Sean Hannity Show - Flynn On Hot Seat - 12.1

Dec. 2, 2017 - Sean Hannity Show

01:39:13

Flynn On Hot Seat - 12.1

Mark Simone fills in for Sean and spends a lot of time on the news that General Flynn has decided to testify in the Russian scandal. Fox News contributor Greg Jarrett lends some thoughts on just how "ethically questionable" the Mueller prosecution has been. The Sean Hannity is live weekdays from 3 pm to 6 pm ET on iHearRadio and Hannity.com. Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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	Well, how are you doing?
	It's Mark Simone.
	Normally I'm here on our big uh New York affiliate, W-O-R.
	Sean, what a day to take off, but smartest singing.
	Smart move.
	Sean will be back on Monday.
	We have we got lots to talk about.
	We'll get to General Flynn.
	We'll go over the whole situation, all the details, everything you need to know.
	We'll get to Matt Lauer, uh, everything you need to know, and then some things you'll wish you never heard about this Matt Lauer.
	We'll get to the tax plan, we'll get to the NFL.
	Uh we'll get to the uh next person who's gonna be uh caught in sexual harassment.
	I don't know who it is, but it's a three-hour show.
	Somebody will be caught before this is over.
	It'll be song.
	I guarantee you before the show's over, somebody will come out.
	Uh Congressman Conyers may have a press conference.
	We'll bring it to you live if it happens.
	If I were him, I would uh just go into hiding.
	Just do an Al Franken.
	Anytime anybody says anything, I'm deeply embarrassed, I'm ashamed, I'm uh uh that Al Franken.
	How many apologies is this now?
	Like thousands and thousands.
	We could close the deficit.
	We just had a dollar for every time this guy apologizes.
	So uh General Flynn, uh where do we even begin?
	It was uh this morning that it uh leaked out.
	This uh Mueller investigation loves to leak, so it they leaked it out first that General Flynn would plead guilty, and he did earlier this morning.
	He uh went into a courtroom, pled guilty, so I guess that makes him uh convicted now.
	Uh the deal is he will testify.
	He will become a witness for Mueller, and in exchange for that, he will get prison time from zero to six months.
	If his cooperation, uh his testimony, if everything holds up, uh it'll most likely be zero, but at the most, at the most it would be six months, but it's probably zero.
	Uh here's the thing about Mueller, he has absolutely most likely absolutely no case.
	Nothing.
	He's uncovered absolutely nothing.
	All you can do in a case like that when you uncover nothing is try to indicate people on anything.
	You get Manafort on a crime from back in the nineties or from his lobbying days, you find some financial thing he did, and you indic him on that.
	You threaten to send him to prison unless he gives you something on this case.
	So even though you found nothing in this case, by doing that to him and you indict his associate, you fet threaten to send them To prison if they don't give you something on this case, because you can't find it.
	Maybe he can give it to you.
	And if you've really got no case, then you bust into Manafort's house at four in the morning with guns drawn.
	His wife and uh Manafort and his wife are in bed, you put the guns right in their face.
	This is when you've got no case at all.
	If you got a great case and you found stuff, you don't have to pull any of this stuff.
	So in the case of General Flynn, if you want to get something on him, you indict his son.
	You go after his children, you get them in a legal noose, and then you threaten to indict his son unless he cooperates.
	And very often what they do in these FBI interrogations, they'll come interview you for three hours.
	Then they'll come back a week later and interview you for three hours.
	Then they'll come back a week later and interview you for three hours.
	Then they'll carefully compare all these transcripts to find any discrepancy.
	If there's one syllable uh discrepancy, you've got a problem.
	Uh by the way, it's interesting to note with the Hillary uh interrogation, they didn't make notes.
	Because that's when you can trap them in a perjury thing.
	That's why they deliberately didn't make notes.
	So uh but uh somehow Flynn got himself caught up in something, probably not the best uh attorneys on that, because that's what an attorney will do.
	Make sure you don't say anything that could be considered lying to the FBI, because that's where he's charged.
	He's not charged with any specific crime, but what they call a process crime, somewhere in the process he lied.
	So that's what he's charged with.
	Now there's probably other charges.
	That's something that's another thing they do when they have no case.
	They don't charge you with everything.
	Sometimes you'll say, well, if it was really that bad, why didn't they charge that they hold those charges back and they let you know they're holding them back.
	For instance, here's another thing you do when you have no case.
	In the case of Paul Manafort, a lot of people are saying, well, if he really did all that stuff with the money, how come they didn't charge him with tax evasion?
	They deliberately didn't do that.
	They're holding that one back.
	And the reason they hold that one back is the only thing Manafort could say is I'll get a presidential pardon, I don't have to worry.
	But they're holding the tax charge, and if he got a presidential pardon, they'll go ahead with the tax charge, but they'll do it locally.
	They'll do it in New York State, and the presidential pardon won't apply.
	So these are the kind of things you have to do when you have to terrify people into talking.
	And sometimes, even if they haven't got anything, you know what?
	They'll make up something, they'll come up with something.
	Or uh when you've got them terrified and you're going to put their kid in jail, you could say to them, didn't the president uh direct you to do that?
	And you'd say, Yeah, yeah, I think so.
	Oh, you'll testify to that.
	Yeah, I think so.
	So sometimes you get that kind of a situation.
	So uh here's the problem with uh uh General Flynn.
	It looks like everything they're talking about, and what they're talking about is that at some point he spoke to the Russian ambassador or spoke to somebody Russian and tried to say, you know what, but don't do anything yet on the sanctions.
	In other words, started uh setting up communication.
	But from everything they've uh said so far, it's after the election.
	So it's the president elect.
	Now you could find some law where technically you're not supposed to do that till you're actually the president.
	But if you ever got in front of a jury, I don't think they'd worry about that little technicality.
	Uh average juror would say to himself, you know what, he's the president-elect.
	Uh he's basically just sending a message to Russia.
	You're like, hold off, wait till we get in office, and we'll it won't sound too outlandish to a jury.
	So I can't see a jury convicting anybody uh on that.
	You remember the famous clip of uh President Obama where he leans over to the Russian ambassador before the election and says, Tell Vladimir after the election, I'll have more flexibility.
	audio.
	That Jason is so slow.
	It took him like half a millisecond to find the clip.
	Getting old, what do you want?
	So uh that's the other thing.
	If you ever went to a courtroom, they would just play this clip of President Obama.
	He did exactly the same thing.
	And then the Mueller people will argue, but technically you can't do it unless you're the actual president.
	A president elect can't do it.
	But to the average juror, they're really not going to be bothered by that little technicality.
	I I don't see any conviction here.
	Uh should the president worry?
	Well, if you it depends.
	If you watch Fox, that's a little another little chess move in the game.
	But uh I I I had more fun just for an hour watching MSNBC.
	The president is practically in the electric chair if you watch MSNBC.
	They're Talking about the exposure he faces.
	This is the uh this has never been anything like this.
	This is unbelievable.
	The firing of Comey.
	That's the other thing.
	This all supposedly goes to the firing of Comey.
	He fired Comey to protect Flynn.
	Well, let's say you ever did get into a courtroom.
	All you'd have to do is run a video.
	It's up on uh YouTube.
	There's a montage of every major Democrat demanding that Comey be fired.
	This is the day before, the week before.
	They all demanded Comey be fired.
	You just show that to a jury.
	Every Democrat, everybody was calling for Comey to be fired.
	The only question was why did he wait?
	Why didn't he fire him uh the day after he took office?
	So I I don't see how any of this would would mean much in front of a jury.
	But let me know what you think.
	1-800-941 Sean is the number.
	1-800-941 Sean.
	It's a strange world, isn't it?
	You're trying so hard to put General Flynn in jail.
	But Bo Bergdahl, eh?
	You can go.
	You didn't do anything.
	What a world we live in.
	So uh we got lots to get to.
	We'll get to, of course, get back to uh uh General Flynn throughout the program.
	Remind me to get to Al Franken.
	Uh you know, they said uh this now uh how many are we?
	Six.
	Six accusers of Al Franken, the sixth accuser.
	And it's getting worse for Al Franken.
	The last one was an a f a lawmaker, they just keep saying a lawmaker.
	Somebody in Congress, or may it might have been a local legislator, but they keep saying a lawmaker.
	She's anonymous, but she's the sixth accuser.
	The fifth accuser is a military uh uh woman, a veteran.
	So this doesn't look good.
	This looks pretty bad for Al Franken.
	He's gotta go.
	He's gonna be out by uh I'd say January, somewhere by January, he'll be gone.
	He'll have to resign.
	He just uh can't face it.
	As I said, uh Congressman Conyers will hold a press conference bringing that live when that happens.
	I I assume when you hold a press conference, you're gonna resign, but everybody keeps saying, oh, he's gonna he's gonna hold his press conference and say he's gonna fight till the end.
	Uh it's a little crazy.
	He's already paid off uh accusers, he'd made payments, obviously guilty.
	He's got a long history of this.
	Everybody is has been talking about it for years, so he'll try to hang in there.
	Hey, the other question is, and I keep asking this, nobody can answer this.
	You know, this all started this looking for sexual harassers.
	It was to take out uh, you know, some of those groups they wanted to take out conservative broadcasters.
	So they targeted them.
	And then they they might have gotten a couple, but once you open that can of worms, uh for the last two months, it's been taking out dozens and dozens and dozens of liberals, broadcasters, anchormen, uh people in government.
	So uh if you take the list of everybody that's been caught in all of this, it's 98.9% liberal.
	Now, why is that?
	I don't mean to make this partisan, but it's an interesting question.
	Why is it 98, 99 percent Democratic?
	I could see it being 60 percent Democratic, 70 percent, but why is it almost all Democrats?
	I mean, you could argue well when you get into Hollywood, it's all Democrats there anyway.
	When you get into broadcasting, the networks, that's all Democrats.
	But it's interesting, isn't it?
	And and from what I hear, the next one's coming again, all Democrats.
	So uh let's take a call or two.
	Let's go to Brian in Arizona.
	Brian, how are you doing?
	Yes, pretty good.
	Thanks for taking the call.
	Where are you from?
	Originally from Belfast, Northern Ireland.
	Oh.
	Very good.
	Excuse me, I've got a cold.
	And uh just a cold.
	Um I've lived here in the states from 1979.
	Yeah.
	And we are both legal aliens at the time.
	And we took our American citizenship two years ago on January the 8th on our first vote in the primary was for our sitting president, President Trump, who is doing a fantastic job.
	Oh, well, thanks, Brian.
	Thanks for calling.
	Good call from uh Arizona.
	Yeah, you know, if you just step back, uh totally nonpartisan, you just step back and look at the first year of President Trump.
	The stock market has broken record six times now.
	It's at an all-time high.
	Uh the stock market has added six trillion dollars in value uh in market cap.
	Uh you got uh growth at 3.3%.
	We're praying to get to 3%.
	We're at 3.3%.
	Unemployment at a low that we haven't hit in a million years.
	We're down to 4%.
	It's been a great first year.
	A lot of that is the result of taking out 975 regulations.
	It's been a blockbuster first year as far as jobs, the economy.
	You've got uh all kinds of uh factories, companies coming over to America for the first time.
	You got that deal that he made in China.
	By the way, if you're uh MSNBC viewer, you won't know about this.
	It was not reported, but on that China trip, besides all the other successes, China agreed to invest 250 billion in this country.
	Uh Virginia alone is getting 80 billion of it.
	So I mean, great things have happened in the first year, but everybody makes it look like it's total disaster.
	Uh well, one more call.
	Let's go to Frank in Glendora, California.
	Hey, Frank.
	Hi, how are you doing?
	Good.
	Good talking to you.
	I've never talked to you before.
	I can tell.
	Uh what'd you want to say, Frank?
	Well, uh, I wonder where this is all leading to with the president, because I I know they're trying the abstraction of justice angle.
	Uh uh, but you know, like you said, Mueller uh or uh everyone called for uh Comey to be fired.
	So that's not gonna work.
	What law are they after?
	Is it campaign finance laws?
	Well, you bring up a good question.
	That's a very good question, uh Frank.
	But here's the uh here's the bottom line of all this.
	Comey, uh uh Muller and Comey, I think they're working together, but Muller's been on this for a year.
	We're almost a year into this.
	And at the end of the first year, they found nothing.
	Absolutely nothing.
	If they opened up uh this case and they found all kinds of things going on, you would never hear a leak.
	You wouldn't see anybody get indicted for these little process crimes or getting indicted for something from ten years ago.
	If they had found big things they would keep very quiet, they would hold a press conference one day and announce these big blockbuster things they found, and that would be it.
	But that's not the case.
	They found nothing.
	So when you find nothing, again, you got to go into Manafort's house in the middle of the night with your guns out and try to terrify him.
	You got to indict him on uh money laundering or something like that from his lobbying days from a million years ago, and you got to indict General Flynn's kid and try to uh scare him that way.
	That's when you've got nothing.
	But we'll keep talking about this.
	Mark Simone here.
	Hey, follow me on Twitter, Mark Simone NY at Twitter.
	A lot of stuff up there.
	Mark Simone NY at Twitter.
	And uh Sean will be back on Monday.
	Don't forget Hannity tonight, nine o'clock, Fox News Channel.
	Back in a moment.
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	Hey, welcome back.
	It's Mark Simone here for Sean Hannity.
	Sean will be back on uh Monday.
	So uh you hear about Matt Lauer?
	He's now trying to get 30 million from NBC.
	He wants 30 million dollars.
	You know, in every contract in broadcasting, there's what's called the Morals Clause.
	If you get caught in a terrible scandal and you bring disgrace to the network, they can end the contract.
	They don't have to pay off.
	The contract's voided by that, and there's no uh more dramatic example of uh getting caught in uh uh that's morals clause coming into play.
	So they just fired him.
	They don't have to give him anything.
	But there was a year and a half remaining on the contract, and that would be a year and a half would Be thirty million dollars.
	So he's demanding the money.
	And you're saying to yourself, well, they'll never pay that.
	They don't have to.
	They'll pay it.
	He'll get the money.
	And I'll tell you why.
	Everybody at NBC knew about this.
	Everybody on the Today Show knew about this.
	Everybody running NBC, all those uh people knew about this.
	And they covered it up for years.
	And Matt Lauer can uh pretty much uh document that he can talk about times he's discussed it with them.
	So they need to keep him quiet.
	He'll get his thirty million.
	Eh, maybe they'll negotiate it to 20 million.
	But he could spill the beans on a lot of NBC management and other anchors and uh so he'll probably get the money.
	Hey, Greg Jarrett will be with us.
	He is the great Fox News uh legal analyst.
	So we'll go over General Flynn and exactly uh what could happen here.
	It's Mark Simone for Sean Hannity.
	Sean will be back on Monday.
	We've got a lot coming up.
	Larry Cudlow and more, all later in the show.
	John Conyers may hold a press conference at any moment.
	We'll bring you that live.
	Stay with us, Mark Simone here on the Sean Hannity show.
	The administration's effort to continually dismiss all these figures.
	Uh I'll be anxious to hear what they say when their national security advisor again pleads guilty in terms of of lying to the FBI about his contacts with Russians.
	Do you hear you?
	Let's put this investigation one step closer to proof of collision.
	Listen, I think we have got more work to do, and we're gonna do the take as long as it takes to get all of the facts.
	You know, it it uh we've got a s number of major figures like Donald Trump Jr. and I want to bring back Jared Kushner, particularly in light of some of the supposed comments that General Flynn may have been making.
	Um we've got other individuals like Michael Collins and others that we still need to come back, but I we've got more facts to gather.
	But um there seems to be this you know, we've got now two people pleading guilty.
	We've got a campaign manager and his deputy still under indictment.
	Uh how many more figures have to be brought to justice because of their ties with Russia before we end up connecting all these doctors?
	Hey, it's Mark Simone here for Sean Hannity.
	Uh we got lots to talk about.
	Greg Jarrett, is he one of your favorites now?
	Uh everybody keeps saying that.
	Of course, Greg Jarrett rocks.
	Absolutely.
	Fox News legal analyst all over the place on uh Fox News and uh great to have him here with us.
	Greg Jarrett, how are you doing?
	Mark, pleasure to be with you.
	Hey, uh, am I right?
	You're like you've seen a million of these cases.
	If uh the Muller uh team, if they're leaking stuff out, if they're uh trying to indict people's kids, if they're breaking into your house with guns drawn in the middle of the night, uh that usually indicates they haven't uncovered blockbuster stuff.
	They're trying to squeeze people to get something.
	Is that would that be correct?
	Yeah, I think it's right, and I I think we've seen some rather thugish tactics so far used by Muller and his chief prosecutor, Andrew Weissman, and Weissman in particular has a long and distinguished track record of abusing power and engaging in conduct, which is ethically questionable.
	So that doesn't surprise me.
	But um and and honestly, today's you know, guilty plea by Michael Flynn doesn't surprise me.
	He lied, not once, but twice.
	Lied to the vice president and got fired for it, lied to the FBI, and now he'll be punished under the law.
	You know, the question is whether he'll implicate anybody in the Trump administration, and if so, for what crime?
	I don't see any.
	Why would he lie to the FBI?
	I would assume a guy like this would get himself some top attorneys before he spoke to the FBI and they would make it clear to him not to lie about anything.
	How could he make that mistake?
	Even smart people do stupid things.
	Um I long ago sort of gave up trying to figure out why they do that.
	I mean, I understand why, you know, Papadopoulos may have have lied, because he's what, 29, 30 years old.
	You know, I was pretty stupid when I was 29 or 30 years old, or at least I did some stupid stuff.
	Uh Flynn, uh it's curious.
	Um, you know.
	Um maybe he was in the intelligence community for so long that he you know he thought that line's okay.
	Yeah.
	Uh uh let's say, because it looks like what he may have done is uh and Trump uh apparently at that point was already president elect.
	He may have tried to contact Russia to give him a message, you know, don't worry about the sanctions.
	But you can do that when you're president.
	I guess technically, legally, you're not supposed to do it when you're president-elect.
	But when you get in front of a jury, are they gonna really worry about that little distinction?
	Well, I don't think uh that it would ever get in front of a jury, and here's why.
	It is only arguably a crime under the Logan Act.
	But, you know, Mark, uh that was passed in 1799.
	Uh it it it makes it a felony for a private citizen to interfere in international disputes between the U.S. and foreign governments.
	Nobody has ever been prosecuted under the Act.
	Why?
	Because most lawyers and judges agree it's likely unconstitutional.
	Yeah.
	Uh and second of all, Flynn was not acting as a private citizen as the law defines it.
	He was acting in a wholly different capacity.
	He's a government representative of a president about to assume office.
	And this is what presidential transition teams do.
	I I talked uh several months ago with a professor in Texas who wrote a book on it.
	It's called Presidential Transitions in American Foreign Policy.
	And he said, Are you kidding me?
	This is the kind of stuff that transition teams routinely do and must do.
	It's irresponsible not to do it.
	So I find it hard to believe that a Logan Act violation would ever be charged.
	So let me go back to that question.
	Am I right that if if he had uncovered big stuff, big bombshells, we would never hear a leak, nothing would happen one day, there would just be a press conference, they unveil these bombshells.
	The fact that we're doing this petty little stuff means he's found nothing.
	Well, I can say this for sure.
	He's found nothing about uh Trump Russian collusion during the campaign.
	Yeah.
	Let's remember it's you know, I mean, it's not a crime to talk to a Russian, even though uh the ignorant media, uh mainstream media seems to think so.
	Show me the statute that makes it a crime.
	It's a crime of collusion in in antitrust law, but not in a campaign.
	Now, having said that, there is a campaign election law that prohibits the exchange of money between uh campaign officials and foreign nationals, uh, such as the money that was given to foreign nationals by the Clinton campaign to obtain negative information, the so-called Trump dossier, that would be a crime.
	Hey, um i i i all that's leaked out so far is that he's gonna testify against President Trump.
	He's gonna say that he directed me to make contact with Russia.
	Now, wouldn't that also prove there was absolutely no collusion?
	Well, if there was collusion, why would he need to start making contact with Russia?
	Well, that's a that's a valid point.
	Now, I mean, look, I have read the documents made public by Mueller today, which is the statement of offense that was signed by Flynn.
	Um he doesn't say in that statement that President Trump directed him to do things, to engage in conversations with the Russians.
	Uh it simply refers to as a senior uh transition officials.
	Our own John Roberts is reporting that based on a reliable source, that's KT McFarland, who is the senior official President Trump.
	So uh uh, you know, she would arguably be facing a Logan Act violation, but as I said, I I just don't see it as a violation.
	Um President, you know, there is no evidence in this statement issued today by Mueller about Trump Russian collusion during the campaign.
	It it's it's not in here.
	Huh.
	Uh I know KT McFarland, I'm sure you know KT McFarland and there's no finer person working harder for a country than KT McFarlane.
	I can't imagine uh a prosecutor trying to make something out of that.
	Yeah, and look, she she worked uh all the way going back to the Reagan administration.
	She's very experienced.
	She knows what's legal and what's not legal.
	And uh I'm sure that she felt as though these conversations didn't violate the Logan Act.
	And uh and she may have also been of the opinion, as most lawyers, judges, and legal scholars are that the Logan Act's uh is not constitutional, so forget about it.
	Hey, Greg Jarrett, great legal analyst, Fox News, as long as I got you on the line.
	Let's can I just ask you about Matt Lauer for a second.
	You ever sure every contract has the morals clause.
	If you get in terrible disgrace and you bring uh all kinds of embarrassments to the network, they can fire you.
	And clearly he did that, and clearly they can use the Morals Clause and cut his contract.
	But he's asking for thirty million dollars now.
	If he has information, if he could uh actually testify that they knew about it, we've had talks about it in the past.
	They were covering up, they knew about it.
	You think that way he could get a payoff of 30 million?
	You know, anything's possible.
	And sometimes, you know, a payout of a portion of a contract is you know, hush money.
	Uh I've certainly seen it before.
	Uh where a company doesn't want an employee to start talking about something that's damaging and controversial, so they just pay out their contract.
	Um there's also another argument that he gets a severance pay based on the twenty some odd years he's worked on the Today Show.
	Uh and sometimes that's considered to be a month's pay for every year you've been there, and given his pay, that would be a substantial amount.
	So we we just don't know what's in his contract.
	Yeah.
	But if there had been uh talk of this through the years and it had gotten up to NBC management, are they then vulnerable to vulnerable to a million lawsuits from victims?
	They absolutely are, because that would make them complicit.
	Um, you know, it's the equivalent of eating and a betting in in criminal cases.
	Um so yeah, they have a duty to uh police their own uh uh employment uh situation and the halls of MBC, and failure to do that and be negligent is actionable.
	Uh I don't believe Andy Lack for one moment when he said, Oh, gee, I didn't know anything about it.
	I don't believe uh Jeff Zucker, who's now at CNN, but but you know, presided over NBC News, who says, Oh, geez, surprise to me.
	I knew about it.
	I didn't even work there.
	I know.
	I it's sort of like everybody knew.
	Everybody knew about it.
	You know, there was a friars roast of Matt Lauer.
	It was about five years ago, and I forgot.
	I was reminded today.
	And these were all his friends and everybody doing the rest.
	They were all making jokes about him uh fooling around.
	So it was that well known.
	So it it wasn't even a best kept secret.
	It was it was pretty open.
	If you're the NBC insurance company, are you telling NBC right now, you know, you've got to be careful.
	You're vulnerable here to a lot of lawsuits, and this could cost a fortune in settlements.
	Yeah, uh although some companies uh are self-insured up to a certain limit, and then they only buy uh uh excess uh liability coverage.
	So who knows, you know, whose pocket this comes out of.
	Wow.
	Well, great work as always, and you can watch Greg Jarrett all over the Fox News channel, Fox Business Network, and uh keep up the good work.
	Thanks for being with us.
	My pleasure, Mark.
	Thanks.
	Take care.
	Oh, interesting stuff.
	Who's next?
	Who's next?
	Well, we'll see if we can figure it out.
	Uh, we'll take some calls at 1800-941-Shawn is the number.
	Mark Simone, here for Sean Hannity.
	Follow me on Twitter, Mark Simone NY at Twitter, and of course, Hannity.com and Hannity at Twitter.
	And uh, we'll take some calls in a minute.
	Larry Kudlow and more coming up on the Sean Hannity Show.
	We'll be right back.
	Bad for America, CBS TV, and it's the news like nobody else.
	This is The Sean Hannity Show.
	Hey, welcome back.
	It's Mark Simone here for Sean Hannity.
	Sean will be back on uh Monday.
	It's been a long week.
	Uh I can see why he took the day off a long week.
	Uh, Linda, are you okay?
	Something's wrong with Linda.
	You know it's been a long week when I get to Friday and I have a hat on.
	Listen to the way she talks.
	I'm just too tired.
	She's been talking like this all day.
	What's wrong with the way I'm talking?
	Uh I come in and you go, hello, how are you?
	Hello.
	Normally you walk in.
	I wanted to ease you in.
	I figured we all had a rough week.
	I figured I'd stop barking orders.
	It's Friday afternoon.
	First of all.
	That was for when I was out sick.
	And they had they recorded me just so that if Sean acted up, you know, they had a little little something In the can.
	But even when you listener on the phone, it's what do you want?
	Come on, hurry up.
	But I listen to the phone.
	Hello.
	You know, we're supposed to be friends.
	Oh, okay.
	I'm just be nice.
	Stopping mean.
	Oh my God, I'm going to hear that in my sleep.
	That's right.
	I'm going to send you a little MP3 of it so you can wake up to it every day.
	Could I have a copy of that?
	Make that my ringtone.
	So hey, I hear in Hollywood.
	They're very, very worried about the Oscars.
	There are uh panic meetings trying to figure out how to handle everything.
	Normally, you got all the big producers.
	Harvey Weinstein is a big part of the Oscars.
	You got these other guys, these Brett Ratners.
	First of all, the whole front two rows are not going to be there this year, because they're all either uh hiding or gonna be in jail by then.
	I thought they were all in sex therapy.
	Yeah, they're all sex therapy.
	They're all in the rehabilitation center together.
	And they got um uh Kevin Spacey and a million others.
	I also I hear there's a bunch of actors who are about to go down.
	Uh you will not be seeing them.
	So they uh have uh Jimmy Kimmel as the MC.
	That's because they want a really funny monologue.
	Go out there and just make a lot of great jokes.
	Now they're in panic about let's go over this exactly what you're gonna say uh and exactly what you're gonna do.
	And they're gonna believe me, they're gonna be no child stars coming on stage.
	They gotta edit every film clip very carefully.
	They're very sensitive about this.
	I don't know.
	You ever watch the Carney Awards?
	That's on Saturday night.
	It's on Cozy.
	Oh, I love that one.
	Uh our friend Elvis Duran is on it.
	Tom Bergeron is the host.
	This is a great one.
	It's all the character actors.
	It's like the uh Oscars of character actors.
	You know, there's certain people.
	You don't know the guy's name, but oh, I've seen that guy.
	He was in Seinfeld.
	He was in Everybody Loves Raymond.
	He's in a million shows.
	And they're all the nicest people because they're very they're all working constantly, but they're not big stars.
	If they brought you in the dressing room and hit the button like Matt Lauer with locks the door, you wouldn't care.
	It's kind of like me, you know.
	I'm a supporting actor, you're the star.
	You know, we just step aside, make room for the big name.
	You know.
	And this Matt Lauer, when he said to the obvious some NBC engineers had to install this button, he had a special button under his desk.
	He could lock the doors.
	They must have gone to somebody and said, you know what he wants us to do?
	And uh when he explained it, whoever it was, these uh low life NBC executives, they actually said, eh, put it in, do whatever he wants.
	But he wasn't the only one.
	Isn't that correct?
	I've heard there were multiple people with these locks.
	He says there were.
	I don't I don't think Lester Holt needed one of those locks.
	I don't think anybody else knows.
	By the way, Lester Holt knew about Matt Lauer.
	Everybody knew about Matt Lauer.
	Jeff Zucker knew about Matt Lauer.
	They all knew about Matt Lauer.
	I hear them all now.
	I had no idea.
	There was never even a hint of this.
	Believe me, there were plenty of hints of this.
	You see the Savannah Guthrie on TV crying.
	She should get the Oscar for Best Actress of the Year.
	I'm still trying to process this.
	She knew all about it.
	She works ten feet away from the guy.
	I'm not I don't even work there and I knew about it.
	You knew about it, didn't you?
	I I mean I knew about it.
	I I there were plenty of rumors, but I just uh I definitely I did not know about the lock under the desk.
	I have to say that was news to me.
	I didn't know about the bag of sex toys, even though there's audio of it.
	First of all, if you're Jeff Zucker and you didn't know about this, you may need to resign immediately.
	That means you have the worst instincts for news.
	You're the world's worst reporter.
	You two, Savannah Guthrie and Lester Holt.
	You couldn't spot news going on four feet away from you.
	How can we ever think you're a news person ever again?
	Unbelievable.
	Well, we got lots to get to uh in the next hour.
	We got uh we got Senator uh Representative Zeldon, we got uh Doug Schoen and more, Larry Cudlow is coming up, it's Mark Simone.
	Follow me on Twitter, Mark Simone NY at Twitter, Sean Hannity Show.
	He'll be back on Monday.
	And don't forget Hannity tonight.
	Tax cuts have already passed the House of Representatives.
	Big ones.
	Big ones.
	The eyes of the world now turn to the United States Senate.
	A successful vote in the Senate this week will bring us one giant step closer to delivering an incredible victory for the American people.
	Massive tax cuts and reform.
	I don't even mention the word reform because people don't know exactly what we're talking about.
	You know, for years they have not been able to get tax cuts many, many years since Reagan.
	And the problem was they talked about tax reform, not tax cuts.
	I said, don't call it reform, call it tax cuts and reform.
	So every once in a while we'll add the name reform.
	We're also going to eliminate tax breaks and complex loopholes taken advantage of by the wealthy.
	Who are they?
	I don't know.
	I think my accountants are going crazy right now.
	It's all right.
	Hey, look, I'm president.
	I don't care.
	I don't care anymore.
	I don't care.
	Some of my wealthy friends care.
	Me, I don't care.
	This is a higher calling.
	Do we agree?
	As Hillary said, what difference does it make?
	Well, we'll also cut taxes for the millions of small businesses that file as individuals.
	And that's going to come out of the hopper.
	It's getting there and it's it's going to be better and better.
	We're reducing the tax burden on businesses of all sizes and of every single kind.
	As a candidate, I pledge to fight for American jobs.
	I think it's possibly the number one reason I got elected.
	And I think we've done a lot better at this point than anybody ever even thought possible.
	Think of that.
	Two million jobs since the election.
	Two million more jobs in this country since the election.
	Nobody expected that.
	Excuse me.
	I didn't even expect that.
	But you know, you cut those regulations and you give people spirit and incentive.
	And when you have the highest ratings in terms of confidence that the country's had in many, many years, maybe ever, things happen.
	The tax cut will mean more companies moving to America, staying in America, and hiring American workers right here.
	So that's so important, right?
	Well, we got a lot to talk about.
	Tax cuts.
	Uh let's go to uh uh representative uh Lee Zeldon, great congressman from New York, and uh he was against the uh house tax bill, and then uh Paul Ryan as a result canceled a fundraiser uh for him.
	Congressman, welcome to the show.
	What the hell's going on down there, Congressman?
	Oh boy, well you know, you you know the the pre the president gave a uh a great speech and the American people when they went to vote November of twenty sixteen and they elected President Trump, they they were they were thinking of the issues that might lead to Kate Stanley's death.
	They want tax relief.
	They want to take care of our military and and our veterans, they want to see Obamacare repealed.
	They were fired up, and that's why Donald Trump became uh President Donald Trump, and you know, we're working uh hard on uh the tax reform issue.
	There's uh th there are ways that we can uh make it better.
	Uh by the way, uh if we were having this conversation, you know, a year or five years from now, ten years from now, we're always gonna be talking about ways to make things better.
	Uh but you know, there's much needed uh tax relief uh on you know for for those businesses that that want to grow, that want to create new jobs.
	Uh there are businesses overseas that will that would absolutely love to come back here.
	Uh so there are some good things in the bill.
	Uh you know, there's some unique challenges that we're trying to uh to work on addressing.
	Uh some geographically that it created uh actually a tax increase on the personal side for a uh state like New York.
	Yeah, what the heck was that?
	Yeah, not good.
	Uh so you know, being being a uh New York congressman, uh representing a New York congressional district, I obviously uh am at doing doing my job representing my constituents as we work through this process.
	Uh something that adds to the challenge is you know, we happen to have a governor like like Andrew Cuomo, who's you know, he's already running for president.
	He basically should just step down as governor of New York at this point, uh, if that's what his ambitions are.
	But you know, you need tax relief at you know at all in the Albany level at the state capitals or city hall and uh you know, and that and that's important.
	Tax relief is provided at all levels of government, but specifically you know, go ahead.
	Well, but let me ask you a question.
	I I understand the thinking.
	Why would you uh get rid of the deduction for state and local taxes?
	Well, that way the states like New York are forced to lower their taxes.
	They won't be able to charge crazy high taxes.
	Uh the federal deduction gives them a little air cover.
	So you take that away, they'll have to bring down their taxes.
	But there'll be a five-year gap, tenure gap.
	And what do people do in the meantime?
	Yeah.
	So my and my in my district, we don't vote for Andrew Cuomo for governor.
	He lost an area like mine.
	My district went over 14 and a half points to Donald Trump.
	So, you know, we and obviously we don't like Bill DeBlasio to be the mayor of New York City.
	What I don't like is the idea of getting my hardworking constituents jammed up in the crosshairs of this effort.
	So if you were going to make a change, this technical tax deduction it's been around for over a hundred years.
	It was one of the ways Abraham Lincoln helped finance the Civil War.
	Some people claim that they that they're subsidizing New York, but you look at overall tax policy, spending policy.
	New York is by far one of the biggest net contributors uh you know across the board to Washington.
	But putting that aside, even if you're going to make a change to the state and local tax deduction, you don't put a bill on the president's desk on Christmas and then tell Albany and New York City that you need to fix this by New Year's.
	I mean, it's not just an unreasonable request.
	It's actually an impossible request.
	And and Trump voters end up seeing a tax increase because they get caught up in a crosshairs.
	And that's that's avoidable.
	We could fix it, and that's what I'm advocating for.
	Um this whole thing is a mess.
	You know, we have corporate tax.
	It's triple, triple every other country in the world.
	And I know the real reason we have it.
	That way every c company has to go to Congress with lobbyists and buy every break, every carve out, every loophole.
	But uh why can't everybody in Congress just get together and say, you know what?
	Let's lower the corporate tax to what it is everywhere else in the world.
	But that can't be done, Kenneth.
	Well, I you you have to make our corporate tax rate more competitive, and these companies are becoming more global and more mobile.
	Uh so if we, you know, I I had one company that was in my district, they wanted to build hundreds of thousands of square feet.
	They calculated their effective tax rate of doing that project in my district to be in the low fifties.
	If they did the project overseas, uh they were gonna be paying in the teams, so they move to that other country, and you have not just all of the the jobs to build the hundreds of thousands of square feet, but you have all the long-term jobs of the people who are gonna show up there every day to work.
	So now it's it's gone.
	But a lot of these companies want to come back here.
	And in doing so, in improving the corporate tax rate and becoming more competitive in the global economy, you're increasing GDP, consumer spending will go up, wage growth, more jobs.
	It's all good.
	People's pensions are going up, they're saving more for retirement.
	We also have to improve the issue as it relates to the pass throughs, make sure that that people aren't being penalized because they're in you know a personal service occupation, uh, or they're being penalized because they're a small business.
	So I I'm just somebody who's always advocating for trying to make things better, and you know, I have no apologies or regrets about that.
	Yeah.
	So what what's gonna happen next?
	Where do you where you think this will all end up?
	Well, it seems like the Senate has the votes uh to pass the bill, so it'll go to conference committee.
	I believe that there's a vote scheduled in the House for Monday evening.
	Uh the bill go to conference committee, and then you'll you have to hit agreement between the House and the Senate, and if any change is made uh as is anticipated at a conference committee, each chamber would have to repass it in order to send it to the president's desk and the timeline that uh the House and the Senate is working off of is trying to get a bill to the president's desk by Christmas.
	Yeah, we'll we'll see.
	But uh you know, if the Senate has the the votes to pass the bill to send it to conference at the beginning of next week, that's a that still is a doable timeline, and and hopefully we can uh continue to at conference committee be able to work out some of the the remaining issues.
	And and there are good things in you know a House bill that might not be in a Senate bill or good things in the Senate bill that may not be in a House bill.
	So part of that process is trying to get the best of both bills, you know, into that final product.
	Uh because you flushed out some issues in in one chamber, but not the other.
	Well, all right, uh Congressman Lee Zeldon, good work down there in Washington.
	Keep it up.
	I know it's not easy, but keep up with good work for New York.
	All right, thanks for being with us.
	Uh it's tough down there.
	It's very tough.
	And uh you know, sometimes uh Well, first of all, in every case where we've cut taxes, every time we've cut taxes, revenue goes up.
	It always goes up.
	But uh, you see these uh uh CBO uh different organizations saying, well, this will bring down the revenue.
	It never happens.
	But let's say it did bring down the revenue.
	So what?
	That's great.
	Shrink the government.
	a little less revenue, good.
	You'd have to cut the size of government.
	But it always increases revenue.
	We'll take some calls in a minute.
	1-800-941-Shawn is the number.
	We'll get to Matt Lauer.
	We'll get to uh uh uh Al Franken.
	Uh uh lots to talk about.
	And uh we'll take your calls.
	800-941 Sean is the number.
	Mark Simone here for Sean.
	Don't forget Hannity tonight at nine on the Fox News Channel.
	And Sean will be back on Monday.
	Welcome back.
	It's the Sean Hannity show, Mark Simone here for Sean 1800-941.
	Uh Sean is the number, 1-800-941.
	Sean, so uh the president earlier saying uh did he actually say that Rex Tillerson will stay?
	He yeah, I think he actually came right out and said it.
	Rex Tillerson will stay.
	But that could change at any time.
	Uh they're calling it Rexit, uh, Rex Tillerson leaving at some point.
	One good thing he's done uh at the State Department is, and remember, he's a CEO with a lot of management experience.
	You know when they keep telling you that uh the president uh hasn't filled all these jobs, there's two thousand jobs still not filled in the administration.
	Well, good.
	Don't fill them.
	You got you got too many people in the government.
	Each department, State Department, you got 6,000 people.
	Let's say it was only 2,000.
	That's just fine.
	You know what?
	It should probably be 800.
	But one uh thing Tillerson has accomplished over there is uh is uh just getting uh rid of a lot of people.
	There's layers of bureaucracy you don't need.
	Just waste, expense, it just slows the whole thing down, streamlining these organizations.
	That's one thing you can get when you have a uh a businessman and a CEO in there.
	So whatever else uh you think of Tillerson, apparently he's been very good at cutting the fat and the bloat and the waste over at the uh State Department.
	Um you get some of these people that make these comments, you know.
	Oh, the president's a moron.
	The president's dumb.
	The uh McMaster was reported to have said that.
	But when you actually talk to people there, apparently the problem is one thing about Donald Trump, smart, super smart.
	He's like nine steps ahead of you in a conversation.
	I I've been talking to him for 30 years.
	And one thing I've always learned, don't worry about how you phrased it or what you this guy looks at you with sonar and radar.
	He can he can see everything you're saying.
	And McMaster's one of those guys, if you ask him a question, wants to come in and give you a 40-minute briefing with graphs and charts and slides, and apparently every time he does that, the president said, just get to the point.
	Just tell me.
	Oh no, wait, let me go through this step by step.
	Just tell me.
	Uh, I've got to go through this step.
	So he just couldn't take these uh you know, you ask him what time it is.
	You get a 40-minute uh history of the watch and everything.
	So the speeding up of McMaster uh caused the resentment, and that's why McMaster sometimes would shoot his mouth off uh here and there.
	Let's take a call or two.
	Let's go to uh let's go to uh Larry in Kentucky.
	Larry, how are you doing?
	Welcome to Sean Hannity show.
	Hi, Mark, thanks for taking my call.
	Thanks for calling.
	Yes, I was just uh curious.
	Uh we've got General Flynn here with the line of the FBI.
	I I must be missing something.
	Uh why why is Hillary not facing the same charges for the line of the FBI?
	Well, because the whole process was rigged for Hillary.
	Now the way Oh no, I'm not kidding.
	It really was.
	The way you get caught on lying, they bring you in for a long, lake lengthy interview.
	They interrogate you for a couple hours, then they come back in a couple weeks.
	They interrogate you again for a couple hours.
	Sometimes they come back a third time and carry interrogate you again.
	Then they carefully compare the transcripts to see for if there's any discrepancies.
	That's how it's always done.
	Now you'll notice in the case of Hillary, that's not how it was done.
	There was only one investigation, one interrogation, just one, and no transcript was made.
	So you couldn't possibly catch her in a lie because you had no record of the interrogation.
	That was done deliberately.
	Uh I'm not saying it was Comey's idea.
	It could have been Comey's idea, or he might have been ordered to do that by uh Loretta Lynch.
	Or it might have come right from the president, but it was fixed.
	It was rigged.
	It's the only time in history they didn't make a transcript of the interrogation, and one of the very few times ever, certainly the only time in an important interrogation where they didn't come back and do a second round.
	So they could uh compare things.
	Let's go to uh Sharon in Mississippi.
	Sharon, welcome to Sean Hannity show.
	Hi, Mark.
	Um, I'd like to know what you think about the fact that I've got an idea that um Mueller's not going after the president over collusion with Russia.
	I think he's going after him on obstruction of justice, like Comey laid out the case when he testified.
	He said the president asked him, Do you like your job?
	Do you want to keep his job?
	And later on he said drop the Flynn thing.
	Well, he didn't say that, but I I understand what you're saying.
	You're making a very good point there, Sharon.
	Now that's true.
	There is no collusion.
	And uh Mueller would know that by now after a year of investigating.
	There's no collusion.
	So that's all he could hope for is obstruction to justice.
	He'll go after that.
	What the president said to Comey was what were the exact words?
	It was uh can't you see uh your way clear to you know going easy on uh but it sounded to me like in that conversation, all he was doing was asking for mercy for a war hero, a general, a military guy.
	That that sounded like that's all it was.
	And uh as far as Comey being fired, you could get uh in fact it's just go on YouTube and you'll see it.
	There's endless video of every major Democrat just before that demanding that Comey be fired.
	So it was universal that Comey should be fired.
	Nothing nothing funny going on there.
	Uh Comey Muller, of course, close friends.
	Muller should actually recuse himself from this, but uh uh and they have a history of blunders, but which we'll get to a little later on.
	Doug Schoen will be with us in a moment.
	That should be interesting.
	It's Mark Simone here for Sean.
	Follow me on Twitter, Mark Simone NY at Twitter or Instagram, all of that, and of course, Hannity.com and Hannity every night at nine on the Fox News Channel.
	I hope you can see your way clear to letting this go to letting Flynn go.
	That's the exact quote.
	Exactly.
	You know, we want to get this job done, but we want to be complete.
	And again, one more you know, that we've seen some, uh, and obviously including the president, who said, Hey, you know, nothing here.
	Let's try to shut this down.
	Uh I don't think there's an uh buddy that's following this story now in light of uh another uh admission of guilt coming from a senior Trump official, this time the National Security Advisor, uh, that we don't owe the American public to follow through on this investigation until we get all the facts out.
	Did Senator Senator Burke previously tell you about this conversation with Trump.
	I am the focus is are we gonna be able to do this investigation in a way where we get access to all the witnesses?
	We are going to do that.
	And I think again, I was I was proud of what the Chairman said that uh in his in the New York Times story that uh uh you he acknowledged that the he needed to stay away from the White House, but what is what's what's the real issue here is you've got this repeated pattern of the President of the United States who's trying desperately to stop this investigation.
	Cost Jim Comey his job because he wouldn't stop the investigation.
	He intervened with senators, he intervened with other senior intelligence officials.
	Uh you I think the American people and a lot of us asked why is he so desperate to have this investigation stopped, particularly as we see more and more people either plead guilty or come forward under indictment.
	Hey, uh, we all love Doug Schoen, the uh great political strategist and uh Fox News analyst and author.
	You know, he wrote a great book called uh uh Putin's Master Plan about a year ago.
	He's got a new book called Putin on the March, and uh he's always great to talk to you.
	Doug Schoen, how are you doing?
	I'm doing good, Mark.
	I can't thank you enough for that very kind introduction.
	Well, this is quite a book.
	Now listen, Putin is supposed to be the most brilliant mastermind in the world.
	Now we just went through eight years of President Obama, who didn't look like the most brilliant mastermind in the world.
	He looked like the most disengaged, laid back American president when it came to foreign uh policy.
	Uh and I Trump has a history of tangling with every kind of uh treacherous character in his business career.
	Uh do you think he's on the right track, at least trying to establish more of a relationship with Putin?
	No, I I don't.
	Frankly.
	I I think he's on the right track with ISIS.
	I think he's on the right track with North Korea, with Iran.
	I think we have to get tough.
	But I don't think Putin understands anything other than strength.
	And I think that the real point of the Russian incursion into our election, and I say this in Putin on the March, the real point of the incursion was to divide America, which he has appeared to do.
	And with the soundbite you just played with all the um indictments and the uh guilty pleas both today and earlier.
	I I think the Russians have uh managed to play us again.
	We're not only divided, but we've had numerous criminal charges.
	And the president is, at the very least, in harm's way.
	All right, but if you want to really get tough with somebody, and the president would know this, having dealt with the most treacherous New York characters, if you really get tough with somebody, it's not about huffing and puffing and threatening.
	It's like the godfather sometimes, you know, keep your enemies closer, you know, that kind of a thing.
	Perhaps that's what he's up to.
	It doesn't look that way to me.
	It looks to me like Putin has a strategy, as I say in Putin, on the march.
	He has a strategy.
	He's succeeded in...
	in uh the Middle East with Syria he's selling arms to um Egypt now he is negotiating on oil prices with the Saudis he's helped the North Koreans he certainly is facilitated Iran and he's trying to destabilize Europe I I give you know game set not matching point but game and set to Vladimir Putin and I would say if it's Putin on the march it's it's Trump on the ropes.
	But for instance how much uh how how vulnerable is uh Putin uh to the oil market how much of the Russian economy is depending on oil right now?
	A good 70-80 percent but with oil prices coming back now and with them trying to reduce supply through OPEC I think he's in a lot better shape than he was a couple of years ago.
	Yeah and uh with what's going on in Saudi Arabia now this purge, this takeover this how's that going to affect the oil situation?
	Well I I I think we don't we don't know yet.
	I mean we have to see what the OPEC meaning we have to see how they react.
	I mean I think they made a mistake a couple of years ago from their point of view not restricting production we will see going forward if the Russians and the Saudis and the other members of OPEC uh do what I think is reasonable for them to do under the circumstances we face well this is a great book by Doug Schoen's Putin on the March important book to read.
	But let's go back to the election Vladimir Putin why why on earth would he want Donald Trump as president?
	Hillary would have been perfect for him.
	He's able to uh do whatever he wants uh with her as Secretary of State she's a pay for play politician you can usually buy whatever you need from her wouldn't that be the perfect president for him?
	I well I think he felt that because of Trump's conciliatory approach towards Russia he'd be better.
	But I think the larger purpose was to pit Americans against Americans and candidly Mark I think he has succeeded you look at these investigations and whether you think they're warranted or not it's sure the case that we've spent an inordinate amount of time on Russian investigations and very little time on strategy vis-a-vis Russia uh and the havoc they've caused in the world.
	Okay, but uh first after a year you've got absolutely no evidence of any collusion you've got this little nitpicky stuff oh hold on you got General Flynn trying to make contact which would prove there was no collusion up until that point I I I am not ready to say that now I believe that General Flynn through what he has pled guilty to and what he has uh certainly suggested uh raises questions about whether there has been collusion
	And I don't think you can make the blanket statement now.
	And I think that this has more chapters to go, this investigation.
	And this was a giant step of an adverse nature against the Trump administration and the president personally.
	But, Doug Schoen, you're an old Washington hand.
	You know if they found anything, if there was any real, real evidence of anything, Mueller wouldn't be doing all this little nitpicky nonsense, getting you on a process.
	Oh, I don't call this nitpicky.
	look I go where the facts are I don't believe this is nitpicking.
	I think they have the only guy who can give them the president and I think there is a tantalizing suggestion.
	You're right not evidence yet but a suggestion that the president may well have been complicit with whatever General Flynn was doing.
	Well apparently only all General Flynn is going to say is that the president directed him to make contact with Russia, which would indicate there was no contact with Russia up until that point.
	And the president points out I asked him to make contact with thirty-five countries.
	And maybe you're not supposed to do that till you're technically president, but it's done all the time by a president elect.
	Well let let's wait and see.
	I I'm not ready based on what happened today to say no collusion, certainly what happened uh about the sanctions before uh in December of twenty sixteen the conversations that Trump had I'm sorry that uh Flynn had with Kisliak, the issue of what uh Jared Kushner may or may not have done.
	Mark, I think we're in choppy C's for the president.
	Uh he hasn't his vote hasn't capsized yet but this is not a sea of calm.
	I know but you're talking about a well Logan Act violation of a law from 1700 that's never been used on anybody that that just doesn't indicate big blockbuster bombshells coming as I said Donald Trump was in a better position yesterday than he is today.
	I think you'd agree with that.
	No I I'll give you that that uh it looks a little messy.
	Uh well in the end what would Putin want?
	More uh territory, more money what he wants more territory, more influence, and most of all to reconstruct the Russian Empire, which is all or part of the former Soviet Union.
	Would you say Putin is the wealthiest man on earth.
	Uh it certainly seems that way today from everything I read.
	I mean I don't I don't have those kind of lofty net worth but uh let's just say he's almost certainly in the billions not millions.
	Oh I think you're gonna say it's like a hundred billion downplaying it but yes that's the end that those are the reports that he sneezed on I would sus I would suspect he's not a poor man.
	Yeah.
	Uh and and i if it let's say something were to happen to Putin if Putin were suddenly gone who else is there in the Russian government there are other forces looking to rise up or who it's a very good question.
	I don't know who would emerge but I do believe it would not be a reformer I believe the Putin model has been a successful one in the context of Russian politics.
	And I don't think that necessarily removing Vladimir Putin is going to change the approach of the Russian Federation and its government.
	And the way it works now in the Russian world there there's no opposition and if there is they're keeping that very quiet.
	No opposition that he's there's no real opposition he will be reelected to another term I think it's in April.
	Yeah well it's a great book it's Putin on the march you got to get this book by uh by Doug Schoen and uh re I mean nothing better on Putin on uh Russia and uh it's a great book and great work as always Doug Schoen.
	Thanks for being with Mark thank you for the very kind words now and always thank you so much.
	All right take care.
	Uh great stuff and uh we got lots to talk about.
	We'll get to Matt Lauer and more coming up and uh Al Frankin.
	Hey whatever happened to John Conyers who's gonna have a press conference I don't know.
	Maybe he's uh busy at the moment with something who knows maybe something came up I don't know.
	But uh we'll see if it c if it happens we'll bring it to you live it's Mark Simone here for Sean Hannity we'll take some calls in a minute 1 800 941 Sean is the number uh 1 800 941 Sean.
	Don't forget Hannity tonight at nine o'clock on the Fox News channel.
	Welcome back it's Mark Simone here for Sean Hannity Matt Lauer, uh Charlie Rose, Harvey Weinstein you know forget it goes back to Billy Bush, the uh famous Billy Bush tape that came out and then at some point NBC had to get rid of Billy Bush and people always say the last few days can Matt Lauer ever come back?
	Can Charlie Rose ever come back?
	Well Billy Bush is coming back.
	Apparently uh he thinks it's time to come out of hiding he will make his first appearance where else the late show with Stephen Colbert obviously uh the Colbert people want him to say something bad about Donald Trump.
	It's a uh it's called the late show with Stephen Colbert but it's been renamed the hate show with Stephen Colbert.
	It's just a hate Trump show for a whole hour.
	Obviously uh there's some uh something uh to that that's why uh Billy Bush has chosen this outlet so I think that's what he's gonna do.
	It's gonna be Trump bashing.
	He sees that as his ticket to coming back to being accepted by people.
	As long as you're a Trump hater, this crowd will embrace you uh no matter what else.
	You know you look back to that Billy Bush tape and you say uh the things Trump said sounded bad but you'll all the first thing I noticed one thing nobody's really zeroed in on the first half of the conversation is missing.
	NBC dropped the first part of the conversation, and you only hear where Trump comes in.
	Well, obviously, you can tell from Trump's conversation that Billy Bush had been telling him quite a few stories.
	I think that's what happened there, because I've never heard Trump talk like that, but I think Billy Bush was telling him some amazing stories, and uh the old uh veteran there tried to play can you top this with him and just started embellishing and exaggerating.
	But we need to hear the first part of that conversation conveniently edited out.
	Uh I I am sure uh Colbert will not ask him.
	What were you saying just before that?
	In fact, I guarantee you, Colbert won't even bring it up.
	Can Matt Lauer ever come back?
	He can?
	Why do you say that?
	I don't think he can come back.
	Yeah, because he's a Democrat and Democrats are always welcomed back into the fold and forgiven for their transgressions.
	I don't know.
	If you read some of those stories, I mean there's one of them that appears to me to be rape in his office.
	He has a button under the desk that can lock the door, and I won't even tell it, but it's a graphic story.
	It appears to be rape.
	She passed out in the middle of it.
	And to show a nice guy he is.
	In the story, it says uh he then told his assistant, she's passed out on the floor, uh, to take her to a nurse.
	Not even a doctor, just a a nurse.
	Uh I I don't know, when you read something like that, yeah uh you can't come back from that.
	But see, this is what I don't understand.
	So the woman is taken to the nurse and the nurse doesn't ask questions like what happened, what's this about?
	Everybody knew at NBC.
	I guarantee you the nurse reported it.
	Uh everybody seems so odd to me.
	I mean, if there are reports of this and there were reports taken to corporate headquarters and executives knew about this, and they still did nothing.
	That's pr that's totally complicit.
	Everybody's complicit.
	All those people at NBC, all those management people knew.
	You see the statement, it was very carefully worded.
	Nobody in current management knew.
	Hey, they all knew.
	Jeff Zucker, who's now at uh uh CNN of uh what's his name, Capus, all these guys.
	I heard about it, I guarantee you they heard about it.
	And that's gonna come out.
	I hear there's another dozen Matt Lauer women that the New York Times is now checking their stories, and they'll be coming out.
	There's a lot more Franken coming out, Al Franken, there's more people coming.
	Look at his last two accusers.
	One's a legislator, one's a veteran.
	These are very credible people.
	You know, we had a caller earlier and he dropped off, but he made a really good point, and he said, you know, this is this is a lot more widespread than we think.
	And I said, Oh, what do you mean?
	And he said, Well, he said, You think that this is bad what's happening in politics, if they ever uncover who exactly got some money for their constituents, who used money from the slush fund, who paid off who, but wait till it gets till college campuses.
	We find out about professors, and I was like, oh man, that's a really good point.
	Professors, more liberals, and wait till it gets to the tech industry, wait till it gets to Silicon Valley or Silicon Alley here in New York, where all the tech companies are.
	It's gonna keep growing and growing.
	Hey, coming up in the next hour, Larry Cudlow will be here, the one of the geniuses when it comes to uh the economy, and we'll talk about the tax plan, and uh Jessica Tarloff will be with us and more.
	It's Mark Simone here for Sean.
	He'll be back on Monday.
	Follow me on Twitter, Mark Simone and Y at Twitter or uh Mark Simone NY at uh at Instagram.
	Don't forget Hannity tonight on the Fox News Channel.
	Just moments ago, NBC News Chairman Andy Lack sent the following note to our organization.
	Dear colleagues, on Monday night we received a detailed complaint from a colleague about inappropriate sexual behavior in the workplace by Matt Lauer.
	It represented, after serious review, a clear violation of our company's standards.
	As a result, we have decided to terminate his employment.
	While it is the first complaint about his behavior in the over 20 years he has been at NBC News, we were also presented with reason to believe this may not have been an isolated incident.
	Our highest priority is to create a workplace environment where everyone feels safe and protected, and to ensure that any actions that run counter to our core values are met with consequences, no matter who the offender.
	We are deeply shattered by this turn of events.
	Well, we will face it together as a news organization and do it in as transparent A manner as we can.
	That is the statement from our chairman, Andy Lack.
	And we just learned this moments ago, just this morning.
	As I'm sure you can imagine, we are devastated, and we are still processing all of this.
	And I will tell you right now, we do not know more than what I just shared with you.
	But we will be covering this story as reporters, as journalists.
	I'm sure we will be learning more details in the hours and days to come.
	And we promise we will share that with you.
	And Hoda, I mean, you know, for the moment, all we can say is that we are heartbroken.
	I'm heartbroken for Matt.
	He is my dear dear friend and my partner, and he is beloved by many, many people here.
	And I'm heartbroken for the brave colleague who came forward to tell her story, and any other women who have their own stories to tell.
	And we are grappling with a dilemma that so many people have faced these past few weeks.
	How do you reconcile your love for someone with the revelation that they have behaved badly?
	And I don't know the answer to that.
	But I do know that this reckoning that so many organizations have been going through is important.
	It's long overdue, and it must result in workplaces where all women, all people feel safe and respected.
	As painful as it is this moment in our culture and this change had to happen.
	Yeah, it did.
	This is a a very tough morning for both of us.
	Um I've known Matt for 15 years, and I've loved him as a friend and as a colleague.
	And again, just like you were saying, Savannah, it's hard to reconcile what we are hearing with the man who we know who walks in this uh building every single day.
	We were both woken up with the news kind of pre-dawn, and we're trying to process it and trying to make sense of it, and it'll take some time for that.
	Yeah, we're processing it with all of you at home.
	And we've promised to be transparent and be straightforward and continue this important conversation.
	So this morning it is a difficult morning here again because our top story is once again about our former colleague Matt Lauer.
	And in fact, we just moments ago received a statement from Matt, and let me read it to you.
	There are no words to express my sorrow and regret for the pain I have caused others by words and actions.
	To the people I have hurt, I am truly sorry.
	As I am writing this, I realize the depth of the damage and disappointment I have left behind at home and at NBC.
	Some of what is being said about me is untrue or mischaracterized, but there is enough truth in these stories to make me feel embarrassed and ashamed.
	I regret that my shame is now shared by the people I cherish dearly.
	Repairing the damage will take a lot of time and soul searching, and I'm committed to beginning that effort.
	It is now my full-time job.
	The last two days have forced me to take a very hard look at my own troubling flaws.
	It's been humbling.
	I am blessed to be surrounded by people I love.
	I thank them for their patience and grace.
	This just in Savannah Guthrie has been nominated for best actress for pretending she didn't know about this the whole time.
	I'm processing it.
	I knew about it.
	I don't even work there.
	She's two feet away, believe me.
	They all knew about it.
	Every one of them knew about it.
	Top to bottom at NBC.
	Well, anyway, let's get to uh Jessica Tarloff is the head of research at Bussel, and she's an excellent Fox News contributor and always a great guest.
	Jessica, how are you doing?
	I'm good.
	How are you?
	Thanks for having me.
	I don't know how I am.
	I'm processing it.
	Give me a minute.
	Yeah, I'll give you a minute.
	Please.
	Everybody knew about Matt Lauer there.
	You know, it's I have to say that this entire saga, which has been heart wrenching on a number of levels for the women at it seems every organization that have suffered at the hands of various powerful men, uh, run amok, has been a lesson to me in what I thought I knew and what I didn't know.
	And there's so many open secret quote open secrets that I didn't know.
	Like for instance, I didn't know about Charlie Rhodes.
	I had heard about Matt Lauer.
	Um, see?
	You're telling me you heard about it, and Savannah Guthrie didn't.
	Well, he had a very famous affair, right?
	With Natalie Morales.
	And I it was funny, I was talking with a friend yesterday about when the time transformed past a morality clause having to do with infidelity, because that's what it was for in the first place, right?
	That there was supposed to be.
	I mean, harassment was never to be tolerated, but there used to be some standards as to how you would conduct yourself.
	Now, if you're having a fair, that's apparently not a big deal at all for an organization, and I guess times change and we moved over to, you know, when you're actually assaulting people.
	Um, but Matt Lauer uh was a bit of a known scoundrel.
	Yeah, and it turned out uh well uh I think this will come out in more detail, but uh there's many more women coming out, and it will come out that uh a lot of this was reported to NBC management through the years that there have been a number of times they were warned about it, and they all look the other way.
	Uh yeah.
	So it's well that was the interesting part of Andy Lacks Stephen, which said, you know, the current administration never received any complaints.
	And I I'm not sure that that's true anyway, but I definitely zeroed in on that to put some time on it that maybe he could then blame his predecessor for having ignored whatever complaints came forward.
	But I I totally agree with you.
	It looks like it's going to be um many, many women uh coming forward about Matt Lauer.
	It's an absolute mess.
	Uh-huh.
	Hey, it started with some conservatives, but then if you take the last 20 cases, it's 99.9% liberals.
	Is this just because it's uh mostly in show business or broadcasting where you tend to have mostly liberals?
	Yeah, I think so.
	I I think you're definitely right.
	And I mean, we've certainly had a bad few weeks in terms of that, and I think it is a more difficult position to be in.
	I mean, everyone is ashamed of this kind of behavior, but then when you're a prominent member of a political party that champions itself as the party of women that you know, we have policies that advocate better for women.
	I believe that.
	I think that our policies would make a woman's life better in America than conservative policies.
	You definitely get that extra added bonus of hypocrisy to the argument.
	Yeah.
	Um Hey, all these uh these Charlie Rose, Matt Lauer, all these uh these uh liberal anchors, they were all a year ago telling us how bad Mike Pence was on uh women's issues uh and now look at them.
	Well, I think that's very different.
	I mean, I I'd be very happy to debate the platforms, the Democrat and Republican platform for women, or how actually Mike Pence's now famed policy of not eating alone with a woman actually hurts women professionally because it hurts their chances at having a mentor and a close relationship with a boss or a man in power, frankly, who can help you advance.
	Uh so I I'm not a fan of that, but certainly, you know, right now people would say, well, Mike Pence makes better decisions than Louis C. K. Yeah.
	And you could say, well, uh Democrats believe in a woman's right to choose, unless you happen to be in their office at the moment.
	Well, um, I'm sure we'll get to the part as we continue to go through the slush fund, and we saw today uh the first lawmaker, a Republican from Texas is the first person that we know now settled a sex harassment claim with taxpayer funded money.
	Uh uh Blake Farinhold, I believe is his name from Texas.
	Uh we'll be getting more details of that.
	I I I wouldn't be surprised if we saw a man or two who's uh claims to be pro-life having uh done something not so pro-life.
	So we're talking with Jessica Tarloff.
	Um I wanted to debate Kate Steinley with you, but what the hell what the hell is the debate?
	There's nothing to debate.
	I mean, nothing really.
	I was on Sean's show last night and I don't think we've nodded at each other uh this much since I met him three years ago.
	Uh except when we got to whether all of them are gonna all the sanctuary cities are gonna get defunded, which I don't think is what's gonna happen.
	Um but I drew his attention and I'll I'll offer it to you as well.
	I think that what happened in Virginia with Ralph Northam is instructive on this issue and how Democrats may change because Ralph Northam came out against sanctuary cities towards the end of the race.
	And there was outcry from immigrant groups, and he stuck to it and clearly understood that immigration and illegal immigration was a hot button issue for all Americans, which is you know, part of why Donald Trump won.
	Um so I do think there's an opportunity for Democrats to be more reasonable uh about sanctuary cities than at least say something like we're not gonna get rid of all of them and New York and Chicago, San Francisco, they're never going to get rid of that title.
	I don't I don't know what the term is to get rid of the status.
	It's more than that in San Francisco.
	This is a city that's been run by super liberal Democrats.
	And it's one of the most beautiful cities in America that we're slowly losing.
	I've been talking to tech billionaires who are moving out because the crime is out of control.
	It's one big homeless camp in their neighborhood, and it's it's gonna become the next Detroit.
	We're gonna lose this city to Crime and homelessness and all sorts of stuff.
	If something doesn't happen, and you see this this case is symbolic of the whole thing.
	Yeah, the homelessness I think is a really interesting point.
	My uh my parents work in Portland, Oregon, also a a huge liberal bastion.
	And the homelessness is out of control.
	New York is way worse than it was.
	I think it's more a de Blasio problem than a liberal problem.
	Um I think that these cities have changed in a lot of ways for the worse.
	So I I will not turn on Democrat rule.
	I think that Democrats do a lot of good for a lot of people, especially middle and lower income people.
	Well, that could be, but in a case of uh being mayors, they've made a mess of things, whether it's Washington, Baltimore, Detroit, or now San Francisco, they're losing these cities to to all kinds of uh crime and homelessness.
	You know, and if you're in San Francisco, because of these Democrats with their codes, if you touch one brick on your house, you get fined.
	But if you put up 40 homeless tents in the middle of the street, nobody touches you.
	You're okay there.
	Yeah.
	Um it's not good.
	You I'm sure has looked more have looked more in depth into this than I have, but uh there's no doubt that there are a lot of liberal policies that are going to be reevaluated um heading into election years when we're looking for a wave, right?
	Um but I mean first and foremost, it's a tragedy what happened to Kate Steinley and uh that man should have never been in this country, certainly in the first place, but having accepted that the eleven million who are here are not going to be booted out the second, third, fourth, fifth, and sixth times.
	He certainly shouldn't have been here.
	Okay, maybe I'm generalizing.
	But there's something to this.
	If you take Democratic mayors, Baltimore, uh Chicago, Detroit, Washington, all these cities, and you look what happens.
	Maybe Democrats shouldn't be mayors.
	Maybe they should stick to Congress or something.
	No, I wouldn't go that far.
	I I think there are a lot of policies, as I said, for working families that get pushed through and we have higher minimum wages in Democrat run cities, which I think is good for Americans and good for the economy.
	I think a lot of it is core issues surrounding gang violence.
	That's what the problem in Baltimore, it's a problem in Chicago, San Francisco, not as much.
	Um and we need to look into that.
	Uh we have a gun problem on a number of levels on a mass shooting level, and then also in uh gang violence uh problem level.
	So that needs to be examined.
	But I I certainly wouldn't boot all the uh the liberal mayors.
	Well even though I didn't want to Blasio to win reelections.
	We had that problem in New York.
	It was out of control in New York, as out of control as it could be anywhere.
	Yeah.
	And Rudy Giuliani just fixed the whole problem.
	Why wouldn't every city call Rudy Giuliani and pay him?
	He's a consultant.
	Come to our city.
	Show us how to get rid of do what you did in New York here.
	Why wouldn't every city do that?
	Well, they have called Ray Cali, Ray Kelly and Bill Bratton.
	I mean, the police chiefs are really core to this.
	And they do work as consultants as well, and they're part of these super organizations where they all work together, and each of them actually are advocates for sanctuary city policies.
	I mean the goal, and Rudy Giuliani was himself.
	The goal of the policy is to create an environment in which people who are illegal can come out of the shadows to talk about what's going on in their neighborhoods with law enforcement.
	If they think they're gonna get deported, they're not gonna report a crime.
	And they're more likely to live in neighborhoods where bad things are happening.
	Um so when you actually look at the organizations of mayors and of police chiefs, they're all largely supportive of sanctuary cities.
	Yeah, but both those I think is interesting.
	Both those police chiefs are friends of mine, and they've told me when they get to the city, they don't listen to everything they tell them.
	They don't do what uh what they tell them to do, and it just never gets done.
	So bureaucracy is a problem, right?
	On any level.
	Well, I wish we had more time, but it's always great talking to you.
	And uh uh Jessica Tarloff, where is people should follow you on Twitter and uh where else?
	Yeah, and watch Fox and and vote Democrat, and then I'll be happy.
	Yeah, that'll make everything uh that's just fix everything.
	It's always great talking to you.
	Thanks for being with us.
	Weekend, thanks for having me.
	Take care.
	It's more it's Mark Simone here for Sean Hannity.
	We'll take some calls in a minute.
	1-800-941 Sean is the number.
	1-800-941 Sean.
	Hey, follow me on Twitter, Mark Simone NY at Twitter or uh Instagram or Facebook.
	And uh don't forget Hannity tonight, nine o'clock on the Fox News channel.
	Hey, welcome back.
	It's the Sean Hannity show.
	Mark Simone here for Sean.
	You watch Seinfeld anymore?
	You know, everybody saw every episode 5,000 times.
	You still watch it?
	Go watch it now.
	It's hysterical at how outdated it is.
	It's like watching I love Lucy.
	It's like so primitive.
	There's one episode where they Talk about who you should put on speed dial.
	You remember that episode?
	Like he said, why aren't I?
	Yeah, but that's not bad.
	Do you know Well, the Joel Rifkin one is a little outdated?
	Yeah, no, but if you're twenty years old, you don't know what that is.
	What is speed dial?
	You can't even imagine what such a thing is.
	That's because you don't dial anymore.
	You're too busy tax.
	Everything is instant dial.
	You just touch a button.
	So you've got to explain to a kid what speed dial is.
	They won't know what you're talking about.
	You gotta explain what a pencil is.
	Yeah, and also Kramer keeps coming over to tell him everything, and everybody said, Well, why wouldn't he just text him?
	There was no text back then.
	You kids today, you don't know what it was like to live in that world.
	No text, a flip phone, you'd open it up.
	But do you remember the episode where George is caught sleeping with the cleaning woman in his office on the desk?
	And remember the guy calls him in and he says, It's come to our attention that you had sex with the cleaning woman on the desk.
	And there's a long pause, and George says that not right?
	Is that because if it is, nobody told me.
	So does that frowned upon here?
	You remember that episode?
	And he says you're fired.
	So I guess that's what happened to Matt Lauer, where the guy said, It's come to our attention that you uh had a button under your desk, you locked the door, and then you sexually assaulted a woman and she passed out, and you had your assistant drag her to the nurse, and I guess he said.
	Yeah, was that not right?
	Is that frowned upon I don't know.
	George Costanza, they ought to dig that episode up and run it again.
	He would be in jail now if that happened.
	Anyway, uh when we come back, Larry Cudlow, economist, brilliant economist, next.
	Welcome back.
	It's Mark Simone here for Sean.
	He's just taking a day off, uh he'll be back on Monday.
	Uh Larry Cudlow, uh brilliant when it comes to tax policy, the economy, you want to understand all this stuff that's nobody better.
	Of course, you know him from CNBC.
	And if you're really interested in tax policy, the Reagan tax cuts, uh, all that sort of stuff.
	Get his book, JFK and the Reagan Revolution.
	This is the history of the whole thing.
	It's the best book on the subject, JFK and the Reagan Revolution by Larry Cudlow.
	Larry, how are you doing?
	Thank you, Mark.
	You're wonderful.
	Appreciate it very much.
	So I uh I hear they have the votes now in the Senate.
	Is that true?
	Yes.
	Um they have 50 and they may get to 51.
	And the odds the odd thing, this thing was dead in the water twenty-four hours ago.
	The whole thing unraveled, okay, because of Bob Corker and uh Jeff Flake.
	But all of a sudden, after the Republican Senate conference meeting today, it came back together, and it actually is better than it was twenty-four hours ago when we thought we had it locked up.
	It's actually coming out better.
	Well, what's better?
	So uh a couple things.
	Um probably the biggest thing is small businesses, so-called subchapter s pass-throughs.
	Yeah.
	Um self-employed, you know, wholly owned companies.
	Um they're getting now a twenty-three percent discount off their taxable income.
	That is because of Ron Johnson.
	Senator Ron Johnson, a good friend of mine, been talking to him about this all week.
	He fought and um he won.
	And so all of a sudden the pass throughs, which were kind of forgotten and were kind of shafted.
	Now uh their actual tax rate, their effective rate's gonna come in something like twenty-eight or twenty-nine percent.
	So that's really good.
	That's it.
	That's a new add-in.
	And uh the the repeal of the individual mandate stays.
	That's okay.
	Yeah.
	And Susan Collins signed off on that, and she's voted yes on the bill.
	So that's good.
	Yeah.
	And um sorry.
	Oh, well, we we'd like to have corporate tax down to 15%, like it is in most countries.
	Where where are we on that?
	Twenty, twenty-two?
	We're at twenty.
	The average of the you know, G twenty is about twenty-five percent.
	But the Senate was gonna fiddle with this.
	This was the awful thing last night, is they were gonna have this crazy idea where you'd cut the corporate tax for a couple years, and then you'd start raising it after that.
	And uh I talked to a few senators about that, and I said, You know, I I can't support that, and my supply side group can't support that.
	But that's all gone.
	That's all gone.
	So it's 20%.
	And the only glitch on the Senate is that they want to start it in 2019.
	They should start it in 2018.
	The House is 2018, and I think 2018 will come out of the conference.
	Hey, uh your book, JFK and the Reagan Revolution.
	If you read this book, it and it'll explain it to you that whenever you do this with the tax cuts, you increase revenue.
	It's happened every single time.
	It will always happen every time.
	Read the book, it'll explain it all.
	But uh why is it every one of these organizations, CPO and everything, whenever they do the projections, they always show it lowering uh revenue.
	Yeah, because they don't understand growth, Mark.
	They don't understand incentives.
	They don't understand if you keep more of what you earn or more of what you invest, that this has you coming back to do more and more.
	They don't understand that trillions of dollars will be unlocked and invested in the U.S. I mean they don't understand it.
	The Joint Tax Committee says one less than one tenth of one percent increase in growth.
	All right, let me repeat that.
	Less than one tenth of one percent.
	I mean, it's unbelievable.
	Yeah.
	And as you say, history proves otherwise.
	I'm sorry.
	The economy's gonna grow.
	This thing goes through on the business side alone.
	The economy is gonna grow three to four percent for as far as the eye can see.
	And you're right.
	Revenues will come in stronger and stronger, and it will wind up paying for itself just as it did under JFK and Reagan.
	That's what's gonna happen.
	But these dopes, you know, Mark, we've got to drain the swamp.
	These these models are part of the swamp.
	They've got to drain them.
	Uh let's say there was a tax plan where it did lower revenue.
	Let's say the revenue came down a little.
	So what?
	Great.
	Cut the size of government.
	Do it that way.
	Right.
	What's wrong with that?
	Let's keep right.
	Let let the let the folks keep the money.
	You're exactly right.
	Let the folks keep the money.
	It's not the government's money.
	It's your money.
	It's my money.
	Yeah.
	Our efforts.
	Let's say I have work for.
	I mean, if you had to decide how to spend your money, that's probably better than Chuck Schumer deciding how to spend your money.
	Thank you.
	That's right.
	Uh I mean, which what you had last night, man, Bob Corker wanted this crazy trigger where if the revenues came in short, we would be raising taxes so that if the economy is softer, they're going to raise taxes and make it worse.
	Yeah.
	I mean, I've never seen anything so stupid.
	Fortunately, that's all been stripped out.
	Hey, if the revenue was less, great.
	Uh but Bob Corker, one of the worst alligators in the swamp, doesn't want that money cut because he likes to uh spend it on his waist and bloat and uh uh favors that he buys and uh whatever.
	But um now he has no record, he has no record of fiscal conservatism, Mark.
	Let me just say that.
	He has no record for that.
	This is a lot of phony baloney self-seeking publicity, you know.
	I mean he's gonna be out of the Senate.
	He's resi he's he's retiring, he would have lost his seat anyway.
	So this is a very strange story.
	I know the guy, he's he's a nice guy, but I don't know what he's up to.
	Well, we know what he's up to.
	You know, when you're in uh Congress when you're in the Senate, you want to dole out favors and uh spend money in the right places, and it's not your money, so if the bridge is uh eight hundred million, so what if it ends up being four billion?
	Here's the money.
	That's that's what it's all about.
	He wants this, by the way, on the subject of Corker, you know, he's the head of the foreign relations committee.
	He he likes to put more money into the State Department.
	Yeah.
	And the State Department generally runs its own farm policy, doesn't listen to the president.
	So that's corker's uh that's corker's court.
	You know, some sometimes I hear uh I hear people complain about President Trump.
	They say, you know, there's two thousand jobs he hasn't filled yet in the government.
	Good.
	Don't fill them.
	I know.
	You're exactly right.
	And by the way, he'll he'll tell you that.
	I mean, that's part of the strategy.
	Yeah.
	We don't need nine hundred assistant secretary for energy or interior.
	We don't, or state.
	We don't need that stuff, okay?
	So spot on, reorganize the government, roll back regulations, stop punishing success, Mark.
	Stop punishing investment.
	Hey, let me ask you an important question about the tax plan.
	Uh will we still be able to deduct local and state taxes?
	I know it's uh uh you get rid of that and it's forces the states to lower their taxes, but in the meantime in New York, will we still be able to deduct that?
	You'll probably wind up getting a uh ten thousand dollar deduction from your property taxes.
	That's all.
	That's it.
	That but that's it.
	That's in the House bill, and it was in the Senate, it was put into the Senate bill uh today.
	And the problem with that story, I mean, you know, long run, we shouldn't allow that deduction.
	All it does is give left-wing governors a chance to raise more taxes and spend more.
	But the problem with this story is true tax reform, you're supposed to really slash the individual rate.
	You know, like Reagan brought him to 28 and 15.
	Yeah.
	This bill, first of all, the the top rate is not going to move, probably.
	And the middle rates are gonna drop by three percentage points, which is nothing.
	So really a lot of folks are gonna get hurt.
	I I think unnecessarily.
	This didn't have to happen.
	But it's all about these crazy scoring and the CBO and your friends at the Joint Tax Committee.
	You really should talk to them, Mark in the joint tax committee.
	Get get copies of your book, uh JFK and the Reagan Revolution.
	Go over there and give one to each person.
	Say, read this before you do anything.
	They won't let me in the door over there.
	I've been trying to end that since I worked for Reagan 35 years ago.
	Oh, you know, that's a very good question to ask you, because you did all this with Reagan 35 years ago.
	What's different now?
	Is it harder to do this now?
	Is it easier?
	Did you go through all these same problems back then?
	We went through a lot of them, but we didn't have the political polarization.
	In other words, Reagan sold his tax cuts to a whole bunch of Democrats.
	The first tax cut, which was 81, he had something like 75 or 80 Democrats in the House, and many Democrats in the Senate.
	And the second one in 86 was totally bipartisan.
	Um Richard Gephardt, Bill Bradley, even Danny Rostinkowski from Chicago, the head of the Ways and Means Committee, served a little time later in the pokey.
	He was in favor of the 86.
	Today, you know, Chuck Schumer, it's all partisan, soak the rich, hate the rich, hate Trump.
	Nobody wants to talk across the aisle anymore.
	Yeah.
	That's a, you know, that's a big obstacle when you want to do these gigantic reform bills.
	And I think, you know, that's too bad.
	I I regret that.
	But also nowadays, is it just extremely transactional?
	If you need to get somebody's vote, it's not that you explain it to them.
	It's that you go over there and say you need a bridge in your state, or how would you like to give out 10 billion in uh defense spending?
	Uh it's that kind of stuff, isn't it?
	Yeah.
	Well, listen, man, I we did it in '81.
	We had a few bridges to nowhere.
	We had a few judgeships.
	I don't deny it.
	But Mark, even that doesn't work anymore with Democrats.
	Yeah.
	I mean, they're like Locke Step behind uh behind Schumer and Pelosi.
	I mean, there might be.
	There might be a couple of Democratic senators, okay, in the final bill, uh, guy like Joe Manchin of West Virginia, or Heidi Heidkamp of North Dakota, uh, maybe Joe Donnelly of Indiana, maybe even Claire McCaskill of Missouri.
	So you might get a couple.
	But as I said, during the Reagan years, you know, we we we had tremendous democratic support.
	So it's a different town.
	But listen, man, I think the Democrats are slitting their own throat.
	You know, they've they're trying to block all these tax cuts.
	They're waging, you know, war.
	It's all class warfare.
	It's all redistribution.
	It doesn't help them.
	I mean, Obama won For president, but they lost everything else during his years with this class warfare stuff.
	They lost the Senate, they lost the house, they lost state houses, they lost, you know, local legislatures.
	It doesn't help them.
	Yeah, that's a good point.
	They're on a kamikaze mission.
	Very good point.
	That's why they're going to have to change at some point.
	Well, I'd say we're out of time, but everybody get the book, JFK and the Reagan Revolution.
	It's Larry Cudlow's book, the best book ever written on these tax cuts.
	And uh, you know, it's Christmas coming up.
	Everybody buy one and send it to everybody at the CBO and the tax commission and tell them hey, just read this before you score anything.
	Read this book.
	JFK and the Reagan Revolution.
	Of course, you can see uh Larry on CNBC.
	Larry Cudlow, thanks for being with us.
	Mark Simone, you're wonderful.
	Thank you.
	See you soon.
	Take care.
	Uh oh, we'll take some calls in a minute.
	1-800-941 Sean is the number.
	1-800-941.
	Uh, he'll be back on Monday.
	And don't forget, watch Hannity tonight at 9 on the Fox News channel.
	It's Mark Simone here for Sean Hannity.
	Hey, welcome back.
	It's uh Mark Simone here for Sean Hannity.
	We got lots of people calling in.
	Let's take a call or two.
	Let's go to uh who's been hanging on the longest.
	Let's go to Mary in Indianapolis.
	Hey, Mary.
	Hi, Mark.
	How are you doing?
	Uh good.
	Okay, I just want to ask.
	Uh you said Hillary earlier.
	They only interviewed her once.
	They don't tape it, so everything is okay.
	We don't worry about it.
	But with the when the Republicans do this, they crucify him.
	Why aren't these people held accountable for doing something illegal to begin with?
	I hear this all the time on talk radio.
	Um, where it's a crooked investigation, or they did this or that.
	People lost their jobs.
	And then the next day we just go on and everything's okay again.
	I don't understand why they're not held accountable.
	Well, it's a very good point.
	As I uh pointed out, what probably happened with uh General Flynn, what they do in an FBI interrogation, they call you in, they interrogate you for hours.
	They would make a trans uh transcription, they transcribe the whole thing.
	Then a couple weeks later they come back and they do it again.
	And sometimes they do it a third time, and then they compare the transcripts to see if there's any discrepancy in your story, and that's where they get you for uh lying or not telling the truth.
	But in the case of Hillary, and I've never heard of this happening, no transcript of the interrogation, no recording of it, nothing.
	I mean, that's really, really, really rigging things.
	And uh it's just absolutely unheard of.
	That way they can't possibly get you on a lying to the FBI because there's no record of the interrogation.
	So I think what happens here, you know, it's like when they started with the sexual harassment going after people.
	It was originally some people trying to take out some conservative broadcasters, but they opened up a can of worms, and next thing you know, hundreds of liberals are being caught up in this from Matt Lauer to Charlie Rose to Al Franken to all sorts of people.
	I think the same thing happens here with Mueller and company.
	Now I think they've opened up a can of worms here.
	Before this is over, you know what?
	I bet you there is a special prosecutor looking into Uranium One and Hillary and uh the emails and all that.
	And in the end, they're not gonna find anything on Donald Trump.
	They're not just gonna find anything.
	This is uh all they got with Flynn is maybe the Logan Act, a law that's never enforced.
	Uh uh just bet you before the end of next year, there's another special prosecutor in Hillary ends up Matt Loward in all of this.
	Well, we're out of time.
	Sean will be back on Monday.
	Uh great being with you.
	As always, normally you can hear me on W O R New York.
	You can go to my website, MarkSimone.com, or follow me on Twitter, Mark Simone NY Twitter.
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