Representative Chip Roy, of Texas is here to talk about his op-ed in the Federalist about the need for the border wall and immigration reform. Sean recaps his trip to the border. Spoiler alert, it's as dangerous as you think it is. The Sean Hannity Show is on weekdays from 3 pm to 6 pm ET on iHeartRadio and Hannity.com. Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
You want smart political talk without the meltdowns?
We got you.
I'm Carol Markovich.
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, verdict with Ted Cruz now, wherever you get your podcasts.
When I told people, I was making a podcast about Benghazi.
Nine times out of ten, they called me a masochist, rolled their eyes, or just asked why.
Benghazi, the truth became a web of lies.
From Prologue Projects and Pushkin Industries, this is Fiasco Benghazi.
What difference at this point does it make?
Listen to Fiasco Benghazi on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
Hey, it's that time of year for those of you, God forbid, you got to keep your New Year's resolution.
What if you're a timeshare owner and you want to get out of your timeshare?
Maybe that's at the top of your list of maybe you made a bad investment over the years.
It doesn't matter.
Let not your heart be troubled, because the new year is also a reminder that you can get serious about getting rid of this timeshare and doing it right and doing it legally, and Lone Star Transfer is absolutely an amazing group of people.
From beginning to end, I highly recommend if you have any type of timeshare.com.
You have the option to receive a one-time auto-dialed text message from iHeartMedia.
All right, glad you're with us.
All right, looks like funding for the wall is gonna happen one way or the other.
One is the president declares a national emergency, and the other Congress actually cares about the men and women of law enforcement and the families of those who have lost loved ones and the drugs that are pouring into the country and those that are victims of human trafficking.
You know, I thought they had all the compassion in the world to left.
Apparently not.
And as the media is now highlighting for the first time the furloughed government employees are not getting checks, and I could sympathize with them.
And I'm sure it's difficult, challenging for some of them.
I live paycheck to paycheck.
I remember for a long time I had $200 in Old Stone Bank in Warren, Rhode Island.
That's all I had.
That was it.
And spent all my money on college, didn't have any more, and I was living paycheck to paycheck.
So the sooner this gets done, they get their money, they pay their mortgages, their rents, their car payments, and get their groceries and everything else that they need in between.
You know, Democrats though, they've got they bear a huge responsibility in this.
They all supported this policy when Barack Obama was president.
Barack Obama sounded like Donald Trump.
So did Chucky Schumer.
So did Hillary Clinton, and so did Joe Biden, and so did all these other hypocrites out there.
And so the real reason they're not going along with this is because Donald Trump will get the job done.
It's sort of like all the Republicans when they voted to repeal and replace Obamacare, knowing it's never gonna be law.
You know, those show votes as we called them at the time.
It's the same thing here.
Those were all show votes by Democrats to act like they really supported border security.
But now that it means something, they're not going anywhere near it.
And nor do they want, in any way, shape, manner, or form, any political success of the president.
You know, one other thing in there, and I and I do know and I do understand, by the way, is this on?
All right, could we pull out all the plugs and turn that away from me?
You're kidding me.
I no idea it's here.
Unbelievable.
Anyway, all the Democrats in the media are saying that it's you know horrible, horrible, and it is it's it's so inconvenient and so unnecessary, and it creates anxiety for so many people.
I think that's going to be handled in pretty short order for those that are furloughed.
But all the men and women in ICE, all the border patrol agents think about this.
They'd all need to find new careers if the Democratic Party had their way.
Because before the 2018 midterms, they wanted to abolish, and some today, Acasio uh Cortez wants to abolish IC and the things that are being said, you know, when they say manufactured crisis, okay, that's a great term.
When you watch, and I hope you will watch tonight, Hannity.
Well, you're gonna meet families that lost loved ones that were killed by illegal immigrants, including the police officer, uh uh police officer sing out in California.
And you're gonna meet the parents of Pierce Corcoran.
They lost their 22-year-old son in Knoxville, Tennessee.
And you're gonna meet other parents, you know.
I I don't think it's a manufactured crisis in their lives.
You know, we found an interesting statistic is uh and maybe I'm just thinking, the numbers that we have been given were about uh 300 overdose deaths a week when as it relates to heroin.
Uh there is a Center for Disease Control study that shows it's well over 900 a week in terms of opioid heroin deaths that take place, 90% of that of course coming uh across our southern border, which is a big deal.
How many of you saw Jim Acosta?
I mean, it's the greatest moment in the history of television.
Jim Acosta's in McCallum, Texas.
And this is, you know, it takes us uh tweet sweets it out, I guess.
He's standing next to a barrier wall, you know.
And and he goes, I'm here, wall that's right, and there's nothing wrong.
It's all fine.
There's nobody here.
And here are some of the steel slats that the president's been talking about uh right here.
Uh as you can see, yeah, yes, you can see through these slats to the uh other side of the U.S. Mexico border.
Uh, but as we're walking along here, we're not seeing any kind of uh imminent danger.
There are no migrants trying to uh rush toward this fence uh here in the McCallan, Texas area.
As a matter of fact, there are some other businesses uh behind me along this highway.
There's a gas station, Burger King, and so on.
Uh but no sign of the national emergency that the president has been talking about.
Uh as a matter of fact, it's pretty tranquil down here.
It's tranquil.
I mean, the president the president literally tweeted out Acosta.
That's our point.
If you build the barrier, you're not gonna have the trouble.
Now there is a report out now that says a new migrant caravan, larger than the first one, is now forming in Honduras yet again, and plans to leave next week.
Now, where we are in all of this is the Trump administration is gonna make a decision at some point.
How is it that they're gonna approach getting the money?
Um and there's different schools of thought.
Lindsey Graham says the president should declare a national emergency now.
There is the precedence for it.
Uh there will be a court fight that would ensue.
The likelihood of judge shopping would be real.
They would probably send it out to, you know, California, Oregon, and guarantee that it they get a liberal judge and it gets the appeal would go to the Ninth Circuit, and then it would make of itself, although you can expedite all of that, um, and it could be done faster than people think could work its way through the courts and in a shorter period of time.
You know, I can tell you seeing this everywhere here, you know, we have um Long Island has a massive MS-13 problem.
And many of the members of this gang, MS 13 on Long Island, are illegal immigrants.
Uh Fox had a report that there was uh three suspects arrested following a bat and knife attack outside of a Burger King restaurant, and by the way, a pretty well-known area in New York uh on Long Island that I used to live.
Anyway, goes on to say that two of the three were previously held by Homeland Security, but were ordered released by federal judges.
That's why judgeships matter.
Anyway, one of them is uh 20-year-old Nobelli Montez Zoniga, and you have Ramon uh Aravola Lopez, nineteen, and another one, Oscar Canalias Molina, seventeen, facing second degree assault charges related to a brawl outside of a Burger King in Huntington Station.
This all happened Wednesday of this week.
All three entered the U.S. illegally as unaccompanied minors.
Well, it's not clear what the groups were fighting about.
One thing is clear.
Everyone arrested are confirmed members of MS-13, according to the Suffolk County Police Commissioner.
All three defendants were previously confirmed, MS-13 gang members.
And it goes on to say that thereafter they were detained by the U.S. Department of Homeland Securities, Immigration, Customs, and Enforcement, and then they were released from custody by a federal district county court judge.
By the way, why don't we ever give out the names of these judges that put us in harm's way all the time?
They're in the country illegally.
Yeah, come back and come to court in about a month and a half.
Your court date is two months from now.
Nobody shows up.
Why would they?
Anyway, it goes on to say that these agents had wanted to travel to New York, live with their mother, blah, blah, blah.
And you know, it's um, and this is hours before the president traveled to the southern border yesterday, where I was, I think, for the 14th time.
Most of these people, I know in my business, media, uh, TV, radio, they don't ever go to the border.
They've not seen the things that I have had the opportunity to see.
Where we were in McCallum, Texas yesterday, and I've been all the way from the Rio Grande all across the border to San Diego.
But you can walk across one side is Mexico.
The other side, if you make it across, that's the United States.
You could, and it's so shallow you can walk across it.
And if you can't do it in a minute or less, that means you're really slow.
You can have a cane and walk across in about a minute.
I mean, Blair, the Mr. Marathon, you know, runner over there, probably do it in 20 seconds.
Um, you know, Newsday had a report out today.
In 2017, Long Island, New York, nearly 40% of all homicides committed by MS-13 gang members.
40%.
2017, MS-13 was responsible for 50% of homicides in Nassau County, which is the county I was born in, where I lived a big part of my life.
Suffolk County, 27%.
Eight of the 15 homicides in Nassau County believed to be victims of MS-13 violence.
And it's it's gotten to the point that they even at the Long Island Railroad, they're just shutting down crossings because that's where some of the gang members hang out.
Well, why don't you arrest them?
Maybe that would solve the problem.
Um, the Democratic wall is beginning to crack.
I I don't have a strong feeling either way.
I know the president has this the statutory legitimacy to declare a national emergency.
That's not even in question.
And he certainly has, as commander-in-chief, the constitutional authority to do this.
And it's just a matter of which way he decides to go.
Now, the administration is now laying the groundwork to declare a national emergency to build the wall.
Fox News had reported that the president set those wheels in motion to fund alternatives or finding alternative ways to fund the wall.
That means Nancy and Chuck can go pound sand.
And the White House has directed the Army Corps of Engineers to look at possible ways of funding the border security.
Sarah Sanders told Fox News last night as ongoing partial federal government shutdown over money for the border wall is less than two days away from becoming the longest in our nation's history.
By the way, good things happened when Newt Gingrich had a shutdown fight with Bill Clinton.
Anyway, the White House has directed the Corps of Engineers to examine the February 2018 emergency supplemental budget, which included disaster relief for California, Florida, Texas, Puerto Rico, among other states, to see what unspent funds could then be used to use for the border wall.
They apparently have 13.9 billion dollars available.
Well, if you're gonna do it, let's get the whole thing done and let's do it right.
The numbers I found from the CDC are interesting because we had been citing three hundred deaths in America a week as the number, but the the Center for Disease Control, CDC.gov has different numbers about drug overdose deaths.
And from 1999 to 2017, more than 700,000 people have died from a drug overdose.
700,000.
Around 68% of the more than 70,200 drug overdose deaths in 2017 involved an opioid.
You know, look at states like New Hampshire and Maine and Ohio and Michigan and Midwestern states.
They are really, I mean, it's like a death a day in some of these states and some of these towns.
There was one report that per capita, it was a city in Ohio that prescribed opioids, meaning like oxycontin, is like 600 per person.
And then when they can't get the pills anymore, then they go buy heroin.
And that heroin more now than ever before is being laced with fentanyl.
And fentanyl is guaranteed to kill you.
But anyway, they said on average, 130 Americans die every day, according to the CDC, from an op opioid overdose.
That's a lot of Americans.
Then the crime statistics that we had last year we have them available, 2016.
Illegal immigrants accounted for 13% of all non-immigration related federal sentences in fiscal year 2016, but yet they're 3.5% of the population.
I mean, these numbers are staggering.
So Lindsey Graham is calling for the president to declare a national emergency and just build the wall.
We'll get to that.
Support on Capitol Hill to do this with the Republicans is building as well.
88% of Americans disagree with Chuck and Nancy, and they do think there is a crisis at our border.
Even the New York Times legal experts are saying that Trump can use Pentagon funds to build the wall.
Wall Street Journal says the Pentagon has 13 billion also available to build the wall.
And the Pentagon saying that they're ready to help Trump build the wall.
So it's all set in motion.
We have the National Emergencies Act of 1976.
That allows the president, and it's been used many times before, to trigger emergency powers conferred on him by Congress.
This is a congressional act that deferred.
So statute he has a statutory authority as well as the constitutional authority.
Anyway, we'll get to all of this and uh much, much more.
800-941 Sean, toll-free telephone number.
We have a special edition of Hannity tonight.
Manufacture crisis, really?
Well, wait, meet the families that lost loved ones because of illegal immigrants.
And I I'd love to see Nancy and Chuck sit down with them and tell them to their face it's a manufactured crisis.
All these idiotic news reporters or so-called news people that have been towing the Democratic Party talking point.
Maybe they'll look them in the eye.
Oh, sorry, you lost your son.
This is just a manufactured crisis.
It's cold, it is heartless, and it is rooted in nothing but politics.
There's no truth to what they say.
All you have to do is open your eyes.
One thing that is not political, it's smoking.
That's about people.
And there are 34 million Americans now that smoke.
But for many, there's not been a clear alternative.
Jewel for me has been a game changer.
I watch people all the time.
They go outside in the middle of the freezing winter just to have their smoke.
You don't have to do that anymore because of Joule.
Now, people don't have to worry about the smell on your hands.
Jewel was specifically designed by smokers for smokers to be a satisfying alternative.
It's a clean technology.
Jewel has no ash, no odor, no mess.
If you're one of those 34 million adults who do smoke, you now know there's an alternative to cigarettes and cigars.
Just go to Jule J-U-U-L.com slash switch America.
That's J-U-U-L.com slash switch America.
Now, this product does contain nicotine and nicotine is an addictive chemical.
But just go to Joule J-U-U-L.com slash switch America.
Yeah.
Now to be clear, the president has said in even today, earlier today, that he's not looking to immediately declare a National emergency that he'd rather work on a deal with Congress and do it legislatively.
Although he does have statutory authority and he has constitutional authority, which I'll get to in a minute.
He says we're not looking to do it right now, uh, meaning the national emergency.
And he said, I'm not gonna do it that fast.
Lindsey Graham is asking him to do it now.
But the president said that for days he might declare it, and if it comes down to it, this president will do it that way because that's just well, let me give you the example.
We have the what's called the National Emergencies Act of 1976.
That allows any president.
You know, the emergency powers that were conferred to him by Congress, by the way, over a hundred and seventy times if you you want to look at the exact number, and uh it's been used in the past by other presidents for a whole variety of things.
I mean, uh, you can go back to the Bush administration, the Obama administration.
There's over 160 laws, 47 court rulings, precedence giving the president these emergency powers.
That would include reshaping the military, putting members of the armed forces under foreign command, conscripting veterans, overturning sentences issued by court martials, uh taking over weather satellites for the military, suspending environmental laws,
bypassing federal contracting laws, allowing unlimited secret patents for Army, Navy, and Air Force scientists, and all of these provisions came visa statutory statutories and laws by Congress.
It gives them the authority.
The holidays may be over, but 2019 brings a whole lot of new goals to accomplish.
And the best online cigar store in the world is here to help you make every day the celebration that you deserve.
Just go to famous smoke.com/slash Hannity to pick out all your favorite cigars at the lowest prices.
And Famous has an exciting new offer that we created exclusively for all you Hannity listeners.
That web address is famous smoke.com slash Hannity.
And when you click the activate button, we'll instantly knock 20% off your entire order when you spend just $99 or more.
That includes cigars, cutters, lighters, humidors, and more.
Whether you want cigars by the box, samplers, five packs or singles, famous will deliver them to your door fresh and securely packed and ready for your smoking enjoyment.
So remember to click the activate button, and you'll get a full 20% off your order, and you'll only find it at famous smoke.com slash Hannity.
That's famous smoke.com slash Hannity.
All right, 25 till the top of the hour.
White House contemplating, according to the Wall Street Journal, that the shutdown will continue for weeks.
It's a partial government shutdown.
Now, if you're impacted by it and you didn't get your check today, it's it's uh a burden on those people, but it's also a burden on people that have permanent separation, like moms and dads that never see their kids again.
It's certainly a burden on the on every small town and big city, the heroin epidemic, opioid epidemic that's going on.
Now, as of Saturday, though they did I guess they they're out of session now in the in the House, so that means as of Saturday, it will be the longest shutdown ever.
Uh, which doesn't surprise me or mean anything.
When the shutdown happened, Bill Clinton and uh Newt Inrich, we actually got a lot of good things done in the end of that one.
Anyway, the president says he'll sign a bill giving federal workers back pay when the shutdown is over.
That's breaking news.
He said uh he's not gonna declare the national emergency right now, and the president made those comments just moments ago.
Yeah, the message is that I appreciate their service to the country, they are incredible people, the federal employees that we're talking about.
Many of them agree with what I'm saying and what the people in this room who are experts are saying.
They don't want to see people killed because we can't do a simple border structure.
Uh and I appreciate their incredible support.
We have yesterday, it was I was watching this morning and reading this morning that so many people are saying the president is doing what's right, and even though it's affecting us short term, temporarily, as you know, a bill was just passed, which I will sign in Congress, making sure that everybody's gonna be paid immediately upon uh when this is over.
Uh but I just really appreciate the fact that uh they they have handled it so incredibly well.
And many of them agree with what we're doing.
We have no choice.
Steve, go ahead.
Well, um, 24 hours ago, you were saying you probably want to declare a national emergency.
No, I said I could do it, but it's well, I'll tell you why.
It's the easy way out.
But Congress should do this.
This is too simple.
It's too basic.
And Congress should do this.
If they can't do it, if at some point they just can't do it, this is a 15-minute meeting.
If they can't do it, I will declare a national emergency.
I have the absolute right to do it.
It says as clear as you can.
Now, what will happen?
I'll be sued, it'll be brought to the Ninth Circuit.
And maybe even though the wording is unambiguous, just like with the travel ban, it'll be appealed to the Ninth Circuit, and we'll probably lose there too, and then hopefully we'll win in the Supreme Court.
But that's what happens.
You can take the most perfectly worded document, as we have in this case, and they'll always bring it to the Ninth Circuit.
And then you never know what's going to come out of the Ninth Circuit.
And you never know what's going to come out on appeal.
But fortunately, we have a Supreme Court that's treated us very fairly.
So I'd rather not do it because this is something that Congress should easily do.
This is something that the Democrats should do.
And I don't want to give an easy way out of something as simple as this.
Not only simple, it's easy, and it's going to secure our country.
You know, we have a country that is under siege.
You could actually, you know, a lot of people don't like the word invasion.
We have a country that's being invaded by criminals and by drugs, and we're going to stop it.
So I want the Democrats to come back to Washington and vote.
Thank you very much.
Thank you every time.
Thank you.
All right, that's the president being very adamant with reporters and uh saying, well, if I have to, I'll do it, but it's gonna take the but he's pushing the Democrats to do their job.
The very same policies they supported for years, they say.
But now that it means something, it's just like Republicans voting for repeal and replace.
They're all for it 65 times when it doesn't mean anything and it's never gonna pass.
Then they get an opportunity when it would have passed.
Uh oh, um I'm not sure now.
Or in 2015, when you get seven Republicans in the Senate that vote for a straight-up repeal of Obamacare, but they knew it was never gonna matter because Obama was never gonna sign that.
So they can vote for it.
Then they can go back to their districts and tell people or their states that I voted to repeal Obamacare.
So many of these politicians are so phony.
You know, one thing you gotta like with this president is that he likes to fight for the promises he made, and he's doing it.
You know, I was there yesterday with him and did the interview.
We'll air some of that interview coming up later in the program today, but um, and I'm listening, all these border patrol leaders in this particular sector, right where the Rio Grande is, and it's just a hop skip and a jump, and you're in America with no barrier whatsoever.
And I'm talking to these border patrol agents.
I literally did the interview with the president standing up in front of literally mounds of drugs that they had confiscated this week.
I told you I've been to those drug warehouses.
It's unbelievable.
Now, this is an interesting fact found by ABC of all people.
They actually did some work.
They found according to the Federal Register, 58 national emergencies have been declared since the National Emergencies Act of 1976, which allows a president to trigger the emergency powers uh conferred on them by Congress.
And it's been in place now in various forms for more than like 150 years.
But anyway, 58 national emergencies have been declared since the National Emergency Act, the latest act, but we've had this going back, you know, before Lincoln was president for crying out loud.
And um 31 of them are still in operation today.
Continued today.
They're annually renewed, and they're still in effect.
You know, national emergency with respect to Iran.
But well, that was Jimmy Carter when he was president.
We can go back that far.
Somebody used a lot of this was Bill Clinton.
Bill Clinton used it on a number of occasions.
George W. Bush did it on a number of occasions.
Barack Obama did it on a number of occasions.
Uh, including, I think one with Columbia because of the trafficking of uh drugs into the country.
So there's no doubt about the statutory right of the president to do so, or the constitutional right to do so.
He's the commander in chief.
First role as commander in chief is to protect the homeland.
And I don't care what term you want to use, but people that keep entering our country illegally that are pulling on our infrastructure and in terms of our health care and our education and our criminal justice system, the 470 uh court cases that have been set precedence as it relates to the 1976 Act.
So the president can use those legal tools available available to him.
And um, and it's not a legislating.
He's he's saying, okay, with all the drugs coming into the country, with all the human trafficking involved, with all the deaths that have taken place, and you're gonna meet many of these angel moms and dads tonight.
You know, if you watch Hannity tonight and you see these parents that lost their kids and they tell their stories, ask yourself, does that sound like a manufactured crisis to you?
Or if if you believe the you know, the centers for disease control numbered, 900 opioid deaths a week, a week, or you believe the Department of Homeland Security, 300.
One thing that is happening, we're beginning to see the Democrats are beginning to get nervous, and some Democratic lawmakers are beginning to crack on their opposition to the wall, and uh apparently it's getting a little difficult in caucus sessions.
One Democrat Colin Peterson of Minnesota, Democrat says he got 67 calls supporting the wall, five against.
They are concerned about the trade situation, but from what I can tell, they're still hanging with the president.
Uh today we got 67 calls uh for building the wall and five against.
Sounds to me like he's still pretty popular.
202-224-3121.
If you want to call your member of Congress, you want to call your senator, you can let them know how you feel about all of this.
You know, all the polls that have come out, there's another new poll that shows the American people do in fact believe there is a crisis at the border.
Morning console poll.
79% of voters believe there is a crisis and a problem at our southern border.
Well, I mean, how could you not think so?
You know, I I don't know anybody that has not been impacted by addiction.
I mean, in some way, I mean, you you know a neighbor that's addicted.
You have a friend whose son or daughter's addicted, you have uh a friend whose husband or wife is addicted, you have a close family member that's addicted.
Everybody's dealing with this.
And these drugs are flooding into the country.
You know, the human trafficking, you hear these stories about young women from Central America, young women from Mexico, trafficked up to the United States for to be prostitutes, ruining and destroying the lives of these young women, absolutely destroying them.
Uh Pat Buchanan thinks the president should just declare the national emergency.
Newt Gingrich says he should wait.
And Newt had the longest shutdown ever.
That's about to be broken.
Um keeps coming up is, you know, the media is claiming, well, I thought you said Mexico was going to pay for the wall.
And I played this before because when he was then candidate Donald Trump, I asked him specifically, I said, Well, you don't think that he's gonna that Mexico's gonna write a check, do you?
You think Mexico's gonna actually hand over the funds so you can build a wall?
And he said, No, not at all.
Now they're saying they're not gonna pay for it.
They will pay for the wall.
We're gonna build the wall, we're gonna pay for the wall.
We're going to stop businesses from leaving our country.
And we are they are being they are being drained out of our country, our jobs, our money, our base, and our factories.
We are we are gonna stop it.
You don't expect he's gonna write a check.
But what you're saying is that they will have to make concessions.
Well, there's many different ways.
So in other words, you don't expect Mexico to say, yes, Mr. Trump, here's a check for 10 million dollars.
It'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 them, we may tax them.
Okay.
It doesn't make any difference.
Look, we lose a tremendous amount of money on.
We have a trade deficit with Mexico, $58 billion a year.
People don't know that.
The wall's going to cost $10 billion.
All right, so there you go.
But the media keeps saying, well, well, where's Mexico paying for the wall?
Well he just did a new trade deal with Mexico.
That's better for the American people.
There you go.
More profits.
There's your wall.
Um, you know what's interesting?
The Daily Caller picked up on something I thought was pretty funny.
If walls don't work, how come Democrats built a wall to protect their convention center in 2016?
And I know because I've been to all these presidential, you know, these conventions, the Democratic Party Convention.
There's another thing.
You can't get into the Democratic Party convention unless you have a picture ID.
Democrats don't want picture IDs when you're voting, but if you want to get into their convention, you better have a pictured ID or else you're not gonna get in.
Anyway, protesters against the Democratic Party's nomination of Hillary Clinton were met with tall fencing around the perimeter of Wells Fargo Center in Philadelphia during July of 2016.
Many of the protesters who gathered outside of the barrier were supported by were supporters of independent Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders.
Some Democrats uh felt like they were cheated.
They were, and seeing the extensive security constructed by the DNC, they don't want to hear what we have to say.
And uh that's why we are out here daily.
Well, it's interesting.
You need picture IDs to get in, you gotta walk around a fence, and you have to go through security.
And if your last name is Hannity, it takes twice as long.
They don't like to let me into those conventions, but unfortunately they don't have any choice.
Um we see what's happening with our media.
I mean, you have one station uh saying this morning that CNN called them, the station's KUSI, and CNN fake news called their newsroom asking if one of their reporters could give them a local view on the debate surrounding the border wall and the government shutdown, and they offered Dan Plant to as reported dozens of times from the border, including one story from 2016 that was retweeted by former Speaker of the House, Duke Gingrich and posted on the Drudge Report.
Uh we believe CNN declined a report from KUSI because we informed them that most border patrol agents we have spoken to tell us the barrier does in fact work.
That's another thing.
Why didn't Chuck and Nancy get on Air Force One yesterday and go travel with the president?
I've been down to the border 14 times.
There's not a single border agent I've met in all that time, and I met a lot of them.
They're all great guys.
They all are willing to put their lives on the line for us.
And they all say, yeah, when we build the wall, yeah, it we basically eliminate all illegal immigration from that point.
Puma County is one great example.
They went from five miles of wall to 64 miles.
And guess what?
97% drop.
Anyway, so we'll see what happens.
Um, but it looks like the president's gonna hold out, let the Democrats do their job.
If they don't, he has the option of the national emergency, which clearly he is going to use if he has to.
Not his first choice.
But we'll see what happens.
Hey, listen.
So Kamala Harris is gonna run uh for the Democrats.
They're all trying to outdo themselves with the highest tax rate, which is not gonna serve them well.
Anyway, Carl Anderson, 2016, leader of the Knights at Columbus.
Uh, she starts asking questions of this guy.
Um, and were you aware that the Knights of Columbus opposed a woman's right to choose When you joined the organization, were you aware that they opposed marriage equality?
Um what does that have to do?
It's a Catholic group.
Were you a mayor aware that it's an all-male group?
Yes, so must stop holding the American people hostage, but to stop manufacturing a crisis.
This president just used the backdrop of the Oval Office to manufacture a crisis.
This is a manufacturing crisis.
No crisis exists, and anyone making the argument is most likely guilty of fear-mongering and willfully misleading the American people.
Locals will tell him on the border, even conservatives, is that there isn't a national security crisis.
The notion that we have a crisis there, a security crisis, is absolute nonsense.
This is a manufactured crisis and a crisis manufactured by the Trump administration.
This uh artificial crisis of the president isn't gonna justify his uh appropriating money for a wall that Congress is unwilling to give.
Is there a crisis at the border?
The president said there's a humanitarian crisis at the border, is there?
Absolutely not.
We have a challenge.
Oh, our humanitarian issues or challenges for us.
The big scam of the whole address was that there's a crisis.
There's not a crisis.
Some question if there is a crisis at all, as the president has claimed.
There is not a crisis at the border.
It's a manufactured crisis for the president to get a political win.
Crisis can have, as we see now, a very elastic definition.
He's determined to convince you there is a crisis at the border.
Even though an intelligence official tells Sinon, quote, no one is saying this is a crisis except them.
If you ever doubt it in any way, by the way, our two Sean Hannity show, glad you're with us, are toll-free telephone numbers 800 941 Sean, if you want to be a part of the program.
If you ever had any doubt whatsoever that the Democratic Party is in complete alignment, agreement with, and to use a phrase, in collusion with uh the media in this country, this is the greatest example.
They all they they couldn't even come up with a second word.
They all use the same word, manufactured crisis.
Now, tonight on Hannity on the Fox News Channel, you're gonna meet a lot of moms and dads uh that lost their kids to illegal immigrants that killed them.
You want to tell those parents that this is a manufactured crisis, or any of the 300 families that get news that a loved one is now dead from a heroin overdose.
90% of the heroin coming into this country coming across the southern border.
This is outrageous.
And of course, a very different story back in 2013, where the Democrats sounded more like Donald Trump than Donald Trump sounds like Donald Trump.
But because this would be his success, getting something done, they can't allow that, which now leads us to the possibility that the president will have to declare a national emergency, get Pentagon funds, and get the wall up one way or the other.
Newt Gingrich is with us, former Speaker of the House.
How are you?
I'm doing well, and I think what you're doing tonight is what the president should do for the whole country.
I think they should invite every family who has lost a loved one to an illegal immigrant to come to Washington to the White House, have a meeting, and then go up on Capitol Hill and confront directly these people who claim that the death of their loved one is manufactured.
I think nothing would uh shrink the Democratic Party faster than to confront the families who have a legitimate personal experience that the country's not secure, and that in fact Americans have been killed, they have been raped, they have been robbed, in some cases they have been tortured by MS 13 gang members.
Uh, all these people who are here illegally.
Well, I mean, this is the point.
Uh yeah, why do you think that they've taken on this tact that somehow and just look at the last two weeks?
I mean, one of the families we're gonna have on.
We're gonna have a member of Officer Singh's family's gonna be on the show tonight, and another family, uh, mom and dad, on December 29th last year, you know, just a few weeks ago, uh, they lost their son, Pierce Corcoran.
Uh he was hit with a by an illegal immigrant that was apparently on drugs or drinking and driving on the wrong side of the road.
He's dead.
You know, Democrat Democrats thought it was a crisis when there was family separation, which had happened in the previous two administrations.
Uh they thought it was a crisis when our border patrol was being pelted with rocks and bottles, and to defend themselves, they used tear gas.
The media was screaming that quote our ICE officials are gassing children.
They thought that was a crisis.
Well, this is permanent separation.
These are mothers and fathers that don't ever get to see their kids again.
Well, look, I think there are a couple of things going on.
First of all, a large part of the Democratic Party cares more about the fate of people who are not legally here than they care about Americans.
Uh I mean let's just be honest.
Their their bias is if you're an American citizen, why should they worry about you?
You're not their constituency, you're not who they're emotionally attached to.
They're more concerned about the treatment of a six-year-old or a nine-year-old at the border than they are about the death of an American from an illegal immigrant.
And and I think that's just a deep bias of the Democratic Party that has grown stronger over the last thirty years.
I think second, you have a lot of Democrats who are for open borders.
The new governor of California, who represents sort of a California crazy ideology, has called for not just a sanctuary state, but for California to be a sanctuary state with free medical care for everyone, specifically including illegal immigrants.
So Governor Newsom is going to make California the magnet for the world.
If you know if you need medical care, go to California, they'll give it to you for free.
Although so you can go to New York City.
So and I I would I would like to remind everybody that, yeah, Gavin Newsom has promised free health care for everybody, including illegal immigrants.
If you need health care, you know, all you really need is to get in your car or jump on an airplane and go out.
Gavin Newsom said it's going to be free.
So why not do it?
Yeah.
And I and I think but I think it's the same open borders, you know, after all, wise why should we think being American is special?
And I think it's a deep, deep uh behavior now, almost an illness in the Democratic Party.
And then the other part of the Democratic Party, of course, just hates Trump.
And they that they don't want Trump to have a victory under any circumstance.
And so you end up with uh sort of a bitter end oppositionism.
I mean when when the president said to Speaker Pelosi, if we'll reopen the government and then do everything you want, could we in the next 30 days uh solve the problem of the border?
And she said no.
And then he said, Well, that's why are we meeting why are we meeting?
I'm out of here.
And he was right.
I mean, if their attitude is that there is nothing they're going to do that fits the commander in chief's interest, uh now I I I will say uh I I believe it'll be a mistake for him to use his executive power.
I think this is an important moment in history, and I wrote my newsletter about this today.
He should focus on winning this country and seeing Democrat after Democrat begin to weaken.
And if he stays at it, uh your president gonna see enough Democrats split that in fact uh they're gonna be able to pass something.
Well, here's what's happening.
The the same media that backs up the Democrats with the manufactured crisis line, the same media now is is talking about this poor family has to sell their welding equipment and and this family is making cheesecakes just so they could pay their rent and they're selling the cheesecakes to neighbors door to door, and you know, it is and and uh and I feel sorry.
Uh listen, at one point in my life I lived, you know, pretty darn I was paycheck to paycheck for many years actually in my adult life.
Uh I know it's not fun when you don't have a lot of money and savings, and for a lot of these families, they don't have that money, and it is inconvenient.
They will get all of the money back in time.
Um, but this is what's being played up in the media, but they don't put on the parents that lost their kids and they only want to push the one side of the argument.
But but also if you if you feel sympathy for uh government employees who who are not going to be paid for several weeks, although as you pointed out, the Senate's already passed a bill and it guarantees they will get all the money when the when this is over, uh, they'll get paid the back pay.
But if you feel sympathy, call um Chuck Schumer and Nancy Pelosi.
I mean, look, let's be clear about this.
It's in their power for a relatively Small amount of money out of the total federal budget, it's in their power to work out an agreement with the commander in chief and have the government reopen tomorrow.
So you know the the this is not a one-sided thing.
And I think that we have to have the courage to stand tough.
I noticed that uh there's a great story out today that CNN was trying to find a local station in San Diego that would uh reconfirm its bias that walls don't matter, and they couldn't find one because all the state's local stations in San Diego were saying, of course they matter.
They had a 90 something percent reduction in the state of the state.
And then you had another station.
Then you had another station that actually tried to paint the president alter his look to make him more orange.
I mean, there's fair media.
And you know, I've never seen it this to this extent where it's this obvious and this transparent.
But when they came out and and we were kind of watching the SNL opening skit with Nancy and Chuck, and it was a really bad open.
And I I'm I'm sitting there watching this train wreck, and they both used the word manufactured crisis, and that then was picked up by everybody in the in the media.
I've never seen the alliance this tight where it is the same verbiage, it is the same phrase, the exact same arguments.
They're the same, they're the same people.
Let's be clear.
That's not like we're gonna quit kidding ourselves.
They're not the news media.
Uh they're the liberal propaganda arm of the Democratic Party.
I mean, the New York Times or CBS News or CNN, they don't exist as news organizations.
They're propaganda instruments.
Let me ask you this.
You all right.
So you want the president to stay strong and keep the government shut down, the partial government shutdown, which represents about 25% of the workforce for the for the government.
All right.
Then all these stories, furloughed, pain, misery, it's all going to be put on Donald Trump's lap, uh, which is their emotional appeal, ignoring the families that are permanently separated and lost uh loved ones because of illegal immigration.
So, but the point is the president seems to be laying the groundwork to declare a national emergency.
Why would you why would you not go along with that strategy when it is according to every legal expert that matters that I've consulted, they all agree it's a slam dunk.
Many Democrats agree it's a slam dunk.
Okay, it's a slam dunk.
He could have done it three months ago.
My question is really simple.
We now have a genuine crisis of government.
We have a collision between the new Democratic House and the President of the United States, and the truth is that Chuck Schumer now is is just you know, he he's the tail on on Nancy Pelosi's machine.
He he's trying he's trotting along behind Pelosi and she's leading the way.
Sooner or later, the president's gonna have to win a collision with the Democratic House.
The sooner he does it, the better.
If he sidesteps this fight right now and is clever and uses, you know, a nice legal device, we're still going to come right back to a collision.
Uh if on the other hand, he can raise the ante enough that marginal Democrats go in and say, I I can't take the heat.
We're gonna have to solve this.
Uh at some point he will force the Democrats to start to learn that a president of the United States who has the power of the veto can in fact impose very substantial costs on a left-wing radical House of Representatives.
But I think for him to be clever right now, and he may well be legally able to do it.
I just think that is in the long-term government of the United States, it's not a good solution, and it will lead the Democratic House to cut the budget of whatever institution he gets money out of.
All right, stay right there.
In the end, that that's that's their answer.
Uh, we continue.
Former Speaker of the House, New Kingrich is with us, 800 941 Sean.
If you want to be a part of the program, Jay Seculo, the president's attorney is going to check in with us today uh about the legality of declaring a national emergency, and we'll talk to a Texas representative.
He has an op-ed and the Federalists about the need for the border wall.
I was there yesterday.
You can walk across the Rio Grande, it'll take you a minute.
minute you can walk right across and you'll barely get your sneakers wet in some areas.
And as we continue with former Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich, you're urging the president to just stand strong on Um I think Mitch McConnell's hanging in there pretty strong.
I know that I've interviewed Lindsay Graham and Kevin McCarthy.
The House is strong, uh, but I can see maybe a few senators, Lisa Murkowski, Mitt Romney among them, you know, start peeling away, and I'm sure the Democrats are working very hard on that part.
So first first of all, McConnell has said he won't bring up a bill the president's not going to sign.
So as long as McConnell keeps his word, and he's up for re-election in 2020, and he knows that the most popular person in the Republican Party is uh President Donald Trump.
So one, uh the Senate's a blocking place to start with.
Two, the president's got the power of a veto.
Now to override a presidential veto on this issue is impossible.
You couldn't do it in the House, you couldn't do it in the Senate.
It takes two-thirds plus one.
You'll never get that margin.
So the President's a position to try to teach the country a lesson, which is on this issue, the Congress has to negotiate, and the Democrats have to learn to negotiate, and that's why I'm very skeptical of sidestepping this fight.
I think they need to turn up the heat.
Have you told the president?
No, I just I only realize I only realize today how real this is getting, and I'm I'm going to call him and talk to him about it.
Because I do think it would be a mistake to go down that road.
I think you should call.
I think I think he's winning.
And I think that he needs to recognize and people like you are a big climate.
As the country looks at families who have had people killed by illegal immigrants, the whole manufactured line looks cynical and sick.
And I think people begin to realize that these these are people who are are really pretty despicable to describe the killing of Americans as something which is manufactured when in fact it's the tragic loss of life.
All right, New King Rich, former Speaker of the House, thanks for being with us.
800 nine four one Sean, toll-free telephone number, uh, was down in Texas yesterday at the Rio Grande.
Uh, when we come back, Representative Chip Roy from Texas, he put an op-ed in the Federalists about the need for the border wall, immigration reform.
Remember, I sat through a security briefing down in Texas.
Six hundred and forty-two thousand Texans victims of crime in a seven-year period.
Well, we'll play that tape when we get back.
Criminal agents have been responsible for about 642,000 criminal offenses.
Uh you look up there in top left, sexual assault.
There's close to uh eight thousand victims.
Six hundred and forty-two thousand crimes.
Texas in Texas alone.
Yes.
Individuals, their criminal history reflected they were committed over six hundred and forty-two thousand crimes.
That's the cost of not security.
This is the first president's come down here since I've been here since in five years.
I came down here in November of 2013.
During 2014, we had the humanitarian crisis with unaccompanied children.
Um I didn't have anybody from the White House come down here and show the support for the men and women of the Border Patrol, C V P and DHS.
Uh having the president come down here means an awful lot to charge.
You hear the media, you hear the Democrats, they call this a a manufactured crisis.
Okay.
What's your answer to that?
So uh in 2014 we apprehended 256,000 people.
We're on pace to apprehend over 200,000 people.
Just yesterday apprehended 133 people from different countries other than Central America and Mexico.
Where?
Uh, from Pakistan, India, Romania, China, on and on and on.
This isn't a magic.
That was yesterday.
Just in this sector alone, 450 people were apprehended total.
Uh we continue to see increases.
We're averaging about six hundred and twenty a day on beliefs.
All right, that is the head of the sector, Mr. Ortiz that I met yesterday, him and all these guys.
I got a lot of time before the president came.
I spoke with a lot of vice members and border patrol agents and and people from all sorts of uh law enforcement, and this is this is their reality.
And there I am on literally I'm on the Rio Grande in McCallum, Texas, and the water is not that deep.
You can walk across and it would take you less than a minute.
If you're an athlete like Blair, you could probably do it about thirty seconds.
That's that's all it takes.
And then you walk right up.
There's nothing to stop you.
You walk from Mexico into the United States, nobody's there.
Nobody to stop you.
Now, if you had the barrier put up, well then that would then be the the we'd at least be able to detect you there, and if you're trying to g climb the barrier, push down the bar, whatever you're trying to do well that gives the law enforcement time to do their job which is what all these guys were saying.
This helps them do their job.
And when they tried it in UMA when they tried it in San Diego, uh Yuma went from five miles of fencing to sixty four miles of fencing.
Well then illegal crossings dropped ninety seven percent.
Anyway, Congressman Chip Roy of Texas is here.
He had written an op ed in the Federalists about the need for the border wall and immigration reform.
This is the reality of all these border states.
The first bit of tape you heard was when I was down there with a security briefing with Governor Rick Perry at the time and in a seven year period six hundred and forty two thousand crimes were committed against Texans alone including homicides and including as you heard sexual assaults.
Sean, thanks for having me on.
I'm delighted that you're down at the border.
I'm delighted that you've gone down before with Governor Perry.
I used to work for Governor Perry.
I worked for Senator Cruz and Senator Cornyn.
So a lot of the guys that you've seen down there at the border who know what's going on, Those of us from Texas know that this crisis is real.
It's been real for a long time and the problem is we've got Democrats who want to play politics when we're trying to make sure that we're saving the lives of American citizens who are endangered like Jared Fargus who was murdered last summer by an illegal immigrant by somebody who was captured, released,
captured, released and now his beautiful mother Laurie no longer has her son because of an illegal immigrant who who took his life and the little girls who you know and I know today are going to get snatched up by the cartels and thrown into the sex trafficking trade because we refuse to do our basic job as a sovereign nation and secure our border and this is not new.
Tom Coburn was on the floor of the Senate a decade ago talking about rape trees because of how bad it was along the border and it's only gotten worse as we've empowered the cartels and the president is one hundred percent right and I'm glad that he's focused like a laser on building fencing securing the border and doing the things we need to do to get it right.
The border patrol agents down there like my friend uh uh Brandon and and uh and uh Hector Garza and the guy down there that are doing the hard work they're uh wonderful people and they need the resources they need to do their job so I'm glad you're shining a light on this why why do you think the Democrats that supported this in two thousand and six and two thousand and thirteen many of the same people are now against it, vehemently against it.
What do you think is happened?
This is pure politics.
This is pure blind hatred directed toward the president of the United States without regard to their duty as congressmen and congresswomen representing their districts and representing this country to secure the border.
They're burying their head in the sand.
And frankly, let's be fair, there's been a bit of a bipartisan burying the head in the sand over the last 10 years and ignoring the crisis of the border.
You've pointed that out over the years.
And I'm just glad now that we seem to have a unified party behind a president who's willing to stand up and do the right thing.
we're winning Sean I mean we're seeing uh Spamberger down at Richmond and we're seeing some of our Democrat colleagues start to talk about how hard it is going back to their district and the folks saying hey uh we want to get this border secure I've got border patrol agents calling me and they're worried about their pay and I understand that and they're telling me look stand strong and keep fighting to secure the border because it's time to fix it and I'm glad the president's doing it.
Does it matter if the president keeps the government shut down and fights this till the end that way or if he declares a national emergency and that probably takes it into the courts does it matter to you which way he does it well I personally think he ought to just keep holding the line.
We ought to come together as a Congress and we ought to put pressure on Democrats to do this straightforwardly and uh fund the necessary border security uh that we need we're talking about two hundred and thirty four miles of fencing we're talking about immigration judges we're talking about technology we're talking about a humanitarian relief this is money that we ought to spend and we ought to make the Democrats have to stand up and vote on it and do it.
If the president has to go down the road of emergency declaration, we'll cross that bridge when we get there.
I think that it is an emergency.
I think that Democrats have authorized defense in the past.
But I'd rather that we just keep staying focused and doing our job, and the president ought to do that and draw attention to all of this.
And so the longer we do this, the more people will pay attention and understand how dangerous fentanyl is, how dangerous the cartels are, and that we shouldn't have the situation where a Border Patrol agent is down there at 11 o'clock at night alone with no radio signal, no cell signal.
The cartels have operational control of the border, and he's sitting there knowing that he could be in danger at any time.
he could do nothing to actually stop what's happening.
We need to change that right now and it's our duty to do it.
Well, I think it could be done and be done expeditiously and then put a lot of Americans to work in the meantime.
And uh I don't care if it's a wall, I don't care if it's you know, high tech fencing.
I just we just need the barrier.
Uh I don't know if you've been to the Rio Grande area a lot, but you have you been there?
Many times.
Uh whether I was working for Governor Perry, whether I was working for Senator Cruz, and then I was the first assistant attorney general of the state of Texas.
Uh we litigated DAPA in the courts and one in Fifth Circuit.
Uh I've been down there working meeting with Border Patrol and was last down there in August, and I'm actually gonna go back down uh a week after next.
And uh those guys are on the front lines, and if you go down there and you meet with border patrol, as you have, you see what's actually happening and you see how broken it is.
And you I gotta tell you all those guys are frustrated because they want to do their job, but it becomes an impossibility in terms of doing that job uh when you have all these obstacles and they're not giving you the the help that they're asking for and with the proven track record.
Uma is an example.
Uh also uh San Diego is an example.
Parts of Texas have been an example where we built the wall, they stopped coming.
No, no question.
You know and I know that in San Diego in the late 1980s, before they put the triple layer fencing up along that fifty mile stretch, there were over six hundred thousand arrests a year.
That number is down to thirty thousand arrests.
Fencing works.
Is it perfect?
No, no, no measure is gonna be perfect.
But fencing slows the tide, allows us to focus the resources where we need to.
You can still use border patrol agents, cameras, focus on points of entry, and get operational control of the border.
That's all we're asking for.
That's what the border patrol agents want, and that's what Texans want.
I can tell you on the front lines, it was the number one issue in my district in Texas twenty-one.
Lamar Smith has been a stallard on immigration before me and happy to try to carry on his legacy and work with the president and and try to get this done the right way.
If uh your colleagues in the House uh and you know, when you talk to them, obviously Republicans seem united.
Do you see any wobbling at all among Republicans or are they willing, you know, especially you're hearing every you know story about every furloughed employee who will they'll all get their back pay.
I know it's inconvenient.
I feel bad for them that it's inconvenient, but they'll all get back pay and the money that they would otherwise have had.
Um do you think that which pressure is gonna give in here in your view?
Well, what I'm seeing is a whole lot of pressure on uh Democrats to actually do their job to secure the border.
Um Republicans seem united, they're saying the course, uh they recognize how important it is to get this done right.
Um I believe that we're gonna continue to win this battle if we if we just take to the American people and why it matters.
And uh you you're exactly right.
Uh we're gonna pay employees.
Um I've uh deferred my pay until until we pay the the employees and the border patrol agents and others who are going without pay, and uh we should.
Uh but we should do it the right way, we should do it methodically, we should do our job, we should secure the border, and uh and then take care of uh of those that uh that uh will reliant on that pay when we get through it.
So um we just got to stay the course.
If we do so, we'll win this.
But it we can't back away.
I mean, this is it.
I mean, this is the future of our kids.
They didn't even have the fentanyl in the room yesterday because they were worried it was too dangerous to have around on display when they have the display of other narcotics and heroin and other stuff because it's such a dangerous drug.
Hey, listen, th three if you take a grain of salt or a grain of sand and put three of them, they can kill a two hundred and fifty pound guy uh in seconds.
Unbelievable.
Yeah.
All right, I gotta extraordinary.
All right, thank you, Congressman.
Uh Congressman Chip Roy of Texas, up close and uh personal, he sees what's going on.
Quick break, we'll come back, we'll continue.
Wide open phones, uh as well as we get into our final hour free for all, we'll be joined by Jay Seculow.
We'll talk about the legality of building the border fence and the judge shopping that inevitably would happen if the president declares a state of emergency.
Let's get to uh some of our busy calls here at the top of the hour.
Jay Sekulo, he is the chief counsel for the American Center for Law and Justice Counsel to the president.
He'll weigh in on the legality of and the right, which I've gone through in great detail in the course of the program today.
Uh, if the president decides to declare a national emergency on this.
Uh let's say hi to Mike.
Mike's in Ohio.
Mike, how are you?
Glad you called.
I'll be real quick.
I am the only con compassive conservative left in my family.
So I negotiate with my liberal brother and sister all the time.
So I came up with an idea.
I know it's crazy, but I think they would agree to it.
Is what if we gave the Democrats the uh Kinsburg replacement with uh either uh Garland or somebody else that they would pick for Trump to get all his border wall.
Well number one, uh slow down there.
As far as we know, she just had an operation, and you know, we all should pray for her health and and hope she's able to recover.
Number one, number two, you don't go making deals where you hand out oh, we'll give the Democrats a Supreme Court.
Uh no, that's what elections are about.
That was a big part of the election.
And if the Democrats don't want to do their job, look, you're gonna meet all these angel moms and dads and families tonight that lost their loved ones.
If they want to say that this is a manufactured crisis and look the American people in the eye or the inconvenience of being furloughed and not getting your check today, I do have sympathy for people that have bills to pay.
And Democrats, they bear a big part of the responsibility.
They won't even show up and negotiate.
President has invited everybody, he took his vacation away, he stood in Washington, Nancy Pelosi was in Hawaii.
I guess Maxi Waters was having fun and sun somewhere, I don't know where, but you know, they have to come to the table.
And if they're just gonna say no and obstruct, no and obstruct, and we keep seeing the drugs pouring into this country, the human trafficking element, and we see people dying at the hands of people that weren't vetted that come into this country.
You know, let's have that debate.
And if it takes a while, it's gonna take a while.
Uh let's go to Bob in Vegas.
Bob, how are you?
Glad you called.
Hi there, Sean.
Um, I I train federal law enforcement for living, and I'm furloughed and tomorrow I missed my first paycheck.
And I think there's blame to go around for both Democrats and Republicans.
But what's most important to me is why each side's doing this.
Trump, I believe, wants to save American lives.
All the statistics he puts out, DHS puts out, um, you know, the border patrol agents you've seen put out is true.
I know that.
And and it will save lives.
And I think the Democrats know it will save lives too.
Because they approved the border wall already, but now they won't.
Why is that?
Because they want to spike Trump.
So Trump to me wants to save lives.
They want to spike Trump, even if it costs innocent American lives, and I have an issue with that.
Well, let me first say I I I can sympathize as somebody who for years in my early adult life lived paycheck to bay check and had no money in the bank, or $200 in the bank, you know, at the old stone bank in Warren, Rhode Island.
Uh so I fully completely sympathize and understand with those furloughed employees.
Uh the good news is both Republicans and Democrats are saying that they will get all this back pay.
It represents about 800,000 people, about 25% of the federal workforce.
Uh, I know it's inconvenient.
I know it's hard, I know it's difficult.
Uh, but it's even worse when you have hundreds of Americans dying every week because of the ninety percent of heroin coming across the border.
Or I agree with you.
Or those illegal immigrants that are killing our fellow Americans, and you'll meet them tonight on Hannity.
We're bringing these families in.
It they'll tell you their story about permanent separation.
Democrats got all worked up about, oh, well, the kids are being separated from mom and dad.
Well, we have permanent separation in these cases.
But uh all right, Bob, thanks for what you do.
I I do hope you get your check soon.
I hope the Democrats do what they said they were going to do five years ago.
They're not doing it now because they don't want to help Donald Trump.
We'll continue.
Coming up next, our final news roundup and information overload hour.
The law's a hundred percent on my side.
So if we can't make a deal with Congress, so we should be able to make a deal with Congress.
If you look, Democrats in Congress, especially the new ones coming in, are starting to say, wait a minute, we can't win this battle with Trump because of the fact that it's just common sense.
How can we say that a wall doesn't work?
They show on helicopters, empty fields or people just running through.
And you put a wall they can't run through.
What are the options though?
If you declare a national emergency, the Pentagon also has the funds available that they would be able to help support the building of the wall.
If we don't make a deal with Congress, which we should be able to really just common sense and there's some compromise needed.
And look, they know that the walls were right.
That was part of my interview with the president from Texas at the Rio Grande yesterday, uh McCallum, Texas, is where the interview took place.
And the president's saying that if Nancy and Chuck, if they refuse to do their job and support the things that they themselves supported passionately in just recent years, and they just want to stop the progress, how many more Americans have to die?
How many more Americans uh are we gonna see angel moms and dads?
You're gonna meet some of them on on Hannity tonight at nine.
Is this a manufactured crisis in their life, or that ninety percent of heroin that comes into this country uh comes across our southern border?
You know, I actually found another statistic because we've had been saying and and the Department of Homeland Security had put out that three hundred Americans every week die because of a heroin overdose according to the CDC dot gov about drug overdoses from nineteen ninety-nine to twenty seventeen, seven hundred thousand people have died from drug overdoses.
Sixty-eight percent or more of than the seventy thousand two hundred drug overdose deaths in twenty seventeen involved an opioid.
On average, they're claiming a hundred and thirty Americans die every day from an opioid overdose.
That's a that's nine hundred plus a week.
More than three hundred.
Anyway, joining us uh now, let's talk about the legality.
If the president does decide to go this route and declare a national emergency or bring in the Pentagon or the Army Corps of Engineers, uh does he have the legal authority to do so?
Will it be challenged?
Uh Jay Seculos with us, Chief Counsel for the American Center for Law and Justice, also counsel to the President.
How are you, sir?
I'm doing great, John.
All right, so let's go if the President decides to go this route.
I see uh every I don't see any legal obstacle, even Democrats are acknowledging, n some of them at least, that the President has the authority to do this.
Uh if you want to go to the specific law that, you know, we can go to we can mention the specific law in this particular case because uh he has a right to do it.
So look, the president has both statutorily has the right to do it, and that is Congress created the National Emergencies Act, so he has that.
But he also has the authority under the Constitution of the United States as president.
So he has both constitutional authority and statutory authority, that is legislation that was passed authorizing uh actions in the event of a what is deemed by the president to be a national emergency.
Now, by the way, some people are trying to conflate this with an act of war.
It that's not what it's about.
It's not about an act of war.
It's a national emergency.
For instance, President Clinton in nineteen ninety-five issued a national emergency declaration because of drug cartels coming and dealing with uh heroin epidemic, and he issued a the Colombian drug cartels, he issued a national directive on that national emergency declaration so that he could take specific action.
You mentioned the funding of this, and it as you said, the for instance the Army Corps of Engineers has uh uh at least at least five billion dollars in discretionary funds for what's going on.
Well, they actually they actually have approximately thirteen point nine billion available from congressionally approved monies uh from February twenty eighteen than the supplemental uh spending bill.
That's in addition to the five billion dollars they have under the discretionary act for civil spending expenditures.
So it's not as if look, this has never been about the money.
What is this about?
The those that are opposing the president on this do not want the president to have a win.
Look what he's offered.
He's offered uh to negotiate, they don't want to negotiate.
He has talked about comprehensive immigration reform, they don't want to talk about comprehensive immigration reform.
He's talked about you know the thing with Jim Acosta yesterday at CNN, he goes to the water, he says, I'm at the bo border, I'm at the wall, there's a uh steel slotted fence here, like the president wants happening.
Exactly.
Precisely.
Right, because there's protection.
So I think that look, from a legal standpoint, it's very clear that the president has the authority.
Now, you asked in the interview with the president the question about what will happen.
So will they challenge it?
And the answer to that is of course they'll challenge it.
The next question is what happens ultimately.
Well, let me slow you down here.
They're gonna challenge it and they'll follow the typical left wing route, which is to go judge shopping, and that means the lawsuit will likely happen in Oregon or California.
Yeah, so they'll go to the Southern District of California, they'll go to Hawaii, they'll go to uh to Oregon, like you said, they'll go to the Ninth Circuit.
So you lose at the district court, you lose at the Court of Appeals, and you win at the Supreme Court, as we did with the case involving the uh travel restrictions that were imposed on the six targeted countries.
Well, if it's a national emergency, can there be an expedited process?
Because how long is that gonna take what you just described?
I think actually I I mean I know the the my perspective on it is this.
This is a question of law, not a question of fact.
Uh so it should move very rapidly through the I think you could you could see this happen in months.
And and here's the real legal question.
This is what people need to understand.
What is the legal question here?
The legal question is not whether the whether the president deems there to be a national emergency.
That's his decision as as president.
So the legal question is can a judge and this is what really would happen.
Can a judge say, I don't think there's an emergency, I being the court, the judge, thus the president doesn't have the authority to act.
And I think that's an overwhelming majority of the Supreme Court saying a judge cannot impose his authority over the president's, especially as it relates to both constitutional and specific statutory construction where the statute says the president has his authority.
A judge cannot say, well, my view is the president got that wrong.
So statutory on that issue.
So the president constitutionally and statutorily has the ability to do this, correct?
And and you're referring to the National Emergencies Act of 76.
Right.
Right, exactly correct.
All right, explain.
Now constitutionally, he's the commander in chief.
Now, if Americans are being killed in part because of vulnerability on our southern border, wouldn't he wouldn't that be part of his job as commander in chief to protect the southern border?
And and that would then also allow and free up the military, not only to provide funds, but to also be down on the border and protecting the border.
No, that's exactly correct.
So if you look at the the overall authority of the president as commander in chief, it is very clear that it encompasses those kind of situations.
So you've that's why I say you both have a statutory right and a constitutional right.
Now, the fact is that you may not even have to get to that uh because the statute's so clear, but clearly the constitutional right is it is inherent in the president's authority as president of the United States, and a judge cannot impose his view of what the determination is over the presidents.
Does the judge get to make the determination of what's a national emergency, or does the president?
And the the statute says the president and the constitution says the president.
Well, it's not going to start stop liberal activist judges.
What if it's a national emergency that the president declares why couldn't why wouldn't this go straight to the Supreme Court?
Isn't there a path that they could not original jurisdiction?
So there's there's not original jurisdiction in that situation.
But do you know how many uh items of law give the president the uh authority in the time of a national emergency existing on the books, over 470 provisions of federal law.
So this is a well-established right that a president has.
So that's why I think it would move very quickly through the courts.
So that would mean that there would be an obligation at the lower courts going to the Ninth Circuit, going then to the Supreme Court, because it is it's in this category of a national emergency, they have a duty and obligation uh where they can't sit on it for a year before they decide the case.
I think that's exactly correct.
And there's another issue here too, and that is not just the issue of the judge imposing his view or her view of what the law uh what the whether there's a national emergency or not.
It's again, it's not a you know, people are conflating this.
The national emergency means it's like an act of war.
That's not what it means.
The national emergency is defined differently.
And when President Clinton did it for a drug cartels out of Columbia, what's the if it was good in 1995, it would be good now.
I mean, no question that the president has there's precedent, not only in the law, but in fact on this.
And when I say in fact, what I'm meaning is other presidents have exercised this this authority in similar situations.
So this is not unprecedented in the right.
We had New King Rich on earlier.
Newt's position is that the president's in a much better political position to keep the shutdown going.
And let it and I said to him, well, if you watch every single other cable network except for Hannity on Fox, what you're hearing are is are the difficulties, and I'm sure it is difficult for some of these furloughed employees uh for them to they've got to pay their their rent, they got to pay their mortgage, they got to pay for their cars.
All of that money will eventually make its way back into their bank accounts, but it has inconvenienced them and worried them at a pretty high level.
And but he thinks it is a much better way to go than to declare the national emergency.
Well, I mean, here's the look, that's a political question, and I respect New King Ris former Speaker's uh judgment on that.
I think look, the president has the authority to do this.
Does that get the people back to work?
That's all you know.
By the way, if he declares a national emergency, does it mean that the uh that you've reached this impasse now in the government's funded?
It doesn't mean that now the president can say we will now move forward on that because I've taken action since Congress would not, but that would be a decision that the president would make.
Um and you know, the political consequences of this look I'm sympathetic for the people that are have been furloughed.
I mean, who won't be?
You have to be.
Look where it came from.
That's a good point.
But you know, i in a situation where you got a Democratic Party that that just five years ago was sounding just like Donald Trump, and that means Biden and Obama and Clinton and Schumer and all of them.
And we played those tapes over and over again.
And then to take this stand here and to be so insulting when the president offers a meeting to solve the the problem with the vice president, they send their aides, or when Nancy Pelosi flippantly says, I'll give you a dollar.
Um they're not serious about ever solving the issue.
It's is it just that they don't want Donald Trump to get the job done that they obviously couldn't get done?
Yeah, and no question about look.
I mean, if you if you look at this historically, and I have every time there's been a real discussion of immigration reform, Sean, under a Republican, the Democrats have blocked it.
Let's remember what George Bush tried to do, right?
What Ronald Reagan tried to do.
Others.
So here's what the and the president puts out in the last few days, we could get comprehensive immigration reform.
The last thing they want is comprehensive immigration reform done under the watch of Donald Trump.
I mean, let's be realistic.
Because let's talk about the money we're we're we're dealing with here.
Five billion dollars is less than one tenth of one percent of our budget.
Less than one tenth of one percent of our budget.
Twenty-five billion dollars doesn't even reach like I think it's point four percent uh of of one percent, point four of one percent, like half a little more than half a percent of our budget.
So this is not about the money.
This has become an ideological battle between the left and the right, between the Republicans and the Democrats, however you want to describe it, over not the money, but a philosophical issue if they don't want this president to have this win.
Well, that's sad because in the meantime we saw what has happened in just the last two weeks with Officer Singh, uh, who by the way will be on Hannity tonight and Pierce Corcoran, his mom and dad, will be on the program tonight, and we're gonna meet other angel moms and dads, and they'll tell their story.
And I bet they have some uh some strong words and thoughts about the whole concept and the whole idea that this is a manufactured crisis, because it's not.
Continue with uh Jay Sekulo, Chief Counsel of the American Center for Law and Justice, also counseled to the president.
All right, so the president now is is his hand in a sense, he's got to make a decision.
And what I'm hearing from my sources on Capitol Hill is the president's gonna give them a deadline.
Maybe it's up to the State of the Union address, maybe it's two weeks, three weeks, whatever.
And if Congress fails to act, then he will declare the the state of emergency, which you know, having been down there thirteen times, Jay, and having seen uh the drugs, the poorest borders, gang members arrested in front of me, and also talking over the years to many of these angel moms and dads.
Let me tell you, every American should watch Hannity tonight and and then decide for yourself if this is a manufactured crisis, as they say.
But how long would it take getting through the courts if you assuming they go to California, assuming they go to the Ninth Circuit, how long till it gets its way to the Supreme Court?
I think it can move rapidly.
I mean, I think they could the government can ask for expedited review at every step.
In other words, don't just wait for when it gets to the Supreme Court, expedite review at the district court, expedited review at the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals.
I mean, I've done cases where it's gone from, you know, the district court to the Supreme Court in two months in eight weeks.
So it it can happen.
I mean, I've had cases where I've taken a stay up to the Supreme Court on from a decision in a day.
Right.
So there is there are ways to to move the case forward.
Clearly.
And but you do know they'll judge shop it.
Oh, absolutely.
I mean, you gotta wonder if maybe it would be better if the Republicans they filed The suit in a more friendly venue first.
Let them do it.
Well, I mean, they're they're gonna file a lawsuit as soon as the president, if the president takes action, they are gonna file a lawsuit.
Uh and that lawsuit will be filed in a sympathetic jurisdiction, which means someplace probably in California.
And in that case, and in that scenario, what I think will happen is we're gonna have to just aggressively move for review.
And so you just got to get it up.
Uh you got to get it upstairs to the Supreme Court as quick as you can.
Yeah, and how long would an expedited review normally take?
I think you could do an ex-I mean an expediter review properly pled could be done in a couple of months.
It could be pretty quick.
It could go even go quicker if they it depends on how big the board of the case.
I think if we get to actual real judges that aren't judicial activists, I can't see this losing in the Supreme Court.
Jay Seculow, Chief Counsel, American Center for Law and Justice, also counsel to the president.
Thank you, Jay, for being with us.
800 941 Sean, toll-free telephone number.
get to your calls when we get back as we continue.
All right, 25 now till the top of the hour.
800 941 Sean, if you want to be a part of the program.
So this yesterday was what my I'm trying to remember.
We've tried to go back and at least 12, 13, 14 trips to the border.
I'd been to McCallum, Texas before.
I've been to the Rio Grande many times.
I've been out there with some of these guys with gunships.
You know, I remember one instance, and this was the uh we were there before Governor Perry got there one year, and you'd see people on the other side.
I mean, I probably could reach them if I was throwing a baseball.
I mean, it's not that it's you know, you'll walk across in some areas with where it's not deep at all, you can walk across and be in the United States from Mexico in about one minute or less.
And uh anyway, so but also we saw people there that were armed, obviously dangerous, on the other side of the border.
And we had when I was with Governor Perry, an El Salvadorian family crossed.
Then we got people, as they pointed out yesterday in the briefing with the president, you know, we they're catching people from 40 countries.
You know, Bangladesh, the Middle East, all over the world.
People get to Mexico, gro go to the southern border, and that is the one area that probably the the easiest area to cross.
And um anyway, so we went over all this with the president, what his plans are, and uh let me play this exclusive interview that I had yesterday with the president at the border in McCallum, Texas.
Mr. President, uh Thank you.
Thank you very much.
Rio Gram behind us, these are the guys on the front line.
You have you're giving them encouraging messages right behind them is 500 pounds of drugs that they have captured from this river.
That's right.
They are incredible people.
We've just spent some time together, and uh, we had a whole group at a meeting we also had that was just covered on your network and other networks, and uh it's incredible the job they do, and we really appreciate it.
That's right.
They have a tremendous amount of drugs that they just captured right behind us, and uh that's what they do.
And if we had a barrier, a steel barrier, a concrete barrier, whatever you want, it wouldn't uh have we wouldn't have the problem.
I have some shots that will show uh in this.
People can walk across the river and it'll take them about what, a minute and a half, two minutes.
That's that's all it would take.
And if they there is no barrier, all those drugs get in if these guys can't carry every sec every inch of of you know the two thousand miles.
That's right.
They have uh easy access into the United States.
We've built a lot of wall, we've renovated tremendous amount of wall with money that we've already gotten, and uh we're continuing that, but now we really just want to get it going and finish it up, and we're gonna build the new wall.
And it's common sense, it really is.
When you think of it, whether you're into the world of law enforcement like these incredible folks behind us that understand the wall so easily.
I mean, it would make their job so much better.
And they could also go to other areas because we have the wall, you don't need so many people.
We would probably pay for that many times in one year, if you think about it.
Just many times.
So it's not a money thing, it's a political thing.
Uh they look at the 2020 race and they're not feeling too good about it.
They'll do whatever they can to win.
I have tapes of maybe 20 Democrats.
They all use the same phrase, manufactured crisis.
Interestingly, their best friends in the media, they're all using the same word, manufactured crisis.
So we have drug cartels, we have gangs that we're dealing with, 90% of America's heroine crossing our southern border.
And then of course we've had homicides, and we've had sexual assaults, 100,000 violent assaults.
What do you say to that talking point the media and the Democrats are using?
This is manufactured.
Well, you know, I watched last night.
I saw in your show last night, actually, where you had anchor after anchors using the exact same word.
It's manufactured, manufactured.
Sounds like they're in collusion.
A little collusion.
That's the real collusion, okay?
That's the real collusion.
You take a look, because they all use the exact same term.
I mean, literally the exact same two words, but they had manufactured.
I said, where do they come up with that?
It's a manufactured crisis.
No, it's a manufactured sound bite because it was just a sound bite, but every virtually every, you know, I call it the fake news.
I'm sure you haven't heard because you're not fake news, actually.
You're real news.
And there is some of that.
No, there is some of that around, fortunately, and these are great people.
Uh these are patriotic people that do it correctly.
But you know, when I hear that term manufactured, and you see every single group using it, it's very sad.
We lose 300 Americans a week.
90% of the heroin comes into the country.
Um, but w in the last two weeks we lost Officer Singh in California.
Then Peter Pierce Cochrane I I had his parents on the show this week.
I don't know how you recover after losing a child, killed by illegal immigrants.
I've met and I've interviewed so many angel moms and dads.
Me too.
Um, are they gonna say that to them?
The people that lost their loved ones, their sons, their daughters, their parents.
Well, Sean, you know, many of the people that aren't getting their check, they get it.
They're gonna get it soon.
But many of the people, they're with us a hundred percent.
They want us to win this battle.
These people want us to win.
Everybody wants us to win this battle.
It's common sense.
Death is pouring through.
We have crime and death, and it's not just at the border.
They get through the border, but then they go all, they filter into the country.
And you have MS 13 gangs in different places like Los Angeles, and you have gangs all over Long Island, which we're knocking the hell out of, but there should be no reason for us to have to do this.
They shouldn't be allowed in.
And if we had the barrier, they wouldn't be able to get in.
Okay, so the point uh everybody that I have met and spoke spoken to, they all say, tell the president if you see him, hold the line.
Oh, yeah.
Now, you said earlier today that it's likely that you're very likely gonna declare national emergency.
How soon would that happen?
No, if we don't make a deal with Congress, most likely I will do that.
I I would actually say I would.
I can't imagine any reason why not, because I'm allowed to do it.
Uh the law's a hundred percent on my side.
So if we can't make a deal with Congress, then we should be able to make a deal with Congress.
If you look, Democrats in Congress, especially the new ones coming in, are starting to say, wait a minute, we can't win this battle with Trump because of the fact that it's just common sense.
How can we say that a wall doesn't work?
They show on helicopters, empty fields or people just running through.
And you put a wall they can't run through.
It's a good thing.
What are the options though?
If you declare a national emergency, the Pentagon also has the funds available that they would be able to help support the building of the wall.
If we don't make a deal with Congress, which we should be able to, really just common sense and there's some compromise needed.
And look, they know that the walls work.
You know what works?
A wheel and a wall.
It's they call it a medieval thing.
Well, you know, I'm looking at all these very expensive cars all over here, loaded up with machine guns, and every single one of them has wheels.
It's a wheel is an old thing, and a wall is a real thing.
There are two things they work.
They work.
A wall would be so effective, it would solve so many killings and so much death and drugs and human trafficking, where they tape up women on their face, they tape them up and they put them in the back of a car or a van and they drive right through our border.
I guess the next most important question is when you do that, you would you expect they're gonna go judge shopping, they'll go to the Ninth Circuit, they'll go to California to start the process.
Uh is there are your attorneys telling you there's an expedited way, perhaps to the Supreme Court?
They are saying there possibly is, and hopefully we wouldn't even have to go through it.
The law is very clear.
I mean, we have the absolute right to declare a national emergency, and this is security stuff, this is a national emergency if you look at what's happening.
And you just heard the statement they came in last week or this week from Pakistan and different people, they they got them.
Do you see Sarah Carnaval Leslan have people from Bangladesh?
Absolutely, and they come in through the southern border because it's really considered the space and the place where they can get in, And we want to close it up.
These people have done the greatest job.
It's hard work.
And it could be a lot easier, and it it would be virtually a hundred percent effective.
And Nancy and Chuck know that, but it's politics.
It's about the 2020 campaign.
It's about running for president.
That's what they're doing.
They're already doing it.
Uh it's a shame.
We gotta put the country first.
When you see when you see the same Democrats, Hillary, Obama, Biden, uh, Schumer, all supporting this, you know, in 2006, 2013.
Right.
They're not supporting it now.
Is it because you're the president and they don't want you to get a win?
Shouldn't the win be about the country being safer, more secure?
They know what I'm saying is a hundred percent right.
And it's not only us, it's everybody saying it.
These people say it, everybody says it.
If you don't have a barrier, whether it's a steel barrier or a concrete wall, substantial and strong, uh, you're never gonna solve this problem.
You're never gonna solve it.
And I don't need this.
Look, I could have done something a lot easier.
I could have enjoyed myself.
I haven't left the White House because I'm waiting for them to come over in a long time.
You know that.
I stayed home for Christmas.
I stayed at the White House for New Year's and New Year's.
I think you tweeted Christmas Eve all alone.
Where's Chuck and Nancy?
My family, I told them, stay in Florida and enjoy yourselves.
But the fact is, I want to be in Washington.
I mean, I consider it very, very important.
Last question.
Timeline before you think you have to go the route and declare a national emergency.
Well, I think we're gonna see what happens over the next few days.
They should do it immediately.
Look, we're not going anywhere.
We're not changing our mind because there's nothing to change your mind about.
The wall works.
It's not a question like, well, maybe it won't work.
It'll work a hundred percent.
Now we're adding onto that equipment to find drugs that are hidden in cars.
I mean, we have this incredible equipment.
We're adding sensors, we're adding drones, but what we need is we need the the barrier.
If we don't have a barrier, if we don't have a steel or concrete barrier, we're all wasting a lot of time.
And lives will be saved.
I know you're thought you're thinking about the furlough employees.
You support them getting all their back pay.
100%.
I support them uh tremendously, but I also support families like the Singh family and others others by the hundreds and by the thousands that have lost somebody because our policies are so bad, and especially at the southern border.
They've lost or they've had people so badly hurt, but they've lost them, they've lost their lives, they've lost, they've lost their heart out of the family.
I support those families.
The angel moms, you know the angels.
I've interviewed them very well, and so do I. I support them too.
Does it mean a lot to you guys that the president's down here?
Yes, sir, absolutely.
It does.
And is he describing the situation accurately?
And if you get the wall, the drugs will stop, you can stop the cartels, human trafficking, drug trafficking, the gangs.
Yes, sir.
It will help.
It'll improve the effectiveness by what percent.
Like the chief said, Um, the majority of our traffic is uh is usually coming through areas that don't have a wall just like this, uh, 515 pounds of dough.
Mr. President, thanks for taking time.
Thank you very much.
Thank you guys for what you do too.
Thank you.
We appreciate it.
All right, now tonight on Hannity, we're gonna have angel moms, dads, families.
They're gonna tell their stories exclusively to us.
I wonder what they think of the Democrats and the media saying that this is a manufactured crisis.
You know, literally, you could fill a stadium.
There are so many people, family members that have lost loved ones.
And it's sad that they don't seem to care even a whit about them by saying it's kind of insulting.
That's it's a manufactured crisis.
Uh that's my son or daughter.
What do you mean a manufactured crisis?
Uh or if you lost a kid to heroin, where the heroin come from.
Well, nine out of ten times it's coming from Mexico.
Right, this whole united talking point among Democrats and their cohorts in the liberal hate Trump media of oh, this is not a crisis.
It's a manufactured crisis, manufactured crisis.
Um, really, let me play this for you, and then we'll tell you what we have on Hannity tonight.
President Trump must stop holding the American people hostage, but stop manufacturing a crisis.
To manufacture a crisis.
This is a manufacturing crisis.
No crisis exists, and anyone making the argument is most likely guilty of fear-mongering and willfully misleading the American people.
Locals will tell him on the border, even conservatives, is that there isn't a national security crisis.
The notion that we have a crisis there, uh security crisis is absolute nonsense.
and a crisis that uh manufactured by the Trump administration.
This uh artificial crisis of the president isn't gonna justify his uh appropriating money for a wall that Congress is unwilling to give.
Is there a crisis at the border?
The president said there's a humanitarian crisis at the border.
Is there?
Absolutely not.
We have a challenge.
Oh, our humanitarian issues or challenges for us.
The big scam of the whole address was that there's a crisis.
There's not a crisis.
Folks, the president has manufactured one heck of a political crisis for himself.
Donald Trump is manufacturing a national security crisis.
You will hear them say is that this is a manufactured crisis.
It's not a national security crisis.
It remains a Seinfeld shutdown.
All about all about nothing.
What happens when there is a real crisis?
When there is a real emergency, does he take to the airwaves?
Do we give him the airwaves?
Do we believe him?
Some question if there is a crisis at all, as the president has claimed.
There is not a crisis at the border.
It's a manufactured crisis for the president to get a political win.
Crisis can have, as we see now, a very elastic definition.
He's determined to convince you there is a crisis at the border.
Even though an intelligence official tells Cinnanon, quote, no one is saying this is a crisis except them.
The way he was killed, what my family's going through right now, I do not want any other family law enforcement person to go through that.
Whatever it takes to mean ice, put a stop to it, my family fully supports it.
I want them to go to work, be safe, come home to their family safely.
And I always, every day I was, you know, scared that I would lose my son.
Never in my wildest dream did.
I ever imagine my son dying at a family outing.
A criminal, illegal alien that killed him.
Well, we're going to be interviewing parents, family members of those that have been killed by illegal immigrants.
Angel moms and dads.
Wonder what they think of the media and politicians saying it's a manufactured crisis.
Well, of all of that, don't miss it.
Tonight, 9 Eastern Hannity Fox News.
Have a great weekend.
We'll see you tonight at nine back here on Monday.
You want smart political talk without the meltdowns?
We got you.
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 a verdict with Ted Cruz now, wherever you get your podcasts.
When I told people I was making a podcast about Benghazi, nine times out of ten, they called me a masochist, rolled their eyes, or just asked, why?
Benghazi, the truth became a web of lies.
From prologue projects and pushkin industries.
This is Fiasco Benghazi.
What difference at this point does it make?
Listen to Fiasco Benghazi on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.