Best Of The Week: General Kelly and an Angry Rand Paul - 10.21
This week Sean was live from Las Vegas and covered; an emotional defense of President Trump by General Kelly, an angry Senator Rand Paul who has been trying to leverage the power of reconciliation to move an agenda, the legendary Dionne Warwick stopped by and actress Tracy Melchior and musician Kaya Jones stopped by to share their thoughts on the Harvey Weinstein scandal. The Sean Hannity Show is live weekdays 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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General Kelly.
Just took to the podium, and I want to play it in full.
This will be our third topic today and tonight.
I want you to listen to what he had to say about those that dare politicize the death of a soldier.
And that means all of you fake news people on CNN.
NBC, mainstream media, you disgust me, all of you.
Listen.
Most Americans don't know what happens when we lose one of our soldiers, sailors, airmen, marines, or coast guardsmen in combat.
So let me tell you what happens.
Their buddies wrap them up in whatever passes as a shroud, puts them on a helicopter as a routine, and sends them home.
Their first stop along the way is when they're packed in ice, uh, typically at the at the airhead, and then they're flown to use a Europe, uh, where they're then packed in ice again and flown to Dover Air Force Base,
where Dover takes care of the uh remains, uh, embalms them, uh, meticulously dresses them in their uniform with the rebel with the medals that they've earned, the emblems of their service, and then puts them on another airplane linked up with a casualty officer escort that takes them home.
A very, very good movie to watch if you haven't ever seen it is taking chance, uh, where this is done in a movie HBO setting.
Chance Phelps was killed under my command right next to me.
And it's worth seeing that if you've never seen it.
So that's the process.
While that's happening, a casualty officer typically goes to the home very early in the morning and waits for the first lights to come on.
And then he knocks on the door.
Typically the mom and dad will answer, wife.
And if there is a wife, this is happening in two different places.
If the parents are divorced three different places, and the casual casualty officer uh proceeds to break the heart of a family member and stays with that family until uh, well, for a long, long time, even after the internment.
Uh so that's what happens.
Who are these young men and women?
They are the best one percent this country produces.
Most of you, as Americans, uh don't know them.
Many of you don't know anyone who knows any one of them.
But they are the very best this country produces.
And they volunteer to protect our country when there's nothing in our country anymore that seems to suggest that self-service to the nation is uh not only appropriate but required.
But that's all right.
Um who writes letters to the families?
Typically the company commander, in my case is a marine, the company commander, battalion commander, regimental commander, division commander, secretary of defense, typically the service chief, command of the marine corps, and the president typically writes a letter.
Typically the only phone calls a family receives are the most important phone calls they can imagine, and that is from their buddies.
In my case, hours after my son was killed, his friends were calling us from Afghanistan, telling us what a great guy he was.
Those are the only phone calls that really matter.
And yeah, the the uh letters count to a degree, but uh there's not much that really can take the edge off what a family member is going through.
So some presidents have elected to call.
All presidents, I believe, have elected to send letters.
Um if you elect to call a family like this, it is about the most difficult thing you could imagine.
There's no perfect way to make that phone call.
Uh when I took this job uh and talked to President uh uh Trump about how to do it, my first recommendation was he not do it.
Uh Because it's not the phone call that parents, family members are looking forward to.
It's nice to do, in my opinion, in any event.
He asked me about previous presidents, and I said, I can tell you that President Obama, who uh was my commander-in-chief when I was on active duty, uh, did not call my family.
That was not a criticism.
That was just to simply say, I don't believe President Obama called.
That's not a negative thing.
Uh I don't believe President Bush called in all cases.
Um I don't believe any president, particularly when the casualty rates are very, very high, that presidents call.
But I believe they're all right.
So when I gave that explanation to our president three days ago, um he elected to make phone calls in the case of the four young men who we lost in Niger at the earlier part of this month.
But then he said, you know, what how do you make these calls?
Uh if you're not in the family, if you've never worn the uniform, if you've never been in combat, you can't even imagine how to make that call.
I think he very bravely does make those calls.
Uh the call in question that he made yesterday, um, or day before yesterday now, were to four family members, the four fallen.
And remember, there's an extra kin designated by the individual.
If he's married, that's typically the spouse.
If he's not married, that's typically the parents, unless the parents are divorced, and then he selects one of them.
If he didn't get along with his parents, he'll sit he'll select a sibling.
But the point is the phone call is made to the um extend only if the next kin agrees to take the phone call.
Sometimes they don't.
So a pre-call is made, President of the United States or the Commandant of the Marine Corps, or someone would like to call.
Will you accept the call?
And typically they all accept the call.
So he called four people the other day and expressed his condolences in the best way that he could.
And he said to me, what do I say?
Uh I said to him, sir, there's nothing you can do to lighten the burden on these families.
But let me tell you what I tell him.
And what let me tell you what my best friend Joe Dunford told me, because he was my casualty officer.
He said, Kel, um, he was doing exactly what he wanted to do when he was killed.
He knew what he was getting into by joining the that one percent.
He knew what the possibilities were because we're at war.
And when he died, in the four cases we're talking about in Niger, my son's case in Afghanistan.
When he died, he was surrounded by the best men on this earth, his friends.
That's what the president tried to say to a family four families the other day.
I was stunned when I came to work yesterday morning in brokenhearted at what I saw a member of Congress doing.
Member of Congress who listened in on a phone call from the President of the United States to a young wife, and in his way tried to express that opinion.
That he's a brave man, a fallen hero.
He knew what he was getting himself into because he enlisted.
There's no reason to enlist.
He enlisted.
And he was where he wanted to be, exactly where he wanted to be, with exactly the people he wanted to be with when his life was taken.
That was the message.
That was the message that was transmitted.
It stuns me that a member of Congress would have listened in on that conversation.
Absolutely stuns me.
And I thought at least that was sacred.
You know, when I was a kid Growing up, a lot of things were sacred in our country.
Women were sacred and looked upon with great honor.
That's obviously not the case anymore, as we see from recent cases.
Life, the dignity of life was sacred.
That's gone.
Religion.
That seems to be gone as well.
Gold star families.
I think that left in the convention over the summer.
But I just thought the selfless devotion that brings a man or woman to die on the battlefield.
I just thought that that might be sacred.
And when I listened to this woman and what she was saying and what she was doing on TV, the only thing I could do to collect my thoughts was to go and walk among the finest men and women on this earth.
And you can always find them because they're in Arlington National Cemetery.
Went over there for an hour and a half, walked among the stones, some of whom I put there because they were doing what I told them to do when they were killed.
Um I'll end with this.
Uh in October, uh April rather of 2015, I was still on active duty, and I went to the dedication of the new FBI field office in Miami.
And it was dedicated to two men who were killed in a firefight in Miami with against drug traffickers in 1986.
Uh Grogan almost retired, 53 years old, Duke, I think less than a year on the job.
Anyways, they got in a gunfight and they were killed.
Three other uh FBI agents were there, were wounded, now retired.
So we go down, Jim Comey, get an absolutely brilliant memorial speech to those fallen men and the and the and to all of the men and women of the FBI who serve our country so well and law enforcement so well.
Uh there were family members there.
Some of the children that were there were only three or four years old when their dads were killed on that street in uh Miami Dade.
Um three of the men that survived the fight were there and gave rendition of how brave those men were and how they gave their lives.
And a Congresswoman stood up, and in the long tradition of empty barrels making the most noise, stood up there and all of that and talked about how she was instrumental in getting the funding for that building, and how she took care of her constituents because she got the money, and she just called up President Obama, and on that phone call, he gave the money the 20 million dollars to build a building.
She sat down, and we were stunned.
Stunned that she'd done it.
Even for someone that is that empty a barrel, we were stunned.
But you know, none of us went to the press and criticized.
Uh, none of us stood up and were appalled.
We just said, okay, fine.
So I still hope, as you write your stories, and I appeal to America, that let's not let this maybe last thing that's held sacred in our in our society.
A young man, young woman going out and giving his or her life for our country.
Let's let's try to somehow keep that keep that sacred.
But it eroded a great deal yesterday by the uh selfish behavior of a member of Congress.
So I'm willing to take a question or two on this top on this topic.
But let me ask you this.
Let me ask you this.
Is anyone here a gold star parent or sibling?
Does anyone here know a gold star parent or sibling?
Okay, you get the question.
Thank you, General Kelly.
First of all, yeah, great deal of respect, Senator Five for everything that you've ever done.
But if we could take this a bit further, why were they in Niger?
What was unbelievable moment by General Kelly.
To abandon the ideals we have advanced around the globe, to refuse the obligations of international leadership, and our duty to remain the last best hope of earth for the sake of some half-baked Spurious nationalism cooked up by people who would rather find scapegoats than solve problems.
This is un is as unpatriotic as an attachment to any other tired dogma of the past that Americans consigned to the ash cheat the ash heap of history.
No idea what has happened to just Senator John McCain, News Roundup Information Overload Hour, 800 941 Sean.
If you want to be a part of the program, we've been talking at length on how Donald Trump is totally almost single-handedly now dismantling Obama's imperial presidency and the latest on the Iranian deal and the latest on the health care deal last week are just the two biggest examples.
Donald Trump and uh and then of course we got Steve Bannon saying that what's happening with uh what happened in Alabama is just the beginning, declaring war on the establishment Rhino Republican Party that has yet to get anything done.
Mitch McConnell is literally ground zero in this battle and this fight.
Joining us now is Senator Rand Paul, who was very instrumental in getting the president to pay attention to this 1974 law that w exempted corporations that had businesses in different states.
It allowed these businesses to buy their health care across state lines, and basically it was a cooperative and they weren't subject to the burden of state law, nor the subject to the burdens of the ACA Obamacare rules and regulations.
And now people can form their own cooperations, associations, and they have the ability to have the same benefits that the corporations do.
That means the buying power that, let's say, restaurant workers would have, or radio workers would have, or any industry workers would have.
They can now buy across state lines.
Once this is implemented, they can have the buying power, purchasing power of big groups.
They can buy across state lines, and they could even get plans like, for example, a catastrophic plan, which is illegal under Obama.
The single best thing that could have happened for Obamacare, considering the colossal failure of Republicans uh to keep their promise to repeal it and replace it.
Rand Paul was instrumental in all of this.
How are you, Senator?
Quite good.
Yeah.
What the President did last week to legalize individuals to join associations that buy across state lines, it may be one of the biggest free market reforms ever in the past generation.
It also may be the biggest thing that will allow people to escape Obamacare, because people are going to be able to get out of those individual marketplaces, out of these Obamacare plans, and they're going to be able to get the kind of insurance you're right that big corporations have.
This is what Pepsi has, it's what Coca-Cola has.
It's what Amgen, Amazon, Microsoft, these big corporations offer ERISA plans.
So what we're doing is saying, hey, the individual's going to be able to get ERISA plans now, and through their size, they should be able to negotiate lower rates, but also through their size, they should be able to negotiate good terms, meaning good insurance.
Well, I would think that this would allow a lot of the things that you and I have talked about real solutions for years.
And and I think you're one of like two senators, and then the Freedom Caucus members that actually discuss things that would work, like health care savings accounts, like cooperatives.
I mean, I think you and I have been the biggest supporters of health care cooperatives because they actually work and you can couple those cooperatives with some type of catastrophic insurance if you have a an accident, a bad accident, or get a heart attack or get cancer.
And what bothered the great thing about this, yeah, and the great thing about this is it doesn't cost any federal money.
The president mentioned this also.
This isn't a big federal program like Lindsey Graham's, you know, block grant thing that costs a trillion dollars in grants.
This costs zero.
This just lets you have the freedom to form associations and buy insurance, and it costs zero taxpayer money.
Well, I like the idea for all of those reasons, but we still really are just threading a needle here because Obamacare is still in place.
And if Donald Trump is president even eight years, that means the next person in is gonna undo what the president did here, and then we would be back with Obamacare, no.
Yeah, but the problem is we had six senators who voted to repeal it in twenty fifteen.
I brought up the exact vote this time.
I brought uh I made them vote on the exact same vote again.
And and exact same bill.
And it would have revealed the repealed the employer mandate, the individual mandate, would have repealed all of the taxes, would have been a trillion dollar tax cut as well.
We could have done it with just Republicans, but we lost Republicans who were for it and then got weak need and voted against it.
So this is a real problem.
And we're struggling as a Republican Party trying to determine who we are anymore.
We've got a budget battle going on, and I told the president that I want to help the President on the budget, and I said I will vote for the budget as long as the spending doesn't exceed the caps.
But guess who's asking to exceed the caps?
John McCain.
John McCain and Lindsey Graham.
Both of them are insisting that we exceed the caps and that we spend money that is above the caps that we put in place.
And so we have conservative Republicans saying, no, no, the budget should stay within the the the spending caps, but then you have John McCain and Lindsay Graham saying, oh no, no, we want to spend above the caps, and we won't vote for any budget unless it spends above the caps.
Well, I I've got to understand that you said something that I've been saying now for a while, and that is the Republican Party does not have an identity any longer.
They really don't have an identity.
Well, there's a fake identity.
There's the identity that every congressman, every senator goes home on the Republican side and they say, We absolutely need entitlement reform.
And it's going to be in the budget, entitlement reform.
But mark my words, they will not do it.
They will not introduce any bills that will reform entitlements because they're afraid of their own shadow.
The the actual budget has like six trillion dollars worth of savings on on entitlements, but it's a fiction.
They will not do it.
Their savings for next year, and so this week when we get to the budget, I will introduce an amendment that says the instructions for the budget should allow us to do entitlement reform.
And you watch this vote.
It's going to be interesting to watch the Republicans squirm because they'll all say they're for it, but I promise you they'll vote against the amendment.
They will not vote to allow budget reconciliation to be used for entitlement reforms.
So then I th you sound like me.
I mean, because I agree with you about Lindsey Graham.
I agree with you about John McCain.
I actually retweeted you last night.
I bet you're not even aware of it, are you?
Well, I am, but I am you caught me today.
I'm I'm upset today.
I'm mad, I'm mad at Republicans who really don't believe in anything they say that.
Well, join the club because I've been saying this, shouting this on TV and radio for months and months.
They suck and they have no identity and they don't work, and they have no vision for the future of this country.
I mean, it's pathetic the Republican Party.
I mean, it's worse than no identity, it's a false identity.
They project that they are for spirituality.
You mean why don't you say it a different way?
They're lying.
They're lying.
They lie.
When they said repeal and replace, there were a hundred Republicans in the House that never had any intention.
Those seven Senators that voted to repeal in 2015, and you all you needed them to do was vote for the same bill in 2016 when it would have happened, and they didn't do it.
So they were lying to the American people.
Isn't that true?
It's nonstop.
This goes on you you it just every day.
It's it's one more thing.
But I promise you they are going to vote for a budget that says they'll do entitlement reform, but I'm gonna force an amendment vote, and on the amendment I will say, okay, let's have instructions in the bill as to how we could do entitlement reform with a simple majority through budget reconciliation, and I guarantee they'll all vote no.
We're also gonna do it on Obamacare.
I'm gonna insist that they revisit Obamacare on the budget, and I'm gonna say, let's put instructions in there that says that we can still repeal Obamacare.
I'm guessing that most of the Republican leadership will vote against me on both of those amendments.
Well, I'm guessing you're probably right.
So now we're stuck with what?
Now the president signaled today that he might be willing to cut a bipartisan deal to stabilize Obamacare because it's spiraling out of control.
He called it a quote, short-term solution, uh so we don't have to worry about this transition into what you encouraged him to do.
And he spoke for, you know, minutes after he met with Lamar Alexander and Patty Murray.
And those are not two people I have any confidence in.
And I'm gonna tell you the worst of them all is is your fellow Kentucky Senator, Mitch McConnell, who can't get a darn thing done.
We shouldn't bail out Obamacare.
I won't vote to bail out Obamacare.
We shouldn't give the insurance companies any more money.
What should happen is the people who are trapped in the individual market should be allowed to leave, should be allowed to get group insurance through these health associations.
We should do everything possible to speed it up.
And I can tell you I was with the president for uh, you know, a good while the other day, and the president said he's gonna try to speed this up.
He wants people to as soon as possible be allowed to leave these individual markets, these Obamacare markets.
He wants them to get group insurance cross state lines, and he's telling his people to expedite this and do it as fast as they possibly can.
Let me play your fellow Kentucky Senator Mitch McConnell talking about excessive expectations, because I don't think they were excessive expecting repealing and replacing Obamacare, and I don't think it's excessive to get tax reform that we need in this country to get to jumpstart the economy and incentivize businesses to invest in factories and manufacturing centers and energy so that we can get the forgotten men and women in poverty on food stamps and out of the labor force, you know, back climbing the trajectory to success.
Here's what he says.
Which uh I find extremely irritating.
And I'm going to tell you why.
Congress goes on for two years.
And part of the reason I think that the storyline is that we haven't done much is because, in part, the president and others have set these early timelines about things need to be done by a certain point.
Now our new president has not been in this line of work before.
And I think excessive expectations about how quickly things happen in the Democratic process.
And so part of the reason I think people feel like we're underperforming is because too many kind of artificial deadlines on uh unrelated to the reality of the complexity of legislative may not have been fully understood, And of course, our political adversaries would love to say that any time.
So what I'm asking of you is to judge.
This Congress when it finishes.
How much have we done to make America competitive again and to grow again?
And that's part of America.
Make an America great again, which is what uh the president talks about so much.
Artificial deadlines, complexity of legislation, excessive expectations.
The president hasn't been in this line of work before.
Now there was a kumbaya moment between the president and Mitch McConnell.
I don't believe it for a second, Rand Paul.
I I couldn't uh disagree more on that this is an artificial deadline.
We've had six years.
We voted previously to repeal it.
What has to happen is voters in the states of the six or seven senators who changed their vote need to let their people know loud and clear, go back and do what you promised.
You promised to repeal it.
We promised to repeal it.
We didn't ever promise that we were going to replace it with Obamacare Light.
We promised to repeal the damn thing, and we ought to vote, and I'm gonna continue to force them to vote as many times as I possibly can on repealing the thing.
Well, I mean they won't but they're not gonna do it.
But they're not gonna do it.
I mean, that's the perhaps it sends it but perhaps it sends a message back to their voters that their voters need to reassess their choices.
I want to go back to this issue with John McCain, who took a jab at the president when he criticized uh, you know, nationalism of the president.
And you know, you went after John McCain, I thought rightly so on this.
You know, after what happened in Vietnam, we lost 58,000 Americans, then through the prism of politics, we stopped fighting and we we basically pull out after so many people die.
We did the same thing in Iraq.
Five thousand people dead, we pull out.
If we don't have any intention to fight and win wars, why are we fighting them anymore?
And I think this is really the problem.
This is where John McCain's had it completely wrong.
He's been he's wanted to be involved.
If he had his way, we'd be in twelve different wars right now in twelve different countries, but we wouldn't declare any of them.
One of the rate ways that our founding fathers said that we would unify and that we would rally around the flag is that we would vote as a body in Congress, and we just wouldn't go to war unless we voted in Congress.
George Bush actually, even though I disagreed with the Iraq War, he did come and he voted.
We voted on the Iraq War.
I would have voted with him on the Afghanistan war because those people harbored those who attacked us.
So but both times he came to Congress and voted.
Since then we don't vote.
We just went on decade after decade, and McCain and Lindsay Graham are the chief architects of these wars.
They have never met a war they don't like, they were everywhere all the time agitating for war.
They're bankrupting the country, and yet we fight in a half-assed way, and we are policing and we become policemen.
Look, I've talked to our Navy SEALs.
These these are some some some great guys, and when you talk to them, they say we'll do anything that you need us to do, anywhere around the world, any time.
but the mistake comes when you ask us to go plant the flag and create countries for you because we're not policemen, we don't want to be policemen and we don't want to be into nation building.
But that's John McCain, Lindsey Graham.
Nation building wars everywhere.
Well, I'm gonna tell you something.
I mean, if we're not gonna fight wars with any intention of winning them, then let's not put these guys in harm's way to begin with.
And what happens every time now we fight we begin a conflict which we can win, but we we we literally put handcuffs on our soldiers, the rules of engagement they can't fight back, and number two, I mean, w we we don't have the stomach politically to see it through.
And all those people that put us in those positions are running for the hills if it becomes politically unviable in their eyes.
It's all about how it affects them.
It's not about what the right thing to do is.
Well, and I think we have to be you're right.
We have to go in and when we do go to war, it should be rare, and when we do go to war, we should go to win.
But then we really do have to come home.
To tell you the truth, we've been in Afghanistan for fifteen years now.
It is nothing more than nation building.
If they will not stand up and fight for their country after we've given them billions of dollars of of weapons and uniforms and you name it, we've given it to 'em.
And if they can't stand up and fight for their country, they're never gonna have one.
So it's sort of a little bit like welfare.
You can't give people welfare forever because it saps their incentive.
It's the same way with supporting foreign countries.
They have to eventually stand up and fight for themselves.
And in Afghanistan, it is time.
Obama put a hundred thousand troops in there, and you know, the Taliban slink away, but they go and they wait and they wait.
They will always wait.
They will wait for a thousand years.
The people who live there need to stand up and fight the Taliban if they're gonna fight 'em.
But uh we can't do their business forever.
I like Rand Paul Med.
You should stay mad more often.
You're you're definitely more effective when you're pissed off.
But by the way, my staff says I do a better show when I'm pissed off.
All right, thank you for being with us.
Dion Warwick, renowned entertainer, performer of all time, joins us right now.
Michael Francis is with us.
He plays the pastor in the movie Let There Be Light.
Kevin Sorbo is the main star in the movie, and he's the horrible person that makes a transformation.
Um welcome all of you to the to the program.
Dion Warwick, I've been a fan of yours since I was young.
Your voice is amazing.
You being in this project has added so much to it, and I can't tell you how beautiful that song is.
That's amazing.
Could you tell us about the song?
Yeah, how are you, first of all?
I'm good, except my voice is a little shot from screaming last night at this uh Vegas Strong concert.
Uh-huh.
I anyway.
Well, the song uh very very proud of, written by my son Damon Elliott.
And his vision was to literally let people know that there is a a solution.
And as it turns out, he he called me and says, Mommy, I need your voice.
I say, okay.
And I did.
I did my part on on it.
But he also recruited some m most incredible talents to participate as well.
Uh you'll hear Gladys Knight, who is just over the moon as far as I'm concerned, with what she gave to the project.
Uh the young lady named Maya, Billy Ray Cyrus.
I mean, he just went all out to get people who had the same mindset with regards to what the film was about and his his vision as to what he thought the song represented.
So I could not be prouder of being a part of this project and more proud of the fact that my baby was the one who can came up with the idea.
Well, he has a beautiful heart, obviously.
If he put that together, I mean the words in that song really touch people.
Uh Kevin, let me go to you.
I never thought I'd or dreamed I'd really be in the music business.
And I remember watching your hit movie, God's Not Dead.
And I remember interviewing you at the time, and I said, you know, if there's ever a project, maybe we can do one together.
And you and Sam, your wife, and Dan Gordon came to my office one day.
I don't think we talked more than fifteen, twenty minutes, and you told me the whole story of Let There Be Light, and I just fell in love with the story.
And and f we've just been working on the project ever since.
I mean, it's an ama uh the the end product, it's one of the things I'm most proud of in my entire career because I think this is a movie that needed to be made.
It's contemporary, it touches people's hearts.
It's everything that I think Hollywood doesn't do.
It's it's about real issues, real life crisis and conflict that people have, and it also offers a good message for people that I think is often ignored out of Hollywood.
So you know, I was only too honored to join with you to do it, and um from your end, you guys did a fabulous job.
Well, thank you.
And it is interesting how whole thing came together because you know m my wife Sam came up with the idea.
She started writing the script.
She brought in Dan Gordon, who's a dear friend, and uh people may know Dan or may not know him, but he's one of the top writers in Hollywood.
He wrote uh Hurricane with Denzel Washington, wrote wider for Kevin Costner.
But anyway, Sam and got together, finished the script.
I read the script.
Three days later, you called me and said, Hey, I'm ready to do this.
I'm gonna do something.
You guys have anything.
And my wife says that's my script.
We flew up to New York.
Dan Gordon did the pitching, and in that 20 minutes that Dan talked, you didn't interrupt him once.
I thought we should have done the documentary on that, because I thought that was pretty amazing.
You were spellbound by the script and the story that he had to tell.
Listen, I've I've learned that there's some of the movie business, I don't like the business part of it, but what you guys have created, the artistic part of it.
You know, I have now shown this to over 200 people.
I've done my own focus groups, and you actually have up on your website, you know, some testimonials of some sh airings that we've had, focus groups with people, and it's unbelievable.
Ninety-eight percent of people that see this movie cry.
And you start out as a very conflicted individual that hates God, aborting God, and then we find out the reason why.
And and you're living a life that really you shouldn't be living in.
You left your family and you're drinking too much and you're doing drugs, and and we find out the reason you wrote aborting God.
Um, and you had lost a son at nine years old.
And the transformation is amazing.
Part of that transformation comes when you m meet with Michael uh Francis, who has one of the most incredible life stories of anybody, because he is a real life pastor.
Michael, welcome to the program.
And you grew up the son of a notorious underboss in the Colombo Fi Crime family, and your own father at one point in your life signed off on a hit on you, and you found yourself in isolation in prison and and your life changed.
Yeah, Sean, it's good to be back on again.
I just want to mention really uh something real quick.
Uh Dion Warwick, she doesn't remember, I'm sure, but she played at my prompt.
My dad actually uh brought me to Copacabana that night in 69.
And uh we all had a great time.
Yeah, yeah, it was way better.
As long as they had a good time, that's all that matters.
It was great.
It was terrific.
Well, yeah, Sean, I was uh I was very attracted to the script.
Uh, I'm really into apologetics.
I love Kevin.
And uh I'll be honest with you, I never acted before.
They had to twist my arm to do it because I I've been myself in documentaries.
But uh I said, listen, I'll do it as long as I don't ruin the film.
I you know, I was playing myself, so it was uh it was pretty easy, and they're a great cast and a great crew, and and I think it's a wonderful story.
I think people are really gonna be touched by it.
Very entertaining, very well done.
But you're also a pastor in real life now.
How long have you been a pastor?
Well, no, I'm not a pastor, Sean.
I I go out, you know, throughout the world and share my testimony.
So I I mean I'm not ordained or anything like that.
Okay.
Which I think uh, you know, it could be a benefit because uh, you know, I tell people I'm I'm just you, you know, we all have a story to tell.
Mine might be a little bit more dramatic, but at the end of the day, you know, it's a story about Christ's mercy and grace in my life, and there's no doubt in my mind that uh he saved my life.
He put a woman in my life that led me to Christ and over the past 20 years, had so many challenges and struggles, but he got me through all of it, and uh, you know, I'm just happy to tell the story uh whenever I can.
You know, Kevin, one of the other reasons I wanted to be a part of the project besides the great story, and once we agreed to do the film, once I took on my executive producer role, I I'm a big believer you let people do their job.
And you know, you told me where you're gonna be filming, you told me what the schedule you're gonna be on.
We went over the script, we did everything that we're supposed to do.
And then when I started getting the first pictures and first cuts, I began to say, It this is something magical happening here.
And I I don't know if you've had the same experience, but everybody I've shown the film to, they all cry, and it touches people deeply.
That doesn't happen enough when I go to the movies.
I like to be moved and touched and mo and inspired and and so on and so forth.
Well, this is a movie about redemption, it's a move about faith, it's a movie about hope.
And you know, we've been doing quite a few screens and getting testimonials.
We were just in Washington, D.C. last week at the Value Voters Summit there, and it was amazing the responses from people coming out.
Sam was doing the testimonials on camera.
I was uh talking to people, answering questions, and uh just just you know, answering anything they had to say, but there was a group of teenagers that walked out, and they're about 15, 16 years old, and one of the boys in that group, I over overheard him say that is the best movie I've ever seen.
And to get that from a teenage kid, where all they want to do is go see visual effects movies that you don't care about character development, you don't care about what happens to people.
You see thousands of people die in these smash them up movies.
This is a movie that is real life and it's gonna touch people.
It's gonna there's something for everybody in this movie.
They'll be able to relate to it, they'll be able to take something from it.
And I don't want to preach to the choir with this movie.
You know, I want I want atheists to go, I want agnostics to go.
I want people to get up there and look at this movie with an open mind and open heart and come away with what they come away with.
Because I know it's gonna touch them.
I just gotta tell you, it's uh it's been an honor to do this project with you.
It opens one week from today.
We have a special airing of it at Trinity Life Center.
Then I'm going to be out and on the road this weekend.
I'm gonna be in Dallas for two church services with Dr. Robert Jeffers at his church, and I'm excited about that.
Then we're gonna go see my buddy Darryl Scott, who is in Cleveland.
But anyway, let there be lightmovie.com and also Hannity.com for theaters.
Uh Dion Warwick, I've always loved your work, God bless you.
Thank you, and your your son did an amazing job.
Michael, it's great to talk to you again.
And Kevin, we'll have you on TV next week.
We look forward to that too.
Thank you.
So we have a lot of news as it relates to the Clintons and the Democrats and money that they got from Harvey Weinstein.
I mean, it is pretty uh the the amount of money we're talking about is pretty insane.
And uh anyway, so we have some new statistics out here, and and some of them are pretty shocking.
And one of them, for example, is that all the money that was given by Weinstein to the DNC, they're keeping ninety percent of the money.
The Clinton Foundation is keeping two hundred and fifty thousand dollars of the money.
You know, now Weinstein questions have Bill and Hillary and Chelsea on the run, and Hillary actually made some comments this weekend, and let me play them for you.
You are a beacon of feminism.
You talk of you know to women's rights.
You knew Harvey Weinstein well.
And what stage?
And you must have known the rumors about him, Harvey will be Harvey.
I'm not no, I did not.
I I did not.
But everyone knew rumors about not specific cases, but everyone knew that Harvey Weinstein, apparently, in his circle, um, was a little bit, you know.
Well, I all I can tell you is that I did not hear those things.
Look, we just elected a person who admitted sexual assault to the presidency.
Uh so there's a lot of other issues that are swirling around these uh kinds of behaviors that need to be addressed.
And I think it's uh important that we stay focused and shine a bright spotlight and try to get people to understand how damaging this is, and the women coming forward is the only way that that story will be told.
This kind of behavior cannot be tolerated anywhere.
And this depends upon women coming forward and having the courage to come forward.
And yet in your book, the three women brought on to stage by Trump attacking your husband, and you kind of dismiss them.
Was that the right thing to do?
Are you sure about that?
Well, yes, because that had all been litigated.
I mean, that was the subject of a huge uh you know, investigation, as you might recall in the late nineties, and uh there were conclusions drawn, and that was clearly in the past.
Um, but it is something that has to be taken seriously, as I say for everyone, not just for those in entertainment right now.
Oh, really?
Were they litigated?
Not really.
And the case, yeah, you did have to pay Paula Jones eight hundred and fifty thousand dollars, but Hillary was part of the effort, and now we find out Harvey Weinstein helped bankroll the Clinton Lewinsky defense at the time.
And remember the treatment of Kathleen Willie and Jennifer Flowers and and Paula Jones and Juanita Broderick.
Really?
Just apply all of those words to her husband who was in the White House, and she knew it, she defended him to the nth degree and said, and and they smeared and slandered every one of those woman women.
And then of course she takes c millions and millions of dollars from countries where women are told how to dress, they can't drive, they can't vote, they can't travel, that marital rape is not a crime in these countries, and even domestic abuse is not a crime in these countries, where gays and lesbians are often killed just for being who they are.
And then, of course, you have you know, Christians and Jews.
You can't build the temple in Saudi Arabia, you can't build uh Christian church in Saudi Arabia, and she took tens of millions of dollars from those countries, and they bought her silence because she doesn't say a word about it.
What a phony.
Anyway, joining us now is Tracy Melcure is with us.
She's an actress, entertainer, best known for her roles on One Life to Live, The Bold, Beautiful, and Sunset Beach, author of the book, Breaking the Perfect Ten.
Kaya Jones, formerly with the Pussycat dolls, uh, who has a great single out now, by the way, here to discuss the ongoing allegations of Weinstein, and she was quoted over the weekend as saying that when she was working and singing for the Pussycat dolls, they were basically hired prostitutes who are owned and controlled by those with the money.
Kaya, welcome to the program.
Hi, thanks, Don.
So t when what do you mean?
So you were part of a very successful band.
The Pussycat dolls.
Okay.
What do you mean what do you mean it was like a prostitution ring?
When I say that, what I mean is that prostitution is accepting money for sex.
And I what literally what I meant was we girls that wanted to sing, just like many girls in this business want to sing or they want to act, and we're propositioned, and in order to move forward in your career, you're given uh an ultimatum or an opportunity to sleep with an executive or be pushed onto somebody in a high platform in this business.
That's exactly what I meant.
Um whether it's a job or you're taking cash, what is the difference?
Prostitution is prostitution.
Well, I and so, but would you did you ever feel you were forced to sleep with people if you wanted your career to move forward?
100%.
And I chose not to, which is why I've had to do it independently.
This whole road has been a hard journey of struggling, not having funding, having to do it on my own, creating my own work, working with producers, finding them on my own.
I walked away from the pussy cat dolls because I was not willing to outsleep my bandmate.
Wow.
They all need to come forward.
They all need to come forward.
They all knew.
And our dead mother who controlled us, she knew too.
Everybody did.
That is so sad.
Have you run in have you run into good people that that like your talent, your voice, your performances, and and just are in it because they like what you do.
Oh, of course, you know, yes, there are good people in this business.
It's hard to find them.
Um most people that have had to turn a blind eye or walk away from situations.
You know, I've come into contact with now.
I think it's a beautiful time right now.
There's a movement in this country of a lot of love and God, and you can feel the energy of positive affirmations coming forward, which is why all of these people are being exposed because they're downright evil, what they do to young women and to young men.
So this is in the music business, the modeling business, the television business and the movie business.
It's everywhere.
Oh, it's everywhere, and that's why you're seeing it all with this colluding with you know Congress and people in government, because it it literally, you know, look at the Hillary Clinton campaign.
It's all of these celebrities up, but she had no idea.
Come on now.
Everybody is friends with each other.
You know, you utilize celebrities to get your narrative out because they have a poll or they have a focus.
So everybody's friends with each other, and they of course they know.
Wow.
Now, Tracy, you have a heartbreaking story in your experience as an actress.
Let me play an exchange.
It's a little hard to hear uh of you being on Larry King Live and what you said in this interview.
This is back in 2005.
Listen to this.
My sister and I have met a couple of guys on an airplane, and we went to this they invited us back to their apartment or something after.
Yeah, and I don't even really remember what or where.
So it was it's all foggy um at this point.
How we got in this situation with these guys.
But we just met them, and they'd invited us back to their apartment.
There was two guys and my sister, and we went with them.
And um it was you know, when I drink it to Kira, this big rather bang.
I'm proud of that.
But the next thing I knew, and I I I really believed that there was some sort of a drug drug or something in either the pot was raised or something because the feeling was so bizarre.
It was um I I felt like I passed out.
I thought I was gonna pass out passed out, and I wake up in a bedroom with the guy, and he's helping me.
But I am physically unable to speak to stop and to move my body in any way.
But I'm completely aware of what's going on.
No.
Why not?
I guess the same reason most people don't.
It's it's um the shame, the shame of it.
Like, well, why was I there?
Smoking pot and drinking to cure.
Yeah, I was attracted to him, and I was what was I thinking, and I felt like I deserved it in a sense.
And um mentally.
It just yeah.
Well, actually, no, it it just further cemented my belief that you know, your physical body and your feelings just need to be suppressed.
Tracy, so you were raped in this incident and you it sounds like what was alleged with Bill Cosby that so they drugged you and you're half you know dazed and confused, and the next thing you know, you wake up and somebody's raping you when you're in a bedroom that you don't even know how you got there.
Exactly.
And it's horrible when I listen back to that, you know, because you grow up and you understand more and everything, and it's like I I it's just so sad because I think so many of these women, and I don't know if Kaya can relate, but I mean I had so many issues from my childhood where I didn't feel like I had self-worth and I just wanted to matter.
I wanted to be important, and I realized at a very young age, as a woman, you are never more valuable than when you're naked, and you never have as much of that male attention that you know, like I was craving from father figures.
You you you're number one to a guy when you're standing in front of him naked.
And that was like the payoff for me was like nothing is gonna distract this guy from me right now.
I matter.
And that's what I crave.
That's the I'm listening here as a guy, and what you know, and I have sisters and I have a daughter, and that this is a father's worst nightmare, what you're both describing.
And quick break, right back, we'll continue.
All right, as we continue with Tracy Melcure and Kaya Jones, who have experienced a lot of what we've been discussing regarding Harvey Weinstein, and it's more common than anybody knows.
This is the casting couch syndrome, is that they bring you in and and let's say you have a naturally talented ability to sing like Kaya or or Tracy, you had a natural ability to be an actress.
And so you brought in and you're you put on the casting couch, and immediately you begin to realize that oh, you can get the job, you'll get the gig, but there's a quid pro quo associated with that.
How often did you both experience that?
To me, it was never quite direct like that, but it was we it you know that your connections in the industry are how it works.
You know, it's who you know, right?
Um so it was just for me.
I wanted to associate with them.
And the first time was I was out at a club in Hollywood with a girlfriend, and the guy came up to us and he's like, You're too pretty to wait in line.
Do you guys want to get into the club?
I can get you in.
And we're like, Yeah, sure.
Well, next thing you know, we're sitting next to a very well-known Hollywood producer, and you know, we're kind of schmoozed the whole night.
And I was with my girlfriend, but the guy gave me his card at the end, and he's like, I can get you into a lot of other places and meet a lot of people.
And I was like, Oh, wow, okay.
And you know, I was like, Is he like a manager?
And he kind of like acted like he was the manager, but he was more of a handler.
And it was like, hey, oh hey, so we're going to this restaurant, meet us, and that's how it started.
And the next thing you know, you're back at their house, you and a group, and you're all like having a good time.
Yeah.
Oh, yeah.
Uh you know, you're by yourself with two executives and one of the girls from the group, and you're at a house, you know, in Malibu, and you're like, what are we doing here?
And where are their wives and where is the rest of the the girls?
I wanted to just say I I had somebody who at twelve years old was the first time I was assaulted.
It was an 18-year-old boy at an older sister, she had friends over.
They were all and this guy wandered off into where I was watching TV and attempted to rape me.
And I um somebody came in at the very last second.
Um, and I just I think it's really important to differentiate the difference like sexual assault, I feel like it's such a broad term, and it's kind of thrown around, almost like I there used to be a joke I heard where what's the difference between sexual assault and flirting?
It's if he's cute.
And I think it's important because some people I hear now, everybody's like, Oh, I've been assaulted, and their stories are pretty mild in my you know what I mean?
And I don't mean to discredit them, but you're you're talking about being a victim of real assault, real rape and really dang dangerous situations.
Um it's so sad to hear this.
It it breaks my heart and it just is It's painful to hear it and it's it I can only imagine the the pain and the trauma you'll live with.
I don't guess that you really ever get over trauma like this.
Kaya, do you get I mean I know you're tough, but do you ever get over?
I couldn't imagine it.
No, I don't think I don't think that you can ever get over being violated or uh mistreated in any circumstance.
A lot of my mental state and of uh what I feel that I have had to, you know, overcome is the mental and emotional abuse that came along with the sexual advances, you know, having to try and get through certain seeds that are planted in your mind, and you allow them to grow, but they are planted, and they're planted by people in powerful positions that are holding your dreams.
And so you in some way think equates, like if I don't tell, then you know, loose slips things shift, and I can continue in this company or business, and you and you play on those narratives where I'm finally speaking out because I you know saw what Rose came out and said.
I've been speaking out since two thousand and five.
So disgusting.
I mean, Tracy, I want to get your your last thoughts on this.
And I disagree with Kaya.
I think you can get over it.
I I took uh a big part for me getting over it with taking responsibility for my part in it.
I well but wait, why are you blaming yourself though?
I mean, I don't know but somebody blaming myself, but just starting to change how I engage and putting myself in those positions, right?
And I became a Christian.
I felt all of that could be washed away.
I put all my faith and my hope and everything in God now.
And yeah, when I talk about it, I mean I had to call my best friend and cry on the phone with her before I could do this interview.
Um there's still pain there, but I feel like I you're not a forever victim.
You know, um But there's still there's still there's still a raw nerve here.
I mean, I hear it in your voice.
I've known you for a while, and yeah.
I mean, I hear pain.
I hear trauma, I hear uh.
Well, I think I do too.
I just want to give hope.
I don't want to be like, oh my gosh, you know, I just I'm not a victim card type person, and I just really want if there are girls listening that there is hope.
That it's not like forever.
I have I've been married for 18 years.
Can I just add one thing to this?
There are good people out there, and there it there is a lesson for girls.
Never put what you want above what is right for you.
In other words, yeah, maybe you want a music career, modeling career, movie career, TV career.
But if you're not gonna be working with good people, don't sell your soul for any opportunity because it's not worth it.
Thank you both for I know it's painful to share your story, but it brings to life exactly what we're talking about and what so many women have gone through and how this is so institutional.
As I said it last week, this is the tip of the iceberg.
All right, Ch Tracy, we appreciate you being with us, same Kaya.
We'll see you both on TV tonight.
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