All Episodes
Jan. 2, 2019 - Sean Hannity Show
01:36:38
Lessons for Romney

Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich joins Sean as 'Hannity' kicks off the New Year with the latest on the government shutdown, efforts to secure our border and the latest controversy from Senator Mitt Romney. The Sean Hannity Show is on weekdays from 3 pm to 6 pm ET on iHeartRadio and Hannity.com. Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

| Copy link to current segment

Time Text
This is an iHeart podcast.
You want smart political talk without the meltdowns?
We got you.
I'm Carol Markowitz and I'm Mary Catherine Hamm.
We've been around the block in media and we're doing things differently.
Normally is about real conversations.
Thoughtful, try to be funny, grounded, and no panic.
We'll keep you informed and entertained without ruining your day.
Join us every Tuesday and Thursday, normally, on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
I'm Ben Ferguson, and I'm Ted Cruz.
Three times a week, we do our podcast, Verdict with Ted Cruz.
Nationwide, we have millions of listeners.
Every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday, we break down the news and bring you behind the scenes inside the White House, inside the Senate, inside the United States Supreme Court.
And we cover the stories that you're not getting anywhere else.
We arm you with the facts to be able to know and advocate for the truth with your friends and family.
So down with Verdict with Ted Cruz now, wherever you get your podcasts.
My friends at MyPillow, my buddy Mike Lindell told me he was coming out with a brand new product.
It's called the New Mattress Topper.
So I got the new mattress topper immediately and I've been sleeping on it now for a couple of months.
It's the best thing you've ever felt in your life.
Now, you literally have MyPillow foam for support.
It's a transitional foam that helps relieve pressure points and it's ultra-soft, patented temperature regulating cover.
And I got to tell you, it has a 10-year warranty, a cover that's washable and dryable.
It's made in the USA, backed by their 60-day unconditional money-back guarantee.
Once you try this new mattress topper, you put it right over your mattress, you will never sleep better.
And right now, you, my radio listeners, are going to save 30% off when you go to mypillow.com and use the promo code TOPPER.
And by the way, Mike will also give you two standard MyPillows absolutely free.
All right.
So try mypillow.com promo code Topper.
Promo code Topper for this great deal and the best night's sleep you ever had.
Happy New Year.
Glad you're with us.
Write down our toll-free number.
That has not changed.
800-941-Sean, if you want to be a part of the program.
Here's why I take my two-week vacation every year.
This is my big vacation of the year.
Even my own family says, what's wrong with you?
You work too much.
Just take more time.
Take more.
I'm like, there's something happening.
I got to go in.
What happens, though, is, and I did not watch a lot of TV.
I did a lot of reading.
I've been reading Taylor Colwell novels and a bunch of other stuff that's important in my life.
And you just, after like a week, this whole adrenaline life that I live on radio and TV, I start becoming like a self that I remember from last Christmas because that's about the only time the adrenaline is not racing totally and completely and utterly through my entire body system.
You mean you become a human.
I basically become human being again.
Yeah.
And I, you know, I get a little more thoughtful, a little more soulful.
I used to go ski every year, but I don't do skiing much anymore.
Not that I don't want to.
My son broke his leg when he was eight, and that was it for me.
I just, I couldn't go back.
I know, what a wimp, right?
But I skied my whole life.
But there's something like I find God on the mountain.
It's just that moment where you're looking out and you've just, it's just majestic.
And anyway, so I did watch some TV.
Not a lot, not a lot of news.
I kept up with the news, but mostly online.
And I have started just thinking and thinking and thinking about what this year is going to be like.
It's culminated in what I am going to describe to you as a mission statement for both this show on radio and the TV show Hannity on the Fox News Channel.
And it's like things have gotten to a place that it's so bad, the forces of hatred against this president are so aligned, they're so out of their minds.
They are so fixated on destroying the president that there's, in my mind, it just started coalescing in my mind that there's got to be another focus in this country on far more important things than, well, what did President Trump and Melania say to seven-year-olds calling in about Santa?
That became a big controversy.
I turned on the news and they're, well, he said, is seven about the age where maybe, you know, kids believe in Santa Lessa or, oh, you know, you'd think it's the biggest sin of the century.
And they turn it into the biggest deal or the stock market fluctuations.
They turn that into the biggest deal.
This is what they'll never tell you tonight to make my point.
That Wall Street Journal pointed out, total U.S. retail sales rose 5.1% for the holiday season.
So, I mean, serious, $850 billion was spent this holiday season.
Real middle-class wages, just in the last year, this is the president's accomplishments.
Middle-class wages went up, their hourly earnings eclipsing the 3% growth mark for the first time in 12 years.
That means the working men and women in this country, they benefited from the Trump economy.
They benefited from the Trump policies economically.
We already knew about, you know, 4.2% GDP growth, 3.4% GDP growth.
I mean, these are things we hadn't been seeing.
Now, I know that there are a lot of you.
Look, I'm not a big stock market person, but my buddy who does the stock market, my financial guy, sometimes writes a column for us.
You know, he always says, if you're not willing, if you need the money you're putting in the stock market within 10 years, don't put it in the stock market.
Put it in something, you know, like a treasury or a muni.
I don't know.
I don't even know what these things are.
Honestly, I pay so little attention to this crap.
I just don't care.
It's not my area of interest.
I've always felt in my heart, Wall Street's rigged.
I've always felt it's a betting game.
And yeah, it goes up and people, I just made so much on this stock and so much on this stock.
Okay, well, what about when the stock goes down?
I don't want to go through the emotional ebb and flow.
I'm kind of about wealth per, not protect.
You want your money to grow, and there are far safer investments.
You just have to do your due diligence, that sort of thing.
Anyway, so we have record holiday sales this Christmas season.
The president, here are his top 10 accomplishments in one year.
Remember Brett Kavanaugh mentioned him as a candidate?
Well, he's now on the Supreme Court.
He kept that promise.
The president confronted China.
Now China's capitulating on tariffs for automobiles, soybeans, vegetables, and other products that they will be importing from the United States.
That is a big win for the country.
Middle class wages rising again, eclipsing 3% for the first time since the Great Recession.
The president got the U.S.-Mexico-Canada trade deal.
All those people saying, well, Mexico is never going to pay for the wall.
That was another controversy.
I'll play it later.
I asked the president, you don't think Mexico is going to write you a check and pay for the wall, do you?
And he said, no, I'm going to negotiate a better trade deal so it'll pay for itself.
Well, that's exactly what he did with the Mexico-Canada trade deal.
He ended that horrific Iranian nuclear deal.
That was another success last year.
He moved the embassy to Jerusalem.
That was another promise made and a promise kept.
We see that he's been able to smash the ISIS caliphate in Syria to the point now the JV team is under control.
Of course, the JV team was what Barack Hussein Obama called them.
Yeah, just the JV.
We see record low unemployment for Hispanic Americans, African Americans, women in the workplace, youth unemployment.
Our vets are getting back to work in numbers that we haven't seen in decades.
The president held the line on migrant caravans.
And one of the things I am most excited about that I don't think people understand how huge this is, but because he opened up drilling in Alaska, and we haven't even started yet in Anwar, and the president ending burdensome regulation.
Well, we now had in 2018 record American oil production.
And the U.S. has now surpassed Russia and Saudi Arabia.
And we are now the world's largest producer of crude oil.
And I'm not even talking about natural gas and clean coal.
You add those jobs to the American economy when they'll be coming online as the expansion capabilities rise.
What's going to happen is you're going to have millions of Americans get high-paying career jobs.
Well, that's going to mean new homes for them and new cars and trucks for them.
That's going to mean an increase in their lifestyle, a dramatic improvement in their lifestyles, better lives for themselves, more opportunities for their kids.
And then we're not dependent on foreign oil as the lifeblood of our economy.
So I'm on vacation and I'm realizing you're never, ever, ever going to get that news except from a few locations.
Some talk radio hosts, some are phonies, some a few cable TV shows, mostly on Fox.
And that's about it.
You got all of these forces.
First, you got the crazy Democrats.
They hate Democrats.
They hate Trump.
Maxine Waters hates Donald Trump.
Nancy Pelosi hates Donald Trump.
Adam Schiff hates Donald Trump.
Chuck Schumer, the flip-flopper himself on immigration.
They all hate Trump.
The news media in this country.
Again, I'm watching the president in Iraq and they're criticizing him because he's visiting the troops.
I'm like, wow, we've gotten this low.
And then he's talking to kids on Christmas.
He didn't go to Mar-a-Lago.
He says, I'm here.
I'm willing to do a deal.
It's Christmas Eve.
Hello.
I'm trying to be funny.
Then you add to this, you know, we've got these five forces of hate against the president.
I just said the five forces, but now I would say the five forces of hate.
You got the Democratic Party.
If Donald Trump cured cancer and gave every American a million dollars today, they'd still hate him.
Then you got their willing accomplices, an extension of the Democratic Party.
That's the hate Trump media and probably the most obvious haters.
And it's every second, every minute, every hour, every day.
A nonstop loop of hating Trump.
And most of the American newspapers are a part of it.
The networks are a part of it.
You got two cable channels just dedicated to hating Trump every minute of every day.
And then you got the deep state.
By the way, watch that boomerang come back this year.
Oh, it's coming back.
What we've reported to you is all going to happen.
I won't get into that now, but they hate Trump.
Remember, you are a, we are smelly Walmart people, according to Peter Strzok.
We are irredeemable deplorables, according to Hillary.
We are bitter, angry Americans that cling to God, guns, Bibles, and religion, as Barack Obama once described us.
But here's the problem.
Is any of what they're going to do or say they're going to do this year going to help the men and women in this country, the forgotten men and women?
They're going to be fixating all of their hatred on one man.
Well, we're not going to do that.
This show, and on Hannity on the TV show, we're going to go in a different direction.
And we are going to watch out for the things that matter to you, protecting your security, making sure the economy grows to help you and the decisions we need to make as a country so that we are strong and prosperous, not only for this generation, but for future generations, which means we have a lot of people to watch.
So we're going to add this new segment of the program.
We're going to have, we'll call it Hannity Watch.
Hannity Watch on the economy.
Okay, statistics you're never going to get anywhere else.
Hannity watch on the government shutdown.
What deal is being offered?
Why won't they take the deal?
Right now there's a deal on the table.
You give the money for the wall for the president, which is good for our security, to stop drug trafficking, human trafficking, criminals from crossing over the border, and they would get protection for some of the DACA kids.
Sounds like a reasonable deal.
We're going to have Hannity watch on the hate Trump media, Hannity Watch on the hate Trump deep state.
We're going to have Hannity Watch on the hate Trump Hollywood gang, Hannity Watch on the socialism push in the country.
And at the end of the day, we're going to cover the things that no other show, that no other, no members of the media seem to want to cover.
And we'll cover the lies and the double standard.
And we're going to stand up for equal justice under the law.
And we're going to stand up for equal application under the law.
And moving forward, what I have concluded is there's got to be one show in America that wants to help protect and look out for you, the American people.
And we're going to watch these forces of hate.
We're going to chronicle it.
And we're going to offer solutions that they're not capable of.
We've got to protect the country against forces that would shred our Constitution.
This is about protecting core values, due process, equal justice, equal application.
We're going to be your watchdog.
We're going to expose corruption and lies and double standards.
We're going to expose bias.
And we're going to expose who the real haters in this country are.
They're not people that care about you.
They're not people that care about your kids, your future, your generations, jobs, protecting the economy, protecting.
You know, look what happened with this cop that was killed by an illegal immigrant.
Well, hello.
Do we have an obligation to protect the people of this country?
So we're kind of going to be an island.
And I'm going to tell you more about it tonight.
We've got Hannity Watch on the border battle, the shutdown battle, and Hannity Watch on the deep state all coming up.
Newt Gingrich joins us today.
Also, well, the latest, we've watched, missed a lot of deep state news.
John Solomon will check in.
We'll get to your calls today, but we're going to do this differently.
They're going in one direction, and I'm going in the direction of we will look out and watch all of this hatred and expose it and offer the solutions that will hopefully make the country a better, safer, stronger, and more secure place.
We'll continue.
Hey, if you're one of 34 million Americans that smokes, you know what a hassle it can be.
For me, I'm out playing golf and I come back smelling like cigars.
It's the smell on your hands and your breath, your clothes.
But now thanks to Juul, you don't have to worry about it anymore.
Juul is a vaporizer.
It does contain nicotine for a satisfying transition.
Now, when I found Juul, it was a complete game changer in my life.
I don't smoke any cigars any longer.
And Juul was designed by smokers for smokers to be an alternative to whatever it is you're smoking.
So if you're one of 34 million adults who do smoke cigars, cigarettes, pipe, whatever, well, there is an alternative to all of them.
Now, to discover the smoking alternative, that's like nothing you've ever tried.
Just visit juul.com slash switchamerica.
That's ju L.com slash switchamerica.
Now, warning, this product does contain nicotine, and nicotine is addictive.
So I'm just going to finish this thought, then we'll get to the government shutdown and why the border battle is worth fighting for, because it is worth fighting for.
And we have a lot of deep state news.
We know that Mayor Giuliani accused Mueller of some pretty serious stuff during the holiday.
And I think that he's probably right accusing him of destroying the evidence as it relates to Strzok and Page's phone.
So we'll get to that.
Very simply, I see a media landscape with just one message, hating Trump.
I mean, this is not disliked.
They hate him.
They think they're going to impeach him.
They're not.
You're never going to get two-thirds of the Senate.
They may impeach him in the House because you've got to— In 90 days, America's going to know what a bunch of lunatics Nancy Pelosi and her team is.
I'm telling you, it's going to be fun covering them.
And we have plans that we can't reveal because there are people that don't think in this business and they copy everything I do.
But we have good plans.
But I'm going to tell you what this show is going to be about going forward.
We're going to be your watchdog.
They can hate the president all they want.
They can create false hysteria, impeachment, impeachment all they want.
It's not going to happen.
And we're going to evaluate the important issues of the day as a show that is a separate island dedicated to protecting our deeply held American values and fighting what's good for you and the American family in general.
Simple.
So that's basically it.
We're calling it Hannity Watch, and we're going to be different.
And we're going to literally now cover the news and information that you can't get from the hate Trump media, the hate Trump Democratic Party, the hate Trump deep state, the hate Trump never Republicans.
I honestly could care less what Mitt Romney has to say about Donald Trump.
You know what I care about?
I care about record low unemployment for women in the workplace, Hispanic Americans, African Americans, and the fact that you don't like Donald Trump's style doesn't matter to me.
We're now the biggest producer of oil and energy on the planet.
I like that because that means high-paying career jobs for my fellow Americans.
I like the fact that the president's fighting to build the wall to protect our southern border from human trafficking, drug trafficking, and those that would want to bring harm to our American family.
I think we have a right to vet people.
Democrats sounded that way four years ago.
Now they changed their tune.
Why?
just because Donald Trump wants it.
I don't care that they think Robert Mueller's stupid report is going to be the most interesting thing of the year.
It's not.
There is no evidence of Trump-Russia collusion.
There never has been.
And all these process crimes that they get all worked up about don't mean a thing.
So we'll have things like, look, the bottom line is both here and on television, this show is going to be an island unto itself.
We're going to be very different than anything else you can get anywhere else on TV and on radio, except for my fellow conservative radio hosts that do a great job every day.
And there are many of them.
And I, you know what?
Thank God they're doing what they're doing.
But we're going to, we're literally dedicated.
We want to protect and preserve American values, American principles.
We're not going to be governed by this, what is now a pathological hatred, an irrational hatred, a fixation, a focus that's never ending on one person.
Not even about the person as much as it is about the policies.
He just happened to have a personality that fights for the things that he ran on.
And he steps on toes and he breaks dishes and he makes people uncomfortable.
Okay, well, too bad.
He's an iconoclastic person.
And I think, you know, a lot's riding on him getting this wall built.
And holding out, I think, is an important thing to do.
You know, but there's so much more to it.
This is what I realized over vacation.
You know, we've got American values and principles.
You know, there's got to be some people out here that are dedicated to bringing you the truth and a different point of view.
That's what Hannity Watch is all about.
Hannity Watch on the economy.
How are things going to impact your family and your pocketbook?
Hannity Watch on healthcare.
Okay, how do we get the best care at the lowest cost for you and your family?
That's where Dr. Josh Umber comes in, Atlas MD.
Healthcare Cooperatives, Health Savings Accounts.
Hannity Watch on Media Bias.
By the way, that's like fishing in a barrel.
Honestly, you just, you can't miss.
If I wanted to do a Hannity Watch on the media bias segment every second of every day, I could fill the hour.
We saw the president signing a campaign hat, a red hat, his Make America Great Again hat.
Troops are not supposed to be involved in political activities.
The U.S. military is not a political force.
And there's no question the saying Trump 2020 and Make America Great Again, those are political slogans of a Trump campaign.
They are not governmental sayings, to say the least.
The president seems to have confused in some way this troop deployment, this troop visit with a campaign rally.
If you told me I'm getting a 10% raise and I'm only getting a 2.6% raise, I'd be pretty pissed off, especially if I was in a war zone risking my life every day.
Ambassador Rice is right.
The man does not believe in what America stands for.
What did you make of that address that Donald Trump gave in front of U.S. troops in Iraq?
I thought it was obscene.
When we turned on CNN and we saw the president politicizing a Christmas message, it was like, we kept saying, he's like the Grinch.
Every time he's around military audiences, he tends to politicize it.
Mr. Trump once again used a captive audience of American heroes to push his unpopular domestic agenda, this time the wall.
An important step, albeit one that took a long time for him to do.
Or after two years in presidency visiting soldiers in Iraq, this was kind of over the edge.
Did the president, from what we know, get a good sense of what the situation actually is there on the ground?
Well, I don't know how you can after three hours, but that's just me.
It's just another flashover substance type of thing.
Everything with this president is staged events.
It seems very disingenuous.
It seems so contrived and so disingenuous.
He should have made it earlier.
He only made it because Mattis quit and he had a lot of pressure saying he hadn't gone anywhere.
Doom and gloom and hatred and it's now really a mental condition.
They can't help it.
It's pathological.
I don't think they can help themselves.
They wake up every day, work themselves up into a frenzy.
By the way, the president intervened to make sure the Coast Guard gets paid during the government shutdown.
I personally advocate, I hope that they're able to, and they always do it, so I don't think it's going to be a problem.
I want those people that have been furloughed to get their money back.
I know that that is, you know, this is important.
It's around Christmas time.
People have bills to pay.
It's hard.
And I think he will.
Hang on.
I got to send one quick note.
Yes, yes, and yes.
All right.
I'm back to the show.
And I will tell you that, you know, that $75 million payroll, you know, the president will do that.
But the president's got to hold out for his wall.
If they want to wait three months, I'm fine with that.
Essential services will continue.
People will get their social security checks.
The military is standing by.
Department of Homeland Security is standing by.
The Democrats wanted this wall themselves just a couple of short years ago, but now because Trump wants it and their derangement syndrome kicked in, now they don't want the wall.
I mean, we've got a lot.
We've got a Hannity watch on national security.
This is about protecting our homeland and literally keeping Americans safe, both home and abroad.
Hannity watch on border security.
The country needs to stop the flow of illegal drugs on our southern border, human trafficking on our southern border.
I've at least taken the time to go down there.
Half these people that talk about it, they've never been down there their whole life.
Been down there 13 times from the Rio Grande to San Diego.
So we've got news that really needs to be covered.
And more importantly, policies need to be put in place that are good for you, we, the people, and for the country, America.
And that's the minor adjustment that we're making in light of what is now the biggest information crisis in American history.
So we're calling it Hannity Watch.
If you think they're going to report that the president intervened to make sure the Coast Guard gets paid?
No, I don't think they're going to do that.
You think they're going to give you the top achievements from last year?
Promises made, promises can.
I doubt it.
Or that we had a record Christmas season, holiday season, or that the president's approval rating, what, 47%?
Happy with the job he's doing.
After all he's been through and all the horror that's been spewed his way, you would think it's a lot worse.
And remember, the Constitution, Article 2, Section 4 about impeachable offenses, treason, bribery, high crimes, misdemeanors.
Let me make a prediction.
All the Russia stuff is going to go away, and they're going to have to move the bar because they can't get them on Russia.
But they'll figure out something that they think they can get them on.
And if the Democrats, here's another prediction.
If they want to go down this road and the deep state aligns with them and the media aligns with them and Democratic lunatics, you will know how crazy the Democrats are.
Promise you listen to this show for the next hundred days.
Watch Hannity for the next hundred days, you will know how insane they are.
And it's not gonna, it's.
It's honestly the easiest job in the world to.
All you got to do is show them in their own words and they will expose themselves anyway.
For that to happen, the House OF Representatives, if they do it, it's going to be a purely pure, it's purely going to be a political act.
That's it.
They'll find some, you know, he spit on the sidewalk.
That's what it's going to probably be like.
And if that happens, anybody can bring charges of impeachment in the House.
Did you know that?
Anybody can do it.
Any member of the House can propose charges.
And then they just need a simple majority.
But then it gets kicked to the Senate.
And then you need two-thirds of the Senate to vote to convict on the impeachment order.
And at that particular point, I think the bar is way too high.
And here's my prediction.
The president's approval rating will go even higher.
It'll go higher by the day.
That's how interesting that's going to get.
You know, there was a lot that took place.
You know, we're having a battle over the borders, right?
So you can go back and look at, you know, I have some statistics from a number of years ago, the government accountability office.
There had been 25,064 homicide arrests of criminal aliens since 1955.
There were 52,929 criminal aliens incarcerated in federal prisons.
Those numbers have gone up.
We now know that the average cost is $70,000 for every illegal immigrant in the country as it relates to use of the criminal justice system, the health care system, our educational system.
But putting all that aside, what do you say, those that don't want some border protection, what do you say to families that lose loved ones?
We all know about Kate Steinley.
That's only one person.
They've been, look at what happened this weekend.
We had this murder out in California, this police officer.
And I'm thinking, okay, if you're part of that family, what are you thinking?
Because I know what I'd be thinking.
Now, the local police are blaming California's sanctuary to city and state laws for allowing a violent illegal immigrant to evade capture until gunned down, until he gunned down a cop, a hero cop last weekend.
Anyway, Perez Aragia, who was in the country illegally, had previous arrest, taken into custody Friday on suspicion of killing Newman police corporal Ronald Singh, who is 33 years old, husband and father of a five-month-old baby boy, killed by an illegal immigrant.
The sheriff Adam Christensen, who led the investigation, rightly, I think, is blaming California sanctuary laws for preventing local authorities from reporting this illegal immigrant to U.S. immigration officials for deportation after two previous drunken drive-in arrests.
The sheriff also said this guy had gang affiliations.
Spokesman for Governor Brown said that police could have informed federal authorities if the suspect was a known gang member.
Oh, okay.
That's your excuse.
Now you have people that not only break the law, but then they kill other Americans.
Now, what do I want in terms of immigration?
Well, we saw what happened on New Year's Eve when the border got rushed again.
Remember we saw before vacation, bottles and rocks being pelted at our guys?
Our ICE officers?
In this particular case, this five-month-old boy will never see his father because we don't enforce the laws of the land.
You know, we have another case.
Looks like California police officer Ronald Singh isn't the only American who might be alive today if we had a border wall.
We know in Knoxville, Tennessee, police have charged the man accused in a deadly crash on Chapman Highway Saturday night with criminally negligent homicide.
Knoxville Police Department said that Franco Cabrani Francisco Eduardo, 44, now faces homicide charges in addition to charges of not having a driver's license and having no proof of financial responsibility, which means he didn't have insurance.
Arrest records also show that he was that there was a hold placed on him by ICE.
But when you have sanctuary cities and sanctuary states, that doesn't mean a thing.
Well, what about these families?
So if we have a wall, well, okay, that means that people can come into the country.
I don't think most Americans care where you come from.
We want to check out your background.
We want to know that you come here with the best of intentions.
I say 99% probably want a better life for themselves and their kids.
We want to make sure you're not associated with criminal activity or with gang activity, that you have the means of taking care of yourself when you get here so you're not a burden on the American taxpayer.
And if you want to come in, we'll allow a certain number of people to come in every year based on our needs.
Maybe we need temporary workers more years than others.
And then they could apply for green cards and go through the process, but do it legally.
Why is that such a hard concept?
And the idea, if you don't have a wall, that people could just walk across with drugs and be involved in human trafficking is a form of insanity to me.
Where do you think those drugs are headed towards?
Every small town and little city in America and big city.
All right, don't forget our mission statement tonight on Hannity.
Desperate times call for desperate adjustments.
And that is, we are going to be the news outlet that you need that they will never provide.
All right, also when we get back, Hannity Watch on the borders, we'll have the latest.
Hannity watch the deep state.
A lot of news you did not hear about over the holiday.
In our two happy new year, Sean Hannity show, 800 9.1.
Sean is our toll-free telephone number.
You want to be a part of the program.
So I'm going to lay out this mission statement tonight.
We're not going to give away all our secrets, but one thing is certain.
In the year of 2019, you know, these times deserve a different approach.
And there's so much that is going on that is not being covered by, well, you have this alliance basically of deep state bureaucrats, the Democratic Party, the hate Democratic Party, the hate Trump media, the deep state that hates Trump, weak Republicans that hate Trump.
Mitt Romney hates Trump.
And meanwhile, I just gave you in the last hour a list of 10 of the most massive successes we had in the last year that nobody pays attention to.
Holiday sales, biggest in six years.
We had Brett Kavanaugh, promise made, promise kept on the Supreme Court.
The president confronting China, they've now capitulated on tariffs as it relates to automobiles and soybeans and a bunch of other American products.
You have middle-class wages.
I know you're thinking about the stock market, but for the middle class, they're not.
They're thinking about wages.
Well, that went up over 3% for the first time since the Great Recession.
We got the U.S.-Mexico-Canada trade deal.
And yeah, we're benefiting so much, some of that money is going to go to pay for the wall.
We ended the Iranian nuclear deal.
We've moved the U.S. Embassy to Jerusalem.
We've smashed the ISIS Caliphate.
And the president now has put an end to the JV team that Obama once referred to them as.
We got record low unemployment for Hispanic Americans, African Americans, women in the workplace, Asian Americans, youth unemployment.
You know, the president held the line with migrants.
We now are energy independent.
America had record American oil production because the president got rid of the bureaucracy.
And finally, last year we surpassed Russia and Saudi Arabia to become the world's largest producer of crude oil.
You add natural gas to that.
And we're going to create millions of high-paying career jobs for Americans.
President ends with a 52% approval rating.
I'm sorry, 47% approval rating as it relates to Rasmussen, about the same level that Obama had.
But yet all you're going to hear this year is nonstop, never-ending Trump derangement hatred, not syndrome.
It is a hatred.
Powerful forces, the media, the Democratic Party, weak Republicans, never Trumpers, and the deep state, all in unison, just trying to destroy the president and make no progress for the American people.
So that's why we're creating Hannity Watch on the economy, Hannity Watch on the hypocrisy, Hannity Watch on the media, Hannity Watch on border security, Hannity watch on the deep state.
And we're going to cover the news and give you the information you can't get anywhere else because they have one agenda.
Hate Trump every second, every minute, every hour of every day.
Newt Gingrich is here with his preview of 2019.
How are you?
How are you doing?
I'm doing great.
That's actually pretty exciting.
And quite a program you've outlined.
You know, I spent the two weeks, so I'm watching TV over the holiday, right?
Every time I turn on any news program, it was, all it was is, I hate Donald Trump.
That's all it is.
And then I began to realize this is an environment we've never lived in before.
So I think it is so bad that there's got to be a counter program to this.
And the counter program, who's going to look out for the forgotten men and women and keep the economy rolling and keep energy jobs so they can be created and fight to keep the country safe and secure and secure the borders.
And I just think it's an opening because nobody else is going to do it.
Well, no, look, I think it's great.
In fact, my one suggestion for you to think about, and it's already changing it.
Go ahead.
I've got to have your package each day.
No.
Well, I thought it was brilliant, but it sparked my creative juices.
What can I tell you?
I think you ought to take the essence of every day, put it into a newsletter or an email format, and offer to anybody who wants it the talking points from that day of all the key news items you just outlined so that they have it to go to work the next day or to go to the local bar or to go to coffee Saturday morning.
And they've got your talking points in their hand.
And I think you'd be surprised how many people sign up for it.
And you know what?
I'm going to do that.
And we'll do it for free.
And we'll put it up on my website.
We'll put it up on social media.
And then everybody can have it.
Because here's what's missing.
As I watched them criticize the president and Melania from going to Iraq, that was like the last straw for me.
And then they criticized the president because he and the first lady were talking to kids about Santa and he didn't do it the right way, according to the media.
And then I just realized the only words we're going to hear this year are impeachment, impeachment, impeachment.
The president is not getting impeached this year.
I'm 99.9% sure there's no Russia collusion.
It was Hillary collusion with Russia, but not Trump.
And I think they're going to be very disappointed, move the goalpost, but they're not going to be talking about or thinking up policies that are going to help the American people.
That I can assure you.
No, that's right.
I thought it was interesting, by the way, that Giuliani said, you know, put up or shut up.
I mean, Mueller's had all this time.
What she got.
Show your hand.
And I don't think they have a hand.
I think they have to do it.
I don't think so either.
What about all these other issues, though?
Because this is part of what my coverage is going to be about, too.
What about the abuse of the powerful tools of intelligence?
What about the fact that they exonerated Hillary when she was guilty of crimes?
What about the fact that they committed fraud against FISA court judges?
What's going to happen there?
Well, look, I think there's a whole range of those things.
And I think the depth of corruption, when you look at the FBI, for example, it's astonishing how many different people are now involved.
And I think again and again you see this happening across the system.
And that to me was a surprise.
I mean, I knew that there was a bias, but I didn't know that it had gotten so bad that people were willing to break the law and cover for each other.
And you're exactly right.
There is a pattern out there that we're going to have to continue to put pressure on.
And of course, the other story here, which is going to be fascinating, is I noticed this afternoon that the left-wingers are already mad at Nancy Pelosi because the rules package that she's proposing doesn't give them everything they want.
And I think that the Democrats may find that they have a lot more problems among themselves than they expected, and that life is not going to be nearly as easy and clear-sailing as the New York Times or the Washington Post would like.
You see, I think something's going to happen this year, and it's going to be fascinating for me to watch and you to watch, is they're going to start overplaying their hand.
And if they think that they're going to issue a million subpoenas on a million different topics and not have pushback and not do what Obama did in that slow walk it all, I think they're delusional.
You know, the idea that they're going to try and turn the next two years into destroying one man and not think about the American people is a mistake.
For example, we're now in the middle of a so-called government shutdown.
Government shutdowns don't bother me.
I do want the people that are furloughed to get full back pay.
I don't want them to suffer.
But essential services always keep going.
But the idea that they're not going to fund the border wall, I don't see the president caving on that.
The president's going to get the money for his wall one way or another.
And I think stopping drug trafficking and human trafficking and having the ability to vet people that come into this country is a good thing for our safety and security.
And I think the American people, it's a winning issue for the president in the end.
Look, every time you see, for example, as we saw in California the other day, an illegal alien killing a policeman, it just reminds everybody that those who are opposed to protecting America just are totally out of touch with reality.
I think in the long run, being against national security and being against public safety is a losing hand.
All right, quick break more with Newt Gingrich on the other side as we continue our new year edition of the Sean Hannity Show.
One thing I think we can agree on is we shouldn't shut down the government over a dispute.
And you want to shut it down.
You keep talking about it.
The last time, Chuck, you shut it down.
No, no, no.
And then you opened up.
20 times quickly.
I don't want to do what you did.
20 times you have called for I will shut down the government if I don't get my wall.
None of us, if you want to know something, you want to put that in.
You said it.
I'll take it.
Okay, good.
You know what I'll say?
Yes.
If we don't get what we want one way or the other, whether it's through you, through a military, through anything you want to call, I will shut down the government.
Okay, that's fair enough.
And I am proud, and I'll just agree.
I am proud to shut down the government for border security, Chuck, because the people of this country don't want criminals and people that have lots of problems and drugs pouring into our country.
So I will take the mantle.
I will be the one to shut it down.
I'm not going to blame you for it.
The last time you shut it down, it didn't work.
I will take the mantle of shutting down.
And I'm going to shut it down for border, but we believe you shouldn't shut it down.
All right, as we continue with Newt Gingrich on our newsmaker line, what do you think is going to happen as it relates to the shutdown?
Because my position for the president would be, and I know the administration invited over the Democratic leaders.
They didn't really want to spend time with the president.
They want to do it their way.
They're going to offer a package tomorrow with zero wall funding.
Okay, that's an unacceptable deal.
So the president's going to keep the government shut down.
I assume there'll be continuing resolutions to fund the essential aspects of government until they come to a deal.
How do you see this playing out?
I think it depends on how much nerve the president has.
I think in the end, first of all, and as you know, I wrote an op-ed about this about two weeks ago.
I think that there's a deal for the DREAMers, which over 80% of the country agrees with.
If you came here as a young child, we ought to find a way to make you legally comfortable.
Not necessarily have citizenship, but legally comfortable.
And there's a deal to combine that with funding for the southern border.
And I think the Democrats, every day they turn that down, are saying to the Hispanic community that they dislike Trump more than they care about helping people who overwhelmingly Americans think ought to be helped.
I don't see why the president should give in.
And I think that if he's continuously willing to talk and he's continuously looking for some reasonable compromise, they could pass, for example, $2.5 billion this year and committed $2.5 billion in appropriations next year.
He'd get $5 billion.
And the Democrats will say, no, I'm not even going to do that.
I think currently they backed off even from the original billion six-state effort.
There's a point where it becomes silly.
And I think one of his jobs, and he intuitively, you can watch him, he intuitively knows that the more the country gets to see of Nancy Pelosi, the better off it's going to be for Republicans.
Well, I think he wants her out there in public.
He wants her being herself.
You know, if you look at the sheriff out in California, you have a local sheriff blaming, you know, California is not only, San Francisco is not only a sanctuary city, but California is a sanctuary state.
And the local sheriff, Perez Aragaya, you know, literally is saying now that those laws, blaming those laws for the illegal alien murder of a hero cop.
I mean, that just happens this weekend.
And how do you justify one American dying?
I'm going to see more of this.
Well, and I think what it does is it makes the Democrats look like they're totally out of touch With reality.
And of course, the left-wing Democratic Party is totally out of touch with reality.
And that's a key thing to understand about this.
You're not having a debate between two sides about the same world.
You have a debate where one side lives in a fantasy in which everybody's nice.
We don't really need borders.
MS-13 isn't a threat, etc.
And I think as the country comes to understand that, the future of the Democrats will diminish accordingly.
You know, I look at what the president is doing here on this.
I just think that closing the government down and not making any deal, but being open to the president stayed home as Nancy Pelosi was in Hawaii and Maxime Waters, I read, was in the Bahamas or somewhere, and everybody else is on vacation.
And he's saying, I'm here.
I'm willing to make a deal for going that vacation.
I think it was a smart thing to do.
But more importantly, I don't know how any reasonable person with the numbers of Americans that have been murdered, and I've been from the Rio Grande to San Diego 13 times, helicopters, boat, all-terrain vehicle, horseback, you name it, I've been on it.
I've been there when gang members were arrested.
I have the videotape.
I've seen the drug warehouses, floor-to-ceiling drugs, but drugs, human trafficking, the dangerous element that want to cross our borders.
To me, it seems like something worth fighting for.
And one of the things I don't like about a lot of politicians in that.
Right now, you're engaged in the contest of will.
Pelosi feels her oath.
She got to be speaker again, and she thinks that she's tougher than the president.
And I think there's a certain importance to Trump and, frankly, forcing a victory here.
I don't care how long it takes.
And again, those our audience ought to know, I helped close the government twice in 95, early 96 for a total of 27 days.
And as a result of that confrontation, we ended up getting a welfare reform, the largest capital gains tax cut in history.
And we balanced the federal budget for four straight years.
So I'm not afraid to get involved in a collision.
And I think it's really important that the president not back down because this is the first test of two solid years of the Democrats trying to come at him.
And if he gives in on this, who knows what their next demand will be.
Yeah, I think you're going to see a lot of bars being moved.
Mr. Speaker, Happy New Year.
And we'll be seeing you hopefully a lot throughout the year and hearing from you on the show regularly.
We always love having you.
And all the best to you and Callista.
And I hope you're enjoying Italy, the fine wine, and dining while I'm working hard every day, you know, trying to save America.
I just hope you're enjoying it.
McLean, Virginia.
I'm talking to you from McLean, Virginia, and I'll tell you, I am really, I am really looking forward to your new program.
I think it's a brilliant insight, and I think it's going to be historic and very important.
All right.
Thank you, Speaker of the House, Newt Kingridge, 800-941 Sean is our toll-free telephone number.
You want to be a part of the program?
We'll have more on this immigration debate coming up at the top of the hour.
Our Border Watch segment comes up later in the program.
We're going to have our mission statement on Hannity tonight, nine Eastern on the Fox News channel.
We'll have our Deep State Watch also coming up in the next hour as well.
Have you seen conduct by the Mueller team, or are you aware of actions that they've taken that you think should be independently investigated by the United States?
Absolutely.
Destroying the 19,000 texts of struck and pays.
I told you at the beginning, this thing began illegitimately.
It began with struck and the steel dossier, which is totally false, paid for by Hillary Clinton.
Imagine the search warrant is based on a bought and paid for piece of Upper research paid for by a political candidate, a piece of garbage, and they don't properly alert the court to that.
A lot of deep state news, Hannity Deep State Watch continues as Giuliani accusing the Mueller team, Mueller himself, of destroying key evidence.
And he made this over the Christmas break.
The media, of course, pretends not to notice.
But if you think what that would do to this case, if true, why were those 19,000 texts, why were the phones of Paige and Strzok cleaned, wiped cleaned?
How is it that the left always gets away with wiping stuff away?
But, you know, then look at the case of General Flynn.
General Flynn, you don't need a lawyer, says the deputy FBI Director McCabe.
No, just you're just going to come over and a couple of guys are going to talk to you.
No big deal.
James Comey, ha, bragging about the fact that he, on day four, the Trump administration sent in his FBI agent something he never would do if Obama was president or if Bush was president, but he wanted to take advantage of Trump being president.
They all had an agenda.
He knew about the dossier being unverified and salacious and phony, but he still signed off on it.
And one of these people is going to be held responsible.
And so Giuliani said that Mueller should be investigated for destruction of evidence for allowing those text messages from Strzok to be erased, messages that would show the state of mind and the tactics of the lead anti-Trump FBI agent at the beginning of this entire probe.
By the way, Ken Starr said that Mueller's team may be guilty of obstruction of justice.
You have now a poll that came out just two days ago.
The majority of Americans want Trump to declassify documents from the Russia investigations.
That would be the things we've been telling you about.
That would be the FISA warrant applications themselves.
Again, unverified, uncorroborated, a lot of it debunked, and yet all these people put their signature on it.
Frauds committed against four FISA court judges.
Look at the oddity of how they handled the Flynn interview, told him he doesn't need a lawyer, doing things they'd never do in any other administration.
On top of that, we have a, you know, we have Fusion GPS spy Christopher Steele admitting he was hired by Democrats to sabotage Trump and his campaign and posed victory.
That also happened.
So, you know, at the end, where does this end?
Well, we know we've got a group of people that are going to be screaming impeachment, impeachment, impeachment, impeachment every single day, but yet there's no evidence of any Trump-Russia collusion.
But we have plenty of evidence of Hillary Clinton and her crimes that have yet, and she's yet to be brought to justice.
Anyway, he's been working real hard over the holiday while I was off trying to recharge my battery.
John Solomon of the Hill is back with us.
How are you?
Happy New Year, Sean.
Good to be with you.
Well, I think Juliani is right.
He did the wide-ranging interview is with you.
Tell us about.
Yeah, it was an amazing interview.
And, you know, there are so many things now when we look back.
You know, part of the problem with the Russian case is it's complicated.
And, two, some of the revelations that are exculpatory or helpful to the president are so scattered that no one's pulled them all together.
And I think the mayor did a great job of looking at 30,000 feet, all the problems with his investigation.
You've got these 19,000 text messages the FBI destroyed.
Only the IG went to the effort and got him reinstated when he found him.
Do we know if we got all of them?
Because without the IG, which is important ones.
Yeah, the most important ones that were not recovered were the ones that Paige and Strzzok exchanged while they were working for Robert Mueller's investigation.
So those first three months from May to June before they left or were fired from the Mueller investigation, those text messages remarkably are wiped and gone and never to be retrieved.
And we'll never know what they were talking about and how they were trying to steer that investigation in the first three months of Robert Mueller's technology.
But Mueller had to know at that point because Strzok and Paige were working for him.
And he had discovered that they were so virulently anti-Trump.
So he had an obligation, didn't he, to preserve these text messages, preserve these phones?
It's funny.
It's the same obligation Hillary Clinton had to retain those work-related emails on her server and didn't comply with.
There's a law called the Federal Records Act, and it says anything that you create in your government work that's substantive or relative to government work needs to be preserved.
One of the things the IG pointed out in his December report was the FBI didn't really, and the Justice Department and Mueller's office didn't have a policy for complying consistently with that law.
And so right off the bat, you got the investigators not complying with laws, and yet they're investigating other people for potentially breaking the law.
And I think that's the sort of hypocrisy that drives everyday Americans crazy.
All right, as we continue our Hannity Deep State Watch, because this is going to be an ongoing story throughout the year, the question is, remember when I said facetiously and I said it's not going to work out well for you and I don't recommend it, but if you were to do the things that Hillary did and you were to erase subpoenaed emails and then acid wash your hard drive with bleach bid and bust up your devices with hammers knowing they also had information that had been subpoenaed, I wouldn't recommend it.
And everybody said, Hannity's advising people to obstruct justice.
Hannity was doing no such thing.
I was saying if you did what she did, it would be pretty dumb.
Now, how do they get away with it?
People ask all the time, when is there, I mean, do we expect the next Attorney General?
Do we expect the Inspector General?
Do we expect the President?
Is he going to, you know, Hill had an article saying most people want this information, the 302s.
They want the original applications.
They want the gang of eight information.
They want this so-called fourth bucket of information.
You could tell us about that.
Are we ever going to get to see this stuff?
I do.
I have a high degree of confidence that the president, when the time is right, when the opportunity is no longer there for Democrats to say you release that information to obstruct Bob Mueller's investigation, when that time is right, I believe the president will release all that information.
And when we see it in its entirety, everything we've been talking about up to this point will not only be confirmed, there will be new revelations.
I am certain that the FBI had evidence that was exculpatory to Carter Page that they kept out of the FISA warrant.
I'm certain of something because I'm going to report it tonight, and I'm going to reveal it on your show tonight on Fox.
But tonight, I'm going to be able to report that for the last two years, the United States intelligence community had exculpatory information about Mike Flynn's trip to Moscow, December 2015.
Remember when he sat alongside Vladimir Putin at the RT dinner, the television network dinner?
It turns out that Mike Flynn notified the government advance, got a protective defensive briefing, how to avoid being compromised when he was in Russia.
And then he came back and reported everything to the United States government that went on there and who he talked to and what he observed.
That's not the act of a charge.
By the way, and every time I've interviewed Carter Page, he said he was often debriefed.
He willingly was debriefed and shared all the information with our intelligence community.
So they got to.
You got Mike Flynn doing the same thing.
Now you got Mike Flynn doing the same thing.
Chuck Rousey tried to get this information released, Sean, and the United States government.
Donald Trump's own administration, the bureaucrats and his own administration, wouldn't allow that information out.
And you have to ask the question, why?
Why can't we know the truth about these things?
General Flynn, that meeting was portrayed as like the beginning of this conspiracy, which, by the way, never happened, right?
But if you knew in the beginning of this that Mike Flynn did the right thing, he got a defensive briefing.
He cleared it.
He told people in advance.
He came back and got debriefed.
It changes the whole context of the meeting.
And we were deprived of that for more than two years.
It's really remarkable.
I was shocked at what was supposed to be the Flynn sentencing hearing, and the judge ended up calling a three-star a traitor.
And they made the case.
They were letting the court know that certain things had happened.
One, that the deputy FBI director said that he doesn't need a lawyer.
Meanwhile, this was an investigation.
They weren't telling him it was an investigation.
That in and of itself, to me, would be a violation of Miranda.
And certainly, if you use that information after you told him not to have a lawyer, it would be not admissible to me.
Then, of course, James Comey bragging about how he bypassed normal process and procedure, not go through the White House counsel, but walk right into General Flynn's office or send his agents in, knowing that he wouldn't do it in any other administration.
How did we get to the point where he was supposed to get no jail time, and now the judge wants to throw the book at this guy?
Well, it's an important thing to remember because a lot of the media didn't cover this with the same fervor that they recovered the judge's first remarks, but there was a recess in the middle of that hearing.
When the recess ended and the judge came back, he recanted his remarks saying, I did not mean to suggest that General Flynn was a traitor.
And in fact, he acknowledged he misunderstood the timeline that they were talking about this Turkish representation where he was representing a client tied to Turkey.
And the judge had conflated that as having occurred when he was the national security advisor, that representation ended long before Mike Flynn became President Trump.
Yeah, but then he also went on to say, don't expect you're going to get a better sentence the next time you're in my courtroom.
I think that the judge made clear that he'd like to send Mike Flynn to prison.
But let me tell you something else important that occurred during that hearing that I don't think anyone covered.
The prosecutors on Mueller's team were asked, do you think Mike Flynn committed treason or would you consider charging him with treason?
And they said, no, there's no evidence to support that.
That's very, very important.
Admissions.
You never hear that stuff.
You only hear the other things in the media.
But that was a very important moment in that court hearing.
And when you go back and you look at the media coverage, we've now debunked the media coverage.
The prosecutor who knows everything about Mike Flynn says there was no treason.
That's an important part that we need to focus on.
A lot of the expectations and allegations and made-up narratives at the beginning of the year.
Well, wait a minute.
But the whole predicate for the lying to the FBI charge against General Flynn was based on the fact that those agents that Comey bragged about bypassed normal procedure and got in and did an interview after they said you don't need a lawyer.
They already had the transcript because they had illegally surveilled.
They never minimized.
Then they unmasked and then they leaked the raw intelligence about General Flynn.
Now, maybe he lied or maybe he didn't remember it perfectly because they had a transcript in front of them.
Yeah, by the time they went to interview him, they knew what Mike Flynn had said, and I think they were checking his reliability, his willingness to be honest about it.
Remember, the agent who first interviewed him concluded that he wasn't deceptive, that when he gave the question, he didn't feel like Flynn was intentionally trying to mislead the FBI.
Nonetheless, seven months later, they wrote a report that said he was lying, and they rang him up.
Quick break, more with John Solomon on the other side.
All right, as we continue with our deep state watch investigation, John Solomon is with us from the Hill.
All right, so how is all this?
So we're going to get a Mueller report for sure this year.
Right.
How do you see this?
And the media is, if we count, I think we'll reach at least a million times this year, and it's not going to happen.
They're not going to convict the president and impeach him.
They're not going to ever get two-thirds of the Senate, in my opinion.
The question is, how is this going to end, especially since there's no Trump-Russia collusion?
And what happens on the other side of the equation?
The abuse of power by Strzok and Paige and McCabe and Comey and others.
And Bruce Orr and others.
There were two amazing moments over the holidays that really struck my nerves when I saw them.
One was when Mike Isakoff, one of the lead reporters who first broke the stories about the dossier and pedaled the dossier story at the beginning.
In fact, it was his story that was used to support the affidavit or support the FISA warrant.
When he came out and said, I think the Steel dossier is going to turn out to be unverified.
When the reporter who peddled it starts to talk that way, I think you know one thing right away, right?
The origins of this case are eroding, so much so that even.
So that means a FISA court, a Pfizer court fraud, was committed and perpetrated on a PISA court multiple times.
What happens to the people that lied to the judge that was supposed to verify and corroborate?
Well, let's talk about one of those people because the second thing that caught my nerve in the middle of the holidays was James Comey's second interview, where he said he was asked twice, Do you think the FBI has an obligation to give exculpatory information to the FISA court when you're applying for a FISA?
And both times, Comey said, I don't know.
How could the man who signs the FISA, who's in charge of the FISA program for the FBI, not know his obligations to the court?
Those two things are setting up, I think, what's going to happen in 2019.
You're going to see the acknowledgement that the dossier was the main evidence and that it was flawed and everybody knew it was flawed from the beginning.
And two, that the FISA court was misled.
Now, what happens from that?
The IG will lay out some facts, and the president, the new attorney general, is going to have to decide accountability.
I think the second political thing that's beginning to happen already, Sean, Democrats are changing the goalposts in the football field, right?
It was about collusion.
I guarantee you, by the middle of 19, they'll be talking about something entirely different, has nothing to do with Russia collusion, because they've got to keep the narrative going, but they have to change the facts because all those facts are.
What is it going to be?
A campaign finance violation?
I think you're going to see pay-to-play.
I think they're going to move.
I think HR1, their first bill that you're introducing in the House tomorrow, is designed to set up a new argument that early in the Trump administration, there was a pay-to-play mentality of people working for him.
We're just going to move the field and the goalpost to an entirely different stadium and play a Okay, then does Hillary get in that game?
Because we know the pay-to-play that took place at the Clinton Foundation.
Yeah, great question.
I think that the Justice Department has not been able to answer that question.
The best thing I've heard was Mark Meadows talking on our show recently saying, I believe there's good reason to think there's an FBI investigation looking at criminality of the Clinton Foundation.
That's the first time I've seen somebody in the know, theoretically, someone who's been briefed saying that aloud.
The Justice Department is mum on that.
That's the place to look.
I think it's Little Rock, Arkansas.
If there's any justice for the Clintons, it's going to come out of Little Rock, Arkansas.
All right.
John Solomon will continue to follow, we call it Hannity Deep State Watch, as we're going to be following all the corruption that the rest of the media will be ignoring on a daily basis.
Somebody's got to do some honest reporting, and we're taking it upon ourselves.
Anyway, 800-941-Sean is our number.
Stay right here for our final news roundup and information overload in the final hour of the Sean Hannity show.
Now they're saying they're not going to pay for it.
They will pay for the wall.
We're going to build the wall.
We're going to pay for the wall.
We're going to stop businesses from leaving our country.
And they are being drained out of our country.
Our jobs, our money, our base, and our factories.
We're going to stop that.
You don't expect he's going to write a check, but what you're saying is that they will have to make concessions.
Oh, there's many different ways.
So, in other words, you don't expect Mexico to say, Yes, Mr. Trump, here's a check for $100 billion.
That's not feasible.
It wouldn't look good.
So, you think the deals that you make with it will more than compensate for the wall?
Even if we tax him, we may tax him.
Okay, it doesn't make any difference.
People who enter the United States without our permission are illegal aliens, and illegal aliens should not be treated the same as people who entered the U.S. legally.
The president's decision to end DACA was heartless and it was brainless.
When we use phrases like undocumented workers, we convey a message to the American people that their government is not serious about combating illegal immigration.
Hundreds, hundreds of thousands of families will be ripped apart.
If you don't think it's illegal, you're not going to say it.
I think it is illegal and wrong.
Tens of thousands of American businesses will lose hardworking employees.
And the argument there, Mr. President, is Americans don't want to do the work.
We just can't find American workers to do the work.
Mr. President, that is a crock in many instances.
It's just not true.
In my view, Trump's decision to end the DACA program for some 800,000 young people is the cruelest and most ugly presidential act in the modern history of this country.
I cannot think of one single act which is uglier and more cruel.
We've got to do several things, and I am, you know, adamantly against illegal immigrants.
People have to stop employing illegal immigrants.
Come up to Westchester, go to Suffolk and Nassau counties, stand in the street corners in Brooklyn or the Bronx.
You're going to see loads of people waiting to get picked up to go do yard work and construction work and domestic work.
You know, itty, this is not a problem that the people who are coming into the country are solely responsible for.
They wouldn't be coming if we didn't put them to work.
My proposal will keep families together and it will include a path to citizenship.
You notice with all these Democrats, by the way, glad you're with us.
Happy New Year.
800-941 Sean is our toll-free telephone number.
You want to be a part of the program as we now begin our Hannity Border Watch segment, our top story of the day, the government shutdown disaster, which it is not.
And are there things in life, if this isn't it, worth fighting for?
I give you all the numbers.
You know, look at the Government Accountability Office.
This goes back numbers of years now.
We've got almost 30,000 homicide arrests of criminal aliens.
You know, if you go back a few decades.
Look at the drugs that pour over into America from our southern border.
I've been there, been to the drug warehouses.
I've seen the confiscated drugs.
I've seen them all.
They're all aimed at making it to your small town or your big city right into the hands of your vulnerable kids.
And the same thing with human trafficking and the people that are abused and die.
You put the wall up, you put a border wall up, it protects people on both sides.
Is it really too much to ask that we have the ability as a country to vet those people that would like the honor of coming into our country to join our family?
I don't care where you come from.
I just want to know that you're safe.
We saw the caravan.
We knew that over 600 criminals had infiltrated the caravan, including gang members, including MS-13 members, including others that had committed violent crimes.
So you have the shutdown, and we never have a government shutdown.
Essential services always continue.
Now, Democrats, for whatever reason, think they're on the winning side of this.
Now, for the president, to me, this is a moment where he is saying, I'm going to stand on a principle.
And the principle is, for national security purposes, we've got to secure the southern border.
That means there's a little pain in the interim, then so be it.
House Democrats announcing their plans to end the shutdown without funding the border wall.
Soon as they're sworn in tomorrow.
Okay, well, that's not a plan.
That's dead on arrival.
President graciously inviting congressional leaders to the White House for a security briefing today.
Democrats don't want to go.
White House calling their plan.
White House said that if they're not going to give, and look at what the president's offering.
Look what Lindsey Graham is offering.
He's saying, okay, well, you've cared about DACA kids all these years.
You care about the children, as you always say.
Well, here's a great deal to allow them to stay for three years and then have a renewal for three years.
That's what they're offering.
And this whole issue I played at the beginning of this, an interview during the time that President Trump was then candidate Trump, and I said, well, do you expect them to give you a check, meaning Mexico to pay for the wall?
No, but we're going to have new trade deals with Mexico, which we now have.
And it will be so beneficial that it'll ultimately pay for itself.
And that's exactly what much of the trade deal is about.
Better trade deal for, obviously, the better deal for the American people.
Anyway, joining us with more, we have Maria Elvira.
She's a Cuban-American journalist, broadcaster in her own right.
She ran for Congress.
She's worked for CNN, Univision, and Telemundo.
Jessica Vaughan is with us, Director of Policy Studies for the Center for Immigration Studies.
Let me start with Jessica Vaughan.
Jessica, all right, so we're watching all of this.
We saw last night a violent migrant mob launching a New Year's Eve border attack.
So my question to you is, let's go over the numbers.
What is this costing the American people in terms of the criminal justice system, the educational system, the health care system?
What does it mean in terms of the importation of drugs, human trafficking, and then, of course, those criminal elements?
Not 98% of them.
98% want a better life.
We get that.
But how many people have died in the last couple of decades that tells us we need security for the American people first?
Well, you're right.
Illegal immigration is enormously costly to our country.
First, there are the fiscal impacts.
According to the National Academy of Science, which is the premier research academy in our country, the net fiscal cost of the average illegal alien is $74,000 over their lifetime, and that's not including the costs of kids that they have.
So that's each one over their lifetime costs more than $74,000.
So, you know, if you do the math, that means every $5 billion we spend on a border wall would only have to stop not even 70,000 illegal aliens before it starts to pay off.
This is an investment.
The effect on reducing illegal immigration would have the wall pay for itself very, very quickly.
And that's why it's such a good investment besides the fact that it works.
But there is a huge public safety impact of illegal immigration also.
We don't know the number of Americans or legal immigrants who are killed by illegal aliens because no one keeps track.
They don't want to know.
Law enforcement agencies don't inquire about immigration status.
They don't keep track of it, even though they track all kinds of other details about people who get arrested, but they don't want to know about the number who are here illegally because it's too politically uncomfortable and they'd have to do something about it.
And then we have other problems, terrorists and gang members exploiting our catch and release policies at the border.
That is undermining all the progress that our state, local, and federal law enforcement agencies have made over the years in fighting terrorism, fighting transnational gangs, and fighting other kinds of violence and drug trafficking in our communities.
And, you know, this, we cannot keep undermining their very good work in this way.
We need border security, and it needs to happen.
Now, the only reason it isn't is political on the part of the Democrats.
Maria Vira, I mean, this is part and parcel.
You even see, for example, that large percentages of the Hispanic American community, they want border security.
They don't mind the process being legal.
Oh, no, no, and it's true.
And I was listening to all the different sound bites that you were presenting at the beginning of the segment, and I didn't hear anybody from the Hispanic community talking.
So I thank you very much for giving me the opportunity and explaining to you what we think.
Remember that we are the largest minority in the country.
We are almost 18% of the population, almost 60 million people.
And those people basically, and I can assure you, Mr. Hannity, that many millions of Hispanics believe that we need to take care of those who do not have a criminal record and are in the country, not necessarily to give them citizenship, but to give them some type of legality.
We don't have any problems with the border because we want people to come in with visas.
The border needs to have very big gates for those who come in.
Because at the same time, and just to comment to what the lady was saying, is that you have a lot of illegals that are paying social security benefits and will never claim them because they're paying under a dead person's name.
And that stays in our Social Security or in the Treasury of the United States.
That needs to be taken account of.
Also, we have to come to realize that many of the business owners of America are paying those people less wages an hour.
And then the products, the jalapeno peppers, the tomatoes here in Homestead, where I am, very close to Miami, or the berries in Ohio, those berries cost to less because those people are picking them up.
So there are no, there are, everybody's responsible for this party.
Well, I think you've got a couple of things going on.
I think politically, you've got one party that's looking at a generational political shift in the country.
I think you have another party that wants cheap labor, which is unfair to those that would come here.
I think we would have a need in this country for migrant labor at different points.
As long as we have a chance to vet everybody, and maybe if you do that for a certain number of years and you want to apply for a green card or citizenship, I don't have a problem with any of that.
All I want is this: let's make the process legal.
I think we have a right to protect the American people first.
Let's vet those people that want to be our visitors and make sure that they're coming here with the right intentions.
And then, secondly, let's make sure that when they get here, they can take care of themselves.
I think that is standard criteria.
Most countries have that, and they even have it like in Australia, New Zealand.
You better be willing to contribute a significant amount of money or skill that they need in their economy, or you're never getting in.
And they agree with you.
I'm surrounded by illegals.
I talk to them all the time because I want to come to your show well-informed.
Do you really think they want to be Americans?
Oh, no, they're proud to be either Guatemalans or Hondurans.
And good for them.
They just want to come here.
They want to work.
They don't want to get into trouble because I'm talking about those illegals that do not have a criminal record.
If you have a criminal record, you're out.
And we all think the same way in the Hispanic community.
But Maria, ever since I was 12 years old and working in restaurants, I can tell you that many of the places that I worked had illegal immigrants.
You know, Eisenhower Park had a place called Salisbury on the Green.
It was like a wedding factory.
I did five weddings every weekend as a bartender.
And I can tell you that these guys come in, they work their 14, 16, 18-hour shifts, and they work really hard.
And they live in fear that they're going to be sent back.
And they think my Spanish is awful.
Hable porquito Española used to always say.
But I mean, I became friends.
All I saw were people working their asses off.
Now, if we need workers in the country, there's got to be a way.
If we don't have a wall, what's going to happen is the drugs continues, the human trafficking continues, the high costs associated with illegal immigration continues, the impact on our educational, criminal justice, healthcare system all continues.
And the Democrats sounded like Donald Trump four years ago.
Now, all of a sudden, he wants the wall, so they don't want it just because he wants it.
But don't you see that it's all politics and that the Democratic Party, and I can say this loud and clear, they have played political football with Hispanics for 30 years.
They're woolly us, and now they are the saviors.
They are the ones who want to be moral, really.
But you know when they had the opportunity to save the Hispanics in 2009 when President Obama told Spanish television that he was going to do an immigration reform law the first year of his presidency.
And what did he do?
He put all that political capital into Obamacare, which was okay, but he lied to us.
Let me get the last word from Jessica.
Go ahead.
Yeah, I mean, we all should be able to agree that we can't have a legal immigration system with any integrity at all unless we have border security and unless we're enforcing the rules on legal immigration.
I mean, Sean, you and I did these jobs.
I worked for carnivals and in restaurants and retail.
These jobs simply aren't available in many cases to American teenagers anymore because employers have had the option of a steady stream of illegal workers.
And that hurts legal immigrants.
It hurts young Americans and others as well.
And so, you know, I don't think most Americans are against immigration.
Most Americans just want it to be legal.
Exactly.
And we have legal immigrants.
The only way we're going to stop it and haven't been, I've been down there more than anybody else I know in the media from the Rio Grande to San Diego.
I've seen it all from every vantage point.
And especially, how many more families, and again, it's a half of 1%.
But if the 99.9% are good people, but you got one group of people that come here and commit murders, well, what if it's your family?
You're going to feel differently if it's your family, as we should feel as an American family.
Anyway, thank you both.
Maria, thank you.
Jessica, thank you.
When we get back, your calls, 800-941-Sean is our number.
All right, 25 now until the top of the hour.
So we're going to start a mission statement tonight, as we did earlier in the program today.
And I didn't spend a lot of time watching TV over the Christmas holiday.
This is my long break every year, but I did spend some time.
And as I watched the insanity that is now called news, there is no real news that exists on television or in newspapers anymore.
They don't exist.
I mean, I was kind of even a little shocked to hear a former executive editor of the New York Times saying that their paper's news pages, you know, their home of the part about straight news coverage supposedly, is unmistakably anti-Trump.
And I'm like, yeah.
What do you think fake news CNN is?
It's literally every second, every minute, every hour, every day.
And the MSNBC is even worse.
And you can't get honest, truthful coverage.
They've all got an agenda.
Everybody's got an agenda.
And their agenda is in Sepatico.
It's an extension of all things liberal, socialist, democratic.
And, you know, the president of the United States and the first lady can't even go visit our troops in Iraq without being criticized.
They can't talk to kids about Santa without character assassination and hate and all the hate that's against them.
I mean, this has really moved on to something that I've never thought I'd see in my lifetime.
You know, we've talked about five powerful forces that are out there to destroy the president.
Well, what they are, it is a sewer of hatred in basically everywhere we go.
President, 52% job approval rate to end the year by Rasmussen.
Many Americans that voted for the president, they're happy with the job that he's doing.
No president's ever going to be perfect.
I think the president's doing the right thing, standing up for border security.
We've given out the numbers and the statistics often enough.
The cost to our criminal justice system, our health care system, our educational system, Americans that are losing their lives because people enter this country illegally, the drug importation, the human trafficking.
The toll is massive.
But again, we're nothing but smelly Walmart people as Peter Strzz called us or irredeemable, deplorable people as Hillary called us, or bitter Americans that cling to our God, guns, Bibles, and religion as Obama described us.
So you have what is now these forces of hatred of Donald Trump.
It's beyond.
It's really sick at this point.
They wake up every day.
What can we hate Trump about today?
How can I sound more outrageous than my competitor on radio or TV today?
What can I do to really, really, really a big, big, big, big, big super liar?
No, no, no.
He's a big, big, big, big, big, super, super, super duper liar.
And that's how they try to outdo themselves.
Now, I have a lot of information about the Trump agenda that I guarantee you you haven't heard anywhere else.
And that's what we're going to do every day on this program and every day on television.
We're going to have Hannity watch on the economy, news you won't get anywhere else.
We're going to have Hannity watch on hypocrisy.
Look at the Democrats.
They sounded just like Donald Trump a few short years ago.
They're not going to point that out on any of these other news, so-called news channels.
We're going to have Hannity watch on, we're going to call out their bias.
We're going to have Hannity watch on campus indoctrination and insanity.
We're going to have Hannity watch on the culture, Hannity watch on the deep state, Hannity watch on border security, Hannity watch on the advancement of socialism.
You name it, we've got it.
Look at the holiday sales report.
We now have Wall Street Journal.
Shoppers delivered the strongest holiday sales increase for U.S. retailers in six years, according to early data.
Now, total U.S. retail sales, excluding automobiles, rose 5.1% during the Christmas season from a year earlier, according to MasterCard Spending Pulse, which tracks both online and in-store spending with all forms of payment.
Overall, U.S. consumers spent over $850 billion this holiday season, according to MasterCard.
Now, the figures suggest the stock market swoon, the partial government shutdown didn't curb consumers' confidence in spending.
That's good.
Here's something you won't hear.
What about the president's accomplishments in the last year alone?
Let's see.
He kept a promise.
Brett Kavanaugh's name was on his list when he was a candidate to be on the Supreme Court.
A conservative or originalist, constitutionalist, he kept that promise.
President kept his promise with China.
China now has agreed to get rid of a lot of our automobile imports, take in our soybeans and other crops that they need to feed, what, a billion people.
We had middle-class wages rising.
I know a lot of you probably lost money in the stock market.
I've told you, I'm not a stock market guy.
Stock market to me is gambling.
I don't trust it, never have, never will.
I think the people that benefit from the stock market are the people that work on Wall Street and have all the insider knowledge that they need to make good decisions.
I'm not one of them.
I don't want to be one of them.
I think there are other investments that are safer, more secure, maybe not as big a return, but it's certainly, I don't want to lose the money that I earned.
And to me, if you're willing to put it in the stock market, well, stocks go up and down.
Now, my stock market friends will tell me, well, if you have money you want to invest, you shouldn't want that money for at least 10 years because of the ebb and flow of the stock market.
I'm not interested in the ebb and flow of the stock market.
But real wages for the middle class, well, that went up 3%.
That sounds pretty good if you're a middle-class American.
The people that are the forgotten men and women in this country that make the country great.
You're not going to hear about that on any newscast or the U.S.-Mexico-Canada trade deal that the president promised that benefits us and became a better deal for the United States.
It's good for our cars.
It's good for our farmers.
It's good for Wisconsin.
It's good for Michigan.
It's good for the industrial Midwest.
We know the president kept a promise and ended the Iranian nuclear deal.
The president kept a promise and moved the U.S. Embassy to Jerusalem.
We know that the president has pretty much smashed the ISIS caliphate and is now pulling out of Syria, again, in time.
Very different than the Obama belief that it's the JV team.
We see major increases in records in minority jobs in America.
We have the lowest unemployment record ever for Hispanic Americans, African Americans, women in the workplace, youth unemployment.
Our vets are getting hired in bigger numbers than they've ever been hired.
The president's been holding the line to keep his promise on securing the borders, held his line on the migrant caravans.
America also, for the first time last year, record American oil production, surpassing Russia, Saudi Arabia.
We are now the world's largest producer of crude oil.
Never mind all the natural gas and coal that we have.
We're now exporters of energy, which means high-paying jobs for a lot of people.
You're not going to hear this from anybody in the media because they're fixated on hating the president.
So we'll have Hannity watch on the economy.
We're going to have Hannity watch on the abusively biased media.
We'll hold them accountable.
We're going to have Hannity watch on hypocrisy.
They sounded like Trump on the border.
Now they have a very different tune.
We'll have Hannity watch on every and any issue that impacts your life because they're not going to do it.
They're incapable now of anything that represents real news.
And we'll watch the deep state, Hannity watch the deep state.
We're going to have Hannity watch for equal justice under the law, equal Equal application of our laws.
We'll watch the Democratic Party.
In 90 days, all of America will know how crazy all the Democrats are.
You just, it's going to be, they're going to lose their minds collectively, and the media will champion all of it.
So we'll watch it all very closely.
And moving forward, this show is going to be about the people that mattered in 2016.
Because why they're busy hating Trump every second minute hour of every day and every week.
Well, this show is going to protect the forgotten men and women in this country that they ought to be focused on and fighting for the policies that will make your life better, that will make your homes more secure, that will grow the economy so it impacts you and your family and your kids.
In other words, we'll be your watchdog.
We're going to expose corruption and lies and double standards when we see it.
We'll expose those that are the real haters in this country.
It's not hard to do.
I was probably Obama's biggest critic.
I never hated the guy.
Like, these people hate this man.
I've never seen anything like it.
I mean, if Donald Trump cured cancer today, he'd still be hated.
If Donald Trump gave every American $10 million, they'd still hate him and manufacture some reason or another.
So we're going to watch out for your family, your pocketbook.
We're going to watch out for what's in the best interests of your family.
We're going to watch and call out this media bias that exists.
We're going to show you all these Hollywood phonies and their agenda.
We're going to look at all the political correctness that exists in the world and the indoctrination of our kids and how the deep state are literally abusing the tools of intelligence that we've given them.
We're going to stand up for free markets and liberty and freedom and the Constitution.
We'll watch out for socialism and the push to destroy free markets.
We got a lot of work to do this year, but we're going to be very, very different.
We're redesigning the shows for this purpose and this purpose only.
These are, you know, difficult times demand a different approach.
And it's like, I can't, if I focus on one topic, there's no way I can get it all in.
You want to know how crazy they are?
Let's listen to some of the Democrats.
Just listen.
This is just a small sampling of what's coming.
I'm trying really hard to find something positive.
Donald Trump is a job loser.
Republicans wrote a bill that abandons farmers, farming families.
It weakens the farmers.
The president's fitness for office is something that is being called into question.
I'm very worried about his fitness.
In terms of the bonus that corporate America received versus the crumbs that they are giving to workers to kind of put the schmooze on, is so pathetic.
They're going to say, if you give them bump stock, it's going to be the slippery slope.
I certainly hope so.
I mean, I wanted a, I'd love a single payer, but we're not.
First, he tries to charm you.
President Bush tries to charm you.
That's just it, President Bush.
I'm sorry, I meant to say the priorities of the American people, and they are not what President Bush.
Excuse me.
I'm so sorry.
We have to pass the bill so that you can find out what it is.
We are a nation that will not stop until every child is born with the opportunity to go to college or trade school free of cost.
Would you push for a Trump impeachment?
I would support impeachment.
You used the term the occupation of Palestine.
What did you mean by that?
Oh, I think what I meant is like the settlement.
I am not the expert on geopolitics.
We need to occupy every airport.
We need to occupy every border.
We need to occupy every ICE office.
Medicare for All is actually much more, is actually much cheaper than the current system that we pay right now.
Just last year, we gave the military a $700 billion budget increase, which they didn't even ask for.
Should leader Pulinski become the next Speaker of the House, we need to tell her that we've got her back in showing and pursuing the most progressive energy agenda that this country has ever seen.
With this kind of inspiration, I will go and take Trump out tonight.
This is a bunch of scumbags.
I will fight every day until he is impeached in 1845.
What the House is.
Reclaiming my time.
Reclaiming my time.
Titieri.
Reclaiming my time.
Okay.
Reclaiming.
Matter of fact, Mr. Secretary, they say, Maxine, please don't say impeachment anymore.
And when they say that, I say impeachment, impeachment.
The fact that he is wrapping his arms around Putin while Putin is continuing to advance into Korea.
Anyway, we'll have a lot more on that tonight, Nine Eastern on Hannity on the Fox News Channel.
We're calling it like our mission statement.
Hannity, watch.
We're watching out for the forgotten men and women of the country because they're obviously not going to do it.
They're watching out for themselves.
They're watching out for their agenda.
They're singularly focused on hatred of the president.
I mean, it's almost pathological at this point.
It's beyond derangement syndrome.
It's psychotic derangement syndrome.
All right, that's going to wrap things up for today.
Hannity, watch.
What does it mean?
We have a mission statement as the rest of the biased, abusively biased media, the Democrats, the deep state, weak Republicans, never Trumpers.
Well, we've got a plan for them in the next 100 days.
We'll outline it tonight.
Hannity, 9 Eastern on Fox.you DVR.
We'll see you then, and we will be back here tomorrow.
Happy New Year.
It is great to be back.
You want smart political talk without the meltdowns?
We got you.
I'm Carol Markowitz, and I'm Mary Catherine Hamm.
We've been around the block in media, and we're doing things differently.
Normally is about real conversations.
Thoughtful, try to be funny, grounded, and no panic.
We'll keep you informed and entertained without ruining your day.
Join us every Tuesday and Thursday, normally, on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
I'm Ben Ferguson, and I'm Ted Cruz.
Three times a week, we do our podcast, Verdict with Ted Cruz.
Nationwide, we have millions of listeners.
Every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday, we break down the news and bring you behind the scenes inside the White House, inside the Senate, inside the United States Supreme Court.
And we cover the stories that you're not getting anywhere else.
We arm you with the facts to be able to know and advocate for the truth with your friends and family.
So down with Verdict with Ted Cruz Now, wherever you get your podcasts.
Export Selection