Sean Hannity sits down with former House Speaker Newt Gingrich to truly understand what it takes to reverse decades of bureaucracy in Washington. The Contract with America was Gingrich's opportunity to push back against the liberal agenda and Donald Trump is trying to revive that effort. Speaker Gingrich offers some suggestions for President Trump on how he can fight back. The Sean Hannity Show is live from 3 pm to 6 pm ET on iHeartRadio and Hannity.com. Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
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All right, glad you're with us.
Happy Friday.
Write down our toll-free telephone number.
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It's been a tough week.
800-941 Sean, if you want to be a part of this extravaganza, hardened.
I can deal with all the stress in the world.
I really can.
And I'm actually amazed at my own capacity to deal with stress and compartmentalize and keep focused and work when you're juggling a thousand balls in the air.
Just the hardest thing in the world.
I know all of you have experienced it.
It's not easy.
It's not fun.
It's not.
It just hits you like a bat in your head and it's just a pain in the neck.
Anyway, glad you're with us.
It's Friday.
We'll get a lot of calls in the course of today's program and extravaganza.
A lot to get to.
Obviously, I got a lot to say about Robert Mueller and his appointment as the general counsel investigating.
This is a whole new level.
And I think the administration better understands something.
And I'm going to explain that in a second.
We're going to get into some of the other issues of the day that we've kind of been ignoring because of all the news.
I'm going to explain everything that's happening with the media, especially the five groups that want to take down the president, which is probably where I'm going to start here in a second.
You know, here's what's happening: there's now a cycle, and it really came out in all of its ugliness this week.
In as much as, you know, in the last week and a half and two weeks, it's just been non-stop.
And what the cycle is, is this: that you get either the New York Times, the Washington Post, CNN, whatever liberal media group that it happens to be, and they come out and then they drop their big bomb.
Anonymous source.
People outside of the White House say he revealed secrets to the Russians.
And people outside the how would people outside the White House, why would we take their word over people that were in the meeting in the White House with the president that are telling you factually what they heard and saw and it didn't happen?
But the media, what they do is they take it, they drop their bomb headline, they go for the cheap headline, and then boom, it explodes.
Usually late in the day, we call it a late day drop.
And then after the late day drop, then you get on the nightly newscast, breathless reporting, and then hysterical reporting.
And then only to find out later that, oh, sorry, that was maybe the guy inside the room is actually the one that's probably telling the truth.
They don't pull it back.
They don't apologize.
They don't try to make good on any of these things.
They just don't.
And it's been one after another after another after another after another.
And that's why I've identified, you know, the greatest threat now to this president.
There is a threat.
These people want to destroy President Trump.
The deep state doesn't like him.
They don't think they can control him.
They are part of the swamp.
And, you know, James Comey, what he did this week is Beyond the Pale and the New York Times.
I sent myself a memo after meeting with the president.
Okay, what did you send?
What did you send yourself in that memo that was so important that we can't believe that, oh my God, did he try to obstruct justice?
Is that what they're saying?
Did he try to obstruct justice?
The president of the United States of America?
Linda, what was the date we got it?
That was in January.
January 27th.
January 27th.
Now, do we have the tape of Comey from May?
And James Comey said nobody ever tried to obstruct justice?
Because he says, in his own words, he actually goes on, it would be a big deal if somebody tried to get me to stop an investigation.
So if the Attorney General or senior officials at the Department of Justice opposes a specific investigation, can they halt that FBI investigation?
In theory, yes.
Has it happened?
Not in my experience, because it would be a big deal to tell the FBI to stop doing something without an appropriate purpose.
I mean, we're oftentimes they give us opinions that we don't see a case there, and so you ought to stop investing resources in it.
But I'm talking about a situation where we were told to stop something for a political reason.
That would be a very big deal.
It's not happened in my experience.
It's not happened after the memo.
Then why is this even a headline?
Trump tried to convince them to stop.
Now, there's another problem Comey has.
And you think of the breathlessness of the reporting and the word impeachment this week came out over and over again.
Impeachment, impeachment, impeachment.
I can play it all.
We played it for you early in the week.
You know, we've got a new introduction.
We do it on TV and now we're starting it on radio and we're calling it our fake news roundup.
Listen to the introduction that we made because this is part of what I'm calling the cycle.
You got to understand, if all these other countries can be propagandized, you know, I've been fascinated over the years about groupthink and brainwashing and hypnotic, yes, we can, Obama.
It was sort of like nobody thought for themselves.
And we're like here on an island trying to expose Frank Marshall Davis and the Alinsky disciple and the Acorn activists and hanging out, you know, in the church of GD America.
And he is like family to me, Reverend Wright, but I didn't know what this guy was thinking.
And Ayers and Dorn, the unrepentant terrorists, and who made up the core of who Obama was.
Now we ended up being vindicated, but the rest of the country was in a trance.
I spend hours, I don't know why, I'm fascinated for hours I spend watching the American Hero Channel and watching the history channel and trying to understand evil.
You know, how it's very, very hard for good people to comprehend evil.
It really is.
And that 100 million human souls were destroyed and murdered in the last century alone.
The Gulags, Russia, Stalin, Killingfields, Cambodia, communism, fascism, Nazism.
And I watch these videos and you see the pictures of the people in the crowd and they do their sick, twisted, evil, Nazi salute.
And you're saying, what's wrong with these people?
Wake up.
How can you do it?
Or you watch, you know, we saw during the Iranian Revolution when the Ayatollah Khomeini took over power from the Shah of Iran and all the people, they would beat themselves in their face until they bled.
They wanted to prove that they themselves were the most loyal.
You know, how does somebody, I wrote this in my book, Deliver Us From Evil.
Does somebody go to work every day, and their job is to take fellow human beings off a train, make them feel like they're going to be well taken care of?
How many of you would nurses, doctors, carpenters, plumbers?
Oh, good, we've got work for you.
Make you take your clothes off, think you're taking a shower, and then kill you.
How do you go home to eat at night when you slaughtered your fellow human beings?
There is evil, evil at a very high level, and there is groupthink at a very high level.
I'm not comparing Obama supporters to, you know, I am saying there are different degrees of indoctrination.
And human beings have this incredible desire to be accepted.
They want to be accepted and they want to be in the group.
And I see this among journalists on Twitter.
They just, okay, I'll tweet you if you tweet me.
They all want to be liked.
They all want to be accepted.
I see this among weak Republicans.
They want to be liked.
They want to be accepted.
They want Democrats to respect them.
Probably the most guilty of this now is John McCain.
He just wants to be liked, wants Democrats to like him and prevented him from even putting up a fight for the presidency.
There is a certain unquestioning behavior among partisans, by the way, right and left.
I only use Obama because, yes, we can Obama.
Now, it's not the same as the Ayatollah Khomeini or radical Islamists or anything like that, but it's a different level.
It's the same thing.
If you're not questioning, if you're not asking questions, you know, it's, you know, go back to what I'm saying here about the news media or James Comey.
James Comey comes out, blaring headline, New York Times, you know, that Trump tried to get him to obstruct justice, that he said to lay off Comey.
Hope you lay off Comey.
Media headline, feeding frenzy, anonymous sources.
And then we find out much later, oh, he said, wait a minute, in May that nobody ever tried to do it.
And if they did try, it would have been a big deal.
And this happened in January.
And then we discover, it takes us a day.
We discovered that, you know, if he was so concerned about the dinner with Trump trying to get Michael Flynn off the hook, well, then he had a legal obligation, and I would assume the FBI director knows the law, 18 U.S. Code 4 or 28 U.S. Code 1361, that he could have broken and committed two felonies by not going to the Justice Department and giving them the information.
So that's dead.
Just like, you know, we discovered today, my buddy Rowan Scarborough is just a terrific, terrific human being, national security reporter for the Washington Times.
And, you know, they tweeted out in the Washington Times today, Comey didn't ask for more money.
The interim FBI director, remember we heard after Comey was fired, well, that's just because he asked for more money for the Russia investigation.
That's not true either.
That didn't happen.
And the Washington Post got it wrong again.
They got everything wrong.
You know, what are the other headlines that they got wrong last week?
I can't even remember all the times they've got these things wrong.
You know, but on every big major issue headline and the cycle that they go through, they try to create a whirlwind of feeding frenzy, and they do, and they're getting people hyped up, and they're making Americans think that Donald Trump's going to be impeached.
And they're creating the notion that it's ungovernable and he can't do his job.
And 80% of his time and his staff time is being spent, you know, defending this nonsense.
Just like, for example, in the Deputy Attorney General, this was the other Washington Post story.
He says, you know, they reported, oh, the deputy attorney general said he was going to quit because he was being used as an excuse to fire Comey.
And then he did an interview with a station in D.C. and said, I never threatened to quit.
Doesn't matter.
The Washington Post will drop their next bomb without being held accountable for basically lying, false reporting, fake news.
Call it whatever you want.
And that's the cycle we're in.
You know, I told so many people that you got to understand something.
The stakes are high for the left.
If Donald Trump is successful, it is the worst thing that can happen for them, especially after eight years of Obama failure.
And I gave you all of those statistics, poverty, food stamps, people out of the labor force, lowest home ownership rate, doubling the national debt.
Donald Trump's successful and we become energy independent and we have more security with the wall and we're vetting people that have that come from cultures that contradict our constitutional republic.
And if he goes forward with education back to the states and we actually see dramatic increases in test scores, and especially in inner-city America, if the president's success, we're energy independent, and that means that we don't have to worry so much about the free flow of oil at market prices and could keep us out of foreign conflicts in the future.
If the president is successful with an economic plan that creates millions of jobs for Americans and puts the rungs of the ladder back in the ladder so they can climb it again, that is an existential threat to everything that represents modern liberalism, redistribution, socialism, big government, nanny state, womb to the tomb, cradle to grave, you know, ideology that has failed over and over again.
And it's the environment that we're living in.
This is now unprecedented in terms of they want to destroy him.
How is it that James Comey says Hillary admits Hillary's committing felonies?
Nothing.
We want a real Russia collusion story.
Just look to the Clinton server scandal.
Wow, 20% of America's uranium going to Vladimir Putin, the foundational material to build nuclear weapons, and the Clinton Foundation is pounded with millions of dollars in donations and Bill doubles a speaking fee in Moscow.
There's a scandal, Russia scandal.
Nobody wants to pay attention.
How is it that guys like Michael Flynn and maybe even me, I'm told, have been surveilled and unmasked.
And then in the case of Flynn, the unmasking results in the leaking of intelligence, a felony, a violation of the Espionage Act.
And we have circa.com, circanews.com, and Sarah Carter and John Solomon reporting dramatic increases in the surveillance in this country in the election cycle in 2015 and 16.
Well, do we have an increased national security threat?
I don't think so.
Are we using the guise of national security to spy on Americans and trample on Fourth Amendment constitutional rights?
I think, yeah.
Hannity Headline, a bite-sized version of the show that you can take with you anywhere you go.
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You know, we already got our late afternoon, typical, predictable weekly, you know, cycle dump of the day here today.
They're both on the Drudge Report.
New York Times, by the way, the Times and the Washington Post, they're dying to, they're competing with each other.
Who can bring the president down?
That's what their competition is.
New York Times, Trump told the Russians firing the nutjob Comey eased investigation pressure.
Really?
Okay, let's look at the piece and let's see who the source is in this.
All right.
So they got the pictures and it looks really professional.
It's the New York Times, all the news that's fit to print.
And President Trump told Russian officials in the Oval this month that firing FBI Director Comey had relieved great pressure on him, according to a document summarizing the meeting.
I just fired the head of the FBI.
He was a crazy real nutjob, he said, according to the document, which was read to the New York Times by an American official.
Who's the official?
Who's the deep state?
I mean, really?
We get these kind of leaks in the Obama years.
I don't, I think they liked Obama because they can control Obama.
I face great pressure because of this Russian narrative.
You know, it's yeah, I mean, if you're fighting back a lie every single day for month after month after month, and he added, I'm not under investigation.
And, you know, but the question here is: what does that mean?
It doesn't mean anything at all, in spite of what the headline is.
And you know what?
James Comey kind of seems schizophrenic.
He's like, he wanted to be the most respected, the most professional, the most this.
And then he'd lay out the case, and Hillary should be indicted.
And I'm like, I'm making the closing arguments in a courtroom and only to get to the end and say, never mind.
He's nuts.
You know, how does he, you know, make such a big deal about, well, I had a memo.
And in my memo to myself, I said to myself, well, he asked me, I hope this Flynn thing can go away.
But he didn't think enough of it because five months later, he was testifying under oath saying it would be a huge deal if somebody tried to get me to stop an investigation.
You know, then, of course, we discovered there are laws that govern if an FBI director is appealed to and obstruction of justice was taking place, he would have been obligated under the law to go after Russia.
I'm sorry, to go to the Justice Department after Russia.
I'm getting tired.
I can't even keep all of this straight.
Wrote a friend of mine a few minutes ago.
Keeping this straight all day in my head is like it's now becoming a complicated task because there's so many fake news lies out there.
All right, on this Friday, 800-941 Sean, toll free telephone number.
More news coming up next.
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It doesn't matter how much they get wrong.
Doesn't matter how often they're wrong.
Doesn't never the retraction.
Well, inside the meeting, the Russians, with the Russians, we revealed secrets, except the people in the meeting don't say so.
And then, of course, the news media.
All right, we actually created something to describe the cycle or what I'm calling the cycle, which is all right, late day drop.
Washington Post, New York Times.
We got two of them today.
Washington Post right now is Russia probe reaches current White House official people with familiar with the case say.
Listen to how they write these things up.
Law enforcement investigation, possible coordination between Russia, Trump campaign has identified a current White House official as a significant person of interest, showing the probe is reaching into the highest levels of government, according to people familiar with the matter.
Who are the people?
Are they the same people that told you that the Deputy Attorney General Washington Post threatened to quit and you got wrong last week?
Are those the same people that told you that James Comey wanted more money and had asked for more money for the probe before he quit, before he was fired by Trump, that you got wrong?
Who are these people?
The senior White House advisor.
I mean, it all sounds so ominous.
And then this is the cycle.
They dropped their bomb, their late day drop, anonymous sources, people familiar with the matter.
Oh, well, I can be familiar with any matter.
Just tell me what matter you want me to talk about.
I can make up all sorts of crap.
This is the same Washington Post that was wrong about Comey asking for money.
Same Washington Post last week, wrong about the Deputy Attorney General saying that he threatened to quit.
Just wrong.
They both became big bombs, late drop news.
And then you go to the media that night.
They do it just before the nightly newscasts on the big networks, just before the cable shows.
And they figure they can control the narrative.
And then they create, then the networks love it because not only they're the ones more than anybody, they want to bring the president down.
They want as much collateral damage.
They invested in Obama.
They invested and colluded with Hillary's vis-a-vis wiki leaks.
And they just want to take the president down.
They just don't like his agenda.
They supported Hillary.
They supported Obama.
They never vetted Obama.
They never told you the truth about how Obama failed.
And now, whatever the leak is, they're going to run with it.
Nobody's ever going to hold them accountable.
And they create hysteria.
And then it results in you tuning into TV at night and hearing this.
From NBC News World Headquarters in New York, this is NBC Nightly News with Lester Holt.
This is the CBS Evening News with Scott Pelley.
From ABC News World Headquarters, this is ABC World News Tonight with David Muir.
This is Meet the Press with Chuck Todd.
Today on Face the Nation.
From ABC News, it's this week.
Here now, chief anchor George Stephanopoulos.
It's The Late Show with Steven.
It's the Angels.
From.
This is CNN Tonight.
I'm Don LeMond.
Good evening.
I'm Chris Madison, Washington.
Welcome back to Morning Joey.
Good evening, Chris.
Thanks, my friends.
And thanks, too, at home, for joining us this hour.
I'm Wolflitzer.
in the Situation Room.
You think I'm kidding?
Is that true or is that not true?
Listen, I'm laughing because it is so true.
As they say, all good humor is rooted in the truth.
Oh, New York Times, Trump told the Russians to fire.
He fired the nut job Comey and ease the pressure of this ridiculous investigation.
Anyway, it's absolutely insane.
And so, how bad is the Breathless?
Where did I get that tape from?
This guy.
You might remember.
Well, is that true or not true?
Or, you know, I mean, you think people aren't suggestible?
You know, look at this poor girl when our candidate lost.
This is how hysterical she got.
This is going to be a joke.
I cannot believe this is happening.
I'm literally about to fing tell myself that I'm not kidding.
You better fix this shit right now.
I literally am going to die.
I need an ambulance.
Need an ambulance.
You know what's fascinating in all of this?
Um, and I'll get into this later in the program today, too.
But, you know, so I'm having this discussion with Mark Cuban, and I'm going to keep it private.
I mean, Mark likes to be aggressive, and I'm like, Mark, I can play the I can drop the same word bombs on you as you're dropping on me.
And I met him, I actually like him, I think he's a great guy, and I know he doesn't like Trump, that's his business.
That's I'm fine with that, and I don't care what he does and what he says, I don't care what his political views are.
We live in a great free country, at least for now, unless our Fourth Amendment rights are squashed.
Here's a fascinating thing to me: he's not happy with me covering the Seth Rich issue.
And I'm like, Mark, you got to understand something here.
This is deep and this is profound.
And what's happened, and why this is important is why for he was killed on June the 12th.
12 days later, WikiLeaks dropped their DNC email bomb, which ended with Debbie Washington Schultz getting fired and other people getting fired.
And it exposed collusion at the highest levels of the Democratic Party that they colluded to defeat Bernie Sanders.
Bernie had no shot.
He had the superdelegates into the mix.
It was full-on DNC had a side, and it was Hillary.
And why this is important is: number one, the narrative has always been that the collusion, that Vladimir Putin and the Trump campaign, you know, colluded to dump these things to defeat Hillary Clinton.
Now, it's this investigation that has gone on nearly a year, and there's no they're there, and there's no evidence there.
Now, we got a special counsel, which, by the way, creates a huge danger for the president in this sense.
You know, the special counsel wants to always justify its existence.
I don't know Mueller, I don't know where he's headed.
I guess anybody that had any contact with Trump, by the way, if you guys want to contact me, number one, I'm a journalist.
Number two, I refuse to answer any questions.
It's a sad state of affairs.
Think about this in America.
One of my good best friends in the world, his best buddy is an FBI guy that I've gotten to know.
And I've talked to him and I've talked to other FBI guys.
And we talked about different cases that have come up over time.
And I'm like, look at the Denny Haster case.
You know, Denny Haster probably did all these horrible things with paying this guy off, all that stuff.
All right, so fine.
I said, but that's not what he got in trouble for.
Got in trouble for lying to the FBI.
And I say, well, I mean, I love the FBI.
The FBI comes to my house.
Aren't you going to want to help your friends in the FBI?
Now I'm going to tell you what he said.
Well, I won't tell you fully.
He said, you never talk to the FBI.
He goes, because the second you're not consistent with what you said before, they're just looking to screw you, especially in this political environment.
That's sad.
Because instinctively, as a law-abiding citizen, I want to help my friends in the FBI because I have great respect for law enforcement, as all of you that listen to this program regularly know.
And I'm being told by lawyers too.
You can't ever talk to people.
I'm like, you're kidding me, right?
I mean, you want to help.
You want to, no, don't.
Because if you say one thing that contradicts something else, or you had forgotten a conversation that you had with somebody that might sound a little different than what you're saying now, in this political environment, they'll try to destroy you, just like the IRS was used to destroy conservatives.
That makes me sad for my country.
It makes me very sad because I've met Secret Service, I've met Intel people, I've met FBI people, I've had family in law enforcement my whole life, and I have the deepest love, respect, and appreciation for what they do.
But in this politically charged environment where we're now watching, We're literally, you know, wondering and watching whether or not, and this is where circa news comes in, and John Solomon and Sarah Carter, whether or not our intelligence community could have been weaponized, trampling our constitutional rights, our Fourth Amendment rights against unreasonable search and seizure,
where they're literally surveilling Americans or foreign entities are surveilling it and they have access to the accumulation of data of foreign intelligence agencies, and that, quote, technically legally gets them off the hook.
Or if you have, you know, a case of unmasking, which is just wrong, if Americans are incidentally surveilled while they're doing their legitimate work to protect Americans and keep us safe and in a dangerous, evil world that's so necessary, and they incidentally pick up an American, they're supposed to minimize it.
It's a process of minimization.
They don't do it.
Like in the case of General Flynn, then, you know, and then when they write up the document, they're supposed to say American.
They don't even, even if they know who it is.
And then we have the leaking of intelligence, a violation of the Espionage Act.
And the reason that this Seth Rich thing is so amazing to me is: number one, what Julian Assange said.
If I had to guess, he probably regrets because he basically all but identified this kid as the source, not Russia.
Now, you might say, Hannity, why should I trust WikiLeaks, Julian Assange?
Okay.
Well, he does have an 11-year track record of never being wrong.
Never.
By the way, the charges against him in Sweden were dropped today.
I'm sure that's going to get a lot of pickup.
But then he has the bigger threat where there are people in the United States that want extradition because he had published information.
That's a different issue for a different day.
But my only point here is: if in fact it wasn't the Russians that gave this information on the DNC, the files to the DNC, and let's say it was somebody else.
Well, the whole Russia conspiracy narrative of impacting the election dies.
So Julian Assange, all but kind of in that Dutch interview, to me, my interpretation is saying, wow, it sounds like it.
And meanwhile, he's denying that he ever got anything from any state or Russia specifically.
And we've interviewed him many times on the show and on Hannity the TV show.
And I went to London, where you might remember.
And yeah, he's being spied on all the time, and we all know that.
And so then you got this kid that works for the DNC, and then you got him, he's murdered.
12 days later, the WikiLeaks dump comes on the DNC.
They've been saying for almost a year that this is a robbery.
Big problem with that is they shot him in the back.
They killed this poor kid.
And my thoughts and prayers do go out to his family.
You lose a 27, if I lose a 27-year-old kid, I'm done.
Stick a fork in me, done.
I don't think I'd ever recover.
And I've got pretty broad shoulders.
So my heart goes out to them.
My prayers go to them.
But they didn't rob him.
They didn't take his, I guess he had a chain or a necklace.
They didn't take his wallet.
They didn't take his phone.
Well, how's that?
They didn't take his watch.
How's that a robbery?
How do you justify calling it a robbery?
Now, if you look at, there was one of the Washington papers that said, and it was the former UK ambassador to Uzbekistan who's connected to Julian Assange.
It said, yeah, there was a transfer in a wooded area near American University.
And here's the question: Is it possible that somebody within the DNC ranks saw the injustice, the collusion, the unfairness, basically a coordinated effort to steal or prevent Bernie from ever having a fair shot at the nomination?
That supported Bernie Sanders, and that maybe they were so outraged at this immoral conduct that they decided to expose it.
Is that a possibility?
Well, the media is not even contemplating asking that question.
Now, we've been out there on a limb investigating Obama before he became president while everybody was in there.
Yes, we can know Obama, Obama, and they're chanting.
And we told you the truth about Obama, and we investigated Hillary and the emails and Uranium One deal and the corruption and the lies and Benghazi and everything else.
We do their job.
They've ignored all of this.
And every step of the way, I'm always told my greer is on the line.
And if you support Donald Trump and he loses, you're over.
You're done.
We'll write your obituary.
Now, what I'm doing is what I've done in the past.
I'm investigating it and asking questions.
Something doesn't smell right to me.
And the media is ignoring that as they come out with their fake news story of the day.
That's all we're doing.
So to Mark, I'm just saying, this doesn't smell right to me.
Doesn't smell right.
800-941-SHAWN.
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All right, as we roll along, Sean Hannity Show, 800-941-SHAWN.
All right, Newt Gingrich, he just got back from a long trip.
He's been out of pocket.
By the way, the president took off his 15,600-mile diplomacy tour.
By the way, I doubt it's going to be an apology tour.
Yeah, we're on Hannity tonight, 10 Eastern.
Don't miss the show.
We got a great show.
So we'll check in with Newt.
We're going to take calls in the second half hour of the next hour.
News Roundup, we'll check in with former U.S. Attorney Matthew Whitaker.
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Now, he's been traveling abroad.
We've not had him on the program in a while, but you know, with all of this, what I'm calling now the cycle of hysteria and anonymous sourcing and late-day drops and breathless reporting, and then it all turns out to be false.
For example, the Deputy Attorney General did not attempt or did not say he was going to resign.
But that was the headline in the Washington Post.
James Comey did not ask for more money just before he got fired by Donald Trump, or all the other many false news stories that have come out in recent days.
You know, the discussion, well, secrets were revealed to the Russians.
Okay, but the people in the room say that's not true.
And all the other fake, phony news and all the breathless reporting and the hysteria and the impeachment talk.
And joining us with his perspective is former Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich.
I actually quoted you this week when you weren't here because you wrote a brutal takedown of the mainstream media.
Well, look, I just tried to accurately report on what's going on.
And the fact is that they are, they've just gone off the deep end.
Well, you even said, you said it's disgust, you're disgusted, and it's despicable.
And it is.
Well, and I had the experience, I was in Kiev in the Ukraine, and people there were getting their news from CNN and the New York Times.
And I talked to a student group and a young parliamentarian group, and then to a more older, more mature group.
And again and again, I was getting questions as though these false stories were true because their only source of reference was CNN, which was hysterical 24 hours a day and being anti-Trump.
And I began to realize that CNN has done more damage in the last four months to the United States overseas than either Al Jazeera or Pravda ever dreamed they would do.
People believe in them.
They say, that's an American network.
They must be telling me the truth.
But the I've identified five forces that would like to take down the president.
I think the most dangerous is the deep state.
I think that is the intelligence leaking, surveillance, unmasking.
We don't get to the bottom of that.
It's never going to end.
Even Chuck Schumer said, yeah, you go against them, they'll get you six ways in Sunday.
Then the media, with their breathless, hysterical reporting every day, creates an impression that this president is not able to govern.
That's part of their goal.
And ultimately, their top goal would be to take him down.
Then you got Democrats.
They've wanted impeachment since November 9th.
Then you got weak Republicans that won't defend the president.
Then you got the Never Trumpers.
They're fueling the fire to say that we were right and people like Gingrich and Hannity were wrong.
Well, of course.
I mean, this is why I have so strongly endorsed Dennis Prager's view that we're in a cultural civil war.
These people make perfect sense if you understand that the world they want, the way they want to change America, the left-wing values they want to impose, all of those things are put at risk by Donald Trump.
And if Donald Trump succeeds, their entire worldview is going to disappear.
And I think that's why you have this bitterness and this anger, and in some cases, violence or threats of violence.
I mean, it's the most intense I can remember it in my lifetime in terms of genuine, deep political hostility.
Look, I was with you when you were Speaker.
I was there for a lot of that time, and it was hostile then.
This is at a level that is so much higher.
Look, when you start having members who have death threats, when you have a woman chasing a congressman down the street in a car, when you have young fascists threatening to beat up anybody in a parade who they don't like, I mean, you just go down the list of things that have been happening recently, and it really is like the 1930s in Germany and Italy.
I mean, the left has just gone off the deep end, and they are prepared to use every means they can to stop Donald Trump.
I agree wholeheartedly.
I really do.
So what about how the White House is handling all this?
Can they make improvements?
To me, it seems like 80% of their time now is being consumed with just dealing with the 6 o'clock or 5:30 or 5:45 daily bomb that the hate Trump, destroy Trump media is going to dump on them.
Well, that's part of the reason I wrote the newsletter at Gingrich Productions, which said, you know, we're either going to fight or surrender.
I almost want to interrupt you and say, okay, Newt, it sounds worse than it is.
And you want me to talk for you for a minute because you said.
No, it's okay.
I was on several long airplane rides and my voice dried out.
The White House does not yet realize this is a real war.
They can't appease the media.
I mean, the president has lunch with some of the media who hate him, despise him, attack him every day.
He's legitimizing the very people who spend their time attacking him.
And that's just wrong.
And I think the White House, I hope when they go on this trip, that they will really take some time and think about the mess that they've left behind in terms of the news media, the hostility, the Democrats in Congress.
And I hope they'll come back prepared to really think about how you fight this kind of a campaign because you have to be prepared to fight every day, and you have to be deciding that, you know, they have tools if they want to use them.
They give them enormous advantages.
For example, the president can report direct to the American people and simply ignore the news media.
And if he did that, he would get his message across and then let the news media figure out how they were going to cover him.
Every time he dances with them, he empowers them and he makes them look more creditable and more respectable than they should be.
Okay, so I agree with you.
So, look, you always think and have concrete ABCD 1234.
What are the ABCD 1234 answers from your perspective?
Well, first of all, don't take their bait and spend your time talking about just trash.
I mean, all this stuff, if you were to look at the last five weeks, the amount of time the White House has spent on left-wing trash is absurd.
The president ought to talk about job creation.
The president ought to talk about the kind of health system we want.
The president ought to talk about national security.
The president ought to talk about cutting red tape and regulations.
And all the junk that these people want to spend every day on, this is why they should stop having the daily press briefings.
Because Spicer is not going to ever be able to get past the garbage questions that are going to come up from the news media.
And so the news media right now has the president dancing to their tune.
Well, the president has the ability to go on Facebook.
He has the ability to talk from the Oval Office.
He has the ability to do daily briefings.
He can do major speeches.
If he will be disciplined, he can step past all this junk and rebuild his national coalition around the things that affect American people's lives.
It's a simple test.
If it affects the lives of the American people, talk about it.
If it's just Washington gossip, do not talk about it.
I'm being serious with this question, and you might interpret it the wrong way.
I don't mean it the wrong way.
Is that realistic?
Is it possible to ignore the press?
Sure, why not?
I'm just asking.
You told the story about where 74% of the country is on Facebook.
You can create your own channel.
Trump did create his own channel.
If he had relied on the press, he'd have lost the election.
But he created channels on Twitter.
He created channels on YouTube.
He created channels on Facebook.
He created channels on Snapchat.
I mean, he was out there doing stuff and doing it better than they're doing it right now because right now they're allowing the press to define what the topic is.
And the press will never define a topic that helps Donald Trump.
Do you think they've had a net negative effect?
And what do you make of all the impeachment talk?
And what do you make of the general counsel appointment, special counsel appointment?
Well, I think, first of all, that the White House has to understand that this is very dangerous.
You're now entering criminal law.
This is not a New York real estate deal.
And they need to have the right lawyers.
They need to behave very carefully.
And they need to understand that what happens is, you know, people who are totally innocent get caught up, say the wrong thing, end up committing perjury or obstruction of justice, and all of a sudden, you're in a totally different fight you never dreamed of.
So they've got to take this very carefully.
And I don't think yet that they've done that.
Second, put it to one side.
They're the ability to answer every question they get asked about this topic, they can say, that's currently being handled by Mueller, and we're working with Mueller.
We're cooperating totally.
Next question.
And that's all they have to say.
You know, it's a very interesting question.
It's a very interesting question.
Because I have an FBI friend of mine.
I'm really, like all these FBI guys that I've ever known and all the Secret Servicemen I've met and all the people in intelligence I've met.
You know what they say to me is that if the remember, think of all the cases, like Danny Haster with a payment deal, he got in trouble for lying to the FBI.
Right.
All right.
Now, let's say you say something and you just misremembered it.
And I'm not joking around here.
I mean, that's four years earlier and you said this to them.
Or there's a difference between outright lying.
I mean, it almost seems to me you can't win if you don't have a perfect memory in being interrogated by law enforcement if they are weaponized with a political agenda.
Sure, look, I've said very directly, people like Flynn should never testify unless they get a grant of immunity.
Because you go in front of one committee, you give an answer.
You go to a second committee, you give an answer.
You sit down and get interviewed by the FBI and you give an answer.
And some very smart people take those three answers, lay them over each other, and say, now, wait a second.
In paragraph 9, sentence 2, you were different.
Now, why were you different?
Were you hiding something?
And you get into the person I feel the most angered about is Scooter Libby, who literally did nothing wrong.
That's true.
But the independent counsel, who is supposedly going after a leak, knew who had leaked.
It was a member of the State Department, told that person to shut up and not admit they'd leaked so he could use his position.
It was Richard Armitage they knew from day one that leaked.
Right.
They knew it.
And they didn't shut down the investigation.
Because the independent counsel wanted to get Vice President Cheney.
You know, I had this story that came out about me not that long ago, and I never verified it.
Well, I might have been unmasked and surveilled.
And I just talked to some lawyer friends of mine, and I said, oh, okay, what if this is true?
They said, well, number one, you're a journalist.
Number two, these are lawyers.
They said, I never let you say a word.
And I said, well, no, no, no.
When they asked me a question, they said, I can't.
We can't.
Because if you don't have a perfect memory, you're setting yourself up.
And I'm thinking, I love the FBI.
I'd only want to help the FBI.
I mean, that's what my natural instincts are.
Of course.
But is that like, is that the world we're now living in?
Yes.
That I can't try and help people that I love and respect?
You better be very careful because you become the next target.
Listen, I had an independent counsel appointed against me when I was a speaker.
We turned over a million pages.
Think about that, a million pages.
And then I sat down for hours, and he would say, now here on page 52,509.
As smart as you are, you can't possibly keep up.
It's an impossible task.
It's impossible.
All right, stay right there.
We'll continue more with Speaker Gingrich.
Hannity Headline, a bite-sized version of the show that you can take with you anywhere you go.
To sign up today for Hannity Headlines, go to Hannity.com.
And as we continue with former Speaker of the House, Newt Kingrich, his voice a little sore.
He just got back from doing a lot of training.
You can't just dive in like this.
All the years I've known you, this is the first time I've heard you talk about your underwear.
Let me tell you, I'm going to send you some.
I'll send you the t-shirt.
I just want to remark for the record that on this date, you and Sean ended up talking Sean's underwear.
This has got to be fake news.
I don't know.
This is probably fake news.
I don't even know what you're talking about.
You know what?
For all the years I've known you, you know, when you, the admonition you just gave before the break about the special counsel and the president, he better take it seriously.
Why in my mind, and I don't know Mueller.
I don't know if you know him.
I don't know him personally.
And I'm worried that he loves Comey, and he may have some bias that Comey was fired.
But I think what scares me is at the end of this thing, it's all going to hinge on an interview with the president after months and months and months and months of investigations go on.
I mean, what does the president do with that person?
Remember, it's not just Mueller.
I mean, Mueller's very, very respected.
He was a very courageous American in Vietnam.
By every standard, he is a tremendous professional.
But he's going to head up a team of investigators.
And those investigators are all trained to look at every piece of evidence and, wherever possible, to draw the most negative possible conclusion.
And they're going to look at an enormous amount of material.
And as you point out, they're then going to start with the White House team, and then they're going to get to the president, and they're going to be tracking back and forth.
Now, in this meeting on December 11th, you know, one of the 52 meetings you had that week, two people remember this, and one person remembers that.
What do you think happened?
That's really dangerous ground.
And the president needs a world-class attorney who understands how to deal with this kind of investigation.
And frankly, every person who's going to be touched by Mueller should have a first-class attorney and not assume in any way that any of this is a risk-free game.
This is a very dangerous project.
It has the potential to put people in jail, and you have to deal with it with that level of seriousness.
Is it now the point where journalists that are conservative but now under the same level of attack, or is this going to be at the White House?
I have always felt this, and I'm under more attack than I have ever been.
And I know you've been under attack your whole life, to be honest.
So, this is nothing for you, but it just feels like it's got a level of intensity that the left wants as much collateral damage.
Anybody that supports the president, likes the president, believes in the agenda.
And that means everybody in the White House, everybody outside the White House, that everybody now is going to be subject to all sorts of attacks that never ending.
The difference is this: the left is now so frenzied and so furious that they want to humiliate and destroy.
They don't, if you watch them on college campuses, they engage in hunting down conservatives, they engage in ridiculing and humiliating people.
I mean, there's a whole mood out there that I think is very, very dangerous.
I first saw it when Scott Walker proposed to reform the civil service bureaucrats in Madison, and he and his wife both got death threats.
And I thought, you know, this is really touching a nerve.
I mean, and I think that's what you're seeing.
They don't just want to defeat President Trump, they want to humiliate him, drive him from office, and make sure that no populist conservative can win for the next half century.
So they want to make an example of him.
And he needs to understand that.
And remember, 99% of the donations in the State Department went to Hillary Clinton.
97% of the donations in the Justice Department went to Hillary Clinton.
That gives you some idea what the balance of the culture is like and what they think about the current president of the United States.
All right, Mr. Speaker, thank you.
All right, 800-941-Sean is our toll-free telephone number.
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You know, I'm getting criticized.
Mark Cuban was writing me, I'm not going to disclose the privacy of the messaging that we did back today.
And I've always like and respect Mark.
He seems to have a real something in his craw about the president, Donald Trump, and we're going back and forth.
And he keeps asking me, why are you reporting on this young man, this 27-year-old DNC staffer Seth Rich?
And, well, I can only say this now, although Reddit is putting up some interesting.
Do you trust the people at Reddit, Linda?
I do.
And I think there's a lot of people that are reporting that are doing the hard work that the journalists are not doing because they're too busy reporting fake news.
I'm digging really hard, is all I'm going to say.
Like we did a deep dive into Obama, like we did a deep dive into Obama's failures, like we did a deep dive into the Clinton Foundation.
We don't need to do a deep dive.
There's 19 cameras on the block where the man was murdered.
We just need to see the tape.
Where's the tape?
Let's see the tape.
Okay.
And I have come across somebody that is a friend of his that cares deeply about what has happened to him and that feels strongly that this is this.
Look, you can't call it a robbery for a year and they shoot somebody in the back.
I'm sorry.
It goes, it defies all common sense and logic that I have.
I want to be respectful to the family, and apparently they're upset and they're mad and they're annoyed at anybody reporting it and the idea that perhaps he might have had contact with WikiLeaks, etc.
But, you know, what I'm being told is he was a Bernie supporter and had a lot of social media accounts and that he might have been doing the right thing.
This is where my investigation is going.
I want to find out if he was a person of deep conviction and conscience and felt and discovered that the DNC had colluded to absolutely screw over Bernie Sanders and Bernie Sanders supporters.
And to me, which would make him a real iconoclastic, courageous truth teller.
And I don't know why.
I guess because everything's colored by the world of politics today, that that would somehow be a bad thing.
But if you're going to rob somebody, you're not going to steal their wallet.
You're not going to take their credit cards.
You're not going to take a necklace that might be worth something or a phone, or you're not going to take their watch.
I don't know.
That seems, is there anybody in there that thinks that sounds a little odd?
Everybody.
All right, you guys are all waving your hands.
And, you know, I got something that is, I'm going to hold off on.
It's on Reddit.
A thousand and one gates, you know, to the truth here.
And that, in fact, that he was a Bernie Sanders supporter.
Now, I'm going to investigate this.
Now, why does this matter?
Because the whole narrative, if in fact, if in fact it was a person of conscience that discovered what ended up getting Debbie Wasserman Schultz fired, and that in fact it was somebody other than the Russians, maybe from within the DNC.
And I'm not saying necessarily Seth at all.
And my thoughts and prayers go to him and his family.
I can't imagine losing a 27-year-old child.
I don't know how you recover from that.
And I just, there's, it's, I'd be, I'd not be consolable at that point.
So, but finding an answer, is it a possibility that the entire Russia collusion narrative and story is false?
Now, I can understand why the media is not interested in it because that's going to expose them as having been god-awful wrong forever.
That's it.
That then would say, you know, the media, then it's sort of like everyone in the media that did the tinfoil hat conspiracy theory, Russia Trump campaign, Trump transition team conspiracy theory, will have been proven wrong.
And that, you know, when I listen to Julian Assange in his own voice, and I know some of you say, Hannity, why do you trust Julian?
He's never been wrong in 11 years.
And you got to give WikiLeaks credit.
I also think I have a better understanding of him having met him and interviewed him as often as I have.
It's just my opinion.
All right, so you can see.
I think a lot of you, you don't want to trust my judgment.
Don't trust my judgment.
Question, ask, ask questions.
But this wasn't a robbery.
It was not a robbery.
There's nothing that points to a robbery.
And that's been the rigid narrative forever.
Here's the next question: Who's in possession of this young man's computers?
Who has them?
Because they'd tell a tale.
Yes or no?
Where are they?
Just a thought.
All right, let's get to our busy telephones here as we go to, let me see, Billy is in Savannah, Georgia.
What's up, Billy?
Hi there.
Thank you for listening to my idea.
Yes, what's up?
If physically harming our plotting to harm the president is a major crime.
All right, so let's follow all the little snowflakes down their little rabbit holes, right?
Right.
Emotional and mental distress is very bad, and anyone who causes someone to have emotional and mental distress should be accounted for.
You know, they should be, you know, taken care of.
Right.
Right?
So I'm listening.
Go ahead.
Then why then are the media, the Democrats, and the Republicans attacking, belittling, bad-mouthing, trying to diminish the president's reputation?
And not only that, now they're dragging his young son into it.
Okay, if any emotional damage can be done, let me tell you, that would be the one for me.
So they're dragging his son into it.
They're causing all this damage and this, you know, to his reputation, to his self.
Are they not then, by their own philosophy and beliefs, becoming the biggest criminals that we know?
Look, you have an FBI director that was partnering with a guy that believed that he had a dossier.
He was about to put him on the payroll that believed that Donald Trump had hookers in the Ritz-Carlton in Moscow years ago and they were urinating on his bed.
And it's only because it became public that that stopped.
That was James Comey that wanted apparently to put this guy on some type of payroll.
Then you've got Melania Trump, and we know the horrible things said about her.
Then you've got incest jokes, not that there's such a joke in the world about Ivanka Trump.
Then you've got a 10-year-old being picked on.
Then you got every single person surrounding the president, liking the president, supporting the president, all being attacked.
And you got to go back to my narrative.
It's, you know, today is, you got to see the cycle.
You got to see the breathlessness.
You got to see, you know, sadly, when they drop a bomb story, and I mean a bomb stinker, but they create as much chaos as they can.
It gets proven wrong.
Then they just drop another one and everyone forgets that the last three things that they reported on were lies.
And that's the Washington Post today.
You know, I honestly think we're getting to a point where libel laws have to change in the country.
And I believe in freedom of speech, but having been a victim of slander and smears and besmirchment and outright lies, it's you want to defend yourself.
And the first thing my lawyer says to me, you're a public figure.
And I get it.
The bar becomes that much higher.
So I guess, you know, what you can say is that there's nothing really that they can do, except we can demand that better reporting.
I mean, you know, one of the reasons I think talk radio, Fox News, Matt Drudge, Breitbart, the Fox News channel have been under such heavy fire is they want to keep us off our game.
They want us out of the game because we expose them and we're an alternative.
But look, understand.
There is a cultural battle going on that I have never seen in my life with an intensity I've never seen in my life.
And this is a real battle, a real conflict, and there are no compunctions, so it seems, in terms of any adherence or fidelity to truth or ethics on the other side.
So I'm just embracing what it is.
I face the truth.
I understand what I'm up against, and I go from there.
I think that's all we can do.
Thank you, Billy.
Let's say hi to Mark in North Carolina.
What's up, Mark?
How are you?
Glad you called.
Hey, Sean.
Great to talk to you, man.
I've tried so hard to get through to you.
Thank you.
I think that first thing is I wish I could move from North Carolina to South Carolina just so I could help the primary Lindsey Graham.
He's the worst.
You know, betraying their party and just the fact that they even helped to allow this independent council go is just something the Democrats would never allow, and they're just getting outmaneuvered.
I don't know who he thinks he's serving.
Secondly, on the Independent Council, I'm hoping Trump uses that to his advantage and has Sean Spicer and everybody from his administration just say, look, there's an investigation.
We're not going to answer one question about this fake news, anything related to it.
We're not talking about it ever again.
There's an, you know, use the old A, there's an investigation going on, so we can't talk about it.
And just keep calling it what it is.
Absolute fake news.
It's really fake news.
And I got to tell you, they're getting good at it.
They're getting good at the hype and hysteria.
Now, look, there's going to be a point where, except for the really, really hardcore leftists, where those people that are buying into the hype and that they're going to have to realize, all right, how many more times are you going to suck me in with hopes that Donald Trump is on his way out the door?
You know, the good news is, look, this is a long-term conflict.
They want to undermine an election, the election results.
They don't want this president to be able to govern.
And if we care about the direction of the country and want to prevent this from happening, then we've got an obligation to now engage like we did in the election with the same intensity.
And there's no doubt the deep state, the media, liberal Democrats, weak Republicans, and never Trumpers have their agenda to destroy the president.
And our job is if we want the country that we voted for, we've got to engage again.
And I think people are sensing it.
I feel it.
I feel engaged to fight.
And I feel engaged to tell the truth.
I feel as engaged as I did during the election.
To me, the stakes are just as high.
All right, let's get back to our busy telephones here.
Janet is in Boca Raton in beautiful Florida.
Hey, Janet, how are you?
Glad you called.
Thank you.
It's such a pleasure to speak to you again.
I'm so honored to talk to you.
Well, thank you.
You made my day.
How are you?
I respect for you.
I really do, because you're the only one that speaks the truth.
You're so genuine.
You're so, you're really the real deal.
Well, you're very kind.
I'm trying to be.
Anybody in the world would listen to you and be open-minded and know that you speak righteous.
And I just can't believe what goes on.
And I just wanted to say thank you for the Trump pens.
And my grandkids were hysterical.
Yeah, it's funny, right?
I mean, every time you show that to somebody, the reaction is pretty amazing.
They were hysterical.
Yeah.
And they said, man, did you get these?
And I said, oh, it's a long story.
You know the funny thing?
We had like a million requests.
I don't remember.
How many did we ultimately buy Linda?
I bought a bunch of them.
How many did I buy?
Oh, God, I don't know.
I had to go check my office.
No, no, no.
Well, you know how many we ordered.
How many did we order?
Oh, God.
I think it was like 2,000 or 3,000.
It was so, so many.
And they went in 10 seconds.
I mean, I can't possibly fulfill them.
But I still have one box left because I have some people that I need to give them away to.
So stop giving them away.
I will be the greatest president that God ever created.
Look, I'm really rich.
I will build a great, great wall on our southern border, and I will have Mexico pay for that wall.
I don't wear it to pay.
It's my hair.
I swear.
I love China.
I just sold an apartment for $15 million to somebody from China.
Our leaders are stupid.
Our politicians are stupid.
We will have so much winning if I get elected that you may get bored with winning.
I think I am a nice person.
People that know me like me.
Anything else on your mind today?
Just wanted to say thank you, and I just enjoy listening to you.
I even leave work early just so I could get the three o'clock, you know, so I could listen to you.
Oh, that's, you know, and it's so difficult to get to you, but I just want to.
Well, if it was easy, that would mean there's not enough people listening, Janet.
That wouldn't be good.
Yeah, well, I wish they all would listen to you because, you know, at least you give hope to this world and, you know, positiveness.
And that's what we need.
We don't need all of this negativity.
I mean, it's disgusting.
Oh, it's crazy.
Listen, it's off the hook and out of control.
And I've never seen anything like it in my life.
And, you know, with that said, I'm energized.
I'm motivated.
I'm ready to fight.
And I don't have a lot of fear in my life.
I just don't.
I'm not easily intimidated.
There's like one thing in my life that I really don't do well with.
And I experienced it this week with Roger L.'s death.
I don't like death.
I have a hard time with that.
But I pretty much can handle everything else.
And, you know, there's a lot of stuff that we're dealing with on a daily basis here.
We're just trying to keep up and do our job and keep focused and, you know, provide news and information and opinion you're not going to get anywhere else.
And that's what being a talk show host means.
Yes, I'm a journalist.
I'm a journalist in this way.
Yeah, we do straight interviews.
That's it.
No bias, straight interviews, boom.
Presidential candidates, you know, highly elected people in office.
And sometimes we debate people.
Then sometimes we give commentary.
That's all under the umbrella of being a talk show host.
Is it journalism?
Of course it is.
Hannity, you're not a journalist.
Well, not in the traditional sense.
I'm not as abusively biased as CNN.
That's true.
The New York Times or Washington Post.
We'll continue.
This is the Sean Hannity Show podcast.
So far, you've not seen any evidence of collusion.
Is that right?
Well, evidence that would establish that there's collusion.
Well, I respect the move, but the entire thing has been a witch hunt, and there is no collusion between certainly myself and my campaign, but I can always speak for myself and the Russians.
Zero.
Holding them accountable.
Sean gets the answers no one else does.
Freedom is back in style.
Welcome to the revolution.
We're burning down the mashing bullets at the moon, baby.
Sean Hannity.
More behind-the-scenes information on breaking news and more bold, inspired solutions for America.
Coming up next, our final news roundup and information overload hour.
I think the American people want to know: has the dismissal of Mr. Comey in any way impeded, interrupted, stopped, or negatively impacted any of the work, any investigation, or anything ongoing projects at the Federal Bureau of Investigations?
The work of the men and women of the FBI continues despite any changes in circumstance, any decisions.
So there has been no effort to impede our investigation today.
So if the Attorney General or senior officials at the Department of Justice opposes a specific investigation, can they halt that FBI investigation?
In theory, yes.
Has it happened?
Not in my experience.
Because it would be a big deal to tell the FBI to stop doing something without an appropriate purpose.
I mean, we're oftentimes they give us opinions that we don't see a case there, and so you ought to stop investing resources in it.
But I'm talking about a situation where we were told to stop something for a political reason.
That would be a very big deal.
It's not happened in my experience.
Mr. President, let's get your reaction to Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein's decision to appoint a special counsel to investigate the Russian interference in the campaign.
Was this the right move, or is this part of a witch hunt?
Well, I respect the move, but the entire thing has been a witch hunt, and there is no collusion between certainly myself and my campaign, but I can always speak for myself and the Russians.
Zero.
I think it divides the country.
I think we have a very divided country because of that and many other things.
So I can tell you that we want to bring this great country of ours together, John.
And I will also say very strongly, we've had tremendous success.
All right, the acting FBI director, then the FBI director, and then the president.
By the way, all of those, remember, we pointed out laws that are broken.
In fact, if the FBI director was told by the president, well, let's end this investigation thing, the so-called big memo story flop of the week, the obstruction of justice.
Well, that would have meant that he had a legal obligation as the FBI director of the United States to take it to the Justice Department.
He didn't do it because it didn't rise to the level.
And he's on tape after the meeting saying, no, no one's ever tried because it would be a big deal.
And so is McCabe saying the same thing.
You see how many fake news stories that we're fed a line, anonymous sources, and then after the anonymous sources come out and people outside the White House that weren't in the room, well, then comes the media feeding frenzy, hysteria, breathless reporting.
And then after that, we spend 24 hours, we put timelines together, facts together, other statements that these people have made together.
And lo and behold, the story gets blown out of the water.
Or we just actually interview somebody like the Deputy Attorney General who supposedly had threatened to quit.
And he says, no, I never threatened to quit.
Or we talk about, well, Comey was fired, but he was asking for more money for the investigation.
No, that didn't happen either.
It just is no end to any of this, but it's a cycle.
Understand, this is the cycle.
But now Democrats have realized they went full on hardcore press this whole week and last week.
They got nothing.
Now they say, well, let's back off the impeachment talk because you know what?
I think this might begin to backfire.
That's where we are.
Former U.S. Attorney Matthew Whitaker is with us.
He's the executive director of the Foundation for Accountability and Civic Trust, former U.S. Attorney from 2004 to 9.
And what about this memo?
What about what you just heard from James Comey?
It would be a big deal, a really big deal if somebody tried to get me to stop an investigation.
And then the big memo comes out, but what he said happened after the meeting with Trump.
Well, and this is the thing, Sean.
I mean, it is so frustrating for someone like myself that served in the Department of Justice that knows how that organization runs and to have everyone else wildly speculating as to the contents of a memo that no one's seen, the sort of duties that FBI Director Comey had, that if he thought he was being interfered with by the president, what he would have done, we don't have any reporting that he did do that.
So, I mean, it's just, you know, it doesn't prevent the people that hold themselves out as experts as to, you know, making up news and, like you said, creating fake news and making accusations.
But, you know, right now, I don't see anything in my experience that would suggest that the president or anyone has done anything wrong as it relates to the investigation that the now special counsel Bob Mueller is conducting.
Well, nobody ever stopped the investigation.
The investigation was not defunded or not funded at the level that the FBI said they wanted or needed.
There's still no proof whatsoever of collusion of any kind or even contact, but yet the conspiracy theories continue.
And again, the double standard is so transparent.
It seems to me that there's a pattern that's emerged, though.
You literally have the news media, and it's a cycle here.
What they'll do is they'll drop an anonymous source or people outside the White House or unnamed sources.
They'll drop a late afternoon bombshell so all the cable channels go insane.
They'll have breathless reporting that goes on and on and on after the late day drop.
And then after that, then we find out, oh, you mean the Deputy Attorney General didn't threaten to fire, but that was a big lead story in the Washington Post.
And Comey didn't ask for extra money because they have sufficient funding.
I mean, I'm not sure how justice could be carried out for anybody under these circumstances.
Yeah, the only good news is that while these stories keep coming up and then are defunct, what you actually have is the professionals within the FBI and the Department of Justice that are career folks with a lot of experience are doing their jobs.
And, you know, the alleged Russian interference in the election and whatever that's been characterized as now, I haven't seen any reports of actual evidence that anything happened.
Diane Feinstein said it last night.
I mean, she said there's no evidence.
With all the noise and all the hysteria that has gone on, there's no evidence at all.
And you see what's playing out in terms of the national news media here.
Let me ask you this.
If James Comey had this meeting with the president, which is in January, and then in May he's saying it would be a big deal if anyone tried to get me to stop an investigation.
Well, if in fact his notes that he made to himself were accurate and he thought the president was trying to influence him, isn't there, aren't there two codes, 18 U.S. Code 4 to 28 U.S. Code 1361 that would compel him legally that he would have had to go to the Justice Department?
Yes, and he would be subject to criminal penalties himself if he didn't report that obstruction.
And we should take it for, I guess, let's assume that this memo exists, and let's assume that the president asked him to stop investigating Flint.
That doesn't rise to the level of obstruction of justice, and it doesn't sound to me, based on what's been reported, that Jim Comey, as he sat there, believed that the president was telling him to stop the investigation.
As you know, in the law and in these types of situations, the words and whatever the president did or didn't say is going to be very important.
And if all he did was make a mere suggestion and not an outright command, I don't think that rises to the level of the-couldn't it have been the same thing as what he said about Hillary?
And this, oh, I don't want to cause these people any more pain.
I don't want to do this.
I have no intention of doing that.
Remember, he said that?
I do remember that.
Was he obstructing justice then based on the standard that Comey is saying in the memo and the way the media is suggesting it?
I don't think it's I don't think that's the case at all.
And I and I and I unless this memo has been produced, which I haven't seen a copy of it, but all I've seen is the New York Times report of what it may or may not contain.
But the president denies that that conversation even happened in the first place.
So until we know all the facts, to suggest that there's obstruction in justice here, I think is taking a reckless step that I think some folks and some media commentators are going to really regret ultimately.
All right.
Let me ask you about Hillary Clinton.
You heard James Comey on the 5th of July last year.
We know what the laws are regarding the handling of classified documents and what gross negligence happens to be.
And that's the legal standard.
And Comey used the term extreme recklessness.
Is there any difference between gross negligence and extreme recklessness?
No, and at the time I wrote an op-ed in the USA Today that suggested I would have prosecuted that case, and I'm a reasonable prosecutor.
I think the evidence was there.
I think there was actually, you could point to several facts that show that she had specific intent to do this.
And one of those would be setting up a private email server in the first place.
In other words, that was designed to circumvent congressional oversight.
Yeah, and especially FOIA laws, which, I mean, we saw the communications between her and Cheryl Mills and others about, you know, a lack of desire to have people poking around in their private correspondence.
Top secret classified documents, special access program documents on a computer server in a mom-and-pop shop bathroom closet.
Does that reach a standard of gross negligence, erasing nearly 33,000 emails, some top secret?
Isn't that a violation of the law?
Aren't these felonies?
I think they absolutely are.
And I think that, you know, the fact that Cheryl, Cheryl Mills, I'm sorry, but the fact that the Attorney General Loretta Lynch at the time, you know, acted in the way she did when the decision was going to be made and sort of burned herself with her tarmac meeting with Bill Clinton and then put it all on the FBI.
Do you have any doubt that Hillary Clinton committed felonies?
No, not based on the evidence we know and what we've seen, there is no doubt that she violated the missing and mishandled classified information.
And that would be a felony.
Absolutely.
And James Comey made a decision.
Does that fit within the realm of prosecutorial discretion or does it seem political to you?
Well, it wasn't Jim's decision to make, and that's been one of my criticisms.
You know, Rod Rosenstein served as a U.S. attorney when I was U.S. Attorney in Des Moines.
He was U.S. Attorney in Maryland.
Right, but he made the decision and he circumvented the role of the attorney general.
Even if she needed to recuse herself, we have methods to do that, not for him to just take over and say, I'm in charge.
Exactly.
And that was one of the bases that Rod pointed out as to why Jim should have been let go because he did not follow the standards, traditions, protocols of not only making those prosecutorial decisions that weren't his to make, but also to then go out and talk about it so publicly about a denial of where they decided not to prosecute someone.
All right, stay right there.
We'll continue more with former U.S. Attorney Matthew Whitaker.
It's our news roundup information overload.
We have our Friday Florida, Georgia Line concert series.
Yes, We Need a Smile on Our Face.
Then we'll get to your calls.
Final half hour, 800-941 Sean as we continue on this Friday.
Hannity Headline, a bite-sized version of the show that you can take with you anywhere you go.
To sign up today for Hannity Headlines, go to Hannity.com.
And as we continue with former U.S. Attorney Matthew Whitaker, and again, he spent years as a former U.S. Attorney, 2004 to 2009.
And what do you know of Robert Mueller?
And do you think the special counsel is a good idea?
Yeah, he was the FBI director when I was U.S. Attorney and interacted with him on a handful of times, saw him speak, heard.
I have a lot of respect for him.
I think he's a, you know, both sides appear to be very impressed with him and should be.
He's a former U.S. Attorney in San Francisco and then FBI director.
And I think he'll do a good job.
I'm a little disappointed.
As you know, there have been many of us that called during the Obama administration for special prosecutors in the Hillary Clinton email situation and other instances where the Obama Department of Justice didn't appoint any special prosecutors.
And then the Trump administration now appoints a special prosecutor to look at this alleged interference by Russian nationals and collusion with the Trump campaign, which, again, there's been no evidence of that.
Wouldn't we know by now, considering all the smoke that is out there?
I mean, you know enough about the deep state.
You know enough about our intelligence community.
You know enough about the methods that law enforcement have at their avail, the tools at their available.
Wouldn't we know by now if there was any there there?
Oh, yeah, and this investigation has been going on for six months already.
There is probably a pretty clear picture as to what was or most likely wasn't happening.
You know, clearly Flynn had some issues or at least an issue with what he did or didn't disclose.
But I just, you know, this idea that there was some collusion with Russian nationals and even Putin to interfere and did interfere with the election, I think is just ludicrous based on what we know at this point.
Well, I think you're right on a lot of these things.
Why, if everybody's so concerned about collusion, two stories that stand out in my mind.
One is the president, then President Obama, tried to influence the Israeli elections and defeat a sitting prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu.
He even used taxpayer dollars to do it.
You know, if that was such a big deal, why didn't anybody think about that?
Well, right.
I mean, this is the, you know, there is no doubt that both campaigns were talking to other countries.
You would want to be well-versed on issues all around the globe.
And so I think it's funny that somehow this story has been created and regurgitated about the Trump campaign in Russia.
But we're not talking about Hillary Clinton's campaign and all the foreign nationals that they were talking to because both campaigns wanted to be up to speed on geopolitical issues.
One last question, and I want to ask it about the real Russia scandal.
Have you followed the Uranium One deal?
Hillary, Secretary of State, signs off on a waiver that allows 20% of America's uranium to get in the hands of Vladimir Putin and the people surrounding that deal in Canada and elsewhere.
All of a sudden, millions and millions flowing into the Clinton Foundation.
Bill Clinton doubles his speaking rate and speaks in Moscow.
Does that sound like a pay-to-play scheme to you or quid pro quo to you?
And why haven't we investigated that?
Well, it does.
And at the time that that news broke over a year ago now, and the Foundation for Accountability and Civic Trust, which I run in Washington, D.C., we spoke out and we called for.
That's another area where we should have had a special prosecutor because it really smelled bad as to the State Department approval and then the subsequent Clinton Foundation donations.
And it's something that's still out there, and I hope eventually this Department of Justice can look into it.
I appreciate your time.
Matthew Whitaker, 800-941-Sean, toll for your telephone number.
When we come back, yeah, it's Friday.
It's been a tough week, and we've got our Friday Florida, Georgia Line concert series, and your calls coming up next.
We have a very important Hannity monologue you don't want to miss because we put it all together.
The entire cycle that they're trying to emotionally drag the country through between the media, the deep state, and much more.
10 Eastern on Fox.
Quick break, right back.
Your calls.
800-941-Sean.
You want to be a part of this extravaganza.
All right, let's go to Ben is in Colorado.
Ben, happy Friday.
Glad you called.
You're on the Sean Hannity show.
Hey, Sean.
First of all, I'd just like to say thank you so much.
If it wasn't for you, I don't know where we'd be.
I think when this story's all written, you are going to be the key in a lot of ways to turning this thing around.
And I ask you to please, I know you got things in place, but be safe.
You got shot in the back.
Nobody knows what we're going to do.
You know how many people are saying that to me?
I got a call from a friend of mine telling you, well, you know they're going to be, you know, they're investigating you.
I know that you know that you're in trouble.
Listen, here's a little secret and truth that I'll never get credit for in my career, but everybody on my team here who works so hard for me every day, they know because they're a part of it.
You know, when we were investigating Obama hard in 07 and 08, I mean, we were out there by an island unto ourselves, right?
Linda, tell me where I'm mistaken here.
And warned by friends and foes alike that this is the end.
Remember that?
Many, many times.
All right.
All right.
So it didn't stop us.
We didn't think of the consequences.
We just kept pursuing it.
We pursued to tell the American people the truth heading into this election.
And we did more vetting.
We did more analysis.
We gave you who Donald Trump was, I think, in a way that was fair.
And we fulfilled our campaign promise to give an equal shot to all the other candidates.
And that the American people decided.
But, you know, there were people, we didn't think about the consequences of Donald Trump won or lost.
We just went in for what we thought was right and what a disaster Hillary would be and how bad the last eight years was that nobody else was reporting.
You know, it's the same thing here.
I mean, we're taking on the deep state.
We're taking on a hostile media that would love nothing more than to say Hannity's gone, Hannity's fired, Hannity's boycotted, Hannity's in trouble, but it doesn't stop us like it never has before.
Or, you know, the idea that we're asking really hard, tough questions that, you know, they should be asking, the Democratic Party should be asking about Seth Rich and about why he was murdered and why they keep telling us it's a robbery when nothing was robbed.
And, you know, why did Julian Assange say what he said in Dutch TV?
And, you know, we're not stopping asking the questions.
And we're doing our job.
The other thing I really love the new fake news monologue deal because one of the things that it proves that you've been saying for a long time is that journalism is dead.
And it's so obvious.
These people don't have an original thought.
Somebody says something.
And the rest of them, like you, you know, the monologue shows it perfectly.
They just parrot each other.
Well, look, it's sort of like groupthink, and it's something that I've seen a lot in my career.
And I, you know, I like being my own person.
You know, a lot of people say, Hannah, you're no journalist.
I'm not a journalist in the traditional sense.
No, but a talk show host comes under many umbrellas.
We do news information.
We make calls.
We do investigation.
We're journalists.
We also have a point of view.
We're the opinion page of a newspaper.
We're also, you know, one day I may do a straight interview of somebody.
Another day I may debate somebody.
Another day I'm giving my commentary.
Another day I'm interviewing a straight interview of a presidential candidate like a journalist and asking all the questions they would ask and probably better ones than they could think of.
So being a talk show host is sort of all-encompassing.
It's under all that umbrella.
So yeah, we're journalists.
And by the way, just to tell law enforcement and everybody else, we're protected as a journalist too.
Advocacy journalists is a journalist.
So anyway, listen, I appreciate.
I'm not going anywhere.
I mean, look, look, if people are going to stop me, they're going to have to rip this microphone out of my hand.
I'll go kicking and screaming.
And you could probably find me driving around somewhere.
Maybe we'll get a central location and we'll do the talk show in person.
Maybe I'll get two, you know, a bottle of wine and two Dixie cups.
That's what we'll do.
800-941-Sean, if you want to be a part of the program.
But, you know, let me give you our fake news montage that we played earlier.
From NBC News World Headquarters in New York, this is NBC Nightly News with Lester Holt.
This is the CBS evening news with Scott Pelly.
From ABC News World Headquarters.
This is ABC World News Tonight with David Muir.
This is Meet the Press with Chuck Todd.
Today on Face the Nation.
From ABC News, it's this week.
Hear now, chief anchor George Stephanopoulos.
All right, you guys getting the pointer.
Fake news.
And that's it.
The breathless reporting.
And it's a cycle now.
But Democrats are afraid because they're sensing, as we do, there's a potential backlash here.
All right, Richard is in Montreal in Canada.
Richard, how are you?
Glad you called.
Welcome to the Sean Hannity Show.
Hi, Sean.
You're doing a great job.
I like to talk about Philip Haney.
I'm just wondering why President Trump won't hold a joint press conference with Mr. Haine to get his story out because CNN and NBC and the Democrats are terrified that his story will get out there because if his story gets out there, the credibility of those news organizations are finished.
Do you agree with that?
Yes, I do agree.
Listen, I think Philip Haney is a national treasure, a great guy.
We're still in touch with him.
He's a founding member of the DHS.
Remember, he wrote the book, See Something, Say Nothing.
He's also a guy that we love on this program, and he's also the guy that was ordered by Obama to literally scrap from the beginning of the DHS all of the intelligence that they had gathered over the years leading up to 2008.
It's a disgrace what they did.
And apparently, he's told me that Congress still has copies of all the hard work that they did.
In other words, he always talks about connecting the dots and that he, had he been at the Department of Homeland Security, he believes he could have connected the dots before San Bernardino.
Is President Trump aware of his story, of his reports?
I know more than I really want to tell.
Is that fair?
And it's not that I'm being coy or smartass or I'm just not.
I just there are people now that I think are beginning to get it.
President Trump is going to talk about him?
I think there's a lot more going on.
I think, look, this president, you've got to remember, is very quick on his feet.
He's quick to adjust.
His trajectory from private life, entrepreneur, businessman, to politician, there's a lot of rough patches in there, but the growth trajectory was unlike any I've seen.
And I'm predicting it's going to be the same as being president.
He's going to stumble.
He's going to hit a few roadblocks.
He's got a few learning curves there.
But at the end of the day, he's going to get it.
And I think we're on the road to getting it, both on the economy and on national security issues and on an enemy that at least he has the courage to identify, which is radical Islamic terrorists.
Anyway, Richard, thank you.
You have a great weekend.
God bless you.
I appreciate the call.
800-94-1 Sean is a toll-free telephone number.
You want to be a part of the program.
All right, Hannity, tonight, 10 Eastern on the Fox News Channel.
All right, tonight we expose not only the five big groups that want to take the president down, but we're telling you how they're doing it.
There's now an orchestrated, repetitious cycle that they're using.
We're going to lay it out so this way when you see it happening next week and the week after and the week after that, you'll understand what it is.
We've got full coverage of all of this.
Just set your DVR and we'll have the best coverage.
