Sean Hannity Show - Making The Government Work For Us

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Dec. 27, 2018 - Sean Hannity Show

01:37:28

Making The Government Work For Us

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	Hey, welcome to the Sean Hannity Show.
	It's Mark Simone here for Sean.
	I'm on our big flagship station in New York, WOR, along with Sean and Rush and all the great, it's the number one talk station in the world.
	But here we are on the greatest radio show of all, the Sean Hannity Show.
	Sean taking a day off.
	He'll be back soon.
	We got lots to get to.
	There's breaking news all over the place.
	The president, it turns out, has made a surprise visit to Iraq.
	The Dow has stunned everybody by making a huge comeback.
	Now, this is all very bad news.
	I feel terrible.
	You know, these Democrats, it's getting tougher and tougher.
	It's two years in now.
	And again, all these Democrats sit around all day trying to figure out how to make the president look bad.
	And after you've come up with 1,700 scandals that fizzle and are forgotten about a day later and don't work and nobody cares about, it's so hard for them to come up with something, this endless campaign of what President Trump calls presidential harassment.
	It's a great term, presidential harassment.
	So they worked really hard over Christmas.
	You know, it's tough because he's not, you know, there's not a lot going on.
	You can't find a scandal to gin up.
	So they came up with, he doesn't visit the troops.
	First president.
	You always hear this first president in 10 years.
	First president in 80 years.
	First, they always got this first president.
	So this was the big scandal they worked so hard on that.
	He's the first president not to visit the troops.
	Well, it turns out, and this is not in response to that.
	This is a visit that had been planned for some time.
	In fact, the reporters were starting to learn about it a day or two ago, but were sworn to secrecy.
	Believe it or not, even the fake news kept it secret.
	So it was quite a secret visit to Iraq.
	Flying over there, curtains drawn, lights off on the plane, obviously for security reasons.
	And the president visited the troops in Iraq, spending a lot of time with them on Christmas, addressing a huge gathering of troops, then meeting individually with them, taking selfies with them, all of this stuff.
	So it completely screws up this latest Democratic scandal narrative they came up with.
	So they had to go back to last week's fake scandal they've ginned up, which is that the Dow is crashing, the economy is crashing, we're going to a bear market.
	This was the big thing they had before that.
	And now the Dow comes roaring back today, up 600 points today, completely screwing up that fake narrative.
	So I don't know what they're going to do.
	I don't know what they're going to come up with next.
	And you got to feel bad for them.
	They had their hopes pinned on Russia and Mueller and collusion.
	And I think even most Democrats are starting to realize now.
	You know, it's a couple of years.
	If he was going to find any collusion, he would have found it by now.
	So, and they've expanded this investigation into everything.
	You know, every inch of everything Donald Trump has ever touched is now under investigation.
	They put that in big headlines in the fake news.
	Every organization Donald Trump has ever been involved with is now under investigation.
	I guess you're supposed to think, wow, he must be a bad guy if that's the case.
	No, actually, it's the opposite.
	When you hear that, it means they can't find a darn thing.
	That's why they have to keep expanding and expanding this investigation.
	Anyway, we've got lots to get to today.
	We've got a lot of great guests coming up.
	We'll get to Russia.
	We'll get to the stock market.
	We'll get to, hey, there's a movie out.
	This is another Democratic plot.
	We'll get to this.
	We'll get to Ruth Bader Ginsburg.
	Kevin Spacey, have you seen this very bizarre comeback he's trying to make?
	I don't know what the heck that's all about.
	We'll get to that coming up.
	And we'll get to the retail world.
	Is it dying?
	Is it retail sales strongest in 10 years?
	They've had a big season, but the retail stocks are dropping.
	Well, we'll get to why coming up.
	We'll get to the shutdown.
	Of course, it's day five of the shutdown.
	I love a government shutdown.
	It is great.
	The only real danger with a shutdown is every time they reopen the government.
	So if it could just stay shut down.
	Now, what's going to happen here?
	And first of all, it's a shutdown.
	How come I'm on the Sunday shows?
	I'm seeing Schumer and who's that beady-eyed little guy, Adam Schiff.
	If the government is shut down, why do I keep seeing these guys on my television?
	Adam Schiff, Chuck Schumer, Pelosi, respect the shutdown.
	Please stay home.
	It's Christmas.
	We don't need to see you right now.
	Here's what will happen.
	It's like, you know, they think Trump has painted himself into a corner.
	It's the other way around.
	January 3rd is going to roll around.
	When is that?
	That's a week from today, right?
	It'll probably stay shut down until then.
	They're not going to compromise, and he's not going to budge.
	But what's going to happen is January 3rd, they're supposed to take control of the House, and they've got 4 million hearings that are going to begin.
	They're going to investigate everything.
	They're going to investigate the Trump organization.
	They're going to investigate his tax returns.
	They're going to investigate.
	Oh, January 3rd is Thursday?
	Oh, it's a week from tomorrow.
	So here's the problem.
	With the government shutdown, they're going to realize, oh, we can't hold any hearings.
	The government's shut down.
	Then what are they going to do?
	You know, I say leave it shut down until 2020.
	That way there's no hearings, nothing.
	Now, listen, there's some people in the federal government.
	A lot of it is funded already.
	This is not a full shutdown.
	It's like a 20% shutdown.
	But if you look at it employee-wise, it's like a 14% shutdown.
	So you've got to get those people paid.
	They're all paid, by the way.
	It's just they don't get their checks every week.
	They'll have to wait until the shutdown's over to get paid.
	But I bet they're looking into something right now, some way of getting them their money ahead of time.
	They don't lose any money, but obviously you don't want to wait weeks for your paycheck.
	So I bet they'll figure out something of that and just leave it shut down.
	Who needs it open?
	And the other thing is, you know, when you see these Chuck Schumer types on television trying to terrify you at the idea of a government shutdown, it's not that terrifying.
	I mean, does he think we're that dumb?
	We've all been through in recent years 18 government shutdowns.
	It doesn't really affect a whole lot.
	A couple of memorials get closed down.
	The Jefferson Memorial is closed.
	You can still go look at it, but you can't walk inside.
	Here in New York, it means the Statue of Liberty is closed to visitors.
	You know, the Statue of Liberty, a lot of people go to the Battery Park there and they look at the statue, but you could actually take a ferry and ride over there and go around the Statue of Liberty into the Statue of Liberty.
	So that becomes closed.
	But what they did here in New York, they've decided to pay to keep it open.
	It costs, I forget, some number, like $60,000 a week to keep it open.
	And it looks very generous on the part of the local officials that they're going to chip in and keep it open.
	But it turns out it brings in millions in revenue.
	So that's the reason they're chipping in to keep it open.
	So it's not the worst thing this shutdown.
	If it'll keep Congress home, it's probably a good thing.
	And again, we've had a lot of shutdowns in the past.
	Do you remember the last shutdown?
	No.
	Remember the one before it?
	No.
	It really wasn't much.
	It didn't have much effect on your life.
	But again, these poor Democrats having to come up with a scandal a day.
	They thought they had something there with Mattis.
	You know, that was big fake news.
	General Mattis out.
	This indicates total chaos in the administration.
	But I know they don't want to hear this, but if you look back, oh, wait a minute, President Obama fired Mattis too.
	In fact, when President Obama fired Mattis, it was quite humiliating.
	Mattis found out by watching television that he was fired.
	But they make it sound like if you switch secretaries of defense, what chaos?
	They forget to remind you, there was a period where Obama went through four secretaries of defense quickly, very fast, just kept switching secretaries of defense.
	It's not chaos.
	Mattis, a good guy, but he just disagreed with the president on everything.
	I mean, this is going back a year or two.
	He even disagreed on the Paris Climate Accord.
	He didn't want to pull out.
	So they've been disagreeing all along.
	Mattis is gone.
	He had originally been recommended by General Jack Keene.
	That was first choice for Secretary of Defense.
	That's who President Trump wanted.
	General Jack Keene.
	He went to Keene and asked him to take the job.
	Keene couldn't at the time.
	His wife was sick.
	He was having things to deal with his personal life.
	He just couldn't do it at the time.
	But he recommended Mattis.
	Mattis had been his number two guy for a long time.
	So that's how Mattis got in there.
	Hopefully, now that he's out, General Keene will consider taking the job.
	He'd be great.
	Hey, also, we'll get to the wall.
	I love these Democrats, these Schumers and Pelosis, all over CNN, all over MSNBC, all over the fake news.
	New York Times, the Bezas Post, all saying, you know, a wall doesn't work.
	Experts say a wall doesn't work.
	What experts say?
	Have you heard any experts say a wall doesn't work?
	Border Patrol says it works just fine.
	Have you ever heard a prison say, you know what?
	The walls aren't working.
	We're going to take them down.
	Every prison has a wall.
	It works just fine.
	Remember East Berlin when they had the wall?
	Boy, did that work.
	Nobody got out.
	That wall was great.
	In fact, it was so strong, Democrats, everybody kept yelling, tear down that wall.
	38 countries have a wall.
	Israel's got a wall that works just great.
	I mean, it's doing a phenomenal job.
	Obviously, walls work.
	Hey, if there's a Democrat listening, would you call me and explain to me this fear of walls?
	What is this wall hatred all about?
	I've never quite understood this.
	I know it's symbolic of, you know, anti-illegals.
	It prevents illegals from breaking into the country.
	But when Pelosi and Schumers argue, you know, it's immoral, what is the actual argument against a wall?
	First of all, Democrats are always crying for infrastructure.
	This is infrastructure.
	It's a great infrastructure project.
	And at $5 billion, it'd be one of the cheapest infrastructure products ever.
	You know, here in New York City, here in Manhattan, if you live around the country, this might not seem like a big crisis.
	But to these New York politicians, this is a crisis.
	We have two, we've got tunnels that go from Manhattan to New Jersey.
	There's the Lincoln Tunnel, there's the Holland Tunnel.
	And then there's also two railway tunnels.
	The trains come in under the Hudson River on a tunnel.
	So supposedly, we need a new railway tunnel.
	Now, it costs $11 billion to build this railroad tunnel just to get into Manhattan.
	And if the government says $11 billion, you can figure it's probably a billion.
	Anyway, it's like a 10-year project.
	Schumer, our governor here, Cuomo, our mayor in New York, they're always going to Washington, pleading, begging, crying.
	We have to have this tunnel.
	It's only $11 billion.
	They beg the president.
	They run articles here in New York all the time.
	What kind of miser is this that he can't give us $11 billion for the tunnel?
	Supposedly, that's nothing, and he should be paying it right away.
	He should be writing the check today.
	But when they ask for $5 billion for a wall, they'll tell you it's a fortune.
	You can't spend it.
	It's a waste of money.
	So this is one little tunnel to make it easier for commuters into Manhattan.
	But a wall to protect the entire country, the entire border, they can't do it.
	They can't do it.
	Anyway, let's take a call or two.
	Let's go to Jim in Houston, Texas.
	Hey, Jim, how are you doing?
	Welcome to the Sean Hannity Show.
	Hey, thanks so much.
	I'm glad I got on.
	First time caller.
	Really?
	I would think that there would be a way to fund the wall and bypass the government and still make the Mexican people pay for it.
	And that would be simply by putting a tax or a fee on money that's sent south of the border.
	These people send the money home.
	That's why they're here working.
	Yeah, there's a lot of illegals who send money home.
	It's a huge amount of money.
	It goes back to Mexico.
	If there's a way to seize that and use that for the wall, you could also get Mexico to pay for it in different ways.
	We have a lot of trade with Mexico.
	You could yank the $5 billion out of there.
	Just the renegotiating of NAFTA, you know, that freed up a lot of money.
	The president's pointed this out.
	If you look at how he renegotiated the NAFTA agreement, we probably easily save $5 billion there or get $5 billion back so that could be used for the wall.
	There's a lot of ways to do it.
	I'd love to see a GoFundMe.
	Maybe not a GoFundMe because they take a fee out of that, but something like that.
	Do you know if you took all the Trump supporters, all the people that voted for Donald Trump in America, if each one chipped in 80 bucks, you'd have the wall paid for.
	That's all it would take: 80 bucks from every Trump supporter.
	Now, obviously, you don't have to get 80 from everybody.
	Some people could give 8 because some people give 800, that sort of thing.
	But you could easily fund the wall that way.
	Well, we'll see.
	Anyway, we've got lots to get to today, lots of stuff to talk about.
	Remind me to get to this Dick Cheney movie.
	It is really, this is quite a plot by Democrats.
	We'll get to that.
	If you want to follow me on Instagram, Mark SimoneNYC at Instagram.
	Oh, make sure you follow me on Twitter, MarkSimoneNY at Twitter.
	And don't go away, we've got lots coming up.
	It's Mark Simone here for Sean Hannity.
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	Hey, welcome back.
	It's the Sean Hannity Show.
	It's Mark Simone here for Sean.
	He'll be back soon.
	We've got lots to talk about.
	You know, you met this movie, Vice?
	It's a movie.
	It's a brand new movie.
	Is it Christian Bale?
	There's a bunch of big movie stars in this, and it's about Dick Cheney.
	Now, this is another Democratic tradition when there's a conservative that they hate.
	After they're out of office, they often put together a movie just to trash the person.
	Do you remember Nixon?
	That was a movie by Oliver Stone, and they're really the most biased, distorted, slanted films.
	For instance, with the Nixon movie.
	Nixon did a lot of great things in his presidency.
	There were some great successes in the Nixon years, including opening the door to China and all that.
	So when Oliver Stone makes the movie, it's basically two things.
	It's about him drunk at the end in the middle of Watergate, running around the White House, drunk, not knowing where he is.
	It's just him the last few weeks in turmoil.
	And then there's a couple other scenes where he's meeting with donors.
	It looks real shady.
	So that's the whole story of Nixon, according to this movie.
	I mean, just totally biased.
	And then you remember the great Margaret Thatcher gets out of office.
	Remember the movie Thatcher?
	It was Meryl Streep or some great actress.
	Was it Glenn Close?
	Somebody played Thatcher.
	But the whole movie, nothing about Thatcher's great career, nothing about the brilliance that Thatcher showed in office.
	The whole movie was about Thatcher at the end, the last year where she had Alzheimer's and she's bumping into walls.
	That was the whole movie.
	So now Dick Cheney is getting that treatment.
	Hollywood has made a movie about Cheney.
	All it focuses on is the worst of Cheney, exaggerated to ridiculous extremes.
	They've made up quotes and scenes that never existed.
	So this is just for liberals.
	This is like revenge porn for liberals.
	So it's actually doing pretty well, believe it or not, because there's a huge audience of liberals that love this kind of stuff.
	So avoid it if you can.
	Hey, we've got lots to get to on the Sean Hannity show.
	Greg Jarrett will be a little later, one of our favorite guests.
	Also, what's the next Trump scandal?
	It's not a real scandal, but what are Democrats planning to be the next big scandal?
	You know, they just got research and development coming up with the new scandals all the time.
	I'll tell you what it is in a moment.
	We'll take your calls.
	It's Mark Simone here for Sean Hannity.
	It's the Sean Hannity Show.
	Hey, welcome back.
	It's the Sean Hannity Show.
	This is Mark Simone here for Sean, the breaking news.
	Just a little while back, the president has made a surprise visit to Iraq with the first lady.
	This has screwed up at newsrooms all over the country.
	You know, yesterday they started that first president ever not to visit the troops on Christmas, all that kind of stuff.
	You saw all those little things.
	A lot of columnists were writing columns for tomorrow about they're going to attack him on this.
	Well, it turns out he visited Iraq yesterday.
	And this was not in response to those jabs in the news.
	This had been planned for some time.
	In fact, some in the press actually knew about it, but were sworn to secrecy for security reasons.
	President spent a lot of time with the troops, not only speaking, making a speech to them, but taking a lot of selfies with them, shaking a lot of hands, a lot of conversations with the troops.
	So that's one scandal they won't get away with.
	They'll try something else.
	Also, we're planning on going after the stock market.
	It's crashing.
	This is it.
	We're plunging into recession.
	Remember about 20 minutes ago, I told you the Dow roaring back, up 600 points?
	It's up 750 now.
	So there goes that narrative, too.
	But they'll try whatever they can try.
	Hey, also, retail sales, the biggest year in 10 years.
	It was a big boom in retail sales.
	Now, I don't know how 2019 is going to be, but it was probably the biggest Christmas season in many, many years.
	Now, it's just not, you know, in stores, but also online, but a huge, huge Christmas season.
	You know, when they talk about the Dow dropping, one of the problems is the top smartest guys in Wall Street will tell you.
	The problem is we got used to one thing in the Obama years.
	Wall Street was doing fine and Main Street was a disaster.
	Well, under this Trump economy, Main Street business is doing great, better even than the stock market.
	It's the first time we've had that in many, many, many, many years.
	So some of the top Wall Street guys tell me that's part of the problem.
	They don't know how to play that.
	They're not used to that scenario.
	So they haven't figured out exactly how to adjust to that.
	Dow up 800 now.
	So it's a good day on Wall Street.
	But Main Street doing very well.
	You know, you always hear the GDP and all that gross domestic product.
	It's up.
	It's way up.
	It's been a big year in the economy.
	But GDI is very important.
	That's gross domestic income.
	And that's way up for the year.
	That's a key thing.
	You've got two key factors.
	Income is up for the first time in years.
	And gas prices are dramatically down.
	So that's like another tax cut.
	So you've got income up, gas prices down.
	That's like another tax cut.
	More money to spend.
	And it's showing up in the retail world this holiday season.
	Hey, John McLaughlin, he's the best pollster around.
	He's got a great article.
	Check this out.
	It's in Newsmax right now.
	You know, they tell you the president is dropping in the polls.
	It looks bad for 2020.
	He goes over it in real detail.
	Read that article.
	The president's doing fine, and he looks very good in the polls for 2020.
	And if you look at the midterms and say, well, it was down from here and down from, well, read the article.
	It's pretty good.
	It really explains that Trump is fine.
	The Trump movement is fine.
	It's the swamp Republicans, the old Republicans, the old RNC, who are deep down secretly, never Trumpers.
	They're the ones that are hurting things.
	They're the ones that had a problem in the midterms.
	You know, the Paul Ryans of the world, who's basically, you know, the Republican Chuck Schumer, just says one thing, does another thing.
	For example, the president takes office, you figure, this is it.
	We'll get this health care straightened out.
	We'll have an alternative to Obamacare.
	You assume that in all these years, Ryan and company were putting together the alternative.
	Trump takes office.
	Even he was stunned.
	Not only didn't they put together any alternative, secretly, they're all for keeping Obamacare.
	It was put together by drug companies, insurance companies, both insurance and drug companies love it.
	They happen to be the biggest single lobbyists in America, the biggest lobbyists of all.
	More money flowing into Congress from drug companies, insurance companies.
	So Ryan and company making sure that Obamacare stays the way it is.
	So it's good to see him gone.
	It's good to see one rhino swamp snake after another leaving Washington.
	Hopefully in 2020, you not only have a Trump victory, but a clean house some more out of these swamp creatures.
	You know, as a lot of people pointed out, you know, it's nice to say drain the swamp, but this swamp was built over 50 years.
	You're not going to drain this in two years.
	This swamp has deep infrastructure.
	It's going to take a long time to drain this swamp.
	Hey, what's the next big scandal coming?
	Not a real scandal, but Democrats busy with the fake news trying to gin up some big scandal.
	Here's the next one.
	Bonespurs.
	You know, sometimes they'll pick on the president for not serving in Vietnam.
	Bonespurs.
	You know, he had a medical excuse.
	Bonespurs got you out of the draft back then, and the doctor diagnosed him with bone spurs.
	But sometimes you'll see them make fun of the president over that.
	They love to make fun of who didn't serve when it's a Republican.
	Meantime, if it's Bill Clinton who went to great lengths to dodge the draft, no mention of it.
	President Obama didn't serve, but of course he was after Vietnam.
	You know, the last great real combat veteran in office was George H.W. Bush.
	And then you went into a world of a lot of baby boomers and younger where they just didn't serve.
	It just wasn't that common to serve.
	You know, it's, I think something like 5% of America serves.
	So you're going to have presidents who didn't serve.
	And the president got that medical deferment.
	So what is coming out now, this is years ago, in Queens, New York, where the president was 18 years old or 19 and eligible for the draft.
	And the doctor diagnosed him with bone spurns and wrote up the medical report, and that got him out.
	I think there was another doctor that also backed it up.
	So the doctor who diagnosed him with bone spurs is dead.
	He's no longer with us.
	But his daughter has now come forward and said the whole report was a fake.
	He faked this medical report.
	The president didn't really have bone spurs.
	This doctor wrote him a fake medical excuse.
	And the reason the doctor did it, according to the daughter, who knows if she's telling the truth, but this doctor, his landlord was Fred Trump, the president's father.
	He was in a Trump building.
	He did it as a favor to Fred Trump.
	And then in exchange for that, he got very favorable treatment for years after that as far as rent and renting space and all of that.
	And what about that other doctor?
	Well, supposedly he was also in a Trump building and backed it up just to get favorable treatment from the landlord.
	But there's no evidence of this at all.
	This is the daughter saying it.
	Who knows?
	She's probably one of these very liberal Democratic Trump haters.
	She may have just made the whole thing up.
	It's also, I mean, the father's dead, but it's also a terrible thing to do to your father.
	I would assume if you write up fake medical reports and then submit them to the government, I assume you're committing all kinds of crimes there.
	So she's basically turning her father into a totally crooked doctor and criminal.
	I don't know.
	Who would do that to their own father?
	Anyway, let's take a call or two.
	Let's go to Matt in Florida.
	Hey, Matt, welcome to Sean Hannity Show.
	Hello, sir.
	Just a little note about the wall.
	If a wall is good enough for the Pope, then how come it's not good enough for the United States?
	A wall is great.
	Every prison uses it.
	What prison ever said, you know, that wall is not working.
	Tear it down.
	Every wall works.
	You're right.
	Good call.
	The Pope has a wall.
	Hey, remember when Barack Obama got out of office, he bought that beautiful house in Washington, D.C.?
	First thing he did was spend a fortune to put a wall around it.
	They work.
	Everything has a wall around it.
	What is this thing that walls don't work?
	Who came, who could say that with a straight face?
	You got to be Chuck Schumer or Nancy Pelosi to actually look somebody in the eye and say, oh, the walls don't work.
	Remember a few years ago, they were all for fences.
	Fences, they don't mind.
	The walls they mind.
	That's why the president lately starts calling it a fence.
	You know, it's going to be a big concrete fence.
	Actually, if you look at the latest design for the wall, it's these enormous steel spikes that go up like 30 feet into the air.
	And the reason it spikes, you can see through it.
	And Border Patrol has told the president, very important, it's a big help to be able to see through the wall.
	Because if you do have the wall, you really don't know what's going on on the other side.
	Who's approaching it?
	Could be somebody with explosive trying to blow the wall down.
	You've got to be able to see through the wall.
	So that's why the latest design is made of enormous steel spikes.
	You can go online and see it.
	It's really impressive looking.
	And the steel poles have these spikes on top of it, making it really impossible to climb over.
	But the way it looks, it looks like, you could call it a fence.
	I guess that's why he's calling it a fence.
	It looks like an enormously strong state-of-the-art sort of fence.
	Anyway, let's take another call or two.
	Let's go to Gerald in Bakersfield, California.
	Hey, Gerald.
	Yeah, hello, Mark.
	How you doing?
	Merry Christmas, sir.
	You too.
	Say, I just wanted to touch base and just express my.
	Stop.
	Wait, stop right here.
	Hate when people touch base.
	That's the worst thing.
	Let me do this.
	You ever get these calls, they leave a message.
	I just wanted to touch base.
	How about I dying to talk to you?
	I'm sorry.
	How about I've been waiting forever to call you and talk to you?
	I just wanted to touch base.
	Sounds like you're not really that interested.
	Oh, I am very interested.
	All right, let's start over.
	Say you've been waiting to talk to me.
	I've been waiting to talk to you.
	Oh, that's great.
	Looking forward to it.
	All right.
	Well, what I would like to express is my disappointment, and I haven't heard it made that often.
	How the Republicans, as it turned out, some 41 incumbents retired during the midterms, and the Democrats picked up 40 seats.
	Now, some of these guys that retired, I have to say, including Ryan.
	Now, he may have been a Ryan.
	Well, let me just explain this because a lot of people didn't realize this.
	The loss of the House was all Paul Ryan's fault.
	When you're the speaker and you got 40 guys retiring, this is traditionally done.
	You go to 10 of them and convince them to stay one more term.
	You can do it.
	It can be done.
	Ryan didn't do it.
	A lot of people believe he deliberately didn't do it.
	I don't trust this Ryan for a second.
	He's got all sorts of lobbying jobs lined up and waiting.
	Chamber of Commerce, Business Roundtable, basically, he's in league with them.
	A lot of people think he deliberately didn't ask anybody to stay.
	I hate to say it.
	I believe that too, because I think the next thing he's going to do is become a huge lobbyist, and I'm not sure what side he's going to be on, but it's not going to be ours.
	Don't worry.
	I know.
	When 90% of the incumbents succeed in re-election and 40 retire, I mean, it basically handed the base.
	It handed the Democrats the house.
	And anyway, I just wanted to.
	Touch base.
	I know.
	Touch base.
	All right.
	No, Gerald, excellent point.
	Excellent call.
	Thanks for calling.
	Boy, you know, you've got to always keep your eye on this Ryan.
	Watch this, Ryan.
	He's a slimy, dangerous character.
	He deliberately, you can do it.
	It's been done by other speakers.
	You can convince 10 people to stay one more term.
	That way, you won't lose the house.
	You could have had 10 stay.
	It would have been easy to do.
	He deliberately didn't do that.
	He lost us the house for whatever money lobbying reason he has.
	Paul Ryan, one of the biggest snakes in the swamp.
	Anyway, Mark Simone here.
	Hey, if you want to follow me on Twitter, it's Mark SimoneNY at Twitter.
	Follow me on Twitter and Instagram too, Mark SimoneNYC at Instagram.
	In fact, you'll see a little tour of the studio.
	I just put that up on Instagram, MarkSimoneNYC at Instagram.
	Hey, also, don't forget Hannity.com, Hannity.com, and Hannity tonight and every night on the Fox News channel, of course, at 9 o'clock.
	Back in a moment.
	It's Mark Simone here for Sean Hannity.
	Hey, welcome back.
	It's Mark Simone here for Sean Hannity.
	If you're a Democrat, you might turn the radio down for a moment.
	I don't want to get you upset.
	You might start to cry or something.
	The Dow is having a phenomenal day.
	It's going to close up over 900 points.
	This messes up every Democrat who all weekend, if you've been at Christmas dinners, family dinners, arguing with everybody, they always say, yeah, the stock market's crashing.
	What are we going into a bear market?
	Well, it had a huge day, up almost 1,000 points today.
	Now, look how will fake news report that?
	A thousand points up in one day?
	Here's one of the fake news headlines.
	U.S. stocks whipsaw.
	Erratic.
	So this is bad that it's going up.
	And it says, with bear market looming, well, we don't know if there's a, why would a bear market be looming?
	Again, earnings up, fundamentals very strong.
	Anyway, the best economists, three best economists in the world, Larry Kudlow, Art Laffer, Steve Moore.
	Steve Moore will be with us in the next hour, and we'll talk to him about that.
	We got Greg Jarrett coming up.
	We'll go over the latest with Mueller and all of that.
	Government shutdown.
	Believe it or not, it doesn't affect the special counsel.
	They pass some little weasly little law somewhere that the special counsel is permanently funded no matter what, no matter what happens, the special counsel keeps working.
	And the latest word coming out of there is they'll be done in February.
	And in February, they will finish and submit the report.
	The report from the special counsel goes to the Attorney General.
	That's it.
	That's how it ends.
	Special counsel writes a report, hands it to the Attorney General.
	He can throw it in the drawer and not tell anybody about it.
	He can look at it and decide on action to be taken.
	But here's what's going to happen to Congress.
	The House, the Democrats, are going to subpoena the document.
	They're going to demand to see it.
	So that'll be the big fight coming up.
	Now, as I said, we got Greg Jarrett coming up in the final hour.
	He's the expert on this.
	Best book, The Russia Hoax, all about the Mueller investigations.
	We'll get all the latest from him, Ruth Bader Ginsburg.
	They say she's working from the hospital.
	All right.
	I'll believe that when I see it.
	But we wish her well.
	I hope she recovers.
	First of all, God forbid anything happens to her.
	You think the Democrats are hysterical now.
	Can you imagine if President Trump gets to fill a third Supreme Court seat?
	It will be unbearable.
	All family holiday dinners will have to be canceled.
	There'll be too much screaming.
	Did you fight with anybody over the holiday dinners and all that?
	It's terrible.
	You can't listen to it.
	You just can't listen to it.
	You got to get those little earbuds, stick them in your ear, just crank up the music, just tune it out.
	Anyway, we've got a big hour coming up.
	Steve Moore, the great economist, will be with us in the next hour.
	We'll talk to him.
	Anyway, we'll go over everything coming with Mueller and company.
	What's the latest on all of that?
	We'll have all the latest for you on the shutdown.
	Sean will be back soon.
	It's Mark Simone here.
	Normally, I'm on WOR, our big flagship station.
	Another two hours to go.
	Mark Simone here for Sean Hannity.
	Well, welcome back to the Sean Hannity Show.
	Mark Simone here for Sean.
	Normally I'm on WOR, our big flagship station here in New York, but I've been off all week.
	So I'm actually wiped out here.
	I'm tired.
	I'm not used to, you know, I'm not used to doing a radio show for the last five days.
	Like, you know, you take a week off and then you go back to the gym for the first time.
	But we got a big hour coming up.
	Doug Shoan, we don't have him yet, do we?
	No.
	What happened to him?
	We'll find him.
	Doug Schoen's a great guest.
	Oh, and then we got Steve Moore, the great economist.
	We've got breaking news all day today.
	At the beginning of the show, we found out that the president has made a surprise visit to Iraq to see the troops, upsetting Democrats who had planned to attack him for this week.
	And this is not a response to that.
	This was something that had been planned and in the planning stages for many days.
	Secret visit to Iraq, but it was unveiled today.
	Now, the other big news, the Dow has made a roaring comeback.
	It closed up over 1,000 points, 1,085.
	The Dow up in one day.
	That's the biggest day in the Dow in seven years.
	That is huge.
	A roaring comeback.
	What's today?
	Wednesday?
	So you got two more days of the Dow.
	It could be a big week.
	The year ends.
	We didn't find him, Doug Shoan?
	No, I'm worried about him.
	He's usually a very reliable guest.
	So the Dow up 1,000 points.
	This is great news.
	Now, here's what's, you know, the controversy has been the Fed chairman, Chairman Powell, who even if you're willing to accept the rate increase, that is justified the quarter of a point.
	His language upset everybody.
	The last Fed announcement, everybody kind of got it through their head, we're going to have a quarter of a point increase, and that'll be it for a while, and we'll live with it.
	So he did the quarter of a point increase, but then afterwards made this incredibly hawkish statement, very unusual for a Fed chairman.
	And after the Dow had been through a really rough, choppy month, usually you watch your language, but he was brutal.
	Not only the rate increase, but he said there's more coming, probably a lot more coming.
	It was extremely antagonistic language from a Fed chairman.
	So that's why all the calls for the president to fire him.
	Now, there's some controversy as to whether a president can fire a Fed chairman.
	He's a governor.
	You can fire a governor, but there's a lot of legal thinking that you can't actually fire a Fed chairman.
	But we'll get back to that.
	We found Doug Schoen, who's the great upholster, author, political analyst, great guy, very smart guy, Fox News, columnist for Newsmax.
	Doug Schoen, how are you doing?
	I'm doing just fine.
	Thank you as always, Mark, for a very, very kind introduction.
	Well, thanks for being with us.
	And listen, explain these Democrats to us.
	They just seem to lack basic coping skills.
	They just seem to be hysterical about everything.
	They just can't seem to accept the fact that Trump won and come back in four years and try again.
	What's wrong with them?
	Well, I think they see Trump's approval rating sinking.
	They see that they've got the House now, and they're digging in in ways that may not be productive for the country, but they believe is productive for them politically.
	I think that's the best quick explanation I can offer, Mark.
	Yeah, but, you know, he's all right as approval rates.
	I mean, he's fine.
	Now, you know, the Democrats are going to start a hearing on everything.
	They have a hearing on his tax returns, a hearing on this, on that.
	Aren't they going to shoot themselves in the foot with all these hearings?
	Well, they could, but, you know, his approval rating is about 42 this morning as of real clear politics.
	So I think the Democrats' attitude is it worked pretty well in the congressional midterms.
	Why not stick with it, especially given a left wing that you know as well as I do is emboldened and arguably empowered.
	And also nuts, wouldn't you agree?
	Well, I'm not going to call them nuts, but I certainly don't share their worldview.
	I think that's fair.
	We certainly differ on that and differ fundamentally.
	Look, I'm a pre-market capitalist who believes in a social safety net.
	A lot of the far left believes in socialism.
	I'm not a socialist and never will be.
	Hey, but listen, you're the expert pollster.
	You know, if you look at these network polls, the New York Times, all these polls, the metrics are terrible.
	They put Republicans like a 23% in the sample, which is idiotic.
	So really, his approval rating is probably 50.
	I don't know.
	I don't think it is 50.
	I think he is underwater.
	And I think what the Democrats believe, rightly or wrongly, is confrontation keeps the party together and, you know, is passable as a political strategy.
	Look, I believe in compromise.
	I think we should compromise on immigration, do some sort of border security enhancement combined with a path to citizenship for DACA and for the illegals to give them a right to stay here legally.
	I think that makes sense.
	It's passed before and arguably should pass again.
	That's what I think.
	Yeah, but you know, what is the fear of walls?
	What is this wall hatred among Democrats?
	When you say border security enhancement, build a big wall.
	Problem solved.
	Well, Trump himself said build a wall or a fence.
	And if that represents a little softening, hopefully we can get to a consensus.
	Because one thing's for sure, we do need border security.
	Yeah, well, I think the reason is if you've seen the latest design of what the wall will be, it's these big steel spikes.
	It's like the most incredible state-of-the-art fence on steroids.
	So I guess under, you know, if you look at it, you could technically call it a fence, but it's as big as a wall.
	So When Chuck Schumer and these people say with a straight face, walls don't work, what on earth are they talking about?
	That I don't know.
	I mean, Mark, look, they voted in the past for walls.
	I'm not against walls per se.
	I'm for enhanced border security any way we can get it.
	I think the issue was not to fight politically, but to make the country safer.
	But don't you think if they do hearings, and they will, the problem is it's not like Mueller where it's mysterious and secret.
	The hearings are on TV.
	You can watch them live.
	And people start to watch this and say, it's a lot of trivia.
	They don't seem to really have anything here.
	Well, until it happens, we don't know that that'll be the case.
	Certainly the Democrats could overreach.
	It's happened before.
	I remember in 1998, the impeachment when I was working for Bill Clinton, and clearly that did not help the Republicans one bit.
	But until we see what happens and what's done, I don't think we can say definitively what the outcome will be, Mark.
	Hey, you're a great pollster and analyst.
	2020, who do you think is the leading Democrat right now?
	Like a couple of them.
	Well, I think Joe Biden is probably the leader, Bernie Sanders second, but I have no certainty that either of them will be the nominee.
	My only certainty is that it'll be a chaotic process.
	And the probable beneficiary of a chaotic process, notwithstanding what I've said before, will probably be the incumbent Donald Trump.
	Yeah.
	Hey, but you've worked with Mike Bloomberg, and you know when he wants to do something, he's determined.
	He'll spend money.
	He'll open up the checkbook.
	What if he wants to really do this and spend $100 million or a billion or whatever he wants to spend?
	I mean, he's a big force.
	He could take that nomination from everybody.
	Well, look, I obviously have worked for him for 20 years, have great respect and affection for him.
	He's not made a decision, but I would agree with your assessment.
	When he puts his mind to something, he is purposeful, committed, and willing to do what it takes to win.
	So, look, he would be a very good president, in my judgment, and it would be a, I think, a great race between Trump and Bloomberg, but we're not there yet.
	But when you say Biden, isn't that kind of doesn't say much for the Democratic Party.
	There's not much bench there if you've got Bernie and Biden, two 80-year-olds.
	Well, I have to agree with you.
	You know, Bernie is outside what I think makes sense.
	Don't think he could get elected.
	And Biden, you know, my sense is his time has largely passed.
	He may well have a broader appeal than most, but he is a gaffe-prone guy who has not exactly been too successful when he's run on his own.
	Yeah.
	When they talk about Beto O'Rourke or somebody like that, it's just another Obama.
	It's a charismatic guy with no resume.
	That's also a bad formula, too, isn't it?
	Well, I mean, compared to Obama or compared to O'Rourke, Obama did have a resume.
	And in the Senate for a couple of years, O'Rourke's been a congressman, what, six years of our member correctly?
	Yeah.
	And, you know, I mean, I thought he ran a novel campaign, but it wasn't clear to me what he stood for or what he said that that was so distinctive.
	Well, he looked good.
	You know, they say he's the new Bobby Kennedy.
	He took his jacket off.
	He rolled up his sleeves.
	Instead of standing still, he walked back and forth on the stage.
	It's all gimmicks and image.
	Well, I was going to say, looking like Bobby Kennedy is not a criteria to be elected president.
	But explain the phenomenon of Democrats embracing people like that.
	Look at this Ocasio-Cortez.
	She was a bartender eight months ago.
	How does this happen?
	Well, I think the left wing of the Democratic Party, like the right wing of the Republican Party, wants something new and different.
	And at least in the Democratic Party, there is a willingness to opt for socialism, left-wing politics, and policies like Medicare for all, jobs for all, $15 guaranteed minimum wage for all, that I think are unrealistic and potentially destructive.
	Yeah, and what is this Democrat's love of socialism?
	Do you know any socialist country that has a problem with illegal aliens trying to break in?
	It's the other way around.
	It's the other way around.
	And I remember my dear friend, client, teacher, Pat Moynihan saying he hasn't seen a country, a communist country that people are fighting to get into.
	They're fighting to get out of it.
	And I think, you know, that's basically right.
	So, but you understand the Democratic mind.
	What is it with these?
	I mean, it all sounds great.
	You know, bleeding hearts sort of help everybody, but it's not real.
	It's not practical.
	Well, the reason I said it was destructive is, I mean, the principles themselves are good.
	I want more people covered by health care.
	I want more people to be employed.
	I want more people to earn more income.
	But we've got to pay for all this.
	And I'm like you, I think, Mark.
	I'm very skeptical of government-run programs.
	So those are my key objections.
	Yeah.
	So what do you think is going to happen as far as the shutdown?
	You know, I think and hope that the Democrats and the Republicans move closer together, Trump having called the wall potentially a fence, and the Democrats having in the past embraced a wall or enhanced border security.
	I hope that happens, but so far there's no evidence it is.
	You guys got to stop saying enhanced border security.
	It sounds like one of those Pentagon terms.
	How about a big wall?
	I don't mean it that way.
	I mean it as a way of protecting our country from people who shouldn't be here.
	There's no right to be here.
	Doug Shoan, where should people go to read you?
	What's the best way to do it?
	I'm at foxnews.com and at Douglas E. Shoan on Twitter.
	And Mark, I can only say it's a great pleasure to be with you during the holiday season and anytime your graciousness is only exceeded by your intellect.
	Oh, my God.
	I love this flattery.
	But he's a great guy, a very smart guy.
	So follow Doug Schoen at FoxNews.com.
	Hey, Doug, thanks for being with us.
	Mark, thank you.
	A pleasure as always.
	Take care.
	Oh, coming up, Steve Moore will be with us in a little while.
	He's one of the great economists.
	It's been an amazing day on Wall Street, the Dow, up over 1,000 points.
	Biggest day in seven years.
	We'll talk to him about all of that and what it means.
	Coming up, it's Mark Simone here for Sean Hannity.
	Hey, welcome back.
	It's Mark Simone here for Sean Hannity.
	Sean will be back soon.
	You can follow me on Twitter.
	It's Mark Simone NY at Twitter.
	I was just checking Twitter.
	A lot of people writing to me.
	There is a GoFundMe for the wall.
	Yeah, that's true.
	There's a great guy, Triple Amputee, a veteran, GoFundMe for the Wall.
	It didn't start that long ago.
	About two weeks ago, he's up at $18 million already.
	So you can look that up.
	Biggest day in seven years on the Dow.
	Amazing day.
	Up 1,086.
	Almost, almost 1,100 points.
	Phenomenal day.
	Let's take a call or two.
	Let's go to Greg in Ohio.
	Greg, welcome to the Sean Hannity Show.
	Thank you, Mark.
	Appreciate it.
	Thanks, Greg.
	Really, Cole.
	I keep hearing Democrats talking about gun control, but how can they ever have gun control if they don't shut the border?
	Well, that's a good point.
	It's a big source of illegal guns coming over the border, not to mention drugs coming over the border, not to mention who knows what.
	We've caught terrorists coming over the border.
	You know, when I show you that video, people crossing the border illegally, you notice they've got knapsacks, suitcases, packs.
	Who knows what's in there?
	Terrorists bringing stuff into the country.
	Where are you in Ohio, Greg?
	I'm in central Ohio.
	Not too far from Columbus.
	And what have you noticed this past year?
	People doing better?
	People happier?
	People making more money?
	I think people are doing better, and people seem to be happier, I think.
	You know, you hear a lot of people negative talk about people having fights and this and that and the other, and there's a lot of root rage.
	I do see a lot of that.
	But when I'm in the stores, people just go out of the way to be nice and hold doors for people and help each other.
	So it just seems different than what you hear.
	No, you know what?
	You ought to come to New York for a couple of days.
	You'll love it.
	It's so different.
	You get pushed and shoved.
	Nobody holds the door for you.
	They'll knock you over to get through the door.
	But we love it here in New York.
	But Greg, welcome to the show.
	Thanks for calling from Ohio.
	Great talking to you.
	Yeah, it's, I don't know.
	We're going to talk to Steve Moore in a moment, but the thousand points, it's a huge day in the Dow.
	He'll explain it to us exactly what's causing it.
	It was down for all the wrong reasons.
	A lot of people like to point to the China negotiations, the battle with China, the tariffs.
	That's a slight factor, but not a big factor.
	You know, one thing that got buried by the fake news, they don't make mention of it anywhere.
	In that China fight, China made an enormous concession about 10 days ago.
	A startlingly big concession for round one.
	They agreed to cut auto tariffs from 40 to 15 percent.
	That's a huge, huge concession from China, especially in the first round.
	So that fight is going well.
	Earnings are very strong.
	Retail sales, we've had the best retail year in, I think, 10 years this holiday season.
	GDI, that's an important number.
	Gross domestic income, it's way up.
	Fundamentals in business, very strong.
	So we'll talk to Steve Moore when we come back.
	He's one of the great economists in the world, and we'll see what he's got.
	He can explain all this to us.
	Record day on the Dow, biggest one-day rise in the Dow in seven years, up almost 1,100 points.
	It's Mark Simone here.
	Follow me on Twitter, MarkSimoneNY at Twitter.
	And of course, don't forget to go to Hannity.com and watch Hannity tonight, every weeknight, 9 o'clock on the Fox News channel.
	It's Mark Simone here for Sean.
	Back in just a moment.
	We'll talk to Steve Moore.
	Coming up.
	Don't go away.
	Well, welcome back.
	It's Mark Simone here for Sean Hannity.
	The big news is today the Dow had the biggest day in seven years, up almost 1,100 points.
	Huge day on Wall Street.
	And we've got with us, listen, the three best economists in the world, Steve Moore, of course, Larry Kudlow, and Art Laffer.
	All three of them got together on a book, and it's come out now.
	It's a book you should get.
	It's actually, Larry, of course, left to join the Trump administration, but it's Steve Moore and Art Laffer.
	It's Trumponomics.
	If you want to have all this explained to you really well, it's Trump Anomics.
	Get the book.
	And the author, best-selling book, the author is on the line.
	Steve Moore, how are you doing?
	Well, Mark, I do believe in Santa Claus after today.
	That was an amazing.
	What did you say?
	Is this the biggest day for the Dow in how many years?
	Seven years.
	Seven years.
	Wow.
	Well, Santa Claus is bearing gifts this year.
	Alec, I predicted that when the Dow went, you know, what, the 22,000, there were a lot of stocks are very cheap right now.
	Even with the thousand-point gain, you know, the real economy, Mark, is very strong.
	I mean, Trump has created an economy where 2018 was probably the best year for the economy in 20 years.
	We had 3.5% growth.
	We have the lowest unemployment rate in 50 years.
	We have construction, manufacturing through the roof.
	We have 7 million more jobs than people to fill them.
	So I don't know.
	You've been in this game a long time, Mark, but I've rarely seen where the economy's headed in one direction and the stock market's been headed in the other direction.
	But look, I think fundamentally this U.S. economy continues to steam forward.
	You know, a very smart guy in Wall Street told me that one of the big problems, not China, not the other stuff, but he said they're not used to Wall Street not doing as well as Main Street.
	Mainstream has been booming more than Wall Street, and they haven't figured out how to play that yet.
	That's part of their problem.
	Does that make sense?
	I think it is.
	Look, I think that the Fed did a disastrous job and made a catastrophic decision last week to raise interest rates.
	What we have, I mean, think about this.
	We've got the perfect economy up until when the Fed raised interest rates.
	We had very strong economic growth, the strongest economic growth in something like 15 years.
	We had nice industrial production numbers, high consumer confidence, and no inflation in the economy.
	It was like, what's the old cliche that the Fed really truly took the punchbowl away from this party just when it was getting going, and there were no signs of inflation.
	So I don't really understand that.
	In fact, if anything, there's deflation.
	Look what's happened to the oil price.
	Look what's happened to prices of things like silver and to ask farmers whether they think there's inflation in the economy.
	The price of soybeans, the price of wheat, and cotton have been falling.
	So there is not inflation.
	We've got high growth.
	Mark, somebody has to explain to me why the Fed would be raising interest rates in that kind of environment.
	The other thing, of course, that's out there as the 800-pound gorilla is this trade war with China, which I believe Trump is right to fight because I think China is an increasing menace on the international scene.
	But Mark, I'll tell you this.
	If Trump can get this trade war fixed and he can win some concessions from China on opening their markets and stop stealing our intellectual property, you think it was a good day for the stock market today.
	Wait till we get that deal done.
	Hey, China made a big concession the other day on auto tariffs.
	I know.
	They lowered them from 40 to 15 percent.
	That's an astonishing concession.
	But the media hid the story and buried it.
	So that may have hurt the market by not publicizing that enough.
	And you're exactly right about that.
	And, you know, what's so interesting about that is it's just the opening bid for China.
	I mean, China's going to have to make some very significant concessions here.
	I mean, they impose very high costs on American goods.
	It's very difficult for American businessmen and women to do business in China.
	And then, as you know, they've been stealing and cheating.
	And you saw what happened with their hacking into the databases of American companies.
	That's thievery.
	So I think Trump is fighting the good fight here.
	And I think it's about time somebody confronted Beijing.
	We'll see whether Trump can get them to back down.
	I think they're going to.
	As Trump once told me, look, if we can't trade with China, we sneeze.
	If they can't trade with us, they catch pneumonia.
	And there's a lot of truth to that.
	Yeah, now, Steve Moore has been advising President Trump all along, and he's written a great new book with Art Laffer called Trump Anomics.
	Get this book if you're interested in this subject.
	There's no better book than Trump Anomics.
	Hey, getting back to this Fed, Commissioner, since the economy is doing so well, maybe you could justify a quarter of a point increase.
	But his language, his language was ridiculously aggressive about many more rate increases coming.
	Why would he do something like that?
	Because I think the Fed has a failed model, Mark.
	I think that the Fed has been operating on the principle that there's a kind of limit to our economic capacity and our growth, and that we can only grow at, say, 2%.
	And if we get past that, it's going to cause inflation.
	That's wrong on two counts.
	Number one, there's no limit to our growth.
	As you remember, Mark, we had rates of 6% growth under Reagan and 6% growth under John F. Kennedy after his tax cuts.
	So you expand the productive capacity of the country.
	There's no reason we can't grow at 3, 4, 5% with the right set of policies, which, by the way, Donald Trump is putting in place.
	The other fallacy is that a lot of these liberal economists believe that increased growth causes more inflation.
	But as you mentioned, Art Laffer is one of the great economists.
	You're exactly right about that.
	You know, as our laugher has taught us, when the economy produces more apples, the price of apples goes down.
	It doesn't go up.
	So an increase in growth should lead to more products and lower prices, not higher products.
	You see what I'm seeing what I mean?
	Yeah.
	Hey, now it turns out the retail Christmas season is the biggest in 10 years.
	A lot of money was.
	And explain the number GDI, that's gross domestic income.
	That's a crucial number.
	People do have more money now, don't they?
	They do.
	And, you know, this is a point that economists like myself and Larry Kudlow and others have been making throughout the years that the average, for all the talks about this being a tax cut for the rich, I mean, as you know, Outlaugher and Larry Kudlow and I helped write the plan for Trump.
	So we know that bill better than just about anyone.
	This was not a tax cut for rich people.
	It was a tax cut for our businesses so they could invest more and hire more and pay more.
	And guess what?
	That's exactly what they're doing.
	They're investing more in their companies.
	They're paying workers more in terms of bonuses and pay raises and more benefits.
	And we estimated at the Heritage Foundation that the average family saves about $2,500 a year.
	Well, guess what?
	You know, you give the average $50,000 or $60,000 worker a $2,500 raise.
	I don't care what Nancy Perosi says.
	Mark, that ain't, what does she call them?
	Crumbs.
	That isn't crumbs.
	And guess what?
	People feel better about their financial situation.
	They feel like they got a little bit more money in the bank and their wallets.
	And they spend, yeah, look at the retail, not the retailers, but the online sales for Christmas.
	I think they were a record high this year and shattered the old record.
	Yeah, Amazon had a record.
	And also what they call the FANG stocks, Facebook, Apple, Netflix, Google, all that stuff.
	The only problem with those companies is their stock, right?
	Their stocks have fallen a lot, but they're still selling a lot of goods.
	Yeah, but that's one of the things that they've been in trouble, but they had a big comeback today as part of this rally.
	So that's good news.
	Look, I think I'm really bullish on the U.S.
	I think there's way too much negativity.
	There's way too much concern that we're headed into a recession.
	Now, look, I don't have a crystal ball.
	I can't tell you what the economy is going to look like a year or two from now, but I can tell you this, Mark, that Donald Trump has put in place very pro-growth economic policies on regulation, on energy.
	By the way, Mark, did you see the story a few weeks ago that the United States is now producing more oil and gas than we're consuming?
	And that's the first time that's happened in, what, our lifetimes, practically.
	Yeah, also gas prices way down.
	Now, people forget that's another tax cut, basically.
	Yeah.
	Oh, yeah.
	Yeah, every penny reduction in the price of gasoline at the pump puts over a billion dollars into the hands of consumers that they can spend on going to the store or buying groceries or paying for their health insurance or going out and taking their spouse out for dinner or whatever it might be.
	So that's a real stimulus to the economy as well.
	It's like a tax cut when the price of gasoline goes down at the pump.
	Wow.
	Hey, Dow had the biggest day in seven years, up 1,100 points.
	You know who I felt really bad for?
	I saw you on some TV show yesterday.
	Nice woman, but you were saying the economy's strong fundamentals.
	And she was screaming at you, there's a recession.
	The whole market's going to crash.
	I feel bad for her.
	What must she think today?
	Well, you know what?
	There's a lot of people who hate Trump so much that they're rooting against the American economy.
	A lot of people just want the economy to fail.
	And, you know, that's too bad because listen, we want everybody to succeed.
	We want everybody to get a pay raise and more money in their pockets.
	And so I'm rooting for America.
	As I said today on CNN, I'm just bullish on America.
	And if we keep with these policies in place, we're going to get more growth, and middle-class workers, that's what it's all about, Mark, is helping the middle class have more jobs and higher salaries and higher take-home pay.
	Yeah.
	Well, Steve Moore, you advised the president.
	You, Art Laugher, Larry Kudlow, our best economists.
	What do you think is next?
	What can he do this year?
	Could there be another tax reform bill?
	I think we've got to get the Fed to stop raising interest rates because I think that's sucking a lot of the oxygen out of the economy.
	I think he's got to get this trade deal done with China.
	That's the number one goal of the Trump administration.
	And by the way, think about this, Mark.
	How many people live in China?
	Over a billion, right?
	Over a billion Chinese.
	Imagine if we can sell our products in an open market to China, what that would mean in terms of our productive capacity to sell things to countries like China and India and these Asian countries that have so many people.
	So let's open up our trade, but do it in a way that's fair.
	And as Trump has always told me, Mark, he said, I believe in free trade, but it's got to be fair trade and it's got to be a level playing field.
	If we've got that level playing field, I believe America can outcompete anybody.
	Hey, Steve Moore, just explain to there's probably some Democrats who are listening to the radio right now that are screaming about all these tax cuts.
	All they do is help the corporations, this tariff war, if you win it, all it does is help the corporations.
	But explain how that helps the average American.
	Well, as I said earlier, you know, if you get a better business climate and you help businesses, you know, my old boss, Dick Harmy, who used to be the House majority leader for the Republicans many years ago, used to say, you know, liberals love jobs, but they hate employers.
	And, Mark, you can't have a job without people, you know, providing the jobs, people, you know, entrepreneurs and businessmen and women establishing their own businesses.
	Did you know, Mark, today we have something like 27 million small businesses in America.
	And this was a tax cut for those businesses so they could, instead of hiring 10 people, maybe they could hire 12 or 15.
	And, you know, small businesses become medium businesses, and some of them may become the next, you know, Google or Apple.
	So that's how you do it.
	You make your businesses, American businesses, succeed and they can hire more workers.
	And incidentally, if you look at the situation today in terms of the global economy, Mark, you know this.
	Guess what country has the best performing economy this year?
	The United States.
	Wow.
	I love Steve Moore because not only is he smart, but he always throws in that.
	And Mark, you know this as well as anyone else.
	I know it because you follow this stuff, and you've probably followed it as long as I. How long have you and I know each other's five years, I'm sure.
	Half the time, you're nine steps ahead of me on this, so I don't always know.
	Well, you hang out with smart people like Larry Kudlow, so I know you know this stuff too.
	Yeah, well, hey, if you want to really know this stuff, if you want to really learn this stuff, it's a great book.
	Steve Moore wrote it with Art Laugher.
	And didn't Larry Kudlow have a hand in it too?
	Oh, yeah.
	I mean, he was working on it with us, and then all of a sudden, Donald Trump stole him away from us, and now he's the chief economist for the White House.
	And that's what an honor that is for the country and for Larry and for Trump.
	I mean, it's a great combination.
	Yeah.
	So if you want to really understand all this stuff, actually, if you want to sound like a genius with all your friends, get the book.
	It's a great book by the three best economists.
	It's called Trump Enomics.
	It's a new book.
	It's already a bestseller.
	Trump Enomics.
	Go out and get the book.
	And Steve Moore, where should people go to read your columns?
	Well, let me just say one thing about the book.
	You know, people say, I don't want to read that book.
	I don't like economics.
	This isn't really about economics.
	It's about how Trump did it, how we made America first and his philosophy behind this.
	And, you know, so people can read my stuff at heritage.org.
	And, Mark, I hope you have a happy, happy new year, my friend.
	All right, Steve Moore, I got us another tax cut coming this year.
	And thanks for being with us.
	Take care.
	Thank you.
	Mark Simone here for Sean Hannity.
	Sean will be back soon.
	We'll take some calls in.
	Oh, don't go anywhere because Greg Jarrett is coming up.
	We'll get the latest on Mueller and the Russia hoax.
	That's the title of his great book.
	It's Mark Simone.
	You can follow me on Twitter, Mark SimoneNY at Twitter.
	Mark SimoneNYC at Instagram.
	And don't forget to Hannity.com.
	And, of course, watch Hannity tonight and every weeknight at 9 on the Fox News channel.
	Back in a moment on the Sean Hannity Show.
	Welcome back.
	It's Mark Simone here for Sean Hannity.
	It's the day after Christmas.
	Is this a holiday?
	I mean, we're all working.
	There's Kylie.
	There's Jason in the control room.
	And during the break, I walk out there in the office.
	I don't see anybody, a lot of empty desks.
	But it's a day after Christmas.
	Have we had enough of those Christmas songs?
	Or those Christmas movies?
	What's your favorite Christmas movie?
	Christmas Story?
	Yes.
	Christmas Story or Charlie Brown Christmas.
	Charlie Brown Christmas.
	No.
	What?
	Yes.
	Is that really?
	I guess that's a Christmas movie.
	Oh, yeah, Kevin McAllister.
	Yeah, now listen, that Home Alone, that kid who's now looks like he's 70.
	No, how old is he?
	He must be like 30.
	He's got a new commercial.
	You can see it online.
	It's actually for Google.
	It is a great commercial where he's home alone, only now he's a helpless millennial, and he uses his Amazon.
	It must be the Google HomePod, actually, to do everything for him.
	That would make a great movie.
	You know what the worst Christmas film is?
	It's a wonderful life.
	I don't get that film.
	I mean, it's brilliantly done.
	It's well acted, but it makes no sense at all.
	You know, they show you what the town would have looked like without Jimmy Stewart.
	It looked much better without him.
	It had nightclubs.
	It had casinos.
	With him, it was the dullest town in the world.
	So the whole movie makes no sense at all to me.
	Anyway, when we come back in the next hour, Greg Jarrett will be with us.
	He's got a book that you got to read called The Russia Hoax.
	Now, when it comes to Mueller, when it comes to what the hell went on at the FBI with McCabe, Strzok, Paige, Comey, and all their biased partisan shenanigans tampering with everything, he is the expert on it.
	So we'll talk to him coming up next.
	We'll get all the latest developments.
	Mueller report is supposed to wrap up in February, but we'll go through that with him.
	And then it's a report that's delivered to the Attorney General.
	Supposedly, he can just throw it in his desk and ignore it if he wants, but Congress will try to subpoena it.
	We'll find out all about that coming up in the next hour.
	It's Mark Simone here for Sean Hannity.
	Big hour coming up.
	Hey, welcome back.
	It's Mark Simone here for Sean Hannity, one of the best books of 2018.
	In fact, the number one bestseller is Greg Jarrett's book, The Russia Hoax.
	You've got to get that book.
	No better book on the subject of Comey, Mueller, and all this witch hunt.
	Greg Jarrett's latest book, and he's on the line with us now.
	Of course, you see him on Fox News.
	Greg Jarrett, how are you?
	Mark, I'm well.
	Great to be with you.
	Merry Christmas.
	Merry Christmas.
	I'm hearing rumors that the Mueller report will be wrapped up and completed and handed in in February.
	Now, is this true?
	It just goes to the Attorney General, and it's up to the Attorney General what he'll do with it.
	That's right.
	Under the special counsel regulations, it goes to the AG.
	He can give it to Congress.
	He can make it public, or he can divide it up and only give a summary to the public.
	But you can expect the Democratic House to subpoena the Inspector General and try to elicit the information that way if the Attorney General doesn't make it public.
	So a lot of ifs in that scenario.
	So we'll have to wait and see.
	I'm skeptical that Mueller will finish up by February.
	We've heard these reports before.
	He was going to be finished up in October and November and December.
	And, you know, here we are, almost January.
	So we'll wait and see.
	Now, Adam Schiff on one of these shows has pretty much said they will definitely, the Congress will definitely subpoena this report.
	What legal authority do they have to actually do that?
	Can they do that?
	Well, they can.
	There's nothing in the special counsel regulations that say in response to a subpoena, you may withhold the information.
	Now, if the Attorney General thinks that there is some privileged information in there, he could always go to court and fight the subpoena.
	And that, of course, as you know, is a very long process.
	So I have no doubt that Schiff and others in the House will attempt to get their hands on the document.
	The Attorney General may just decide to give it to them anyway, and of course it'll be immediately leaked.
	Yeah.
	Now, also, could the Attorney General read it and then throw it in his drawer and not say a word about it?
	Is he legally allowed to do that?
	He absolutely is.
	And in fact, that's happened before with independent counsel, you remember Patrick Fitzgerald decided that essentially in the Scooter-Libby case, he was only going to make public that portion of the investigation.
	Everything else was kept confidential to this very day.
	So just because a report is written doesn't mean it's made public.
	So let's say it's not made public.
	Can they, Congress legally, can they subpoena Mueller to testify?
	And is Mueller free to talk about what's in there?
	He probably would be unless the Attorney General sought an injunction or a temporary restraining order.
	And then, as I say, it would become a battle in a federal court.
	So, you know, one way or another, Democrats in the House are going to try to make it public.
	And, you know, we're assuming, of course, that the information contained therein is negative.
	It may well be something that even Republicans are welcoming in a public venue.
	Well, listen, we all started out thinking Mueller is a straight arrow.
	Mueller will do the right thing.
	But after, I used to think that about Comey years ago.
	After watching that and reading your book, I'm not counting on Mueller doing the right thing.
	Like the rest of them, he's going to make it as negative as he can make it.
	I was actually surprised that the moment Mueller was appointed, everyone jumped on board and said he's the perfect person.
	He's got impeccable credentials.
	I wrote a column the next day saying, wait just a minute.
	He is conflicted by virtue of his close relationship with James Comey, who may very well be a key witness.
	And in fact, Comey has been interviewed by the special counsel as well as Rod Rosenstein.
	That's a disqualifying conflict of interest.
	Mueller should never have taken the job.
	And, you know, he has more than one conflict of interest.
	He actually has three, as I identify in my book.
	So, you know, and the fact that he hired a team of 17 partisans, some of whom represented Hillary Clinton and the Clinton Foundation, suggests to me that he cannot and will not be fair and objective and neutral.
	Yeah.
	What can the president do?
	I know he's talking about releasing his own report about the Mueller report.
	Is that going to have any effect?
	I mean, what can he say?
	You mean the lawyers for Donald Trump?
	Yeah.
	Yes.
	In fact, I've talked with them about it.
	They have pretty much concluded their report, although they'll modify it depending upon what's in the Mueller report.
	But they're very prepared for this.
	And if the Mueller report is made public, they'll immediately and simultaneously make their report, their counter-report, public as well.
	And when you think about it, that's only fair.
	You know, Mueller and his team of partisans will probably write a report that is highly critical of Trump, although it may be entirely circumstantial evidence.
	They may conclude we have no definitive proof of collusion.
	And it's only fair, therefore, that the president's lawyers be heard as well to present their side of the story.
	This is the problem with prosecutors.
	Prosecutors always only present their version of events.
	And to any potential defendant or defendant, that's inherently unfair.
	Hey, the best book on this subject is Greg Jarrett's book, Get It, The Russia Hoax, number one bestseller, best book on this subject.
	Now, I guess the acting attorney general is afraid to do too much here, and there's probably no chance that we get the new attorney general confirmed before the Mueller report.
	But if we did, couldn't he step in and say he could fire Rod Rosenstein?
	He could say, you know what, you're all over the map here.
	Stick to this.
	Just look at this.
	Yes, and, you know, much depends on how quickly the Senate Judiciary Committee can confirm William Barr, the nominee.
	And, you know, the people I've talked to up on the Hill on the Senate side say they think it can get done pretty quickly within about five or six weeks.
	Democrats will drag their feet, so we'll wait and see.
	But, you know, the person that is more conflicted than anyone else is Rod Rosenstein.
	You know, the special counsel regulations specifically state that if you have a personal or political interest in the case, you must recuse yourself.
	My goodness, he's a witness.
	He wrote the memo for the firing of James Comey, and Mueller interviewed Rosenstein.
	So think about this.
	Rosenstein is Mueller's boss, and yet the subordinate interviewed the boss, who may, in the long run, determine what action will be taken.
	That's a terrible conflict of interest.
	Rosenstein should have recused himself a long time ago.
	And the fact that he hasn't suggests that he is biased and motivated against Trump.
	Well, you've been saying this since day one, and of course you're absolutely right.
	But why doesn't somebody just throw him the hell out of there and say, you got to recuse yourself?
	I think the political optics were negative for Trump.
	Trump certainly had the authority to fire Rosenstein, especially when evidence emerged that Rosenstein was trying to get others to tape record secretly the president and depose him under the 25th Amendment.
	And of course, you know, Congress wanted to hear from Rosenstein to answer those questions.
	Did you do this?
	And he continued to defy their requests and slow walked it until Democrats took over the House.
	So, you know, Rosenstein could have been fired, should have been fired more than any person at the Department of Justice.
	Hey, Greg Jerry, we only got like a minute left, but the Southern District of New York, that's the local U.S. Attorney here, is looking all through a Trump organization business here in New York.
	Wouldn't a new attorney general just say, stop that?
	There's no report of any crime there.
	Wait till something is discovered.
	Well, you're right.
	A good and competent and responsible attorney general would say, show me why you are doing this and what real evidence that you have that connects the president of the United States to any of these things.
	And especially since it was motivated by Robert Mueller.
	None of this has anything to do whatsoever with Trump-Russia collusion.
	These are collateral issues that are being driven, I think, by a personal and political animus toward Trump.
	Yeah.
	The U.S. Attorney seems to be a very good guy, Jeffrey Berman here in New York.
	So he's had to recuse himself.
	It's the people under him that are doing this.
	But we're not going to get anything really happening here until we get a new attorney general, right?
	The acting attorney general, probably a little afraid to take some action here.
	Well, I think you're right.
	Matthew Whitaker, the acting AG, feels handcuffed by virtue of the political salvos he's been taking.
	So I think much will depend on how quickly William Barr can be confirmed and take over.
	And not that he is a Donald Trump sycophant.
	This is a guy who served as Attorney General for two years back in the 1990s.
	He's a brilliant legal mind, highly regarded, impeccable credentials.
	And I think he'll do what's fair and honest and equitable.
	And that's all you can ask in an attorney general, as opposed to Jeff Sessions, who had no earthly idea what he was doing in that position.
	Yeah.
	Well, Greg Jarrett, thanks for taking the time today.
	You got to get his book.
	It's the best book on the subject, The Russia Hoax, number one bestseller.
	It's Greg Jarrett's book.
	Go to Amazon or wherever you want to go and just get the book, The Russia Hoax.
	Greg Jarrett, thanks for being with us.
	Yeah, you're very kind, Mark.
	Good to be with you and happy holidays.
	All right.
	Happy holiday.
	Thanks for being with us.
	That's right.
	It's the day after Christmas, New Year's Eve coming up.
	When is New Year's Eve?
	Monday night, right?
	That's the worst night of the year.
	There's so much pressure on you.
	Everybody you talk to, what are you doing New Year's Eve?
	Where are you going New Year's Eve?
	You better have a hell of an answer or they look at you like you're the biggest loser to people like me who go out every night to every party, every club, everything.
	I hate New Year's Eve.
	It's the worst night of the year.
	Any place you'd go normally, even the greatest place, if it's New Year's Eve, suddenly it's five times the normal price.
	They don't have the regular menu.
	They've got a special New Year's Eve menu, which means like three things that are cheap to serve on New Year's Eve.
	Everybody's drunk.
	It's the worst night of the year.
	You got every cop in America all over the roads looking for drunk drivers.
	Even if you don't drink, they're stopping everywhere.
	It's a horrible night.
	Stay home, watch the ball drop.
	Anyway, we'll come back in a moment and take some calls.
	The number is 800-941-Sean, 800-941-Sean.
	It's Mark Simone here for Sean Hannity.
	You can follow me on Twitter, MarkSimoneNY at Twitter.
	Or Instagram, MarkSimoneNYC at Instagram.
	Back in a moment on the Sean Hannity Show.
	Hey, welcome back.
	It's Mark Simone here for Sean Hannity.
	Let's take some calls.
	Let's go to, let me see, let's go to Jane in Arizona.
	Jane, welcome to the Sean Hannity Show.
	Oh, thanks, Mark.
	How are you?
	Good.
	How are you doing, Jane?
	I'm doing well.
	I just finished the cleanup from Christmas dinner.
	And did you have a big fight at the table with all the relatives?
	Nobody spoke of politics.
	Oh, that's good.
	I know it was dull.
	But at any rate, we had a lovely time.
	I hope you did too.
	Yes.
	And what did you want to say, Jane?
	I wanted to say that as frustrated as we all get as conservatives listening to the mainstream media, Pratt and why, and oh, my word, I think, and I have done it myself, I decided, all right, I'm wearing my colors.
	And I think if all our conservative friends would wear their colors, I have my magma hat.
	I go to Costco with it.
	And any other errand I might make.
	And more often than not, I get many compliments.
	Yeah.
	So we can all, if we all started to do that, we could, you know, annoy a liberal here or there and then find like-minded people.
	All right.
	Well, that's a good idea.
	Everybody should wear their MAGA hat.
	The only thing is it depends where you live.
	If you live in Arizona, you can probably wear your MAGA hat.
	And if you're in, let's say you're in the New York City area, you go up into Westchester or out in Long Island or Connecticut, you could wear your MAGA hat.
	But if you live right in the middle of Manhattan, you go to the Upper West Side where all the crazy liberals are, you probably can't wear the MAGA hat.
	And if you go down to, there's incidents here downtown, Greenwich Village, Soho, where when you wear the MAGA hat, people chase you out of a restaurant.
	They refuse to serve you.
	They start yelling at you and screaming at you.
	I don't know who's going to want to have to deal with it.
	But you're right.
	It's a good point.
	If everybody starts wearing their MAGA hat, what are they going to do?
	What are they going to do?
	Throw 50 people out of a restaurant?
	What are they going to do on that Upper West Side if they 200 MAGA hats?
	I think that's the key.
	We all got to start wearing it.
	Let's go to Earl, call him from Kentucky.
	Hey, Earl, welcome to the Sean Hannity Show.
	Yes, thank you for taking the call.
	You know, since the Devs have been planning months, if not years, to impeach Trump because he's not one of the party, one of the good old boys, to be able to change up the plans of the socialist Democrats, since President Trump picked Vice President Pence, if he was to publicly come out and say, if you even think you will impeach President Trump, I was picked to follow his goals.
	And I will follow out all of the plans that Mr. Trump has put in place to make America great again.
	And that would throw them off their game if he was to stick the lock and step with Mr. Trump as long as Pence is not also going to try to play the other game and be watching.
	Well, that's a good point.
	Earl, that's an excellent point.
	If Pence would come out and say, I will follow up on everything Donald Trump is going to do, maybe that would head off an impeachment.
	But I don't think so.
	I think they'd rather deal with Pence.
	You know, it's not just the policy.
	It's something about Trump.
	Maybe it's the brashness, the bragging, the boldness, something about Trump that just sets them off.
	They just go nuts when they see him.
	And again, you know, I like Pence, but who knows if he comes from the swamp.
	He's not the outsider.
	But it's just, they just go nuts.
	It's the personality of Donald Trump.
	He's called them every name in the world.
	Pence hasn't.
	And the other thing is, I know they're secretly plotting, Democrats, to find some way to impeach them both.
	Impeach Pence and Trump together.
	That way, Speaker of the House Pelosi becomes the president.
	Can you imagine that?
	Anyway, back in a moment.
	There's more on the Sean Hannity Show coming up.
	Hey, welcome back.
	It's Mark Simone here for Sean Hannity.
	Sean will be back soon.
	You got the fake news.
	You know, you can't trust anything you watch on CNN or MSNBC.
	I mean, can you take the New York Times seriously anymore or the Jeff Bezos Post or any of that?
	But one of the things, and this fake Chuck Todd and fake news, Lester Holt.
	And whenever you see them say, and they'll quote this all the time on these shows, the president has been caught lying 7,546 times.
	Now, the way that works, besides totally corrupting the news media, all the fact-checking sites have been totally corrupted.
	Factcheck.org, PolitiFact.
	You can't trust them for a second.
	Even that Washington Post fact-checker, Pinocchio, can't trust it at all.
	For instance, I took a look at them.
	Now, the Washington Post fact-checker says, President Trump has made 7,546 false statements over 700 days.
	Well, now, if you look into that, you got the most biased guys evaluating this.
	So most of them are not lies.
	And here's another thing they did, and this is preposterous.
	If the president said in one of the rallies or one of the speeches, this is the best economy in history, that's counted as a lie.
	And then they found 240 times where he said that in rallies.
	So they're counting that as 240 lies.
	Or another one where he said, it's the biggest tax cut in history.
	That's counted 390 times that he said it as a lie.
	Now, obviously, every president does that, whether it is or it isn't the best economy in history.
	You can go back to any president out on the campaign trail.
	They speak in those slogans, best economy in history, the best tax cut in history.
	It's a normal thing for any president to say.
	It's a campaign boast.
	You can't count that as a lie.
	So whenever you see these crazy numbers, president has been caught lying 7,500.
	Remember, it's a lot of nonsense like that.
	Hey, the other thing going on, this has been the year, you look back at 2018, what a Me Too year this has been.
	I mean, if you went back a few years ago and you told somebody, you'll see Bill Cosby go to prison in your lifetime.
	They would have thought you were insane.
	But here he is sitting in prison right now.
	Less moon vests.
	You couldn't be a bigger, more powerful guy in the entertainment industry.
	He's gone.
	Doesn't even get his severance.
	They said he lied to the investigators, covered up in the investigation.
	Hey, by the way, a lot of top CBS people wanted to see the reports.
	CBS brought in some big law firms to do a massive investigation.
	And there were people at CBS that were waiting to read this final report.
	Well, it turns out there's no written report.
	CBS hired these big law firms, and a totally unprecedented, you never do this, they said to them, don't write a report.
	Just report to us verbally.
	So nothing is in writing.
	That gives you an idea of how creepy whatever he did was, is they didn't even want it in writing.
	Then, of course, you got Harvey Weinstein.
	You know, one of the interesting cases is Kevin Spacey, who got caught.
	In fact, it's so bad, one of them has gone criminal, and on January 7th, he's going to be arraigned in Massachusetts.
	Now, they say they're going to arraign him in Massachusetts.
	They don't say whether he'll be there to be arraigned, but it's January 7th.
	One thing about Spacey, it was 2017.
	He vanished off the face of the earth.
	Even his friends, people that know him, said they had no idea where he was.
	And the best word was that he was hiding on some island in the South Pacific, totally hiding.
	Maybe that's what you do if you're a Me Too guy.
	But he's just released a video.
	It's on YouTube.
	It's already gotten 7 million views.
	It's the creepiest thing you'll ever see.
	We're not going to play it.
	It's just too creepy.
	It's Kevin Spacey, and he's in character as the creepy guy on House of Cards, as Frank Underwood.
	And he does the same Frank Underwood creepy character, and he looks into the camera and he purrs in this creepy voice.
	You knew what I was up to.
	And then there's a part where he says, I know you want me back.
	I don't know what the point of this video was.
	And why do this when you're finally about to be arraigned in a criminal charge?
	A district attorney in the Cape and Islands, Massachusetts, is going after him.
	But as I said, it's got 7 million views already.
	Hey, the big news today, two things, two big breaking stories today.
	President Trump visited Iraq.
	It was a surprise visit for Christmas.
	It was the president and the first lady, the press, the fake news, starting to go after him for being the first president.
	This was their big scandal of the day.
	Big first president not to visit the troops on Christmas Day.
	Well, it turned out he had.
	And it wasn't in response to those stories.
	This had been planned for days and days and days.
	Takes a lot of planning, obviously for security reasons, to get the president over there and back.
	It was a very secret flight.
	Curtains drawn on Air Force One.
	Actually, I don't know if they took Air Force One.
	They probably took a different plane.
	Curtains drawn, lights out on the flight.
	Top security.
	He was on the ground for several hours in Iraq, addressed the troops, then met with them, then took selfies with him, all that stuff.
	And he's back.
	It was a great visit.
	He said he plans to visit Afghanistan at some point.
	So that's a big breaking story today.
	Now, the other thing, this will really infuriate Democrats because the other big narrative was how the whole economy is crashing, the market is crashing.
	Today was an unbelievable day in the stock market.
	It closed up almost 1,100 points.
	That's huge, up 1,086 points, almost 1,100 points.
	That's the biggest one-day increase in seven years.
	Phenomenal day in the economy.
	You've got to figure tomorrow will be more of the same.
	Anyway, let's take some calls.
	Let's go to New Jersey.
	Let's go to Rob.
	Rob, welcome to the Sean Hannity Show.
	Hey, Rob.
	Hey, Mark.
	How are you doing?
	Thank you for taking the call.
	Yes.
	What do you want to say, Rob?
	If I didn't have to work so much, I'd love your show more often in the morning.
	Oh, thanks.
	Well, normally I'm on WOR here in New York, 10 to noon.
	But what do you want to say?
	Well, I took a little note and I dialed the phone because I heard what you said about the hatred for Donald Trump.
	And I always hear this phrase, hatred for Donald Trump.
	I have a little bit of a different opinion about that.
	I don't think it's the hatred.
	I think it's the fear about the agenda over the last 20, 30 years at least of the intentional downfall of the middle class and America in general as both Republicans and Democrats enrich themselves, as they're really all on the same team, both paid actors, they're all paid actors, whether it's from campaign donations or what have you.
	So I just, I think the hatred thing is an easy scapegoat as opposed to really what the true agenda is of the establishment, really.
	Well, okay, I know I understand what you're saying, and you're absolutely right.
	Republicans and Democrats have been awful on this for decades, whether it's both parties leaving the border wide open, both parties allowing Obamacare.
	They've been in all both parties in bed with the lobbyists.
	It's been horrible.
	I can see why the swamp hates Donald Trump.
	He's there to bust up their game.
	But the public, the liberals and the public joined in.
	Suddenly they're engaging in McCarthyism with Russian witch hunts.
	Suddenly they're defending the swamp.
	Why do you think that is, Rob?
	Well, you know, you mentioned the public.
	See, the establishment is a lot more, they're profiting from it directly, so you know why they want to keep them out of power.
	But I have a phrase on my page that I use.
	It's called media zombies.
	It's unbelievable to me that such a large percentage of the America, and I think it really is changing, but they really don't think for themselves.
	So this media zombie mentality is just unbelievable.
	They believe what they're told, and it's slowly starting to turn.
	But, you know, on my page, I try and do my part every day.
	And it's really, it's a shame when you see, you run into people and you try to talk to them, and they really have no idea what's truly going on with that.
	I call them evil geniuses about their intention of this country.
	All right.
	Well, Rob, thanks for calling.
	Yeah.
	I mean, listen, the media was always crazy liberal.
	Always, you go back to Dan Rather.
	Listen, he was the founder of fake news.
	I mean, major modern-day fake news.
	You remember he had a whole fake story on Bush going AWOL.
	It was so bad that CBS fired him.
	He was the main anchor.
	He was the face of CBS News, but his fake news was so bad that even CBS had to throw him out and fire him.
	And then I'm trying to remember after rather, I guess it calmed.
	Well, Obama won.
	I guess that's what calmed things down for a while.
	And I don't know if it's just 2018.
	People are so spoiled and immature.
	They just can't cope with losing anything.
	You know, normally when you lost the election, the other side won.
	All right.
	So, you know, you wait four years and you win it back.
	You look for candidates.
	You look for issues.
	Of course, you attack the current president when you can, you know, when you're asked, you attack him on issues.
	But this crazed, insane presidential harassment, trying to take him out every day with another fake made-up scandal.
	And, you know, everything they point to, you know, he fires General Mattis.
	All of a sudden, fake news, the public, the liberals go crazy.
	It's total chaos in the White House.
	How could he fire total chaos?
	Obama went through four secretaries of defense in rapid fire.
	There was a period where Obama had four secretaries of defense.
	In fact, Obama fired Mattis at one point.
	And it was a nasty, ugly firing.
	He didn't even tell him.
	He just fired him.
	And Mattis had to hear about it on TV.
	So I didn't hear much about that back then.
	You know what?
	Everything they bring up, they call this whatabout-ism, but what aboutism pretty much proves the Democrats to be like industrial strength hypocrites.
	You know, like they talk about paying Stormy Daniels to keep quiet.
	That's obviously a campaign finance violation.
	Well, no, it's not.
	And you think about Obama.
	You know, there was a point where he offered to pay Reverend Wright to keep quiet.
	Remember how Reverend Wright was screwing up the election for him?
	So Reverend Wright was approached, offered $150,000 by Obama.
	Obama admitted to it.
	So in fact, that offer is actually better.
	Stormy only got $130,000 there.
	But anything that they're upset about, why not all the time?
	It's just the most ridiculous, over-the-top hypocrisy and crazed anger.
	Let's go to Joe in Las Vegas.
	Hey, Joe, welcome to Sean Hannity Show.
	How are you doing, Mark?
	Merry Christmas.
	Merry Christmas.
	Two quick points.
	The first, there was a caller that said if Pence would come out and say what, you know, that he would call the Trump agenda.
	The problem is they would go after Pence just like they'd say, ah, he was part of the deal.
	Just like, look what they did to, you know, Romney.
	Romney was about as sweet as anything.
	So they'd go after Pence just as hard.
	Yeah.
	And my second point was like the reason why they really fear Donald Trump, because he'll actually do what he says.
	So, for example, everyone's been talking forever to move the embassy to Jerusalem.
	Trump actually did it.
	Trump said he was going to cut all these things.
	He did it.
	So when Trump says he's going to build the wall, Republicans, these rhinos, and the Democrats for sure are really afraid because they know he's going to do it.
	No, that's a good point.
	Well, Joe, thanks for calling.
	Yeah, maybe that's part of it.
	You know, obviously they didn't agree with Bush, and when Bush was president, they sure went after him a lot, but nothing like this.
	But maybe, as much as they disagreed with Bush, they knew he was a real swamp guy, and they took some comfort in that, that he wouldn't really rock the boat too much.
	But this is unlike anything we've ever seen.
	Hey, I mentioned this before.
	Let me just go over this again because I've heard some serious talk among the hierarchy of the Democratic Party.
	This is a strategy.
	They've been thinking about this.
	You find a way to not only impeach Trump, but impeach Pence and Trump together.
	You impeach them both somehow.
	If you do that, if you impeach the president and the vice president, Speaker of the House becomes the president.
	Here's the part two to that.
	Anybody can be Speaker of the House.
	They may not want Pelosi as president.
	Anybody can be Speaker of the House.
	The Democrats with control of the House can vote anybody they want as Speaker.
	You don't have to be a congressperson.
	You don't have to be a member.
	So let's say they want Joe Biden as president.
	They could remove Pelosi and appoint Joe Biden as Speaker of the House.
	In other words, they impeach both Pence and Trump, and then they pick who they want as president, appoint them Speaker of the House, and they would get the job.
	I know it sounds crazy, but it's possible.
	Odds are a million to one that could pull this off, but I know they've thought about it.
	Anyway, we'll come back in a moment.
	It's Mark Simone here for Sean Hannity.
	Hey, welcome back.
	It's the Sean Hannity Show.
	Mark Simone here for Sean.
	You know, you Democrats, you've got a real problem with this Hillary Clinton.
	I don't know what you've got to do about this, but you're not getting rid of her that easily.
	You know, every poll shows Democrats want a fresh new face.
	Obviously, Hillary is the biggest loser of all time.
	I mean, just loses every, you know, first time she runs for president, a rookie came out of nowhere and took the nomination from her.
	Second time she runs for president, a total amateur in his first race ever in politics takes it away from her.
	So yesterday she tweeted out a Christmas message, and the picture with it is a picture of her in the White House.
	I mean, this is getting creepy.
	You know, remember when she was running and they would tell you the most qualified person ever for president, which of course wasn't true.
	George H.W. Bush had a far greater resume.
	Nixon had a greater resume when he ran.
	Most qualified.
	You know, they said she's destined to be.
	Now she's like the old woman in Sunset Boulevard, you know, trying to make some sort of weird comeback.
	So I don't know what you Democrats are going to do about her, but if you hope to have any chance in 2020, you're going to have to like lock her up somewhere or kidnap her or something.
	Hey, it's been a great day, unbelievable day.
	The Dow up almost 1,100 points.
	Biggest day in seven years.
	The president visited Iraq.
	That was the breaking news earlier.
	And it was a great visit.
	We're just about out of time.
	Sean will be back soon.
	I'm Mark Simone.
	You want to listen to me?
	W-O-R here in New York.
	Or you can get me on iHeart.
	Just get the iHeart app.
	By the way, it's a good app to have on your phone, that iHeart app.
	It's really good.
	You can listen to everything on there, music, everything.
	Follow me on Twitter, Mark SimoneNY at Twitter.
	Mark Simone NYC at Instagram.
	And have a great rest of the holiday.
	It's New Year's Eve coming up.
	Then it's 2019.
	Predictions?
	Let's see.
	I think the tech industry has a big problem.
	I think finally Congress steps in and starts regulating it, controlling your privacy.
	I think if anybody's going to have a bad year, it's the tech industry.
	But it'll be a good year for us.
	Hey, we're out of time.
	Sean will be back soon.
	Mark Simone here.
	Thanks for listening and have a great new year.
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