Sean reacts to President Trump's State of the Union address. People everywhere are responding positively to the President's bi-partisan tone and, even in the face of Democrats who refused to acknowledge his message, the message hit home. His greatest line? "The sacred duty of every elected official is to defend Americans. To protect their right to the American Dream because, Americans are dreamers too." The Sean Hannity Show is live weekdays from 3 pm to 6 pm ET on iHeartRadio and Hannity.com. Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
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All right, glad you're with us.
Happy Wednesday.
Great to be back.
Back in New York, rather.
Well, although I'd rather be in Florida if you want to know the truth.
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How did Democrats sit?
I mean, it was so petty, petulant, ridiculous, funny on the one hand.
And it illustrates that they have no plan, no vision, no ideas.
They are void and empty as a party.
Now, look, I've said many of the same things about the Republican Party.
They were lacking their backbone, their spine, their vision.
It seems that one thing is happening, and that is that Donald Trump is getting them focused.
And in spite of themselves, now have a record that they're beginning to accumulate that they can run on and the case that they can make to stay in power for 2018.
Ted Cruz was really good last night when he was on Hannity talking about these very things.
How is it when a president in a State of the Union address talks about 2.4 million new jobs created, higher wages for the American worker, talks about all of the bonuses for American workers?
You know, the crumbs that, you know, millionaire Nancy Pelosi talks about $1,000, $2,000 bonuses, pay raises, tax cuts resulting in a minimum $2,000 per family.
This is now adding up to be serious money.
When he talks about all of the companies, including car companies now, coming back and investing in America, in manufacturing centers, in factories, and creating jobs, when he talks about energy independence, energy, I've said, is that is the gold mine that we've been sitting on for so many years.
And yet now we finally, Reagan wanted to open up Anwar.
Anwar's opened up.
The coal industry saved.
More regulations removed than all presidents combined, and it's done in a year.
A major track record of success.
The president able to bypass the destroy Trump media and lay out the case that is overwhelming in terms of a successful first year presidency.
You know, but the Democrat, they're saying higher wages sit on your hands.
The lowest African-American Hispanic unemployment rates we've ever seen.
No reaction.
Just like these angry looks at Donald Trump.
You know, bonuses for employees.
No, the crumbs, according to Nancy Pelosi, you know, and all the other things, small things, big things, fighting the opioid epidemic, merit-based immigration, even the cultural issues that we as Americans believe fundamentally in our hearts and souls that we respect that flag that so many fought, bled, and died fighting under for our liberty and our freedom.
There is an inherent, you know, DNA that runs through Americans that, you know, we appreciate what they did.
That's why we stand for the national anthem, as he said, and believe that this country is endowed by its creator, that we have been a blessed people, you know, recognizing Israel, diminishing ISIS, all of the things that the president's talking.
You look at this and it's crazy.
There's a chant of USA, and you got a Democratic congressman walking out.
And, you know, and even liberals are really, really ticked off at the fact that Representative Joe Kennedy, I assume he's what, the great-grandson of Robert Kennedy.
I didn't even know he was in Congress, to be honest.
And, you know, he's given this.
First of all, you can't get over the fact that I don't know if it's, you know, lip bomb or something or I don't, what do you call that stuff with chap lips, chapstick, or something?
It's called chapstick.
Yeah.
I mean, it's like, what?
And everyone's texting, tweeting.
What's that?
Is it like drooling?
And what's going on there?
Poor Marco Rubio got the same treatment.
All right.
So you have a young, you're reaching into the past.
You can't put Chuck Schumer out there.
You know, an old, tired, you know, partisan hack that he is.
Nancy Pelosi can't do this.
So they take this young congressman with a big name, which, by the way, even some left-wing activists were pissed off about.
He's a privileged white man giving the state the response to the president's State of the Union address.
It turned out to be a disaster.
You got Democrats booing the president's comments on chain migration.
I guess it was Congressman Luis Guitierz who triggered the U.S. fleeing the House chamber during the chanting of USA, USA.
Pelosi frowning when Trump calls to summon the unity that we need to deliver.
Everybody's been asking for Trump to be more conciliatory.
He's more conciliatory.
He's not going to get any more credit for being conciliatory.
If you go over to the CNN network, you got Van Jones over there tearing into Trump's speech, sweet-tasting candy with poison in it.
You can't make this up.
You got every predictable liberal in Hollywood coming out with anything that they can find.
The problem is, is, you know, these very same people supported Obama, and the Obama years were a disaster.
You know, all throughout 2016, I gave you truth in numbers.
13 million more Americans on food stamps.
Fact, 8 million more in poverty.
Fact.
This is after eight years of Obamaomics.
The lowest labor participation rate since the 70s.
The worst recovery since the 40s.
The lowest homeownership rate in 51 years.
And then, of course, the guy that said $9 trillion in debt was irresponsible and unpatriotic ended up accumulating more debt than every other president before him combined with nothing to show for it.
I mean, CNN got so conspiratorial to demonstrating just how far down the drain their standards are over at the old network, fake news CNN.
They actually spent a couple of minutes before the State of the Union wondering if the First Lady, Melania Trump's outfit, was designed to protest the president, her own husband.
She was wearing white to protest him.
Anyway, it was a reporter Kate Bennett was trying to read the tea leaves and understand why Melania didn't ride to the Capitol with Donald Trump.
Well, okay, he's going at one point.
She goes in before him.
Maybe it had everything to do with that.
Anyway, so after being teed up by Jake Tapper, Bennett tried to read into the secret message the first lady's trying to send with her dress.
You know, she's wearing a cream-colored suit there, which I find interesting.
Remember, last year, the female Democratic senators all wore white, she recalled, while claiming it was to protest Donald Trump.
Listen, it could be a total coincidence, but I find a lot of the stuff that she does these days to look at it twice.
And I think Maureen Dowd called her, well, the Slovenian Sphinx.
Everybody looking at her and trying to decipher the mysteries.
Tapper quickly, is this news?
This is not news.
It's unbelievable.
I thought this, you know, for a long time now, everyone's been talking about is the president a conservative?
Is the president a nationalist?
Is the president a populist?
Hannity, have you changed?
I'm not a nationalist.
I'm not a populist.
I always have been and continue to be a Reagan conservative.
That is what you got out of that speech last night on every single solitary issue.
You know, the biggest thing that you can take, the comfort you can take, is that the president that ran is the president that stood in Congress last night, giving the state of the union and fighting for the same things that he was fighting for on the campaign trail.
That is something you ought to take heart with.
Now, there was some unbelievable, I thought it was the best use.
I thought the storytelling was phenomenal by showing the greatness of the American people over and over again, American heroes and people also that were victims.
I mean, he had two families.
I wanted to cry for them and the whole country crying for them that lost their children, their daughters, MS-13.
It's where I live in Long Island and New York.
I mean, you know, we once used to think of gang violence something that was, you know, a Los Angeles thing.
No, it spread all throughout the country and it's dangerous and people are dying.
The same with the opioid epidemic.
These are real problems.
It got so bad over at CNN that the speech reception was so positive.
Now, CBS had a poll among those who watched the speech.
The president got a 75% approval.
And CNN had a poll and their very own survey, which found 70% of viewers gave it a positive rating.
I mean, CNN's so upset about it that they literally went forward and came out with this poll does not and cannot reflect the views of all Americans.
I'm like, okay, it's your poll.
You can say whatever you want.
In other words, they're like at CNN, please don't let it be true because we're on the wrong course having, you know, soon to be more scandal plague.
Jeff Zucker, best friends of Matt Lauer, you know, ordering everybody that works over there to go forward with the destroy Trump narrative every single day.
Don't tell truth.
Don't look at any of the facts and issues surrounding the abuse and misuse of power as it relates to the intel tools that we give people and the Pfizer warrant and Hillary getting a exoneration before investigation.
Don't look at Comey and Strzok and Page and don't air those text messages.
Just go out and destroy Trump.
So CNN doesn't even mention that almost half of Americans that watch the president's first State of the Union address, 48% say they had a very positive impression.
They can't even mention that, that in addition to the 48%, they had another 22% that was somewhat positive.
So that's a net total of 70%.
And rather than report that, they're trying to convince their audience that their poll is screwed up.
So there are CNN, some important caveats.
The survey reflects the views of only those that watch the speech, not all Americans.
The poll was conducted among a group of Americans who said in prior interviews they planned to watch the speech and were willing to be contacted after its conclusion.
People who choose to watch a political speech tend to be more supportive of the speaker than the general population.
This sample was about seven points more Republican than the entire American population, blah, blah, blah.
Okay, it still was a good sign.
And there's so much good that comes out of this.
And, you know, I'd say that I'd break this down into different categories.
One, I thought the president, you know, everything from talking about the families that have suffered so badly because of gang violence like MS-13.
I just, when you see people, it brings it home.
It just brings it home.
Or talking about this 12-year-old little boy from Reading, California, noticed that when he went to his grandfather's grave, that the graves were not marked with flags on Veterans Day.
And this kid starts a movement and they place 40,000 flags at grave sites for our great American heroes.
It's showing the American spirit.
Then the president goes through a laundry list of things that every conservative, all you never Trumpers, are you not happy with the appointment of justices?
You're not happy that you have a president that supports the Second Amendment?
You're not happy that the president is moved forward to help our brave veterans in their health care decisions and the landmark VA Accountability Act, and that there's even going to be more done properly to do this, or that the president is trying to make Washington accountable.
We have eliminated more regulations in our first year than any administration in history.
You know, we've ended the war on American energy.
You know, we're now building new plants and we're enticing and incentivizing companies to build factories, manufacturing centers here.
The era of economic surrender is over.
You know, I love when the president said it's time for Congress to give these wonderful Americans the right to try.
You know, let's say you're dying and there's maybe just a glimmer of hope with this new experimental drug.
You're not allowed legally to take it in America.
What's the name?
Dallas Buyers Club brought that whole issue home.
And if I'm dying and I want to try an experimental drug that may save my life, it's my business.
I love when the president said, I would think every conservative believes in liberty and freedom.
And you can't look at the first year's record of the president, Mr. Never Trumpers, out there, and not be impressed.
It's just you're so locked into your own narrative of hatred.
Apparently, a controversy has emerged.
Daily Caller reporting that DACA beneficiaries, commonly known as DREAMers, watching the State of the Union address from California, are generally indignant because Donald Trump would associate illegal immigration with crime, violence, and so on and so forth.
But as the San Diego Union reports, some were particularly apoplectic over Trump's Dreamers 2.
In other words, they're mad, and we're talking about illegal immigrants, mad at Trump for calling American citizens Dreamers 2.
I guess Dreamers, I mean, do we have a monopoly use on that word in some way, shape, matter, or form?
In a blistering commentary, Sarah Sanders Huckabee took a, or Sarah Huckabee Sanders took a swipe at Nancy Pelosi in an interview with CNN, and Sanders referenced Pelosi's facial reaction to the president's State of the Union address during which she appeared slightly unhappy.
I mean, didn't they look so angry?
Wasn't that one of the things?
What does the Democratic Party stand for today?
What are they fighting for today?
When you get good news on the economy after eight years of their failed policies, and now things are beginning to turn around, and we have a good story to tell that principles and ideas are beginning to work.
You know, so what do they, why wouldn't everyone be happy?
I'll give you an example.
On my radio and TV show, I don't care who comes up with a good idea.
If it's a good idea, I'm like, oh, that's a great idea.
Every single day.
Linda, you can attest that you're a testament to the fact.
How many times have you said, no, why don't you do this?
What do you think about that?
And I say, that's a great idea.
Let's do it, right?
Yeah, it's a team effort for sure.
Team effort.
I write my monologue every day, and occasionally my staff comes in.
They say, why don't we say this?
Did you think, oh, I think I've got tape that makes your point?
Let's put that in there.
And I'm like, great, let's do it.
And I mean, it's, it's, I don't understand this mentality.
It's like, anyway, so I think it was captured really well when Sanders, you know, said that Pelosi looks like that all the time.
I think she would think she'd want to smile more often.
She seems to embody the bitterness that belongs in the Democratic Party.
They need to decide whether they love America more than they hate this president.
Cuomo, who was interviewing her, shot back, a fundamental disagreement is where's the hate.
But when you think about it, when you have good news, why not celebrate it?
All right, we got the latest on the release of the FISA House Intel memo debate straight ahead.
Mr. Speaker, Mr. Vice President, members of Congress, the First Lady of the United States, and my fellow Americans, less than one year has passed since I first stood at this podium in this majestic chamber to speak on behalf of the American people and to address their concerns, their hopes, and their dreams.
That night, our new administration had already taken very swift action.
A new tide of optimism was already sweeping across our land.
Each day since, we have gone forward with a clear vision and a righteous mission to make America great again for all Americans.
Over the last year, we have made incredible progress and achieved extraordinary success.
We have faced challenges we expected and others we could never have imagined.
We have shared in the heights of victory and the pains of hardship.
We have endured floods and fires and storms.
But through it all, we have seen the beauty of America's soul and the steel in America's spine.
All right, that was the president's state of the union last night and a speech well received, except by the Democrats sitting in the chamber.
75% CBS poll approve of the president's speech.
One fascinating thing, if you look at, for example, you've got this media divide.
You've got on the left, Huffington Post, the hidden extremism of Trump's State of the Union.
Slate, President Trump uses people of color as a cover for his anti-immigration policies.
Vox, Trump has no solutions for America's big problems.
The nation, Trump's long, low-energy state of the union changed nothing.
That's a way of them saying they liked it, that the country is obviously going to like it.
Mother Jones, fact check, Trump has done virtually nothing to combat the opioid epidemic.
The Daily Cost, one of Trump's biggest State of the Union applause lines will be the GOP's biggest stumbling block come November.
You know, mainstream media.
New York Times, Trump issues appeal for unity.
NPR, Trump makes bipartisan pitch, but also plays to base.
They don't, they never have, they never will.
They don't understand who this man is.
There was a really good piece, Selena Zito, writing in the New York Post, Donald Trump is still the man to those blue-collar voters.
I don't know.
You know, people get mad at me whenever I go back and talk about my blue-collar roots.
It was 20 years of my life.
It was a big part of my life, not having money and all the jobs that I did in the process.
But it defined who I am.
I mean, that's why when Nancy Pelosi is talking about, you know, $1,000, $2,000 bonus checks being crumbs, and I'm like, yeah, okay, you're the lady that made us pay for your government Gulfstream 5 to fly to San Francisco every time you wanted to go home for a weekend visit.
It's ridiculous.
Another big difference is, and it may seem small and insignificant, the president used we.
He wasn't like Obama, me, me, I, I, I.
It was we, the people.
You know, very early on in my broadcasting career, uh, when I was in Atlanta, Georgia, the program director, still a good friend of mine, Eric Seidel, uh, we call him Sluggo.
And Sluggo would bring me into his office.
He goes, I want you to listen to Paul Harvey.
And he goes, you always talks to you, we, the.
It's not about me, me, me, I, I, I, sort of like the Toby Keys song, All About Me, All About My Not Me, Ma, what I think, what I know, what I want, what I like, what I see.
It's not about I.
It is about us.
The other thing I think you can take out of this, Michael Goodwin, a good point in his column today about how Trump is actually teaching and educating Republicans and how to fight.
I mean, it's all true.
And, you know, there's always been this belief among Never Trumpers, what is it about his successful agenda that you find not conservative?
You don't like, he's not going to be Reagan.
He's not going to be Mitt Romney in terms of his tone and his style and who he is.
He's not going to magically, you know, morph into the typical swamp creature, BS artist that calls themselves a politician.
That's what makes him who he is.
You know, the guy that tweets, the guy that fights, the guy that stands up for what he believes in, the guy that doesn't back down.
American people find it refreshing.
The establishment Republican base can't handle it.
They're in a collective meltdown every single day on it.
You know, everybody would have told Donald Trump, oh, he scorches the NFL protests in his State of the Union address.
Oh, don't do that.
I guarantee you.
Every establishment Republican, never Trump, don't touch that issue.
Well, there's so many issues they don't want to touch because they're scared of their own shadows.
It's ridiculous, but what are we getting done in the process?
We're rebuilding an economy all based on Reagan principles of economics.
And it's like these people that claimed for years that they were conservative, we're all finding out they weren't really conservative.
You know, they live in a politically correct bubble and they want to be liked.
And wanting to be liked is never going to get anything done.
You know, before Newt Kingrich became Speaker, Bob Michaels was the perpetual minority leader of Republicans in the House and he was a nice guy, but he wasn't a disruptor.
And in comes Newt Gingrich, truly a revolutionary in 94, and he drove Republicans into power for the first time in 40 years.
I don't know if a nice quote politician could have pulled off what Donald Trump pulled off in 2016.
And just because everybody finds his delivery uncomfortable because they're not used to it, because he's not one of them, as long as those blue-collar workers are getting those manufacturing jobs back and factory jobs and we're getting plants built and we got all these big companies,
multinational corporations now incentivized to bring their money back to help the forgotten men and women in the country, those people are going to appreciate it.
And when companies are giving them $1,000 bonuses, pay raise, and lifting the minimum wage, doing whatever they're doing, that benefits all of us.
And if a wall's built that keeps us safer, they're going to like that too.
And if somebody was just given a death sentence by their doctor and the president's successful in allowing them at least the opportunity to try some experimental drug, let's give them the right to try.
This is all common sense stuff.
In one year, getting rid of more regulations than any other administration in history in a year.
That's all good for us.
And that is a win for the American people.
And the reason is, what are the Democrats offering?
What do they stand for?
Eight more years of Obama.
Well, I've given those statistics out enough, and there was eight years of failure.
You know, if you watched NBC News last night, their coverage of the president's first State of the Union address, you got Savannah Guthrie and Tom Brokoff spewing comments about the Russia probe as Trump was preparing to speak.
Let us not forget, as we see Attorney General Jeff Sessions, this is a president under criminal investigation for obstruction of justice with regard to the Russia investigation, Guthrie said.
Well, number one, nobody would know if that's true.
And if it is, it's just trumped up nonsense.
We've had a year, and I guarantee you, Savannah Guthrie, I'll give you three hours on this show to give me evidence of Trump-Russia collusion.
And you will not be able to do it.
But I'll be able to give you evidence of collusion as it relates to Russia in the 2016 election.
That's something that you probably never talked about.
How about we make, how about government, you know, solving the problems that impact the lives of the American people?
You know, after eight years of adding millions to poverty, millions to the food stamp rolls, you know, the lowest labor participation rate, the worst recovery in 40 years, doubling our debt and having nothing to show for it, maybe now it's time that we focus on the people of this country and solve their problems.
Getting rid of the employer mandate solved a problem.
Moving Americans, America, towards energy independence, that's going to create millions of high-paying career jobs.
Now, maybe these guys in suits, instead of boots, maybe they don't care that much about those people that are out of work or in dead-end jobs, but the people that are going to get the high-paying career jobs with the benefits from oil companies and coal companies and fracking companies, they're going to be pretty darn happy.
And they're going to be able to get their first house and their second house, and they're going to be able to get a new car and they're going to be able to take a vacation and go out to dinner and not have to worry about how much it's going to cost.
I don't ever hear these politicians ever talk this way because they apparently have either they've lost touch with where they came from or they don't care.
And it's all about their power that they care about.
We have some interesting developments as it relates to the memo that I want to get to here.
And we'll be talking about it later in the program as well.
So the FBI released a statement on the memo.
Now, you've got to remember: here's some background foundation for you.
Rod Rosenstein, now, let me backtrack.
The demands by the House Intel Committee for documentation from the Department of Justice, it took nearly a year for them to hand over the basic, fundamental, and simple things that were being asked for by the House Intel Committee.
This is where we get the struck page memos.
This is where the memo comes from, the information they finally had to turn over.
Now, hours before the deadline, or else they were going to basically hold the Justice Department, FBI, in contempt, Rod Rosenstein, the guy that appointed Robert Mueller, goes into Paul Ryan's office and begs him, please don't let Devin Nunes' House Intel Oversight Committee don't let him have this.
And Paul Ryan said, no, we want to be transparent, and he held his ground.
Well, now we're about to get it released.
And we're told that the FBI Director Ray is appalled by its contents, and it resulted in Andrew McCabe being fired.
I'm also told that when in March the Inspector General report comes out, that may even ultimately be worse as we look into the cover-up of the Hillary Clinton email server investigation and the exoneration before investigation.
So the FBI now knows this memo is coming out and they're scared.
The FBI takes seriously its obligations to the FISA court and its compliance with procedures overseen by career professionals in the Department of Justice and FBI.
We're committed to working with the appropriate oversight entities to ensure the continuing integrity of the FISA process.
So FISA abuses clearly is what this memo is going to get into.
With regard to the House Intelligence Committee's memorandum, the FBI was provided a limited opportunity to review this memo the day before the committee voted to release it.
As expressed during our initial review, we have concerns, grave concerns, about material omissions of fact that fundamentally impact the memo's accuracy.
Here's a problem.
Well, now the people at Fox went back at the FBI and said, is there anything in this memo that is inaccurate?
Anything?
And the FBI said there's nothing inaccurate.
Devin Nunes just this hour has responded, having stonewalled Congress's demands for information for nearly a year.
It's no surprise to see the FBI, DOJ, issue the spurious objections to allowing the American people to see information related to surveillance abuses at these agencies.
What do you think that Andrew McCabe walked out alone?
You don't think this memo is up to his eyeballs in it?
Rod Rosenstein, I hear, is the most scared person in Washington right now.
The FBI is intimately familiar with material omissions with respect to their presentations to both Congress and the courts, and they are welcome to make public to the greatest extent possible all the information they have on these abuses.
Regardless, it's clear the top officials used unverified information in a court document to fuel a counterintelligence investigation during an American political campaign.
Once the truth gets out, we can begin taking steps to ensure our intelligence agencies and courts are never misused like this again.
Basically, it's saying that Hillary Clinton bought and paid for dossier full of Russian lies, propaganda, misinformation, first designed to rig a general election after she rigged the primary against Bernie and after Comey struck Paige McCabe and maybe Loretta Lynch rigged the investigation when she committed felonies.
Then they used it as a foundation for a warrant against an opposition party candidate.
That is what we're going to learn, in my opinion.
This cannot happen in the United States of America.
And I don't care that Rod Rosenstein and others, the facts are the facts here.
Poor mainstream media, they'll just run with the FBI's criticism.
They won't even tell you the truth.
There's so much more coming.
I wish I could share it with you now.
We'll have a lot more later in the program and tonight at nine on Hannity.
New Kingrich in the next hour.
Senator Joe Manchin, he's up for re-election in West Virginia, said today the Democrats were wrong not to show respect to the presidency by sitting down for the most moving part of the president's State of the Union address.
I think the Democrats were wrong in not showing respect.
I was taught in West Virginia there's a little bit of respect and you should show that.
And I did that then and I did it last night.
He knows he's in trouble without being a Democrat in West Virginia.
All right, quick break.
We'll come back.
800-941-Sean, toll free telephone number.
And together we are building a safe, strong, and proud America.
Since the election, we have created 2.4 million new jobs, including 200,000 new jobs in manufacturing alone.
Tremendous number.
After years and years of wage stagnation, we are finally seeing rising wages.
Unemployment claims have hit a 45-year low.
And something I'm very proud of: African-American unemployment stands at the lowest rate ever recorded.
And Hispanic American unemployment has also reached the lowest levels in history.
Small business confidence is at an all-time high.
The stock market has smashed one record after another, gaining $8 trillion and more in value in just this short period of time.
The great news for Americans, 401k retirement, pension, and college savings accounts have gone through the roof.
And just as I promised the American people from this podium 11 months ago, we enacted the biggest tax cuts and reforms in American history.
All right, our two Sean Hannity show the president from his first State of the Union address last night.
One of the things that really stood out is the Democrats.
You can even see some of them like instinctively want to stand.
But, you know, they refuse to applaud or stand up even when the president talked about really good things for the country, you know, job creation.
They sit on their hands.
Higher wages.
They sit on their hands.
The lowest African-American Hispanic unemployment rates ever, ever.
And nobody applauds.
All the bonuses, the crumbs, as Nancy Pelosi calls them, the $1,000, $2,000 bonuses for employees, the good news that we have had securing the border, even opioid epidemic, the fight that's gone on there and immigration and, you know, the American flag, the national anthem in God We Trust, recognizing Jerusalem as Israel's capital, greatly diminishing the Islamic State, lower prescription drugs, defense, everything.
There's not one thing that they can point to and say, you know what, the president's done a really good job.
We didn't expect it, but he did a really good job on this or that.
Anyway, joining us now, former Speaker of the House, New Kingrich, is with us.
Let's get your overall view of the president's speech last night.
Well, I thought unbalanced, particularly when you add in the extraordinary way that they brought guests who fit not just stories, but guests who personified key parts of America.
I would rate it better than any State of the Union Ronald Reagan gave.
And that's about as praise as you're going to get.
Did you see that the Heritage Foundation, their calculations, they rated Donald Trump's first year more conservative than Reagan's?
Oh, I think particularly when you take the judges and you take the deregulation stuff.
I've asked several people to check because I don't have an answer for this.
But my hunch is that President Trump has deregulated more red tape in his first year than Reagan did in eight years.
I mean, what Trump said.
Well, the president said that last night that they've done more in one year than all presidents combined in terms of eliminating regulation, which is in and of itself a spectacular achievement.
I want to ask you, before we get into the specifics, this is interesting to me because I know that when Steve Bannon was there and all this talk about nationalism and populism, I watched it from afar.
Ever since you have known me, now going back to 1990 and even before then, I always identified as a Reagan conservative.
I've never changed my views or my values.
And I make the case that the State of the Union speech last night, the president's policies, that which he is fighting for, are conservative, not nationalist populist.
And you and I have discussed it a little in the past.
Is he governing as a conservative?
I believe he is.
Oh, sure.
But he's a conservative with some very interesting twists.
He's very entrepreneurial.
So he's very much focused on getting things done.
That makes him more activist than any conservative probably since Theodore Roosevelt.
He is very aware of how the world has changed.
So his belief in putting America first is much more intense than it would have been for Reagan, who was leading a country which was at the peak of its power and where with the collapse of the Soviet Union there were no natural peer competitors.
So Trump, in that sense, is in a slightly different world.
He also faces just a radically more hostile left than anything we've seen in our lifetime.
I mean, last night, and I know you had the same feeling, you watched the black and the Hispanic caucuses refuse to applaud when the President of the United States announces this is the lowest level of black unemployment in history.
It's the lowest level of Hispanic unemployment in history, both of which, by the way, have been validated by the fact-checkers.
You would have thought surely they could applaud the fact that people in their communities were now finding jobs.
They couldn't do it.
They disliked Trump more than they liked their own folks getting a job.
You know, I think we're going to watch this economic resurgence continue.
I mean, I think the tax plan is going to have a massive impact on the economy.
The president, every president, including Reagan, wanted open and war.
Now it's open.
The Obamacare mandate is dead.
Corporate tax cuts, repatriation, energy independence.
I think we're looking at millions of high-paying career jobs and the added bonus that we produce the lifeblood of our economy, our own energy, and we can even export some.
So I think this is going to, even in a year, I think we'll see some massive improvements.
And here's what I don't understand.
Jimmy Carter failed spectacularly with his liberal policies as president.
It paved the way for Reagan.
Here you have, on any measure, economically, under Obama, 13 million more Americans on food stamps, 8 million more in poverty, lowest labor participation rate since the 70s.
You had the worst recovery in 40 years, lowest home ownership rate in 51 years, and he doubled the national debt, accumulated more debt than every other president before him combined.
Now we see a reversal.
But why is there always this ebb and flow politically that somehow the rhetoric, as eloquently as it was delivered by Barack Obama, then becomes appealing to the country?
We always keep experimenting with something we know is ultimately going to fail.
Well, I think part of that's because you've had a very narrow balance of power, really beginning with George H.W. Bush breaking his word on no new taxes, which in many ways broke the morale of the conservative movement.
And from that point to here, you've had this constant back and forth in a country which is very narrowly divided.
And what we don't know yet is whether with Trump's extraordinary achievements and his great communication skills, we are actually seeing the beginning of a new era in which we put together an American patriotic national movement that is committed to economic growth, committed to excellence, committed to merit, and willing to continuously reform government until things work.
If that comes together, then you'll get the way you know that this is real is you get 16 to 20 years of the same team in charge, and the country keeps reelecting them because it's working.
But I think what you had was with George W. Bush, the combination of not winning in Iraq and Afghanistan, combined with the financial crisis of 2007 and 2008, set the stage for a Barack Obama, who ran at the time, despite your best efforts to pull the mask off and describe who he really was.
He ran at the time as a guy who was a common sense, mainstream, you know, we can get this done together.
You'll get to keep your doctor.
You get to keep your insurance company.
I mean, a lot of what he said was just playing a lie, which is the hallmark of modern liberalism, because if they tell the truth, they're going to lose.
Let me move on.
We are hearing both from General Kelly and the president last night that he wants to release and be transparent and release the memo from the House Intel Committee.
It's very interesting if you look at the history of how this memo came into place.
The House Intelligence Committee had requested documents from the DOJ, and then up to the last hour, the DOJ was unwilling to hand them over.
In a last-ditched effort not to hand them over, Rod Rosenstein, who appointed Mueller, he races into Paul Ryan's office and says, please don't make us release these.
Anyway, Ryan stood by Devin Nunes.
Nunes reads the documents.
He writes a memo about how flagrant FISA abuses and other things are and the people involved in a concerted effort to play politics with the Intel community, which is very dangerous.
And now the FBI is weighing in on all of this.
Now, they cannot report any inaccuracies in the memo, but they still don't want it released.
Why wouldn't they, well, I guess I understand for personal reasons why they wouldn't want it released, but why wouldn't they want full transparency so we can clean up any mass of any upper echelon people that are that are hurting rank and file hardworking members of the Intel community, FBI and Department of Justice?
Look, I think the damage that is being done to the reputation of the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the reputation of the Justice Department is just breathtakingly large.
And this memo apparently absolutely validates that the reputations ought to be damaged.
Again, let's be clear.
We're not talking about the average everyday FBI agent who's honest and sincere and goes to work to enforce the law.
We're talking about a small group of people at the top who were so corrupted in the Obama years, both at justice and at the FBI.
And I think they realize that when these things, apparently, just based on what we've seen happen already, when this stuff comes out, that it is just explosive.
And so there's a certain amount of protecting themselves, protecting their friends.
They can make an argument that it releases too much of information about how our FISA system works.
But the truth is, we're in a situation right now where the American people deserve to know these things, and the American people have every right to be offended by the way this has been handled.
All right, as we continue, former Speaker of the House and author of the New York Times bestseller Vengeance, Newt Gingrich is with us, getting reaction to the State of the Union.
So when this memo comes out, here's what we do know.
And imagine, let's reverse roles here.
And I've asked you this question on TV, but I think it's worth going back to.
Hillary rigs a primary, according to Donna Brazil, when the evidence is all said and done.
She had Bernie had no shot.
It was rigged.
Comey, Strzok, Paige, McCabe, and maybe even Loretta Lynch, you know, are involved in exonerating Hillary on the email server scandal where we know felonies were committed months before they ever interview, investigate her or the principals involved.
Exonerate before investigating.
Hillary then pays for a Russian dossier full of lies, misinformation, and propaganda, ironically from Russia, to mislead the American people in a general election.
And then you've got that same dossier bought and paid for, used as the foundation to secure a FISA warrant against an opposition candidate in an election year, and then a president-elect.
Now, let's say Donald Trump did all of that to Hillary.
Where would the country be?
Where would the media be?
Well, look, you know, and I know.
Why are you laughing at my question?
It's a good question.
Well, but you and I both know that the elite media is the left.
The elite media has now got this terrible problem that they really built up the whole Russian story, thinking it was going to get Trump, and now instead it's getting Democrats.
They don't know what to do.
They're sort of spinning like tops.
Publications, which were thrilled to release U.S. secrets and were happy to publish things that might harm our national security, are now totally confused about whether or not they really want to know.
You know, suddenly transparency may not be a good idea in terms of publishing this paper.
And I think it's very clear that, and I hope everyone listening to us understands how vivid this is.
We live in a country where there was an enormous danger that had Secretary Clinton won, that all of this would have been covered up.
The sickness would have continued.
The very people who are now being forced out would still be in power.
And we were in really great danger of the Justice Department and the FBI becoming instruments of political power.
And it's pretty clear that they were being used in the last part of 2016 in ways that are a total violation of the rule of law and a total violation of the American Constitution.
I think this is just very vividly clear, and people need to understand how bad this is.
And you need to understand that the elite media is not the referees covering the fight.
The elite media is the offensive wing of the left, and it's totally in the game, and it is totally committed to creating a narrative that's just factually false, but that is necessary.
You know, if you're a liberal, you can't afford just to believe in the truth.
You have to invent new things that prop up your side no matter what the truth is.
All right, Mr. Speaker, appreciate you being with us.
You'll be on Hannity tonight.
Nine Eastern will have a reaction to all of this, and it looks like the memo could be released today or as early as tomorrow.
We're following that story very closely.
FBI is trying to prevent, oh, not FBI, top echelon people in justice, in Intel, and the FBI trying to prevent it.
We'll have all the details.
Nine Eastern on Hannity.
Quick break, right back.
When we come back, Ron DeSantis of the Freedom Caucus.
Let's release the memo.
Don't worry.
100%.
Imagine that.
Yes, sir.
You get too angry.
How are you doing?
Now, as far as the memo goes, the memo came over.
We've got our folks in our national security lawyers in the White House that work for me, work for the president.
They're slicing and dicing it, looking at it so that we know what it means and what it understands.
Did you see it?
I did.
What do you think?
It'll be released here pretty quick, I think, and the whole world can see it.
All right, that was the General Kelly.
He was speaking about releasing the memo.
The president caught on Mike last night saying, Yeah, 100% he wants the memo released, not new information, although the media is trying to treat it that way.
Interesting development on all of this as it relates to the memo, because from my understanding, Rod Rosenstein, remember, before the information that resulted in the building of the memo by Devin Nunes, who is the chairman of the House Intel Committee, Rod Rosenstein was in Paul Ryan's office begging, begging, begging, please do not give this information out.
Anyway, Paul Ryan stood by his chairman, Devin Nunes, and in fact, as a result of the information at the last hour being handed over to the House Intel Committee, well, the memo was drawn from that.
Well, now we have another last-ditch effort of the FBI, and they're trying to stop even the memo from being released.
So, what is it they don't want us, the American people, to see in this?
Anyway, so they sent out a statement yesterday.
It says the FBI takes seriously their obligations to the FISA court and its compliance with procedures overseen by career professionals in the Department of Justice and the FBI.
We are committed to working with the appropriate oversight entities to ensure the continuing integrity of the FISA process.
With regard to the House Intelligence Committee's memorandum, the FBI was provided a limited opportunity to review this memo the day before the committee voted to release it.
As expressed during our initial review, we have grave concerns about material omissions of fact that fundamentally impact the memo's accuracy here.
Now, what got updated here after a review, a source close to the matter told Fox News the FBI officials could not point to any inaccuracies in the memo, none whatsoever.
Ron DeSantis has taken the time as a congressman, soon-to-be gubernatorial candidate in the great state of Florida, to go over and actually see the memo.
This seems to be in keeping with the top echelon within the FBI Department of Justice wanting to protect itself from what are clear abuses.
That's my interpretation, yours.
Well, Sean, I'll tell you, when they put out that statement, it was a little surprising because they went, you had one of the main guys over there who's been involved in all this was one of the guys that Ray sent to review the memo.
And the intelligence committee staff said, listen, please tell us what is wrong in here.
We don't want any misstatements of fact.
You tell us what facts are wrong so we can correct it because they didn't want to vote to make this public if somehow they messed anything up.
They could not point to a single fact, the FBI couldn't, that was wrong in the memo.
And so you think about that, there's nothing wrong with the facts.
Even the FBI acknowledged that.
I want to put emphasis.
So the FBI sends over one of the principles involved in this that is being discussed in the memo.
He probably wasn't factored into the memo as much, but he's somebody who's very high up in the counterintelligence aspect and would be very well read into all the FISA stuff.
And so if they're not able to identify what's wrong with the memo, then why are they putting out a statement saying that somehow material omissions means that this is somehow factually flawed or somehow flawed?
That was not the same message they gave.
So that leads me to believe, I mean, they've been resistant to any type of oversight over this.
The only reason we got to this point is because the Congress, we were pushing and demanding and threatening contempt.
And so they finally allowed it limited access to this stuff.
For them to act like, oh, we only had a limited time to review it and all this.
Well, they've been stonewalling for four or five months.
So the memo is going to be released very soon.
I've also said, you know, this shift memo, I read that, release that too.
I mean, in many ways, it was a sloppy kind of misdirection memo that I think actually supported what Nunes was saying in certain discrete instances.
And so I'm perfectly happy with the American people having as much information and analysis as they want to be able to make a decision about what happened.
I agree with you because they also have all the underlying materials to back up what it is that they're investigating and saying here.
Now, look, if they're, we do have certain facts on the table now, and we do know that there was an effort by Comey and Strzok and Page and Andrew McCabe, who was just fired.
And it looks like Loretta Lynch is involved in at least knowing the outcome ahead of time.
But we do know that there was an effort to exonerate Hillary Clinton so that she could continue her presidential race without even doing an investigation.
In any book that you read on law, I would argue that is obstruction of justice.
Then we have the whole dossier issue on top of it.
This now gets into some very serious constitutional issues where we have bought and paid for, even Fusion GPS, and they never tried to even verify what they wrote in this dossier, bought and paid for by one political candidate, Hillary Clinton, and then used as the foundation for a FISA warrant to spy on an opposition candidate in a lead up to an election and then a president-elect thereafter.
Now, I would imagine that, you know, when we put the FISA law together, it was specifically designed that very, very specific criteria needed to be met to spy, to have our government spying on Americans, you know, considering their Fourth Amendment protections against unreasonable search and seizure, correct?
Right.
And the thing about FISA is if it's a foreign national in a foreign and foreign land, all you have to do is suspect that they may be an agent of a foreign power.
But if you're talking about an American citizen, you have to suspect, have probable cause to show the FISA court that they're acting as an agent for a foreign government and probable cause to think they've committed a criminal offense under U.S. law.
And I can tell you, just from both memos I've read, I'm not convinced that there was ever a plausible basis to think that Carter Page was violating U.S. law.
I think Carter Page has got a lot of problems, but I don't think it was as an agent of a foreign government or that he was violating these statutes.
And so it seems to me to be more of a pretextual thing rather than something that was really grounded in the facts.
And I would also point out, Sean, you laid it out.
If the FBI is saying, oh, we can't release this because there's going to be damage, then why has the FBI and DOJ, Obama holdovers, and the Obama people during the transition, why did they leak classified information with impunity for months and months and months, feeding the New York Times, feeding the Washington Post with all of this stuff if they're so worried about classified information?
And I would also note that since Congress is starting to dig into this, what has happened?
Bruce Orr has been demoted twice.
Peter Strzok demoted.
Lisa Page demoted.
Andrew McCabe fired.
James Baker reassigned.
If there was nothing wrong with any of this, then why are these people having their positions removed?
I think the reason is because folks realize that these guys are problematic in their behavior.
Why is Orr, why is Strzok and why are Page even still there knowing what we know now?
Well, I agree.
I mean, I think that you look at those struck text messages.
Obviously, he hated Trump, the insurance policy.
Strzz and Page talking about, oh, Hillary may be the next president.
Don't go in with guns blazing, all this stuff.
I mean, it's just absurd.
And yeah, I don't think that they should be there.
But even what's happened in the accountability that we've seen, I mean, Sean, you know, there's usually no accountability for anyone.
So even the fact that they're getting reassigned to administrative positions, you know, that shows you that there are some problems here.
And so let's just let the facts come out.
But I really, really am skeptical of hearing from some of these people who knew there was leaking going on in their agencies, acting like going through a normal legal process to release this information to the public is somehow going to be what actually damages national security, not what they were doing for months and months.
What is coming in behind this?
Because there are a lot of other issues that still need to be investigated.
Are we getting a handle on other documents?
Because it takes forever to get these varying departments to turn over the information so that we can make conclusions.
Are we going to now accelerate the process to get a lot of the information we need?
Are we getting that information?
So there is going to be a second phase of this that could result in another memo that gets into issues related to this.
I think absolutely there is going to be a need for us to do more public investigation based on the questions that are both answered and raised by this memo.
So I view the memo as a very important step, but I don't view the memo as the final step in this process because I think there's a lot more stuff that we're going to have to answer.
Yeah, I think so too.
I guess the main thing, what will the average person draw from all of this?
That we really did have a concerted effort of, and again, this is not rank and file FBI, DOJ, or intelligence officials, but that we did have a concerted effort to help one candidate over another and then use the powerful tools of intelligence to accelerate that effort.
Is that a fair characterization?
Yeah, I think that if you look at the Hillary and then this, and it's the same cast of characters, I mean, Strzok, Paige, McCabe, Comey, all the same people in both investigations, not representative of the FBI as a whole or the DOJ.
In every instance with Hillary, they bent over backwards not to make a case against her.
What I think the memo will show was that they basically relied on very thin gruel to be able to put forward this collusion narrative.
And so it's the complete opposite in terms of the zealousness.
They were underzealous against Hillary and they were overzealous against Trump.
Well, I mean, I guess that tells a lot.
I mean, are you convinced when you look at the exoneration that was being built months before the investigation into Hillary's email server, and then you look at the evidence, and then you look at 18 U.S. Code 793 in the Espionage Act about mishandling, destruction of classified top-secret special access program information, all of which were on Hillary's server in a mom-and-pop shop bathroom closet.
And then you look at the actions thereafter, subpoenaed emails were deleted, and then you had the hard drives acid-washed and bleach-pit, and then you had devices being busted up with hammers.
That to me seems like an obstruction case on the surface, and a very strong one at that.
Should this now be revisited?
I think it will be.
I think what they're waiting for is this Inspector General's report.
Remember, the Democrats wanted the IG to look at how Hillary was handled, particularly with regards to Comey reopening the case.
They thought that that was important for the election results, and they were really upset about that.
But what's happened is, as the IG has dug into this, the evidence has been not that there was an anti-Clinton bias, but that there was a pro-Clinton bias, an anti-Trump bias in the FBI.
So I think that's going to be made clear.
And I think it's important to point out to your viewers: I'm not alleging, and none of my colleagues are alleging that the FBI is biased in favor of Dems against Republicans.
It's not a partisan thing.
The animus was really directed against Donald Trump as an individual.
You may not have had the same view if you had a different Republican.
So I don't think it's about party as much as it's about they did not believe Trump should be president.
And if you think about, you know, do we want a country where the American people get to make their choices, or do we want a country in which nameless, faceless bureaucrats in positions of power get to try to undermine the people's choice?
I mean, so it's a very critical issue that it boils down to.
All right, Ron DeSantis, he is a member of the Freedom Caucus making a run for the governorship in the great state of Florida.
We'll take a break.
As we continue, Ron DeSantis is with us.
He is with the Freedom Caucus addressing when we might get the release of the memo.
I'm hearing maybe as early as tonight, probably no later than tomorrow.
Let the American people decide.
You've decided you're going to leave Congress and you're going to run for governor of the great state of Florida, so you are going to be my future governor, I hope.
Oh, yeah, absolutely.
And we're going to be banging on your door to move the operation down to South Carolina.
I want to move the operation down.
I've got to get Fox's permission.
I want to go in a.
Did you see what they did to me last night?
It was 12 degrees without the wind chill last night, and they had me doing a show outside.
It was brutal.
Well, you should talk to your buddy Rush about the amount of money he saved coming down to Florida.
So it'll be good.
And we'd much rather you have him be spending that money in Florida than be sending that to Andrew Cuomo.
That's just better off for the country.
Well, no, I agree.
And by the way, Governor Cuomo doesn't want people like me in New York.
Did you ever hear him say people that are pro-life and believe in the Second Amendment?
You know, we have no bid.
We are not New Yorkers.
So I'm not a real New Yorker, apparently.
So I'll take my 10% that they steal from me every year, and I'll save when I die.
He'll take another 10%.
You know, they literally pick in your pocket everywhere you go in New York.
You know, it's like $14 now to cross a bridge in New York.
You ever hear of that?
Oh, I mean, I'll tell you, the thing is, is you get hit over with these tolls, which is bad enough.
But the thing is, the roads are still all bumpy and bad.
Good luck in the run for governor.
Ron DeSantis will miss you in Washington, though.
800-941-Sean is our toll-free telephone number.
When we come back, news roundup, information overload.
John McLaughlin, Doug Schoen will stop by, and some of the polls on the president's speech are absolutely through the roof.
We'll tell you about that next.
Hey, ladies and gentlemen, today that promise is being broken by an administration that callously appraises our worthiness and decides who makes the cut and who can be bargained away.
They're turning American life into a zero-sum game where for one to win, another must lose.
Where we can guarantee America's safety if we slash our safety net.
Where we can extend health care in Mississippi if we gut it in Massachusetts.
We can cut taxes for corporations today if we raise them on families tomorrow.
Where we can take care of sick kids if we sacrifice dreamers.
We are bombarded with one false choice after another.
Coal miners or single moms.
Rural communities or inner cities.
The coast or the heartland.
As if the mechanic in Pittsburgh, a teacher in Tulsa, and a daycare worker in Birmingham are bitter rivals rather than mutual casualties of a system forcefully rigged towards those at the top.
As if the parent who lies awake terrified that their transgender son or daughter will be beaten and bullied at school is any more or less legitimate than a parent whose heart is shattered by a daughter in the grips of an opioid addiction.
So here is the answer the Democrats offer tonight.
We choose both.
Looking at President Nixon during one of his State of the Unions where he's talking about the Watergate investigation, I just want to play that by you because it's sort of an interesting look back in history how he handled it.
I would like to add a personal word with regard to an issue that has been of great concern to all Americans over the past year.
I refer, of course, to the investigations of the so-called Watergate affair.
As you know, I have provided to the special prosecutor voluntarily a great deal of material.
I believe that I have provided all the material that he needs to conclude his investigations and to proceed to prosecute the guilty and to clear the innocent.
I believe the time has come to bring that investigation and the other investigations of this matter to an end.
One year of Watergate is enough.
And interesting to hear the response there from obviously Republicans there.
Are they succeeding in sowing the seeds of doubt here?
I keep coming back.
You had a front row seat to Nixon.
And were there moments like where you thought, boy, Nixon is actually doing a good job of undermining this investigation.
But it turned out he wasn't, right?
Well, it was a different time, for one thing.
You didn't have a constant play that was going on across the wide spectrum of everything.
If Nixon had Fox News, does he survive?
Well, he didn't have Fox News.
All right, so there you have it.
Joseph Kennedy, I don't even know what was going on.
What did they put on his face?
Was it drool or was it too much?
I don't know.
It looked like chapstick or something.
I mean, everybody had picked up on it.
And then, of course, we have, you know, CNN, conspiracy, Scholl Network, conspiracy TV, MSNBC, you know, push Trump as 1974 Richard Nixon.
Okay, give me the evidence.
Anyway, joining us with reaction to all this.
President had massive poll numbers last night.
A good reaction to the speech.
One in particular that stood out in my mind was the CBS News poll.
And among those speech watchers, 75% approving of the president's speech last night.
Joining us to discuss pollster, founder, McLaughlin and Associates, John McLaughlin, Doug Schoen, Polster, author, political analyst, Fox News channel contributor.
And Doug, I start with you.
I mean, I've got to believe this was a page right out of your handbook because this is something you preach regardless who's in power, that you want them to go to the middle.
You want them to reach out.
You want, you know, some conciliatory tones.
You can't deny that the president threw that out last night.
I have no reason to deny.
I can only enthusiastically embrace and say, and Sean, when he asks you what to do and how to advance his interests, say, Sean said to keep doing what you did in the State of the Union and what you did in Davos.
Because you know what, Sean?
It works and it worked last night.
It did work in Davos.
It did work last night.
But the reality is there's never been a president as hated and as attacked in history as this one, John McLaughlin.
You now have every minute of every day on two cable news networks, three broadcast networks, and so-called big newspapers going at him with a fury 24-7.
They don't stop.
Nobody's ever talked about his accomplishments, I mean, except for somebody like me and a few of us.
Right, right.
And I wouldn't say he's as hated because he's intensely liked by millions of Americans.
It's the elites that hate him because he is turning things inside out.
And by the way, those same media elites that don't like him, they ought to thank him for their increased ratings last night.
I mean, the Ford broadcast TV networks had an increased rating of 19%, according to the early numbers, over last year, Barack Obama's State of the Union.
So he's increasing the ratings for all of them.
Millions of Americans are watching.
And according to the CBS poll, among over 1,000 people who watched last night, as you mentioned, 75% of all voters that watched approved of his speech last night, including 97% of Republicans, 72% of Independents.
But 43% of Democrats approved of it while all those Democrats were sitting on their hands.
And 81% of those who watched said he was trying to unite the country rather than divide it.
91% liked what they heard on infrastructure.
75% like what they heard on national security.
72% liked what they heard on immigration, even though Congressman Gutira is a Democrat, got up and walked out while Congress was cheering USA, USA.
I mean, the Democrats look so out of touch.
The congressional leadership, Nancy Pelosi, Chuck Schumer, those Democrats who sat on their hands when we were applauding American heroes.
That speech was not about Donald Trump last night as much as about what his accomplishments have done for average people.
Listen, I think the most indicative example we have is the reaction was so positive to the president's speech last night.
CNN had their own survey where 70% of their viewers gave the speech a positive rating.
And then CNN put a disclaimer on their own poll.
The poll does not and cannot reflect the views of all Americans.
In other words, they're like begging over it, CNN.
Don't go by our poll.
This can't be true.
You know, God don't let this be true.
Right.
Right.
It's just the media elites that are so out of whack.
I mean, the Trump derangement syndrome of those people who drink water inside the beltway have been affected by this.
Yeah, look, when they sit on their hands, or in the case of Gutierrez, you know, getting up when it's chanting USA, USA.
But when the president's touting, 2.4 million jobs created, when the president's talking about higher wages and bonuses, and Nancy Pelosi refers to $1,000, $2,000 bonuses as crumbs.
I know looking at my own life, Doug Shoan, a $1,000, $2,000 bonus at different points in my life would have made a massive, massive difference in my life, or the lowest level of recorded unemployment in the African-American and Hispanic communities, or securing the border, or even, you know, his work in terms of neutralizing ISIS and defeating them in Iraq, for example.
There's nothing that made them happy.
There's no accomplishment that they can point to because they hate him so much.
Well, look, Sean, I was with the CEO today who showed me his internal payroll and it said amount of benefit due to tax cuts per employee and the amount of bonus payments.
That is huge stuff.
And if the Republicans can package it, they can turn around a political situation that until recently has favored the Democrats.
And I would tell my Democratic friends, not many listen to you, Sean, but they should.
But I would say to them, negotiate with the president.
Rather than blasting him, say, okay, where's the proof?
What do you want to do?
How can we get deals done?
Then, and only then, can you legitimately disagree on policy if those disagreements, as I believe they do, continue to exist.
But to just do what Pelosi did is just ridiculous, Sean.
I was embarrassed as an American, not just as a Democrat, but as an American, for the rhetoric, the hate, the bile, and frankly, the ignorance.
What is your take on Joe Kennedy?
And, you know, I don't know what to make of what was going on and hanging down from his lip, or it looked like, I don't know, chapstick, vascular.
I don't know what people put on their lips these days.
I don't put anything on mine.
And then Joe Kennedy, it seemed like such a stretch to go from the president, state of the union, and then to have a Massachusetts liberal with a big name that's loaded give a speech.
I just thought the optics of it were horrible for them, John.
Well, I think you hit the nail on the head is all during the speech, you saw nothing but tired old liberals.
I mean, literally, Bernie Sanders, Chuck Schumer, Nancy Pelosi.
I mean, the liberals across the screen who are there don't represent their party.
So they said, well, let's find a young liberal.
Still be wrong and out of touch.
And let's use one that happens to have a known last name.
Right, right.
So they're going back to the break.
So Ted Kennedy isn't with us anymore.
Well, who do we got?
So they found a young, out-of-touch liberal.
But the reality of this is the president has been very successful in his first year.
His numbers, as we all know, have been grinding up on his job approval, where we had his last poll this month.
It was 46% job approval.
Republicans were still losing for Congress.
But doesn't he poll hired?
In other words, isn't there a hidden Trump support level out there?
Well, it's hidden when you don't look for it.
I mean, a lot of these media polls don't poll Republicans.
They have us in the 20s.
And on Election Day, November 2016, we were 33%.
We should be over 30% in the polls.
And that's what our poll does, Rasmus and Politico.
The Fox News poll that had him trending up finally had Republicans over 30%.
So if you make it look like an actual election, he hasn't been that bad.
However, last night, the polls don't capture this.
And we're going back in the field on Monday for next week once these polls.
All right, stay right there.
We tapped in.
We've got to take a break.
We'll talk about 2018 and what that looks like for Republicans and Democrats on the other side of this.
All right, as we continue, Doug Schoen, the pollster, and John McLaughlin, the pollster, is with us.
All right, Doug, let's go to 2018.
Usually in these off-year elections, the party that is in power in the White House tends to lose seats.
The question is, is there an opportunity for the Democrats to ever get control of the House or of the Senate?
I would argue if that happens, the Democrats would move towards impeachment for no reason, but they would try.
I think it would be bad for the country.
Well, I think certainly if there is a Democratic House, they will try.
And one of the things that is just a built-in advantage for the Democrats, like redistricting isn't a built-in advantage to the Republicans, is the fact with Trey Gowdy's retirement, there will be 40 Republicans who do not seek re-election.
So I think, Don, you may have a different opinion.
I think it's about 50-50 now whether the Democrats win the House.
I doubt they win the Senate, but I do think there's a good chance they could win the House.
John?
Well, I think there's always been concern about the House because, I mean, eight years ago, I was working for Eric Hanner, and the Democrats are taking a playbook.
They're taking a play out of Eric Hanner's book where Eric Kanner, correctly, because it was bad policy, had all the Republicans vote against stimulus.
All the Republicans vote against Obama's budget.
All the Republicans vote against Obamacare because it was bad policy, and he wouldn't compromise with us.
So we regained the House.
This is different in that Trump's policies are good, as we saw last night, and in these early polling, is they're majority popular.
And the Democrats are the ones out of touch.
So the Republicans have a challenge here where initially there seems to be a backlash against Republicans.
And even in our poll this month, we had the generic vote plus three Democrat.
But the Republicans need to expose the Democrat policies that they won't reach out on infrastructure.
They won't reach out on rational immigration policies, on national security.
They can't stand for a guy who ran away from the North Korean dictator and for American heroes, a Marine who re-enlisted, who had lost both his legs and was blind.
I mean, the Democrats needed to show some element that they're willing to share values with us and compromise on majority important things.
So I don't think this is like eight years ago when we regained the House.
I think this is a moment here where the Democrats seem to be going off.
They're not a Doug Shoan Democrat.
They're not a reasonable group of Democrats.
They're not somebody that we should negotiate with the United States.
And don't encourage them to be either.
Just let them keep going down their merry Nancy Pelosi road that they're on.
And I don't think they helped themselves last night either by sitting on their hands.
They looked angry, petulant, childlike at times.
I don't think the optics were good sitting on your hands when you're talking about America coming back and Americans being successful.
No, I tend to agree.
And Sean, the other advantage the Democrats have is given the non-deductibility of state and local taxes and the weakness of the Republicans on both coasts, the Democrats, in a certain sense, could actually win the House through California, New York, New Jersey, Connecticut, Washington, and Oregon.
That could be enough to swing the House.
That being said, I agree.
The optics were, to me, just ridiculous, embarrassing.
Embarrassing, yeah.
All right, guys, good to talk to you.
We'll be checking in all throughout the year.
This is our first temperature check on election November 2018, so we've got a lot of time between now and then, although time flies.
Thank you both, Doug Schoen, John McLaughlin, 800-941 Sean, Tolfrey telephone number.
As we continue, your calls and part of the president's speech from last night.
Next.
All right, 25 to the top of the hour, 800-941-SHAWN, toll-free telephone number.
You know, I want to do something here.
I actually thought last night State of the Union was as close to Reagan as I've seen since Reagan.
And so, what we did is we've taken the best of last night's hour and a half speech, and we want to play some of the best chunks of it for you because the media doesn't want to focus in on these specific things.
So, we want to make a difference.
So, here's the president from last night: Mr. Speaker, Mr. Vice President, members of Congress, the First Lady of the United States, and my fellow Americans.
Less than one year has passed since I first stood at this podium in this majestic chamber to speak on behalf of the American people and to address their concerns, their hopes, and their dreams.
That night, our new administration had already taken very swift action.
A new tide of optimism was already sweeping across our land.
Each day since, we have gone forward with a clear vision and a righteous mission to make America great again for all Americans.
Over the last year, we have made incredible progress and achieved extraordinary success.
We have faced challenges we expected and others we could never have imagined.
We have shared in the heights of victory and the pains of hardship.
We have endured floods and fires and storms.
But through it all, we have seen the beauty of America's soul and the steel in America's spine.
In the aftermath of that terrible shooting, we came together not as Republicans or Democrats, but as representatives of the people.
But it is not enough to come together only in times of tragedy.
Tonight, I call upon all of us to set aside our differences, to seek out common ground, and to summon the unity we need to deliver for the people.
This is really the key.
These are the people we were elected to serve.
Over the last year, the world has seen what we always knew, that no people on earth are so fearless or daring or determined as Americans.
If there is a mountain, we climb it.
If there's a frontier, we cross it.
If there's a challenge, we tame it.
If there's an opportunity, we seize it.
So let's begin tonight by recognizing that the state of our union is strong because our people are strong.
And together, we are building a safe, strong, and proud America.
Since the election, we have created 2.4 million new jobs, including 200,000 new jobs in manufacturing alone.
Tremendous number.
After years and years of wage stagnation, we are finally seeing rising wages.
Unemployment claims have hit a 45-year low.
And something I'm very proud of, African American unemployment stands at the lowest rate ever recorded.
And Hispanic American unemployment has also reached the lowest levels in history.
Small business confidence is at an all-time high.
The stock market has smashed one record after another, gaining $8 trillion and more in value in just this short period of time.
The great news for Americans, 401k retirement, pension, and college savings accounts have gone through the roof.
And just as I promised the American people from this podium 11 months ago, we enacted the biggest tax cuts and reforms in American history.
Since we passed tax cuts, roughly 3 million workers have already gotten tax cut bonuses, many of them thousands and thousands of dollars per worker, and it's getting more every month, every week.
Apple has just announced it plans to invest a total of $350 billion in America and hire another 20,000 workers.
And just a little while ago, ExxonMobil announced a $50 billion investment in the United States, just a little while ago.
This, in fact, is our new American moment.
There has never been a better time to start living the American dream.
So to every citizen watching at home tonight, no matter where you've been or where you've come from, this is your time.
If you work hard, if you believe in yourself, if you believe in America, then you can dream anything.
You can be anything.
And together, we can achieve absolutely anything.
Here tonight is Preston Sharp, a 12-year-old boy from Reading, California, who noticed that veterans' graves were not marked with flags on Veterans Day.
He decided all by himself to change that and started a movement that has now placed 40,000 flags at the graves of our great heroes.
Preston, a job well done.
Young patriots like Preston teach all of us about our civic duty as Americans.
And I met Preston a little while ago, and he is something very special that I can tell you.
Great future.
Thank you very much for all you've done, Preston.
Thank you very much.
Preston's reverence for those who have served our nation reminds us of why we salute our flag, why we put our hands on our hearts for the Pledge of Allegiance, And why we proudly stand for the National Anthem.
America has also finally turned the page.
Decades of unfair trade deals that sacrificed our prosperity and shipped away our companies, our jobs, and our wealth.
Our nation has lost its wealth, but we're getting it back so fast.
The era of economic surrender is totally over.
From now on, we expect trading relationships to be fair and, very importantly, reciprocal.
We will work to fix bad trade deals and negotiate new ones.
And they'll be good ones, but they'll be fair.
And we will protect American workers and American intellectual property through strong enforcement of our trade rules.
For decades, open borders have allowed drugs and gangs to pour into our most vulnerable communities.
They've allowed millions of low-wage workers to compete for jobs and wages against the poorest Americans.
Most tragically, they have caused the loss of many innocent lives.
Here tonight are two fathers and two mothers, Evelyn Rudriggers, Freddie Cuevas, Elizabeth Alvarado, and Robert Mickens.
Their two teenage daughters, Kayla Cuevas and Nisa Mickens, were close friends on Long Island.
But in September 2016, on the eve of Nisa's 16th birthday, such a happy time it should have been, neither of them came home.
These two precious girls were brutally murdered while walking together in their hometown.
Six members of the savage MS-13 gang have been charged with Kayla and Nisa's murders.
Many of these gang members took advantage of glaring loopholes in our laws to enter the country as illegal, unaccompanied, alien minors and wound up in Kayla and Nisa's high school.
Evelyn, Elizabeth, Freddie, and Robert, tonight everyone in this chamber is praying for you.
Everyone in America is grieving for you.
Please stand.
Thank you very much.
I want you to know that 320 million hearts are right now breaking for you.
We love you.
Thank you.
The United States is a compassionate nation.
We are proud that we do more than any other country anywhere in the world to help the needy, the struggling, and the underprivileged all over the world.
But as President of the United States, my highest loyalty, my greatest compassion, my constant concern is for America's children, America's struggling workers, and America's forgotten communities.
I want our youth to grow up, to achieve great things.
I want our poor to have their chance to rise.
So tonight, I am extending an open hand to work with members of both parties, Democrats and Republicans, to protect our citizens of every background, color, religion, and creed.
My duty and the sacred duty of every elected official in this chamber is to defend Americans, to protect their safety, their families, their communities, and their right to the American dream.
Because Americans are dreamers, too.
Americans deserve accountability and respect.
And that's what we are giving to our wonderful heroes, our veterans.
Thank you.
So tonight I call on Congress to empower every cabinet secretary with the authority to reward good workers and to remove federal employees who undermine the public trust or fail the American people.
We are joined by one more witness to the ominous nature of this regime.
His name is Mr. G. Sung-ho.
In 1996, Sung-ho was a starving boy in North Korea.
One day he tried to steal coal from a railroad car to barter for a few scraps of food, which were very hard to get.
In the process, he passed out on the train tracks, exhausted from hunger.
He woke up as a train ran over his limbs.
He then endured multiple amputations without anything to dull the pain or the hurt.
His brother and sister gave what little food they had to help him recover and ate dirt themselves, permanently stunting their own growth.
Later, he was tortured by North Korean authorities after returning from a brief visit to China.
His tormentors wanted to know if he'd met any Christians.
He had, and he resolved after that to be free.
Sung-ho traveled thousands of miles on crutches all across China and Southeast Asia to freedom.
Most of his family followed.
His father was caught trying to escape and was tortured to death.
Today he lives in Seoul, where he rescues other defectors and broadcasts into North Korea what the regime fears most, the truth.
Today he has a new leg.
But Sung-ho, I understand you still keep those old crutches as a reminder of how far you've come.
Your great sacrifice is an inspiration to us all.
Please, thank you.
Hannity tonight, we got a big show tonight as we are going to go over the state of the union and the media's reaction to it, Democrats' reaction to it.
Also, we can have the memo released as early as tonight, so I am told.
May happen tonight, may happen tomorrow.
I'm told the latest would be Monday.
Newt Gingrich is on tonight.
Sarah Carter, Greg Jarrett, Congressman Matt Gates on tonight.
Sebastian Gorka, Dan Bongino, Larry Elder, and Geraldo.
All right, so set you DVR.
That's 9 Eastern on Hannity on the Fox News channel.
News you will not get anywhere else.
We'll see you tonight at 9.
And of course, we will see you back here tomorrow.
Thanks for being with us.
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