Sean Hannity Show - Defending Our Schools - 2.22

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Feb. 23, 2018 - Sean Hannity Show

01:35:15

Defending Our Schools - 2.22

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	You are listening to the Sean Hannity Radio Show Podcast.
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	All right, glad you're with us as we continue our show from yesterday from Washington, D.C., the swamp, the sewer.
	Write down our toll-free number.
	Even though we're here, our number remains the same.
	It's 800-941 Sean, if you want to be a part of this extravaganza.
	Very fascinating to watch this debate unfold over how to really, it's about how to keep schools safe.
	But if you watch the media, the only answer that they have is how do we modify the gun laws in America?
	In this particular case that happened in Parkland, you got to stop.
	You got to start at where it all began.
	You have a very troubled kid.
	Now, I would say all of you, wherever you live, you probably have that one kid in town, the three kids in town that you know are the biggest troublemakers.
	You know, at the end of the day, most kids in school know the other kids, the ones that do drugs, the ones that smoke pot, they know the ones that drink, they know the people that are having sex.
	They know everything that's going on there.
	In this case, they knew about this kid Cruz.
	They knew that he was in trouble.
	They knew that he had brought these, you know, different parts of a weapon into the school.
	He got thrown out of the school.
	Now, I am in particular.
	I was a little disappointed in the sheriff of Broward County last night.
	We went after Dana Lash, and well, a lot of people went after her.
	They talked about burning her and calling her a murderer.
	And she's sitting there trying to offer solutions and find areas of agreement.
	If the real goal is if you want to score cheap political points, okay, you can go out there and you can stack the deck.
	There's one kid that actually is claiming that CNN didn't, you know, was trying to feed him the question, therefore, he didn't want to go and partake in that.
	And by the way, CNN has a history of this.
	Wouldn't surprise me.
	I'll play you his comments later in the program today.
	But if you really want the solution, you got to sit, you got to talk, you got to listen.
	I think what happened at the White House, that listening session yesterday, was far more productive than what they tried to do on CNN last night.
	At some point, we've got to ask ourselves if everybody knows after a shooting that a kid is capable.
	Oh, that's we're not surprised.
	Everybody thought he was capable of this.
	Okay, the school obviously had to know.
	He brought clips to school one day.
	Not many kids in high school are bringing clips for weapons to school.
	If you look over his social media footprint, what do you see?
	Guns, an obsession with guns, one gun picture after another, shooting guns, showing off guns, showing off this and that.
	That is an indicator.
	The fact that the police, some 39 times, had to get in touch with this family about this kid is a pretty strong warning that something really bad is going on here and this kid's not getting it and he's not changing and shifting his behavior and trying to get along with the social mores and values that most people have.
	39 times is a lot.
	And then you take two very specific calls to the FBI warning about this particular kid.
	Now, at some point, you got to say to yourself, okay, where did we mess up?
	Because every bit of evidence that we would ever need that somebody's going to act like this, we had that evidence right there before us, and everybody knew that, quote, that was the kid.
	Now, think about where you live now.
	If you have kids, if you ask your kids, they'll kind of reveal a lot if you talk to your kids.
	You got to pick the moment.
	I find the best moment is usually if I turn off, you know, Sirius XM radio, whatever station I'm listening to, either country music, Howard Stern, whatever I happen to be listening to in my car, I'll just turn it off and start talking and start asking questions.
	Like, I know, all right, I'll pick a school that I know that my kids were never a part of.
	At one particular school that I know, where my friend's kids go, there is a certain area where the kids that smoke pot go in the morning and smoke pot.
	Everybody knows the exact location.
	In the afternoon, before they go back to class after lunch, they go back to the same spot every day and they smoke pot.
	A lot of the kids know it, a lot of the teachers know it, and nobody does anything.
	And if that information would be given to the police, well, the police can be hiding out in another part and they can smell it and they can go over and they could do their job, and that would help get drugs out of school.
	Then, if some kids are doing harder drugs, well, the other kids know about that too.
	If some kids are, you know, promiscuous, that's pretty well known as well.
	Although sometimes people lie about that particular issue, but they have it.
	So, anyhow, so the listening session was interesting to me.
	I thought a lot of people made a lot of the points that I've been making about this topic, which is if you really want to secure a school, it's really not that hard.
	If that's the goal, and you can do it without turning it into a gun debate.
	And here's how the gun debate goes: Let's say as a result of this shooting, they banned AR-15s, which was used in this particular shooting in Parkland.
	Okay, the biggest loss of life in a school shooting happened to be Virginia Tech.
	In that school shooting, they used pistols.
	So, if the next shooting, God forbid, because we don't lock down these schools, we don't do a full security and threat assessment on these schools, and we pretty much have these schools wide open for anybody that wants to walk in, whether they have an idea or not.
	Whatever the next weapon is, the next time, then they're going to take away, chip away at people's Second Amendment rights.
	I don't think that secures anything because you can't deal with the evil that lurks in the hearts of every man, woman, and child on this earth.
	But you've got to predict that these people exist because they do exist.
	So, the first thing that I would do is, I would have every school district ask the hard question: who are the kids that are now the most likely to be in trouble?
	Who do we know that's struggling?
	And maybe they're a little antisocial, maybe they're, quote, a little weird.
	Maybe every school should look at the social media sites of every kid in their school.
	If you got 3,000, it's going to take time, but you know, you have a few people spending eight hours a day just going through the social media postings of every individual in the school.
	You can do that fairly expeditiously.
	Then you have the police and security professionals, maybe former military guys.
	We go to every school in the country.
	You hire these guys.
	They probably would volunteer and say, We don't have the money.
	Can you help us out?
	And I guarantee you, people, trained professionals in the military and law enforcement, they will give you a rock-solid threat assessment plan that will be impenetrable, which means that this can't happen again.
	And it's got to be followed up with: okay, no kid gets in the school without the proper ID.
	I can't get in any building in New York without a license.
	If I go to the buildings that I work in, I can't get in without my ID.
	You know, I can't tell you how many times, you know, I've gone to work and I don't have my ID that day.
	And they say, Hi, Mr. Hannity.
	And I said, Yeah, I forgot my ID.
	And they said, You got to sign in at the front desk, and I better have my other ID with me or else I'm in trouble.
	And they know exactly who I am.
	Just like nobody gets exceptions when you go through security at the airport.
	You go through the airport, everyone gets, doesn't matter.
	And look, nine out of ten times, I'm doing jet blue, and they'll say, Hi, Mr. Hannity.
	How are you?
	Good to see you.
	I like your show.
	Now take your shoes off and open your bag.
	And if I'm set to be checked, I'm going to get wanded and checked.
	Like just the way it should be.
	You know, you think about this.
	We, after 9-11, we now protect our airports.
	We now protect, you know, our sports stadiums.
	Look at what they do for the Super Bowl every year.
	They lock that sucker down.
	They got dogs for bombs.
	They've got everybody being wandered.
	You go through metal detectors.
	Now, look, I'd rather live in a world where I did not have to take my shoes off and put my bags through the x-ray machine and wait an hour and get there an hour early so I can board an airplane.
	I prefer to live in a world where I could walk up five minutes till my boarding time, take my bag, throw it right over the bin, close my eyeballs, and go to sleep.
	But that's not the reality of the world we live in.
	We don't want another 9-11.
	We don't want another hijacking.
	And after these things happen, you've got to learn lessons and you've got to get smarter.
	And if the goal is to protect these kids, well, the first thing is I would find a database and build a database of every kid that you think and identify as being troubled.
	And then with those kids, maybe you can work with local counselors in the area and maybe they would even counsel the at least attempt to counsel these kids for free and maybe offer up their services.
	And then if you bring in the retired military guys and the retired police officers, they do a full threat assessment.
	They decide for you what doors are open at what time.
	They decide if you need an ID program in that particular neighborhood.
	They can determine if every kid needs to go through a metal detector, just like they go through when you're getting on an airplane.
	And then nobody can get into that school that doesn't, that isn't identified, that has something that they shouldn't have in the school.
	And then you follow it up with trained professionals that are hired.
	Retired military, armed, retired police, armed.
	And you're going to say, Hannity, we don't even have money for books.
	Well, I don't know if that's hyperbole on the part of some people, but you know what?
	If that's the case, I would imagine that every single school district would be able to gather enough people and do enough fundraising to make sure that you have the necessary protection because you can't put a price on a child's life.
	So I think there are practical solutions.
	And, you know, I'll play you some of the things that were said from yesterday.
	Listen to this one kid.
	And, well, first of all, this is what really angers me.
	This is a guy that was, it was a Broward shooting survivor.
	Listen to him tell him that last night when they called, let's see, Dana Lash a murderer and they were chanting to burn her.
	Listen to what he says about how CNN set this up.
	Yeah, I expected to be able to ask my questions and give my opinion on my questions.
	But Colton Hobb, a member of the junior ROTC who shielded classmates in the midst of terror, says he did not get to share his experience.
	CNN had originally asked me to write a speech and questions and it ended up being all scripted.
	Colton wrote questions about school safety, suggested using veterans as armed school security guards, but claimed CNN wanted him to ask a scripted question instead.
	So he decided not to go.
	I don't think that it's going to get anything accomplished.
	It's not going to ask the true questions that all the parents and teachers and students have.
	Now, I have a little bit of history.
	This is not new for fake news CNN, and it was obviously a stacked act.
	But then you go to the White House listening session, and I'll play this when we get back, because I thought there were really, really smart, bright, intelligent ideas that were being put forth there.
	I give the president a lot of credit for doing this.
	And there's a way to do this that we can protect our kids, protect our schools, and also protect the rights of law-abiding Americans and their Second Amendment rights.
	All right, bump stocks.
	All right, got it.
	That's gone.
	The NRA had supported that.
	And the NRA supports a lot of other things in spite of the way the media demonizes and tries to portray them.
	It's like everything else they do.
	It's inaccurate.
	Pretty amazing story out about fake news CNN.
	Michelle Malkin writes this.
	And anyway, and they talk about, well, this isn't the first time.
	She reminds us that during the presidential debate in Vegas in 07, Wolf Blitzer introduced several citizen questioners as ordinary people and undecided voters.
	Well, later it turned out to include a former Arkansas Democratic Director of Political Affairs and the president of the Islamic Society of Nevada and a far-left anti-war activist who'd been quoted in newspapers just ripping Harry Reid for his failure to pull out of Iraq.
	And then at a CNN YouTube GOP debate two weeks later, the everyday undecided voters whose questions were chosen included a member of the lesbian, gay, bisexual, transsexual Americans for Hillary Clinton steering committee,
	a young woman named Journey who questioned the candidates on abortion and CNN failed to properly identify as an outspoken John Edwards supporter, a supposed log cabin Republican who declared his support for Obama on an Obama 08 campaign blog,
	a supposedly unaffiliated concerned mother who was actually a staffer and prominent Pittsburgh union activist for the steelworkers, which had endorsed Edwards for president, another, quote, undecided voter who urged Ron Paul to run as an independent, but had already publicly declared his support for the former New Mexico governor Bill Richardson's Democratic presidential bid and a staffer for Dick Durbin,
	a former intern for Jane Harmon and a former intern for the Council of American Islamic Relations.
	So, you know, when you listen to this guy come out and say, yeah, they didn't want me to ask my question.
	They wanted a scripted question.
	I'm thinking, oh, well, that fits perfectly.
	Because the network that actually, you know, this was an article in one of these blogs.
	I forget which one about me today.
	Hannity at CPAC, he called CNN the shh whole network.
	Okay, they used that word like 194 times in 24 hours because it was anti-Trump.
	And now if they're stacking the deck with people that support their agenda on the Second Amendment and they come up with a phony town hall, well, it certainly fits into the narrative that I've been saying that journalism is dead and CNN is the shh whole fake news network that they've always been.
	So you're not going to get any fairness.
	The only question I have, why did Rubio and Dana Lash go on the network?
	We'll have Dana Lash on Hannity tonight at CPAC.
	All right, 25 now till the top of the hour, 800-941 Sean, if you want to be a part of the program as we continue.
	Look, everybody can talk all they want, I think, about the Second Amendment.
	At the end of the day, I don't think laws changed short of banning weapons in this country, disarming the American people, and even then would never get the desired result.
	It's sad, but we live in a dangerous world.
	I ask liberals all the time, all the years I've debated gun control, well, God forbid, what happens if somebody breaks into your house?
	What are you going to do?
	I'm going to call the police.
	Okay, you're dead.
	Your family's dead.
	You're done.
	Whatever they decide to do to you will be done.
	And you have to be able to defend yourself.
	I've never understood the fear that some have of defending themselves.
	People ask me all the time because they know that I'm somebody that believes in the Second Amendment, right, to keep and bear arms.
	You know, what kind of gun should I get?
	Should I get a Glocker or a Ruber?
	You know, they don't even know what they're talking about.
	A shotgun?
	What about an AK?
	You know, because they've heard these.
	I'm like, well, I don't care what kind of gun you get.
	I have AR-15s.
	I have shotguns.
	I have a collection of pistols.
	It just happens to be a passion of mine.
	Unfortunately, I don't get to shoot as much as I want.
	Being in radio as many years as I have, my ears are shot, and I don't really feel like hearing ringing for three weeks after I shoot, even with ear protection.
	And it just happens.
	But I still shoot, you know, to keep my skill level up.
	What firearm do you want to be trained in the use of?
	That would be my advice.
	Learn about firearm safety.
	It's not a toy.
	You know, before, you know, I just happened to be helping my daughter.
	She's on the verge of getting her license.
	There's nothing worse in the world than teaching a child how to drive a car.
	That's how I am on the other side.
	I'm just like twitching and twitching.
	Calm down, Dad.
	Calm down.
	I got it.
	You stopped in the middle of the intersection.
	A car was headed right towards me.
	Hit the gas pedal.
	It's really not that bad.
	Well, actually, it is.
	It actually is.
	But I try to do it patiently.
	It's the same with firearms.
	Look, I know some of you are afraid of firearms.
	One thing you will learn, you'll never hear about the NRA is you meet people at, if you go to a gun shop and you want to buy a gun, maybe for self-protection, or maybe you just want to try it and see if you like it, that it's something that you're interested in.
	The thing, my experience has been, as experienced as I am with pistols, I'm not as experienced with rifles.
	But the desire of those that know to teach in a very loving and friendly, safe way is unbelievable.
	And they know that if there's inexperienced people with firearms, they want to take the mystery away.
	They want to show you how to use these weapons, how to store these weapons, how to load these weapons.
	What happens if the weapon jams?
	What if this happens?
	There's all sorts of people that, you know, this is what they do for a living.
	And they take great pride in teaching people gun safety.
	And every Second Amendment, pro-Second Amendment person I know is passionate about safety.
	I'm extraordinarily passionate about safety.
	Anyway, so, you know, we have the usual opportunists, those that want to politicize tragedy.
	I mean, this wasn't two hours old, and I think you had members of Congress on the floor of the House, you know, coming out with their typical predictable talking points.
	And there are yet millions of Americans that believe in the right to keep and to bear arms.
	We believe historically, constitutionally, it is our right, and it's given to us and granted to us.
	And unfortunately, we have to fight to keep those rights.
	You know, if you don't solve the problem, which is the safety issue, at schools, then every time this happens, everyone's going to be going back to the same old arguments and debates.
	And we're not going to solve the problem.
	And schools are not going to be any safer.
	But if you really want to save these kids from these terrible situations, there's a way to do it.
	Full, complete security threat assessments of every single school.
	And I guarantee your local police department, you know, retired military in your community, retired special ops forces in your community, I guarantee you they would line up if you put out the call, hey, we're looking for the best and brightest people in the community to help keep our schools safe.
	Will you help us?
	They'll do it for free.
	They would do that in a second, in a heartbeat.
	And then they'll make a full, complete threat assessment.
	What is the best way to get kids to enter the school?
	How do you prevent people that don't belong in the school from getting in the school?
	Probably some ID system would be necessary.
	You might have to add to it a system, a metal detector of some kind, or wanding the kids as they come into school to make sure that they don't bring a weapon into school with them, making sure people that don't belong there can't get in there.
	And then you have to hire people that are armed and trained and have the ability to be on the ground.
	You know, all these shootings, as we learned in the White House conversation yesterday, they're over in three minutes.
	Police take six to eight minutes, which is an astronomically great response rate.
	But by the time they get there, it's over.
	So you have to have people on the ground that are able to do it.
	I'm less inclined.
	I'm not against teachers that want to be trained, that would feel comfortable carrying a firearm with them concealed.
	I'm absolutely fine with that.
	But I'm not expecting that a lot of teachers are going to want to go through that kind of training and have that big responsibility on their hands.
	I think most teachers I know, they want to teach.
	And so I think it's you're really looking at retired policemen, retired military, and yes, I think I would have them armed.
	And I think if you do that, I think we're going to make it a safer place for our kids.
	You know, in this listening session, I thought the President did a remarkable job.
	I thought on CNN you got the same predictable fake news.
	They wanted to make a Jerry Springer show out of it, and they did.
	And I think there's a better way to talk to each other rather than, you're a murderer, murderer, murderer, and, you know, burn her.
	I mean, really, that's news?
	It was pretty pathetic.
	Really?
	And there's an absort of sickness that they take their agenda that far.
	I want everyone to think about this for one second.
	This goes right into your question.
	Do you know that it is not federally required for states to actually report people who are prohibited possessors, crazy people, people who are murderers?
	No?
	We've been actually talking about that for a long time.
	Let me answer the question.
	Let me answer the question.
	You can shout me down when I'm finished, but let me answer Emma's question.
	It is not federal law for states to report convictions to the NICS system.
	All right, that was Dana Lash yesterday at this town hall.
	Same thing happened to Marco Rubio when he tried to explain his position on this.
	Am I the only one, by the way, that finds it a little bit more ironic that a room full of gun control advocates are shouting burn her and murderer, assembled by fake news CNN last night, repeatedly threatening violence against the NRA spokesperson in that show, which was Dana, during the questioning by a Stoneman Douglas student, Emma Gonzalez.
	You know, you had attendees literally screaming and heckling her as a murderer.
	And, you know, all right, so Jake Tapper said to keep quiet.
	As he kept quiet, by the way, I didn't hear him jump in.
	And the angry crowd grew angrier and they grew louder.
	And Lash tried to say, if you let me answer your question, you can shout me down when I'm finished, but let me answer Emma's question to which someone shouted, You're a murderer.
	Well, how are you going to have a conversation with somebody like that?
	And I know everybody's emotions are running high.
	I get it.
	I understand it.
	We lost 17 people.
	We did not have to lose.
	There are preventable measures here.
	And if you love life, we've got to protect innocent life.
	And the way to protect innocent life is like the same way that we protect all other life in big environments like this.
	And that is security checks.
	That is IDs.
	That is metal detectors, the same drill.
	I mean, imagine, we'd all love it, I guess, that after 9-11, we didn't have to go through security the way that we do, but that's not reality.
	That wouldn't make us safer.
	I'm willing to take my shoes off, go through the wanding, go through the machine, have them check my bag, take out the lotion that I put in there because it's too big, have them take my water and say, have a nice day and go onto my plane and know that everybody else went through the same check.
	That plane's going to be safe.
	I mean, I'd rather live in a world where there's no evil, but that world doesn't exist.
	There's a world of murders, rape, child molesters, evil people.
	We have evil countries, North Korea, Iran, you know, Putin, Russia, China, that all hate us.
	And then we have individuals that have their own evil within them.
	All those people I mentioned are evil.
	So the idea is to protect the good people against the evil people.
	Anybody that would walk into a school and kill innocent children this way is evil.
	You're not going to remove the evil from the heart by taking away the gun that you think the next one is going to use.
	So it just, it's logically speaking, that's not going to work.
	Protecting our schools is the answer.
	All right, let's go to our busy phones.
	Joe is in Los Angeles.
	Joe, you're on the Sean Hannity show.
	Hey, Sean, how are you doing?
	I'm good, sir.
	What's happening?
	Hey, I just want to bring up a couple of things really quick.
	We have a high school out here, and I actually live in Santa Clarita, and we have a sheriff's department right on that high school campus.
	And, you know, when the Democrats cry, oh, we can't afford that.
	We can't afford that.
	All Trump has to do is box them in the corner and say, okay, I'll tell you what, we'll take all the money away from the illegals that we're giving benefits to, and we'll fund it that way.
	And now we'll have safe schools.
	And then I want to hear them complain about it.
	It's like, you know what?
	Having armed security or a sheriff's department or a police department on every campus throughout the country, all you need is like maybe two or three cops.
	And it seems like.
	Well, I don't think so.
	Look at this Parkland school.
	They had, what, a first, second, and I believe third floor in the main building.
	Then they have multiple other buildings on the campus.
	You've got to secure, number one, the perimeter of the school.
	This is my threat assessment knowledge from all my friends that are in law enforcement.
	You've got to have the perimeter sealed off.
	You have to have the entry point sealed off.
	And then you have to have at least somebody, I would argue, on every floor that is prepared to deal with any situation that would emerge on that floor.
	So, okay, so how many floors are there?
	What, three?
	You can have an armed guard or an armed police officer on every floor.
	What, maybe three cops?
	Well, okay, in one building, yeah, three.
	And then you have one, two, or three people on the perimeter that go back and forth to make sure that nobody is hanging out in the woods trying to walk in.
	And maybe they made an arrangement with somebody to push open the door for them.
	You got to make sure that doesn't happen.
	And you got to make sure that, you know, the kids that are in the class in the school, that those kids don't have weapons themselves.
	Right, right.
	Oh, I like your idea with the metal detector and all that stuff, too.
	I just think that, you know, like you said, with the TSA, you have to go through those situations.
	And then, yeah, you come out on the other side and you're fine.
	You know what I mean?
	But I think the way to fund it is you cut off all the money to the illegals and say, no, we're not going to give government benefits to these people anymore.
	We need to funnel it into our own country for our own safety.
	Look, there's all sorts of ways that we can do this.
	What if we made everybody that worked at a school, maybe they can get a federal income tax break?
	They pay no federal income taxes on their other job.
	And if they volunteer, you know, 10 hours a week, retired police, retired military.
	They have a military pension, no taxes on their pension, nothing, not a penny, if they are willing to work 10 hours a week.
	I think that's a good deal.
	These guys would do it in a heartbeat.
	We wouldn't even notice it.
	Let's go to Eric is in Parkland, Florida.
	Eric, again, we're sorry what happened to your community.
	And I do believe there are answers if we want them.
	Hey, Sean, it's an honor to talk to you.
	I graduated from Soman Douglas in 2004.
	Parkland's been my lifelong home.
	And, you know, I could go a lot of different ways and talk about a lot of different things.
	But I really just wanted to begin with a comment on what you said at the very beginning of your program today about last night's sham of a town hall.
	You said you were disappointed in our sheriff.
	Let me say this in no equivocal terms.
	The sheriff of my county down here, Scott Israel, is a politician.
	He's a leftist.
	He is best friends with Debbie Wasserman, Schultz, and Ted Deutsch.
	He's not a sheriff.
	So when people come in and when people look at our community now, because it's been thrust into the spotlight and they talk about the sheriff's department, let's just be real clear.
	And I need all of America to know he is not a sheriff.
	He's a politician who masquerades behind a badge.
	The first thing out of his mouth last week when he stood in front of my home is gun control.
	And our governor, other governor, didn't say hi to our governor at the press conference and talked about defeating people who take money from the NRA.
	So I just really need it.
	I'm so glad I got through the line.
	Listen, I was very happy with the job he did.
	I mean, and his team did.
	And I can separate his politics from the job of being a sheriff.
	I thought he did a good job under the circumstances.
	I think his answer and his logic are faulty.
	I think the only smart person in Florida yesterday was Governor Rick Scott, who knew darn well that this was a setup by CNN.
	And I'm going to lay out tonight their history of stacking the deck in these phony town halls that they put together.
	Fake news, phony town halls.
	Look, I love law enforcement.
	They're allowed to have their political opinions that differ from mine.
	That's not the issue.
	The issue is if we implemented what I said, a full security threat assessment of every school, we controlled the perimeter, one entrance point, one exit point.
	In an emergency, you have a plan to open other doors, and then you had armed, retired police, armed, retired military on every floor of the school, and you metal-detect the kids coming in and you ID them, I think it ends.
	I think the problem goes away unless somehow there's a weakness in the system, somebody doesn't do their job.
	Anyway, that should be the goal.
	800-941 Sean, if you want to be a part of this extravaganza, Cheryl Atkinson's going to talk about just how fake news got started in this country.
	Then we have Tom Fitton of Judicial Watch.
	Then we'll get back to this topic with Geraldo Rivera and Jonathan Gillum.
	All right, when we come back, where did fake news begin?
	And Geraldo, Jonathan Gillum, debate the issue of the shooting in Parkland.
	What is the solution?
	What if the whole anti-fake news campaign was an effort on somebody's part to keep us from seeing or believing certain websites and stories by controversializing them or labeling them as fake news?
	But who would want to do such a thing?
	When connecting the dots, I find it often helps to follow the money.
	I wanted to know who was funding the nonprofit FIRST draft and its anti-fake news effort.
	I found the answer.
	It was Google.
	Google's parent company Alphabet was run by a man named Eric Schmidt.
	Eric Schmidt, as it happens, had devoted himself to Hillary Clint's election campaign, offered himself up as a campaign advisor, and became a top multi-million dollar donor to it.
	His company funded First Draft around the start of the election cycle.
	Not surprisingly, Hillary was soon to jump aboard the anti-fake news train.
	And her surrogate, David Brock, of Media Matters, privately told donors he was the one who convinced Facebook to join the effort.
	I'm not the only one who thinks the whole thing smacked of the rollout of a propaganda campaign.
	Glenn Greenwald of The Intercept wrote, The most important fact you need to realize is that those who most loudly denounce fake news are typically the ones most aggressively disseminating it.
	But something happened that nobody expected.
	The anti-fake news campaign backfired.
	Each time advocates cried fake news, Donald Trump called them fake news until he co-opted the term so completely that even those who were originally promoting it started running from it, including the Washington Post, which in January of 2017 wrote, it's time to retire the tainted term fake news.
	In fact, it's now commonly misreported that it was Donald Trump who thought up the phrase.
	Actually, it was just a hostile takeover.
	I can tell you there are two ways to tell that powerful interests might be trying to manipulate your opinion.
	Number one, when the media seems to be trying to shape or censor facts and opinions rather than report them.
	Number two, when so many in the media are reporting the same stories, promulgating the same narratives, relying on the same sources, even using the same phrases.
	I mean, think of it.
	There are literally thousands of legitimate news stories that could be reported in a given day and an infinite number of ways to report them.
	When everybody's on the same page, it might be the result of an organized campaign.
	I'll leave you with a final thought and a warning.
	It's about a new catchphrase being bandied about, media literacy.
	As in, we'll tell you who to trust and who not to trust.
	Media literacy advocates are busy trying to get state laws passed to require that their version of media literacy be taught in public schools.
	They're developing websites as resources for journalists and the public.
	They're partnering with universities.
	I think media literacy is a new name promoted by some of the same people who want to tell you what to believe.
	People with their own agendas using terms designed to fool you into thinking they're neutral authorities.
	What you need to remember is that when interests are working this hard to shape your opinion, their true goal might just be to add another layer between you and the truth.
	All right, that was Cheryl Atkinson, and she's giving a speech and a talk to one of these TED Talks is what they have.
	And it's pretty powerful talk about the issue of fake news in America and how bad it actually is and what it means in terms of how do you get your information.
	Cheryl Atkinson, by the way, she is with Sinclair.
	Her Sunday program is called Full Measure.
	This TED Talk, I guess, you did out in Vegas.
	Cheryl, where'd you do it?
	About in Reno, I think if you Google just TEDx and fake news and my name or anything like that, it'll come up on YouTube.
	Well, let's get into what fake news is and the origins of fake news.
	That's what we need to get into.
	Because you know what?
	I think you're right.
	I look at the media, and I'm an opinion journalist.
	I'm an advocacy journalist, but as part of being a talk show host, I actually do journalism, and I want to present the truth.
	And yeah, I have strong opinions, but I also see the biggest underreported story in the history of the country being ignored.
	You know, we hear about Trump-Russia collusion, but nobody wants to talk about Putin's operatives in America in 2009 committing crimes, bribery, extortion, money laundering, and kickbacks to get a foothold in the uranium industry, and nobody seems to care.
	Not even a little bit do they care.
	And the same with the fake steel dossier.
	And I hear one narrative and one narrative only, and the only other show that I think has the other narrative is mine.
	So, you know, if I'm wrong on anything, I want you to tell me.
	But I think this is more pervasive.
	I think it's more groupthink, more of an echo chamber than anybody ever imagined.
	I think you're absolutely right on this point.
	And I would say you start with the premise, as I've written about in my books, that pretty much all the narratives you see in popular life, whether it's on social media, the news, billboards you see, it's all being, the strings are being pulled by these multi-billion dollar industries that seek to shape us.
	And they figured out wholly how to make the news report its talking points and its narrative du jour, which is why in a neutral environment, I believe the Iranian story that you mentioned, as well as this crisis in our intelligence community and the FBI that exists, I believe it's a constitutional crisis, it would be more reported in a neutral environment of people just using their own reporting skills and their own natural assessments.
	It's not because of this phenomenon that you just mentioned.
	How could the media, as they do, act so outraged and feign outrage, moral outrage, and be so offended at the idea that Vladimir Putin, which I think the evidence is overwhelming.
	Of course he wanted to try and create chaos.
	I think Rod Rosenstein was correct.
	I think their goal was to sow discord in America with American elections, which is why they were for and against every candidate at different times.
	I mean, simultaneously, they had competing rallies that they had organized through their troll network, one for Trump and one anti-Trump.
	But if the media is going to tell America that Russian influence and interference matters, and then they're going to ignore that we had a we literally had an FBI informant inside of Putin's operatives network in America and he was reporting back to our government all these crimes being committed by Putin's thugs here,
	his operatives here, and the whole goal was to get a foothold in America's uranium industry, and they ended up successful 18 months later because the then Obama administration and the CFIS board signed off on it.
	If we're not going to talk about that and we're just going to gloss that over, well, that tells me that the only thing Russian that really the media cares about is just Russia Trump.
	They don't care about Russia.
	They don't care about Russian interference.
	And similarly, that goes for the fake dossier.
	We care about Russian interference in an election.
	Well, I think that the same media would care about a Hillary Clinton bought and paid for Russian dossier using somebody that's not an American citizen, a foreign national, to get this propaganda, not verify the propaganda, all designed to manipulate the American voters.
	And then it even gets used as an application and a FIS warrant to spy on a Trump campaign associate.
	Now, these are bigger stories to me that actually have evidence.
	I don't see any evidence of Trump-Russia collusion.
	I think you're absolutely right again.
	And I would say if you're talking about foreign interference, the Russians, from what we know, use social media in a sense, in a way that probably many foreign countries do, as well as in a disguised sense, the way our own U.S. government does and American citizens.
	But as you say, is not reported or underreported, the fact that a Yemeni-born, I guess, British citizen, Christopher Steele, was able to get his foreign intelligence that came from Russian sources into the hands of the FBI, used to get a wiretap on a U.S. citizen is a much, to me, a much bigger deal.
	And number two, which hasn't been reported, I hope to publish on this pretty soon, which hasn't been reported much, the Ukrainians, who oppose the Russians naturally, have been able to coordinate with, or collude, if you will, the Democratic National Committee to get some of their information and intelligence and things that they wanted promulgated against the Russians into the hands of the FBI and get it reported also in the hands of reporters.
	So if you're talking about foreign interference, there is, I think, a much stronger line down other paths that haven't been widely reported.
	In all the years that the year and a half or thereabouts that the media has been investigating Trump-Russia collusion, can you cite any evidence that it existed?
	No, there is none.
	And I've, you know, I've even written down, sort of memorialized the many different former Obama officials and Republicans and Democrats who have all said that, even when they've reviewed classified evidence.
	And if you notice, it seems to me that the argument's shifting a little bit whereby some of the people who factually stated that there had been some sort of proven illegal collusion between Trump and Russia are now saying things like, see, we told you the Russians were involved in social media.
	They're not even really arguing the same point anymore, but they're still acting as if the point has been proven.
	Mueller, for me, I look at a guy that he doesn't have any Trump supporters, doesn't have any Republicans on his team.
	He has a lot of people that donated to people like Obama and people like Hillary Clinton and the DNC.
	And then I look at what the New York Times described, Andrew Weissman, his hitman and his track record.
	And we now have been examining two specific cases where he's been excoriated by judges for holding back exculpatory evidence.
	In the case of Anderson Accounting, tens of thousands of people lost their jobs because of him.
	That case was overturned in the Supreme Supreme Court 9-0, that doesn't happen very often.
	Four Merrill executives went to jail because of Andrew Weissman, and those convictions were overturned by the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals.
	So, and he's obviously anti-Trump.
	Why is Robert Mueller putting together, why did he put together, I think, the most biased team of prosecutors you could ever have as part of a special counsel investigation?
	Well, some have said that the Mueller investigation doesn't cross over into, for example, the dossier investigation, but I think it does.
	I think all of this now intertwines in a complex way that makes Mueller, even if he's an honest guy, I have no reason to think he's not, you know, an honest player, but puts him in an awkward position of the appearance of a conflict of interest.
	Because if, as I believe, the larger scandal is the intelligence community and FBI have been committing alleged unethical acts, if not crimes, in surveilling citizens, and this is what they were trying to, in my view, hide from the incoming Trump administration, if this took place over the past 10 or 20 years, as I believe the evidence shows, then that was when Mueller was FBI director, and it would be in his interest to protect the agency that I assume he loves, the culture, and the people, some of whom he worked with directly.
	So I think there's a conflict, even assuming he's an honest player, and I'm not saying he's not, but I think there's an appearance of a conflict.
	I think it's more than an appearance.
	I think there is a conflict.
	We'll continue more.
	Cheryl Atkinson, 800-941-Sean is our toll-free telephone number if you want to be a part of the program.
	All right, as we continue with reporter Cheryl Atkinson, she has been writing and talking at length about the media.
	So as I cover stories that the media doesn't cover, Cheryl, I felt like in 2007 and eight that the media gave Barack Obama a pass.
	And I went deep.
	We did a deep dive into who Barack Obama was, his past, his associations, et cetera.
	And that's where we found Bernadine Dorn and Bill Ayers and the Reverend Jeremiah Wright and Acorn and Alinsky and Frank Marshall Davis.
	And I feel, and the media just ignored it and gave him a pass straight to the presidency.
	I feel similarly now that the media has an agenda, and this time it's to destroy Donald Trump.
	Because if you're really going to influence, really care about Russian influence in America, you can ignore Uranium One.
	You can't ignore the steel dossier.
	And now that it's creeping closer towards President Obama, what would be the best way to get to the truth?
	Well, I feel as though you're right that the media has admitted that its goal is to try to destroy President Trump under the idea that they believe he's a uniquely dangerous person, whether a predator of women or horribly racist or whatever it may be.
	So they've lifted themselves or we have lifted ourselves from our normal ethical requirements that we operate under to try to be neutral and fair and use certain kinds of sources.
	And in doing so, we've become vested in our theories.
	And now when these theories are being blown apart or proven otherwise by the evidence, you see this sort of confused effort to dig in.
	And instead of following the facts, once you get so vested in something, I think it's human nature not to want to turn around, especially when they've acknowledged what their goal is.
	So, you know, it's a very confusing time.
	But if you play this substitution game, as I call it, and you see how equal stories and evidence are being treated differently by various players in the media, you have to conclude that this is not a fair playing field.
	Well, it's more than, I think it is, I don't think we have journalism for the most part in America today.
	I think journalism's dead.
	I think all these networks are abusively biased, agenda-driven.
	And in the years here of Trump, the years of Trump, I think you've got, you know, all of this is on display and it's transparency on a level that nobody ever imagined.
	It's all out there for people to see.
	I don't think they're even trying to hide it anymore.
	I think that's right.
	I mean, I think what we have now is primarily advocacy journalism.
	And don't get me wrong, there are still some great reporters out there, and occasionally their great work gets published, but it's harder, number one.
	And number two, they're finding that they're being asked to produce a certain kind of stories.
	And if they don't, those stories don't get published.
	They want to.
	I'm in touch with some of them.
	And I know people, you know, sources they deal with who say these reporters, in many instances, want to tell certain stories.
	I know reporters.
	Cheryl, they say that they're jealous of me because I'm doing work that they're not allowed to do on their network.
	How sad is that?
	I get the same.
	I do that, the Sinclair Full Measure Show on Sundays, and I get called as not a week goes by.
	Someone doesn't call me from one of the networks, an acquaintance or somebody saying, can you hire me?
	Because it looks like you're getting to do uncredit reporting.
	And I wish I had a bigger staff because I don't, but there are people who really want to do that and they see what's going on.
	All right, Cheryl Atkinson, thanks for being with us.
	As always, we appreciate it.
	800-941-Sean, toll-free telephone number.
	We are in Washington, D.C. Tonight at CPAC.
	We've got a great show.
	We'll have a town hall on the issue of how do we stop school shootings and more investigation into deep state gay.
	Tom Fitton is the president of Judicial Watch.
	He'll join us next.
	Later on, Jonathan Gillum, Geraldo Rivera, will be debating how to keep our schools safe and much more.
	Straight ahead.
	Several former and current officials to answer 10 simple questions.
	And these are questions that the public not only should know and have a right to know, but I think they want to know.
	And that is, simple questions like, when did you learn about the dossier?
	When did you learn that it was paid for by the Democrats?
	When did you learn that this was a political piece?
	Part of what we sent out today with the questionnaire with 10 questions on it also is a cover letter that says if you don't answer this, we're giving them a couple weeks to answer it.
	You will be subpoenaed and you will come before Congress to tell us when you knew about this.
	All right, Devin Nunes, who has now a set of questions, as all of this now makes its way right back to the top of the Obama administration, what did they know?
	When did they know it, especially about the steel dossier?
	10 specific questions.
	We know that Clapper, we know that Brennan, we believe Susan Rice and all others, including probably President Obama, are now being asked to answer these questions by March 2nd.
	If not, things will get a little tight for them.
	Also, over at Judicial Watch, our friends there have filed a new lawsuit with the State Department about the unmasking documents that went through.
	Remember, Samantha Powers, how is it that she was unmasking a person a day?
	And then she denies that she was unmasking a person a day.
	And then that raises a question, if it wasn't her, then who was it?
	Anyway, because in the final year of the Obama administration, there were three 500 times more unmasking requests than had ever taken place before.
	And that tells us that probably there were people within the Obama administration for political purposes wanting to know what the Trump campaign was up to.
	So those that were picked up on any type of surveillance, while minimization is the standard operating procedure, not identifying them, in other words, that they have a right to privacy, Fourth Amendment rights against unreasonable search and seizure.
	Well, we're finding out that the unmasking was so widespread that it seems like illegal spying was taking place.
	Our friends now at Judicial Watch have filed a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit against the Department of State about unmasking, also requesting other records tied to Obama's ambassador to the U.N., Samantha Power, and that ongoing investigation.
	And Tom Fitton is the president of Judicial Watch.
	He joins us now.
	How are you?
	Hey, Sean, good to be with you.
	All right, so just so people know, so, all right, I believe in intelligence gathering because there's a lot of evil in this world, and we know that it's pretty smart to know what the Russians are doing, the Chinese are doing, the Iranians are doing, the North Koreans are doing, and we have these powerful tools of intelligence.
	But at times, when such people, foreign agents that we are surveilling legally, that we're doing our job to protect America, well, when they get caught up in a conversation with an American citizen, for whatever reason, a business purpose, or in the case of General Flynn, he's talking to his soon-to-be counterpart in Russia, they are not supposed to reveal the name of the American unless they pick up something that would be illegal or dangerous to the country.
	And the process, if an American is picked up incidentally, is called minimization.
	They minimize what it is that they're listening to as it relates to the American side of that conversation.
	And then, of course, the next step in that would be: well, if you think the Americans done something untoward or illegal, well, then you might unmask the identity of that individual and then begin an investigation.
	But this apparently was so widespread, it was happening almost all of the time.
	And then in the case of General Flynn, then they took raw intelligence, they leaked it, and I would argue set him up for a perjury trap.
	So what are you trying to get, and what do you think happened, and what do we know that happened?
	Well, I think the administration quickly understood that they could use this foreign intelligence surveillance as a backdoor way to spy on the Trump team.
	And their logic was, well, we needed to know the identities of these Americans so we could understand the intelligence.
	And I'm convinced the dossi was the rubric and the excuse that they used to justify the unmasking of the Trump team.
	You know, we know the people who were unmasked include, as best I can tell, General Flynn and Attorney General Sessions.
	And you can bet the president was unmasked as well back when he was a candidate.
	No doubt that happened.
	Well, they're not going to want to give you this information.
	And look, you're getting some great information through these Freedom of Information Act requests, but it's taken forever for you to get them.
	Well, that's true.
	And I think, you know, there's got to be this commitment to transparency by the administration, expose what went on.
	Unfortunately, I think the lawyers are running the show, and King Mueller is running the show, as I call him.
	So they don't want to tell us anything.
	They don't even want to confirm or deny a lot of what even took place, such as the unmaskings.
	And so that's why we're so in court, just to force them to go on the record and maybe give them an opportunity to fess up here.
	And just as they declassified information for the Nunes memo, just as they'll declassify information for the Democrat memo, they need to start declassifying information so that we know whether there was an abuse of power unrivaled in recent American history using this unmasking process to justify spying on the opposition to the Democratic Party.
	Of course, Obama was in control of the Democratic Party was in control of the executive branch at the time.
	This has got to be cleared up.
	Nunes said he looked at the materials initially.
	He said there was a major issue, and we still don't have answers, and that's why we're in court trying to get them.
	All right.
	Samantha Power, what was she doing asking anyone to be unmasked as UN ambassador to?
	You know, by the time that intelligence gets to the senior people in the administration, the lower-level intelligence officials, the senior intelligence officials, thoroughly scrub it, and they make sure anything they need to know is in there.
	And if an American isn't listed, it's because it's a judgment of the intelligence community, the consumers of the information that it needs to know.
	Why was Susan Rice, Samantha Power at the State Department unmasking people despite basically being told by their subordinates they didn't need to know?
	Look, I don't have an answer, but the bottom line is when you have a 300-400% increase, which we did have in this final year, you got to believe in an election year, especially in light of everything we know about the dossier, that in fact they were doing this as a means of spying on an opposition party candidate.
	Now, the country got look what happened when we had a break-in in the case of Richard Nixon and his campaign of their opposition, their other party, during an election year, and to get information against the other party, and then the cover-up that ensued afterwards.
	We look at Watergate as one of the lowest moments politically in the country.
	This, to me, takes Watergate and pumps it full of steroids and human growth hormone at unsustainable levels, and it becomes the biggest abuse of power in American history.
	Well, yeah, the power unmasking numbers look like they're like 260.
	And what I like about what Nunes is doing now, you know, we've been focused on this too, but he's drawing more public attention to it as you are, is that this isn't just the dossier being misused by the FBI and Justice Department to mislead the Pfizer court.
	There are other agencies involved.
	During the Obama administration, Obama made sure it was all hands on deck going after Trump on Russia.
	You had, it looks like, according to RealClear and Paul Sperry, that you had Brennan attached dossier to the intelligence briefing for the president, the daily intelligence briefing for President Obama.
	The NSA obviously would have been doing the intelligence surveillance.
	And then you had the dossiers being created out of the State Department, and of course the unmasking is being created out of the State Department.
	So you've had multiple agencies being abused, it looks like, to get Trump.
	And let's not be distracted by these Russia indictments.
	Let's not be distracted by the, I guess, the Democratic memo maybe come out in a day or two.
	It's all about getting Trump.
	It's not about Russia, guys.
	It's about Trump and using the powers entrusted by the American people, using the powers of government entrusted by the American people, abusing them to target Trump and remove him from office.
	That's what this is all about.
	I'd like to know with Powers testifying before Trey Gowdy that she did not do the unmasking, but it was done in her name.
	I want to know who did it then.
	That raises the scandal to an even higher level.
	Was it somebody above?
	Sessions is a victim here.
	Sessions is a victim.
	Flynn is a victim here.
	The president is likely a victim.
	You know, it's a violation of law to unmask someone for improper purposes.
	And I have no doubt that's what went on.
	But why isn't it being investigated?
	We're happy to do the work.
	Nunes is asking questions.
	Where is the Justice Department in terms of asking questions about the unmaskings that took place during the last administration?
	We don't know the answer to that.
	That's the sad reality.
	All right.
	Thanks, Tom Fitton with Judicial Watch.
	We always appreciate the good work you're doing, sharing it with us.
	This is going to be a process.
	And as we move forward, every time we're getting more information, and the story becomes clearer and clearer about an abuse of power, systematic abuse of power and corruption at the highest levels of government.
	And yeah, we're now getting right to the top of the former administration, the Obama administration.
	All right, to our phones we go as we say hi to Joel.
	He's in Jacksonville, Florida on WOKV.
	Joel, hi, how are you?
	Welcome to the sewer, the swamp that is our nation's capital.
	I'm doing great.
	Thanks for taking my call.
	Thank you.
	I got a question.
	With the collusion investigation and the dossier and everything getting even closer to Obama, how can we expect any of these major players to tell the truth under oath?
	I don't, well, I mean, I don't think they're going to tell the truth.
	It's one of these things.
	And this, look, for those that want an instant touchdown here, that the smoking gun comes out, that day may come.
	But right now, you've got to understand they know exactly what they did.
	They know exactly what evidence exists.
	I'm sure there were efforts and are efforts to prevent us from ever seeing any of this evidence.
	And they're trying to cover it up as quickly as they can.
	I mean, I think the whole Susan Rice final moment in the White House is very revealing.
	15 days prior, they have a meeting and she goes back with, he said, Barack Obama said, do everything by the book.
	Because she doesn't want him getting in trouble and probably doesn't want to get herself getting in trouble because of what was actually said in that meeting.
	Now, over time, maybe we'll find out what the minutes of the meeting actually said.
	Look, the bottom line is this, and these are facts.
	We know that the media won't cover bigger stories involving Russian influence in this country, including the election.
	If Donald Trump had bought and paid for a dossier with a foreign national getting information from Russians and Russian government sources that are never verified to smear Hillary weeks before and months before an election, the media would be demanding his impeachment right now if he had done that and then he won the election.
	In the case of Hillary, the Clintons, they always get a pass.
	If President Trump ever was so stupid to have an informant from the FBI within Putin's network here in America that are trying to get a foothold into the uranium industry and then allow it to happen, even though we knew all the crimes were being committed, then that's a dereliction of duty.
	You know, it's a betrayal of our important national security interests.
	And remember, the president, first and foremost, is the commander-in-chief.
	Obama had to know about this.
	Hillary had to know about it.
	Eric Holder, we had nine agencies that all signed off on it.
	It never made sense to give 20% of our uranium to a hostile regime, Russia, a hostile actor, Vladimir Putin, especially because we don't even have enough uranium sources on our own.
	It was stupid on a level I can't imagine.
	And if I'm Putin and I was able to successfully navigate through those uranium mines, no pun intended, then I would think going forward on an election interference issue would be a piece of cake because, well, I can pull anything off pretty much now.
	Hey, listen, I appreciate the call.
	Thank you.
	800-941-Sean.
	And as we continue, Sean Hannity Show we're in Washington, D.C., 800-941, Sean.
	You want to be a part of the program?
	I know a lot of you watching the president in that town hall he had together and then what they did to poor Dana Lash last night and Marco Rubio last night.
	You know, why would you think you're going to get fair treatment on the fake news network?
	You know, apparently they're even setting up questions on the fake news network.
	And, you know, to have people say you're a murderer and shouting all other sorts of incendiary comments.
	Why waste your time?
	Dana Lash, by the way, will be on Hannity tonight on the Fox News channel to respond to all of this.
	But in the meantime, let's get to our phones here as we say hi to Barry.
	Barry is in New York City holding down the fort for us.
	What's up, Barry?
	How are you?
	Hey, good to talk to you, Sean.
	I appreciate what you do.
	I'll make it quick.
	With the Trump collusion story now finally starting to fall apart and all the evidence mounting that there's collusion on the other side, is anybody from the mainstream media going to break ranks and start telling the truth?
	No, I don't think so.
	I think the media has now dug themselves a hole that they can't get out of.
	And they're so married to the Trump-Russia collusion story, the last thing they ever want to acknowledge is they were wrong and conservatives had it right.
	But we do have it right.
	Yeah, I can't help but think that if I'm a young journalist looking to make my mark, reporting the truth would actually be a novel idea.
	It's a sad thing that's not the rest.
	Look, they're in lockstep.
	They have an agenda.
	Their agenda is to destroy Trump.
	Their agenda was first to make sure that Trump never got elected.
	Then after Trump, in fact, got elected, then their effort was, you know, all in, let's destroy him, and we'll work with the liberal talking point that Russia is what happened.
	They colluded with Russia.
	Well, there was collusion with Russia, but it was Hillary's collusion with Russia.
	She's the one that paid for Russian government lies.
	She's the one that, you know, signed off on that idiotic deal to give Russia 20% of our uranium.
	So there was Russian influence.
	All right, got to take a quick break.
	When we come back, we'll go over the president and his town hall listening meeting that he had yesterday and the disaster and setup that was on CNN last night and much more.
	Yeah, I expected to be able to ask my questions and give my opinion on my questions.
	But Colton Hobb, a member of the junior ROTC who shielded classmates in the midst of terror, says he did not get to share his experience.
	CNN had originally asked me to write a speech and questions and it ended up being all scripted.
	Colton wrote questions about school safety, suggested using veterans as armed school security guards, but claims CNN wanted him to ask a scripted question instead.
	So he decided not to go.
	I don't think that it's going to get anything accomplished.
	It's not going to ask the true questions that all the parents and teachers and students have.
	You know, I could tell you that in addition to all of the sorrow that we're feeling in our community right now, there's also a lot of anger.
	Anger that the police can visit a person dozens of times and not take action.
	Anger that the FBI could get at least two credible tips and not take anger, not take action.
	And one possible solution, which we discussed with Secretary DeVos over lunch, was if a tragedy strikes, can we wait for the first responders to get to the campus four or five or six or seven minutes later?
	And one possible solution, which may not be very popular, would be to have people in the school, teachers, administrators, who have volunteered to have a firearm safely locked in the classroom, who are given training throughout the year.
	There are plenty of teachers that are already licensed to carry firearms.
	Have them raise their hands to volunteer for the training.
	And when something like this starts, the first responders are already on campus.
	And if it's not the teachers, you could have people that work on the campus.
	A custodian could be an undercover policeman.
	Someone who works in the library or the lunchroom could be an undercover policeman.
	He serves lunch every day, but he also has a firearm at the ready.
	A guidance counselor.
	If you can't stop it from happening, and with hundreds of millions of guns out there, I don't know if it'll ever be fully stopped.
	But the challenge becomes, once it starts, to end it as quickly as possible.
	And just unfortunately, you can't wait five or six or seven minutes.
	So between having the schools trained for lockdowns and possibly having armed personnel, staff that are willing to do it.
	I just want to say before we really begin, because I want to hear views, but we're going to be very strong on background checks.
	We're going to be doing very strong background checks, very strong emphasis on the mental health of somebody.
	And we are going to do plenty of other things.
	Again, next week, the governors are coming in from most of the states, and we're going to have a very serious talk about what's going on with school safety.
	Very important.
	And we're going to cover every aspect of it.
	There are many ideas that I have.
	There are many ideas that other people have.
	And we're going to pick out the strongest ideas, the most important ideas, the ideas that are going to work, and we're going to get them done.
	It's not going to be tough like it has been in the past.
	It's been going on too long, too many instances.
	And we're going to get it done.
	So, again, I want to thank you all for being here.
	And I'd like to hear your story.
	And I'd also like to, if you have any suggestions in the future, based on this horrible experience that you've gone through, I'd love to have those ideas.
	All right, that was the president in his listening session yesterday.
	And you heard earlier literally a cut where CNN, and they do have a history, as I mentioned earlier today, of stacking questions.
	One guy making the claim that, yeah, they didn't want my real questions and comments.
	And I thought there were a lot of very smart, intelligent people at this listening session with the president yesterday, really thoughtfully.
	And some of the suggestions I didn't agree with, but many I thought understood the need for security, which is what we have been calling for.
	Joining us now, Geraldo Rivera and Jonathan Gillum are with us to discuss and debate this.
	I think it was a very smart thing for the president to do.
	He looked honestly concerned.
	I think there are simple things that can take place, but I stand by we better secure these schools like we would secure any other important building, a bank or Capitol Hill or wherever we need to secure a building where we have the capability, Geraldo, of doing it.
	Agree, Sean.
	I'm very proud of the president.
	I'm totally in sync with him on this.
	You know, we had our dinner on Saturday night at Mar-a-Lago, and I broached the idea of the juvenile assault weapons ban.
	It was something the president had not pondered up until that moment, but he was so deeply shaken by what he saw when he visited the hospital and saw these kids all torn up that he made it part of his program, along with enhanced background checks, along with people on the no-fly list not getting access to firearms.
	I think that he is really on the verge of something very important, a pioneering move, a lot like, you know, you wouldn't expect it of President Trump.
	He's such an advocate of the Second Amendment.
	But like Nixon going to China, the unexpected man is the one who's going to make history here.
	And I think, Sean, it's clear that he endorses your plan that I endorse as well, hardening these schools to make them at least as safe as, you know, a jeweler's sale, for example.
	What do you make of all the attacks?
	You know, calling Dana Lash a murderer and burn her during this town hall, the idea that some people that had views CNN didn't want didn't get on the program.
	And I think the broader issue, Jonathan Gillum, is the police were called to see this guy 39 times.
	The FBI got two very distinct warnings about this guy.
	Everything that we wanted or needed to know about him was on social media.
	And again, we dropped the ball in a spectacular way.
	This is not see something, hear something, hear something, say something.
	This is hear something.
	We said something, and nobody listened.
	Yeah, it's been a complete failure on the part of this police department's ability to forward think what somebody who continuously has called of odd behavior could be, you know, possibly could do.
	I think it's a failure on the individual, the part of the individual, the FBI that dropped the ball about the YouTube video.
	And I got to be honest with you, I'm disagreeing with Geraldo on this because look, we can do all the weapons bans that we want.
	We can look at juvenile.
	I've been shooting a gun since I was five years old.
	And we can look at all these ways to limit this or limit that.
	What I'm seeing is a complete failure already is the president's ability.
	And, you know, I'm a supporter of President Trump, but I'm looking at a man.
	The reason I voted on him and supported on him and supported him and talked about him so much before the election is because he's operationally minded.
	And he came in, for instance, with this skating rink in New York.
	He came in, saw that there was a problem, and quickly got on board and brought in subject matter experts, I think he said from Miami, to look at this ice rink.
	He got under budget and undertime and he got it done.
	What I'm seeing now is typical government speed, which we should have immediately reacted because there could be another shooting tomorrow, today.
	We need to start looking at the best way to do it, the cheapest way to do it, and let's just get it done.
	Let's get people in the schools that can protect it.
	Let's lock the students' threat assessments.
	Let's lock the schools down.
	If George Clooney and Oprah Wincream, these people want to donate money for $500,000, he could have bought 56 schools, two metal detectors.
	So these celebrities need to think about that as well.
	We need to get on board and start doing this because so far, it's been a week, and it's been a complete failure.
	We've got nothing done to secure the schools.
	We've always just talked about, you know, let's ban this and let's not get this.
	But in the listening session yesterday, I thought the number of people in their own way, their own version, Geraldo, supported what you and I support, which is you got to have every school with a full set, full systemic, comprehensive security markup.
	We've got to go in and see where the security vulnerabilities are.
	Then you don't get into any school without the proper identification.
	Doors can't be opened unless, of course, there's security at those doors.
	And then hire that then hire enough retired policemen, retired military armed so that they can protect in case of any situation.
	I don't know how many teachers are going to actually want to carry a gun in their classroom.
	So I think to have him train professionals, to me, would be a better idea because let the teachers do what their job is to teach.
	Or the coach or an administrator or a security guard.
	Why not have a security guard in your budget and ID and one good gun per some scientifically derived number of students?
	I disagree with Jonathan.
	You already have, look, you talk about the systemic failures of the FBI in terms of checking the leads they had and the local cops in terms of the 39 calls they had.
	But what about the response of the Broward deputies?
	And I love that department.
	I worked, you know, I did my pioneering American vice that led to the cops program on TV with the Broward sheriffs.
	But they took an awfully long time to get into that building, even though they were on the property.
	You know, you've got to have people who are much more responsive, much more hip and aware of the fact that these kids are so precious.
	But Jonathan, my God, are you in favor of 18, 19, 20-year-olds with emotional problems going out and getting all liquored up?
	If you're not, if you're in favor of kids not drinking until they're 21, then what, for God's sake, is wrong with banning assault-type weapons for kids when they're in this evolving emotional state, when they have all these problems.
	You know, kids are suicidal.
	This one broke off with this one.
	This one wrote something awful in my yearbook.
	Let them grow up before they can buy A weapon that can fire 30 rounds in 10 seconds.
	I think that it's time to come to grips with the fact that the president has moved off his comfort zone.
	He sees that this may not solve the problem, but it's a first step.
	And it certainly would have stopped this Nicholas Cruz from buying the AR-15 that he used to kill these people.
	Not necessarily.
	I mean, look, when I was in the FBI, we did gun buys every day.
	You can get guns faster.
	Right now, I could go out in New York City and get a gun illegally faster than I could if I tried to get one legally.
	They're everywhere.
	That may be true, but you've got to do something to make the good, the victim, you know, the perfect, the victim of the, it's ridiculous.
	You're doing something.
	You've got to take that.
	I'm not disagreeing with you on this.
	What I'm saying is that, you know, for instance, over in Africa, instead of curing malaria by going and killing mosquitoes, they go out and hand out mosquito nets.
	And it does nothing to stop people from getting malaria.
	It's just a band-aid.
	And, you know, if we really want to get into this, we need to start having regulations on video games, on movies from glorifying rape and killing.
	I mean, that's where a lot of this stuff is coming from.
	We should have, you know, there's all kinds of stuff we could do with the mental health care industry.
	But the fact is, what is aggravating me is that the things that could be done to make the school safer right this instant are not being done.
	And in this discussion that they had with the families, I understand it's a great healing thing.
	It's a great PR thing.
	You need to have that with subject matter experts such as myself who would do this for free.
	We're going to spend millions, possibly billions.
	The idea is we do all that.
	That's what President Trump has so admirably laid out.
	We've done everything of, oh, woe is us, and you're throwing up your hands.
	And because you can't fix it with one fell swoop, you don't do anything.
	What Trump has said is he's not going to do that anymore.
	From now on, he's going to try.
	He's going to try his best.
	He's going to do this.
	He's going to do that.
	He's going to do this.
	He's going to do that.
	But I think we all agree one thing.
	If we do what we agree on, these kids will be safe.
	We can secure every school in America.
	All right, stay right there.
	We'll come back.
	We'll continue.
	Also, Geraldo will join us tonight.
	We'll have more on this debating on Hannity.
	Nine Eastern.
	We'll be in the main ballroom of CPAC tonight and doing our show live.
	Hope you can join us.
	800-941-Sean.
	Toll-free telephone number.
	Quick break, right back.
	We continue.
	Fighting the Trump hating liberal media one day at a time.
	This is the Sean Hannity Show.
	All right,
	as we continue, Jonathan Gillum and Geraldo Rivera.
	And, you know, one of the things that really frustrates me is, you know, Geraldo, you always want to have debate and discussion.
	And I think, look, there are people that I know that are deathly afraid of guns.
	And my attitude to them is, well, you don't have to carry one if you don't want.
	I don't know what you're going to do if somebody breaks into your house at night.
	I don't think a baseball bat's going to win.
	But if you're uncomfortable, that's your choice.
	But I believe in freedom, freedom of liberty and freedom of choice.
	But, you know, to watch what they did to Marco Rubio and Daniel Lash last night, burn her.
	She's a murderer because they don't agree on the gun issue.
	They prefer mental health, attacking it from the mental health point of view and attacking it through the background check point of view and attacking it from the point of view of securing and ensuring that every school is safe.
	I don't think it deserved that kind of attack.
	It seemed like a setup to me.
	Well, I think that, you know, you get into that venue that is a hostile venue.
	I give them credit for going to the hostile venue.
	My point is: everything that you just mentioned, whether it's mental health, whether it's background checks, whatever, if you're on the no-fly zone, you don't have access to weapons, whatever it is, use them all.
	Use them all.
	We have done nothing because we're fearful that the little steps we take won't be a cure-all.
	I say you've got to start someplace.
	What President Trump is doing now, I think is the most admirable, one of the most admirable things that I have seen him do.
	Mark my words, you will see an uptick in his popularity already at 49%, according to Rasmussen.
	When he listened and he showed that compassionate face, when he told me, and I sat as close to him as I sit with you, Sean, a foot or two away, and he told me how shaken he was by the fact that some of these kids had multiple wounds and the rounds ripped into their limbs, tearing off part of their limbs.
	He was deeply shaken.
	I remember we were with Eric and Don Jr., two lifelong gun advocates.
	And, you know, this is something, a catalyst for change.
	This can never happen again.
	Let's adopt the kid slogan.
	And if CNN gives a plantage question or the kid is, you know, disgruntled for this or that, forget about all that stuff.
	What we want is our children.
	I've got a sixth grader going into seventh grade.
	I want to know when I drop her at that school that she's going to come out at the door at 3:15.
	She's going to be just as safe as she was when I brought her in there.
	All right, we're going to continue.
	We all have that expectation, and we should have the assurance that that happens.
	So I don't think there's any disagreement on the main goal and point there.
	All right, thank you both.
	Geraldo, we'll see you in the main ballroom tonight, 9-Eastern, Hannity Explosive Show, 9-Eastern on the Fox News channel.
	All right, as we continue, 25 now till the top of the hour, we are in the nation's capital.
	Let me play some of this listening session from yesterday.
	There were some amazing things said.
	One was said by a junior ROTC guy about how they were able to protect Broward's students with Kevlar pads.
	We've got another individual, Andrew Pollock.
	His daughter was slain in this Broward school shooting.
	And he talked about how we protect our airports.
	We protect concert stadiums.
	How many kids need to get shot?
	We got to fix it.
	We're going to fix it.
	And then I also want to play for you the president, his own words, when he described the idea of arming teachers and having armed security in the schools, something that I've been advocating now for a long time.
	Listen to this, then we'll get to your calls on the other side.
	I pulled in teachers.
	I pulled in kids that weren't in my class.
	There were kids walking around that had no clue where to go.
	And I was like, if you don't know where your class is, get in mine.
	I just pulled him in.
	We shoved him in the back of the classroom.
	And me and Colton took these Kevlar mats that we have from our marksman.
	Kevlar, so hold on.
	Slidden for one second here.
	So you've got all these guys, teachers, students, huddled into this classroom together.
	You just mentioned Kevlar, so like a material for a bulletproof vest.
	Yes, sir, like the body armor.
	Like body armor.
	You guys had this Kevlar material.
	What did you do with that?
	They're big hanging curtains at Kevlar.
	And he said to me, he was like, those are Kevlar.
	We should put them in front of us.
	And I was like, you're a genius.
	That's a great idea.
	I went and confirmed it with my first sergeant.
	And me and him started moving.
	And we made a wall in front of all the kids out of the Kevlar pads.
	I was on the second floor in that building, texting my mom, texting my dad, texting three of my brothers, that I was never going to see him again.
	And then it occurred to me that my 14-year-old brother was directly above me in that classroom where Scott Beagle was murdered.
	Scott Beagle got my brother in the class.
	He was the last kid to get back into that class.
	And I'm sure a lot of you have read my texts on the internet with my brother.
	I didn't plan for them to go viral.
	I just wanted to share with the world because no brothers or sisters or family members or anyone should ever have to share those texts with anyone.
	And that's why I'm here.
	I lost a best friend who's practically a brother.
	And I'm here to use my voice because I know he can't.
	And I know he's with me, cheering me on to be strong, but it's hard.
	And to feel like this, it doesn't even feel like a week.
	Time has stood still.
	To feel like this ever, I can't feel comfortable in my country knowing that people have, will have, are ever going to feel like this.
	I want to feel safe at school.
	You know, senior year and junior year, they're big years for me when I turned my academics around, started connecting with teachers, and I started actually enjoying school.
	And now, I don't know how I'm ever going to step foot on that place again or go to a public park after school or be walking anywhere.
	Me and my friends, we get scared when a car drives by.
	We're in here because my daughter has no voice.
	She was murdered last week and she was taken from us.
	Shot nine times on the third floor.
	We as a country failed our children.
	This shouldn't happen.
	We go to the airport.
	I can't get on a plane with a bottled water.
	But we leave it.
	Some animal could walk into a school and shoot our children.
	It's just not right.
	And we need to come together as a country and work on what's important.
	And that's protecting our children in the schools.
	That's the only thing that matters right now.
	Everyone has to come together and not think about different laws.
	We need to come together as a country, not different parties, and figure out how we protect the schools.
	It's simple.
	It's not difficult.
	We protect airports.
	We protect concerts, stadiums, embassies.
	The Department of Education that I walked in today has a security guard in the elevator.
	How do you think that makes me feel?
	In the elevator, they got a security guard.
	I'm very angry that this happened because it keeps happening.
	9-11 happened once and they fixed everything.
	How many schools, how many children have to get shot?
	It stops here with this administration and me.
	I'm not going to sleep until it's fixed.
	And Mr. President, we're going to fix it.
	Because I'm going to fix it.
	I'm not going to rest.
	If you had a teacher who was adept at firearms, they could very well end the attack very quickly.
	And the good thing about a suggestion like that, and we're going to be looking at it very strongly, and I think a lot of people are going to be opposed to it.
	I think a lot of people are going to like it.
	But the good thing is that you'll have a lot of people with that.
	You know, you can't have 100 security guards in Stoneman Douglas.
	That's a big school.
	It's a massive school with a lot of acreage to cover, a lot of floor area.
	And so that would be certainly a situation that is being discussed a lot by a lot of people.
	You'd have a lot of people that'd be armed, that'd be ready.
	They're professionals.
	They may be Marines that left the Marines, left the Army, left the Air Force, and they're very adept at doing that.
	So the idea, yeah, that we can protect our airports after 9-11 and we can protect, you know, sports stadiums and concert stadiums and not have shootings.
	I'm not talking about Vegas, obviously, and what happened out there, an outdoor concert.
	But we have the ability to cordon off and protect any area if we put the manpower to it.
	And the idea that we could surround a perimeter of a school with trained professionals after a full threat assessment and make sure that nobody gets into that school that doesn't belong in that school and they can't get in with anything that represents a weapon of any kind.
	I think it would go a long way to getting rid of these.
	And if the idea is to solve the problem, then let's do that first because I would think everybody would agree with that first.
	Sarasota, Florida, Randy, next.
	Sean Hannity show.
	Yes, sir.
	Sean, I have a very simple solution to this problem that we have going on in our communities.
	There are thousands upon thousands of veterans out there, highly trained veterans, combat veterans.
	I'm a specialized veteran myself.
	We could report to our local county sheriff's department just like you have volunteer firefighters reporting to the local county firefighter department.
	We could be called upon to go, Randy, we need you at the school from Monday through Thursday.
	We need you with them all Wednesday through Thursday.
	We need you at this church on this weekend.
	And there are thousands upon thousands of veterans that are highly, highly trained that are more than willing to help out and protect our communities.
	And thank you so much for that.
	I think, but even bigger than that, Randy, I think there are jobs available for people that, look, I know friends of mine that are 42 years old, retired from the NYPD, and they worked on terrorism task forces, you know, their entire career.
	Exactly.
	And they want a new career, a new job.
	They also, they got into this work because they want to serve.
	And for them to go out and do full threat assessments and come up with a plan where nobody could penetrate into that school, it's win-win-win-win-win.
	Everybody wins, and we protect our kids, which is the number one goal.
	Anyway, my friend, thank you for all you do, and we appreciate your willingness to say, yeah, there's a lot of us that want to continue to serve.
	Shonda is in Austin, Texas, next on the Sean Hannity show.
	Shonda, how are you?
	Hi, Sean.
	This is off the subject of a lot of what you're talking about today with Florida.
	I listened to you yesterday and called in late.
	And I was kind of incensed on the things that you were talking about.
	They were saying about Billy Graham.
	And it made me realize even more than I had before that I didn't initially support Trump in the primary.
	I supported Marco Rubio, and I supported him because of the blue walls.
	Honestly, I wanted to win.
	But I've come to the determination that no matter who won, it was going to be a narrow victory.
	And Obama had weaponized that government bureaucracy to the point and media, to the point that no one that won was going to be accepted.
	Number one, they didn't think that anyone was going to win.
	But if Rubio had have won, or Emit Romney, or I'm just throwing names, I don't think that even seasoned politicians and what they deal with with scandal and swellacious media attacks could deal the way Trump has dealt with what he's had to deal with day in and day out.
	And for him, it's just like another day at the office.
	And I feel like other presidencies would have very little in their history and wanted to protect that and perhaps, you know, not being able to withstand the attacks that I think the left was going to do no matter who was watching.
	Look, it's 100%.
	I've never seen such hostility to any one person in my entire life in politics.
	And look, this is a blood sport.
	I anticipate every election.
	It's bloody.
	It's brutal.
	It's the same old talking points.
	Republicans are racist and sexist and homophobic and xenophobic and Islamophobic and they hate women.
	And oh my gosh, they have binders full of women's resumes and they want to hire them.
	They must be sexist.
	So look, all of that goes into the, you know, the rank and file average campaign.
	But now when you're going to pay the Russians for phony government information from them so they can disrupt the electoral process, but you're going to go after the other guy who had no contact with the Russians.
	That's ostensibly what has happened.
	We have all the proof we ever would need that a foreign national literally went to Russia to get lies on another candidate.
	And then they used those lies, disseminated it to the media, even though they didn't verify a thing.
	Well, that's all propaganda.
	That's misinformation.
	That's distortion.
	That's character assassination.
	But that is right out of the playbook of liberal Democrats.
	And then to just make it even worse, the people that are in power at the time, well, they're going to go out there and use that information, the bulk of it, to obtain a FISA warrant to get to start listening on a Trump associate so they can listen to everybody else in an election year and spy on them.
	The thing is, they never thought this would happen.
	You're right.
	But they never thought either that we would be getting to the truth.
	And we're getting to the truth closer every day.
	Thank you, Shonda.
	Mark is in New York City holding down the fort, the all-new AM-710 WOR.
	Hey, Sean.
	Hey, Mark, what's going on?
	How are you?
	Thank you for taking my call, Sean.
	I'd like to start off by saying my son is currently a sergeant in the United States Marine Corps.
	I like to get that out there whenever I can.
	I bet you're really proud of him.
	He's proudly serving our country.
	The kid's doing incredible for us.
	Tell him thank you for us.
	I will.
	Thank you, sir.
	My call to you is because of the frustration my family and a lot of my friends and colleagues are going through.
	We think it's time.
	We love Donald Trump's administration, but we're all feeling the same thing.
	We want Jeff Sessions to either do something or be removed.
	Why aren't people being held accountable?
	It's becoming increasingly frustrating.
	You've got to understand where we came from a year ago when we broke the story that, oh, Trump Tower might have been surveilled.
	Think of everything that has now happened.
	And now we've come full circle where now the head of the Intel Committee is now asking top Obama administration officials about what they knew and when they knew it about the dossier.
	Then we've got the Uranium One deal.
	And we have to expose the media lies.
	Understand, look, if you want to be a professional athlete, you don't just wake up one morning and say, I'm going to be a professional athlete.
	I'm going to be a quarterback.
	And you become a great quarterback.
	No, you spend years and years and years training and training and training and training.
	A story this big, this complex, where so many people lie and are trying to hide things, delete things, acid wash things, destroy their information.
	It becomes, you know, it becomes by a multiple of 500,000 that much harder.
	But the information we now have, we have changed the entire narrative in the country.
	And when I say to you, you've got to be patient because it's not just going to happen.
	They're not going to give it to you.
	We've got to dig it out.
	And everything involved in the legal process takes time.
	So, yeah, I know I share your frustration, but we're getting closer every day.
	And you see this story unfolding before your eyes.
	You know, Watergate went on for years.
	It's the way things work, unfortunately.
	Just, you know, I'd ask you to be patient, follow the new developments, try and educate your friends.
	And there's going to be a day where you're going to hear something that says, wow, it really happened.
	Because we're getting that close.
	Anyway, I appreciate your support and your input.
	I share your frustration, but I understand the process of it all.
	All right, that's going to wrap things up for today.
	Hannity tonight will be broadcasting live from CPAC, and we have Dana Lash, who was mistreated by CNN last night.
	Also, Kellyanne Conway, Sarah Carter, Greg Jarrett, Matt Slapp.
	Also, we'll be checking in with Katie Pavlich and Dan Bongino.
	All coming up, 9 Eastern.
	Hannity, tonight from CPAC.
	Hope you'll join us, and we'll see you back here tomorrow.

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