Sean was joined by former House Speaker Newt Gingrich to launch his new book, "Trump's America: The Truth About America's Comeback." This book has a bit of everything; a documentary, an analysis of the Trump Administration and a clear path toward the recovery that has America returning to its rightful position as a global leader. The Sean Hannity Show is on weekdays from 3 pm to 6 pm ET on iHeartRadio and Hannity.com. Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
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All right, glad you're with us on what is supposed to be a huge, massive Inspector General news week.
It's getting very, very frustrating to me.
Although I'm in a particularly good mood, although some people in this building are not.
Linda is in a foul mood today.
What the train didn't get in?
You had a, what, your car broke down over the weekend?
What else?
Don't you have a show to do?
I do, but you know, looking at you scowling at me makes it harder.
Obviously, you had a tough day today.
Had a rough day.
All right, right in front of you is moonshine.
You have my permission.
Take as much as you want.
Oh, that's a good idea.
It makes me angry and drunk.
I didn't say to get drunk.
I said maybe take the edge.
There's only one way to do moonshine.
That's the only way.
Maybe take it.
Maybe take the edge off of it a little bit and get rid of the hateless.
Clearly, you've never had moonshine.
I have my hate lists.
Stop being mean.
All right.
You know, we here is a fascinating, and I mean, this is stunning development.
Because look, next week, the president now is going to meet with Kim Jong-un, or at least it's back on.
I mean, who knows at any point in time, anybody, I guess, could cancel.
I think if anybody does, it was definitely going to be Kim Jong-un.
But now he is fired.
This is fascinating to me.
He's fired three of his top guys.
This is the old school North Korean, you know, served his father type guys, which I think is the biggest indication that he's serious that this potential reform is real and that maybe there's a big change of heart here.
Now, look, I'm a trust but verify guy and a peace-through strength guy.
And so far, the United States hasn't lost a thing over it.
And so we can only be hopeful because that's good for the world.
At least in the interim, no rockets are being fired.
At least in the interim, one nuclear missile test site has been shut down.
At least in the interim, our hostages are back.
At least in the interim, at least he crossed the DMZ and created some hope for the world.
There's no downside for the president in meeting with this guy as long as they're going to be serious.
And I think the president really managing people's expectations is not going to be anything that is signed here next week.
There's not.
It's going to be a process.
How fast the process goes pretty much is going to be in the hands of the North Koreans.
And it's just going to be something that we're going to have to watch and see what happens and just hope for the best.
But certainly it's more hope than we've had before.
I've got to get into what is just an example after example of how corrupt and dishonest the media is here.
And we have Bill Clinton having a full-on meltdown this weekend, and today, and we'll give you all of that information.
I find this probably the most disturbing of all is that the president's attorney, Rudy Giuliani, former New York City mayor, is accusing Robert Mueller of leaking a confidential letter that was written by the president's team going back, I think, to January, arguing that the president cannot legally obstruct justice, which is a point that we've made over and over and over again in the Russian investigation.
And we've also made a lot of other points about it that I think people really need to understand in all of this because the media, if that's the case and it came from Robert Mueller's office, you know, it is a huge breach, and it doesn't surprise me.
And the fact that it goes where it predictably goes, you know, one of a few sources, either the Washington Post, New York Times, fake news, CNN, or wherever it would happen to be, in this case, the New York Times on Sunday, it remains our position that the president's actions here, by virtue of his position as the chief law enforcement officer, could neither constitutionally nor legally construct, constitute obstruction because that would amount to him obstructing himself.
They're right, technically, on all of these terms.
It is absolutely true.
Like the president, even Comey admitted he has the right to fire anybody.
And as we discovered, and as we discussed at length last week, the president can demand that the Justice Department start or stop an investigation.
The president himself can mandate that because he's in charge of that department.
And while, and this is a thing that frustrated me all weekend long, you know, in these interviews that Rudy Giuliani gave this weekend, you know, discussing special counsel Robert Mueller's investigation of whether the president may have tried to obstruct justice.
Well, evidence part A is that when the in James Comey's memo, the most exculpatory thing in there blows everything out of the water.
Well, I know I didn't have any contacts with people in Russia, but if there's anyone around me or my team, yeah, you need to follow that.
That's right there in James Comey's memo.
Like Comey says, the president could fire him for any reason.
And so, you know, so Stephanopoulos asking this absurdity, and I'm certain, by the way, I've never doubted for a second that Stephanopoulos is still the Clinton sycophant that he always was back in the day.
And I'm sure all these attorneys are probably feeding him these hypothetical questions for the very purpose of arguing these red herring issues here.
But when he's asking Rudy Giuliani if the president has the power to pardon himself, well, Giuliani says, yeah, he probably does.
But what the media is not paying attention to is what Rudy Giuliani was saying after that.
He has no intention of pardoning himself.
He didn't do anything worthy of a pardon.
He's not Guilty of anything.
And if you watch, it's the typical hyper-ventilating, breathless reporting that we always get.
Just like collusion isn't a crime, just like the president didn't obstruct justice as it relates to Comey or the president saying, oh, I hope this Flynn thing's not a big deal, is not an expression or telling anybody, nor did Comey interpret it as something nefarious, the way the media has been covering all of this.
And that the meetings, while he might have said something about the meetings as it relates to Donald Trump Jr., where they didn't understand it before, and this letter reveals it.
Okay, the only thing that we know that he did was confirm that which all of the evidence confirms.
And that is, there was a meeting about this particular act on adoption, the, what's the name of that woman? McGinsky Act.
And that's all it was.
And it was a waste of everybody's time.
You know, so Stephanopoulos throwing out the, well, does he have the power to pardon himself?
Okay, he answers the question.
Maybe that was the dumb part of it.
Because constitutionally, yeah, he does.
And I saw Ari Fleischer's.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Congress has the constitutional authority to impeach if there are high crimes and misdemeanors.
You know, slight additive to all of this.
But he has no intention of doing it.
And can he?
Yeah.
I think that the political ramifications would be tough.
Pardoning other people is one thing.
Pardoning yourself is another.
Other presidents have pardoned people in circumstances like this, both in their administration and sometimes the next president, even of a different party, will come along and pardon.
Well, the power of pardon is absolute, whether anyone wants to agree.
Political ramifications put aside.
And knowing the environment that we are in here, the Democrats want and are looking for any excuse to destroy the presidency of Donald Trump.
It has been their mission before the election, during the transition, and every day he's been the president of the United States.
You know, now the New York Post is reporting, you know, we keep hearing about all of these deep state shenanigans that we have been revealing to you, some of which should shock the conscience of a nation.
All of what has happened here, everybody needs to be concerned about because it really, really comes down to whether or not we are going to be a republic with constitutional order, a constitutional republic, and whether that order is going to be followed or whether or not there are powerful people with the powerful tools of intelligence that think that they know better than the American people here,
that they will literally rig an investigation of one presidential candidate in the case of Hillary Clinton.
They'll overlook huge felonies, violations of law.
They'll overlook obvious obstruction of justice, deleting subpoenaed emails, acid washing, and breaking devices.
And then they'll actively seek and attempt to bring down the other candidate of a party.
And if that includes lying to FISA court judges with bought and paid for Russian lies that even the foreign national that put it together said, well, maybe 50-50 is just raw intelligence.
And he said it under the threat of perjury in an interrogatory in Great Britain.
You would think Americans see the danger here and what's happening in an out-of-control, you know, special counsel, a witch hunt put together by a team of Democratic donors that don't seem to really care about the fundamental issues in this case or how we got here and the stories that we have been pursuing.
Lying to judges is a big deal.
Lying to judges to get permission to spy on Americans is a big deal.
Lying to judges and purposely omitting key information to get a warrant to spy on an associate of a presidential campaign when the people involved in it are using literally the information that the other campaign paid for.
That's all happened.
It is now in, it's irrefutable at this point, everything that has gone on.
And the media is focused on, well, Donald Trump told Don Jr. to tell the truth that that meeting with this lady in Trump Tower was about an adoption act, which is all it was.
Anyway, so now we've got surveillance devices are discovered near the White House, according to a Department of Homeland Security probe discovered, evidence of surveillance devices as part of a federal testing that went on last year.
Isn't that wonderful?
Ron Wyden, by the way, according to a letter from the DHS to Ron Wyden, according to the Washington Post, they didn't say he was behind the cyber snooping.
But if it's close to the White House, we know probably who the target is.
And I think that's difficult to figure out.
Then we've got Mayor Giuliani, who leaked this information to the New York Times, confidential letters now of the president's legal team.
And then the media for them to take it totally out of context.
What really the headline should have been?
Oh, president told the truth about the meeting at Trump Tower, about an insignificant waste of time meeting that took place.
Now polls for Robert Mueller literally collapsing right before our eyes.
And according to latest survey by Mark Penn's Harris polling group, now almost 60% of Americans think it's time for this thing to wrap up and end, which is a good idea.
And Devin Nunes is saying that he could close out his Russia gay probe if only, in fact, they would give him the information that he has literally subpoenaed now for months and months and months that the Department of Justice has been obstructing on.
These are incredibly sad times for this country.
And let me tell you, Kellyanne Conway nailed something today.
Does the president think he can pardon himself?
And Kellyanne goes, excuse me.
And she goes, why would he need to pardon himself when he's done nothing wrong and you engage in these hypothetical exercises constantly?
I presume it's easier.
You know, well, what about that?
What about all that?
You know, what did the letter Kim Jong-un say?
And Kellyanne Conway, he tweeted about the power of the pardon because that's what the hypothetical exercise that was started by Georgie Stephanopoulos.
Just go to the war room.
We know who he is.
He's a Clinton sycophant.
Good grief.
It's not that hard to figure this out.
800-941-Sean, a toll-free telephone number.
Newt Gingrich, by the way, amazing new book, Trump's America.
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Letter also cites the president's pardon power.
Do you and the president's attorneys believe the president has the power to pardon himself?
He's not, but he probably does.
He has no intention of pardoning himself, but he probably does.
Doesn't say he can't.
I mean, there's another really interesting constitutional argument.
Can the president pardon himself?
I mean, it's an open question.
Run the part attorney.
It would be an open question.
I think it would probably get answered by, gosh, that's what the Constitution says.
And if you want to change it, change it.
But yeah.
You know what's amazing about that?
I actually have in front of me an article.
And this was written on October the 28th, 2016.
And the website is called Mediaite.
It's Dan Abrams' website.
They talk a lot about, you know, media, all the fights that go on among media personalities, et cetera, et cetera.
Anyway, it's, again, just days before the election.
It goes written by Chris White.
On Friday, just days before the election reports were emerging, the FBI has reopened Hillary Clinton's email investigation.
And the FBI has learned of the existence of emails that appear pertinent to be pertinent to the investigation.
A letter from FBI Director Comey reads, and while Comey didn't indicate how long the investigation could take, it's a pretty safe bet that investigators won't come to any kind of decision before November the 8th.
It may take months for the FBI to wrap this up.
So it goes on.
So it's Friday, January 20th, 2017.
Hillary Clinton sworn in as the 45th president of the United States.
She beats Donald Trump.
And then they say, can Hillary Clinton pardon herself?
Well, the short answer is she could certainly try and may well get away with it.
It's not a matter of getting away with it.
But when it appeared before the media that Hillary, uh-oh, the email thing is real.
She committed crimes.
The evidence is incontrovertible.
She committed multiple felonies that Comey and Strzok and Paige and others literally rigged that whole investigation.
We're now proving it.
And then on top of it, then they decided to turn on her opponent.
They decided she was it.
They made a decision and they never thought she'd lose.
And remember, Strzok and Paige, well, we don't want to piss her off.
I mean, she's probably going to be the president.
But just in case Trump wins, we've got an insurance policy.
It's like if you die of a heart attack when you're 40.
Yeah, you see what this is?
Deep state madness.
A lot more on the other side.
The new Kingrich joins us his new book.
He's going to debut it right here.
I 25 to the top of the hour.
What is so amazing if you're a casual observer?
And I know we have gone through all of this.
And those of you that are regular listeners, regular viewers of Hannity, you know my analogy.
We're unpeeling a layer of an onion one layer at a time.
And it's been pretty interesting to watch how even the mainstream media now has to play catch up.
And now, although they're not covering it correctly, they now have to acknowledge everything that we have said is happening is in fact happening.
A great column by Michael Barone on all of this.
Obama's spying scandal is starting to look a lot like Watergate.
Now, I think at some point Michael Barone was very smart.
And what I love about Michael Barone is he could tell you what percentage of Hamilton County in Ohio or Cuyahoga County in Ohio went for a Republican or Democrat in 1960 or 64 or whatever.
He's that smart.
Anyway, he said the FBI used informant, yeah, despise.
I'll just say the word.
Not to spy on Trump, as Trump claims, read the headline of a lengthy New York Times story of May 18th.
And then he goes on, the Justice Department used a suspected informant to probe whether Trump campaign aides were making improper contacts with Russia in 2016.
Read a May 21st edition of the Wall Street Journal.
So much for those who dismissed charges that the Obama administration in the infiltration of Donald Trump's campaign is paranoid fantasy.
Oh, I guess once again, you know, people like Sean Hannity and our other friends in Talk Radio and a few of us at Fox, you know, once again, we climb up the tree and we get to the highest branch and we go out on a limb and then we get a twig and we go out on that twig and there's a little leaf hanging there and we usually just cling to the leaf and, you know, to our own peril, we lead ahead of the group and everyone says we're nuts.
No, we're not nuts.
It was all based on factual reporting, evidence, digging and digging and digging and digging and digging.
Yeah, and it was all began to all crumble on March 7th on Hannity, the TV show, and Hannity the radio show when John Solomon and Sarah Carter broke the story about, yeah, there's a Pfizer warrant on the Trump, on Trump Tower is how we reported it at the time, but yeah, on the Trump campaign.
You know, so, and then it goes on to say, defenders of Obama's intelligent law enforcement apparatus have, Apparatchik have fallen back to the argument that this infiltration was for Trump and the nation's own good.
That was Clapper's argument on The View the other day.
It's an argument that evidently didn't occur to Richard Nixon's defenders when it became clear that Nixon operatives had, in fact, burglarized and wiretapped the DNC headquarters in June of 1972.
Until 2016, just about everyone agreed that it was a bad thing for government intelligence, a law enforcement agencies, to spy, IEU's informants, on a political campaign, especially one of the opposition party.
Liberals were especially suspicious of the FBI and CIA.
Nowadays, they say that anyone questioning their good faith is unpatriotic.
The crime at the root of Watergate was an attempt at surveillance of the DNC after George McGovern seemed about to win the Democratic Party's presidential nomination.
And just as the government misconduct in RussiaGate was an attempt to surveil the Republican Party's national campaign after Trump clinched its nomination.
In both cases, the incumbent administration regarded the opposition's unorthodox nominee as undermining the nation's long-standing foreign policy and therefore dangerous to the country.
McGovern renounced the Democrats' traditional Cold War policy.
Trump expressed skepticism about George W. Bush, the Obama administration policies on NATO, Mexico, Iran, and Russia.
And the incumbent's qualms had some rational basis, but their attempts at surveillance were misbegotten, he writes.
And then he goes back to basically lay down the case that this is outrageous.
The things that you in this audience now know that the media ignores.
You know, the media wants to focus in on one 15-minute meeting, get every email, every bit of evidence now shows was about the Magnitsky Act and about adoption, not about getting info as it relates to Hillary Clinton or op research.
Every bit of it.
But they're still fixated on that.
The former Attorney General, Michael Mulcase, did a good job turning the tables as it relates to John Brennan, the former CIA director.
And he's basically pointing out two serious issues that Brennan has to answer for.
Brennan's personal attacks are one of the issues.
Brennan's made unsubstantiated claims about Trump's state of mind, which is, by the way, beyond unethical.
And how is it, how did a CIA asset become an FBI resource in Operation Crossfire Hurricane?
That operation, of course, spying on the Trump campaign.
The CIA is restricted from domestic issues.
It's a point nobody else has made.
Great point by Michael Mucase.
And the former FBI director has been on a warpath against the president and got an agenda.
Anyway, John Brennan, he goes on and on, is going to have a lot to answer for his participation and the participation of the CIA in providing an informant to be used in connection with the Mueller investigation.
That story has not yet been told, he went on to say.
And he noted that the informant, Stefan Halper, was a CIA asset.
That's just the beginning of the troubles, I think, for people like Brennan and Clapper.
You know, the FBI spying, as we've been pointing out, started way earlier than the timeline suggested with Papadopoulos getting drunk with this Australian downer who had donated $25 million to the Clinton Foundation.
And then the fact that, oh, we had to go through State Department and diplomatic, you know, rigamarole to get permission for the FBI to interview the Australian diplomat.
That means John Kerry knew.
And just like we learned last week in two reports that came out, that in fact, President Obama, look at the new Struck Page memos that came out last week.
Really?
It's being run in the White House.
That's a problem because that directly implicates President Obama.
And what did he know?
And when did he know it?
And what did Struck and Page mean by all of that?
It's pretty unbelievable.
And, you know, spying starting earlier, that just takes their whole timeline and blows it up in the water.
And then on top of it, not only did they rig the investigation, not only did they have spies, not only did they lied to a FISA court in the process and lied to FISA judges.
And they used foreign national put together funneled money that literally cited Russian sources.
But under the threat of perjury in Great Britain, the foreign agent that put it all together, Christopher Steele, said, oh, no, no, no, no.
Oh, geez.
Wait, slow down.
Oh, the dossier?
No, no, no, no.
Maybe 50-50.
That's only raw intelligence.
And if he didn't tell the truth, he would be probably in jail for perjury.
And then we get these hypothetical, idiotic questions by Clinton sycophants like George Stephanopoulos.
A hypothetical has nothing to do with anything.
Rudy laughed it off as the hypothetical that it is.
And even couldn't have been more clear when he said he has no intentions of pardoning himself.
He did nothing wrong.
Why are you bringing this up?
But I guess, you know, if you're asking me from an intellectual standpoint, well, now we have an article that points out they were raising the question about Hillary pardoning herself.
You know, the fact that we have a confidential memo that is going through all the varying possibilities that might exist because Mueller's witch hunters led by the pit bull Andrew Weissman, how could any investigation in which Andrew Weissman is a part of be considered credible by anybody?
How is one man who has failed so spectacularly appointed in the first place?
How is it that a guy that loses tens and tens of thousands of jobs for Americans working for Anderson Accounting gets overturned by the Supreme Court 9-0, gets excoriated twice, not once, for withholding exculpatory evidence in cases, and then puts four other innocent people in jail for Merrill for a year.
That gets overturned by the Fifth Circuit.
Why would, under any circumstances, Robert Mueller appoint him?
He couldn't find one independent to work for him?
Genie Ray, who worked on the Clinton Foundation for crying out loud.
It's so corrupt.
There was another great piece.
Who wrote this?
Victor Davis Hansen.
I had a chance to meet him recently.
He's smart.
Really nice.
We need to have him on.
Really smart guy.
And he just raises a hypothetical, and the shoe is on the other foot article.
Imagine it's the summer of 2024: 78-year-old lame duck Trump winding down his second term, basking in positive polls.
His dutiful vice president in waiting is at last getting his shot to run.
Team Trump is horrified about the chance that the nation could conceivably elect a self-proclaimed socialist, like, let's say, Bernie Sanders.
And they accuse Sanders of wanting to turn upside down the free market capitalism and nullify the entire eight-year agenda of Trump.
And anyway, allies abroad, they're especially worried about Sanders and his foreign policy views.
And anyway, so then the Trump campaign does pretty much exactly the same thing that the Obama people did at the thought of Donald Trump being president.
And let's see, in 2024, Trump FBI is implanted as an informant inside the Sanders campaign.
And the head of the FBI and members of the Department of Justice get FISA court warnings using foreign agents using dubious, let's say, Iranian sources.
And you just go and take it from there.
We know what the answer to these questions are.
There would be outrage.
The only reason there's not is because the one thing that Trumps everything, no pun intended, is that everybody on the left and even these pseudo so-called conservatives, we're really establishment people, NRO people, with the exception of Victor Davis Hanson and Andy McCarthy and a couple others.
I mean, most of them are just never Trumpers, just hostile.
Look at the agenda of Trump.
What has President Trump done that's not conservative, that deserves the ire of these so-called intellectuals?
Well, remember, it was Republicans that referred to Reagan as the amiable dunce.
It wasn't Democrats or voodoo economics.
That wasn't the Democrats.
That was the Republicans that said all of that about Reagan.
I know Reagan had a great eight years, and everybody posts, you know, Reagan wants to jump on the Reagan bandwagon, but many of these establishment Republicans were nowhere to be found at the time.
They were horrified at the idea that Reagan would become president.
I'm not saying, in many ways, in terms of governing philosophy, they're absolutely identical.
They want, you know, originalists on the court.
They believe in cutting taxes to stimulate the economy and economic growth.
In spite of 1986, Reagan believed that you had to secure the borders.
You know, both of them believe in free and fair trade.
Both of them believe in peace through strength, and they both believed in keeping their promises.
The beauty of Reagan was keeping his promises.
The beauty of the contract is when the Republicans got power for the first time in 40 years, they kept their promises.
You know, and that seems to be missing.
The reason for Trump's success is he's keeping his promises, and conservatism works.
It's not any more complicated than that.
I have not changed my core fundamental ideological beliefs in 30 years I've been on radio since 1987.
I have not changed my core fundamental beliefs in conservatism being the right ideology and philosophy since I've been on Fox News for 23 and a half years.
I know I'm just as surprised as you are, to be honest.
But my point is the same.
Conservatism is good for economic growth.
We see it all happening.
Record unemployment, low unemployment in 14 states.
Record low employment for women and for African Americans and Hispanic Americans.
You see the tax cuts, real money in real people's pockets.
I've always advocated energy independence.
Originalists on the court, secure borders, peace through strength.
You know, I've always supported Jerusalem, the capital, and it is the capital of Israel.
I've been railing against that idiotic Iranian deal.
It's all gone.
Trump's popular because he's keeping his word.
He's keeping his promises.
And that's something that a lot of these people that run for office, Republicans and Democrats, are incapable of doing.
The three big political figures, I can tell you now, in our lifetime, have been Reagan.
Newt Gingrich was going to join us at the top of the next hour with the contract.
Defining moments.
And you're watching it in the White House now.
And that is somebody that is an agent of change, which is why he got elected.
He wasn't elected because of his personal life.
He wasn't elected for any other reason is that people have had it with both parties and that he's an agent that seemed and is proving that he can get things done.
Republicans, oh, it's going to hurt.
I don't know.
I don't want to repeal and replace.
I only said it.
I didn't mean I'd have to do it.
It's pathetic.
Same with the Democratic Party.
It's working.
Yet they want to destroy him anyway.
And the full force of the deep state and the powerful tools of intelligence are now being brought to bear in what is a witch hunt to destroy this president.
And it's proven out every day.
And the laws and abuse of power and violations are outrageous.
And it's the biggest abuse of power corruption scandal in the country's history.
And the media ignores most of it.
We've dragged them kicking and screaming into covering some of it.
You people are going to have to travel because you'll be in Singapore on June 12th.
And I think it'll be a process.
It's not, I never said it goes in one meeting.
I think it's going to be a process.
But the relationships are building, and that's a very positive.
We're talking about years of hostility, years of problems, years of really hatred between so many different nations.
But I think you're going to have a very positive result in the end.
Not from one meeting.
We're not going to sign a, we're not going to go in and sign something on June 12th, like we never were.
We're going to start a process.
At hour two, Sean Hannity show, toll-free, our numbers, 800-941.
Sean, you want to be a part of the program?
Well, we've been teasing this now for a little while.
And his last book, Understanding Trump, was a number one New York Times runaway bestseller.
And he's the former Speaker of the House.
And it's Newt Gingrich's with us.
His book is just now out today, BarnesandNoble.com, Hannity.com, bookstores everywhere.
It's called Trump's America, The Truth About Our Nation's Great Comeback.
And in light of all the news we have today and the news we had last week about the economy, the summit is back on.
The president moves the capital of Israel to Jerusalem, and we're out of that horrific Iranian deal.
It seems like item by item, we're now on the path towards energy independence, largest tax cuts ever, individual mandate gone.
The wall is going to be built.
You can see how the president is unrelenting as it relates to that.
It is about a comeback.
And I do have the former Speaker of the House, Newt Gingrich, in studio with your first book interview.
How are you?
I'm having a ball.
And the whole point is that there's an America out there that is moving.
It's moving with Trump.
It's moving in part because of Trump.
You look at the economy today.
You look at the economy the week before he was elected.
It's unbelievable.
And you have the lowest black unemployment in history and even liberals now.
I mean, the New York Times actually had to run an article about how good the economy was.
I was quoting all of these sources last week, and I'm literally laughing, you know, because we've run out of good things to say about how great the Trump economy is.
I mean, it had to kill them to write that.
Well, and I think part of the reason I wrote Trump's America is that the story is about a lot more than President Trump.
The story is about entrepreneurs and individuals, small businesses, the impact of new technology on oil and gas across the board, the impact of new technology on space, where we now have reusable rockets for the first time, bringing down the cost very dramatically.
So I think Americans need to understand that not only is the elite media biased and negative and covering trivia, but they're missing the whole bigger story of what's happening in the country and what's happening with the American people.
I think this is one of the things I love about you the most.
And when we have been best friends, almost family now, when you really think about it, I mean, when I think of the journey, my journey, my personal journey, and how our roles and how we've intersected at every single point, important point.
Going back to when I was in Huntsville, Alabama, and you are on the rise to become the next Speaker of the House, and you are formulating the contract with America leading up to I was the MC of that historic night where you were and watched you become the Speaker.
You're arguing in this book that something I think is profound from a history perspective, and that is that in recent history, we've had three major advancements of the conservative agenda.
Ronald Reagan, you and the contract, and now Donald Trump.
Why have there been so many so-called conservatives, especially the intellectual elitist conservative or establishment conservative, that cannot see what you're laying out in simple truth in the book?
Well, first of all, a lot of those conservatives weren't for Ronald Reagan either.
I mean, afterwards.
Amiable dunce.
Yeah, or voodoo economics.
Right.
Good point.
You know, Howard Baker described the tax cuts of 1981 as a riverboat gamble.
But it's very similar to watch what's happening.
Reagan, by sheer consistent force of personality and the fact that it worked.
The economy was booming.
The Soviet Union was collapsing.
It was pretty hard not to think Reagan was successful.
Well, look what's happening with Trump.
And look, they're not the same personalities.
They're very different styles.
But Trump, by sheer brute persistence, has really enacted the most deregulation of any president in American history.
In fact, probably more deregulation than all the presidents since World War II combined.
Trump, by dint of a very disciplined approach, working with Leonard Leo and the Federalist Society, is actually moving the judiciary dramatically towards a more conservative position.
Trump, finally figuring out how the Congress worked after all the problems with Obamacare, turned around and in four months passed the largest tax cut in history.
Again, moving things.
And you see this, and this is very much like Reagan.
You see it in the objective outer world.
It's not the New York Times editorial page or the Washington Post editorial page, but it's month after month of more people being hired.
It is the polls that say consumer confidence is high.
Gallup just came out with a survey that said 65% of the country now thinks you can get a good job, about double from what it was under Obama.
14 states record unemployment numbers, Record lows, record low unemployment numbers for women in the workforce, African Americans, Hispanic Americans.
It's breathtaking.
We're also getting record revenues to the government.
But I want to stay on the comparisons between the way even Republicans had reacted to Ronald Reagan and the way Republicans or so-called Republicans, establishment people, look at NRO, for example.
You know, with the exception of Victor Davis Hansen and Andy McCarthy, I mean, they were so hostile to President Trump, and yet he was always advocating for originalists on the Supreme Court, border security, tax cuts, and a peace-through-strength foreign policy.
Maybe stylistically, I understand they may not like him, but in terms of what he stood for and what he's now followed through on.
Well, I think there's a part of this, though, that goes back to the concept of control.
By the standards of the Republican old order, Donald Trump perennially looks like he's out of control.
And the truth is, at one level, he is out of control.
You know, and this is a guy who can have the South Korean intelligence minister come in and say, had a good meeting with Kim Jong-un.
He'd like to get with you.
Without going through any briefings, any vetting, any structure, he says, sounds good to me, let's meet.
Well, if you are an old-fashioned establishment foreign policy expert, you think that should be a seven-month project.
And by the way, you should play a major role.
So part of what Trump does is he devalues intellectuals and basically says, you know, if I really needed you, I'd call you.
But the truth is, he doesn't sit up late at night reading AEI or Brookings or these other people, or for that matter, National Review.
He very intensely follows his own gut, I think more than any president in modern times.
And if you're an intellectual, that makes you very nervous.
As you point out in the book, and you break the book into two parts, and I think you go right through the comeback that we have now been witnessing.
And it's historic in so many ways.
And yeah, I think he's operating government a lot like the way he probably operated the Trump organization, which means when James Comey was his FBI director, you're my FBI director.
Right.
Right?
He worked for me.
That's right.
And by the way, he does work for him, and he does have the right to fire him.
But you talk about it in terms of the getting rid of burdensome regulation, the tax cuts.
You talk about, you know, something as simple and profound as energy independence, which you started yourself on this program, drill here, drill now, pay less.
The judiciary impact, Neil Gorsuch, and maybe more to come.
There's nothing that I see but for trade, and I think trade is just him negotiating.
I don't think he wants a trade war.
He wants better deals.
I think it just to the letter fits the definition of a conservative.
You recognized it before the election, and a lot of people of your stature would refuse to, were hostile and are hostile to him.
Right.
I think part of it is his language.
I mean, I happen to agree with him that if you watch the over 20 years of the Chinese cheating, that in fact we need a pretty hard fight with the Chinese over trade.
I don't agree with him we need a fight with Canada where we actually have a trade surplus.
And I think to that sentence probably he needs to shake up a little bit the way they're doing the trade deals.
But certainly in terms of China, I feel comfortable.
I think in the degree to which he was basically saying, look, and again, I agree with this, but I think it shook a lot of the traditionalists.
You know, he made the exactly correct point.
We have been fighting since 9-11-01.
That's 16 years.
This fall, 17 years.
Longest continuous conflict in American history.
And you don't see a strategy for victory.
And I think he raised that question.
And for a lot of the old-timers, it was, oh, my God, you're not allowed to say that, even if it's true, and we don't want to think about it.
Well, I'll say this in retrospect.
Well, we know Saddam had weapons of mass destruction, but in retrospect, if we're going to send over 5,000 Americans to die and so many others to get blown up and their legs blown off and their arms blown off and their faces, you know, permanently injured, and we're not going to win, or we're going to lose 58,000 brave Americans in Vietnam and we're not going to win, and we're going to politicize these wars and say, never mind.
We can't do that to any American family anymore.
That's right.
And I think that Trump is very cautious about that.
And it's part of what makes him different.
The other part of it, I think, is that people, I think, are shaken because he does move very fast.
And I think your analogy is right.
You know, people tend to forget that in The Apprentice, the most famous single phrase was, you're fired.
So it shouldn't have come as a great shock to Comey that Trump knew how to say you're fired.
I mean, he'd made an entire career on television.
And Comey himself recognized he could be fired for any reason.
Yeah, and the truth is, if you go back and you read Rosenstein's memo, which Trump got before firing Comey, it is so devastating on Comey that the only criticism I have is Trump should have released the memo on a Friday, let it be the talk show topic for the whole weekend, and then sadly on Monday done what Rosenstein compelled him to do.
Well, I guess that all goes into it.
With all that said, I don't think I have ever, and maybe you can find something in history that I can't, especially the history of this country.
We have never, ever witnessed such a concerted effort.
Now we know a real deep state that used real power, the powerful tools of intelligence, and lying to FISA courts and literally rigging investigations for one candidate and attacking another candidate to undermine that candidate.
Well, look, and I think that's part of what we cover in taking on Mueller and the deep state in my new book, Trump's America, that Americans have to be very concerned about the depth of abuse of power under Obama.
They were abusing power to protect Hillary Clinton.
They were abusing power to go after Donald Trump.
Then they began abusing power to protect themselves from us learning what they were doing.
And as recently as the last couple of days, I've heard Chairman Nunes say he still hasn't gotten the written material.
We'll take a break.
We have Newt Gingrich with us in studio today for the full hour launching his brand new book.
It's now on BarnesandNoble.com, Hannity.com, bookstores everywhere.
Trump's America, the truth about our nation's great comeback.
You think everybody would be happy about it.
But apparently they're just so hell-bent on anything that Donald Trump does that for them to succeed, he has to fail and the country fail.
We kind of saw something happening and we were both out there on a limb.
I think my obituary in terms of being a host was written 50,000 different ways.
Goodbye, Hannity.
Great call on Trump.
We were right.
They were wrong.
What did you see?
Well, first of all, I just want to say, during Election Day, I called into a Frank Luntz phone call that was just using exit poll numbers, and it was so dismal.
Oh, yeah.
I just went to dinner with Cliffson and said, that's it.
Because I'm like you.
You and I were both, we were 100 miles out.
No, no, no.
We were up the tree out at the top of the smallest limb hanging on to the leaf and the string of the leaf and ready to die.
There is, however, I will say, there's one of my favorites on YouTube, Megan Kelly and me.
You can just put in Newton Megan Kelly.
And it's two weeks out, and I'm there with her, and she's going, well, you know, all the polls show he's going to lose by 10 points.
And I said, yeah, he's going to win.
And she said, well, how can you say he's going to win if he's 10 points down?
How did you know?
Well, first of all, I have a pretty good sense of how Pennsylvania, and Callista's from Wisconsin, how these places operate.
And I felt that the Democrats had so repudiated the unionized working blue-collar American that this was going to be payback.
And it was.
And it was.
You know, I've got a great story.
I'll tell you on the other side of this break here, but the thing is, and you could see it when Obama was running.
It didn't matter how much vetting I did alone as the media gave him a pass.
It wasn't going to matter.
You saw the crowd, you saw the energy.
It was real.
And nobody was paying attention.
Donald Trump was packing stadiums, and literally 30,000 other people were outside dining it in.
Well, remember, in the modern era, 30,000 people inside plus smartphones, which they use to take pictures to send on average, I think, to 200 people.
So 30,000 becomes 6 million contacts.
And the last day, I think he did five or six.
Six, yeah.
Six.
And she did one event with 1,500 people.
We'll take a quick break.
The new book, it's out now.
It's called Trump's America, The Truth About Our Nation's Great Comeback.
More with Speaker Gingrich on the other side.
Don't forget, amazon.com, barnesandnoble.com, and of course, Hannity.com, bookstores all around the country.
Quick break, right back, and we will continue straight ahead.
All right, let me go to the president.
This is on Inauguration Day.
As we continue with Newt Kingrich, Amazon.com, BarnesandNoble.com and bookstores everywhere.
Trump's America, The Truth About Our Nation's Great Comeback.
Here's the President on his Inauguration Day.
Today, we are not merely transferring power from one administration to another or from one party to another, but we are transferring power from Washington, D.C. and giving it back to you, the people.
For too long, a small group in our nation's capital has reaped the rewards of government while the people have borne the cost.
Washington flourished, but the people did not share in its wealth.
Politicians prospered, but the jobs left and the factories closed.
The establishment protected itself, but not the citizens of our country.
Their victories have not been your victories.
Their triumphs have not been your triumphs.
And while they celebrated in our nation's capital, there was little to celebrate for struggling families all across our land.
That all changes starting right here and right now because this moment is your moment.
It belongs to you.
It belongs to everyone gathered here today and everyone watching all across America.
This is your day.
This is your celebration.
And this, the United States of America, is your country.
What truly matters is not which party controls our government, but whether our government is controlled by the people.
January 20th, 2017 will be remembered as the day the people became the rulers of this nation again.
The forgotten men and women of our country will be forgotten no longer.
Everyone is listening to you now.
You came by the tens of millions to become part of a historic movement, the likes of which the world has never seen before.
And we all salute the same great American flag.
And whether a child is born in the urban sprawl of Detroit or the windswept plains of Nebraska, they look up at the same night sky, they fill their heart with the same dreams, And they are infused with the breath of life by the same almighty creator.
So to all Americans in every city near and far, small and large, from mountain to mountain, from ocean to ocean, hear these words.
You will never be ignored again.
Your voice, your hopes, and your dreams will define our American destiny.
And your courage and goodness and love will forever guide us along the way.
Together, we will make America strong again.
We will make America wealthy again.
We will make America proud again.
We will make America safe again.
And yes, together, we will make America great again.
Thank you.
God bless you.
And God bless America.
Thank you.
God bless America.
All right, as we continue with Newt Gingrich, I want to go back, I mean, because I think this president has so, he has permanently changed the conventional wisdom about running.
And in many ways, I think you had a big part to play in the Gingrich Revolution or the contract revolution.
I still to this day suggest people ought to duplicate and learn from what works in the past.
And I have, you know, you can see on my thing, Conservative Solution Caucus.
I gave it to these idiots in 2013, and of course nobody listened.
Why would they ever listen to a talk show host?
But more importantly, you saw something here, and this is what we were talking about.
And more importantly, it's a president that makes promises and keeps them all.
And wants to keep them all.
Every other president promised to move Jerusalem to the capital.
They never did it.
You know, when he said he was going to pull out of the Iranian deal, he pulled out.
Nobody saw North Korea coming.
And nobody, he gave us the tax cuts he promised.
He moved us towards energy independence.
He's building the wall.
That wall will be built.
I have zero doubt.
Well, look, I mean, I think one of the things that's fascinating is Trump on little things is totally unpredictable, occasionally self-destructive, wanders around.
You can't, you don't know what he's up to.
On really big things, he is amazingly stable.
I mean, I got calls from European friends towards the very end on the Iran deal.
And they said, what can we do?
What can we do?
And I said, look, you either get him a really better deal or he's gone.
And they said, oh, how can he do it?
I said, he said this for a year and a half.
He actually means it.
Same thing with, as you know, I was the original author of the bill to move the embassy to Jerusalem.
And so I watched all these presidents promise in the campaign and then break their word.
They all did.
In that sense, I think Trump has a very, very good track.
But that's what worked also with the contract.
Sure.
You know, and the contract was, we're going to vote on these things, not pass them all.
We're going to vote on them in 100 days.
Give us a shot.
Yeah, we gave, we designed the contract to be totally honest and totally enforceable, which is why we couldn't promise passage of some of those things, but we could promise voting on them.
Remember, I grew up under, in a sense, under Reagan.
Reagan ran on a handful of things.
He stuck to them.
He totally believed them.
He lived his life out with them for eight years.
The Soviet Empire disappeared.
I mean, I always try to remind people, not only did he relaunch the American economy, not only did he rebuild civic culture and pride in being an American, the Soviet Union disappeared.
That should be a fairly historic presidency.
I love in the first part of the book how you specifically, chapter one, two, you know, the comeback of the country, the comeback of one nation under God, American sovereignty, of freedom of speech, of the tax cuts and constitutional judiciary.
And I love the fact that in the second part, you talk about ongoing challenges for the president.
And number one on that side is fighting fake news and the rule of law versus the rule of Robert Mueller and draining what is a real sewer in Swamp in D.C.
And he has re-I don't think there's a president that is being challenged in terms of his power, in terms of a real threat to his presidency, as we didn't know, but we do now, as this president was as a candidate, as a president-elect.
And I do believe the left absolutely wants him gone, impeached any way they can succeed.
Look, as a historian, I look at all this stuff, and it strikes me that it's so obvious if you go up to 50,000 feet.
Every element of the left and about 20% of the Republican Party collectively would do anything to get rid of Donald J. Trump.
How do we deal?
Here's what's happened, and I do my nutshell version of it, is it starts with Hillary Clinton, and she did not want congressional oversight.
She commits a felony, violates the Espionage Act, then she subpoenaed her emails.
She deletes 33,000 subpoenaed emails, acid washed her hard drive, had somebody that works for her break up her devices.
Okay, then we have Strzzok, Comey, Page, and that whole mess.
We know that they favored her over him.
All the messages show it.
They were writing an exoneration in May.
They didn't even interview her to the weekend of the 4th of July.
Two days later, they exonerate her, but the exoneration was written long before the investigation by Strzok and Page.
And then we're now learning that they launched this whole Russia probe way before the time that they said that they did.
And more importantly, and sadly, they used a Clinton-bought and paid-for foreign national put-together dossier with Russian lies to manipulate the American people, lying to FISA court judges in an original application and three subsequent applications, and they never told the judges she paid for it.
That is, as quickly as I can say it, the biggest abuse of power and corruption scandal in history.
I think the greatest disappointment in the Trump administration is the Attorney General.
Huge.
I agree with you.
Look, if we had a real Attorney General, all of this would be under investigation.
I mean, if we had a crusading attorney general who was prepared to turn over all the rocks and find all of the snakes and insects and other things that are hiding, we would be, first of all, astonished how sick the system had gotten and how much of it goes to Barack Obama and how much of it goes to Valerie Jarrett.
Well, that was the big revelation last week is that we found a struck page memo that says this is being run by the White House of Barack Obama.
But look, again, as a historian and an occasional novelist, you couldn't make it up.
No, you have to say to yourself, given the style of the Obama White House, how likely is it that they got a FISA court decision and the president didn't know anything about it?
Zero.
It's impossible.
That was an administration totally run by the genius of the one person at the center who every morning knew he was a genius.
Barrett Obama.
Barack Obama.
Here's, but this is a real, clear, present danger for the president, in my view.
Do you agree with that?
I think it's a real present danger for the country.
Agreed.
If we don't get this right, tell me if I'm wrong.
Are we the former Soviet Union?
Are we now Venezuela?
Yeah, more Venezuela than the Soviet Union.
I mean, decay, corruption.
I mean, one of the things that's breakdown of our constitutionalism.
We're trying to break down the constitutional system.
And one of the things that's very obvious from watching these guys is all of them assumed Hillary would win, and all of us assumed the cover-up would go on.
And that's why you now have this amazing resistance.
I mean, this election, and I try to explain this in my new book, Understanding Trump, I mean, Trump's America, that Trump's America depends upon us being able to retain power.
Because if we lose power comes in, boy.
Look at what's happened.
I mean, now the polls show, you know, 60% of the American people think it should be over, what they've done here.
Yes.
People, you know, literally, this all started in terms of our investigation really getting some legs, and we were right.
It was March 7th of 2017 on Hannity that we literally, Sarah Carter John Solomon broke the story that, in fact, surveillance of a FISA warrant had been issued against, we thought Trump Tower at the time.
We didn't have it exactly right.
But in the course, everything I just laid out for you has been proven true.
Every bit of it.
And what it makes you, what all of our listeners should understand is this is not just a threat to the president.
You allow the FBI and the Justice Department to be corrupted, and their power is so enormous.
It is a threat to every American.
How many people tell me, oh, don't stop.
Whatever you do, don't stop.
By the way, they're coming to get you.
Well, look, I think that's a clear and present danger.
Great.
Are you going to bail me out?
Well, if I'm not in there with you.
We were best friends for a long time.
I think we could work it out.
All right.
Got to take a break.
More with Newt Gingrich in studio.
He'll be on Hannity tonight, 9 Eastern on the Fox News channel, Trump's America, The Truth About Our Nation's Comeback, and Amazon.com and BarnesandNoble.com, Hannity.com, Bookstores Everywhere.
Final Moments, Newt Gingrich, his brand new book.
This is a great read.
You break it down, amazing, positive, successful story of the Trump presidency.
It's called Trump's America, The Truth About Our Nation's Great Comeback, and also the dangers that the president talks about.
I want to go back.
I was going to tell the story earlier, but I talked to the now president three times on Election Day in 2016.
First, I said, I saw the exit polls.
Somebody's going to come in your office.
They're probably drawing straws right now and give you horrible news.
You lost every state.
And then I told him the story about, well, in 2004, I was on the air.
John Kerry was going to be the next president.
At 5.35 that day, the vice president at the time, Dick Cheney, called my radio program and was begging people in Florida and everywhere else to get out.
And the next time I talked to him was about 8 o'clock that night.
I said, I'm telling you, you're in it.
I'm looking at every, I stay home on election nights.
I have all my career.
I'm telling you, you're in this.
I'm looking very closely at all these counties.
It looks really good.
And the last time I called him was, I think after Wisconsin, I said, Mr. President.
And he said, how do you know?
How do you know?
I knew I was right at that point.
Yeah.
Well, I had the same feeling.
Chris and I actually went across Wisconsin that Saturday.
And in rural Wisconsin, there were hundreds of Trump signs and literally zero for Hillary.
And this was an area that used to vote Democrat.
And I called Ryan Spribus, the national chairman at the time from Wisconsin, and he said, I'm seeing the same thing.
And you just knew if Wisconsin was going Trump.
It was over.
And it was over.
Yeah.
All right.
So we'll have more on TV tonight.
Congratulations.
Your last book on the president really did well understanding Trump.
It's brand new out today.
Trump's America, The Truth About Our Nation's ComebackHannity.com.
Mr. Speaker, congratulations.
The number one bestseller, I'm sure, in the making.
And people do need to read this.
It's very revealing the story of media will not tell you about how successful the president is and frankly the dangers that exist for the president to this day.
We'll take a quick break.
We'll come back.
Our final hour, free-for-all, Ed Henry, on all the breaking news today out of Washington and much more straight ahead.
A few days ago, in response to critics who have suggested that you should have resigned in the wake of the Lewinsky scandal, you said that you should not have.
If you were president now, in 2018, with everything that's going on with the Me Too movement, how would you have approached the accusations differently?
Well, I don't think it would be an issue because people would be using the facts instead of the imagined facts.
If the facts were the same today, I wouldn't.
You're asking, well, don't we have a right to change the rules?
Yes, but you don't have a right to change the facts.
Clinton says critics are now pouncing in light of the Me Too movement, but he stands by his decision to fight impeachment rather than resign.
So a lot of the facts have been conveniently omitted to make the story work.
I think partly because they're frustrated that they got all these serious allegations against the current occupant of the Oval Office, and his voters don't seem to care.
I think I did the right thing.
I defended the Constitution.
Do you think this president's been given a pass with regards to the women who have come forward and accused him of sexual misconception?
Well, I think that no, but it hadn't gotten anything like the coverage that you would expect.
Looking back on what happened then through the lens of Me Too Now, do you think differently or feel more responsibility?
No, I felt terrible then and I came to grips with it.
Did you ever apologize?
Yes, and nobody believes that I got out of that for free.
I'll have to white out $16 million in debt.
But you typically have ignored gaping facts in describing this, and I bet you don't even know them.
This was litigated 20 years ago.
Two-thirds of the American people sided with me.
They were not insensitive to that.
I had a sexual harassment policy when I was governor in the 80s.
I had two women chiefs of staff when I was governor.
Women were overrepresented in the Attorney General's office in the 70s for their percentage in the bar.
I've had nothing but women leaders in my office since I left.
You are giving one side and omitting facts.
Mr. President, I'm not trying to present a side.
No, no, you asked me if I agreed.
The answer is no, I don't.
And I asked if you'd ever apologized, and you said you had.
I have.
You've apologized to her.
I apologize to everybody in the world.
It is important to me that everybody who has been hurt know that the sorrow I feel is genuine.
First and most important, my family.
Monica Lewinsky and her family.
But you didn't apologize to her.
I have not talked to her.
Do you feel her an apology?
No.
I do not, I've never talked to her, but I did say publicly on more than one occasion that I was sorry.
That's very different.
The apology was public.
And you don't think a private apology is owed?
I think this thing has been, it's 20 years ago.
Come on.
Let's talk about JFK.
Let's talk about, you know, LBJ.
Stop already.
I don't think President, you think President Kennedy should have resigned?
Do you believe President Johnson should have resigned?
Someone should ask you these questions because of the way you formulate the questions.
I dealt with it 20 years ago plus, and the American people, two-thirds of them, stayed with me.
And I've tried to do a good job since then with my life and with my work.
That's all I have to say to you.
I want to send a message to every survivor of sexual assault.
Don't let anyone silence your voice.
You have a right to be heard, and you have a right to be believed.
We're with you.
The meeting on June 12th in Singapore went very well.
It's really a get-to-know-you kind of a situation.
Mike has spent two days doing this.
We've gotten to know their people very well, and we will.
You people are going to have to travel because you'll be in Singapore on June 12th.
And I think it'll be a process.
It's not, I never said it goes in one meeting.
I think it's going to be a process.
But the relationships are building, and that's a very positive thing.
We're talking about years of hostility, years of problems, years of really hatred between so many different nations.
But I think you're going to have a very positive result in the end.
Not from one meeting.
We're not going to sign a, we're not going to go in and sign something on June 12th like we never were.
We're going to start a process.
And I told them today, take your time.
You can go fast.
We can go slowly.
But I think they'd like to see something happen.
And if we can work that out, that'll be good.
Do you believe Kim is committed to being a reason?
Yeah, I do think so.
He'd like to see it happen.
He wants to be careful.
He wants to be, you know, he's not going to run and do things.
All right, Gladi with us.
News Roundup Information Overload.
That was the president.
And yeah, a lot of great things happening on the economy.
Yeah, the June 12th summit is on.
No, there's not going to be an agreement signed.
Yeah, it's going to be a process.
And a lot of it's going to be up to Kim Jong-un, how fast or how slow he's wanting to go.
Reports out there, by the way, that he's purging the ranks of the old guard in North Korea.
We're watching that story very closely, along with a lot of other ones.
Ed Henry is the chief White House correspondent for the Fox News channel.
He joins us now on this pretty big breaking Momentous News Day.
How are you, sir?
Sean, great to talk to you.
It really is a lot of breaking news.
Well, let me start first with Bill Clinton having a full-blown meltdown in that interview that he had over the weekend.
I mean, just losing it.
Yeah, I'm surprised in a way because, look, he had something like, as I was listening to that audio, it sounded a little bit like when he went after our own Chris Wallace years ago.
Remember that?
And that was like, I thought Chris's questions were very fair and appropriate at the time, but he had a lot of pent-up hostility towards Fox News.
And he kept saying, you do this and Fox this and Fox that and was wagging his finger.
This was, as I understand, NBC Today Show Craig.
By the way, and usually in those moments, it really is Hannity this and Hannity that.
Yeah, yeah.
And that's very justified, by the way.
Yeah, thanks a lot.
By the way, here we go.
More articles about, oh, Fox has a news division and an editorial division.
Yeah, Sean, all the attacks on Sean, very justified.
He's not my friend.
Nothing like, no, you want nothing to do with me.
Sean is my very good friend.
I ruined you.
I think there's a simple answer to this now that we sort of have diverted our attention here.
It's simple.
If you have a newspaper, every newspaper, for the most part, has national, regional, international news.
Most newspapers have a sports section.
Most newspapers have even a gossip section or a life and living section.
Most newspapers have an editorial page.
They have an op-ed page.
Well, Fox News is basically a newspaper and has all of those elements.
And I happen to be on the opinion side, the editorial side, if you will, although we do break a lot of news pretty much every night.
And I endorse everything you just said so that everybody understands clearly that we were teasing each other a minute ago.
And on top of that.
You're being mean to me.
Let's be honest.
You're being horrible to me.
I'd be a little mean.
No, but and the other thing that people, you're too humble to say is that you're number one at it.
So, you know what?
It's not just that you're doing the editorial page at Fox, but in a very tough environment with people coming after you, you've kept your head held high, your integrity intact, and you, night in, night out, are number one in the world.
So everybody can take that.
You know, it's what, and I think the only way you're able to build an audience is by delivering news and information.
And in this particular age, I don't think there is a lot of journalism and a lot of news breaking on other channels.
I think that there is an agenda.
They call themselves news, and they're anything but news.
Well, Sean, we've been chasing the news on the news division side of Fox News.
We've been pushing on.
I'm not talking about Fox News.
Fox News is great.
You know what I'm saying?
We're pushing on all fronts.
But what I was about to say was anyone who wants to dispute the idea that you have changed some of the narratives in the mainstream media, if they tried to dispute that, I think they would be foolish because night in, night out, you've brought in new facts that have changed the conversation and have raised difficult questions for James Comey and others that were not the focus of the story at the beginning.
And by the way, I'm not saying that that means that there are not tough questions for the president as well, as you know in my reporting, in saying that there's still an investigation of the president.
And people can't deny that.
But you have pointed out that there's an investigation of the investigators that a lot of people didn't want to talk about at the beginning of this.
But I got to tell you, especially with this IT report, we think finally coming out about how the Clinton email investigation.
When do you suspect we're getting it?
You know, I actually think that this is something that I'm scratching my head at because I think our listeners and our viewers night in, night out, have to be getting a little frustrated with what's happening because the Justice Department Inspector General had been signaling for a while that this was coming out.
We kept saying, well, in the next couple of months, then it was the next couple of weeks.
So, I mean, over the weekend, there was more talk that it could be coming out this week.
But I hesitate to tease that because I want it to be fact-based and I want to be able to.
Well, I heard anywhere between Tuesday of this week, tomorrow and Friday.
Now, the problem with it coming out on a Thursday or Friday, well, that now butts it up against the June 12th summit.
And that means that you have an absolute date of a major shift in news focus and coverage coming.
And to me, any late-week release of this is going to be designed to bury this news and minimize the actual impact of this news.
Now, I know it's going to be followed up by hearings.
My sources are telling me 28, we have literally ready to go, 28 FBI officials that will tell the true story about how the email investigation of Hillary Clinton was rigged and how.
You know what?
I think big picture that what you were saying a minute ago about the timing is interesting because I do think the summit will end up overshadowing some of those headlines.
But I have to say, in this news environment that you started this conversation with about all these breaking stories, I think there's so much out there that it doesn't matter which day a certain story comes out.
If it has legs, if it has real juice, and if it is accurate and fair, it's going to have lasting impact.
And in this case, I think this Justice Department Inspector General report, you could put it out Saturday at 2 a.m., and I think it's still going to have legs, whether the North Korea, it could be a North Korea peace deal the next day.
This story will still have legs because this is an Inspector General nominated by Barack Obama, who appears to be about to put out a blistering report for James Colby, Andrew McCabe, and others.
I think that's going to have legs.
Yeah, I agree with you.
Even, you know what?
And we can walk and chew gum.
We can follow the developments in North Korea.
We should.
And I think reporters who don't are not being honest because what you said earlier in the conversation, there are people who want these stories to go away.
And I think, in fact, this Inspector General report, if he delivers on what has been promised in terms of the actual facts and not hyperbole, I think it's going to have legs.
All right, as we continue, Fox News, Chief White House correspondent Ed Henry is with us.
All right, let's talk a little bit more.
Public support, by the way, for this Mueller probe is now collapsing.
You have almost 60% of Americans believe that Robert Mueller's investigation should wind down.
According to a new survey Harris poll that has come out, I think it is now 58% say it's pretty much time for Mueller to pack it in.
And only 42% want it to go on forever because I guess they just hate Donald Trump.
And then, of course, you have this weekend.
Now, it was a known fact.
Here is, you know, the fascinating way that the New York Times covers things and other news outlets covered things.
You know, they're saying that, well, the president, again, this is a developing scenario.
And some spokespeople said, well, the president didn't put together the entire statement of Donald Jr., but apparently everything that was said by everybody was backed up by the emails that were found and discovered in conjunction with that meeting, which was that it was a colossal waste of time about the McGinsky Act and about adoption.
Yeah.
I do think on the substance of the meeting, not much has really turned up to suggest you're right that at the beginning when we first learned that Don Jr. had helped put together some kind of meeting at Trump Tower in the heat of the campaign, the mainstream media wanted to turn that into Watergate, quite simply.
And I don't think the substance, as we know the facts today, have panned out that way.
Where I would challenge what you just said, though, is I'm struggling to understand, given that premise that it turned out to be a whole lot of nothing, at least on paper right now, why then did Jay Sekula go out in 2017?
this is a meeting in 2016, why did Zay Sekulow, one of the president's lawyers, I know he's a friend of yours, went out in 2017 and multiple times said the president had...
I think there's a simple answer to it.
I don't think he knew the facts, except what was available at the time.
And from what I can understand is that, you know what, there's so many different nuances in all this.
Just like I would argue that if anybody called any congressman or any senator that's running for election, said, I've got op research on your competitor that I think you're going to want to see.
I don't think one of them would turn down the meeting.
And there's nothing wrong with taking that meeting.
Right, the meeting.
But I'm saying in terms of what Sekula was quoted on in 2017.
I'm saying, I think I'm absolutely certain that he didn't have all the facts at the time.
Well, then he shouldn't have said anything, though.
I mean, that's the point.
My point is just this, and not to attack Jay or impugn his integrity.
He's going to be able to explain it himself.
But very briefly, I would say that if he did not have all the facts in 2017, he should have gone on Sunday shows and elsewhere and said Donald Trump had nothing to do with drafting the press statement about that meeting.
I think there's a simpler answer to that because everyone's trying to make this nefarious.
And here's what the simple answer is.
And the simple answer is he didn't know at the time.
And the simple answer is that it's not a big deal considering this.
At the end of the day, what do we have here?
Everybody confirming one thing.
And the one thing is, is that the meeting was about the Magnitsky Act on adoption.
You know, at some point, you got to apply common sense.
And if there's nothing nefarious about what people were saying or what they knew and that they might not have known, then it's, you know, why would you blow that up into the bigger deal?
And it seems to me that that's all part of an agenda of the insignificant coverage that the media now harps on and blows up when it's absolutely nothing.
Good to a point.
But if there's nothing to the meeting, I also think people should tell the truth about it.
That's the only point I have.
Yeah, I think, and I think that changed.
That's my point.
All right, Ed Henry, we appreciate it.
Thank you, my friend.
Thanks, Trump.
Well, what he's really talking about there is that Trey Gowdy believes that he has been told multiple times by the Department of Justice that Donald Trump, President Trump, is not a target of this investigation.
He believes that he's been told that multiple times.
And so he comes to the conclusion: well, if they were only going after Russians, if the FBI was only going after Russians and Donald Trump's not a target of this investigation, then what is all this about?
And so the mainstream media continues to ignore that piece that Mr. Gowdy, I think, has clearly said now on multiple occasions, but was very clear about it last week, and that President Trump is not a target of this investigation in his own mind.
Now, you have to remember that Mr. Gowdy loves the FBI and the Department of Justice.
I think all Americans want to have a good Department of Justice and FBI doing their job.
And if they're targeting Russians or Chinese or what have you, that's what we expect them to do.
However, the challenge we have in this is that they actually targeted a political campaign that was Donald Trump.
And that's where I think that even though Mr. Gowdy believes that the president's not a target of this investigation, his campaign is, and I think that's where the challenge occurs.
So last August, we issued a subpoena.
We should have been provided all of this information that we've been asking for over and over and over again.
We issued a new subpoena.
And so now we've been waiting.
We've attended two briefings.
They were very small briefings, not a lot of information, but we were happy it was progress.
We believe that there are some documents, information that we will review this week.
All right, that was from this weekend, and that was Devin Nunes.
I'm with Maria Baratoromo.
800-941-Sean is our toll-free telephone number if you want to be a part of the program.
All right, let's get to our busy phones in the meantime.
As I promised today, a lot of news happening out there.
We got the Korean summit on.
We got great economic news.
You've got now the media going ballistic over something that we know and has corroborated has been true, which is, yeah, the meeting at Trump Tower with Don Jr. and Jared and Manafort was about adoption.
And the president said it was about adoption, which was the truth.
Well, he might have said it was about adoption.
Okay, that was corroborated by multiple emails.
It's not in dispute.
It's not even a question.
All right, let's get, you know, it's, all right, well, anyway, Velma's mad at me.
Why are you mad at me?
What did I do now?
Hi, how you doing?
Well, you don't sound that mad at me.
Well, you know what?
I text you.
You don't text me back till you get good and ready, if you do.
But if Anthony and Marcel text you, you text them right back.
I text, well, because they're young, you know, they're young, and I just have to.
I'm old.
No, because I don't think your feelings are going to get hurt.
And if I notice that my adopted nephews are looking for their uncle, I try to pay attention.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Look at that.
So you want to hurt my feelings.
No, no, no.
Do you know how busy this insane life is that I have going on here?
Yeah, I know.
Do you have any idea what my day is like, Velma?
Yeah, I do.
My own sister says to me constantly, you know, yells at me because I don't have time to answer her texts.
Okay, then.
Well, I'll forgive you then.
Oh, my gosh.
But you text your sister back.
I do eventually text everybody back.
I get to everybody.
Sean, I know you're busy.
I still love you.
I just want to make sure that you know that I'm still here and I'm still back.
Velma, when is your birthday coming up?
You're going to ask me how old I am, then I ain't going to tell you.
No, I didn't ask you.
I asked you, when is your birthday?
It's a very different question.
Oh, it's in August.
In August.
So you're ready for round two at the win.
Oh, Lord.
I love it.
You know what I'm saying?
Was that like the best day of your life?
Well, the best day of my life was meeting you.
You say that.
I dare you.
Now, wait a minute.
The boys are going to get mad.
Your husband's going to get mad.
Everyone's going to hate me.
No, well, they know.
Well, you're one of the best.
One of the best days.
Okay, one of the best days.
And one of the best days was when you went for your mani-pedi massage and you put on the slippers and you put on the bathrobe and you got.
Oh, and the place is just, oh, my God.
It was like.
It was like a fairy tale.
It was like a fairy tale.
And I'm telling you, I'm so thankful.
And now I go to the regular pedicure man.
I don't even like it because you don't get all that.
Oh, so you don't like going to the regular place now?
Not no more because I've seen what the best is like.
Okay, I've never had any of that stuff done to me in my life.
I never will.
That's because you don't like it, honey.
I love to be pampered.
I love to be waited on.
I don't care.
I love it.
You love it?
Wow.
I love, love, love, love, love, loved it.
Well, I'll get you one for your birthday.
Now that's like your forever I'll get Velma for her birthday and for Christmas gift.
See how sweet you are.
You always make up for it no matter what.
You always make up for it.
But what am I making up for?
I don't understand.
You making up for not texting me back?
I don't know that I saw your text for some reason.
I'm looking in my text.
I can't find it.
Well, well, well.
Maybe you deleted it.
Oh, Velma, what?
Maybe the deep state stole it.
Now that Jerome Corsi says that I'm the next victim.
No, no, Sean.
You know, I know you're busy.
You know, I'm not really, really mad at you, but I love when you text me back.
All right, I will text you back.
I'll make a point of it.
I promise.
I'm going to look very closely.
I said, you know what?
He just threw me over the cliff because I'm old.
Who threw you over?
How old are you?
You know, I ain't going to tell you my age.
You said you weren't going to ask for my age.
No, I said I didn't ask about it, but now that you brought it up, I'm asking.
You know, I don't care.
I don't talk about my age.
Look, all I know is this.
All I know is that you've got two wonderful children that I have adopted, my nephews, and I give them the best gifts that they want.
I get them everything that they want.
Because frankly, you're too strict and you don't get them the things that they really want, and it's frustrating to them.
I spoil them, but I have to do it on my little cheek.
But Moo, Moo.
You their rich uncle.
And you know what?
And they tell everybody.
Good.
It's embarrassing.
Why is it embarrassing?
Why, knowing me is embarrassing?
You know what?
These people want to meet these people if they get more curious and all of this kind of stuff.
Well, Velma, you are like a star in Vegas, and everybody loves you.
I'm telling you, somebody that's running for office called me.
Yeah.
I mean, I talked to yesterday, and they said, I want to see those strips, and they're Democrats.
They want to see what?
They want to see every conversation I had with you.
You know, when I knew they know I know you, and they wanted to see, and I was telling them about you and how much I love you.
Oh, so they, what did they think that I was like hitting on you or something?
No, they know you wasn't hit.
I was telling them.
Well, why would they want to see it?
Because that means they're investigating me constantly, which, by the way.
But you know what?
I tell people.
No, Velma, Velma, they didn't call and want to see every conversation we've ever had for a good reason.
They liked the fact I was telling them you like an uncle to my.
No, no, no, no, no.
Let me tell you how this really works.
They were calling looking for dirt on me.
That's why they were calling you.
Now they want Sean.
Now, I volunteer.
I'm busy volunteering.
Why do you think they wanted every conversation?
Would you mind sending us every conversation you've ever had with Sean Hannity?
Why do you think?
No, they want to hear us pop on the air.
They seem to like you, Sean.
No, no, no, no, no.
That was not a call.
They were just playing you.
No, they weren't either.
No, I wasn't.
All right, let's take a poll here.
Linda, Linda, Linda, why do you think they wanted every conversation?
Be very Linda.
Because I told them me and you started.
No, why did they want every conversation, Linda?
I'm sorry to tell you this, Velma, because you know I love you.
I've been talking to you for years.
But it's all about getting Sean.
It's all about.
What do you think, Ethan?
I don't think so.
It's all about getting Sean.
What do you think, JCON?
This is the big payback.
Yeah, what do you think, Sunshine?
I concur with the rest of the group.
All right, now hang on right there.
Velma, stay on the line.
Don't go anywhere.
Kathy, why do you think that Democrats called Velma and want every conversation that she's ever had with me?
Well, Sean.
Hang on, Kathy.
It's all about getting Sean.
Rich, what do you think?
And Myrtle Beach, what do you think it's about?
I think it's all about Sean Hannity.
Come on, they're trying to take you down just like the deep states trying to take down Donald Trump.
They want to take us all down.
This country is way off course.
Donald Trump is the only person who's going to be able to do it.
All right, hang on.
We'll get back to you.
Mike in Michigan, what do you think, Mike?
Why do they want all our conversations?
They want to do everything they can to take anybody, especially you, as one of the leaders of our right wing.
They want to take us all down because they're all a bunch of socialists and Marxists.
Marshall, what do you think?
Why do they want the conversations?
They're trying to take you down, Sean.
They're trying to take you down, bro.
And Tab will give you the last word in Roseland, New Jersey.
Why do you think they want all our conversations?
Because I think Velma is a Russian spy.
All right, Velma, we'll give you the last word.
Velma, Velma, it's full agreement.
Sean, I know that wasn't it.
I'm telling you.
Have I ever said anything to you that has been untoward or improper?
No, but John, that wasn't what it was about.
No, but you've actually said inappropriate things to me.
I'm not going to tell on you.
Yeah, that's what I'm saying.
You have never disrespected me.
Oh, Velma, we love you, Velma.
Come on.
But that man tickled me the last man, but I promise you.
Oh, did you give it to the guy?
Hang on.
No, but that guy didn't know who I was at first.
He didn't know.
I told him.
I said, I love people, everybody.
I understand.
But Velma, Velma, I know you just don't understand the world I live in right now.
It's nuts.
Sean, yes, I do.
But you know what?
Anybody go against you, I'm going to be up there for you.
Don't even worry about it.
All right, well, I'm going to bring, Velma's going to be leading my defense team, and whatever, whatever.
I'll be on the defense team.
I'll tell you right now.
All right.
We love you, Velma.
Kiss the boys.
All right, let's get back to Kathy and Orlando.
Thank you, Kathy, for being patient.
Hey, Sean, I can't even defeat or combat what Dom was saying.
Good gosh.
Right.
What do you do?
What do you do with that?
You got a live wire.
Yeah, I do.
So what's going on?
How are you?
I'm fine.
Thanks.
Okay.
Number one, I can't have this conversation without thanking everybody.
You as the leader of the PACT, Sarah Carter, and all the way down the line.
And they're not down the line.
They're all equal.
Everybody contributes the same thing, I'm sure.
It's a blessing.
Here's what has been on my mind.
And I know Trump fighting this battle with Rosenstein, Mueller, the whole group, the deep state, whoever it is that's throwing the darts at them, all started, I believe, as a result of this recusal with Sessions.
Is that probably a correct statement?
Let me tell you something.
All of it.
Every bit of it.
Yes.
Okay.
With that agreement, which is where I'm thinking, you also have Congress doing their thing.
So you've got two investigations sort of paralleling one another.
But the congressional one is being fueled by what Rosenstein and Mueller and those guys are doing.
Correct?
Yes, correct.
Okay.
So now, if in the event, and think of this, is it a blessing in disguise for all of us that the recusal of sessions is what brought forth all this dirty swamp water?
Would we have the text messages from the love birds?
Would we have all the release of the IG report?
The IG report's going to tell us everything about at least the Clinton email investigation.
That's where we found the struck page memorandum.
Although, remember, there's a separate now.
We're not going to get the FISA abuse investigation because that just began.
And that's why it's so frustrating.
It's like another year we have to wait.
It's so frustrating.
And I agree.
It's very frustrating.
And the wheels of justice move very slowly, as you well know.
But the recusal of sessions is what started it.
If Sessions had not recused himself, I believe that all of us have to do it.
None of this, no, no, no.
None of this.
If he died, we would have never known about it, and everything would have gone on their merry way.
And maybe some people would have pressured some members of Congress to start trying to dig into this, but it would have gone nowhere because it didn't have the wrongdoings of Rosenstein, Mueller, and that whole group in there and exposing it because that's what's happening.
Am I thinking anything?
No, no, you have it.
The American public is now getting it.
Polls now show that the American people are getting it.
And it's just taken a long time to get everyone here.
And every day, every week, you know, we keep chipping away and I'm peeling the onion.
And it becomes more and more evident, more and more clear.
You know, this is the biggest abuse of power, corruption scandal in our country's history.
And these people are now desperate.
You know, it's not an accident that all of you independently, you know, understand that some Democrat calling Velma in Vegas.
And by the way, this is only a small, tiny tip of the spear in terms of what these people on the left are trying to do to this program and programs like this.
And trust me, it is, if I explained it in the real terms, I have been vetted far more deeply than Obama ever was when he ran for president.
Let's put it that way.
They want this show to go away and shows like it.
Just a fact.
And we're not paranoid.
All right, Hannity, tonight, how the media is so god-awful wrong as usual.
And we'll lay out the latest.
We're also expecting the IG report.
The great one, Mark Levin, weighs in on the legal insanity, the hypothetical about, oh, do you have the ability to pardon oneself?
Excuse me, they were talking about that with Hillary, Sarah Sanders, and of course, Sarah Carter.
