Sean dedicates this show to digging into the person behind President Trump's pick to fill the open Supreme Court seat created by the retiring Justice Anthony Kennedy. Judge Brett Kavanaugh has an impressive record in the tradition of Justice Scalia. Listen as Newt Gingrich, Professor Alan Dershowitz and Oliver North explain why Kavanaugh is such a great choice. 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.
You are listening to the Sean Hannity Radio Show Podcast.
And Ed, I speak for everyone.
Thank you for everything you've done to protect our nation's great legal heritage.
In keeping with President Reagan's legacy, I do not ask about a nominee's personal opinions.
What matters is not a judge's political views, but whether they can set aside those views to do what the law and the Constitution require.
I am pleased to say that I have found, without doubt, such a person.
Tonight, it is my honor and privilege to announce that I will nominate Judge Brett Kavanaugh to the United States Supreme Court.
I've spent my career in public service from the executive branch in the White House to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the DC Circuit.
I've served with 17 other judges, each of them a colleague and a friend.
My judicial philosophy is straightforward.
A judge must be independent and must interpret the law, not make the law.
A judge must interpret statutes as written, and a judge must interpret the Constitution as written, informed by history and tradition and precedent.
All right, that was the president making his big announcement about Judge Kavanaugh as his nominee to replace Anthony Kennedy on the United States Supreme Court.
I don't know whether I start with the insanity of the left.
And let me also start by saying it didn't matter who Donald Trump chose.
The same comments, the same lies, the same hysteria, the same politics.
It's Playbook 101.
It happens in elections and it happens with Supreme Court nominees.
And that is the lies, the slander, the besmirching, the attacks, the manipulation of the American people.
It is all, this is what the left in America is now reduced to.
It is knee-jerkism.
There is no vision.
There is no insight.
There is no plan.
There is no even discussion about how to make the lives of you, the American people, better.
It's all about destroying any and all things Donald Trump.
It's the media, it's liberal Democrats, and I've got all the audio that I will play in the course of the program that proves everything that I am saying is true.
You could replace Judge Kavanaugh's name with any of the other contenders, and you would still be getting the same type of liberal leftist hysteria and reaction.
Just like I have been telling you, 2018 is the single most important midterm election that we will see in our lifetime, because it's about the following.
Not only do they want open borders to keep Obamacare, to impeach Trump but not tell you about it ahead of time.
Not only do they want their crumbs back, the tax cuts back, but they also want to stop.
Elections matter.
Elections have consequences.
The president gets to choose the Supreme Court justice.
It is the Senate's role to advise and consent.
And by the way, I urge them to do their job.
But what you have been hearing and what you will hear throughout this show is not them doing their job.
You have a man of impeccable background, a man with impeccable intellectual experience.
This is a guy that has now served on the U.S. Court of Appeals, which is probably the single most influential court short of the Supreme Court.
The D.C. Circuit from 2006 until the present is confirmed 5736.
I mean, if you look at his family, I actually said last night on TV, take a look at that family because they're about to go through absolute hell in terms of the slander that is now coming their way.
The things those two little girls will now hear about their father are just, and as I was saying it, it had already happened.
That's how prepared they were to go after anybody.
It doesn't matter his background.
It doesn't matter that he has opinion.
They don't care.
They don't care who they hurt, who they slander, because it's all about politics to them.
I mean, this is a guy whose background, he clerked for Anthony Kennedy.
He worked as an attorney in the office of solicitor general.
He worked as an associate counsel in the office of Ken Starr, the independent counsel, and also a senior associate counsel to the president, that being George W. Bush.
He has argued cases before the United States Supreme Court and other appellate courts.
He teaches at places like Harvard and Yale and Georgetown, America's finest institutions, we are told.
I mentioned yesterday, when it comes to the law, there is always nuance.
You are dealing in the case of Judge Brett Kavanaugh.
It's somebody who has devoted his entire adult life to studying and understanding and basing rulings on the Constitution.
The most important thing I'm going to tell you today, by the way, the president has now just gotten off Air Force One and arrived for the NATO summit.
Oh, by the way, there is, he's going to tell NATO allies that they've got to pay their fair share, which is the right thing to do.
He has published articles in Yale law journals and Georgetown law journals and Harvard Law Review and Notre Dame Law Review and Minnesota Law Review and the Catholic University Law Review and Marquette Law Review.
I mean, Washington Post, Wall Street Journal, this is a serious, serious intellectual that if you just stand back.
And I know that even on the Republican side, that not everybody, there was so much lobbying that I know of that was going on as it relates to this.
Some people wanted Hardiman.
Some people wanted Barrett.
My first choice would have been Barrett.
Some people wanted, you know, Mike Lee.
Mike Lee would have been a great choice.
But it doesn't matter.
This is the president's choice.
He graduated Yale college, Yale Law School, was with the Yale Law Journal.
And his whole life now has been the law, the Constitution.
His entire life has been writing, studying, and has written opinions now on nearly 300 cases dealing with some of the most complicated issues arising in federal courts because of being on the D.C. Circuit Court.
The Supreme Court itself has endorsed his positions on many high-stakes issues.
I mean, they've been out there.
11, by the way, decisions endorsed his positions, advocated his opinions.
No small.
He also has argued before the U.S. Supreme Court.
But at the end of the day, let me tell you what this battle is really all about.
This battle is about the left in America, what they cannot get done at the ballot box, what they cannot get done legislatively because it will be rejected and they will be immediately fired if they advocate their true views.
It's sort of like telling Maxine Waters and others, all right, we hear you on impeachment.
Just stop chanting, impeach 45, impeach 45, we'll do it, but just, you know, stop.
Heath Ellison already is talking about impeaching Judge Kavanaugh if the Democrats get control of the House.
I mean, this is how the left is going after Pam Bondi, and they're going after Secretary Nielsen.
And Sarah Sanders can't go to a restaurant with her kids.
And Mitch McConnell now has had it twice, and Kellyanne has now had it again.
And Ivanka Trump, and Melania Trump, Baron Trump is 12 years old.
Leave the kid alone.
And the granddaughter of the president, Don Jr.'s four-year-old daughter, was threatened by this idiot in Canada on Twitter, that they're going after her.
This is the environment now that the left has created.
You saw this last night.
As soon as I got off the air, you have the center, I think, for American politics, and we've got the tape.
I'll get to it.
It's just so much to talk about.
Screeching and screaming.
I have an entire pile in front of me of insane things that the left has said, starting with my favorite, Nina Totemberg, whatever his name is, Totenberg, saying that this is the end of the world as we know it.
I mean, she said it before the president even selected Judge Kavanaugh.
You can't make this up.
You know, you have party leaders, Dick Durbin, by the way, this is great, telling people like Tester and Bill Nelson and Claire McCaskill and Joe Manchin and Heidi Heitkamp.
You must commit political suicide.
Red state, Trump-supporting states, telling Democratic senators to give up your career over this and under no circumstances give Judge Kavanaugh the benefit of the doubt.
Terry McCullough said the nomination of Judge Brett Kavanaugh will threaten the lives of millions of Americans.
No, it won't.
They don't like that they lost.
That's what this is about.
And just like we saw with the women's march right after the president was inaugurated, and just like all the hope and dreams of every Democrat has been put in the hands of Robert Mueller that has come up empty.
Now, too, this is now, this is their stand.
And they will scream and holler and hem and haw and lie and slander and besmirch and use character assassination.
There's a great piece.
I forgot where I saw this.
Forgive me, whoever wrote it.
Who killed the center left in America?
There is no center left.
You know, you watch college students saying they despise Trump's Supreme Court nominee before he announced who it was.
Knee-jerk hatred that they have.
You know, my colleague Shannon Bream had to cancel her show last night.
She was at the steps of the United States Supreme Court, but because of the volatile protest, felt so threatened.
She tweeted out, very few times I felt threatened while out in the field.
The mood here tonight is very volatile.
Law enforcement appears to be closing down First Street in front of the Supreme Court of the United States.
And this is now, you have a comedian bashing people that believe in life, saying abortion should be as easy as pushing the on-demand button.
I mean, you know, what did Bill Clinton say?
Abortion should be legal but rare.
A belief that, you know, it's not a great thing.
You know, or if you have rape or incest or the mother's life, three exceptions I've always embraced my whole life because I think there is context and nuance to life.
And I think those are three examples.
All right, when we get back, I'll tell you what I'm going to do.
Before we get to the crazies, and I'm going to play the crazies, we got it all.
The most important thing you need to focus on in this whole, this circus that the left is creating.
What is the judicial philosophy of Judge Kavanaugh?
Because rightly, Republican presidents have messed up Supreme Court choices.
Everybody should be skeptical.
I think that's actually a good thing.
I will tell you what gives me, I don't know him, never talked to him, but I'll tell you what gives me the most hope about him and what concerns I have, which is probably the Obamacare statute that he rendered an opinion on that would allow it to be a tax.
I didn't like that.
But I'm going to read to you what he said about what Judge Scalia stood for as a judge, his judicial philosophy.
That's next.
All right, as we roll along, Sean Hannity Show 800-941, Sean.
All right, Judge Brett Kavanaugh for the U.S. Supreme Court.
It all comes down to judicial philosophy.
Let me read you something.
This gives me the most hope because this is what I'm going to read you fits my judicial philosophy, what I want in a justice as somebody that believes in co-equal branches of government and separation of powers.
And he described how, like Scalia, this was at George Mason Law School at an administrative law conference, that he is devoted to textualism and originalism.
I read this last night.
I'm going to read it.
You know, let me read it in full at the bottom of the out.
Let me, because I want you to really absorb this.
Because the most important thing you need to understand in this is what this means for potentially 40 years.
Justice Kennedy was on the Supreme Court for 30 years.
That is way beyond Ronald Reagan's presidency.
And this will impact our kids, our grandkids, our culture for many generations now to come.
Besides sending kids off, a president, sending kids off and making the difficult decision to allow American treasure, our children, to go fight a war where they're going to risk their life and their limbs because of the president is the commander-in-chief.
This is the next single most important thing that a president does because it is part of their legacy.
And I know we've had, I know for many, and at times myself, Anthony Kennedy was a disappointment.
And, you know, Justice Souter, do I need any, didn't he say anymore?
It was a colossal mistake.
But then you get people like Scalia, Clarence Thomas, Justice Alito, who I think has been phenomenal.
Neil Gorsuch, so far it looks really good.
And it's about the future of American culture.
So what I'm going to do is I'll take this quick break.
I'll come back.
Going to read what he said about judicial philosophy and much more.
800-941 Sean is on number.
We got a lot to get to.
Newt Gingrich and Alan Dershowitz and so much more.
All right, 25 now till the top of the hour, 800-941, Sean, if you want to be a part of the program.
You know, I don't understand, you know, it's so funny.
I got a call like an hour or two ago from a friend of mine at Fox and said, by the way, some guy at BuzzFeed wants to talk to you.
I said, okay, I'll talk after the show, my radio show.
It doesn't matter.
They put up an article.
There's nothing in this that is true.
And I'm just trying to understand how the media works.
I've never heard of Steven Pearlberg of BuzzFeed.
He says he's a news reporter for them.
And the headline is, Bill Schein White House job isn't good for news for Fox.
Sean Hannity is increasingly estranged from Fox News management.
And it goes on to talk about Bill Schein and how he worked at Fox and was the president of Fox, et cetera, et cetera, and now is working in the White House.
And then it goes on to talk about me and says, but according to people familiar with the matter, Shine's political ascent has brought renewed stress and paranoia to Fox News executive ranks more than a year, blah, blah, blah, blah.
After he's out, then it goes on to say about me after they hired Bill.
And that somehow his new job, you know, is a problem for Fox.
A spokesperson for Fox News and Hannity did not return requests for comment.
I said an hour and a half ago, I talked to them and it goes, Hannity's level of freelancing has irked some of at the top Fox News and its parent company, 21st Century Fox, including Rupert Murdoch's sons, James and Lachlan, who are increasingly feel like Hannity's gone rogue, as one source put it, and that Hannity talks to the president almost nightly.
It goes on to say, and that I've spent time bad-mouthing my network, which I love and I put my life's blood into.
I am so honored that I got hired at Fox 23 years ago.
It has been a gift in my life.
That just isn't true.
And Hannity has maintained his leverage and his singular importance to the network's conservative audience by bringing in huge ratings.
We're number one, thanks to all of you that listen to this program.
And I just got to tell you, my relationship has never been better with the management of Fox.
And it's never been.
What they're saying here is not true.
Rupert Murdoch has been wonderful to me.
I don't know James Murdoch that well, but I know Lachlan, and he's been wonderful to me.
So I'm kind of like, why don't you guys talk to me first?
Maybe not people that must have some agenda.
And I just have a great working relationship with everybody there, except I guess a few people may not like me, but that's their problem.
You know, I assume some people disagree with my opinions.
Anyway, on to more important matters.
I want to read because this all comes down to one thing, judicial philosophy.
What do we want as conservatives?
What do we believe the role of the judiciary is as conservatives versus what does the left want?
I loved what Newt said on his program yesterday.
If you just, 30 seconds before the president comes out, just imagine that it was going to be Hillary Clinton coming out to announce her second nominee to the United States Supreme Court because she would be looking for a judicial activist, someone that wants to legislate from the bench, someone that doesn't respect co-equal branches, doesn't respect separation of powers.
We even have some members of the Supreme Court that have gone as far as to actually cite foreign law to justify their radical judicial activist opinions.
The people that I have most admired in my lifetime on the Supreme Court, if you've never taken the time to listen to arguments in the Supreme Court, you get audio in cases you don't get, you don't, we obviously don't have cameras in the courtroom there.
It is the most fascinating intellectual exercise you will ever hear.
And for example, somebody might be arguing a point and they don't get three words out and they're being interrupted by a justice.
And they have to be quick and on their feet because all the justices have already read their arguments and they basically then have questions about it.
And it doesn't go on for a very long or extended period of time, but it is a powerful back and forth that sometimes takes place.
And Anton Scalia was well known for his wit, his humor, his intellectualism.
And I love what he once said that, you know, there are times as a judge that you must do what the law demands, not what you personally like.
So as a conservative, we believe in separation of powers, co-equal branches.
We believe in the Constitution, that this is a constitutional republic.
We don't think judges ought to be writing law from the bench to advance a liberal agenda because that's what elections are about and that's what the legislative branch of government is about and that's their job.
So what Judge Kavanaugh said in 2006 at this administrative law conference hosted by George Mason Law School, Judge Brett Kavanaugh described how, like Justice Scalia, he devoted textualism and what is known as originalism and rejects unbridled judicial activism.
Let me quote him to you because this gives me the most hope about the president's election because this is my judicial philosophy.
This is what I believe in what he said.
And he's actually said much of this last night.
He said, quote, what did Justice Scalia stand for as a judge?
He wrote, it's not complicated, but it is profound and worth repeating often.
The judge's job is to interpret the law, not to make the law or make policy.
He writes, so read the words, where he spoke, read the words of the statute as written.
In other words, the law written by the legislative branch.
Then he writes, then he said, read the text of the Constitution as written, mindful of history and tradition.
And last night he talked and added the word precedence.
He said, don't make up new constitutional rights that are not in the text of the Constitution.
Don't shy away from enforcing constitutional rights that are in the text of the Constitution.
And he wrote, changing the Constitution is for the amendment process.
We have a constitutional process to change the Constitution.
It's difficult.
The bar is high, but it was designed to be high.
And he writes, changing the Constitution, you know, changing policy within constitutional bounds, that's for the legislative branch.
Remember that the structure of the Constitution, the separation of powers and federalism, co-equal branches, in other words, he says are not mere matters of etiquette or architecture, but are at least as essential to protecting individual liberty as the individual rights that are guaranteed in that text.
He goes on, and remember that courts have a critical role when a party has standing in enforcing those separation of powers and federalism limits.
And he says, simple but profound.
Now, he also talked about in a speech before Catholic University Law Review and wrote for them, he laid out his vision of the constitutional separation of powers and the role of a judge as an umpire in our system.
And he said, at its core in our separation of powers system, to be an umpire as a judge means to follow the law and not to make or remake the law and to be impartial in how we go about doing that.
He goes on, a good umpire should not be making up the strike zone as he or she goes along.
Judges likewise should not make up the rules as they go along.
We see this in statutory interpretation, for example.
A good judge sticks to the established text and canons of construction that help guide us in interpreting ambiguous text.
Justice Antonin Scalia had a profound influence on statutory interpretation.
And one of the things he has helped us to do is to narrow the areas of disagreement about how to interpret the statutes.
In other words, what the legislative branch passes as law.
Every judge now seems to start with the text of the statute.
And then he has commented on religious liberty issues and consistently has a background of having defended religious freedom.
And the Second Amendment, he, you know, argued in interpreting the Second Amendment Heller versus the District of Columbia, he dissented from the court's majority by writing the district's ban on the possession of semi-automatic firearms is unconstitutional.
And his dissent was quoted approvingly by Justice Thomas in asking whether the challenge law complies with the text history tradition of the Second Amendment.
Also on issues of free speech, et cetera, et cetera.
The only issue that the big issue that I seem to have, he's also shown an area of growth in 1998 when he worked with Ken Starr's office, you know, his views on as it relates to Clinton and obstruction and the role of independent counsels at the time.
Now we've got a special counsel that's basically evolved into the same mess as the independent counsel law.
And then in 2009 reversed himself and said, no, I don't, this is not what I support.
So let me just go to the left for a second here.
And we're going to spend time.
We've got Newt Gingrich coming up.
We've got Alan Dershowitz coming up.
We've got my friend Greg Jarrett is stopping by, Sarah Carter, Ollie North today.
We've got a lot of opinions.
Let me place some of the insanity of Democrats in the Senate.
And, you know, people like Schumer and Warren and Booker and Gillibrand and Durbin and Feinstein and Blumenthal and the rest of them.
Listen.
President Trump, with the nomination of Judge Kavanaugh, has fulfilled or is fulfilling two of his campaign promises.
First, to undo women's reproductive freedom.
Second, to undo ACA.
And so I will oppose him with everything I've got.
I want to know something about this judge's values.
And what he's revealed so far is not something that reflects America's values.
I will be saying with even stronger voice that we as the United States Senate, forget partisanship or what have you, for respect for the Constitution to avoid a constitutional crisis, we cannot let this confirmation process go forward, especially now that we have someone that has clearly said that they have a strong opinion should any of those issues come before the Supreme Court.
Tell your story.
Be heard.
Do not give up.
We must convince the Senate to do the right thing and stand against Kavanaugh.
Stand against Kavanaugh.
Stand against Kavanaugh.
Deciding between the freedom of women to plan their own families and the strong hand of government, women lose in Kavanaugh's courts.
Kavanaugh's views on the Second Amendment are straight out of the gun lobby playbook.
Washington, D.C., where he grew up, would be Wild West, D.C. if Judge Kavanaugh had his way.
Brett Kavanaugh appears to meet all President Trump's promises of how his candidate will rule on specific issues.
His views are outside the mainstream, and there's every reason to believe he would overturn Roe.
So here is a memo to the Parkland students.
If you care about common sense, gun violence protection, Judge Kavanaugh is your worst nightmare.
My colleagues should be a no on this nominee unless Judge Kavanaugh specifically commits that he will recuse himself on any issues that involve President Trump's personal financial dealings or the special counsel.
There is enormous grounds for suspicion right now about this nominee.
We cannot go back to a time when women are made criminals for making a choice about what to do with their own bodies.
We cannot go back to a time when they can't make a decision about their own contraceptive.
This is about replacing the authority of government, putting the government's authority ahead of the authority of a woman to make a decision about her own body and her future.
So if you are a young woman in America or you care about a young woman in America, pay attention to this because it will forever change your life.
It's all out of the 101 playbook of the left and the Democrats.
This is a party now that has zero vision to make our lives better.
And they cannot in any way accept they lost in 2016.
They are in a complete meltdown.
They're going to be in a meltdown in Europe, just like they were with Reagan.
Now that the president's touchdown in Brussels will go to London and then to Helsinki.
These are very insane times.
Where do you hear the stuff we're going to play at the top of the next hour?
We got Greg Jarrett, Sarah Carter.
We got Newt Gingrich, Alan Dershowitz, and Colonel North.
We're trying hard.
Three hours a day is all we ask.
One little baby hour at night just to drive the left nuts.
It's all coming up.
800-941-Sean.
We continue the Sean Hannity Show.
All right, glad you're with us.
Sean Hannity Show.
Write down a toll-free telephone number.
We'd love to hear from you.
It's 800-941-Sean.
You want to be a part of the program?
A lot coming up today.
Newt Gingrich, Alan Dershowitz, joins us today, Colonel Oliver North.
And let me go back to where we left off in the last hour because as is predictable now on every level, the left in this country, whoever the president chose, they would have opposed.
I told you my favorite was Nina Totenberg.
This is the end of the world as we know it, which she said on NPR.
She's a Supreme Court reporter and a notorious cheerleader of Ruth Bader Ginsburg.
And so that's her point.
End of the world as we know it.
Then I just played you all the senators.
They all, they could have just plug in the name and they would have said the same thing about any choice of Donald Trump.
I'm convinced if Donald Trump gave every man, woman, and child in this country $10 million, they would still hate him.
They wake up in the morning and they hate him.
They literally live for the next tweet so they can be outraged.
They live in a constant state of feigned moral outrage.
The American people, meanwhile, are laughing.
They get the president.
They've gotten used to the fact he is not going to ever be an establishment figure.
He wouldn't have been elected if he was.
And they kind of like that he's going to go tell NATO, as he has landed in Brussels, that they need to pay more as it relates to the treaty that we have.
And they kind of like the fact that, you know, he's going to go to London and they're going to be crazy leftists that show up.
It's very reminiscent of what Reagan had when he was president.
They didn't like Reagan either.
They don't like strong presidents.
You know, let me just play a little bit more of the media and Democrats.
You know, let me play them criticizing the president before he made the decision.
They already hated it.
You just have to remember how extensive the conservative agenda is here for the Supreme Court.
It's not just rolling back abortion rights.
It's not just rolling back gay rights.
It's not just eliminating affirmative action.
It's not just expanding the death penalty.
I've never recall a previous president outsourcing at least the initial selection process to an outside interest group the way that this president has to the Federalist Society.
A woman's freedom to make sensitive health care decisions hang in the balance with this nominee.
It is near impossible to imagine that President Trump would select a nominee who isn't hostile to our health care law and health care for millions and millions and millions of Americans who is in hostile to a woman's freedom to make her own health care decisions.
For the president, it's going to be all about the personal connection, who he feels comfortable with in the moment.
So you're saying he's going to pick the man, the white man.
So as R.E.M. once put it, the end of the world as we know it.
I've never seen a president of the United States, in effect, make himself a puppet of outside groups and choose from a group of right-wing fringe ideologues.
I frankly don't even think we should be considering this nominee.
All right.
So, but there are others in red states.
Like I just saw that John Tester, he's in a big race this year that he might vote to confirm Kavanaugh.
What's Claire McCaskill going to do?
She won't win.
So are they going to have an election year conversion?
Dick Durbin is telling them to give up their careers for this vote.
I'd like to see him do that.
And then you've got other people like Bill Nelson of Florida.
Heidi Heitkamp is another one.
Manchin of West Virginia.
I mean, all of these people are in big trouble because this is, they're red state Democrats.
Now let me play for you.
Let's go to like the media.
This is MSNBC.
Listen to this insane conspiracy theory.
It is Judge Kavanaugh, who I believe alone on that list is the only one who's on the record at length on this question of whether a president is subject, should be subject to criminal investigations, civil lawsuits, indictment, impeachment, and all the rest of it.
I mean, he's the only one from that list who said a lot on the record in print on this matter that the White House could have reviewed, and he's the one that they picked.
I can't imagine that under any other president picking him, you can imagine another Republican president picking Brett Kavanaugh, but with no other president picking him, would your first concern be that maybe he was picking him because the president thought he wouldn't indict him?
Does the phrase judge shopping come to mind?
And that's what we're selecting the decisive vote on the court that will rule on whether he has to respond to a subpoena or not.
These are near-term concerns.
The next, within this year, he may have to, the court may have to rule on whether he has to be questioned by Mohr.
These are very near-term questions.
Yeah, off the rails.
I know, Unhinged joining us now.
His new book is out just in two short weeks.
It's on Hannity.com, Amazon.com, and it captures it all.
It will be the definitive book on this Russia hoax, the illicit scheme to clear Hillary Clinton, frame Donald Trump.
That's Greg Jarrett, Fox News legal analyst and investigative reporter, Fox News contributor Sarah Carter.
It didn't matter who we picked.
It was going to be the same thing.
Oh, it absolutely did.
And my favorite stupid quote comes from the ever-obtuse and slow-witted Terry McCullough, former governor of Virginia, who was a Clinton lackey for decades.
And he tweeted out that the nomination of Brett Kavanaugh will destroy the lives of, let me get the exact quote.
Here it is.
Will threaten the lives of millions of Americans for decades to come.
In other words, according to McCullough, people will die.
Look, when you say something or tweet something that profoundly stupid, you are only hurting your cause, the cause of the Democratic Party.
And maybe there are some people out there who legitimately might object to Kavanaugh, although he is inly well qualified, head and shoulders above anybody else on the list of 25.
But fine.
But when you conjure up the boogeyman like this, that people are going to die, it threatens the lives of millions.
You're just self-destructing.
And that's the classic Democratic theme now.
You heard it from Chuck Schumer.
You played a clip of it.
And you're hearing it from the media, Jeff Toobin over at CNN, Andrea Mitchell at MSNBC.
Mass hysteria.
Abortion will be outlawed throughout America.
That is not what would happen.
It would revert back to the states.
That's only if Roe were overturned.
That's correct.
It would go back.
So in other words, would you agree with me?
Probably 48 states would have abortion legal, maybe all 50.
I would say 45 at least, some with restrictions, others with parental notification, three months.
Sure.
Some of the stuff that has actually been upheld under the Casey decision, Planned Parenthood versus Casey.
And Democrats, if any of them have an ounce of intelligence, know they're lying to the American people, but they're assuming that Americans are so stupid that they'll buy in to their lie.
What about you're in Washington every day, Sarah, and you're in the halls of Congress every day.
And I just really want to get your reaction to what you hear.
We have gotten a little insight, at least from Rakowski saying, well, there were some people on the president's list I would have had a difficult time supporting, but just based on what was publicly known about them, we're not dealing with that.
And Susan Collins seemed to be okay.
Rand Paul and Ted Cruz, I know they would have picked other people, but I can't imagine they would oppose the president on such an important decision with such a close margin in the Senate.
It doesn't appear that they will.
And like you said earlier, Sean, there are going to be a lot of Democrats, I mean, who are hanging in the balance come the elections, and they're not going to want to go against the voters who are going to be watching them very carefully in some of these states that are so important come November.
I also think it's really disingenuous of the Democrats.
It goes to show you, it's like children screaming and crying.
You know, they didn't get their way.
They were going to be angry no matter who was picked.
And it's disingenuous to the American people to put out these over-exaggerated lies.
Of course, the selection of a Supreme Court justice is very important.
I think what they're so frustrated about, so angry about, is that Kennedy, you know, left that seat open and allowed the president to put someone in his place.
They're very angry about that.
This is just a reaction to that.
They're just spewing out lies out of anger.
And I think that, you know, in the end, what they're most angry about, particularly the Democrats in this situation, is the fact that this is solidifying a legacy for President Donald Trump.
This is part of that legacy that he will have.
And who knows if other seats will become vacant in the future?
And that would be even more extraordinary.
Let me go back to last night.
And it didn't matter.
It was basically, let's protest, fill in the blank.
This is Podesta's Center for American Progress.
It's giving me a headache.
Do we really have to go back to hey, hey, ho-ho?
I mean, it is, it's so unoriginal.
High school cheerleading.
It's the standard high-i-ho-ho.
Come on, man.
Oh, man.
Elections have come.
You know, I don't understand.
They really want a justice that'll legislate from the bench.
Why would Congress want to usurp their power?
Because they know they'll never get it done at the ballot box or legislatively?
Absolutely.
And they love people like Stephen Breyer and Ruth Bader Ginsburg who do exactly that, that they view this Constitution as, you know, Gumby.
It is so flexible and elastic.
You can stretch it and contort it and twist it any way you want.
Do you know how you have just dated yourself?
I know.
Gumby was my favorite.
I bet you it was sort of one of those claymation things.
What was the one on Sundays about a Christian one?
David and Davey.
Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah.
That was so great.
That was a good one.
I watched that one.
And I bet you Sarah Carter has no idea what we're talking about with Gumby.
She's too young.
I know, Gumby.
I didn't know what you were talking about on the other issue.
Davey.
Davey.
Remember Davey?
Well, you know, the bottom line here is I don't see, with all the noise, I don't see where they win.
How do they win?
No, they don't.
And John McCain is, he seems ill, and I don't know if you count on his vote anyway.
No.
Look, I think you were right when you pointed out that people like Manchin and Heitkapp and Donnelly and Tester and others are going to be under enormous pressure.
These are Democrats in ultra-red states that Trump won by huge margins.
And so they will be saying to themselves, shall I betray the idiots in my party and vote to help myself perpetuate my own power?
And they'll always choose themselves because that's what Washington politicians do.
That's not what Dick Durbin is advising them to do.
Well, you know, Durbin's the guy who smeared 12 years ago Brett Kavanaugh by calling him the forest gump of Republican politics, which only goes to prove just how dumb Dick Durbin is.
We'll take a break.
Greg's book, by the way, out in two weeks, The Russia Hoax, The Illicit Scheme.
And by the way, you want to get your copy as soon as possible to clear Hillary Clinton and frame Donald Trump.
Amazon.com, Hannity.com, more with Sarah Carter and Greg on the other side.
Then we've got Alan Dershowitz.
We've got Newt Gingrich all coming up.
All right, as we continue on Sean Hannity's show, we've got Alan Dershowitz at the bottom of this hour.
We'll talk to him about the president's Supreme Court choice, criminalization of political differences.
Why, Greg Jarrett, are they now putting off the sentencing of Michael Flynn yet again?
And what about Manafort that's rotting 23 hours in solitary confinement, having been convicted of nothing, and the only charges really are about a 2005 tax case?
Well, the judge today in Virginia ordered that he be moved out of the location 100 miles away and into a jail in Alexandria, Virginia.
So seeding to the request of Manafort's lawyers.
Why is he in jail at all?
He should never be in jail.
It's outrageous.
It's over the top.
This was Amy Berman Jackson, the Washington, D.C. judge, who issued that particular order, and she's being blatantly unfair.
The allegation was he was tampering with witnesses.
Well, even if he were, that's not grounds for putting a nonviolent individual suspected of a tax fraud case behind bars.
You give him an ankle bracelet, confine him to his home, you take away his computers and his cell phone.
It's as simple as that.
And you could actually turn off all cell servers and a phone.
We have the capability to.
Oh, sure.
You take all his devices away.
And he monitors them in a phone.
You come in and out.
Yeah, you don't put him in solitary confinement in a jail.
What do you think's going on, Sarah Carter, as it relates to this case?
What do you think of this?
Honestly, Sean, I mean, from the very beginning, I think they're trying to squeeze Manafort their own.
Judge Ellis, my friend.
Yeah.
Yeah, I mean, it's just there's no doubt here that they're putting all the pressure they can.
They looked for a very old case.
They brought a case against him that has nothing to do with Russia collusion or anything connected to Russia and the campaign.
They're squeezing him.
They're making his life miserable.
They're making his family's life miserable.
And they're just hoping with all hope that they could either get him to sing or, like you said and the judge said, compose.
Compose some kind of song that they can sink their teeth into.
And now we know you know Weissman, you know, Andrew Weissman, who has been notoriously known and reprimanded by judges for his behavior in the courtroom, for withholding exculpatory evidence, for playing dirty tricks.
I mean, I guess that's why they call him the pit bull.
He's in trouble now, too.
All right.
We'll see you.
I got a run.
We'll see you both on TV tonight.
Sarah Carter, Greg Jarrett.
We'll check in with Professor Alan Dershowitz on his take on the president's choice for the Supreme Court.
Newt Gingrich, Ollie North, all coming up.
Stay with us.
President Trump, with the nomination of Judge Kavanaugh, has fulfilled or is fulfilling two of his campaign promises.
First, to undo women's reproductive freedom.
Second, to undo ACA.
And so I will oppose him with everything I've got.
Want to know something about this judge's values?
And what he's revealed so far is not something that reflects America's values.
I will be saying with even stronger voice that we, as the United States Senate, forget partisanship or what have you, for respect for the Constitution to avoid a constitutional crisis, we cannot let this confirmation process go forward, especially now that we have someone that has clearly said that they have a strong opinion should any of those issues come before the Supreme Court.
Tell your story.
Be heard.
Do not give up.
We must convince the Senate to do the right thing and stand against Kavanaugh.
Stand against Kavanaugh.
Stand against Kavanaugh.
Deciding between the freedom of women to plan their own families and the strong hand of government, women lose in Kavanaugh's courts.
Kavanaugh's views on the Second Amendment are straight out of the gun lobby playbook.
Washington, D.C., where he grew up, would be Wild West, D.C. if Judge Kavanaugh had his way.
His views are outside the mainstream, and there's every reason to believe he would overturn Roe.
So here is a memo to the Parkland students.
If you care about common sense, gun violence protection, Judge Kavanaugh is your worst nightmare.
My colleagues should be a no on this nominee unless Judge Kavanaugh specifically commits that he will recuse himself on any issues that involve President Trump's personal financial dealings or the special counsel.
There is enormous grounds for suspicion right now about this nominee.
The doom, the gloom, the predictable talking points, forking, fear-mongering.
It's actually pretty sad.
Anyway, glad you're with us.
24 now till the top of the hour, 800-941.
Sean is a toll-free telephone number.
Joining us now is somebody that I have a great respect for that doesn't always agree with my political views in any way, shape, matter, or form.
But he has talked at length about how we are now in this country criminalizing political differences.
He has a brand new book out that is now costing him dearly at Martha's Vineyard, which I'm getting a real kick out of.
It's called The Case Against Impeaching Trump.
Alan Dershowitz, Professor Dershowitz from Harvard Law School, is with us.
I'm sorry that I'm getting amused by the happenings on Martha's Vineyard, but it's actually, on the one hand, it's sad, and I'm sorry you have to go through it.
It's very sad.
On the other hand, I think it is very indicative of the polarization that has gone way off the rails in the country, in my opinion.
I agree with that.
It's not about me on Martha's Vineyard.
I could do a few of parties.
It's about how you can't talk to each other.
Look, you and I disagree about so many things, but we talk to each other, we have our disagreements, then we shake hands, and we come back for a next level of agreement or disagreement.
100%.
Today, in America, whether it be on college campuses or when it comes to Supreme Court confirmations, you have to pick sides.
And the other side has no virtues, and your side has no vices, and everybody lives in silos, and nobody wants to interact with anybody else.
And it's a shame.
You know, the folks in the vineyard learned their lesson, and they're now back communicating with me.
It's in writing now.
Now they're writing me emails telling me why I'm wrong.
That's better.
No, no, that's better.
I agree.
And then I'm going to have an event at the big theater in Martha's Vineyard where I challenge anybody to come and ask me questions.
And I will not leave the event until every critical question, every critical statement has been made.
That's what town halls are about.
That's what democracy is about.
But saying that I don't want to talk to you, you have nothing to tell me.
If you're on Trump's side, that's the end of the issue.
That's just not America.
It's not the America I grew up in, where I went to Brooklyn College.
We thought about everything, every issue.
I grew up during McCarthyism.
One of the professors at Brooklyn College, who I had arguments with, was Eugene Scalia, Justice Scalia's father.
And we remained friends.
And I remained friends with his son.
I didn't agree with Justice Scalia about everything he wrote.
But I love Justice Scalia as a person and as an individual.
And we became good friends over time.
I think that's the America I want to see us get back to.
You were actually kind enough.
And I actually have never been to Martha's Vineyard, but you were kind enough to say, listen, why don't you come?
I have these talks.
No, no, no.
I mean, and I'm like you, if it's the right environment, I'll talk to anybody for as long as it takes.
You know, as a conservative, it's been my friends and people I know that are shouted down and threatened and literally run off the stage.
It's gotten so bad.
Look what they did to poor Sarah Huckabee just taking her family to a restaurant.
Look at what Secretary Nielsen had to go through in a restaurant and then at her home.
And it's now also, you can add to that, Pam Bondi and Steve Miller and Kellyanne Conway and the horrible things said about the president's son and granddaughter who's four years old, a Milani and Ivanka.
I don't know.
I mean, I look, for example, at Judge Kavanaugh and I read everything I possibly can.
I had no dog in this race at all, and I know people did.
And what I see is a guy that is a strong intellectual with incredible and impeccable, with an impeccable background that has written thoughtful, smart, well-researched opinions.
Not all that I agree with, Obamacare being one of them.
And I listened and I saw his family last night and I heard his comments last night and I read his comments in 2009 in the Minnesota Law Review and I read his comments on originalism in 2006.
And this guy is a real scholar.
He's not only a real scholar, but he's a scholar with an open mind.
He's changed his mind about issues.
You're right.
I know because he's interacted with a number of my friends and colleagues at Harvard Law School.
You can imagine they don't all agree with him.
And people, for the most part, admire him and like him.
There was an op-ed in today's New York Times by Akhil Amar, who's a very liberal Democrat.
He cried when Donald Trump got elected.
He was really so distraught.
And he writes a column saying this is a brilliant man, an open-minded man.
I heard the same thing from several other colleagues who know him well.
Am I going to agree with all of his opinions?
Of course not.
But what's happened to judicial confirmation?
Look, when Scalia came up for confirmation, it was, I think, 99 to 1 or something like that.
Ginsburg, something over 90, Breyer.
But now everything's along party lines, and the judiciary is becoming very politicized, and the Americans are the poorer for it.
We need an independent judiciary.
We need judges who are open-minded, nonpartisan, who will apply the law fairly the way they see it.
Obviously, they're going to be influenced by their ideology, by their background.
But nonetheless, they're doing it honestly in an attempt to implement the words of the Constitution.
You know, I loved his words when he said the job of a judge is to interpret the law, not to make law or make policy, to read the exact words in a statute which is written by the legislative branch as written and read the text of the Constitution as written, mindful of history and tradition, and don't make up new constitutional rights, not in the text.
Don't shy away from enforcing constitutional rights that are in the text.
And he said changing the Constitution is for the amendment process.
Changing policy is for our legislature.
No, I agree.
And in my new book, The Case Against Impeaching Trump, I take a very literal view of the impeachment criteria.
Constitution says to be impeached and removed, you have to be found guilty of treason, bribery, or other high crimes or misdemeanors.
And some of the people on the left are saying, well, that doesn't mean when it says, even if there's kind of maladministration, that's good enough.
Or if he does something bad in office that we don't approve of, that's bad enough.
But that's not what the Constitution says.
The Constitution says you need two-thirds vote.
You can't change that.
Why should you be able to change bribery, high crimes and misdemeanors, treason?
You can't change it.
It's in the text of the Constitution.
If you don't like it, amend the Constitution.
But sometimes being a literalist gives you more rights because you literally have to apply the rights in the Constitution.
And impeachment is a good example.
You know what?
And I lay it out as a liberal why I want to see the Constitution adhered to literally and very much in tune with what the framers had in mind.
Scalia once said a good judge must conclude as the law demands in spite of it, even if they personally do not like the decision.
I thought that was pretty powerful.
Well, you know, he once came to my class and we talked together for two hours and I put to him a bunch of quick cases where he had come to conclusions that I didn't agree with.
And he said in the end, you know, some of these were conclusions he didn't agree with.
But he had to apply the law.
Now, look, every judge deviates from that.
Bush versus Gore was not the ideal example of nonpartisan law enforcement.
You could take different views on that.
But when you get a case that goes along party lines, you really have to wonder.
But, you know, 90% of the cases in the Supreme Court are not decided along party lines.
You get Ginsburg joining with Roberts, and you get Kagan joining with Thomas.
So it depends on the nature of the case.
But look, we all ought to have an open mind.
We ought to listen.
I haven't made up my mind about Kavanaugh.
I want to hear what he says.
I want to read more of what he's written.
I, you know, like some of the things he said, and I don't like other things he said.
I want to hear what he believes about precedent.
I don't care what he cares about a particular case because when he's on the bench 30 years from now, those aren't going to be about our grandchildren.
He said that the Constitution is written, the statute is written, but he also said mindful of history and tradition.
I took that to mean precedence.
I did too.
I did too.
And I think that's right.
And I think he will abide by precedent.
Look, he's not going to overrule Roe versus Wade.
He may not expand it, not extend it.
He may look at it in a narrow way, but he's not going to overrule it.
Professor, this is a great question.
Everybody fearmongers on Roe v. Wade.
I would argue to you, and I think a lot of people think Roe v. Wade, that ends abortion in America.
It does not.
It would send it back to the states.
And I would argue, I think I could make a strong case that in at least 48 states, maybe more, abortion would be legal.
There would be different variations in terms of restrictions or parental notification and such.
And states like New York and California and so many other blue states, they would be the most liberal laws in the country.
It would not.
Abortion is not at risk.
Let me throw a question.
And I'm pro-life, by the way.
It is reported that you it is reported that you supported Judge Barracks from the Seventh Circuit.
Now, she has said that she believes the fetus is an innocent human being that deserves protection.
Did that mean that she would not allow New York to permit abortion?
Because she answered that too, though.
She said that she, like Scalia, because she wrote extensively on originalism, was a believer in that her own personal views will not impact her decisions.
And she was very clear about that.
We must follow what the law and the Constitution demands.
But the Constitution doesn't mention abortion at all, but it does say you can't be deprived of life without due process of law.
And there are some right-to-lifers who say there should be a constitutional right to life, and a state can't take that away from you.
There are three positions on abortion: the Roe versus Wade, privacy Trump's the right to life.
There is the position that says leave it to the states.
Then there's the third position, not articulated by very many, which says that the fetus has a right that can't be taken away by the state.
And what I would love to hear, because I think Judge Barrett may come up again for consideration if Justice Ginsburg or anybody else.
I'd love to hear her views on that issue.
I totally agree with you.
And I think, you know, there's also, remember when we had John Kennedy was running and he gave his speech on Catholicism.
I mean, one of the greatest speeches ever given.
One of the greatest speeches ever given.
All right.
Your book is phenomenal, by the way.
We put it up on Hannity.com.
It's called The Case Against Impeaching Trump.
Professor Alan Dershowitz, who has been with us, and sadly, he has been targeted for like, don't talk to Alan Dershowitz, which is ridiculous.
We'll take a quick break.
We'll come back.
All right, as we continue, Professor Alan Dershowitz of Harvard is with us.
He's a brand new book.
It's on Hannity.com, Amazon.com, bookstores everywhere.
We only have about a minute and a half.
Let me give it to you and just give us more information.
I've been reading your book and I'm absolutely loving it because it makes me think more than anything else.
And you talk about a purity in terms of we have all got to be civil libertarians, especially with spies and campaigns and lying to FISA court judges.
It really worries me.
I think that's right.
And I think that civil liberties today may be used to protect President Trump.
Tomorrow, they're going to be used to protect the Democratic president and the rest of us.
And that's why I'm so concerned about the civil liberties of President Trump and the constitutional rights, because if you can take away the constitutional rights of a president, you can take away the constitutional rights of everybody.
And, you know, as I've said, if Hillary Clinton had been elected and the Republicans were trying to impeach her or lock her up, I would have written the same book.
It just would have had a different title.
It would have said the case against impeaching Clinton.
You know, I'd look at every fact.
I'd look at all the cases, but I'm trying to be a neutral civil libertarian.
I'm not trying to be a partisan defender of anybody.
And I wish more Democrats and more Republicans would approach these problems in a neutral, objective way.
We can't criminalize differences.
Paul Manafort's been convicted of nothing.
It's a 2005 tax case.
And 23 hours a day now for a month he's been locked up.
That is not justice to me.
I agree with you, and Judge Ellis agrees with you.
And he said that he can't strike it down as illegal, but he was very upset about special counsel and about how putting the screws to him to make him sing.
Make him not only sing, but compose.
That's the issue.
Compose to me sounds like subordination of perjury.
And so they can impeach or prosecute Trump.
That's their goal.
That's scary.
That's not America to me.
It's not.
No, I agree.
We have to have neutral standards.
The case against impeaching Trump, Professor Alan Dershowitz, thank you.
Annette, I speak for everyone.
Thank you for everything you've done to protect our nation's great legal heritage.
In keeping with President Reagan's legacy, I do not ask about a nominee's personal opinions.
What matters is not a judge's political views, but whether they can set aside those views to do what the law and the Constitution require.
I am pleased to say that I have found, without doubt, such a person.
Tonight, it is my honor and privilege to announce that I will nominate Judge Brett Kavanaugh to the United States Supreme Court.
All right, that was from last night.
The president, Judge Kavanaugh, selected to be the next Supreme Court justice, the left, of course, going crazy, and even people, conservatives, Republicans, all that had advocated for other people are weighing in left and right.
We do have a lot of background about his judicial philosophy, as I have been saying all day, which really is at the heart of all of this.
Here to weigh in is former Speaker of the House, author of the bestseller, Trump's America, The Truth About Our Nation's Great Comeback, another massive runaway bestseller, Newt Gingrich.
I want to ask you this.
You know, I actually quoted you last night on the five I was hosting and then on Hannity.
And I think that, you know, if every American before the president spoke just imagined that Hillary was about to come out and make her second choice for the U.S. Supreme Court, how would we feel?
But yet you still get the whining and the complaining.
And there is a natural doubt, you know, is he really going to be in the mold of Alito, Scalia, and Thomas?
Everybody, I think that's a legitimate fear based on past failures.
Sure.
Look, I think, first of all, we have so often had our hopes broken by people like Souter who turned out to be such total disasters that it's reasonable to be anxiety-ridden.
On the other hand, this is a guy who has been on the court now for 12 years, which considering that he's 51 shows who he's 53 rather.
So he got on the appeals court at 41 years of age.
He has authored 300 opinions.
11 of his dissents have been picked up by the Supreme Court who sided with him and overrode the liberal majority on his court.
He is very clearly on most issues deeply committed to a constitutional reading of the law and to being bound by the founding fathers in our history.
In that sense, he's very much, I think, like Scalia.
In fact, he was described by a liberal professor who wrote a very positive op-ed saying that he thought he should be approved, even though this is a pro-Clinton liberal Democrat, but who knows him personally and said, look, he said, this guy's like Scalia, but even better educated.
And he said, you're going to be very impressed with his intellectual.
By the way, that's a hard mountain to climb because Scalia was a genius.
The thing that let me just say that we were very fortunate.
Clista and I were actually in the White House having dinner with Vice President Pence and then watching the introduction.
And then we went to a little reception for the Kavanaughs, including a chance to talk at length with his father, who's a very charming man, and who talked about how true real it all was.
He said, you know, his wife used to go home, and she would, here's now Judge Kavanaugh at about 11 or 12 years of age.
And over dinner, she's practicing her closing argument as a prosecutor now to convict some guy.
And it's his job at 11 or 12 years of age to take apart her arguments.
And he said that's where his legal training began, was with mom sitting there at the kitchen table.
And they're just a charming family.
And I think, you know, devout Catholics, active in coaching his two daughters and basketball, active in helping serve food for the poor.
I mean, it'll be fascinating to watch the left try to demonize him because I think he's actually a very decent human being.
You know, it was interesting you say that because last night I said, oh, by the way, you see that family?
And I put up the family on the screen.
I said they're about to absolutely smear slander and try to destroy that man and his family.
And by the way, it was happening even as I said it in terms of the Democrats and their reaction.
I'll tell you where I get the most hope in terms of what his judicial philosophy is.
And we do have a lot in terms of his background.
And, you know, he has weighed in on really important issues, including religious liberty and separation of powers and freedom of speech and the Second Amendment.
And you rightly point out, reigning in the administrative state of Obama, that was another big one, America's interests.
But where I get the most hope, Mr. Speaker, is when he said, well, what did Justice Scalia stand for as a judge?
This is back in 2006.
He wrote, he said this in a law review article.
He goes, it's not complicated, but it is profound and worth repeating often.
The judge's job is to interpret the law, not to make the law or make policy.
So read the words of the statute as written.
Read the text of the Constitution as written, mindful of history and tradition.
Don't shy away from enforcing constitutional rights that are in the text of the Constitution.
Changing the Constitution is for the amendment process.
Changing policy within constitutional bounds is for the legislatures.
And remember that the structure of the Constitution, separation of powers, federalism, are not mere matters of etiquette or architecture, but are at least as essential to protecting individual liberty as the individual rights guaranteed in the text.
And remember, the courts have a critical role when a party has standing in enforcing those separation of powers and federalism limits.
Simple but profound.
And he said more on that.
And that is the judicial philosophy I would be looking for.
You know, Larry Arn, the President of Hillsdale, said to me last night, we don't emphasize often enough that the only document directly voted on by the American people was the Constitution, that it was adopted in popular votes in every single state, and that it represented the will of the people.
And therefore, when you start to capriciously change it, it's not just the 55 people who went to Philadelphia and wrote it, but it's the thousands and thousands of citizens who knew that they were voting for a contract, that this was why they were willing to become part of the United States.
And I think that you have with somebody like Judge Kavanaugh, a person who feels deeply the burden of history and the burden of America and the sense that he is there to continue and to carry on a tradition, not to destroy it and replace it.
What do you make of the predictable, knee-jerk reaction of the left?
I mean, you saw the screaming and the yelling and the hysteria and the fear-mongering that, again, it's all predictable, but I seem to sense even a greater level of hatred and intensity in the era of Trump.
I mean, that may even be higher than what they did to Robert Bork or Clarence Thomas.
Well, it is, I think, and it is in a sense, first of all, that it starts the idea, I know I hate him.
Who is he?
Yeah, exactly.
By the way, they already said that before.
Whoever Trump nominates, I'm going to hate, whether it's a man or a woman.
Just let me know the name so I'll know who I'm hating.
And you had a lot of, as you and I were kidding yesterday, the wonderful scene of the students who were asked what they thought of Trump's nomination said, oh, that person's really a racist.
You can tell.
And he hadn't nominated anybody yet.
But they had already been taught.
They'd been pre-programmed like badly trained parrots to automatically say anti-Trump things without any regard for the facts.
But here's a sense I have that maybe I'm being too optimistic, but it's my nature as an American to be an optimist.
By the way, it's my nature having all four grandparents from Ireland not to be one, but go ahead.
Well, but they got here.
Yeah, they did, but I'm just saying life got better.
You're always expecting the worst, trust me.
That's close as that is.
Don't say things are going well.
Yeah, exactly.
Exactly.
Don't tempt faith.
Exactly.
But there's my point.
I think for average, normal, everyday Americans, they look at this very pleasant guy with this very nice family.
They look at his very reasonable tone and his reasoned, intelligent articulation.
And when they see people screaming on the other side, it diminishes the impact and the effectiveness of the radical extremists.
And I think that's really what's happening.
Although, I must say the most amazing single statement on the left in the last couple of days was the Democratic whip, Dick Durban, saying, look, if we have to sacrifice a couple of red state senators to stop this, then I'm willing to sacrifice them.
First of all, if you have the whip, you're not supposed to go around sacrificing your members.
No, I am.
It's really a very bad idea.
No, I actually think it's a good idea.
I think he's right on that.
I think they should.
Look, Nina Totenberg actually said these words.
It's the end of the world as we know it.
I mean, it does.
And by the way, she said that before he was selected.
By the way, that's almost two years late because actually election night 2006 is the end of Nina Tottenberg's world.
But it may tell you a little bit about the speed with which they learned at her institution.
Right.
It took almost an extra year and a half.
So I guess the question is, I mean, I've listened to Ram Paul.
He says he has an open mind.
Ted Cruz has an open mind.
Susan Collins and Lisa Murkowski, I would argue that they're probably the four people that you've got to pay the most attention to.
I look at this guy's background and record in judicial philosophy.
I'm a trust-but-verify kind of person.
That's just my nature.
I've read everything I could possibly read about him and his opinions.
I didn't like the health care opinion.
That bothers me because even though Obamacare was sold as not being a tax, he kind of thread the needle a little bit like John Roberts and made the argument that if it's a tax, then it's legitimate and actually paved a way for it to continue.
Does that trouble you?
Well, it troubles me a little bit.
I thought when Roberts did it, that it just made no sense at all.
Although it was a little bit in the tradition of John Marshall, who sidestepped Jefferson very cleverly in Madison versus Marbury in a way that is often misrepresented in law school as a sign of weakness on the court, not strength.
And I thought with Roberts, he had the same kind of thing, that he was playing a game that made no sense in the long run.
But I think having said that, if you take a guy who's had 300 specific papers that he's written in the majority, you have somebody who's had 11 dissents where the Supreme Court sided with him against the appeals court.
You have, you know, what is now all of these years on court.
That's, you know, you've got to find something somewhere.
I just think, I mean, nobody's going to be perfect, but he has got to be in the high 90s in terms of impact.
And frankly, to have somebody of this level of intellectual caliber arguing our side and being in the room with the other eight justices will combine with Gorsuch's having joined them, I think will move the court substantially towards a more constitutionalist position just because of the integrity and the weight of their research and their reasoning.
So I think he will be a major step, as the president said last night.
What I thought was, I do think Trump has probably handled this as well as anything in his presidency so far in the way he consulted and in his speech last night.
And he was quite clear about that.
This is about returning to the Constitution.
And I have no doubt that Kavanaugh is going to be extraordinarily dedicated to it.
That doesn't mean you and I are always going to agree with his interpretation, but we're always going to know he did it based on having studied the Constitution.
We'll take a break.
We'll have more with Newt Gingrich on the other side.
As we continue, Newt Gingrich is with us.
His best-selling book, New York Times bestseller, Trump's America: The Truth About Our Nation's Great Comeback.
One of the things that really stands out to me is I can't think of, and you're a better historian than I am, of a time that there was a presidential candidate that actually telegraphed and gave us the names of potential Supreme Court justices beforehand.
And just like Jerusalem is now the capital of Israel, just like the Iranian deal is dead, just like the tax cuts were passed, and just like the wall is being built, this president seems as absolutely committed to keeping promises more than anybody I've seen.
Yeah, the amazing thing about Trump is that he, on little things, he's just amazingly all over the place, and you have no way of predicting what he'll do.
On big things, he has a steadiness and a consistency that is absolutely historic and that is, in fact, changing history.
And it's sort of amazing to see the same guy have both these sets of characteristics.
But there's no question the decision.
I remember last night I had a brief chance to talk to the Attorney General Jeff Sessions about this because he was in the room with Callista and me and a number of other people, including Leonard Leo, when we got to the discussion about having a list.
And Trump was paying attention and said, well, you really think this would be helpful.
And all of us said, look, you know, people need something to get a grip on how serious you are and how real you are.
And the right kind of list with the right kind of names would send a huge signal, which, of course, it did.
And then Trump has been very faithful to following through on that.
And of course, the job he has done, not just on the Supreme Court, but you look at what he's done is in my newsletter today, both at Gingrich Productions and at Foxnews.com, I talk about how much change he's made below the Supreme Court.
And of course, what he's doing is he's building a farm team for the future.
And he is really looking at younger and younger people.
Having somebody that is like Kavanaugh, who is in his early 50s, Kavanaugh, if he serves as long as Justice Ginsburg, will be on the court in 2050.
That's amazing.
Well, that's amazing.
I mean, and by the way, elections matter, but I've got to let you go.
Mr. Speaker, it's always a pleasure to have you.
I think we have you on TV tonight.
We look forward to seeing you.
I'll be with you there.
All right, Mr. Speaker, thanks for being with us, by the way.
Amazon.com, Bookstores Everywhere, Trump's America, The Truth About Our Nation's Great Comeback, which the mainstream media ignores.
We'll take a break.
We'll come back.
A lot more coverage.
And Ali North as we continue the Sean Hannity show.
We had many hours of productive conversations.
These are complicated issues, but we made progress on almost all of the central issues.
Some places, a great deal of progress, other place, there's still more work to be done.
We now have a meeting in Pamu John set up for July 12th that could move by one day or two where there will be discussions between the folks responsible for the repatriation of remains will take place at the border, and that process will begin to develop over the days that follow.
So a very productive conversation about the process by which we will deliver on the commitments that were made in the Singapore summit.
The North Koreans also confirmed the missile engineer testing facility.
We talked about what the modalities would look like for that destruction of that facility as well.
And so some progress there as well.
And then we have laid out a path for further negotiations at the working level so that the two teams can get together and continue these discussions.
We talked about what the North Koreans are continuing to do and how it's the case we can get our arms around achieving what Chairman Kim and President Trump both agreed to, which was the complete denuclearization of North Korea.
There's no one walked away from that.
They're still equally committed.
Chairman Kim is still committed.
I had a chance to speak to President Trump this morning.
No, my counterpart spoke with Chairman Kim during the course of our negotiations as well.
We had productive good faith negotiations.
Secretary, are you asking?
Are you any closer to a sense of a timeline for denuclearization and a baseline declaration for their weapons of mass destruction?
I'm not going to get into the details of our conversations, but we spent a good deal of time talking about each of those two things, and I think we've made progress in every element of our discussion.
The idea of a nuclear showdown with North Korea keeps you up at night.
I would recommend deleting your Twitter app.
He is not merely being cavalier with a threat about nuclear war.
He's being cavalier in a way that makes him seem demented.
These are the messages from a person who is not well.
From a leader who is not fit for office.
President Trump is goading Kim Jong-un to test a nuclear missile again to prove its reliability, to show him wrong.
And fundamentally, I think it comes across as two kindergartners who are jostling each other, except that each has nuclear weapons.
Well, here's that.
Too late after 100,000 Americans die.
After a nuclear holocaust.
Or after a million die in the United States.
And that's where we are.
This is not an exaggeration.
Trump's comments about nuclear weapons have experts worried he could literally inadvertently trigger a catastrophe.
Chairman Kim and I just signed a joint statement in which he reaffirmed his unwavering commitment to complete denuclearization of the Korean peninsula.
He was very firm in the fact that he wants to do this.
I think he might want to do this as much or even more than me because they see a very bright future for North Korea.
The sanctions will come off when we are sure that the nukes are no longer a factor.
I noticed that some of the people were saying that the president has agreed to meet.
He has given up so much.
I gave up nothing.
I'm here.
Historic day.
Let's just, I think most people like me want to know what was going on in that room one-on-one.
Well, the big thing is this is now my 25th hour of being up and negotiating, and we've been negotiating very hard.
This is about the complete, verifiable, irreversible denuclearization of the entire peninsula.
So without that, we could not have had a deal.
I mean, one thing we want to denuke the entire peninsula.
We want to denuke that whole situation.
That is a hotbed.
And you know what's been happening for years, and nobody did anything about it.
And you have to.
We have no choice.
We had to.
The relationship was really good.
You know, it built.
And I talked about early on in the relationship and the feeling, well, we had a very good feel right from the beginning.
And we were able to get something very important done.
And actually, some things happened after that was signed shot where we're getting rid of certain missile research areas, certain missile testing sites.
They're getting rid of a lot.
Did you talk about a trip to the United States?
Did you talk about it?
I think at the right time, he'll absolutely be coming to the White House, yes.
All right, there you have it.
That was part of my interview with the President in Singapore immediately after meeting with Kim Jong-un and, of course, your media's predictable reaction.
And what do we get?
We got American hostages home.
We got one missile launch site now being dismantled.
We got talk of denuclearization.
We got the remains of Americans going back to the Korean War now being returned.
And Mike Pompeo is saying, don't believe what you're hearing, that this is going well, but it's going to be a step-by-step process.
And we certainly don't have missiles being fired over Japan anymore.
We talk about all of this now through the prism.
The president on his way to Brussels with a NATO summit where he's going to demand that they step up and pay their fair share, that America is not the piggy bank of the world.
And then, of course, off to London where we expect protests, just kind of like when Reagan was president, massive protests, and then off to Helsinki to meet with Putin here to weigh in on all of this.
Knows a thing or two about war and a thing or two about foreign policy is Colonel Oliver North.
How are you, sir?
I'm glad to be with you, brother.
How are you?
I'm good.
I was great last night.
I'm getting in better shape every day.
I'm trying.
I'm just trying to do what you do every day.
Hey, let's start.
I cannot understand America didn't drop $150 billion on the lap of Kim Jong-un, and we've made all this progress.
And all the naysayers never thought little Rocketman, fast fire and fury, my buttons bigger than yours and works, would ever get us there.
And some people saying, oh, he's going to blow up our relationship with NATO.
And why is he meeting with Putin?
Your reactions.
Well, let's start with where Secretary Pompeo was first on this trip, and he went straight to Poinyang.
And now, of course, he's made a bunch of other stops, reassuring the Japanese and South Koreans, and going by Afghanistan just to remind everybody out there we still care about the outcome.
If you look at what's happened in North Korea, add to your list that their test site has been destroyed, whether intentionally or by the earthquake that came first, all of that is gone.
And so, in order for him to continue testing nuclear weapons, he's going to have to rebuild that, and we can certainly see that from overhead.
What bothers me most about this whole experience that we've been going through the last several days is the idea that somebody put out the word that the North Koreans are still doing bad things.
In other words, trying to jeopardize the whole process by saying, look, he's going to get away with it.
The president softened his stance, or the U.S. is having the wool pulled over our eyes.
I think what's really of concern to me is not that we're having the wool pulled over our eyes, because that's not going to happen.
This is not Obama, certainly not Clinton.
And when you look at what's transpired here, somebody inside the U.S. intelligence services leaked that information, which I believe first appeared in the Washington Compost and has now been spread all over the place.
And as you've played some of these cuts from these talking heads and the idiot networks, they're all promulgating the same idea.
Somewhere inside the intelligence services or the State Department, that information came out.
Whether it's right or wrong, it's wrong for it to come out.
I don't believe it's correct.
I think that what you've got is an effort to sabotage this whole thing, just like we've seen with so many of this president's initiatives.
On top of all the other things that you went through, and my adding to it the destruction of this nuclear test site, the Iranian scientists that were making all this happen with the money that was provided by the United States under Mr. Obama, all of those scientists, except for a small handful, have, as I've seen it, come home.
They've gone back to Tehran.
In other words, they're not benefiting in their nuclear program by paying for the North Korean testing and research and development.
That's a very, very positive thing.
It also means that things are hurting in Tehran as a consequence of this.
What the Iranians are going to do is they're going to look very carefully at how we start denuclearizing the steps that are going to have to be taken.
And they're going to benefit from that because they'll know better how to hide things.
Much bigger country, much less information that we're getting from there right now than we are from North Korea.
How does this relate to NATO?
The NATO nations have been traditionally, not just in the last five years, not in the last five weeks, but for the last 15 years, since the wall came down, they've been getting away with less and less of a commitment to the North Atlantic Treaty Organization.
Poland, Poland has made more of a commitment than most of the countries that have been in since way before Poland.
If you look at the Baltic countries, all of them have been underpaying, and yet they've reaped the benefits of American ships being in the area, American troops being in their countries, helping them prepare.
And all of that is a major sign of improvement from what we've had.
Let me ask you this because I'm watching the news.
And, all right, so the president should, you know, landed already in Belgium for this whole thing.
And he's going to take one more.
He took a shot at NATO before he left on Twitter that the American people are not the world's piggy bank, and that's all true, but we don't mind doing our part and helping.
And, you know, so there's going to be protests, which we saw during the Reagan years in Europe, which are going to be big and loud, and the left and the media in this country are going to go nuts.
I actually view that as American strength.
Then you've got this whole battle going on with Teresa May, and her time, you know, Boris Johnson looks like he's making the move now that he wants to be prime minister.
So the president's going then to London in the middle of that change.
There's a bunch of very unhappy members of various governments around, some of them pretty far left, in the case of Great Britain, pretty far right.
In the case of Pyongyang, North Korea, one has to remember that Kim may be in charge, but it's very likely that he's got a very powerful proletariat, excuse me, the folks that are running the country from inside.
They stand to lose a lot without this nuclear weapons program.
And so if his Politburo is telling him how far he can go, he doesn't have full control over what's happening.
And my guess is that's some of what you're seeing experienced with the Secretary of State making the visit.
In the case of the European countries, they've been getting away with, well, not murder, but with essentially underpaying for years on what's been going on out there.
You cannot fix those kinds of problems overnight.
You can't fix denuclearization overnight.
You're not going to get the Iranians to cooperate overnight.
But what you have to have is a strong NATO that can say, for example, as the sabers are being rattled in Tehran, if you close the straits of Hormuz or you mine them, that is an act of war.
And that's kind of, I think, what NATO is up against.
If the Iranians do that, they're cutting off the lifeblood of the world's economy, which is oil and energy.
To me, that would be a moment where the Iranians will then pay the ultimate price.
Well, it is.
That's what I'm saying.
But NATO has to stand up and say that's an act of war.
Open the straits.
Okay.
Is the president going to align NATO?
Look, on the one hand, they seem to just everything, they're all reacting to President Trump.
This president now is beginning to show America's strength on the world stage.
They don't particularly like it.
I think they preferred Barack Obama and his policy of appeasement.
And, you know, so they're reacting, but it's in America's best interest.
And that's, you know, one of the things that everybody, you and I have not forgotten, but too many of our listeners have.
The folks that have been making the decisions for the last eight years plus, because many of them are still in the government of the United States, loved it when Barack Obama ran around the world apologizing for America's strength and power in our economy.
Now that the American economy is booming, you see things like the Chinese, the value of Chinese currencies dropping like a stone.
You see what's happening with Brexit.
And you see Theresa May is getting nervous, nervous Nellies.
She knickers are in a knot.
And she's got conservative members of her coalition saying, we're walking out because you're getting too soft on these guys in Brussels, meaning the European Union.
Look at the European Union is made up of globalists.
The people who govern and they think that they are governing all of Europe really aren't.
All they can do is set kinds of policies that were the very kinds of things that caused Brexit to begin with, right at the get-go.
Why did the British vote in favor of Brexit on the referendum?
Because they're in favor of getting out of the European Union.
Because it was a massive intrusion on the sovereignty of the British Isles.
That's what it was all about.
They don't believe in sovereign nations.
That's why we take so much grief about building a wall to protect our borders.
Look at the only other country that's got a wall that protects their entire country.
Israel.
Israel is getting...
And the wall works.
Yeah.
Yeah, of course it works.
They're getting beaten all over the place with people advocating BDS.
I mean, boycott, divest, and sanction.
They'd love to be able to do that with us.
Not the Israelis.
I'm talking about the European Union.
The fact of the matter is, this is the most powerful country on the planet Earth.
It needs to be to protect our freedoms.
That's why I'm the president of the NRA.
That's why I'm out trying to raise.
All I'm asking for the NRA is the same thing President Trump needs to ask for in the European Union.
Just sign up just one more person.
If you've got an NRA membership, sign up one more from your family, your neighbors, your friends, your co-workers.
Same thing for you.
the way they're going after you and not that you're not used to it but yeah well that's that's that's shocking Listen, if I didn't have protesters at the places where I appear, I would call 1-800 Red A-Cook and get them out there.
You know, it's happening to other people.
It's happened to people like you your whole life, and frankly, me more often than I ever talk about.
But, you know, I'd feel like I'm failing in my job if it didn't happen.
All right, my friend.
Thank you.
I love you, brother.
Semperify.
Semperify.
Safe home.
God bless you.
SemperFy.
Appreciate you.
Quick break.
All right, that's going to wrap things up for today.
We have an amazing Hannity tonight.
News information that you won't get anywhere else.
All right.
We got breaking news, by the way, with John Solomon.
Also, Newt Gingrich, Alan Dershowitz, Joe DeGenova, Greg Garrett.
As your media goes insane, we will have it covered.
