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The president will never get credit for what's happening with North Korea and the pressure that now is going to be brought to bear on them.
We'll get to that today.
I want to talk about a system of justice and institutions in this country that I no longer have any faith in.
We will look at the Alabama Senate race, which is really becoming a showdown between the establishment and those that are sick and tired of the establishment in terms of the Republican Party.
We'll update you also on Graham Cassidy.
And no, I'm still not decided.
I want to see, I want to read the bill.
I told you what concerns me about the bill is very clear, very obvious.
Instinctively, look, you gotta, I've gotta backtrack and predicate everything I'm gonna say on this fact.
The fact is, it's not what I want.
And I want everybody to hear me.
Some of you did not understand me, apparently, yesterday.
And there are certain things in political life that you have to accept as a truth.
And this is a simple truth.
There are those in the Republican Party that have betrayed those of us that are conservative.
Now, rather than beat a dead horse, because I have been hammering this now for a long time about how the Republican Party is not a party anymore with identity, with vision.
I mean, in an ideal world, about 100 Republicans in the House that we learned never really had any intention of repealing and replacing Obamacare, in the best case scenario, that condition wouldn't exist.
The seven senators that voted to repeal in 2015 that didn't exist in 2017 because it mattered, I wish that wasn't the reality either.
There are people that ran for office and made promises and pledges that it's clear they had no intention of ever keeping.
So we have a choice.
We could just dig in and say, okay, fine, we're done.
Or you look for the next best answer possible.
The other thing, I wish Mitch McConnell would get rid of cloture in the supermajority.
Make it a simple majority vote.
And the only reason is there's not a single Democrat in Washington that wants President Trump to succeed.
And there are a lot of Republicans that don't want him to succeed.
I keep telling you about five groups: the deep state and the media and weak Republicans and the Democrats and never Trumpers.
They don't want President Trump to succeed.
And then you can say, well, my health care is fine.
I don't give a rip about any of this.
What do I care?
And okay, I can look at every one of my staff here.
You guys are pretty happy overall with your plan, right?
You all like your plan.
You're all happy with your plan.
When you had your baby, you told me they took great care, and et cetera, et cetera.
All right.
So, same with my TV staff.
I have a good plan.
I don't know what it is, but I have some plan out there somewhere.
I don't know what it is.
And the best case scenario is that you never access the health care system.
And that's a separate story.
But, you know, what's missing in all of this for me are things that I think an opportunity here where Republicans could have been innovative.
They could have created new paradigms.
We have been talking on this show for years about Wichita, Kansas, and a guy by the name of Dr. Josh Umber, an Atlas MD, and a healthcare cooperative, and 50 bucks a month, unlimited care, 24-7 access to your doctor, and you get your prescriptions 95% off.
You walk out of the doctor's office with your prescription, and they take care of everything.
And then you couple it with a catastrophic plan that is only designed with a low premium to pay if, God forbid, you get cancer, have a heart attack, or have a bad accident, which is the perfect plan for young people.
So, what this plan is going to do is the Graham Cassidy bill, at least states will be responsible for the monies we're appropriating for health care.
And I'm pretty confident states that are run by Republican governors are going to turn over every nickel and they're going to be innovative.
We always talk about states being the home of innovation and creativity and new ideas and new paradigms, but they're going to be responsible to the citizens of their states.
And that means, you know, when you couple this with what the president is going to do next week, I'm told he'll sign an executive order.
The executive order will allow cooperatives like Josh Umbers to be emerging around the country, and then hopefully you can get the catastrophic care.
By the way, catastrophic care is illegal under Obamacare because that whole plan was designed that young and healthy people that they buy plans they never need and never would access, and they were forced to, and then they would be funding the sick and the elderly and the uninsured and the disabled.
And it becomes one big Ponzi scheme where they're buying insurance that they, well, now catastrophic plans will be available for young people.
And it's ideal for a young person.
You get one checkup a year, and God forbid, God forbid, happens, you're covered.
That's what insurance is supposed to do.
So it's not that, oh, I stubbed my toe.
Let me go to my doctor, pay my $10 copay, complain about the $10, and walk out with a band-aid on your foot.
And some people go to the doctor that way.
Not most people, most of us won't avoid doctors at all costs, even though they're wonderful people that save lives.
So we missed that opportunity, but I like the idea.
Now, I'm not supporting it.
We had Rand Paul.
Rand Paul's right.
This is not pure federalism.
It does do certain things.
It defunds Planned Parenthood in the bill.
It gets rid of the individual mandate.
It gets rid of the employer mandate.
It allows the purchase of catastrophic plans.
It allows the states to then determine how they best will use their health care federal dollars, which means it's not pure federalism.
And it certainly is a much better solution than what we have today, which is Obamacare.
All right.
Now, the devil is going to be in the details.
And the details are this.
When Jerry Brown in California or the lieutenant governor of California, Gavin Newsom, becomes governor and they go hard left Bernie Obama Hillary care and they bankrupt the state and they misappropriate the funds and they can't possibly sustain whatever it is that they build.
Well, they're going to come hat in hand and they're going to be begging all the states that do manage their money to bail them out.
And the same thing will probably happen in New York and New Joise and it'll probably happen in Illinois.
And unless there's some type of restriction that they can't come back hat in hand and they got to fund the rest of it, and they got to be responsible for their bad decisions, I'm not on board with this.
So now you're saying to yourself, Hannity, you're only asking for half a loaf here.
That's only, that's not what we signed up for.
No, we should have been talking about creative co-ops, healthcare savings accounts, and solutions.
Republicans should have been ready on January 21st with the bill.
What can I tell you?
They now have the most, the single defining 13 weeks of the Republican Party's history here hanging in the balance.
They've squandered all of this time, but there's still an opportunity to do a lot of good things.
Now, is John McCain going to vote for the bill?
I got to assume that Lindsey Graham is going to exert a lot of pressure on John McCain.
Does John McCain care that last year in Arizona they saw 116% premium increase?
Well, I've got to imagine that John McCain is aware of that.
So we're going to wait and see.
I want to see what the bill is.
Apparently, they're going to have a hearing and they're going to try and move towards regular order.
The clock is ticking because you have the September 30th deadline as it relates to the reconciliation only needing 50 votes.
And beyond that, then they're going to need cloture and 60 votes.
It's going to be a pain in the neck because Mitch McConnell is so stubborn and foolish that all the 265 bills that Ryan and the House passed, you know, good bills like Kate Steinley's bill and Sanctuary Cities, he hasn't even begun to touch them, nor is he even staffing the federal government.
He's so inefficient because literally Chuck Schumer rolls Mitch McConnell every day.
And for Mitch McConnell to allow Chuck Schumer to roll him every day is it says it speaks volumes about how stupid Republicans can be at times.
All right, I want to hit something else here, and it's one of our other top stories today.
And the president's never going to get credit for this.
Now, everybody in the media had a collective meltdown over Rocketman and the president using that term.
And the president and the defense secretary and others saying, look, you keep firing missiles over Japan, our ally.
You keep threatening Guam, U.S. territory.
You keep threatening to use ICBMs and build them and put nuclear weapons on them.
And you have the ability maybe in a year to reach New York City and Boston.
Then the United States, we're not going to wait till you put that missile with the nuclear weapon on a launch pad.
And so we've been trying through various means to pressure the North Koreans and Kim Jong-un to stand down.
And Rocketman seems hell-bent on not wanting to be a part of the world community.
Hang on.
Hands up.
Cell phones on.
I think it's the funniest thing I've ever seen at the U.N.
I thought that was pretty funny.
Anyway, so my point is Is that when President Trump says there's going to be action, we don't have a lot of good options unless the president's talking about something kinetic, somewhat similar to an electromagnetic pulse that would basically shut down North Korea and not impact South Korea.
That's going to be the challenge of all of that and what Kim Jong-un's crazy response is going to be.
But the president rightly has said, well, this is the Chinese bigger problem.
It's not America's bigger problem.
Well, the president, because he's now getting along with the Chinese president, China finally reacted, and now they have joined us in ratcheting up pressure and seeing the threat of Kim Jong-un and Pyongyang and also something that will have a major impact on their ability to finance their weapons program, considering they've been starving their people for two decades.
And anyway, North Korea learned just this week that Chinese banks are no longer going to do business with Pyongyang, with North Korea.
Strongest sign yet that the pressure the Trump administration is using to choke off funding to the rogue nation is working.
Now, by the way, for those of you that think Trump is trigger happy, he's not trigger happy.
There's no good, if we have to incinerate North Korea, it's not a great option.
Thank you, Bill Clinton.
Gundale for the American people.
No, it wasn't a good deal.
And we're going to be discussing this at some point in the future about the idiotic Iranian deal and $150 billion, trying to bribe the mullahs in Iran, just like Bill Clinton tried to bribe the dictator Kim Jong-il, Kim Jong-un's father.
It didn't work.
It's never going to work.
But anyway, the Chinese now have jumped on board, which is a really, really good sign.
And the president's being exceptionally clear.
He signed an executive order that punishes individuals, companies, banks that do business with North Korea.
And he thanked the Chinese for stopping their banks from doing business with North Korea.
And the executive order sanctions foreign banks that do trade with North Korea.
And he wants other countries to do the same.
Now, that's called leadership.
But just in case, there's an Air Force strike command awaiting orders on North Korea.
And I was in the Chicago Tribune today.
And I quote, General Robin Rand, commander of the Air Forces, Global Strike Command, saying, We're ready to fight tonight.
We don't have to spin up.
We're ready.
Now, that's not the best situation at all in any way, shape, matter, or form.
And by the way, there was a better piece in the Daily Caller about a North Korean defector describing brutal executions and suffering of the people in North Korea under Kim Jong-un.
I thought liberals cared, had human compassion.
They're more angry at the term rocket man than they are over Kim Jong-un firing real missiles over Japan repeatedly and threatening the world repeatedly and getting nuclear weapons and doing nuclear tests repeatedly.
That's how messed up and what Trump derangement syndrome actually looks like.
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I got probably the most entertaining story I could ever tell on air.
I'm forbidden from ever discussing it, apparently.
You can discuss it.
No, no, I've got too many serious issues to talk about here.
What do you want to talk about, North Korea or your interesting story?
My interesting story.
Now, we have Louis Gomer coming up.
We have Newt Gingrich coming up today, Jonathan Gillum, Rick Unger.
We're going to play a montage of a corrupt media.
I'm going to tell you something about how corrupt this media is.
And you need to understand, this is how bad it is.
We now live in an environment where it's very evident that an opposition party surveilled an opposing candidate during a presidential election.
It's very evident that we have weaponized the intelligence community, or it's been politicized and weaponized, the tools of intelligence.
We have really significant, why didn't the DNC allow the FBI to look at their computers?
Why, if Mueller is looking into the FBI, the whole Trump-Russia issue, why didn't he go to Julian Assange?
Then we got the question of Hillary Clinton's crimes.
Nobody's investigating it.
Then you got Comey, and Comey, of course, works leaks to get his buddy Robert Mueller appointed.
And then Robert Mueller gets appointed by the deputy A.G. Rosenstein.
Then Rosenstein gets interviewed by Mueller.
And then Mueller puts all these Democrats to investigate Donald Trump.
And now we see it's well beyond anything of Trump campaign Russia collusion.
And nobody investigates the deep state leaks.
Nobody investigates the unprecedented surveillance, the unmasking of Americans, the leaking of intelligence of Americans like General Flynn.
Nobody investigates.
Why would Samantha Powers ever need?
We learned yesterday, basically an unmasking request a day during a political campaign.
She's the UN ambassador.
And why is it the same thing?
Susan Rice unmasking Americans.
Why?
Ben Rhodes unmasking Americans?
What do we know about that?
What do we know about the Ukraine?
What do we know about Loretta Lynch?
You know, we basically have so many conflicts of interest in this case.
I just feel like the institutions that we ought to be able to trust, equal justice under the law, the Justice Department, the institution of the media being fair and balanced and offering some fair arbitration.
This is the most one-sided, backwards investigation that has ignored real crimes I have ever seen in my life.
And the American people now are being fed more garbage.
They are being betrayed by these institutions.
And I think I know where it's going.
We'll check in with Louis Gomert.
We'll check in with Newt Gingrich.
And we'll also look at the corrupt media that destroy Trump media as we continue.
All right, 25 till the top of the hour, 800-941-Sean, toll-free telephone number.
You want to be a part of the program.
Our friend Louis Gomer, congressman from the great state of Texas, is with us.
Hey, Louis, tell Connie here, and nobody will have a clue what this means except Connie, is that Linda had a Connie night last night.
And from what I hear, it was really bad.
Just saying.
Okay.
Well, I'll have to find out what that means from Connie.
But Connie knows.
It doesn't sound good.
It doesn't sound good to me either.
Be nice.
Stop being mean.
I'm not mean.
How are you doing?
Well, as far as I know, I'm doing well.
And right now, I'm in Montgomery, Alabama, come to help my friend Roy Moore.
You and I love Donald Trump, and I thank God he got elected.
But I know he reached out and thought, gee, his kindness and help to John McCain would be, you know, reciprocated.
And President Trump helped McCain get reelected.
And we've seen how that went.
McConnell did everything he could to get McCain reelected.
And I just know Roy Moore, I've known him for a lot of years.
And I know Donald Trump will not have a better supporter, not a better, stronger supporter in the Senate.
And I can't wait for Roy Moore to get to the Senate.
Well, I'm supporting Roy Moore as well.
I guess there's a relationship there that I had no idea about.
In other words, like, for example, I supported originally Mo Brooks, but I'd known Mo Brooks for 27 years.
I mean, Mo Brooks is like you.
He used to fill in for me when I was a local host in Alabama.
Well, actually, I met Roy Moore back when I was a judge myself and Chief Justice of the Court of Appeals.
And, you know, I just know he is going to be awesome.
He will help us get a wall done.
He will help us, you know, stopping illegal immigration.
He's, you know, gosh, the guy went to West Point.
He served in Vietnam.
I mean, he's just a man of his word.
And boy, do we need some more of those.
It's really incredible.
And I know that the president's supposed to come tomorrow and help the strange man.
Yeah.
Let me ask you this.
How do you feel about the Graham Cassidy bill?
I mean, I think it's something that, well, I mean, instinctively, I bet you're like me.
And, you know, the thought of sending something back to the states is appealing, but I don't have a bill to read, so I can't intelligently say.
Exactly, and that's what we're complaining about.
But it reminds me of the Department of Education.
Okay, you send your billions of dollars up here to Washington, and we'll take a huge cut out of it, and then we'll dole out to the states what's left for education.
I mean, that sounds like what this is.
And I just think about Lindsay, you know, was calling the Freedom Caucus back this summer when the Senate tried that vote that McCain, you know, couldn't even vote for a skinny repeal to keep his word.
But I've never heard of this being asked in my 12 and a half years in Congress, but McConnell was calling Ryan.
All these senators were calling House members saying, you guys have got to promise us that if we pass this bill in the Senate, that you will not take it up and pass it like it is, that you'll make sure it goes to conference and you change it up a bunch because it's a bad bill.
I've never heard of that question being asked.
I promise you won't pass what we pass.
And I sure hope that this isn't going to be taken up and voted as is.
I know Boehner used to play that game.
Oh, well, we've got to take it up just like the Senate sent it to us.
But no, we don't.
We can have it go to conference and we can make some changes to make it better.
But ultimately, we have got to get some help to the American people.
And it sounds like this is the best chance.
And, you know, I'd mention I've been asking Paul, Ryan, for a couple of weeks now, let's put the pressure on the Senate.
And he said, Louie, I'm doing everything I can from behind.
I said, let's get in front of the scenes.
Let's have the whole conference go out and stand on the steps and demand the Senate do something.
Let's rally people to Washington.
But it sounds like this is going to be the best chance to get something done.
I'm just hoping to guys don't just cave.
I talked to Mark Meadows and I talked to Dave Brad and I talked to a bunch of other people.
And Meadows is like me.
I mean, Meadows is basically saying, look, we didn't expect 100 Republicans to vote 60 times to repeal and replace and never mean it.
And we never expected seven senators to vote for repeal in 2015.
And then when it matters, vote against it.
So you kind of.
Yeah.
And the president, when I've talked to him, I think it was his biggest surprise in coming to Washington that that all of these Republicans in the House and Senate that promised to repeal weren't coming to Washington to do that.
It is pretty amazing.
Well, and it's disappointing.
So now we have this option.
Either do nothing and Obamacare remains the law of the land, or we can at least let the states.
My bet is that your governor, who I happen to be very fond of, Governor Abbott, he's such a good guy, and he did such a good job for the people of Texas during the hurricane.
The same with Governor Scott of Florida.
I mean, during very difficult circumstances.
And that's why it's not in the news.
No, it was in the news.
Milani actually put high heels on when she left the White House.
That was in the news.
But my thought is just very simple.
I mean, if it's going to go back to Texas, I have confidence that Greg Abbott will do a great job.
But I also have confidence that Jerry Brown is going to go single payer and Andrew Cuomo is going to go single payer.
No, no, no.
Yeah, and then they're going to come hat in hand after they screw it up.
We need more money.
Yep, yep, yep.
So should we get a provision?
We can't do that.
We've got to get a provision that says it's your money and we're not going to appropriate another penny and make it the law.
Yeah, but we've got to do something.
I mean, all over East Texas in Lufkin last night, I mean, people are hurt.
They have got to have us do something about Obamacare.
Are you?
They can't afford what they got.
They can't pay the deductible.
And they're just desperate.
We have really got to do something.
And hopefully we can improve on what the Senate has and get them to okay the approvals.
So you like the principle as I do.
You like the idea.
In other words, under the set of circumstances the hand were dealt, which is imperfect.
As a matter of fact, frustrating and annoyingly imperfect, and frankly, a betrayal by some.
But under these circumstances, if it's a choice of doing nothing or block ranning black to the states with certain protective provisions, you would be inclined to support it.
That's what I'm hearing.
Well, I think so, but I will not vote for a bill until it gets I can't pledge to vote for something.
I can't either.
You didn't read it.
It was actually filed.
I know.
I've heard you say that over and over again.
I said to Lindsey Graham this week, I said, send me the bill.
I want to read it.
Yeah, yeah.
And still they haven't filed it.
And I certainly have never forgotten about, I believe it was July 2014, when Boehner had an immigration bill to stop illegal immigration.
It had all these principles in it.
And I know I got up in conference on Tuesday before we were going to vote on Thursday, and I said, I cannot agree to vote for something I hadn't seen.
And I had about a third of the conference boo me for that.
But fortunately, some of those bigger, biggest booers aren't there anymore.
But no, we pledged in 2010.
You give us the majority.
We're not going to do what the Democrats did and vote for a bill to find out who's in it.
And we sure can't do that here.
We've got to see the bill.
Agreed.
We do.
All right.
Last question I have is about Luther Strange versus Roy Moore.
Roy Moore now has a 13-point lead.
And I know that there's people like you going in to help Roy Moore.
Governor Palin is going in.
Sebastian Gorka is going in.
I think the president and vice president will go in on behalf of Strange.
But I think the more that Mitch McConnell funnels money into Luther Strange's campaign, the more people say they don't want any part of Mitch McConnell.
That's my interpretation.
That's what I'm hoping.
But we saw what happened in Mississippi.
We've seen what happened in, well, in Kentucky when McConnell was running, when Beverman was running against him.
And nothing can be taken for granted because I think they've spent $12 million so far trying to get Strange across there.
And you know good and well that loyalty for that $12 million will not be to Donald Trump.
It will be to Mitch McConnell.
And I just know Roy.
I know that when he gets to Washington, and I'll never forget one of our conferences, one of our guys got up.
It was hotly contested.
One of the guys said to Boehner, you're our shepherd.
We're your sheep.
You tell us what to do.
Well, I know Roy Moore knows who the shepherd is, and it's the people from Alabama and his God.
So I really, he's going to represent Alabama and not Mitch McConnell.
And I think that'll be awesome.
But people can't take it for granted.
They've got to, you know, they're not in Alabama, find somebody in Alabama, call them and encourage them to help Roy.
All right.
Oh, and it's RoyMoore.org.
All right.
Louie Gomez.
RoyMoore.org.
Good friend.
One of the few people I like in Congress.
I don't like many of them anymore.
I'm sick of all of them.
And him and the Freedom Caucus.
You know what?
You can just count on them to just give us the best, soundest counsel about what is doable.
All right, 800-941, Sean, you want to be a part of the program as we check in with Heather is in Virginia.
Heather, hi, how are you?
Glad you called.
Welcome to the Sean Hannity Show.
Hi, thanks for having me on.
What's going on?
Hi.
I just wanted to make a comment about everybody's all up in arms about this health care bill.
I just want to open people's eyes.
If they really want to go to a single-payer system, all they need to do is look at this experiment called the VA.
And, you know, just look to that and how well that's doing and how well it's serving us in the military and taking care of us veterans.
You know, that's all they need to look to.
And there will be the answer.
It is not going to work.
Just like the VA isn't working for the veterans.
That's all I have to say.
Well, but Donald Trump has now fixed it for the veterans.
Donald Trump has now moved forward with a number of executive actions and a bill that actually has made it much better for veterans.
He is trying, but it's not.
Where I'm at, actually, the DC VA is it's still, look, like they say, you could put lipstick on a pig, all they're doing is putting lipstick on that big, huge pig.
It's still a pig.
Well, but if, but if, but if our veterans, as the president now has moved forward with, if our president, if our veterans now have the ability, if they're not getting the care they want to seek the care that they need and they deserve, and we promise them, it is so much infinitely better.
But I don't disagree with you.
I'm not talking about a lipstick on a pig.
I'm talking about any veteran that needs any help at any point, any time, whether it be for some type of stress-related issue or physical issue.
We made a solemn vow and promise to them.
And they've got to have access immediately, which is what the president has been pushing and moving forward on and has made improvements on.
And unless and until that always happens, you're right.
It's just lipstick on a pig.
I agree.
The whole premise of being able to go outside of the VA, but like I have tried before, and I've tried many times, but the problem is that being gender-specific issues, like remember, he's implementing it now.
I agree with you.
It's all listen, we keep going through the list, and I don't have time, obviously, now to do it, of all the promises the president kept.
I'll do it again, and I'll do my dings, and we'll lay the list out.
And frankly, it puts the whole Republican Party to shame.
And that was at the top of his list.
And just like the wall is at the top of his list.
And, you know, the president has a pen in hand and ready for Congress to repeal and replace.
That's also at the top of his list.
And unless and until we get all of these things done, as far as I'm concerned, Congress just remains an ineffective group of people with no identity and no agenda.
You know, it's hard.
I'm almost like in the position of having to argue that everything she's saying is right.
We have betrayed them.
Then unless and until every vet, be it PTSD, whatever they happen to have, or any physical injury, has full access to the health care system on demand, it's just not going to work.
Anyway, Heather, I'm glad you called 800-941 Sean.
You want to be a part of the program.
New Gingrich at the top of the hour.
Today I'm announcing a new executive order just signed that significantly expands our authorities to target individuals, companies, financial institutions that finance and facilitate trade with North Korea.
And I'm very proud to tell you that, as you may have just heard moments ago, China, their central bank, has told their other banks, that's a massive banking system, to immediately stop doing business with North Korea.
Our new order will give the Treasury Department the discretion to sanction any foreign bank that knowingly conducts or facilitates significant transactions tied to trade with North Korea.
And again, I want to just say and thank President Xi of China for the very bold move he made today.
That was a somewhat unexpected move, and we appreciate it.
New authority in this area applies to any activity that occurs following my signature on the executive order, which I have actually just signed.
Foreign banks will face a clear choice, do business with the United States or facilitate trade with the lawless regime in North Korea, and they won't have so much trade.
This new order provides us with powerful new tools, but I want to be clear, the order targets only one country, and that country is North Korea.
The regime can no longer count on others to facilitate its trade and banking activities.
Many countries are working with us to increase economic and diplomatic pressure on North Korea, but I continue to call on all those responsible nations to enforce and implement UN sanctions and impose their own measures like the ones I am announcing today.
That was the president and him speaking earlier today, signing an executive order punishing any individuals, companies, banks that do business with North Korea, thanking the Chinese for stopping their banks for doing business with North Korea, and an executive order for sanctions on foreign banks that do trade with North Korea, and he wants other countries to do the same.
Now, this probably is the next greatest step in this ongoing conflict that potentially could end very, very poorly for the entire world because there's not a whole lot of good options.
Former Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich is with us.
How are you, sir?
I'm doing well, and I agree with you.
The symbolism of the president meeting both with the Prime Minister of Japan and with the President of South Korea and then meeting with them together is part of the day in which they were announcing these new, much tougher sanctions.
And the strong endorsement of President Trump's United Nations speech from the President of South Korea, I thought, was very, very encouraging and signs that the alliances are coming together to really confront Kim Jong-un in a positive way.
I also want to mention for the audience, by the way, that the President's meeting with the President of Afghanistan, the President of Afghanistan was very clear and said the Trump decisions have totally changed the attitude and the tone of what's going on in Afghanistan, and that he has, to a remarkable degree, offered them hope for a successful strategy.
It was really quite a strong endorsement.
All right, let me go to what we have discussed in the past, and I agree with you.
If this guy keeps firing missiles at Japan or over Japan and threatening Guam and threatening the United States, he has nukes.
He's building ICBM capability.
You know, you have rightly said that probably the first and most logical military step would be taking any missile right out from the launch pad, or if they fire it, to take it out of the air, which we have the capability of.
And then you did suggest, well, really, General Mattis suggested there might be another option that nobody's talking about because I have been somewhat concerned, thinking there's not a whole lot of good options.
You're saying there may be better options.
Well, I think, first of all, I really strongly support, and ever since 2007, have been actively advocating that we have a kill-on-launch strategy.
And we say, if you don't let us inspect these, we distrust you so deeply that we are not going to allow you to fire a weapon that could potentially take out an American city.
And I think that we have the capacity to kill these on launch, and I think we should exercise that capacity.
And then it's up to the North Koreans.
I mean, do they react by starting a war?
In which case, as General Mattis and the President have both said, they'll be annihilated.
I mean, I think this is not a game.
People need to understand we're dealing with a very tough dictatorship, which has allowed hundreds of thousands of people to starve to death over the last two decades while it focused its resources on building nuclear weapons and ballistic missiles.
And we have to take the steps necessary to get their attention.
Something like that, I think, would dramatically change the equation.
I also believe that General Mattis has implied, and I'm inclined as an American who's an optimist about how we defend our country.
He has implied that there are steps we can take that he's not going to talk about that would enable us to decisively strip Kim Jong-un of his ability to threaten us.
And I would not be at all surprised, since lots of smart people and lots of money have been spent for a long time on this problem, if we don't have some very, very secret weapons that will, in fact, disrupt their capacity for command and control.
Yeah, agreed.
So he mentioned, he was asked, would this be a kinetic option?
And without revealing anything that hasn't been revealed publicly, it's similar to perhaps what we read about that would be debilitating to the United States if a nuclear weapon, for example, just exploded above the continental U.S. in terms of electromagnetic pulse where everything would be shut down.
That's a possibility.
Another possibility is the kind of cyber attack that would make it impossible for their command and control to work.
I mean, you know, imagine you're Kim Jong-un, you wake up and the phone doesn't work.
So you can't call your leadership and say, I want you to attack the U.S.
I mean, there are a number of these kind of possibilities, and we have been working very hard to develop these kind of assets.
Yeah.
All right.
I want to move on to another issue.
I'm watching very closely.
We have been far more critical than even some people at the White House as it relates to the conflict of interest of Robert Mueller.
And now we see that Mueller actually interviewed the person that appointed him, the Deputy Attorney General Rosenstein.
And then, of course, it was his best friend, James Comey, who leaked to the New York Times, which led to the appointment of a special counsel, which is what Comey wanted from the very beginning.
And then we've got all of these issues.
Now we're finding out, as it relates to surveillance, unmasking and leaking intelligence, that Samantha Powers basically was unmasking a person a day.
She's the U.N. ambassador.
Why would she ever need to unmask anybody?
And then Ben Rhodes, and then Susan Rice, and then Loretta Lynch.
And I'm watching all of these issues.
Nobody's investigating, it seems, Comey.
Nobody's investigating the conflicts of Mueller.
Nobody's looking at the laws that were broken by Hillary, which are numerous.
Nobody in the media seems to care about 20% of uranium given to Vladimir Putin in Russia and $145 million kicked back to the Clinton Foundation, which seems like a quid pro quo in my world.
Nobody seems ⁇ in other words, I'm looking at ⁇ I'm basically looking at no equal justice under the law.
I have no faith in institutions any longer, especially media, journalism, if you will.
Americans are being fed garbage every day.
It seems all ideological.
And only one side is being investigated when multiple crimes and felonies are committed by all these other people.
Now, I just have a sense of outrage and indignation about it all because I'm pretty convinced that Mueller's got his sights on Paul Manafort in an indictment and maybe General Flynn in an indictment.
And the only reason Flynn is involved in this is because of unmasking and leaking intelligence.
I'm thinking this is the biggest, most corrupt moment in government I've ever seen.
Well, I think there's a lot to that.
I think people should be very worried.
I was very struck recently.
I was reading Tom Rick's book on Churchill and Orwell and the way in which both of them were against totalitarian regimes and how Orwell went from somebody who had been sympathetic to the communists to realizing that the communists were in fact as dangerous as the Nazis and that he wrote 1984 as a warning against totalitarian big government.
And I think there's every reason to believe I'm really surprised that the Congress has not opened up very deep authoritative hearings on what happened because every point you made is worthy of a congressional hearing.
Why would the Ambassador of the United Nations be unmasking people?
What was her reasoning?
What's her defense?
I mean, she should be brought in front of some committees and asked to justify why she was putting American citizens at risk and asking that they be identified.
I think this I've had a number of friends in the last 24 hours write me and say, this is the most frightening example of an authoritarian state beginning to emerge in which the intelligence community and the Justice Department were apparently both politicized by the Obama administration to such a point that they were willing to violate the rights of individual Americans for political purposes.
And I think that's exactly what you're looking at.
We saw it with the IRS where we have clear evidence that's what happened.
I think we're now seeing it was happening at the CIA, which if you think about it, is really scary.
What I'm seeing is it's very evident now that an opposition party was surveilled during a political campaign.
And what we're also seeing very clearly is that the powerful weapons of intelligence have been used for political purposes, nefarious purposes, and in an unconstitutional way because it totally eliminates all constitutional Fourth Amendment protections that we have.
No, that's exactly right.
And if you have both the FBI and Justice Department being corrupted and you have parts of the intelligence community being corrupted, you really are, these are places where you put enormous power to protect the country and to protect the innocent.
And if all of a sudden they start being politically corrupted, you really have an enormous challenge in terms of freedom and the rights of your citizens.
Stay right there.
We'll continue.
Newt Gingrich is with us.
By the way, he is teaching an online course about national security.
It's called Defending America.
And he's got it up on his website, defendingamericacourse.com, which if you want to take a look at it, it is extremely enlightening.
All right, as we continue, Newt Gingrich is with us.
He's got a brand new course, by the way, that you can subscribe to.
It's at defendingamericacourse.com.
And of course, Newt's book, Understanding Trump, has been on the New York Times best-seller list for like three months and running.
Congratulations on that.
Let me ask about the Republican Party and the Cassidy Graham bill.
I had Graham on yesterday, the day before I had Rand Paul on.
Rand Paul is dead set against it.
You know, to me, I want to see the devil being in the details.
Instinctively, I like the idea of sending states the money and block granting things as a means of circumventing the waste, fraud, and abuse out of Washington.
But I want to see the details.
Your thoughts.
Well, I think, first of all, looking at the details, when you're changing one-fifth of the American economy and life and death is totally legitimate, I think they are going to have a hearing early next week.
But this may also be the best opportunity and the last opportunity in this round to profoundly change what has been a totally failed experiment with Obamacare.
And you go around the country, you look at the pain that's being caused, you look at the cost to the patient, the cost to people buying insurance, the cost to doctors and hospitals.
Obamacare is an absolute disaster.
And in most states, it has turned out to be very expensive, to not work, and to offer people fewer and fewer and fewer choices.
The number of counties that have either no insurance company or only one insurance company is really very sobering.
And I think in that sense that Graham and Cassidy are to be commended.
And Rick Santorum, who was a former senator, apparently played a key role in thinking this through and putting it together.
And I think that they've done the country a real service.
You know, instinctively, I like it because my attitude on it is assuming that states like California, New York, and Illinois that probably will go single-payered, don't come back hat in hand three years later because they're bankrupt and all the states that manage their money better.
You know, the idea that governors and local officials are going to be the ones that have to respond to the citizens in their states is appealing to me.
I also think right off the top, you probably get an additional 50 cents out of every dollar.
But I do think other states are going to blow it.
They're going to mismanage it, misappropriate it, and they're going to come back hat in hand.
How important would it be to have a provision in there that says they can't?
They get their.
Look, I think it's very important to establish, and this is part of what Rand Paul has been trying to say: it's very important to establish real federalism, which is, yes, you get the freedom to experiment, but guess what?
You own the experiment.
You can't experiment and then come to us and say, oh, gee, that didn't work.
I mean, Vermont tried to go single-payer.
They found they could not afford it.
California tried to go single-payer.
They found it would take twice the budget, the entire state California budget.
It would take twice that budget to pay for a single-payer system.
And they just collapsed.
So I think you may be right.
We might find occasionally some folks who have no sense at all who go out and try to do this.
But I do think at the same time, you're going to find that there are going to be states that take the freedom to create a market-oriented system that actually works and that lowers the cost of health care.
I mean, we put into Medicare Part D a whole series of provisions for market effect where people have real competition, they have real choice.
You, the senior citizen on Part D, you're deciding which program you want.
They have consistently come in under budget because it turns out markets work, consumers work, bureaucrats fail, and big government fails.
Yeah.
All right, Newt Gingrich, thank you, sir.
We'll see you tonight on Hannity.
We have big issues now facing this country.
We've got 13 weeks to straighten this mess out.
We'll take a quick break.
We'll come back.
We'll continue.
Joe Concha on just how biased and corrupt the media is every single day.
They care more about Rocket Man than they do about the guy firing the rockets.
Next.
Always get what you want.
But you can get Sean Hannity online at Hannity.com.
The bottom line is, and always has been, there is no evidence that Donald Trump was wiretapped by Barack Obama.
It was and continues to be a lie.
Our conspiracy theory president is at it again.
And whenever something like this happens, I wonder what are the president's sources of information?
Where is he getting these ideas?
And that has been denied by President Obama, by the former Director of National Intelligence, and now we know it as well by the FBI director.
They are all saying it did not happen.
So is the president calling all three of those individuals liars?
I don't think they're taking seriously enough how devastating this is to the American system for one president to say, my predecessor wiretapped.
We have been living in, really through the Trump campaign and unto this hour, this alternative reality.
The way that Donald Trump seems to think about what a president can do feels very Nixonian, that he has a much more inflated view of a president's powers for him to believe that a president could even, in theory, because the election is on, go in and tap the opponent of his preferred candidate.
Trump's mind is a little bit of a mystery to me.
If Paul Manafort has a residence in Trump Tower and Paul Manafort was being surveilled and wiretapped, Trump Tower was wiretapped.
No, it was not.
I'm sorry.
How do you know?
Unless you were saying that he owns every single thing in Trump Tower.
Yeah, that is what he's saying.
The president came out about this, right?
We all remember those tweets on March 4th.
He was derided for this.
But, Mark, is he somehow vindicated tonight?
This is CNN.
You know, it's an amazing set of circumstances we live in.
By the way, glad you're with us, 800-941 Sean, our toll-free telephone number.
You've got all this reporting, and it all comes from the same pretty much four sources.
And it now becomes a 24-hour news cycle.
It doesn't matter how many times they have to retract something, or even if they have the courage to retract something.
Anyway, president tweets out March 4th.
Oh, looks like wiretapping happened at Trump Tower.
March 8th, Sarah Carter, John Solomon report about the FISA warrants.
CNN, NBC, they go full bore into all of this.
Oh, the president's insane.
Oh, the president's nuts.
Oh, the president has no evidence.
Well, it turns out the president's right.
And there you just also heard CNN finally admitting, oh, the president was right.
How can they be so wrong so often and anybody have any trust in, quote, institutions, so-called journalistic institutions?
Joe Concha's with the Hill to talk about this meltdown.
This is only one of many issues.
We'll play the North Korea meltdown in a second.
What's up, Joe Concha?
How are you?
Sean, I have to correct you right off the get-go, if you don't mind.
Go right ahead, right off the get-go.
Okay, you said that CNN admitted that they were wrong.
I haven't heard that they said they were wrong yet.
Well, okay, they reported the opposite of what they reported.
I guess that's you're right.
I am factually inaccurate, and I fall on my sword, okay?
Right.
I hate you.
By the way, I hate all media reporters, in case you didn't know that.
I hate all of you people.
You know, I meant that cynically.
No, I know.
Of course, and not towards you.
Yeah, you would think that that would go part and parcel with their report that Trump Tower was wiretabbed via Paul Manafort, who had a residence in that tower.
And instead of saying CNN previously reported and actually mocked the president for even insinuating that Trump Tower was wiretapped, and we retract those mockeries and we apologize for our previous reporting and saying that the president was wrong and factually inaccurate on that.
I have yet to hear that.
And Sean, as you know, there's no frigging way we are going to hear that.
But the bottom line is what they've been saying in the narrative they said.
They said Trump's a conspiracy theorist.
Anybody that thinks there was any wiretapping, you people are paranoid.
You people are obsessed.
You people have no factual reporting.
And yet they're the ones that now are reporting that in fact it happened.
You're right, without retracting.
The only thing I would say is, yeah, they should retract, but also at the same time, CNN was going on, you know, besides their probably their own opinions and obviously their own vitral towards the president.
But remember, and you've reported on this, that James Clapper and Jim Comey both said Clapper during an interview with Chuck Todd on Meet the Press in March and Comey while testifying that they knew of no wiretapping of Trump Tower.
So if you base it on what they're basing the reporting on government officials at the highest levels, then what else are they supposed to go on type of thing?
But that doesn't excuse them from not retracting.
But Clapper and Comey, when are we going to hear from them?
I guess we heard from Clapper, but he dodged the question in the politics.
Well, that's the thing about Clapper.
I mean, he denies there's a FISA court order, and he actually says that there would be a FISA court order.
If there was one, that he would know about it.
And I think in the end, this is the same guy.
Didn't he get caught lying to Congress some time ago?
Oh, yes.
That happened a couple of years ago while Obama was in office as well, where he was caught in a major whopper.
And the thing is, what bothers me is that he keeps getting booked on other cable networks as some sort of expert, as some sort of guy who is infallible in terms of his honesty.
And now we've seen, it's been proven twice that James Clapper either doesn't know what he's talking about or is intentionally misleading people.
But either way, that's not a place where you want to be when he used to run the DNI.
Well, I think that if you already lied to Congress once, I think I have a predisposition to believe he's probably lying again, especially because he may be up to his eyeballs in all of this crap and all this nonsense.
You know, one of the things I've been thinking a lot about my opening monologue on TV tonight and things that I've been talking about here on the radio, and I think where I'm headed, because this really matters.
If you look at what's happening now, Mueller who is conflicted himself, he's conflicted now on both sides.
Number one, his buddy James Comey leaked apparently government information to get the Mueller appointment.
They're best friends in this.
So he's got a conflict with Comey.
Then the deputy AG Rosenstein, he now has been interviewed by Mueller.
Well, he just happens to be Mueller's boss in this particular case.
Then, of course, we look at the people that he's appointed, and you got eight Democratic donors, zero Republican donors, zero.
Then you've got a Russian deal where 20% of America's uranium goes to Vladimir Putin in Russia.
The media ignores that.
They ignore the issues and conflicts of Comey and of Mueller and of Rosenstein.
They ignore a leak a day.
They want to go after General Flynn, who served his country.
And the only reason that he may have any legal jeopardy is because of what seems to be illegal unmasking and leaking of intelligence.
That's a violation of the Espionage Act.
Then you have, as we're looking at today, basically there's a Catherine Herodge Brett Baer report that basically on a daily basis, Samantha Power, the UN ambassador, is unmasking people.
Why?
Why would she ever do it?
And it seems like the powers of the intelligence community are being used to spy on an opposition party.
And then you got Susan Rice and David Rhodes.
And then you have real collusion that we could prove with Ukraine and a Democratic operative.
Then you got Loretta Lynch on the tarmac and all of these conflicts of interest.
And I'm thinking, wow, you know, how do we have faith in the belief of equal justice under the law when all those things are ignored?
And I didn't even mention Hillary, who did mishandle classified information a crime, who did destroy subpoenaed classified information a crime.
Who clearly did obstruct justice a crime?
None of this is being investigated.
I'm sitting here thinking, wow, this system of justice is really screwed up.
And, Sean, what's supposed to be the check and balance in these situations of government when they act rogue like this, when they use the powers of the intelligence community for political purposes?
It's supposed to be the media.
And now we know that we can't trust most of it.
And I'm not talking media in terms of those brave people that were reporting on the hurricanes down in Florida and in Puerto Rico and Texas.
Those are true journalists.
Those are the guys who don't make a lot of money and girls don't make a lot of money.
Those are great journalists.
I'm talking about political media and obviously them obviously favoring one side so overwhelmingly that they are not going to then call government into power and call these people into power and be the check and balance that it had been for years and years.
Remember, we used to trust media a lot, Sean, in this country.
After Watergate, 75% of the American people trusted the American media.
Now it's down into the teens, and it may even go into the single digits depending on who you voted for.
So that's part of the problem: that we don't know who to trust.
We can't trust our media, and we can't trust our government officials.
And that's a scary time for an American citizen right now when you can't trust those two major institutions.
I noticed you wrote about O'Reilly being on this program earlier this week.
And me, what did you think about that case?
And what do you think overall about institutions that are funded with millions and millions of dollars for the very purpose, like every word you're saying now on this radio show is being monitored by people that are being paid for the very distinct purpose of finding one thing that they deem offensive or politically incorrect?
I think that everybody should go read my favorite analyst on media.
No, it's not myself.
Her name is Cheryl Atkinson, and she wrote a great book called The Smear.
And it scared the living hell out of me because it's all about, just as you described, big money behind all these organizations that are supposed to be grassroots watchdog groups, and they're not.
These are coordinated efforts to take down people one by one.
You asked me what I think of the O'Reilly case.
I think it is compelling, the case that he makes is that, look, and you would know this as a major person in this business as well.
If he takes all those women to court and sues for defamation, you think he's going to win those cases?
That's Sarah Palin, how that went for her with the New York Times.
And all it would do would create all this collateral damage, and in the media, he would be deemed guilty because now we're guilty before we're proven innocent.
So I get why Bill May has paid those women off.
I'm not saying they're lying, and I'm not saying that he's being honest.
I don't know.
That's the thing.
And until we do know, you know, maybe he should have fallen back.
And he told me in an interview I had him on a radio show I did yesterday, I guess, hosted on another network, that he regrets not fighting the way you did.
And he would have done it differently, he said, if he had known that that was going to be the outcome and seeing the success that you had in being on the offenses instead of on the defenses.
All right, we'll take a break.
We'll come back.
Joe Concha, media writer with The Hill, maybe the one guy that we can actually tolerate in the media writing industry.
You know, at least you can do TV and radio.
You know, half of your colleagues are just awful at it.
And they all have, it's all like groupthink.
They all repeat each other and they all tweet each other and retweet each other.
And they all think that they're actually all geniuses and then they don't have an original thought in their head.
And you standing apart is very, very obvious as somebody that's independent, which I do appreciate.
All right, as we continue, Joe Concha is with the Hill.
He is their media reporter.
Let's talk a little bit.
I want to get into this other issue about the president saying rocket man, rocket man, and let's play the media reaction to that.
And I want to get your response to it.
It's like a collective media meltdown.
And let me play that.
So here's my question out of this real quick.
Look, this wasn't a speech.
This was a sermon.
And he wasn't a president.
He was a preacher up there giving his dark world view about threats and conflict.
This was a speech about conflict around the world, not a speech about cooperation.
And that's a real shame.
I do think there is a bit of a contradiction in his presentation today, talking about sovereignty, talking about a renewal of spirit for all of these nations, talking about nations needing to be patriotic.
I imagine if you talk to folks in Venezuela, you talk to folks in North Korea, they imagine that they are being patriotic, right?
Almost trying to teach himself at an eighth grade level about basic sovereign multinational issues.
But I agree completely.
This was absolutely very stark, very absent of any of the normal universal values and mutual cooperation that we try to seek in these international bodies.
So it seems to me the media is more angry at Donald Trump than they are with the guy that's firing rockets over our ally Japan, threatening Guam and threatening the United States.
And this lunatic may have nuclear weapons married to intercontinental ballistic missiles.
Would think that's a greater threat to everybody.
You would think so.
But what I was taken back with the most was it wasn't somebody so much on cable news.
Obviously, Terry Moran is the chief foreign correspondent for ABC News.
And he actually said that Trump's rhetoric during his speech to the UN, which was received by conservatives, I mean, on a very overwhelmingly positive basis.
I mean, I was on with Lou Dobbs, and Lou said that it was the best speech that any president had ever given to the UN.
And then Huckabee and Laura Ingram and yourself and so on thought it was a great speech.
Regardless, Terry Moran said that Trump's rhetoric was bordering on being a war crime, a war crime, for rhetoric, for talking back to a rogue dictator who was launching, as you said, missiles over Japan and threatening Guam and threatening to hit the United States.
I mean, that's how unhinged we've become.
We can't just disagree with the president anymore.
We have to accuse him of a crime every time he speaks.
Now, it's insane, Sean.
This is the most insane.
All these years I've been in radio and TV, I've ever seen it.
And I swear, if Donald Trump gave every American $5 million, they in the media and the establishment and the Democrats and even some Republicans would still hate him and still say, why didn't he give him 10 million?
There's just a joke saying that it should have been 50 million rubles, you know, and tie it back to Russia because everything ties back to Russia.
Everything ties back to Russia.
You know, even Paul Manafort's comments, well, I, you know, it's all it says is he he may, well, if you want to be briefed on the election, tell me where there's evidence of collusion in that one statement that the media is fixated on right now.
Well, obviously, there isn't any, and that's what's been going on every thinking about it.
We're now, it's almost the end of September.
We're nearly a year since the election, and this has been an ongoing narrative now for 11 months.
But yet, despite, and here's the thing, since everything gets leaked these days, including by Mueller's office or by Comey before him, as far as when he was at the FBI, I would think that a pretty damning piece of evidence would have been leaked by now to the press if Mueller had it or if any of these other investigations in the Senate or Congress had it.
And they haven't done it yet.
So we fix, I think our media is fixated on it because in some circles and some cable shows, the ratings are there and that they're creating something right now as far as evidence.
Conspiracy TV, it actually works.
All right.
Joe Concha, The Hill, thank you.
800-941 Sean, you want to be a part of the program?
All right, Jonathan Gillum, Rick Unger coming up next as we continue this busy breaking news day here on the Sean Hannity Show.
It's an overload.
I believe that Graham Caspy really will do it the right way, and it is doing it the right way.
There's tremendous support from Republicans.
Certainly, we're 47 or 48 already.
Senators and a lot of others are looking at it very positively.
For seven years, I think it was revealed in place.
We've been hearing how bad it is.
We've been looking at the premiums go up.
We've been looking at deductibles that have been through the review.
You have states like Arizona where the premiums are going to be worse this year than last year.
Last year, they were at 100% increase, 116%.
I think there's tremendous support for him.
I think it's actually much better than the previous shot, which was very sadly let down.
I feel like that one-on-one, I would go to the Oval Office, sit down at my desk, and there would be a health care bill on my desk, to be honest.
And it hasn't worked out that way.
And I think a lot of Republicans are embarrassed by it.
But I have to tell you, I think they may do a great job.
If this happens, it will be a great thing for the country.
All right, the September 30th deadline now looming as we continue.
800-941 Sean, our number, news roundup information overload hour.
You know, the president's right, it was 116% premium increase in the state of Arizona alone last year, on average, $6,000 to $8,000 around the country.
Millions lost their doctors, their plans.
They are paying a fortune more.
And in many, many counties all across the country, and you can pull it up.
We put it up on Hannity.com a number of times.
You can see how many counties only have one option, one choice.
So people don't have choices in terms of what their health care options are.
Now we find ourselves in a situation, that's the Democratic failure.
Republicans, they promised for seven and a half years, repeal, replace.
Then you find out 100 Republicans in the House with their 60 phony show votes had no intention ever of repealing and replacing.
Then you've got the U.S. Senate, and what do we find?
Seven Republicans that voted to repeal only in 2015 won't do it in 2017 because that actually would mean something and the president would actually sign the bill.
So the last great hope option that the Republicans put together, which, as I have been saying, is never going to be what I want, what I've been recommending, which are big ideas, healthcare cooperatives, Dr. Unger, Atlas MD, and health savings accounts, which I've talked about for 15 years, but block-granting the money to states and eliminating a lot of the things about Obamacare, the employer mandate, the individual mandate, allowing for people to buy catastrophic care cheaper,
which is basically what young people would need more than anything else.
God forbid you have an accident, a heart attack, you get cancer.
Anyway, Rick Unger is with us, senior political contributor Forbes and host of co-host of Steele and Unger, Jonathan Gillum, host of the experts, author of the upcoming book, Sheep No More.
And welcome all of you to the program.
You know, Rick, you sent me an article and it made me think about just how bad health care is and how bureaucratic our government is.
And you talk about a cancer patient that needs a stem cell transplant.
It's very hard to get a donor that has a so-called match.
There is a match, but for this individual, and you can tell the story, to get the match, they got to grant the donor a visa because they're outside the country.
And I'm thinking, like, oh, that should be a no-brainer.
Why is it difficult?
Yeah, Sean, I so appreciate you bringing it up because I'm so upset about the story.
Yeah, you've got a 61-year-old woman in California who has a particularly difficult type of leukemia.
She needs a stem cell transplant.
Her sister is the match.
The problem is her sister lives in Vietnam.
Our embassy there has denied a visa to the sister to come three times.
Now, you would think maybe there's something shady about the sister's background.
There must be a reason.
Well, it turns out that the reason they're denying it is that she hasn't made them sufficiently comfortable that she will return to Vietnam after she participates in the procedure.
Never mind that she's got a five-year-old daughter there.
Never mind that she owns businesses there.
Never mind that her husband fought on the side of South Vietnam next to American troops, and they're in this country because of a special thing that was worked out for people like her husband.
He also was rewarded by seven years in a Vietnamese work camp after the war ended.
Never mind all of that.
They will not let this woman come.
And it has got me crazy.
We are leaning on the U.S. Ambassador in Vietnam.
And the reason I think it's so relevant, your audience respects the limits of government, but has expectations of what government should be able to do.
When you've got a government where you've got some bureaucrat sitting in Vietnam who is going to cause the end of this woman's life for absolutely no good reason, we've got a problem with government.
I have offered, as has Congressman Coria from California, to pay for the security the U.S. requires to stay on this woman every single day she's in the U.S. and to make sure she goes back to her country.
That offer stands.
We've had callers in the world.
By the way, I'll donate money for you.
I knew you would.
I knew you would.
I didn't know.
How do you know I would?
I mean, why are you making it?
Because I know you.
I know you.
I don't know.
The radio is crazy, but you're one of the most decent people I know.
And I knew this story would bother you.
It does bother me.
Jonathan, I think you would probably agree with us on this, but more importantly, I would say, as a conservative, and I'm not going to support anything until I read it, because the devil's always in the details.
But Graham Cassidy, as a conservative, it's not quite federalism.
Money's coming from the federal government.
But letting states have the money to be responsible for the health care in their state instinctively tells me they're going to be far more responsive to the needs of the citizens in their individual states.
You know, Sean, especially since I've been out of federal service for four years and in the media, one thing that I've definitely become more of is somebody who looks for what's an effective answer versus a conservative answer or a liberal answer for other people that may be listening to liberals.
And what you're saying is an effective answer.
What Rick is talking about is with this woman is let's find an effective answer.
Immigration, we don't even have an effective answer for that.
And that's the problem that I'm seeing now is this woman, her husband was held as a prisoner of war by the North Vietnamese, and now she's being held prisoner by politics.
And we see this over and over again.
Yeah.
Well, I mean, mediocrity.
It's bureaucratic nonsense.
And, you know, the health care system ought to be about saving lives.
And look, Rick, you're not going to tell us that Obamacare has worked or that the promises made to sell us this piece of garbage were fulfilled.
And then I'll be the first to tell you that Republicans are breaking their word about what they had promised.
So now we're dealt with, all right, weak Republicans and a disastrous bill.
You know, everyone's going to say, well, my health care is fine, but okay, there's millions of Americans that literally can't get the sufficient care they need.
It's so dangerous.
You and I are agreeing too much today.
We better end this.
All right.
It was nice knowing you.
You're actually right.
I think I'm going to go home and drink heavily to join you.
But the point remains.
I mean, you know, now we're stuck with a solution that's not going to be very good.
Here's the problem that I'm seeing with this.
You know, I am not allergic to the idea of giving states more control over how health care programs work.
I understand the basics of this bill in that sense.
Here is the problem.
First of all, we'd have to be blind to bury our heads in the sands and say the states had that control all of the years pre-Obama care.
Now, you may not like how Obamacare turned out, but it's not like the states haven't had this opportunity, and we all know it didn't go well.
So that's number one.
And I'm not suggesting by that that it has to be the federal government.
You know, we've all got problems there, too.
The other problem, though, is we do know that states are strapped for cash.
The way this bill is drafted, it not only takes away money from them right now, but it takes away more and more and more money every year until 2017, and then the money ends.
Now you'll have senators telling you, oh, you know we're going to re-up this in 2027.
Do I know that the country's going to allow you or that Congress is going to say, yeah, you want to add another $350 billion or more to the budget every year that we had gotten rid of?
I don't know that.
So I love the way you're approaching it.
You're thinking about the people, not about the politics.
But it's about people.
I mean, it's supposed to be about the forgotten men and women.
You know what?
Just because, you know, I hate when people call this show.
I had a guy call the show once and say, Jonathan, well, I've had a great eight years under Obama.
What are you complaining about?
I'm like, oh, I'm so happy for you.
But you know what?
It's not about us.
There are 13 million more Americans on food stamps and 8 million more in poverty.
And we did just basically double the national debt.
I mean, those things matter.
The country matters.
They're a bigger picture.
I'm doing fine.
I don't care about the rest of these people.
That's not how Americans roll.
Did you check to see if that guy was a teacher or if he had never been sick in eight years?
I mean, yeah, of course he's going to have a great ride.
He can't be fired from a job and he didn't have to deal with health care if that was the case.
But see, this is.
Maybe he was involved in the cargo business and he got the contract to allow the $150 billion in cash sent to Iran.
Maybe that's why he's so.
Don't ruin this kumbaya moment.
Let me just say this, though.
I'll save my career here.
Go ahead.
Here, I'll fix it for you.
Rick Unger, you have the manners of a goat and you smell like a dung heap.
That's my Sean Connors.
Yeah, that's because you know me.
So, no, but here's the thing that you're that I think is missing out of this: as I've said before on this show, is that the Republican, the Democratic parties are private companies.
People need to realize that.
And the governors of these states, they are beholden to the same party that the people in Washington, D.C. are.
So the further we get away from the centralized control of health care by the federal government, what I hope happens is you get some rogue governors that have great ideas, and then other states will pick those up.
And the free enterprise of the states are not.
But you see, my biggest worry is I think California will go single-payer.
I think New York will move to single-payer.
And here's a reality and a truth and a fact.
They're going to go bankrupt.
And then they're going to come hat in hand.
And then they're going to ask all the states that manage their appropriations better and came up with better solutions to now bail their backsides out.
And that has to be a part of the bill.
There's got to be an end to this.
Yeah, I would agree with you that California and New York would both very much like to go single payer.
There's no.
And it's going to fail.
But I don't think they figured out how to do it because of the cost.
I agree with them.
All right, we'll take a break.
We'll come back.
More with Rick Unger and Jonathan Gillum, 800-941.
Sean is our number.
You want to be a part of the program.
Your calls, comments, insights coming up next, by the way.
We'll get right to the phone.
As we continue with Jonathan Gillum and Rick Unger, all right, we'll disagree here.
So here is rocket man Kim Jong-un.
He fires missiles over Japan on multiple occasions, threatens Guam, is threatening the United States.
He has nuclear weapons and he's building ICBM capability.
And he is as crazy and unhinged and unpredictable as any world despot that we have seen in recent memory.
So my question is simple.
Why are you liberals more angry at Donald Trump for calling him rocket man and saying he will defend the lives of innocent people than you are at the guy that's firing the rockets over Japan and trying to hold the world hostage and doesn't want to be a part of the civilized world?
Well, personally, it's because I'm insulted that they're taking away this moniker from Elton John, who owns it and deserves it.
Okay, your humor is when it comes to rockets.
Here's the answer: the concern that I know I have is this.
I don't have a problem with the president being tough with North Korea at all.
My only problem is when you're going to make threats, as you will agree, it's really important, I know Jonathan agrees, that you're prepared to follow through on them.
The problem with the threat is that the fallout of what we would have to do is pretty dramatic.
If we were to attack with conventional weapons, then you've got millions of people in Seoul, Korea, not to mention 100,000-plus Americans that would pay the price for that.
If he were to actually decide that he had to take a nuclear action, well, the fallout from that is going to have a massive impact on Japan, China, and South Africa.
But then the option is he builds ICBM capability and he has the world held hostage forever.
Now, the bottom line is he's not completely married ICBMs with the nukes yet, Jonathan.
Not yet.
And to me, the next step is obvious.
Either take the next missile he fires out of the sky or take it off the launching pad.
And if he wants a war, he's going to be hit with force.
As I said in the beginning, there's no good options here.
Yeah.
You know, and we're not even looking at the fact that.
By the way, thank you, Bill Clinton, Rick, but go ahead, Jonathan.
27 million.
Well, thank you to all the politicians for the past 50 years who didn't deal with these people.
Same thing we've been talking about with health care and immigration.
These politicians pass this stuff along.
But when we look at the thing that nobody's looking at is the fact that Seoul Korea is the most populated city on the planet, 27 million people.
It's right on the DMZ, the demilitarized zone.
And you don't have to have a rocket to throw the nuclear weapon over that Kim Jong-il now or un now has.
So that is a real problem.
They need to start looking at the sheer fact that at any moment this guy could send a nuclear weapon over.
And I don't think that that is being looked at enough.
And that does send it into a bit more of a rapid pace.
You notice that Rick never answered my question.
Why is the unhinged left more angry over the term rocket man than they are?
They're more mad at Trump than they are at the guy that's firing weapons and threatening the entire civilized world.
I think the answer is the concern is that it doesn't do any good with this wacko over there to make things more incendiary.
But let me ask a question because you brought up a good point.
You know, you suggested the possibility, why don't we take out this rocket as it's sitting on the watching point or when it's fired?
I agree with that.
That's the way you send the message.
Okay, you send a message, but then you risk he's going to fire at South Korea.
But wait a second.
Don't you want to know why is it that we don't seem to have the capability to do it?
I would have thought by now we would have had a warship in the sea there to take out the president.
Don't underestimate the president or General Madison.
I won't blame the president or Mattis for this.
I question if we have the capability.
Well, it ought to teach us a lesson too, Rick.
And I'd like to, you know, everything, Bill Clinton said, this is a good deal for the American people, and then I'm going to get linked in the weapon.
Never happened.
Same thing's going to happen in Iran.
The same dopey deal that they made, capitulation, bribery, call it whatever he's doing.
He wants to continue it.
He just wants to add to it.
He does not want to continue this deal.
Trust me.
All right.
We got a break.
All right.
Love you both.
Jonathan, Rick, 800-941 Shawn.
We'll hit the phones when we get back.
I wish I could sit with Dick because I've got work to do.
I'm cleaning out the White House.
We're going to sanitize the White House.
We're not going to take what is happening in this country.
Haven't you taken enough?
And then comes along this person.
This person who does not respect you?
This dishonorable human being who cheats everybody.
This dishonorable human being who will lie at the drop of a hat.
This dishonorable human being who had the alt-right to the KKK and everybody else inside his cabinet.
This dishonorable human being who can criticize everybody but Putin and Russia.
Did he collude with Russia?
I bet you Dick Gregory would tell me, yeah, he did it.
Not only are we going to clean out the White House, we're going to take back the house that slaves built.
And I know even my colleagues get very upset.
Some get afraid when I say impeachment.
When I get through with Donald Trump, he's going to wish he had been impeached.
I feel it very deeply.
I am so offended by him.
And I love my people so much that I am not going to put up with it.
I'm going to say, impeach 45 every day.
Impeach 45 every day.
Impeach 45 every day.
How do you do this at a funeral?
Maxime Waters pushing a Trump impeachment at comedian Dick Gregory's funeral.
How do you do that?
It's unbelievable.
These are the insane times we live in.
I keep saying it doesn't matter if Donald Trump gave every American $10 million.
They'd say, why isn't it 15?
Why isn't it 20?
And by the way, did Russia give him the money?
Russia, Russia, Russia.
All right, let's get to our busy telephones here.
800-941-Sean, our number.
Let's say hi to Lynn is in Texas.
Lynn, hi, how are you?
And welcome to the program.
And we still can't forget Texas after Hurricane Harvey.
What's going on?
We're still recovering, Sean.
Thanks so much for taking my call.
The comment that I wanted to make, and the reason that I'm not so sure that I'm happy with the Graham Cassidy bill, is because the feds get the money to begin with.
And I know they say they're giving it back to the state.
The problem is once the feds get their money or get their hands on it, they're able to make all kinds of rules and stipulations to get that money.
And I'm just afraid that's something that they'll do with health care because they've done it with education.
Look, I agree with all of that.
But, you know, and I keep going back to this, and some people get angry that I even say it.
Those of us that believe these congressmen and women, and many of them did mean what they said, you have one in your state, Senator Ted Cruz, for example.
Senator Ted Cruz was there alone in 2013 saying, we have the power to end this.
It's called the power of the purse.
Constitutionally, we have the power.
And he stood up there, and I was pretty inspired.
I was up half the night watching him, and other people went and supported him.
And I thought what he did was the right thing to do.
And he's been urging his party to keep its promises.
Same with the Freedom Caucus.
But when you got seven senators that vote to repeal in 2015, and then in 2017, when it matters, they don't do it.
They had no intention.
And the same thing goes for the 100 Republicans in the House.
Yeah, I don't want to get blamed.
Oh, geez, it's too hard.
So now we're stuck with either doing nothing.
And again, I mentioned this earlier in the program.
It's not about your health care.
Lynn, I'm assuming your health care is fine.
My health care is fine.
Everybody that works for me's health care is fine.
But there are millions of Americans who see increases of $6,000 to $8,000 over the last number of years.
It's not fine for them.
It's not fine for the people that only have one choice.
So if we can send it back to the states, and then you have governors in Arizona and in Kentucky and Alabama and Florida and elsewhere in the country, they're going to do a lot better job, in my opinion, of managing the block grant than anything the federal government can think of.
My biggest concern are those governors that have no sense of no common sense and no sense of budgetary responsibility, and they're going to come up with a single payer, and it's ultimately going to fail as it's been tried before in states like California and elsewhere.
And then they're going to come back hat in hand and they're going to go to all the other states that did manage their money well and say, give us more money.
That I can't live with because that's unfair to everybody.
So I want to see the language.
I want to see the protections and provisions.
I would have to agree with you there.
You know, I mean, and if you're asking me, was this the bill I wanted?
No.
Is this the bill we conservatives wanted?
No.
Is this the bill we expected?
No.
You know, during the last debate, I kept saying, where are the big ideas that we conservatives have been talking about?
You know, I'm sure you've heard Dr. Josh Umber on this program.
At least I hope you have.
Have you ever heard him?
Many times.
Many times.
And I think his plan is terrific.
So, you know, I'm thinking, where are the creative, innovative, out-of-the-box common sense solutions?
Now, the good news is the president is going to couple this with an executive order that's going to allow the it's going to allow and create an atmosphere where more of these co-ops can emerge.
It's going to make it and facilitate it that it's going to be easier.
It will open up health savings accounts and more importantly, for young people that have been bearing the burden of funding health care for the sick and the elderly and disabled and the uninsured.
Well, now they can buy the plan that makes sense for them, which is a catastrophic plan, which is, okay, I got to check up a year and I only get health care if I have a heart attack at cancer or a bad accident.
So they're covered, but they don't get anything else they want, if they break their leg, they're going to have to pay for it.
Does that make sense?
Well, it makes perfect sense.
And I just wanted to tell you real quickly that here in Bernie, Texas, we're a small town north of San Antonio, and Joss Umber's footprint is in our town because we have a female physician that is doing the exact same thing that Dr. Umber is doing here in Bernie, Texas.
That's a great thing.
And I appreciate your call.
I really do, Lynn.
I just want answers.
You know, I keep saying the election was about the forgotten men and women.
I just want answers for people that we got to start solving some problems.
They got to start doing something.
And if they can get the economic plan done, energy independence done, if they can fund the wall, it's going to be a really good start, and it will be a big advantage to them in a lot of ways.
And more importantly, it's better for us.
I want to do things that are good for the country.
The agenda matters.
The promises they make matter.
Anyway, thank you.
Phil is in Rigby in Idaho next on the Sean Hannity show.
Phil, hey, how are you?
Glad you called, sir.
Good afternoon.
You know, listening to what you were saying about the health care, I've been my wife's caregiver since 1981.
Wow.
What's wrong with your wife, if you don't mind me asking?
Well, it goes back to Agent Orange, we're pretty sure, because her dad just passed away from that.
But that's another story.
She's had two kidney transplants.
She's had heart valve replace.
She's had triple bypass.
She's got white matter disease with her brain shrinking.
Lupus, just the whole.
She's been totally disabled since January of 87.
Oh, my gosh.
Well.
Yeah, I've watched her health care costs just her supplement has doubled.
Just the cost for a supplement has doubled.
You know, Michelle Malcolm has been very public about her sick daughter.
And Michelle's like family to me.
I mean, we've gotten along.
We've been friends all these years.
And she's been very, very public about the difficulties that she's had to face and her daughter.
And you know, she lost three insurance policies because of her daughter's condition.
How do you, now that should be illegal?
You know, oh, all of a sudden you buy insurance, but then when you need the insurance, oh, we're done with you.
We'll see you later.
So there's definitely, listen, we have so many problems in the healthcare system, and a lot of these answers can be solved.
And that's why for years I've put Dr. Umber on, years I've put on, you know, people that discuss health savings accounts.
This is the best step that I see.
I'm not there yet, but I want to see the written words in that bill.
The other thing is, is what I'm really looking forward to is Monday.
What Monday?
Monday, Monday, Monday.
You're moving to 9 o'clock.
Yes.
Yes, I'm moving on Monday.
I'm so busy working.
I haven't been thinking about it.
But yeah, I'm moving Monday tonight.
That's right on the Fox News channel.
And I'm looking forward.
We have some really, well, good.
Well, I can't even disclose.
We've got some good stuff for you to plan next week.
And thank you for your support.
I've been listening to you since 2006.
Wow.
And my first inkling was gone, what?
And I could, no way could anybody be this bad.
So I started researching.
Guess who I didn't vote for?
You didn't vote for Hillary.
I didn't know that in 2008, I didn't even vote for Obama.
Wow.
You kept saying this, this, and this.
And I was listening to him and listening to you, and I'm going, what?
So you thought I was nuts in the beginning.
I will say this.
I think I was proven right on Obama.
Oh, you were.
More than right.
I didn't vote for him.
Good for you.
I researched the heck out of it.
Good for you.
Because I started getting interested in politics in 1963.
Wow.
Well, listen, I've got to run, but I want to bless, you know, all my blessings and prayers for you and your wife.
You obviously are one of God's angels.
I mean, it's been very difficult for you, and you hung in there.
You're taking care of the woman you love.
And that's a pretty amazing story.
I do appreciate it.
Barbara, Baltimore, WCBM.
Hey, Barbara, how are you?
I am great, Sean.
Thank you so much for taking my call.
It's been a while since I've talked to you.
Oh, I remember Barbara in Baltimore.
What's happening?
Yes, yes.
And, you know, we've got a candidate here by the name of Pat Madonna who is, they call him Trump.
And I tried to take him down, but I tell you what, he is a strong supporter.
And on Saturday, he's having something here in Dundalk, Maryland.
He's having a fundraiser to change this state.
Sean, I appreciate everything that you do.
I love you so much.
Oh, my gosh.
Oh, my gosh.
Wow.
You're so strong.
And remember, you know, I haven't talked to you in a couple of years.
I haven't talked in at least a year.
You know, my grandson sings God bless the USA like Lee Greenwood.
And, you know, I used to tell you I wanted him to open up the show because I think it's time to do a freedom tour with you leading it with big and rich and all that.
Yes.
Yeah, maybe I can't get up there and sing holy water with big and rich.
I just, I can't get there.
At least I can rap or speak the Charlie Daniels to him.
You do what you do.
You do what you do, and I love you for it.
But I just want to say that.
Listen, we need a fight.
We have a fight ahead of us.
We're battling.
We're fighting for the heart and soul of the country.
There's a lot at stake here.
We cannot stop fighting.
And they're going against our president.
We have a governor here in Maryland who I do believe is open borders.
You know, anybody who doesn't stand firm, if you don't stand for something, you fall for anything.
It's all true.
Governor Hogan got in as a Republican, but he doesn't stand for strong borders.
And, you know, nobody wants to send all these children back.
You know, okay.
But I said they shouldn't vote for 25 years, Sean.
I said, okay, you're going to stay here, you little dreamers, but you can't vote for 25 years.
Well, I think that's part of the deal, actually.
I think that's what's going to happen.
All right, Barbara, we got to run.
We love you.
800-941-Sean, toll-free telephone number.
You want to be a part of the program.
Roger in New Joise, listening to the all-new AM710 WOR.
How are you, sir?
I'm doing great, Sean.
I was actually a crew supporter early on, but I definitely support the president.
And I thought his speech at the UN was powerful.
I'm not going to say great, but I'm going to say powerful.
And I think that he put the world really on notice that our national sovereignty of the United States is important to us by putting America first.
I mean, I think he finally said a lot of things that a lot of us were yelling at the screen for and saying, yes, finally.
And he also reminded those countries that your national sovereignty should be important to you as well.
And they shouldn't just give it away for some immigration quarter they want to reach or some sort of feel-good process.
And I think that's just being lost.
I really like the fact that he reminded people of the blood and sweat that was sacrificed by our men and women.
Did you see those kids?
Did you see those kids, the eight, nine-year-olds, taking a knee in the football game in St. Louis or a suburb of St. Louis?
And, you know, I don't blame the kids.
I don't think they have the full context and knowledge to make a strong enough and well-informed decision.
But the parents and coaches, I just wondered if they'd ever told them how many people fought, bled, and died for their right to take that knee.
Something to think about.
Roger, I wish I had more time.
We do appreciate your call.
800-941-SHAWN, a toll-free telephone number.
All right, Hannity, tonight, 10 Eastern.
Well, 9 Eastern starting Monday.
10 Eastern tonight, Fox News channel.
All right, institutions failing the American people, the media, politicians, and what we need to do to get our government back in place and get equal justice under the law and get some good information and the battle over the Graham Cassidy bill.
New Gingrich weighs in on all of that.
Also, Cheryl Atkinson.
Well, guess what?
She was spied on.
Jay Seculo, the president's attorney, also chief counsel, American Center for Law and Justice, the latest on North Korea, Lou Dobbs, 10 Eastern.
Hannity, Fox News.
Thanks for being with us.
See you back here tomorrow and see you tonight at 10.