Sean Hannity Show - Russian Responsibility - 4.11

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April 12, 2017 - Sean Hannity Show

01:35:11

Russian Responsibility - 4.11

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	All right.
	Happy Tuesday.
	What a newsweek this is uh unfolding.
	You're gonna meet an incredible guy.
	He's actually in the green room, but he's not coming up till later on the program today.
	Uh, that wrote this book.
	It's called Dog Company.
	Cut Captain Roger Hill is his name.
	Get this the true story of American soldiers abandoned by their high command.
	We've told the story about Clint Lawrence, we've told the story about Christian Saucier.
	Way do you hear what this guy writes about in his book?
	It is it it it literally makes you so angry as a person.
	I mean, here are these guys, we ask them to fight, bleed, die for their country, and they get totally screwed over, and they've got to release the enemy, even enemies whose lives they've lives they've saved.
	Incredible stories in this book.
	Uh, we'll put it up on Hannity.com later in the program today.
	Uh also we got the latest on this United Airlines flight, and I I you know how stupid people are.
	It's like dealing with the government.
	Dealing with Social Security Administration or the Motor Vehicle Department.
	How many of you although I gotta say this?
	The last time I went to the motor vehicle department, it actually wasn't that bad.
	It wasn't as bad as it's been in years past, so I gotta give a little credit.
	Um, but you know what it's like when you're dealing with people that don't own run businesses, and well, you know, this one's why don't you just give me the one on the shelf?
	But if you don't have it in stock, well, I can't do that because that's our model.
	I'm like, well, you know, I'll I'll pay full price for the one that you have there, and then you can get another one.
	What's the point?
	That's against policy.
	Now, any store owner would say, sure, take it.
	It's yours, and I'll give you a discount.
	So you fly on these airlines, you wait forever.
	They're always late.
	It's a pain in the neck now to travel more than ever before.
	We have to get the wanding, and we have to get the pat down, and we have to get the groping and grabbing and fondling sometimes by well, I'm kidding.
	I'm overstating the case.
	Most of the TSA people are actually pretty nice.
	And but you gotta wait online forever, and you may miss your flight because you're waiting online forever.
	And anyway, so now you get to a situation where they overbook flights.
	It's not an uncommon practice.
	That's not unusual.
	But when you have a flight that's overbooked, and in this case, with this one doctor, they came in, they said, All right, well, uh we're offering two tickets to Anybody, free flight, blah, blah, blah.
	No takers.
	Well, instead of just upping the ante, what do you mean?
	What do you do then?
	Okay, nobody, all right.
	What if I give you four tickets to any location United flies to?
	Would anyone want that?
	No takers.
	I'll give you four tickets to any location United flies to, and we'll pay for your hotel at a five-star resort, four-star resort hotel.
	No takers.
	And we'll give you $5,000 cash.
	Ding ding-ding-ding ding ding-ding thing.
	A hundred people are going to raise their hands.
	That's a good deal.
	And they didn't up the ante.
	And so you end up sending police in, and I'm I'm not as critical of the police.
	They don't they don't make the policies.
	They're told that they got to take a guy off the plane and the guy is resisting and it's never going to look good.
	It gets so bad to dragging this poor guy out of the airplane when United could have fixed this so easily.
	And I'm just like, okay, well, now you're going to be paying millions in a lawsuit.
	Now you're going to end up paying this guy a fortune because you're too cheap to offer whatever it was going to take to get somebody to volunteer to get off the plane and give them a free vacation because you had overbooked the flight.
	It's not that hard to do.
	I guarantee you, Linda, if it's if you offer four round trip first class tickets and a hotel, a four-star, you know, luxury thing hotel placey, and you give the guys $5,000 cash, give him $2,000 cash.
	How many people on that plane are going to grab that?
	They grab it in a heartbeat.
	I'd grab that.
	That's a great deal.
	So there would have been somebody to take it.
	Now they're going to have lawsuits.
	Now they've got all this negative publicity.
	Now I read their stock is plummeting.
	Now they're they're losing tens of millions of dollars an hour.
	And it was so stupid.
	They could have fixed it for 10 grand.
	What a bunch of dop.
	I don't get and understand stupidity.
	I really don't.
	I have a hard time with it in so many different ways.
	Um, all right, so we have situations evolving in North Korea and Lib and then Syria.
	And I gotta tell you, we are living through the strangest times ever.
	You've got NBC literally suggesting this is NBC news.
	They've got anchors suggesting that if Vladimir Putin masterminded last week's attack in Syria, he could he has gotten everything he could have ever asked for.
	And I'm thinking, what the hell are these people talking about?
	Wouldn't it be nice if it was just completely totally absolutely impossible to suspect that Vladimir Putin orchestrated what happened in Syria this week so that his friend in the White House could have a big night with missiles and all of the praise he's picked up over the last 24 hours?
	Wouldn't it be so nice if you couldn't even in your wildest dreams imagine a scenario like that?
	Wouldn't it be great if we could go back to Wag the Dog being a semi being being a sitcom plot, you know?
	Exactly.
	And I don't know what it is.
	Is there is it a two percent chance?
	Is it a 50% chance?
	Is it I don't know, but what I I don't think it's a zero percent chance, and it used to be with every other president prior to Donald Trump.
	This is nothing but bizarre conspiracy theories.
	Now it used to be that if you were in the in a news position or even a commentator, advocacy journalist, talk show host like myself.
	If you said something that dumb, that ignorant, that speculative, that insane, usually you would be made fun of.
	But this is now a matter of course in terms of news coverage in this country.
	And that it that supposedly comes from a credible news organization.
	Just like the whole Rachel Maddow buildup, we've got the tax return.
	Donald Trump, oh, he paid a fortune taxes more than Obama, more than the Clintons, more than everybody else.
	By the way, in a year that he had losses.
	Oh, I know, oh, and then they then they said, Well, I bet you Donald Trump put it in the reporter's mailbox himself.
	So Donald Trump snuck out of 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue or had his people do it.
	And then they went to the investigative reporter's mailbox and they put one page of his tax return from one year in the mailbox just so that he could look good.
	They actually said that on NBC News.
	That's how insane this hatred, this derangement syndrome against Donald Trump is now getting.
	What I have here is a copy of Donald Trump's tax returns.
	We have his federal tax return for one year for 2005.
	I believe this is the only set of the president's federal taxes that reporters have ever gotten a hold of.
	What we have are these two pages, front and back from the same 1040 form that you might have filled out when you file your taxes.
	And in terms of what's on here, let me give you the basics.
	Aside from the numbers being large, uh, these pages are straightforward.
	He paid uh 38 million dollars, looks like 38 million dollars in taxes.
	Uh he took a big write down of 103 million dollars.
	More on that later.
	Uh, if you add up the lines for income, he made more than 150 million dollars in that year.
	Mazletop.
	Uh we got these pages.
	We got this document today from a Pulitzer Prize winning investigative journalist who's better on financial matters than almost anybody else in the business.
	His name is David K. Johnston.
	Uh, these pages turned up the other day in his mailbox.
	David will join us live here in just a moment.
	Um, but because nobody has had the president's taxes before, we didn't know what to expect.
	Um, when we showed this 2005 return to the White House to ask him if it's real.
	Uh, we sent this over to the White House tonight, and the White House responded basically with Yep.
	And to our detractors that insist that this march will never add up to anything.
	You but this is the hallmark of revolution.
	Yes, I'm angry.
	Yes, I am outraged.
	Yes, I have thought an awful lot about blowing up the White House.
	I am a nasty woman.
	I'm nasty, like my bloodstains on my bed sheets.
	We don't actually choose if and when to have our periods.
	Believe me, if we could, some of us would.
	We don't like throwing away our favorite pairs of underpants.
	Tell me why are tampons and pads still taxed when Viagra and Rogane are not is your erection really more than protecting the sacred messy part of my womanhood is the blood stain on my jeans.
	more embarrassing than the thinning of your hair.
	To be a joke, I do not believe this is happening.
	I'm literally about to f***ing kill myself in a...
	I'm not a kidding.
	You better make this sh right now.
	I literally am gonna die.
	I need an ambulance.
	You can't make this stuff up.
	They are unhinged.
	Trump derangement syndrome.
	I thought it was really bad when we had Bush derangement syndrome.
	This is like insane.
	All right, by the way, I want to just take a moment of time here.
	For years, I have said I never believed that Iraq, Saddam Hussein didn't have weapons of mass destruction.
	I said, in all likelihood, remember the months and months and months and months and months and months of build up to that war.
	I said he got rid of them.
	Well, James Clapper, of all people, not that I specifically trust him, but you know, his senior intelligence official had determined that Bashar al Assad's chemical weapons actually did come from Saddam Hussein's weapons of mass destruction stockpile.
	According to the weekly standard, Saddam Hussein had previously used chemical weapons.
	We have the images of dead children when he used them against the Kurds.
	We know he had the weapons.
	In 2003, Clapper, who went on to be Obama's director of national intelligence, said satellite imagery showing a heavy flow of traffic from Iraq into Syria just before the U.S. invasion in March led him to believe that illicit weapons material material unquestionably had been moved out of Iraq.
	Now begins to make sense, doesn't it?
	And I think people below Saddam Hussein and his sons, that level saw what was coming and decided that the best thing to do was to destroy and disperse these weapons of mass destruction.
	I believe that.
	All right, so a lot happening now as uh as this whole Russia, North Korea access now, Tehran access builds up.
	The Secretary of State Rex Tillerson is headed to Moscow tomorrow.
	Remember, the Russians were supposed to help in the destruction and getting rid of the chemical weapons and biological weapons of Bashar el Assad, and he was the one that said either they're complicit or incompetent.
	Anyway, he was in Italy this morning, and Tillerson said Russia's got to choose between aligning themselves with the U.S. and like-minded countries or embracing Assad, Iran, and the militant terrorist group Hezbollah.
	He said it's unclear whether Russia failed to take seriously its obligations in Syria, or they've been incompetent.
	He says the distinction doesn't really much matter to the dead.
	And he said that the recent chemical attack, we cannot let this happen again.
	And I go to my argument yesterday.
	All right, so we have more on this.
	Vladimir Putin says he's preparing to bomb Syria, that the U.S. is preparing to bomb Syria's capital, Damascus, and will blame the devastation on Assad.
	Then we've got Kim Jong mentally un is out there, and he's saber rattling, talking about nuking the United States or using whatever weapons are necessary against the United States.
	So we'll get to that, and in the course of the program, we'll also get to the United Airlines story.
	We'll talk to two CIA ops on the latest on surveillance, on masking and leaking intelligence.
	And you're going to meet this guy, this author of this incredible new book.
	It's up on Hannity.com, Dog Company, a true story of American soldiers abandoned by their high command, meaning Obama and company.
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	We'll continue.
	All right, as we roll along, Sean Hannity Show, 800 941.
	Sean, you want to be a part of the program.
	Look, a lot of saber rattling out there.
	I know it's got some of you nervous, and some of you think, oh man, we're on the verge here.
	Something bad is going to happen.
	And by the way, there's always a risk when you have rogue, radical, insane regimes that have these weapons of mass destruction.
	But remember, we've lived through all of this through the Cold War.
	We we understand, I think I I actually think the timing of Rex Tillerson meeting with Putin couldn't be any better.
	And I'm pretty confident that a lot of this is for public consumption and face-saving reasons more than anything else.
	And Vladimir Putin saying that the U.S. is preparing to bomb the Syrian Capitol in and will blame the devastation on uh Bashar al-Assad, I think is just another it's like conspiracy fake news here at MBC and CNN.
	It's not much different, and it's all for public consumption.
	And he said uh actually Putin even went further, saying he expects fake gas attacks to discredit Assad.
	Everybody's living in an alter universe right now.
	These are very unusual times.
	Stakes are certainly heightened, but I'm pretty certain and convinced that the president is gonna send Tillerson in there and say, this is the way it's going to be.
	You either want to get along with the United States or you don't.
	And we the United States is not going to accept the use of chemical weapons, and we will respond.
	And I don't think Russia, and I know Assad doesn't want a war with the United States or any type of military action.
	And nor do we.
	You know, we send these young men to fight, bleed, die, and lose their limbs repeatedly, and then we just pull out without victory in the case of Iraq, you hand over not only territory and cities that people fought blood and died for, but you also turn over oil so they can finance all of their terror worldwide.
	As they did this weekend, taking credit for the bombing of these Christian churches on Palm Sunday, these Coptic Christian churches in Egypt.
	So it's precarious.
	And on top of that, you got North Korea threatening to nuke the U.S. in response to any aggression.
	Well, the fat, you know, despot Kim Jong on mentally ill uh unmentally ill, as my friend Curtis Leewo used to always say.
	But that that chubby little kid can't reach the United States because they don't have the intercontinental ballistic missile capability yet.
	And then that raises questions.
	Now you see the danger why you don't allow Iran to spin their centrifuges.
	Now you see why Bill Clinton allowing North Korea to get these nuclear weapons was a really bad idea.
	Now maybe you understand thinking ahead and being strategic and tactical is just smart.
	Oh.
	All right, mad dog Mattis at the Pentagon is holding the first media briefing since the Syrian strikes.
	Let's listen into what uh weapons he says.
	I thought this was an appropriate time now for General Votell and me to update you on the military action itself.
	Last Tuesday on the 4th of April, the Syrian regime attacked its own people using chemical weapons.
	I have personally reviewed the intelligence, and there is no doubt the Syrian regime is responsible for the decision to attack and for the attack itself.
	In response to the attack, our government began a deliberate process led by the National Security Council to recommend diplomatic and military options to the President.
	We met over several days, and I spoke with some of our allies.
	The National Security Council considered the near century-old international prohibition against the use of chemical weapons.
	The Syrian regime's repeated violations of that international law and the inexplicably ruthless murders the regime had committed.
	We determined that a measured military response could best deter the regime from doing this again.
	As always, we examined how best to avoid civilian casualties in the execution of the strike, and our actions were successful.
	Based on these considerations on 6 April, the President directed military action consistent with our vital national interest to deter the use of chemical weapons.
	This military action demonstrates the United States will not passively stand by while Assad blithely ignores international law and employs chemical weapons he had declared destroyed.
	We were aware of the presence of Russians at the airfield and took appropriate actions to ensure no Russians were injured in the attack.
	Our military policy in Syria has not changed.
	Our priority remains the defeat of ISIS.
	ISIS represents a clear and present danger, an immediate threat to Europe and ultimately a threat to the United States homeland.
	In closing, the Syrian regime should think long and hard before it again acts so recklessly in violation of international law against the use of chemical weapons.
	General Votell will now provide further information on the strike.
	Thank you, Mr. Secretary.
	Secretary Mattis stated United States Central Command was directed to develop military options in response to the Syrian regime's use of chemical weapons.
	We did that and developed a target strike package with the goal being to eliminate those capabilities, including airframes, equipment, and fuel supplies that provided offensive military capacity for the regime from Shey Rod Airfield.
	We did not deliberately target personnel in these strikes.
	Once the order was received, we targeted 59 locations on the airfield and struck 57 of those.
	We assessed that we achieved our stated objective and the regime's ability to generate offensive military capability from Shey Rod Airfield, which we assess was the launching point for this chemical attack, has been severely degraded.
	We are obviously paying close attention in the environment in the wake of these strikes and remain appropriately postured to respond as necessary.
	Meanwhile, we are focused on the defeat ISIS campaign, which remains our primary mission.
	In closing, I want to commend the exceptional skill and professionalism of our military forces involved in this strike operation.
	They performed extraordinarily well, and we are very, very proud of them.
	Well, thank you, General Votell.
	We can take your questions now.
	Bob, let's start with yours.
	Thank you.
	You mentioned that defeating ISIS in Syria is your main priority.
	But in light of the chemical attack, is it your view that the U.S. should take some additional steps, such as creating safe zones or no-fly zones, or or even attempting to uh removing Marshal al-Assad from power?
	Uh and if I may ask General uh Votel if you could bring us up to date on the prospects for sending additional troops to Syria to accelerate the campaign there.
	Bob, the the goal right now in Syria and the military campaign as a is uh is focused on accomplishing that is breaking ISIS, uh destroying ISIS in Syria.
	This was a separate issue that arose in the midst of that campaign.
	Uh the use by the Assad regime of chemical weapons, and we addressed that militarily.
	But the rest of the campaign stays on track exactly as it was before Assad's uh violation.
	You don't see a point in doing safe zones or no five zones.
	Those those other issues that you bring up are always under consideration among allies.
	Uh and certainly uh the president has options, but right now the the purpose of this attack was singular against the chemical weapons use.
	That's mad dog mattis and uh our Pentagon given their first press uh report after what happened last Thursday.
	You know, I you just gotta love and respect these guys.
	They're just so bam.
	You know, here's what we're gonna do.
	Uh the story is uh the president actually went out there and and called every commander and the people involved in this attack.
	I mean, with pinpoint accuracy.
	Remember that this none of these military operations, we take them for granted, but they're never easy.
	And to hit every one of the targets, 59 out of 60 tomahawk missiles on track, and then you got to thread a needle so you don't hit the the storage facility where the chemical weapons are actually stored, taking out twenty planes in the process, is just a pretty amazing thing to to watch happen.
	I mean, these tomahawk missiles, they're all 18 feet long, two feet wide, a thousand pounds of munitions in each of them, and you're firing them from 600 miles away in this case at a low altitude.
	Pretty amazing.
	Um, I have no idea what is motivating John McCain and Lindsey Graham these days.
	None.
	I know they're both w war hawks.
	I I understand it, I get it, and I don't I have some respect for some of their positions on this.
	But Lindsey Graham is now urging the President to draw a new red line in Syria that would guarantee much deeper U.S. military involvement in this war-torn country.
	They've had a seven-year civil war, including a possible confrontation with Russia.
	So politicos reporting that Graham suggesting today that the U.S. should threaten to intervene militarily in the Syrian civil war if Bashar al-Assad's regime use uses barrel bombs to attack civilians.
	Graham acknowledged that such a threat would amount to a significant escalation in policy in the present— We don't why do we want to get bogged down in this mess in Syria?
	Why?
	We don't want to.
	What we've done is we've drawn a red line.
	I think it was a proportional and needed response to the use of chemical weapons.
	Now, do we really want to get bogged down in this Syrian conflict, civil war conflict?
	Now, if we want to get involved on a humanitarian basis, It doesn't mean we have to take every Syrian refugee into the country, but maybe we could provide the safe zone, which the president talked about at length, that he would want to do as uh as a candidate.
	I don't know.
	By the way, we had a poll up yesterday.
	Who is going to flip to the Democratic Party first, Lindsay Graham or John McCain?
	What's the results of the poll, Linda?
	76%.
	Sam McCain's gonna uh flip the script first.
	Really?
	Mm-hmm.
	I could see them both going together.
	I think they'll hold hands and jump together.
	That's what I would expect.
	I'm just guessing is they're like best friends.
	I'm not suggesting anything weird.
	I'm just saying, you know, I just think they they do everything together.
	So anyway.
	All right, now we've got the North Koreans threatening a nuclear response to any U.S. aggression.
	You know, the fat kid with that, you know, three stooges haircut.
	Um, that chubby despot is as Ollie North called him last night, is now threatening to launch a nuclear strike on America.
	North Korean state media warned of a nuclear attack on the United States at any sign of American aggression as this U.S. Navy strike group is now streamed towards the Western Pacific, and North Korea's official newspaper said the country is prepared to respond to any aggression by the United States.
	Our revolutionary strong army is keenly watching every move by enemy elements with our nuclear site focused on U.S. invasionary bases, not only in South Korea and the Pacific Operation Theater, but also in the U.S. mainland, they said.
	According to every report I've read, they don't have ICBM capability, or in other words, intercontinental intercontinental ballistic missile weaponry available to deliver those systems successfully to the U.S., but then we've got South Korea's acting president, warning of greater provocation by North Korea,
	ordered the military to intensify monitoring, ensure close communications with the U.S. It is possible the North may wage greater provocations, such as another nuclear test, time with various anniversaries, including the Supreme People's Assembly.
	Anyway, so the North convened a Supreme People's Assembly session today, one of its twice-yearly sessions attended by uh the chubby despot.
	This guy's insane.
	Just like his father was insane.
	Uh China has now canceled a North Korean coal deal after the Trump summit.
	This is pretty interesting, but you know that the Chinese president met with the president at Mar-a-Lago over the weekend or towards the end of last week.
	President Trump tweeted out this morning that the meeting included his warning that China-U.S.
	trade relations would suffer unless Beijing pressures North Korea to abandon their nuclear weapons program.
	Looks like China may already be responding.
	Number one, they said they are willing to open up the idea of concessions on issues of trade with the United States, which by the way, I've always said I never thought the president was a protectionist.
	I always believed he was negotiating to get better trade deals, free and fair trade.
	And, you know, now you have Mexico wanting to renegotiate like yesterday, and now we have the Chinese wanting to renegotiate as well.
	But anyway, the fleet of North Korean cargo ships that are headed to the home port in China after China ordered its trading companies to return coal from North Korea, according to shipping data, following a repeated missile test that drew attention and international criticism.
	China's now banned all imports of North Korean coal, cutting off the country's most important export product.
	That's a big deal.
	And if we can get China to pressure North Korea, that saves everybody a lot of problems.
	So anyway, April 7th, what a coincidence.
	The very day of the Mar-a-Lago summit.
	Guess how China's replacing the coal that they just turned away from North Korea.
	Reuters is reporting that North Korea, a significant supplier of coal to China, especially the type used for steelmaking, known as a particular type of coking coal.
	Anyway, the data shows no U.S. coal like that was exported to China between 2014 and 2016.
	But guess what?
	Shipments now have soared to over 400,000 tons by late February.
	So now China has an option.
	Signs that, yes, Trump's threat of reprisal if they don't have fair trade is working.
	And that was what Trump was saying.
	He warned China the Trade will suffer because of North Korea.
	He said I explained to the president of China that a trade deal with the U.S. will be far better for them if they solve the North Korea problem.
	I'm telling you, I know this guy.
	He is a constant negotiator.
	It's constant.
	That's he's negotiating uh everything.
	China deployed 150,000 troops to deal with possible North Korean refugees over fears that Donald Trump might strike at Kim Jong-un's following their missile attack.
	I look, this guy is crazy enough that you just have to take it all seriously.
	None of this is easy.
	And you know, I think a lot of this, if you really want to get to the root cause of why we are where we are now, is because the world kind of liked a weak America.
	And now with America reasserting its place as a natural leader in the free world and abroad.
	Well, I think those that are used to having their way under Obama and Hillary Clinton are getting like, hey, we can't allow this.
	So they're going to test the new president.
	They always tend to test new presidents.
	What else do we got in the news today?
	Um this was interesting.
	We have this, we'll get to the United Flight issue a little bit later.
	The Trump Justice Department has announced the end of catch and release.
	That's good.
	We got Attorney General Jeff Sessions down at the border today.
	He'll be on Hannity tonight with a full report.
	And we've got GOP leaders, Breitbart article today saying they may be dropping building the wall funds.
	Why would Republicans take away the money that would is the main promise of the president?
	I'll give you another example of Trump saying things that gets results.
	Maryland lawmakers just pulled the plug on a sanctuary city bill.
	Why?
	Because they don't want to have to deal with Trump either.
	I mean, a position of strength work, something Obama never used.
	ICE confirmed 367 immigrants were detained in raids across the country yesterday.
	And days after the terrorist attack, migrant riots that have erupted in Sweden.
	Trump was right about Sweden.
	And by the way, sad story, migrants are being sold at an open slave market in Libya.
	If you don't think evil exists in this world, you're not paying close enough attention.
	It's not that hard to find if you just open your eyes.
	All right, Hour 2, Sean Hannity Show.
	Toll free, our telephone number is 800-941-SEAN.
	You want to be a part of the program.
	Beyond all the conspiracy theories and beyond what the saber rattling is doing to some people in the media.
	Oh, look at what Trump did by bombing Syria after they use chemical weapons against men, women, and children.
	We still have an issue that is not going to go away on this program.
	It has to do with the deep state.
	It has to do with surveillance of a presidential candidate.
	It has to do with surveillance of a president-elect.
	It has to do with unmasking of people like General Flynn, who ended up having his career ruined.
	It has to do with was real intelligence gathering used against Americans by people that had no desire to get any type of legal warrant and under the guise of quote national security concerns, they go out there, they surveil, and then they're really doing it to get to a political opposition candidate and a transition team and a president elect.
	That's what matters here.
	And that's why I keep going back to the basic words, surveillance a masking and intelligence leaking.
	Because if we don't get to the bottom of it, and you know, when Peter King last week said, oh, by the way, this was about their personal lives.
	Meaning it had nothing whatsoever to do with in any way, shape, matter, or form, intelligence.
	Here's what he said.
	Basically, this is information about the everyday lives, who they were uh talking with, who they were meeting, uh, where they were going to eat.
	Uh really nothing uh of any uh substantive value unless you're just trying to uh uh you know lay out a dossier in somebody.
	Sort of like in a divorce case where a uh lawyers are hired or investigators are hired to just find out what a person is doing from morning till night, and then you try to piece it together later on.
	All right, so okay, piece it together.
	It's about people's personal lives.
	Okay, then why wasn't minimization used?
	Why was unmasking taken place?
	And why was surveillance on personal lives taken in the first place?
	You don't understand.
	If for those of you that don't understand, I should say most of you do.
	If you don't understand that this is the foundation of a police state, I don't know what else will convince you.
	Because they're digging up personal dirt on individuals, which by the way, reporters try to do to me all the time.
	And it's amazing how they contact childhood friends constantly.
	Oh, Neil Bortz was recently contacted.
	And uh, what about Hannity?
	What do you what dirt you got on Hannity?
	Swear to God, that's a true story.
	And anybody at Fox, my colleagues all the time, oh, by the way, there's some guy digging up dirt again on you.
	And uh I just told them to pound sand.
	And anyway, joining us now, Scott uh you lingers with us, former uh CIA ops officer and co-host of a podcast, the station chief, Brian Dean Wright is a former CIA ops officer and a you're the Democrat?
	I am.
	You're a Democrat.
	Can you let me in here or do I have to get out?
	No, no, you don't have to get out of here.
	How can you be there's nobody that I know really within surveillance, national security surveillance that you would admit that ninety percent of those guys are all conservative?
	Well, I I actually would disagree with you.
	Yeah, we have a pretty good mix of folks.
	And and you know, we typically didn't and uh ever talk about whether we're Republican or Democrat, we'd go in, we'd focus on facts and trying to solve uh problems.
	So I would say we we had a good mix.
	And how long did you do it for?
	Oh, just under ten years.
	Okay, so ten years.
	So you know a lot about intelligence gathering.
	Sure.
	You know a lot about surveillance.
	Uh you know a lot about unmasking.
	Yeah.
	Okay, what is the usual protocol if surveillance, raw data, surveillance, um, sat intelligence is is picked up, raw data, an American is picked up in a legitimate surveillance case, a normal everyday case where maybe it's an ambassador from China or Iran or Russia or wherever it happens to be, but an American is picked up on that call, and that American is not doing anything unsavory.
	What is the process, the usual process protocol to deal with the American that you don't have a warrant to surveil?
	You were asking the question that we should all be asking, and it's incredibly important when we hear uh Rice say that hey, there's nothing to look at here because she's wrong.
	So let's step back to your point.
	We get the information we on the working level sort of junior level, you go through that information and you see, hey, as an analyst, as an operator, something is screwy here.
	We need to unmask who whoever this is to figure out exactly what's going on.
	When you as operators or or analysts get all that information together, you make a judgment as to whether or not there is a problem, and then but the problem would have to be legal, wouldn't it?
	In other words, the problem wouldn't be about one's personal life like Peter King was saying.
	Correct.
	At that point, you then put a bunch of different pieces of information together, not just this unmasked information, which we would call SIGINT, right?
	You would put humant and and uh you know open source information.
	You put that all together, you put that into a report, or what they call it, PDB, that presidential's uh daily brief.
	And then you give that to Susan Rice.
	At that point, stop right there.
	At that point, my understanding is standard operating procedure would be to put an American and not identify them.
	True or false?
	Absolutely correct.
	But here's the point.
	She shouldn't need to unmask at that point, because the unmasking had already been done at the junior and middle level folks.
	They're presenting her the findings of that broad inquiry into who these people are, right?
	If there is an unmasking need, that will go to the FBI for whatever degree of inquiry.
	In other words, if like say the American that you didn't have a warrant to surveil is plotting, scheming, planning a terrorist attack.
	Right.
	That would be a case where, wow, we've got to pay attention.
	Immediately that will go to the FBI.
	Right.
	I mean, we don't even wait for that to go to just Rice or whomever.
	How unusual would it be that Susan Rice requests the unmasking personally?
	It depends on the issue, but as a general rule, she doesn't need to.
	Why?
	Because all the unmasking and the investigation has already happened before that report has gotten to her.
	All right, but the report would say in in most cases, standard operating procedure, an American.
	It wouldn't be that is correct.
	It would it would be massive.
	Okay, so then why it would it would not be mass it would be masked.
	It would be masked to her.
	So what would cause her in the case of Donald Trump as transition team or is his candidacy to ask for her to ask for it to be unmasked personally?
	I can tell you uh my gut tells me that a politicization of that intel happened.
	So let's be blind.
	And not as a Democrat, but just as an American.
	I think that something went very well.
	So when I say I believe That the intelligence community as it relates to Trump was weaponized and politicized.
	How accurate do you think my analysis is?
	At the most senior level, I agree with you.
	At the low level, that middle level folks that people agree with Langley, they're doing God's work.
	But at the senior level, you know, Susan Rice, Ben Rhodes, that that uh cadria folks, Brennan.
	That I think needs to be investigated.
	You know, just as the FBI is investigating, you know, the the alleged connections between Trump's associates in Russia, all right, but we also need to look into this other piece.
	Okay, you're confirming my entire theory.
	I and I've said this many times.
	I don't like broad sweeping generalizations of a cop is involved in a bad situation, and the cop says, uh and then people go, oh, all cops suck.
	No, they don't.
	There's a few people.
	Now I really believe, and I'll go to you here, Scott.
	I really believe that this is what exactly happened in this case, but I do also believe the guys that put their lives at risk and do the hard work.
	It's such an important part of America's security arsenal to use intelligence that I don't think these are low-level people.
	I think this has to be Brennan, Clapper, Ben Rhodes, Susan Rice, and then I want to know what the president knew and when he knew it.
	That's exactly right.
	Um Brian, Brian is absolutely correct in everything he said, and I'm fully in agreement with him.
	Well, he voted for Obama, so easy now.
	Right.
	The hard the hardworking folks in the agency, though, they are, I think, relatively blameless in this situation.
	This was taken by the higher-ups, this initiative to use the information for political purposes.
	All right.
	So then do you agree that it would be highly unusual for Susan Rice to step in and request the unmasking, but only in the cases that we know of involving candidate Trump, President elect Trump, transition team Trump.
	Absolutely.
	There's no there's no question about it.
	And also the other other thing we have to look at is the early January relaxation to allow more sharing of unprocessed raw intel throughout the community.
	Well that's 16 isn't very unusual, and there's no operational justification for something like that.
	You're talking about executive order 123, what that was amended two weeks before Obama left.
	Yeah, what do I say?
	That's right.
	I I have to hop in for a second.
	When I first started getting really nervous about this whole thing, was this dossier business.
	Let me just tell you that.
	I mean, where Donald Trump supposedly at the writs in Moscow had hookers peeing on his bed that one?
	Why not?
	Here's the deal.
	Not in fifty years of protocol or experience.
	Would anybody at Langley tell you that it is normal to breeze any senior about an uncorroborated, unvetted document, especially in this case.
	Why was Comey willing to pay the guy that put the dossier together?
	Boy, I it it just doesn't make sense.
	Yeah.
	What doesn't make sense is you don't brief a president elect that you believe that they are a traitor, and just say, hey, we just wanted you to be aware of the fact that we're looking at I mean, it just didn't make any sense to serve.
	At any point, I'll start with you, Steve.
	Uh sorry, Scott.
	At any point when when you if they haven't found the Trump campaign, Russia collusion, um smoking gun by now.
	Doesn't that mean it's not ex it's non existent in all likelihood?
	That's absolutely true, Sean.
	The the fact this whole system, this uh executive order and all, seems to be set up to allow leakage within the Obama administration to embarrass the ongoing uh Trump administration, incoming Trump administration.
	And so if that hasn't information hasn't been leaked out, by now it indicates that it does not exist.
	Exactly.
	Well, I mean, Clapper said it, Comey said it, Rogers said it.
	There's no evidence.
	What do you think?
	Well, I gotta tell you, you know, I have friends at the Bureau, and uh what I understand is that there is enough there uh to continue digging.
	Does that mean it is specifically uh now President Trump?
	No.
	Does it mean that it could be one of the various folks that was in his orbit in the months leading up to it?
	You know what?
	I I think that that's fair, and I think that as as a country, we ought to give the FBI enough leash to do their work to figure out if any of those knuckleheads were doing a bad thing that quite frankly, uh you know, President Trump may have not even known about.
	So let's get to the bottom of that.
	Uh but the politicization uh of that to see to say that you know uh uh Trump is is a terrible and a bad man based off some of these allegations, I don't think is fair.
	I think uh we we need to do let the FBI do their job.
	All right, we're gonna pick it up on the other side, Scott Ullinger and Brian Dean Wright.
	Brian, a Democrat, bizarre, but you know, he seems like a normal person otherwise.
	Thank you.
	800 nine point one Shauna's on number.
	All right, guys, listen, pay attention.
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	We'll continue.
	All right, as we continue dealing with the issue of surveillance unmasking, and of course intelligence leaking, we got two professionals with us, Scott Ulinger, former CIA ops officer, and Brian Dean Wright, even though he's a Democrat, he's also a former CIA operations officer.
	Um I guess the other the thing is this.
	So we've had on this whistleblower on the program, and he was with the NSA for thirty-four years.
	Bill Binney is his name, and Bill says that every phone call, every email, every text, every American sends every day is being monitored and stored metadata somewhere in Utah.
	Is that true?
	Well, I'll let my colleagues speak to that as well.
	I I think it it really depends on where those folks are communicating.
	Uh and it and it's capturing the stuff abroad.
	He's saying every American, every email, every text, every phone call.
	I don't buy it.
	You don't buy it.
	You don't believe it.
	What do you think uh Scott?
	Well, there had been some discussion, I know several years ago, it came out um with some of the supposed the alleged Snowden revelations that uh the NSA was collecting data on all Americans and was in fact getting around the law by saying, well, they were merely storing the data, they weren't listening to it, and thus they were following the uh basically the spirit or they were following the rule of law rather than the spirit of the law.
	Um I'm not sure if that is true, but of course I find that pretty troubling if it is, because I think that that would be violating our privacy rights.
	They want to go back in time.
	L let's say that there's a terrorist attack and suddenly they find a bunch of of U.S. numbers that are in contact with these uh terrorists, right?
	They want to be able to go back, you know, X period of time to say, hey, this individual was in fact engaged with the terrorist and and be able to investigate that.
	That that is the underlying desire.
	But but the clearly there is a civil liberties concern.
	You know, do we want all this stuff vacuumed up and kept?
	And and that is a fair question.
	Well, what about somebody like me?
	Because there's all these reports, and by the way, I have no idea if they're true.
	That I have been surveilled and unmasked.
	Do I have other protections because I'm in the media?
	You sure do.
	Uh again, my colleague and I can talk to you more.
	Well, for example, I interviewed Julian Assange.
	Yeah, you know, and I know Julian Assange is been criticized by everybody on both sides.
	You know, it's funny.
	Everything he let out, so did the New York Times.
	You know, I mean, they're not going after the New York Times.
	So journalists have a very special protected category.
	There are others as well, uh, clergy, etc.
	That you all have a very clear uh role in in this country, and it cannot be abridged uh because of some of these fundamental constitutional rights.
	Uh that's by both U.S. law, executive order.
	Uh so uh i if in fact journalists do get caught up in this, uh the FBI when they do see this, or the NSA when they see this, uh, there are very clear rules in place uh where they are supposed to be very careful and judicious with that information.
	Supposed to be.
	Is that your take, Scott?
	I yeah, I I would agree exactly.
	The um the CIO is affords special protection for all as I said, the clergy and the press and all.
	It's possible that uh maybe in your conversations with Assange, who might be considered of national security interest, it's possible that they did incidentally collect on you, Sean, because of your conversations with Assange, but um you know I have no access to tell you what's been done with that information.
	Now, what I have uh because I already have two attorneys that work for me now, because I mean the reports were so rampant and so many people told me.
	Would I have a a civil case against anybody that surveiled and unmasked me without a warrant?
	You bet.
	I would.
	You agree with that, Scott?
	Yeah, I would agree, yeah.
	Exactly.
	The um perhaps you might be interested in retaining uh Brian and myself, but uh are you both attorneys?
	No, not at all.
	I was gonna say no that executed.
	No Democrat wants to be associated with me on that level.
	Come on now.
	Thank you for your insight.
	Our audience really needs to know.
	We really appreciate it.
	800 941 Sean, toll-free telephone number.
	We'll get to your calls in the next half hour, and you can join us uh and then we'll have the latest on the United Airlines will continue.
	All right, 25 till the top of the hour.
	Toll-free our telephone numbers, 800-941 Sean.
	You want to be a part of the program.
	All right, we'll get to your calls here.
	Then our news roundup information overload on this United Airlines debacle.
	It's so stupid how people in business are dumb and short-sighted.
	This is now gonna cost them millions of millions of dollars and all it would have taken ten grand would have handled it easy if they just did the right thing by their customers.
	So stupid.
	Now, people, by the way, oh well, this guy has a history.
	I don't care that the guy has a history.
	The history doesn't mean anything to me.
	He was dragged off an airplane that he didn't want to leave because he's a doctor who had lost his license for eleven years and wants to keep working.
	I don't blame the guy for wanting to do his job and and stay on the plane that he had paid for and booked.
	You don't drag a guy out like that.
	You say, okay, who wants 10 grand?
	I'll take it, I'll take it.
	And then you boom, problem solved.
	Whatever whatever cost it would have been for the airline at that point, it would have been cheaper than what it's now going to cost them all across the board.
	So Hillary is back on the radar.
	She's out there, let's see, she blames James Comey, WikiLeaks, Russia, misogyny, and uh much more for her election loss.
	Couldn't possibly be her.
	Listen.
	It is fair to say uh that the outside intervention, the combination of uh the Comey letter on October 28th, WikiLeaks, which played a much bigger role than I think many people understand yet.
	That gets me back to sort of Russia.
	It was really the weaponization of information.
	I didn't fully understand how impactful that was.
	Fundamentally, a man who bragged about sexual assault, won the election, and won 53% of the white women's vote.
	How is it that in the 21st century, and what does it say about the challenges that one faces in women's empowerment, that in effect misogyny won with a lot of women voters voters?
	Well, I am currently writing a book where I spend Yeah.
	I I spend a lot of time wrestling with this, as you might guess.
	I've got more than once.
	Uh and I I I don't know that there is one answer.
	Let's let let's be clear.
	I think there, you know, in any campaign, there's so many different cross currents and events, and some have greater impact than others.
	Um, but it is fair to say, as you just did, Nick, that certainly misogyny played a role.
	I mean, that just has to be admitted.
	And why and what the underlying reasons were is what I'm trying to parse out myself.
	Where is the evidence that that's the case?
	It doesn't exist.
	And with all due respect, I n I mean, I know that she's probably been very sad and down and depressed, and she can't believe this happened.
	Do we really want to go into the issue of the treatment of women and misogyny uh and get lectured by Hillary with her husband's background and past?
	I don't think so.
	Apparently, she doesn't see the contradiction on our own part.
	All right, eight hundred nine four one Sean, toll-free telephone number you want to be a part of the program.
	All right, North Carolina, Clayton.
	Uh Mark is in Clayton, North Carolina.
	How are you, sir?
	Glad you called.
	Thanks for the letting me call.
	Let me speak.
	Yes, sir.
	Thank you.
	Well, well, Sean, I just wanted to say first before I actually said anything that I wanted to thank you for your tenacity over the last couple of years.
	And and uh I've really grown to appreciate the fact that uh you just you never give up.
	And uh it's it's been it's been uh productive and paid off for for us in so many ways.
	Listen, I'm blessed, I'm honored to have this microphone every day.
	I'm I'm honored to be on TV.
	I'm sure at some point it'll all come to a crashing end, which would make liberals really happy.
	But um, it's a blessing, it's an honor.
	You give me this honor every day, and my job is to do the job you expect, and I like to underpromise and overperform whenever possible.
	So thank you for your kind words.
	I appreciate it.
	So here's the bottom line.
	Um you probably will wonder why a conservative would be asking this question, but it seems like we we we've won what we what we needed to win.
	We're in a position to gain some ground.
	We are absolutely just beating our own because we can't compromise just a little bit.
	It seems like Trump is very pragmatic.
	He's he's uh he's ready to to get the job done, whether he's gotta go uh to a Democrat or a Republican.
	Um at least that's what he says.
	And in some ways, I think that's the right.
	That's never that's never gonna work.
	If if Donald Trump wants to go to the Democratic Party, say because he can't get the votes to repeal and replace Obamacare, and the Republican coalition can't get their act together after eight years and get a bill that they can pass that won't be perfect.
	I'll promise you right now it will not be perfect, but one predicated on free market ideas and ideals and competition that will lower premium costs, offer better care, portability, uh medical savings accounts, incentivize health cooperatives.
	If they can't do that simple job, and then the president tries to reach out to Democrats, it's not gonna end well because the Democratic Party wants to destroy him.
	And any belief that they might want to work with him is is not, in my opinion, rooted in reality.
	I totally agree with you on that.
	I just am trying to say that if we don't compromise, we we won't we can't win.
	If we can't it we have people, we have representatives who represent both moderate and conservative.
	I'm a conservative.
	I wish that we could bring them totally 100% along.
	But because we can't, we are going to have to uh compromise in some way in order to get to get a bill.
	And this is one example.
	The health care bill is just one example.
	Look, I'm I'm reading in a Breitbart article from earlier today.
	GOP leaders are talking about dropping the border wall funding.
	You can't drop the border wall funding when you control the House, the Senate, and your the leader of your party, the president of the United States, made this a top priority item.
	You can't do it.
	I'll give you another example.
	Um look, Trump has done everything he can do on his own to his credit.
	He has.
	You know, for all the never Trumper people out there, they they all were questioning.
	He's never gonna build a border wall, he's never gonna appoint an originalist.
	He's keeping the the thing that impresses me the most since he has become president is he's keeping his promises.
	And by keeping his promises, I think that is it's it's not only good for the country, because I agreed with the agenda much more than the person.
	You know, I believe in limited government, lower taxes, uh extreme vetting.
	I I want the border wall built, I want health care, you know, Obamacare repealed and replaced, and free market solutions, he's already moved on his own for energy independence.
	At some point, you know, militarily too, he's building up the military.
	He's now putting in place the foundation to do his entire agenda.
	And so that's all promising for me.
	But if the Republicans in the House and Senate don't get their act together and do their job, they will lose power because they will deserve to lose power.
	My criticism goes very deep of Republicans, especially in the House.
	There's no reason or justification for the House leadership hiding a bill, not sharing it with with rank and file, being totally mysteriously reluctant and resistant to change it and make it better, not building consensus for the bill, Tying the bill immediately to the president and forcing him to do their job and the heavy lift and getting this thing passed.
	And uh, you know, I just um what I'm suggesting to them now is you screwed it up, now go back to the drawing board and get your job done.
	That's why I don't like a two-week recess, especially when they come back on April the 24th, four days later, we're facing a government shutdown.
	So I I hear what you're saying.
	This, yeah, this is a circular firing squad, but there are enough Republican votes to get every agenda item passed and get it infinitely better than where we are.
	Not perfect.
	I'd write a very different health care bill if I had my way.
	But at least it's a start that will be improved upon over time.
	But if we don't get rid of Obamacare, it implodes.
	And when it implodes, they're in power.
	They will bear the responsibility of it.
	I can I can assure you of that.
	Anyway, I appreciate it.
	Thank you.
	Alex is in Philly, WPHT.
	What's up, uh, Alex?
	How are you?
	Glad you called, sir.
	How are you doing, Sean?
	Uh, this discussion, uh, like I told your producer, I'm a military analyst and strategist, and uh, this discussion has to do with uh Russia, Syria, and North Korea.
	Um the main thing that people are concerned about and i is a Cold War era Russia that they feel that they are seeing.
	Uh the big difference between the Cold War and today is Russia does not have the finances or the ability to go to war with anybody.
	If that was the case, it would have been more than Crimea that they they annexed.
	They would have taken all of Ukraine if their military was even half the strength that it used to be.
	Here's the danger, though, and you've got to calculate this in to any equation.
	They do have nuclear weapons.
	And you have to r it's sort of like um all right, so I'm I'm really into martial arts now.
	I I train four or five days a week.
	And one of the the great things about the arts is we it it really is an art.
	I mean, if I'm saying training with with a group of people, which we do sometimes when we do real hitting, real grappling, real fighting, you know, before you get in a position, you you know, you bow in, you respect your opponent, doesn't matter what belt they're at, there's a respect level.
	There's what we were, for example, let's say I get somebody in a particular chokeholder or they tap, I immediately let them up.
	Yes.
	But if you if you don't respect your opponent and you don't respect the weaponry of Russia, you're making a really bad miscalculation.
	And I don't disagree with that, but the the the major part that and I agree with you 100% on nuclear weapons, but the major part is they don't want to go nuclear, and we do not want to go nuclear.
	I don't believe they do.
	Now, Kim Jong-un might be a different story.
	I mean, look, do I think ultimately he would do it?
	I don't think so.
	You know, I I remember I said after Reagan left office, and I was believe it or not, I was on the radio for the last years of his presidency.
	That's how long my radio career has been, maybe too long in some people's minds, but I remember saying that I think his greatest legacy is going to be strategic defense and when all is said and done.
	Not 21 million new jobs created, not the wall coming tumbling down a couple of years later, not you know, Mr. Gorbachev teared down this wall, but I think I do not doubt that radical Islamic extremists or someone like Kim Jong-un could be stupid enough to launch a weapon like that.
	And why do I believe that?
	Because the history of mankind shows any weapon that's ever been made ends up getting used.
	And at some point, you're gonna deal with some megalomaniac, insane leader like an Adolf Hitler or a Stalin or whatever, and and it could happen.
	And you have to factor all of that in, as I'm sure our military does.
	And that's why we would need the ability to take any missile out of the sky.
	They don't have intercontinental continental ballistic missile technology yet to get a nuclear weapon of the United States, but they're building it, they're working on it, they want it, and the fact that they want it is not a good thing.
	And it may make the case of taking out both North Korea and Iranian nuclear sites.
	All right, news roundup information overload hour here on the Sean Hannity show.
	Toll free our telephone numbers 800 941.
	Sean, you want to be a part of the program.
	So all of us have watched this video of this poor guy being pulled off United Airlines.
	By the way, this is about as sick as it gets.
	Many questions remain following the forcible removal of a man from a United Airlines flight from Chicago.
	By the way, this is from a Pulitzer Prize winner.
	He goes on to say, should airlines be more careful about overbooking flight?
	Should passengers have more rights than they are currently afforded.
	With President Trump behind the whole thing?
	President Trump.
	What did he order United Airlines to get that doctor and pull them off?
	Russian conspiracy.
	Anyway, it is the latest theory, this one from uh one of the luminaries on the left, Michael Hiltzig, a Pulitzer Prize winning columnist from the LA Times.
	He posted the theory that President Trump may have conspired with United CEO Oscar Oscar Munaz to create Sunday's incident.
	Now, of course, he offers no evidence, no explanation.
	There is a lot wrong with what happened here, but let me just play the audio side of this.
	If you haven't seen it, we'll show you on Hannity tonight at 10.
	Can't they rent a car for the pilots and have a drive?
	Hey!
	Oh my gosh!
	Oh my god.
	Oh my god!
	No!
	My God, what are you doing?
	No, this is wrong.
	Oh my god!
	Look at what you're doing.
	Oh my God.
	All right, so that's the audio, and if you haven't seen the video, we'll show you, as I said, tonight.
	And you know, at one point there was one report that the guy said, Just kill me.
	Apparently he was heard just saying that.
	Now, you know, people are raising a lot of questions.
	Well, why did the police involve themselves in this?
	And there was one report that the airport police officer suspended because of the video, showed this victim mumbling, kill me after his he was body slammed, taken off the flight.
	All right.
	Here's what happens in this case, and here's what should have happened.
	So they overbook flights, which by the way is not an uncommon practice because the airlines want to maximize their profits, which is fine with me.
	And instead of doing the right thing, here's the right thing.
	You go on the plane, you make an announcement.
	This is an overbook flight.
	We're looking for two volunteers or one volunteer to leave the airplane, and here's what we're offering you a free trip for two to wherever you want to go.
	Okay, nobody raises their hand.
	Okay.
	Now you have the option that they took, which is to, well, we'll pick this guy.
	You're out.
	Instead of that, then you up the ante.
	We'll give you four tickets to any place you want to go, first class accommodations, and we'll pay for the hotel, any takers.
	This is where they stop.
	They they they tried it once, didn't work, but instead of upping the ante and making it all right, and let's say people don't want the four tickets.
	All right, four tickets, eight tickets, hotel, five thousand dolling money.
	That's somebody's gonna take the deal on that airline.
	It's a crowded airplane.
	Somebody at some point, you're they're gonna look at each other and say, free trip?
	All I gotta do is delay my flight for you know a day, and they'll put me up in a hotel and I get all this free vacation.
	Somebody's gonna take that offer.
	That's the way you handle it.
	You don't go pick somebody out randomly, drag them through the aisle of an airplane and haul him off.
	Because now think of it this way.
	You may think, okay, what if they offered four tickets to the resort that you want, including hotel, including spending money, or a trip to Europe, wherever they happen to fly, and at some point you're going to get a taker.
	Because at some point I'm gonna take it.
	You know, I'm sitting there, right?
	You know, but this guy's a doctor, he had work to do, he couldn't be the guy that takes it.
	There's somebody on that airplane that could have taken the money, taken a bigger offer, and now this guy's gonna sue.
	And this guy's gonna make a fortune because the video is that damning.
	It probably will never get before a judge or a jury because United is going to figure out that they're gonna cut their losses.
	They'll pay the half a million dollars or a million dollars to this guy to make this go away because this is such bad press for them.
	So my question is, was it really worth not upping the ante to get to the point where somebody on that airplane is gonna say, hell yeah, I'll take that trip.
	I'll take the five grand in spending money, and it would have been so much cheaper for them.
	And it's like sometimes people are just void of common sense.
	I am not, believe it or not, as critical of the police officers.
	That's not their role.
	They don't get to go in there and say, up the ante.
	They're in there and they're like, this plane has to take off.
	All these passengers are here, and so but they should have handled it so much differently.
	They just should have.
	Jeffrey Lord, former associate political director Reagan administration, author of the best selling book, What America Needs, the case for Donald Trump, Leslie Marshall, host of the ever so popular Leslie Marshall Show, Fox News contributor.
	Um Leslie, I think you even agree with me on this one.
	Yeah, I I I just had to take my blood pressure.
	Now, yeah, I do.
	I I agree I agree with you a hundred percent on this one.
	Sean, it goes further than this.
	There's a woman on the plane who said out loud, I'll do it for sixteen hundred bucks.
	And United did not respond.
	The other thing is the passengers uh testimony videos posting online today, pretty much backs up the guy, regardless of some you know, prior negatives in his background, a drug of the Yeah, by the way, I don't I don't like what's happened too, because look, I have the ra I have the rap sheet, the back story about this guy.
	And you know what to me, it's like really we're gonna smear this guy.
	I'm I'm with and I'm with and with you a hundred percent because it's apples and oranges.
	Now, Sean, you know my husband's a physician.
	By the way, that was a two thousand and three drug related offense.
	Right.
	But here's the thing.
	I think the reason he was even more adamant that he needed to get to his patients, is he was reinstated just uh two and a half years ago.
	If he missed seeing his patients, his license could be pulled again, and he could be sued by all of those patients, not to mention he's not providing quality care, you know, because the state of Kentucky is like, look, we're gonna give you a second chance.
	You know, you you did bad, you were punished for your crimes.
	He was punished eleven years, he was not allowed to practice medicine.
	Right, and then and now he's allowed to practice medicine.
	He doesn't show up to take care of his patients.
	The state can view that as a screw up and pull the license.
	The patients can view that as him being negligent in their care because it's a lapse in care.
	Uh so and then another thing is Sean, he is a minority.
	If you look at the video, and we all have a number of times, you know, they didn't pull him from the first row on the aisle.
	They went to the middle of the plane and he was near the window, and you see all of these Caucasian men sitting around him, and people have to the a lot big question people are asking today, why that man, and of course, United Stock has dropped six hundred million, and even though Oscar Muniz, the CEO, uh issued an apology, he did a three sixty with his letter to his employees, pretty much patting them uh on the back.
	I think this guy's gonna lose his job, and although I think our country's too litigious, I think this guy has a right to sue.
	And and you're right, Sean, they would have lost far less money that they're gonna lose over the long haul for people that are gonna boycott United.
	This is such an easy stock already dropped, and then the lawsuit and the check they'll have to write to this man.
	Listen, this was such an easy fix.
	It was such an easy do all right.
	Let's say they gave Jeffrey the guy four round trip first class tickets to wherever United flies and a free hotel and five thousand dollars spending.
	At some point you cannot convince me somebody on that plane's not gonna say, Yeah, I'll take it.
	I'll take it.
	I think you're absolutely right, Sean.
	Although now that we've seen how this played out, I'm not sure that it's not better to be dragged off the plane if you're gonna get half a million or a million bucks in a long time.
	He may get more he may end up getting more.
	Listen, not only that the one the one caveat I would have here, and I think you're absolutely right.
	This was devoid of all common sense.
	The one caveat here is you know, I was thinking back to Rodney King and that infamous video of of his being beaten by LA cops.
	What we didn't see is what the precipitating incident was.
	And I and I I'm just picking Rodney King at random.
	Anytime I see something on on TV or YouTube or what have you, that's a video of some controversial thing.
	It it makes me wonder what went on before the cameras came on.
	And in this case, I I think we sort of know, but I'm not sure that we do know totally, and if there's a lawsuit, we'll find out.
	But I think we just have to be careful of this because uh you see the video and everybody jumps to the same conclusion.
	This is horrible.
	But overall, I gotta say, I can't believe I'm agreeing with uh Leslie here, but you know, and y uh yeah and you both, but pure common sense.
	Uh this is what you know, uh Sean, you had Newt Gingrich on yesterday, and he was talking about an article that I've since read about uh the intellectuals as idiots.
	You know, among other things, what that's saying is that these people are devoid of common sense.
	You think of uh John Kerry and Susan Rice and yeah, we got all those uh weapons mass destruction, those chemical weapons.
	They don't have any left in Syria.
	Well, wrong.
	I mean, again, devoid of common sense.
	Uh yeah, you know, you hate to think of what's going on with this Iran agreement.
	But it's the same kind of principle here.
	People don't stop to think.
	And if they do, they would avoid a lot of this.
	Oh, I agree with that wholeheartedly.
	I guess this is a rare moment of uh agreement, even Leslie's on the right side.
	You know, this but it does raise the other question about what you were bringing up about Syria and what the president did.
	You know, let's go back, because let's see, President Obama and President Obama was at different points.
	Let me play all right.
	First we've got to take a little break here, and we'll come back, we'll get to uh Jeffrey Lord and Leslie Marshall.
	We've got to take a quick break here.
	800 nine four one Sean Tolfrey telephone number.
	We'll get to the Syria issue and the lie of John Kerry and the lie of uh Barack Obama and the lie of Susan Rice as it relates to Syria and chemical weapons.
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	We'll take a quick break, we'll come back, we'll continue.
	All right, as we continue with Jeff Lord, former associate political director in the Reagan administration, author of What America Needs, the case for Trump, Leslie Marshall, radio host and Fox News contributor.
	All right, so here is Obama, Susan Rice, well, Obama, John Kerry, and Susan Rice all saying the same thing that, well, his red line in the sand got rid of chemical weapons.
	This has never happened before.
	I I think it was important for me as President of the United States to send a message that in fact there is something different about chemical weapons.
	Uh and regardless of how it ended up playing, I think, uh in the beltway.
	What is true is Assad got rid of his chemical weapons.
	And the reason he got rid of them is for a while.
	Well the president made his decision to strike.
	He announced his decision to strike publicly.
	And the purpose of the strike was to get the chemical weapons out of Syria.
	That's the purpose.
	We achieved a deal with the Russians that didn't wind up in two days of strikes that would have sent a quote message, but would not have removed the weapons.
	We struck a deal to get all of the declared weapons out of Syria.
	Never before in a conflict has that ever happened.
	That during the conflict, weapons of mass destruction are taken out of the zone of conflict.
	And thank God we did that, because if we hadn't done that today, ISIL would have those chemical weapons in large parts of the country.
	Because in the meantime, we were able to find a solution that actually removed the chemical weapons that were known from Syria in a way that the use of force would never have accomplished.
	By the way, there was also a report, James Clapper is actually suggesting what I had said and suspected for years that those chemical weapons in Syria came from Iraq.
	Which of course every liberal narrative is, oh, there were no weapons of mass destruction.
	No, in the lead up to the war, the many months they were moved to Syria, and Clapper says so, but I don't know whether to trust him or not.
	You know, Leslie, this is a problem Here.
	When they say they try and justify Obama's weakness, he draws a red line, they cross the red line, he does nothing, so they go out and tell everybody, but he got rid of all the chemical weapons.
	He didn't get rid of all the chemical weapons.
	He did not do what they said they did.
	Now, let's say they're as wrong about the Iranians and this stupid Iranian deal, and the Iranian mullahs get nuclear weapons.
	What do we do then?
	Well, it's a very different situation, as you know, Syria uh and Iran.
	Um with regard to Syria, I at that time and still maintain if you put a line down and you know you you you make a threat, you've got to follow through.
	And I was critical of the president when it was President Obama, and he did not do that at that time.
	With regard to chemical weapons in Syria, one of the problems is that we don't have the system in place that we do with Iran and our international allies with the Iranian deal uh to be able to check.
	I mean, quite frankly, even when they said there are no more chemical weapons, I was like, really?
	Uh just because it's very difficult uh to verify uh in Syria for not only for the United States, uh for anyone.
	Quite frankly, there you know, we what bothers me also as as a person, a mom, an American, is not just the video, but there was even a worse chemical chemical attack in February, and obviously we didn't care about it because we didn't see video, and that more people are killed by guns and barrel bombs, and we don't think we are very upset by the video, Sean, but we don't want those children to come to our country because we have a banana place for them.
	Okay, with all due respect, the world we do not have the ability to take in every man, woman, and child that is a victim of civil war here, and the president, Jeff, has said that he supports safe zones, that America and the coalition forces would create a military safe zone and provide food and medicine and and blankets and cots and and baby formula.
	And just the other day, Sean, there was a uh uh a Syrian refugee that I saw on CNN saying, we don't want to come.
	We want to be in our own country.
	We want to be a very good thing.
	That was one of them, Chapter.
	He was until the President Trump had sent those missiles.
	Uh you know, the the the question we have to ask is why are these people refugees in the first place?
	And it's because the United States government under the Obama administration wasn't paying attention to business.
	Exactly.
	The thing that really frosts me about this, the word lie is often thrown around.
	I don't think John Kerry and Susan Rice were lying about chemical weapons.
	I think they genuinely believed it.
	No, I think I think they which is even worse.
	I think they lied because I'll tell you why naive.
	But I think they lied because they needed to to cover for Obama's weakness.
	But we'll leave it there.
	800-941 Sean, toll free telephone number.
	Leslie, thank you.
	And of course, Jeff Lord, our good friend, thank you.
	Uh, we'll take a quick break.
	Final half hour, Sean Hannity show straight ahead.
	All right, 25 till the top of the hour.
	Toll-free telephone numbers, 800 941 Sean.
	You want to be a part of the program.
	Now, one of the things that we have been following with regularity on the program, and I even ended up asking the president and the vice president about the cases of Christian Saucier.
	Remember, he was the the Navy submarine guy that took six pictures of a very old submarine.
	They put this guy in jail away from his family, his daughter and his mother and his wife for a year.
	I mean, that's how ridiculous it is.
	And then we talked at length, and I read you the letter that I got from Clinton Lawrence.
	I mean, this guy's spending over twenty years in jail because he made the right decision as there had been a a series of motorcycle IED attacks and and and you know, suicide bombing attacks, uh, even the week before he became a platoon leader, he's now twenty years in jail.
	Twenty years in jail, an American soldier.
	We've talked at length on this program about the idiotic rules of engagement that our men and women in uniform had to practice under Barack Obama.
	That's all going to change now under Trump, thank God, and mad dog Mattis and others involved in this.
	Um there is another story about an army officer talking about how political correctness and that culture is protecting America's enemies.
	His name is Roger Hill.
	He has a brand new book out.
	It's called Dog Company, a true story of American soldiers abandoned by their high command.
	Now, this is insanity.
	Now I said, if you recall during the Obama years, if my son came to me and said, I want to be in the military, Dad, number one, I'd be very proud that he wants to serve his country.
	And following in the footsteps of his grandfather, my father who fought four years in the Pacific.
	But I would advise him, don't do it while this guy's president.
	Because he doesn't have your back.
	And remember I got under s I came under fire for saying that many times, and I'm I don't back away from it.
	If you're gonna tell people you can't fire the gun, you better until you're fired upon, and you may be dead in the interim.
	That's insanity.
	These guys are willing to risk their lives and their limbs and put everything on the line for their country, and then we put handcuffs on them in the field of battle with absolutely no acknowledgment of what a what a war environment could be like.
	Well, this is the story of Roger Hill.
	He I'll let him in his own words tell you, prosecuted for interrogating the Taliban.
	Most evil people on the planet.
	People that want conversion or death for everybody else that doesn't believe what they believe.
	Let's hit it.
	The army has spent over a year trying to keep my book from reaching publication.
	My men were deployed to one of the most violent provinces in Afghanistan.
	And it had seemed that the enemy was always one step ahead of our movements.
	And then we discovered why.
	Through the aid of a counterintelligence team, we uncovered a network of Taliban spies that had been assigned to our base as translators and other workers.
	My hired command would not prosecute these spies, even though the evidence against them was irrefutable.
	And prior to this incident, my company had been forced to release enemy fighters no less than twelve other times.
	With mounting casualties and intelligence of eminent attacks, I took matters into my own hands and interrogated the spies myself.
	And for that, my career came to an end.
	And I was prosecuted for breaking the rules for putting my men first.
	I still love the army.
	I'm a fourth generation veteran and a patriot.
	But what's needed right now is justice.
	Not for my sake, but for the sake of hundreds of men who've been wrongly punished by a broken system that places lawfare over warfare, the judgment of lawyers over battlefield commanders, and the lies of jihadists over U.S. soldiers.
	Please check out Dog Company, a true story of American soldiers abandoned by their high command and help me restore honor to those troops who have been abandoned by an overpoliticized military justice system.
	All right, Roger Hill is now with us in studio.
	Dog Company is the name of the book, The True Story of American Soldiers Abandered by the High Command.
	What you just said there is beyond chilling.
	Number one, you fought for a year because the Army didn't want this book published, correct?
	Yes, sir.
	Unbelievable.
	Yeah, you as you'll see in the book, there's a number of redactions.
	You gotta get a little closer to the mic there.
	I know I know you're an army guy, uh, but uh, I'm a radio guy, you gotta dig in close.
	You can pick the mic up a little bit, and there you go.
	Just put it right to my lips on the case.
	This guy like is six foot twenty, but go ahead.
	Uh so they didn't want you to write the book.
	You had the redactions in the book, but the reality is what?
	What that here you tell your whole story.
	Yeah, so my first Sergeant Tommy Scott and I led a heavy weapons company in one of the most violent provinces in eastern Afghanistan, and it seemed like the enemy was always one step ahead of us.
	We discover why through the aid of a counterintel team.
	We've got twelve enemy spies on our base, confirmed spies, and these are folks that are government heads supposedly, and I'm using air quotes here, vetted to work for us, one of which was my personal translator.
	So I can speak on this whole as a sidebar immigration, you know, special immigration status for translators, so on and so forth, right?
	As well.
	But um, one of which was my translator.
	Also, what was going on at that time is we were receiving credible intelligence that the enemy was planning a large scale attack against our base.
	The rules of engagement were such that you had to release these spies after four days if you didn't have charges brought against them.
	Now you've heard the terms revolving door or catch and release as it pertains to Afghanistan's catch and um detainee management policies.
	That's what we were dealing with because of all the heat that the So you you'd catch known terrorists, but if you didn't get enough intelligence out of them in in four days, then you'd have to let these guys go, knowing that you're letting your enemies that want to kill you back into the battlefield.
	Well, even worse than that, so let me just jump off track here for a second.
	So we had a fire fight one time that I remember um we pushed through the ambush line, you know, we had killed a number of enemy, we captured a couple, one of the guys that we captured had his arm blown off.
	I'm a heavy weapons company, so big guns, fifty calam Mark nineteen.
	Right.
	We patched this guy up, you know, we put our own guys at risk to patch him up, we bring him back.
	We didn't interrogate him on the spot.
	We sent him to hire because he was at risk of losing his life.
	Right.
	So we sent him to hire a saved the guy's life, the enemy's life.
	Two weeks later, they send him back and they say, hey, you need to take him back to where you captured him in this known hot spot.
	And I said, Are you kidding me?
	So what my command says is, well, he's outside that four-day window of bringing charges against him.
	I said, What did you want me to do?
	They said, Well, you don't have a good enough evidence packet against him.
	I said, We caught this guy in an ambush pointing a weapon at fire fight, right?
	In a fire fight.
	So take him back to the area where you caught him and release him.
	We've had to give guy we've been ordered to give guys cab fare to send them on their way as a part of this whole kitchen release plan.
	What is it?
	Pay a terrorist for chauffeur limousine travel or what?
	Yeah, pretty much.
	Yeah.
	You know, who why would the top because I have such respect for my for all the military people I know, why would they ever agree to do this?
	I mean, if if I was put in that position, and I'm look, I've been a rebel my whole life, I've been in trouble my whole life.
	My mother and father, God bless their soul, if they were alive, would tell you I was incorrigible.
	And they would say, Don't leave the house, I'd leave the house.
	And what the reason I say that is I could never be in a position of command ever let a guy like that go.
	I could not obey that order.
	Well, we did it twelve other times prior to the incident that is sort of the the climax of this book.
	Right.
	And so when that when that um when those spies run covered on our base, right, I had a decision to make, right?
	And the the spies that were on our base had a lot of inside knowledge, especially my translator, right?
	Right.
	Because he's in and out of briefings, he knows what's going on.
	And so for us to consider releasing those people as we had the twelve previous was just mind-blowing.
	So we just we weren't gonna be able to do that.
	This is gonna sound terrible, but the guy that you were in the firefight with that lost his arm, you would have been better off leaving him there.
	Uh yeah.
	Because he's because he's going back to the battlefield to kill more Americans.
	Yeah, he would have died within minutes, right?
	He would have bled out.
	Right.
	Yeah, we put a tourniquet on him.
	Let's go back, let's go back to the the story here.
	And when you say that you're abandoned by high command, I think most Americans are saying, What?
	We're asking we send you to go fight.
	You're crazy enough and and patriotic enough to do it.
	You're putting your life in harm's way for us, for our way of life, and we don't support you on the battlefield.
	Yeah, you know this.
	Our our Marines, our soldiers, they don't get to pick and choose where they're sent or the type of fight that they're asked to engage in.
	This is one of the most complex operating environments we've ever faced.
	And if we're gonna send our folks to fight an enemy that fights amongst its own population where the risk of collateral damage, civilian casualties is inevitable, then we have to back them.
	Otherwise, what's happening right now, other than putting them at risk, is there's a dampening effect that occurs over the force where people are hesitating and looking over their shoulders for fear of some sort of investigation for making the wrong call, or you know, if if a civilian gets killed, you know, maybe being put in jail.
	Who gives this insane order?
	Who does this?
	Well, it's it's been the military at large.
	It's this is something that has grown, it's progressively gotten worse.
	But it wasn't the same way under President Bush.
	I think it probably wasn't that great under Bush either, to be honest with you.
	But it did get much worse under the last administration.
	Why are we going to fight wars and not give you guys the ability, A, to defend yourself?
	Which again, if you're willing to risk your life for your country and all and and to preserve our way of life.
	And we don't allow you to do your job.
	I'd like to say war is something that's not necessary.
	I like to say evil doesn't exist, but that's not truth, and that's not reality.
	Yeah, so one of the reasons we wrote dog company is because of the fear that we wouldn't have what it takes.
	Not because our people aren't good, our people are the best on the face of the planet, but because of this hesitance that's being created, this fear of retribution, that we won't have what it takes to win another major war.
	That's the fear.
	That's the fear that I have.
	So that's one of the reasons why dog company was written.
	One of the one of the great pieces of news is, and I have had numerous interviews with the current president, commander in chief.
	He does he he believes in giving commanders the full authority to do their job.
	He he's talked to me about these rules of engagement.
	They're going away.
	Good.
	They're not gonna exist anymore.
	Good.
	But to tie it's almost like putting handcuffs on you and your guys that are out in the battlefield and saying, well, if you do this, so tell me more about what happened in your case.
	Yes, so the we were up against this clock to turn these detainees over, release them basically.
	The other thing that was going on is we were receiving credible intelligence that the enemy was planning a large-scale attack against our base.
	So my first sergeant and I said, We're not going to let that happen.
	We've got to disrupt this attack.
	So we decided to interrogate these spies ourselves.
	Keep in mind, these are confirmed spies.
	The intel against them was incontrovertible.
	So we take these spies, um, a group outside of a building.
	I fire some shots into the ground to scare the ones on the inside into talking.
	We get some good intel, which the command never used because they spent all of their energy investigating us.
	That investigation led to a hearing which led to a handful of us being drummed out of the military too.
	And eventually my first Sergeant Scott, this is the the same.
	So you're you know because of Intel that an attack's coming.
	You know you have people that would know and have the information that would protect your entire company.
	Okay.
	They you get the intel, and then they don't even use the intel because they didn't like your methods, which was just to scare people.
	Yeah, here's the irony, right?
	So we've been asking for birds from our higher command to come pick these spies up.
	There's twelve.
	Two birds would have done that, two black hawks.
	It wouldn't have been that much of a list logistical struggle for them to get these birds to us.
	But as soon as this investigation started, there were birds pouring into our FOB to bring CID and investigators to investigate us.
	So rather than investigating, I mean, i if it wasn't so insane, it's this is a this is a level of madness.
	Yeah.
	You know, um my opinion on committing troops to battle has changed dramatically because of everything you're describing you w live through.
	I cannot we cannot ask Americans to fight, bleed, die, lose their limbs, ruin their life, send them on eight tours of duty, and they come back and they're not the same person.
	They are PTSD because we way overuse them and overwork them, and then commit them to when Mosul Romati, Fallujah to Crete and Baghdad, only to hand it over to ISIS.
	You know, how what do you say to the five thousand mothers and fathers of these dead Americans or the or the parents that are now have to take care of their son or daughter who has no legs and no arms.
	What do you say to them?
	What was the reason we sent them there?
	Because if it was my child, I'd be beyond pissed off.
	Absolutely.
	How many veterans are killing themselves every day?
	You know the stats.
	You know the stats.
	I know the stats.
	I know there's over 250,000 with PTSD, and I can tell you in my own personal life, you have PTSD.
	Absolutely.
	Well, I mean, after after what I've seen, why wouldn't I?
	Yeah, well, I can't I cannot tell you how many times I I called my friend Colonel North because I became aware of a situation of a soldier that came back that is suicidal or addicted to opiates or an alcoholic or abusive towards his family.
	And Colonel North would get on the phone and spend eight hours with these guys and we'd get them help.
	So the American people, and this is what dog company is about, need to demand that these rules of engagement are looked at and rolled back so that they're not so overly restrictive and overly cumbersome for the men and women that are overseas.
	Here's some other food for thought for you.
	Back in 2003, when Eric Shinsecki was the chief of staff of the Army and he was asked what it would take to win in Iraq, he said 250,000 boots on the ground.
	We ignored him.
	So you just brought up a great point.
	We're not sending enough people to win to fight and win these wars.
	If we're not gonna send enough resources to fight and win the wars, then we're gonna irreparably damage the people that we send over there because we're overworking them.
	These are all stop.
	We've got to stop doing it.
	Yeah, you either you either go all in to w to fight and win, and that includes the rules of engagement and being pulled off so that you can fight and win.
	You send the right resources in, or you don't do it.
	That's my argument.
	I agree with you.
	I I don't think look, um, I am glad in a lot of ways that President Trump is not committed to doing any of this, but um this book is phenomenal.
	We put it up on our website yet, Linda.
	We did.
	It's called Dog Company, a true story of American soldiers abandoned by their high command.
	What a sad commentary on leadership in this country, and very specifically against President Obama.
	I will tell you that when I do interview the president next, uh the vice president, I will raise these questions with him because I am as committed as you are to fixing this.
	You guys deserve a hell of a lot better.
	And it's an honor to meet you.
	Thank you, sir.
	Yes, sir, for being with us.
	Thank you very much.
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