but we may want to consult a really good attorney today.
Same lady that lied about Benghazi to us repeatedly.
You got the computer logs of President Obama's team, what they left behind in the White House.
Well, it indicates that Susan Rice accessed numerous intelligence reports during the last seven months of Obama while he was in office that contained NSA intercepts, all involving Trump and associates.
And Sarah Carter has a similar article out today over at Circa News.
And intelligence sources say the logs discovered by the NSA council staff show and suggest that Rice's interest in the NSA materials, which included the unmasking of American identities, appeared to begin around July, the time that Trump secured the GOP nomination.
And then it accelerated after Trump's election in November.
So they basically have been surveilling Trump for since last July.
And the intelligence reports included intercepts of Americans talking to foreigners.
That makes it legal, but they're not the target.
They're supposed to be prot protected.
Their identity's protected.
The process of minimization should have kicked in.
Nobody's name should have been masked.
As a matter of standard operating procedure, they should have just written down American and not given any details, even if they knew it was Trump or anybody associated with him.
And most, uh, if not all had to do with the Russian election interference.
That then explains Farkas.
This also explains the comments of Devin Nunes.
This is now beginning to unfold exactly as I told you it would.
And ordinarily, references to Americans are redacted or minimized by the NSA before being shared with outside intelligence sources.
But in these cases, names were unmasked at the request of Susan Rice or the intelligence reports were specific enough that the Americans' identity was easily ascertained.
They're supposed to protect their identities.
And the exact national security justification for Rice accessing and unmasking these reports isn't clear.
The only obvious answer is she was spying and wanted to spy on Trump and his transition team.
Or his campaign before the election occurred.
So it raises a lot of interesting questions here.
That's also got to be a major focus point in terms of looking into who knew what, when and where, and congressional oversight.
And since lawmakers may want to know if it was briefed to Obama himself or Ben Rhodes himself.
Rice is, I guarantee you, Rice is going to clam up now.
One intelligence professional with detailed knowledge of how the NSA and other intelligence agencies share information with the White House during transitions, told Circa that U.S. intelligence reporting on foreign leaders' perceptions of Trump spiked after his election win in November, creating a trove of information that could be accessed by the outgoing White House.
There's always intelligence reporting on an incoming president and how the world's reacting, but this election was not like any other.
There was a report in spikes in the amount of intelligence being gathered.
Devin Nunes turns out to be a hero in all this.
Do you understand the magnitude?
The proportion.
If you think Watergate break-in was a big deal, don't you think it's a big deal if they were surveilling a candidate, an opposition party candidate, a transition team, and using national security as a cover?
Because that's what it looks like happened.
800-941 Sean or Toprey telephone number.
Now Eli Lake, who wrote a big blockbuster on this, joins us next.
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All right, Hour 2, Sean Hannity Show.
We're following, obviously, all week the effort by the Democrats to thwart the vote on the Supreme Court justice pick of the president, Neil Gorsuch.
We're getting to that, but our top story is...
Eli Lake, now Fox, now others, all admitting what we have been telling you is true.
And the headline of Eli Lake's column is Top Obama advisors sought the names of Trump associates in Intel.
In other words, White House lawyers last month learned from the National Security Advisor, Susan Rice, had requested the identities of U.S. persons.
In other words, unmasking in raw intelligence reports on dozens of occasions that connect to the Donald Trump transition and campaign.
What was she doing this on her own or at the behest of a nosy president?
Anyway, the pattern of Rice's request was discovered by the National Security Council review of the government's policy on unmasking.
What is unmasking?
What are the three things I keep telling you to pay attention to?
Surveillance, yes, that's been confirmed of candidate Trump, of President elect Trump up until when he became president, November, December, and January.
And then I say the most important thing after that is all right, intelligence leaks.
What was I saying last week?
Pay attention to four words.
Right?
Surveillance, unmasking, intelligence leaking.
So those are the four words.
Well, now it is all coming together.
And there's there's so much about this that's getting interesting.
And then you got Adam Schiff.
Adam Schiff was literally the most dangerous place in America up until this weekend was between Adam Schiff and a television camera, because he was racing every camera.
Well, now his r remarks seem to support Devin Nunez and Trump's claims, and he's going dark.
And add to that the factor that we we focused so much on last week, which was Evelyn Farkas's big reveal as it relates to, oh yeah, unmasking and intelligence leaking and and trying to save it.
It's all now beginning to come together.
And Schiff says the that Trump wants to focus on tweets, not on the Russia probe.
But he goes silence after he silent after he finally reviewed the Nunes documents.
All right, so let's go to Susan Rice when she was on PBS with uh with Judy Woodruff and listen to what she said in her denial.
No wiretapping occurred at Trump Tower.
I'm not aware of any order given a spread intelligence amongst government officials about Russia.
That appears now to be a lie.
Pay close attention.
I know nothing about this.
I was surprised to see uh reports from uh Chairman Eunice on that uh count today.
I mean, let's back up and recall where we have been.
Uh the President of the United States accused his predecessor, President Obama, of wiretapping Trump Tower during the campaign.
Nothing of the sort occurred, and we've heard that confirmed by the director of the FBI, who also pointed out that no President, no White House, uh can order the surveillance of another American citizen.
That can only come from the Justice Department with the approval of a Pfizer court.
So today, uh I really don't know to what uh Chairman Nunes was referring, but he said that whatever he was referring to was uh a illegal, lawful uh surveillance, and that it was potentially incidental collection on American citizens.
And I think it's important for people to understand what incidental means.
That means that the target was a either a foreign entity or somebody under criminal investigation, and that uh the Americans who were talking to those targets may have been picked up.
In the last few weeks, the New York Times has reported that in the final days of the Obama administration, uh individuals went out of their way to spread information throughout the government about what they knew about uh intelligence uh that the Russians had interfered uh in the election last year, and that there may have been a connection with Trump campaign officials.
So that story has now been out there for several weeks.
Could there be a connection here?
I'm not aware of any connection.
I had read the New York Times story.
I must say, Judy is uh one of the most senior White House officials and the most senior responsible for national security.
I found that report a bit uh perplexing.
I was not aware of any orders given to disseminate that kind of information.
Well, was having so I have no idea whether that was the case.
But the fact is that uh in the president did request uh back in December, the intelligence community compile all of the information that it had on what had transpired during the campaign with respect to the Russians involving themselves uh in the presidential campaign and that report was provided uh to the American people in unclassified form and to Congress uh in classified form in early January.
Did Susan Rice just lie there joining us now Eli Lake, he had a blockbuster report on Bloomberg today about how White House lawyers last month learned that she, Susan Rice had requested the identities of U.S. persons and raw intelligence reports.
That is called unmasking.
Eli welcome back to the program.
Thanks so much for having me.
All right why don't you explain what you learned and to the extent that this went on.
First of all, unmasking certainly confirms surveillance, does it not?
Well, what unmasking does is it means that someone who's political, in this case it's Susan Rice, who is the national security advisor, she has policy reasons for seeing the most sensitive intelligence, but she's also a political appointee and somebody who works directly for Barack Obama.
And the question is that, as it was described to me, the kinds of reports that she would get where she would see a name blacked out were clearly things having to do
do with either conversations between foreign officials about the Trump transition or conversations with a Trump transition official and someone who was under surveillance a foreign target and then she would say I'd like to see who that U.S. person is in order to get more information on things that at least we now know from from Devin Nunes of what he said two weeks ago that had nothing to do with Russia.
So this is this is very important here.
So in the course of the NSA doing their job which is eavesdropping in this let's say in this case on Russia or it could be China or Iran or or any of our adversaries, friend or foe, it doesn't matter actually, but they're doing their job.
Now but to surveil an American would require a court order, wouldn't it?
Wouldn't it require some type of warrant?
That's right.
If you were going to put a uh uh a wiretap on the communications of an American citizen you need a court order in a secret court known as the Pfizer court but there is also lots of Americans who will be spoken about or speaking with someone who's already being targeted for legal reasons usually a foreign entity or something like that.
And when that person is scooped up or you've been scooped up if you've had any conversations with you know foreign diplomats or foreign ministers or things like that, chances are there will be, you know, at some point in the raw data your name will be there in what you said.
The reason the the system that we have so that we make sure that this sort of thing is not abused is that that name needs to be minimized.
It needs to be blacked out you can't know who I am you can't know the identifying characteristics if you're just trying to focus on the one person who you are are legally eavesdropping.
Let me let me let me help my audience out here because a lot of people don't understand the terms that you're using here.
So in the course of surveilling let's say it's a Russian ambassador, a Chinese ambassador, which we want them to do if that if that Chinese ambassador Russia and ambassador is talking to an American then there is a process that is known as minimization.
In other words that they will they they might be aware of who the purpose person is and but they don't usually when they write up reports, correct me if I'm wrong, standard operating procedure is they would not unveil or unmask the name of the American when they write that report up.
Is that correct?
That's right.
And here's an important distinction the the people who would know the U.S. person are in the bowels of the National Security Agency or somewhere in the intelligence committee.
These are not political appointees they're not people who would use that information for some sort of political end.
They're just there collecting this stuff and they make sure that it's minimized and then it goes out to government officials and that's the way the process is supposed to work.
The story here is that in a review of the logs of the National Security Council, it was discovered by one of the new Trump staffers who was in charge of intelligence that there had been a a number of the requests to find out who the U.S. persons were that were blacked out in summaries of monitored communications sort of raw intelligence reports that would describe a conversation between uh someone in the Trump transition and again a foreign official or
two foreign diplomats discussing a meeting they may have had with the Trump transition official things of that nature and this was a pattern an anomaly where you saw again again Susan Rice requesting to find out who that US person was when this staffer of the National Security Council named Ezra Cohen Watnik discovered that he then takes that information to the Office of General Counsel,
the lawyer of the president and says I want you to do something with this the Office of General Counsel says I want you to stop the review that you're doing there on this policy of unmasking and then the Officer General Counsel then proceeds to look into it and what they've now done is to share this with uh the House Intelligence Committee.
We know that Adam Schiff and Devin Nunes have of course seen this stuff and uh they've offered to share this with the Senate Intelligence Committee to have Congress properly investigate it.
So doesn't it sound to you highly inappropriate and that this now has become uh a a political a sitting administration politicizing raw intelligence and in the process requesting the unmasking in particularly focusing on an opposition party either running or a transition team that is doing their work in the lead up.
Now if if the four words that I keep saying to my audience matter well number one this would confirm that surveillance of the Trump transition team at least took place and that that that unmasking happened because Susan Rice was requesting it and then we have to ask the question well how did Lieutenant General Michael Flynn you know his that raw intelligence in his case was leaked and it ended up with him losing his job over it.
Well all that I want to I would just say a couple caveats the real scandal here might be that everything that Susan Rice did was legal and that we need to reform the law to make sure this doesn't happen going forward.
Um so that's but all right I gotta I gotta take a break but you would agree with me that the leak of yes the leak is a is a crime absolutely that is a felony under the espionage act correct?
Yeah I mean I I think there's specific wiretap information laws but you're right that is a crime.
Alright stay right there.
Eli Lake is with us with uh Bloomberg and he wrote this great piece today.
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Quick break we'll continue more with Eli Lake Bloomberg View columnist writer and uh much more straight ahead and we'll have a lot on this tonight on Hannity 10 Eastern now that Uncle Joe has left the building maybe we can get back to bringing jobs home.
That's jobs J O B S is the Sean Hannity show.
And as we continue Eli Lake is with us with Bloomberg News and we're discussing of course the surveillance of then candidate Trump and then of course President elect Trump and his transition team and also the unmasking now that we've discovered in Susan Rice's request to unmask people in other words the raw intelligence and uh which is very it's not within standard operating procedure by any measure and then it gets taken to the next level for example with General Flynn.
All right when Susan Rice said she didn't know about wiretapping occurring and when she said she wasn't aware of any order given to spread intelligence um was she telling the truth in that interview with Judy Woodruff?
Well I think she has a little bit of wiggle room there because she was talk I mean I think she may have been responding to the tweet from Donald Trump which is which is really literally not correct and that there wasn't a wiretap of a Pfizer sort on Trump tower And then she claimed not to know what Nunes was talking about, which I think, you know, she should revise and extend her remarks because it appears now that you know this was getting at this unmasking issue.
Now, in fairness, when this story originally broke, I think because we're dealing with very classified information, some of the most tightly guarded stuff, that Nunes had to sort of talk around some of these issues.
So he spoke of intelligence reports and incidental collection, you know, did not connect it originally to the issue of unmasking.
So that may give her some technical wiggle room, but I think that she will have more, you know, questions to answer down the road.
All right.
So then the next question is let me play for you Adam Schiff and what he said, and he's gone uncharacteristically quiet since all of this.
All right, but let's listen to what he had to say.
There's no definitive proof of collusion between Tr the Trump camp and Russia.
Let's play it.
Can you say definitively that there was collusion?
There were people affiliated with the Trump campaign who were working with Russians to time the release of damaging information about Hillary Clinton that had been that had been hacked either from John Fedesta or the DNC.
I don't think we can say anything definitively at this point.
We are still at the very early stage of the investigation.
The only thing I can say is that it would be irresponsible for us not to get to the bottom of this.
We really need to find out exactly what the Russians did because one of the most important conclusions that the intelligence community reached is that they are going to do this again to the United States.
They're doing it already in Europe.
So we can say, you know, conclusively, this is something that needs to be thoroughly investigated.
Uh, but but it's uh way premature to be reaching conclusions.
All right, he seems to also support Nunes and his and and Trump claims that surveillance took place based on what he saw when he finally went over and looked at the information.
Well, he's he's keeping fairly tight-lipped about it.
I think again, I would just stress here that you know when you're dealing with classified information like that, it does get uh it becomes difficult to talk in too much detail about what's going on, which is one of the reasons why um, you know, I'm I my sources are on background and not on the record.
But it is interesting because if you remember, Representative Schiff was talking about more than circumstantial evidence, uh not even I think a week ago regarding collusion, and now he's saying at this point we're still investigating it.
And I think that that is the responsible position at this point, in that there hasn't been any kind of smoking gun.
And you know, the other thing I would just say.
And by the way, James Clapper said it, Admiral Rogers said it, and uh James Comey said it.
But what Comey wouldn't admit is whether or not there's an investigation into the into the leaking of intelligence information, which we know happened, which we know is a felony.
Well, I mean, James Comey has created so many problems for himself because if he can give details about an ongoing counterintelligence investigation, or at least acknowledge that, then why wouldn't he talk about other kinds of investigations?
Exactly.
And I know that Trey Gowdy and other members of the committee on the Republican side are very concerned about that.
Uh-uh, I'm very concerned.
All right, Eli, great work by the way.
Eli Lake, he's gonna be on Hannity tonight with Sarah Carter, and we're gonna do a deep dive into this because it's getting more interesting by the day, and it seems the media was wrong on every single solitary point.
Every one.
800 nine-four one Sean, you want to be a part of the program.
Quick break.
Right back.
We'll continue.
Quick break.
Holding them accountable.
Sean gets the answers no one else does.
America deserves to know the truth about Congress.
All right, 25 till the top of the hour, toll-free telephone numbers 800, 941 Sean.
If you want to be a part of the program, big week as it relates to the president, he's gonna be meeting with what, the head of uh China, and he met today earlier with President Abdel Fatah El Sisi.
Remember, he's the the one guy in Egypt that really stood up to radical Islam in what became a historic speech on on his part, and frankly, a very courageous one.
And also we now have Reports that a defector from North Korea is saying that uh Kim Jong-un would in fact use nuclear weapons, and that issue begins to heat up as we speak.
Anyway, here's the uh president talking to President Al Sisi and the Egyptian people.
Here's what he said to the White House earlier today.
It's great to be with the president of Egypt, and I will tell you President Al Sisi has been somebody that's been very close to me from the first time I met him.
Uh I met during the campaign.
Yes.
And at that point there were two of us, and we both met.
And hopefully you like to be a lot more.
But uh it was a very long, it was supposed to be just a quick brief meeting, and we were with each other for a long period of time.
Uh we agree on so many things.
I just want to let everybody know in case there was any doubt that we are very much behind President Al Sisi, he's done a fantastic job in a very difficult situation.
We are very much behind Egypt and the people of Egypt.
And the United States has believed me, back in, and we have strong backing.
We are uh very much, and as you and I will be soon talking, uh, we're building up our military to a level that will be the highest, probably the highest that we've ever had.
Uh we are rejuvenating our military to the highest level.
I think in these times, probably more than ever before, or certainly almost more than ever before.
That's what we need.
And I just want to say to you, Mr. President, that you have a great friend and ally in the United States and in me.
All right, that was the president with the president of Egypt, El Sisi.
One of the things that I guess in the aftermath of Obama's reckless foreign policy and stupid Iranian deal, I guess one of the the benefits that emerge from that is the creation of a new alliance that has emerged between the Saudis and Israel, between Israel and Egypt, between Israel and Jordan, and the Arab Emirates.
We're gonna get to this and uh all the other issues uh as it relates to uh this Colonel Oliver North is with us, knows a thing or two about the Middle East, as he once went there with a suicide pill in his pocket.
In case you ever had to take it, thank God you didn't.
How are you, sir?
And uh how you been alive and well, my friend.
All right, we've got a lot of different issues on the table here.
Let me start with this, then we'll get to the attack in St. Petersburg in Russia.
And uh, but first, I look at Al Sisi as is almost like a modern-day Anwar Sadat.
If you ever read Anwar Sadat's autobiography, it's it's amazing the the guts and the courage that he showed in an effort for peace.
It eventually ended he he lost his life over that that uh alliance that he created with Israel.
But he lost it to the Muslim Brotherhood.
That's not I can't forget that too.
Um El Sisi seems to be a guy that understands the dangers of radical Islam and is not afraid to say it.
He does.
In fact, he's probably offered the best secular challenge to radical Islam of any Arab leader.
I mean, what he said about a it's almost a year ago, and he's refined it since.
It's a challenge to the Imams, the Molas, the Ayatollahs, no matter what they are, the radical Islam no longer has a place on the planet Earth.
And his his charge is to those we sometimes I think mistakenly call it moderates, but the challenge is for them to stand up and and take charge of Islam so that it's not perceived, I think rightly as it is, as a terrorist entity.
Well, I think I think that you know I think what's happening though, don't you think Jordan, the Emirates, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, and Israel all recognize the real clear present danger of Iranian hegemony in the region and absolutely.
Absolutely.
And of course, those are Sunni Islamic states, and and they realize that what you're what what we're on the cusp of is uh an enormous civil war that goes on between Shiites dominated by Iran and the Sunnis, which quite frankly started their own terrorist organizations back in the eighties after they watched the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps created by Hhomeini usurp Islam.
That's what really happened.
If you you consider what was going on prior to 1979, when I the the Ayatollah Homeini comes back from Paris, goes to Kholm and eventually overthrows the Shah.
The creation of the Islamic people often get it wrong.
They call it the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps.
It's not.
It was the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, and it's how Shiite Islam was going to take over and dominate all of Islam.
1981, in response to that, you had this the Salafists and you had the Wahhabis saying, Hey, wait a second, we can do even more because there's a lot more of us.
of course, that's where Al Qaeda comes from, that's where ISIS comes from.
And now you've got the potential for a major cataclysmic event.
The worst part of it, Sean, is you now have right on the cusp of nuclear weapons in the hands of the Ayatollahs in Tehran.
And unfortunately, they have a very apocalyptic perspective on what's going to happen.
They they see Mog and Mogog, Armageddon for those of us in the Judeo-Christian uh tradition.
Well, they have this belief in the in the Mahdi who's gonna, you know, come and it's gonna be the ultimate Islamic victory.
Yes, but but that that lends itself to those who have those kinds of weapons in their hands to precipitating the kind of event that will bring about that cataclysmic end.
And unfortunately, uh the Iranians uh when we first started talking about this conversation, and and Linda was uh on phone with me and sending me emails back and forth, it was Russia, North Korea, and Iran.
Almost no one is paying any attention to the secret collusion between the North Koreans and the Iranians on two things.
Number one, nuclear weapons, and number two, intercontinental ballistic missiles.
Both those countries are getting away with it because no one's paying attention to what what the collusion that's going on.
And unfortunately, there are Iranian scientists in North Korea every time they do a nuclear test or an ICBM test, and the same is true in reverse because the North Koreans send their people to watch the Iranians and they exchange information, they give each other advice.
And it would not be at all unexpected.
I don't think it should be unexpected that you'd have a an announcement from both sides, one in the Pacific with North Korea, and one in in uh the in the Middle East from Iran, that they now have nuclear weapons and and dare the world to deal with either one of them that way.
So you're saying that there's an unholy alliance and they're trading information, and on top of that that there is a good possibility the Iranians, because of Obama's bad deal would get nuclear weapons with the help of the North Koreans.
I I I don't think there's even a possibility.
I think it's an act absolute fact.
And unfortunately, we don't have an intelligence service that's able to put all that together.
But if you if all you have to do is look at the open source, you have to look at the look at the photographs that come out of all these tests in these laboratories.
There's Iranians there, there's North Koreans there.
What are they doing?
They're working together to come up with a miniaturized nuclear device that can be put on the tip of a missile, and missile number one goes into Tel Aviv, not Jerusalem, and missile number two hits a U.S. base somewhere.
It's pretty scary scenario, but it's well, I'm I'm trying I'm trying to be upbeat, but somebody has to speak reality here.
And unfortunately, what was done to our intelligence services in the last eight years before Mr. Trump got to Washington was to emasculate the and collection of the human intelligence that would give us that kind of stuff.
That and politicizing it, which we now see that happened to General Flynn and these revelations today about Susan Rice asking for the unmasking of raw intelligence, which you know and I know never happens.
Well, it should never happen.
Uh in it by treaty, by the way.
The the world has been divided up into five sectors.
By treaty, the United States has certain places where it collects intelligence and we share it with the others.
And those others are Great Britain, Australia, New Zealand, and one other one.
And and in those cases, what they do is they collect in their particular areas and they share it.
And part of the treaty is you're not gonna reveal things that are super sensitive.
There are code words for this stuff, Sean.
I can't even say on the on the radio because I signed a non-disclosure agreement.
But the code words pertain to the collector and the dissemination of it, and by treaty, we've agreed not to print copies of this stuff and send it around the government.
Before the Obama administration left town, they broadened the distribution of that kind of intelligence, what's called raw intelligence all over the government.
And apparently, if this thing is right about Susan Rice, Obama's national security advisor, she exceeded her bounds by leaps that I couldn't even imagine in my day to disseminate the raw information with the names in it and what's now commonly referred to as unmasking.
You know, where is Russia in all of this?
Because all right, now we have this this what appears to be a terror attack today.
Now the Russians have had their own radical Islamic problem over the years.
But anyway, the latest update is we've got what, ten people killed at least, up to fourteen people, you know, according to other unconfirmed reports, forty people injured.
An explosion tore through a tr the train in Carnage and St. Petersburg in their metro tunnel earlier today.
But you know, now we've got Vladimir Putin seemingly, you know, dealing with Iran, seemingly dealing with Syria and Turkey, and seemingly, you know, looking at what the outcome in Syria is ultimately going to be for his own benefit.
So where is he in this equation?
I would add to that, uh, add to what you just said, the relationship that exists and has for a long period of time.
All the g all the way back to the fifties, with the Kim Dynasty inside North Korea.
And so what you really have is what I call a triangle of evil.
You've got the Russians dealing with Iran, you've got the Russians dealing with Turkey, you've got the Russians dealing with North Korea.
And if you think about it, Vladimir Putin is not in great shape.
I mean, he looks good on a horseback without a shirt on.
But his allies are crazy despots in Poin Yang and crazy jihadis in Tehran.
Both of whom could well start World War Three in less than a year.
So the Trump administration, which came into town saying that they were gonna try to get something going with the Russians, had an open window for a while.
I would tell you that as of as of today, despite what just happened in St. Petersburg with it, what is undoubtedly a terror attack.
Despite that, politically in this town it's going to be very difficult for anybody in Washington to include the new president, from opening up a new overture for some kind of accommodation with Moscow.
And Putin's governing a dying country.
It covers what, nine time zones?
No.
It's a demographic time bomb.
The Russians don't reproduce.
No one immigrates to Russia.
There's a million fewer Russians today than there were two years ago.
But not getting any better because nobody goes there, and as soon as they can export a pretty woman, she comes and marries somebody over the internet.
By the way, it sounds like the same move from New York, there was an article today, more than a million people moved out of the state of New York to other parts of the country since twenty ten at a r at a rate of four point four percent, which by the way is the highest negative net migration rate among the nation's large population centers.
And I and I'm still stuck here paying ten percent state income tax.
By the way, the Commonwealth isn't that much better either.
So let's be honest here.
But there are better states like Texas and Florida.
Hey, listen, uh, we'll continue with Colonel North on the other side.
We'll get to your calls news roundup information overload also coming.
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you All right, news roundup information overload.
Your call's coming up at the bottom of this half hour, 800-941.
So a lot of reports this weekend that there is some ongoing negotiations, that they have revived discussions, uh, although thankfully, maybe for the first Time nobody is out actually out there talking and negotiating in the press, because I I thought it was so mishandled the the reveal on the first plan to repeal and replace Obamacare.
Anyway, so hopefully they're also looking at free market competition solutions to the problem.
Because that's the answer.
I mean, if you have cooperatives like our buddy Josh Umber down in Wichita, Kansas, well, that's an option that I think a lot of small communities and towns can use.
Maybe not big cities, but maybe you can even translate it into some big cities.
If you are offering health savings accounts, that's a great way for young people to build up a pretty hefty nest egg over the years and their healthy years, so if God forbid they get older and they get sick and they have a heart attack or a bad accident or God forbid get cancer, they'll be fine.
And they'll have the money to pick and choose where they want the best care and where they think they get the best deal.
The fact that I I keep hearing that these negotiations have been revived and it seems like detente has been reached between the Freedom Caucus and and its critics and as if they were responsible for this breakdown, uh is uh is a good sign to me.
Uh joining us now, the former lieutenant governor of the great state of New York and has been involved, she carries around and sleeps with the Obamacare bill every night.
And she's now the chairman of the committee to reduce infection deaths, Betsy McCoy's with us, Dr. Josh Umber of Atlas MD.
I mean, he created the cooperative now that has been duplicated by hundreds of other practices around the country where adults only pay fifty bucks a month for unlimited care, children ten bucks a month for unlimited care, forty-eight cents for a an X ray and ninety five percent reductions because he negotiated directly with the pharmaceutical companies, including even some some chemotherapy type of drugs.
So welcome both of you back to the program.
Betsy, I I guess it's uh uh to me this is very critical.
This is not something I know people got a little bit angry that it didn't happen right away, but from my perspective, if improvements are made to the bill and it's more free market oriented and it's the right answer, I don't care how much time it takes, I'd rather get it right than get speed.
Your thoughts.
Oh, I so agree with you, Sean, and the fact is the Freedom Caucus has done a great service to the nation.
Of course I wanted the bill to go through.
When when Speaker Paul Ryan stood up there at the podium that Friday and said uh Americans would be living with Obamacare for the foreseeable future, I was extremely distressed with him because all of us want to see Obamacare repealed.
He shouldn't have thrown in the towel.
In my view, he should have said we need a few more days.
Um but the fact Well, I I actually blame him for part of this, and as much as nobody saw the bill before he unveiled it publicly.
Nobody.
Not one person had a chance to read it.
He misled the president about having the votes.
Yeah, and he also built zero consensus.
Now we all know the Republican Party, like the Democratic Party is a coalition party.
You got some liberals, you got some moderates, you got you know, the Tuesday, the Sunday, the Wednesday, the Saturday night drinking group, the Freedom Caucus.
You know, I mean, the study group, it gets to be insane and everyone's got their specific agenda, but at the end of the day, it's not going to be a perfect bill, but it's going to be infinitely better than anything Obamacare gave us, as long as it's free market oriented, right?
Well, that's right.
And the original bill, the Ryan bill, let's call it, did three things very well.
It repealed the individual mandate to relieve those eight million people currently incurring penalties.
It repealed the employer mandate, which should uh create an enormous amount of hiring and also ensure that people who have been demoted to part-time status get their full-time jobs back, and it reformed Medicaid, which is threatening us with the tidal wave of red ink.
But it didn't do one thing, and here I can quote Louis Gomer, one of our mutual favorite friends.
It did not lower premiums.
And the uh Freedom Caucus had the answer for that.
They had a very sound answer.
They were going to repeal the wacky rule in Obamacare that requires health insurance to charge healthy people the same exorbitant premiums as very sick people.
It it's not that we're leaving sick people defend for themselves, but it provides another much fairer way to subsidize care for the sick and relieve healthy people from the unfair burden of having to put those bills in their premiums.
I think that you raised such a good point.
And listen, at the end of the day, nobody in this country gives a rip about what reconciliation challenges exist for the Senate.
They don't care about the bird rule, and they don't care about cloture.
What they want let's face it, by the end of the week, let's face it, we hope that the filibuster and the closure rule are things of the past.
Yeah, I agree with that too.
And if that if that happens, then this is um uh we can make it the best bill ever at that point because they not have to consider any of those things.
I predict that in a few days, now that Rand Paul and others have gone out and played golf with uh President Trump and exchanged these views in a commerce circumstance, uh that we will have that bill that does all the things the original bill did, plus that critically important component's gonna be happy lowering premiums, and by the way, people want deductibles lowered too, and they want better care.
You can't feed a Chihuahua and a Great Dane for the same price, and that's what Obamacare was forcing healthy people to do.
They were they were f the the bill you better be careful because the the Great Dane is gonna chew up the Chihuahua and then have that for breakfast.
Uh Dr. Umber, let me bring you back, and uh I gotta be honest, there's been a lot of people that have been asking me about you from Washington, and I do know that there are people advocating not only for health savings accounts but also to incentivize the type of cooperatives that you yourself have designed in Wichita and had duplicated around the country.
Do you think it's something that even big cities can handle?
Absolutely.
Uh we have doctors um uh you know in small towns of uh a few hundred to obviously large urban areas doing this model, and I I think what you you guys are talking about is the GMP leadership is isn't really good at maybe leading.
They've always been the party of opposition or at least for the last eight years.
So to get into a role where they had to bring people together, I I think we can repeal and replace if we had a plan good enough to get sixty votes.
And I think the direct care model of actually lowering the cost of carefully.
Well, let me let me say one thing.
I don't think there's one Democrat, Dr. Umber, not one.
I mean, if if literally if Donald Trump was offering the best care for the lowest price, every Democrat would oppose it just because it's Donald Trump.
Well, but no, I think there's a lot of vulnerable Democrats in states where where Trump one-handedly and and if OCAR continues to go forward, it continues to hurt people.
So despite that, they want to find some solution and they can't be obstructionists either, and direct care is is easily the you know largest option to come along, you know, unlimited care, free no co-pays, free visits, huge savings on medicine labs.
By the way, if I got you more patients because I keep talking about you nonstop.
Oh, we wait I'll spend my afternoon answering phone calls after after the show airs because uh people call and they want to find a doctor near them there.
They need more affordable health care.
And and that's the where this conversation happens.
How many how many other cooperatives did you help doctors form at this point, or how many people came to you and and you shared with them the model and they're duplicating it?
As of uh the first of April, we now have over 250 clinics that we've personally helped get started.
Um, but there's probably between five hundred and a thousand doing um some variation of this model, but there could be hundreds of thousands of doctors doing this.
This is just the start.
And unfortunately, there's a lot of people asking for this, and there isn't a direct care provider near them.
So we're telling them go out, talk to your doctor, tell them there is a better way.
This is a grassroots movement led by patients.
By the way, the only people that I could see angry at this are the insurance industry and and maybe the pharmaceutical, you know, the distributors.
You want to control doctors and patients.
They're angry too.
But I I think it's wonderful what what Dr. Umber is doing, and I'm a strong supporter of the American Association of Physicians and Surgeons.
People should go to their website and really learn how you can ha have a relationship with your doctor that keeps the insurance companies and the bureaucrats out of the examining room.
And it does lower insurance premiums while improving insurance company profit.
So I know that sounds odd, but this is more like car at home life insurance.
So there is a way that we can take this to the case.
How do they make more money?
Because they sell more catastrophic plans and they're not involved if you stub your toe.
Same reason my life insurance makes money is I don't use them for all the little stuff.
And if we're out competing, Walmart target CVS on medications by 95%, we're lowering the cost of labs, we're eliminating paperwork, we could reasonably decrease the cost of care in this country a significant amount.
We're able now with even less an ideal policy, decrease employer health insurance premiums by sixty percent.
If Trump could do that, Trump could lower taxes and he'd have an economic boom that would last.
Well, let me ask you this.
What where did this originate from?
What made you start this?
Well, you know, I watched doctors leaving insurance since 2000 when I was a pre-med student because it was broken then, and it only got worse.
So over ten years, we watched a lot of different doctors try a lot of different things before coming up with our model.
Uh, and there are a lot of just wonderful doctors who we learned from in that process, and then a continual evolution of how do we find the best value for uh our patients.
And I think if we keep asking ourselves that, our our hypocritic oath should, you know, of do no harm should mean do no financial harm.
Physicians should take it that proud responsibility to be looking for the lower care.
So uh when the cost of pharmaceuticals and you negotiated what, a 95% reduction on average, is that the built-in profit if I go to a CVS or a right aid?
Some of that's built in profit and and uh but I think a lot of it is built in inefficiency.
And so I um I I do think the big box stores could be a lot more aggressive on the value proposition, um, but they're not having to be.
We have a broken market because the consumer pays their ten dollar copay, and then they try to bill insurance for the most if they can, but then they don't get paid on every prescription they hand out because of insurance rules and red tape and and you know, coding and bureaucracy.
So it it is a broken system leading to more expensive care with without even good profit.
But let's say once we eliminate the individual mandate, all of these solutions are gonna flourish.
Yes.
Sean, because there won't be anything stopping them.
People won't be legally paying.
Well, you're right.
Listen, right now, as you know, Betsy, because you know the health care bill of Obama better than I do, but you can't even buy a catastrophic print plan.
It's illegal.
Well, that's right.
In most states, it's illegal, and and furthermore, and this is the really terrible part of this whole thing.
When people pay their premiums now in the individual market, they're not paying for their own insurance.
This is just a tax, a big tax, a big shift of wealth from one group of people to another.
They're being forced to pay a premium that's many times the cost of their own care.
The whole the whole crux of Obamacare was the young and the healthy paying for the sick, the elderly and disabled, and it became a Ponzi scheme, and that's why nobody instinctively wanted it, and why we didn't get to 24 million people on Obamacare.
We got to less than half of that.
All right, stay right there.
We'll continue with Betsy McCoy and with Dr. Umber, uh, 800 941 Sean.
Your calls at the bottom of the hour.
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Quick break, right back.
We'll continue more with Betsy McCoy and Josh Umber and your calls straight ahead.
Bringing jobs back to America and getting America back to work.
This is the Sean Hannity Show.
All right, as we continue, it looks like the health care debate is back in play.
We'll have to wait, watch and see over time which way this goes.
But anyway, uh we continue with Dr. Josh Umber.
He is with Atlas MD out of Wichita, Kansas, Betsy McCoy, former Lieutenant Governor of the State of New York and a health care advocate.
Uh Dr. Umber, you know, people write us and ask us all the time.
Well, actually they annoy Linda, Which is why this is really Linda's question.
And Linda is annoying me until I ask her question.
And she goes, where do people go to find one of the doctor cooperatives like the one you're a part of if they don't live in Wichita, Kansas?
Absolutely.
We have a great map.
Um another doctor put together.
It's the website is DPC, like direct primary care, DPC frontier.com.
And it's an excellent map.
You can zoom in and find doctors who practice this model nearby.
And then if you don't have a doctor nearby, they can always reach out to us.
This is a grassroots movement.
This is patients demanding something better.
When they hear about it, um, so succinctly on shows like this, that they naturally gravitate towards it.
Um and won't need patients.
Well, Linda Linda said doctors.
Linda said I'm making your life a living hell by putting you on all the time and mentioning you all the time.
Mine too.
Yeah.
That's a great problem.
First of all, I didn't say that.
I said it's great.
It was great to have.
That's not true.
You said I'm making his life a living hell because I keep mentioning him every day, and you said he's getting a calls and he can't do his job as a doctor anymore.
Well, you're probably bugging my nurses more because they feel more of those phone calls than I do, but yes.
Well, you know, what you're really describing.
You know what I love about this?
You're describing concierge care that really is only available to very wealthy people.
In other words, people that may not have insurance, or all they have is catastrophic insurance.
And in other words, if they need stitches, they go into a doctor, they write a check, or they go to you know their buddy, the doctor, or they put a doctor on retainer themselves for you know, God forbid an emergency happens.
I know a ton of people that do it.
I don't do it myself, but I have friends of mine that are doctors, and I'll just pick up at the the phone at three in the morning and they'll do me a favor.
Right, right.
And so this is blue-collar concierge in a lot of ways.
Um, because I think some people get afraid of the term concierge, but what we do want to show is that we are providing top level care that is affordable to everybody.
I think it's real quick that people get worried that this means only uh wealthy people are gonna get access to care.
And what we want to show is that this is a model that helps everybody, and if we decrease again, health insurance for employers, there would be a Trump economic uh uh, you know, boom.
The the Reagan would be jealous of.
That's what then that's what we were saying earlier, though, because it's very important that Republicans get it right, because if they don't lower the cost of premiums and offer better care, then they're gonna end up taxes, they can't fix jobs, no, they can't do anything.
I mean, they're they're counting on uh I think a trillion dollars almost in savings year before they can move forward with their economic plan.
Is that right, Betsy?
Well that's right.
And if you eliminate this one price for everybody, regardless of health condition rule, so that the Chihuahua and the Great Dane aren't forced to pay the same price.
You will see premiums come down by as much as fifty percent.
We've analyzed the data, and we know that that one rule in Obamacare that prohibits insurers from giving healthy people a break amounts to 50% of the premium hikes since 2013.
All right, thank you both for being with us.
Betsy McCoy, Dr. Umber, Atlas MD, Wichita, Kansas.
Thank you both for being with us.
This is what you call a solution to a major problem because sometimes getting it right is more important than the speed of getting it done.
All right, 800 941 Sean, our toll-free telephone number.
We'll take a quick break.
We'll hit the phones, final half hour, quick break, right back, we'll continue.
January 20th was undeniably an important day in this country, but January 21st was far more important.
and Marcella Lee Lennon.
Marcella Lee Lennon.
Donald Trump, you don't stand for our values.
That's what they said.
Donald Trump, you didn't win this election.
Donald Trump, we will resist.
And one reason is this, and we did so successfully.
Now I think you're helping the guy Trump understand something.
Donald Trump puts his name around everything.
The Trump Tower, Trump State, Trump Times.
But when it came to health care, so what do we call it?
Trump care!
We call it money care.
Well, tell you my idea.
Because you know what everybody is in the program?
I don't care.
I don't give a shit on people!
They're back, the snowflakes.
That is the new DNC chairman, Tom Perez and his insistent Trump didn't win the election.
He's dangerous.
He's unhinged.
I mean, I just can't believe this guy's losing his mind this way, and he's just starting.
Somebody I know sat next to this guy once, and he is absolutely off the rails.
Insane.
It's going to be interesting to watch.
What else?
You have the Massachusetts City Council to vote on Trump impeachment resolutions.
Good morning, America covered that important story.
Let's see.
We've got uh oh, the DC Swamp creatures funneled.
I saw this the other day, 41 billion taxpayer dollars to elite wealthy Ivy schools.
Shadow Bream reporting for Fox that your taxpayer dollars are helping to fund private universities despite the fact that their bank accounts are bursting at the seams.
Why would we ever do this?
Why?
Jerry Willis reports.
A new study found that over a six-year period, Ivy League colleges brought in more money from your taxpayer dollars than from all the payments of tuition to undergraduate students.
And this despite the fact that they have more than a hundred and nineteen billion dollars in endowment money.
That's insane.
And then we got Hillary back on the seat.
And they got Chuck Schumer.
And we got Nancy Pelosi.
We got Maxime Waters.
Talking about impeachment every other day.
All right, let's get to our busy telephones here as we say hi to uh let's say hi to Mike in North Carolina.
What's up, Mike?
How are you?
Sean.
What's going on, how's it going?
I'm good.
How are you?
Good.
Can't complain.
Look, I'm a uh officer in the United States military down here at Fort Bragg.
I'm just here to tell you I'm a little deeply disappointed in the Freeman caucus.
I'm disappointed in the whole entire way that the Republican Party chose to lay out the plan.
Um, especially in my own Senator Mark Meadows.
He's a freaking retard.
And at the end of the day, what he really needs to do is be voted out of office by somebody else who's a little bit more smart about how North Carolines actually see things.
You don't even you don't even know what was in the bill at all, do you?
Tell me what was in this new bill.
Me, what was in the new bill?
Yeah.
Okay, so let's talk about one in the new bill was for to defund Clanned Parenthood.
I listen to you almost every single day.
Okay, but here but what was you know because you call you you're attacking Congressman Meadows.
Here's my take on it.
Rather than engage in your ad hominem attacks and using horrible names to call people, I'll just put to push that to the side.
Because I think Mark Meadows and the Freedom Caucus actually what they're asking for is to make this a better bill that allows for the cooperatives that allows for the health care savings accounts, which by the way were fundamental to what the president's promises were during the campaign.
So that in my mind makes him a hero, and that's a good thing for everybody.
And then if you look at the specific things that they're talking about here, you know, they're gonna redesign the Obamacare tax credits instead of creating a new tax credit, you know, reduce the value of the benchmark plan from a uh 70% actual actuarial value to a 60% one, allow credits for people with income below a hundred percent of the of the type of coverage that they want to have.
And what they're trying to do is make it more it allows the creation of high risk pools.
It allows, you know, it potentially adding the component which was missing in the in the last bill of enhanced health care savings accounts, increasing significantly the contribution limits, you know, rolling over excess premium tax credits into health savings accounts,
allow for health sharing cooperatives to be built, and at the end of the day, it allows the health savings accounts, you know what, to do what Dr. Umber is doing and then go out and negotiate better rates for people.
So, you know, you maybe want it done now and fast, and I want it done right.
And I think what they proposed is changes should have been taken into consideration.
Now, the biggest obstacle to all of this is nobody got to read the bill before they unveiled the bill publicly.
They were never brought into the process Of trying to make the bill better at any point.
And so fighting to make a bill better for people just makes sense to me.
And it's just something that I actually applaud him for, but I'm not going to convince you, so there's no point.
All right, 800 941 Sean.
Uh big time AJ Houston, Texas.
What's going on, baby?
At KTRH.
Big time Sean at it.
Hey, big daddy.
Hey, you know what?
What?
The best part about this all is we're gonna get another shot at this.
And the best part about it is we the people know what we need to do.
And the best part about it is we got somebody with some gajonies up there to get it done.
And only thing we need is the rest of the idiots to get some cajonies to stand for what they said they was going to do.
Now, we had somebody up there that said, oh, well, we gotta read the uh uh you gotta voted before you read the bill.
Now we know who know who that was.
But like you say, they did not show nobody the bill.
But come on.
Now people, we it's like a football game.
You gotta get a first down, and then look what brady and him did.
They was losing, and then they came back and won it.
You got to give yourself a chance in this people.
Don't be selling out to these Democrats.
They make you sick because of what they done done.
Look at Susan Rice right now.
Look at all this, and we ain't hear nothing about the main.
Only you, Sean, and the rest of us as on this now, and they still talking about Russia.
Sean, did Russia call you because they shouldn't call me to vote for Trump.
Yeah, they didn't call me talking to me.
I didn't call me yet.
I ain't got no call either.
So now wait a minute.
There's a real quick, there's a story, but that is no story.
No, you there isn't anything.
Why do they keep harping on what they we got real stuff and the media ain't sharing it with nobody?
So what they're telling us, Sean, we got a bunch of crooks up there in the Democrat Party.
And it's showing, but the media, that left wing media, boy, they ought to know the people should.
We know what they're about.
And all this they scared to put out, well, Sean, we gonna have it.
We got it.
And doggone it, these Republicans better gross that we watching them, we watching them big time, Sean, and good work as usual, big daddy.
All right, my man.
You are the man.
You're the m they AJ, we've been way ahead of the curve on this.
And you know what?
We're being proven right, and the media's gonna have egg on their face, as will all of the snowflakes and all of the so-called news people, all right.
Let me get to our phones.
Thank you, big time, appreciate it.
John in Long Beach in California.
What's up, John?
How are you?
Listening to KEIB.
What's going on?
Certainly, John Sean, first of all, let me tell you, 38 years in the in the as a medi in uh print and broadcast media, uh, all in big markets.
I was proud of you standing up to Kobel.
I I really was, honestly, journalist to journalist.
I just real quick.
I appreciate it.
Thank you.
That was easy to tell you how this happens.
If the group think happens, uh the fourth estate, we call ourselves and and they we view ourselves collectively, not me particularly, as the only block, the only barricade between the evil corporate world, the plutocrats and everything, and at first it becomes a sense of duty, then it becomes like a sense of entitlement, right?
Right.
And and then it becomes like, well, anything that we do is okay because if you're fighting, you know, this is how Harry Reed can justify being such a hypocrite on these on this nuclear option, because when you're fighting evil, Sean, when you're fighting the bad guys, anything you do is okay, and anything they do is not okay, so they have to follow rules we don't, you know.
And if you have have elections in newsrooms, you'd have very few Republicans elected.
So this is how it happens.
What do you what do you do?
That's how it was.
They they look upon themselves as being better.
What do you do in media?
I'm a I'm a primarily print, but I've done it the talk shows.
I've done a couple of national sports talk shows over the years.
You know, you ought to you ought to call Robin Bertolucci out there in Los Angeles over at our affiliate K E I B, and I think she she also runs KFI, so uh check in with her and tell her that uh, hey, you need a good host, I'm available.
Well, I've done I'm I'm working on that.
I've I've done that in the past, but uh this is about you right now, Sean.
I was coppel was so sanctimonious with you because he doesn't have any problems to get his point across to be so an F uh, you know, an ethical is to cut the sh you know cut it short, it's because they they want to control the message.
It's it's you know the funny thing is he's arrogant.
He asks me to look give him the time to say what he wants to say.
I sit back and let him make his attack, and then boom, cut, slice, and dice in the edit room.
And I'm like, can you make it any more unfair?
I mean, the and I will tell you the entire interview, if he ever aired it, I look great.
And that's what he didn't want everyone to see.
Because I come prepared to do these interviews.
And why do you think that's braggadocious?
I think I'm bragging.
No, I I want people to see it because I know I know I made the case against an abusively biased media, and I know I made the case about how liberalism has failed and why it must be defeated.
They kept the line in there, the headline, Hannity says liberalism must be defeated.
But why?
And then I went through all the Obama statistics and I explained everything in detail, and I explained how people are suffering, and I explain how the the country's in a precipitous decline.
Anyway, John, God bless you, and uh uh go see Robin and tell her I say hello, okay.
Thanks, I will.
Thank you very much.
All right, thank you.
800-941 Sean.
Susanna is in Pittsburgh, PA.
What's up, Susannah?
How are you?
Well, hi, Sean.
First I want to say you're great for America.
You're just horrendous for the Russian conspiracy.
Yeah, exactly.
Uh whereas Liberal Joe said, Hannity's having a romance with Russia.
I'm like, no, Joe.
Hey, listen, I just want to say that Sean, um, there's a whole lot of things wrong with the Ryan uh I want to say Ryan care.
First of all, he was very deceptive, saying that it ha it was necessary for three phases when I hear otherwise.
He left out key people and didn't discuss it with them.
But the m thing that's the worst about it is that he has no passion to change it because he doesn't have to accept the health care that we pay for.
So what I think a national campaign should be this that since they didn't have to accept what we have to live under, they need to come up with a plan that is acceptable that that they have to accept and that is good for us.
That's the only way I see them coming up with a decent plan.
So I think we just need to start a national campaign that whatever they pass, they have to accept for themselves and their families.
And there's no reason why they shouldn't, and I'll tell you why.
We pay for their bill.
Well, I think you raise a good point.
Look, I I I think the I'm like the average person, and I think the average American that has seen their rates go up five thousand four hundred dollars on average, and we're seeing rate increases this year that are even higher, or a hundred percent in the case of well, a hundred and sixteen percent in the case of of what's going on in Arizona, and and people want this.
They want the best plan they can get, the best care they can have, and they want it at the lowest price.
And unfortunately, the the bill needed an adjustment because the premiums weren't set to go down, and that's the only main reason why.
Anyway, so they have to live under it.
They just won't do it.
I had a brother-in-law who died because of Obamacare, so it's very personal to me, but I think they need to live under whatever they pass.
That's he i i they're a public servant.
That's what they call themselves, they'll let them live like such.
I agree.
You know, I'd use the analogy last week on the program.
This guy that for many years was one of the the leading voices in the radio industry.
He used to do a speech and he'd draw a triangle and he'd have at the top of the triangle were the listeners.
And everybody else below that was there to support the hosts which is closest to the listeners, and the program directors that directly help the hosts and and the producers that help the host, and and then all the way down to the main managers, the the top guys.
They're at the bottom.
And their job is to support everybody's goal, which is to serve your listener.
And I I thought it was a great analogy.
The same thing with politicians.
They should be at the bottom, the base of the triangle, and serving the people at the top.
That's we the people with good bills that you know, and by the way, getting rid of government regulation like the president's doing is going a long way as well to help that.
But anyway, Susanna, we deserve better, and Americans deserve better, and we can get this right.
And as Dr. Umbro said, there's so many new innovative creative paradigms out there available to us.
It's all gonna happen.
Anyway, good call, appreciate it.
All my best to Pittsburgh.
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