Sharyl Attkisson, Host of Sinclair’s Full Measure, on Sundays and author of the New York Times bestsellers “The Smear” & “Stonewalled" discusses the Mueller probe, the report that should be released after this 2 year investigation and the McCabe book tour that has become on air testimony for the disgraced FBI employee. Sharyl has plenty to say about the state of ‘journalism’ as we know it.The Sean Hannity Show is on weekdays from 3 pm to 6 pm ET on iHeartRadio and Hannity.com. Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
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You know what?
The biggest deep state news that nobody talked about this week?
And it's so listen, this is the greatest threat to our republic that we've ever faced.
And I won't give you all the details now, but this is it.
In fact, the media, which is going to be a big part of our discussion today, is so complicit in following the hate Trump mob media mentality on Russia, Russia, Russia, Russia, Russia, Russia, Russia, Russia, Russia.
It's just ridiculous.
Because under their nose, we see James Baker wanted to indict Hillary.
The top legal counsel in the FBI under James Comey argued it's obvious she violated the Espionage Act.
And Comey and company, the people that rigged that investigation, fixed it so she didn't get the indictment you would or I would get.
That guy talked him out of it.
Yeah, it wasn't even close.
All the evidence was there.
Never mind the obstruction.
You want to know?
Listen, you want to spend the rest of your life in jail?
Violate the Espionage Act or spend years in jail.
You want to really spend time in jail?
Okay.
If you get a subpoena for emails, delete them.
Acid wash your hard drive with bleach pit and then bust up your devices and kill the SIM cards.
I mean, it's so obvious.
And the people that did that were the James Comeys of the world.
Oh, hang on.
I got to send this.
Who is this?
Okay, sorry for TV.
Who is going, you know, how do we survive that?
That is the biggest news.
If the new attorney general doesn't go back and do his job, equal justice, equal application of our law.
It's finished.
Never mind the Pfizer fraud.
You want Russian collusion?
Oh, what about the phony Russian dossier paid with funnel money hiring a foreign agent?
When are we going to get to the truth about the hookers that are urinating in the bed in Moscow, Trump's bed, which is false?
Like everything else that they said is false.
It's unbelievable.
Now, we're going to get into that today.
We have a border update, the insanity of the left, including Bozo wanting to eliminate, take down the walls, all of them.
We'll hit that.
We have a whole pile of how extreme and radical this socialist Democratic Party is today.
I'll get to all of that and the 2020 candidates and how nuts they are.
By the way, Bernie Sanders, did you know that he's a really rich guy?
I mean, rich to the point that, oh, he's a millionaire with three homes?
Not bad for a socialist.
Why doesn't he redistribute his own money?
He's such phonies.
Sad story out of Connecticut before I get to Smollett is Democrats demand the flag honoring cops be removed so as to not offend Black Lives Matter.
I know you're thinking, Hannity, cut the crap.
You're lying to us.
No, I'm not lying.
That flag that was meant to honor law enforcement, removed from the Connecticut State Capitol.
Democrats complained it might offend Black Lives Matter.
You know, the people on tape saying, what do we want?
What is it again?
Dead cops or something like that.
When do we want it now?
do we have those tapes jason because and it was like pigs in a blanket fry them like bacon That was the other one.
Pigs in a blanket!
Fry like bacon!
Pigs in a blanket!
Fry like bacon!
All right, let me move on to the Smullett case.
The attorney for Smollett denies any of this.
I'm just, at this point, the evidence is becoming pretty overwhelming against him.
I'm going to stand by what I always say.
He deserves due process, presumption of innocence.
But when you look at the facts and what this amazing police superintendent said, we're going to get to that later in the program today.
Eddie Johnson blew me away.
Wow, he was so good yesterday.
But he outlined that Smollett had sent himself the racist, homophobic letter and said that, you know, it was a publicity stump because he was dissatisfied with his salary on the hit show Empire and that Smollett is in custody.
By the way, he's been in court all day.
He's trying to get out on bail.
He was charged.
Now, remember, yesterday, if you didn't hear, the two guys that allegedly were involved in this hoax, which is a hate crime hoax, are on video buying the chemicals, the rope, and a red hat.
So it's not looking good.
And remember, this happened like four in the morning, and it was like 10 below zero in Chicago.
It just seems weird that somebody be waiting to attack somebody like this.
Anyway, and they're claiming they went before the grand jury.
They also said that they rehearsed the whole thing.
So he's been in custody just now before the judges we speak.
This is Smollett's attorney live.
go to this live if we can.
People expect the evidence to show that on Tuesday, January 22nd, 2019, Defendant Smollett received a written letter at the Sinspace Chicago Film Studios, which is a facility on the southwest side of Chicago where the Empire television show is filmed.
This letter contained written threats directed towards defendant Smollett and contained a then unknown white powdery substance.
The letter also contained cutout letters pieced together which stated, Smollett, Jussie, you will die, black F, and the word MAGA was handwritten on the envelope where the return address typically is located.
This powdery substance has since been determined to be crushed ibuprofen tablets.
The letter also contained a drawing of a stick figure, which appears to have a rope around the neck and a gun pointed towards it.
Law enforcement authorities were contacted and the letter was turned over to the Federal Bureau of Investigation, which is currently conducting forensic analysis of the letter.
In January of 2019 and at all times relevant hereto, Defendant Smollett was close friends with an individual by the name of Abimbola Abel Assendero, who is 25 years old.
Smollett and Abel initiated their friendship in the fall of 2017.
During the course of this friendship, Defendant Smollette and Abel socialized together, exercised together, as well as worked on the Fox television series Empire.
Within that working relationship, Abel was a stand-in for a character named Kai, who is a love interest of Defendant Smollett's character on the Empire TV show.
Additionally, text messages between Defendant Smollett and Abel revealed that Abel was a source of designer drugs for defendant Smollett.
Specifically, since the spring of 2018 and on several occasions, Defendant Smollett requested Abel to provide him with Molly, which is street name for that narcotic ecstasy.
Text messages generated by Defendant Smollett to Abel, specifically starting on the morning of January 25th, 2019, revealed Defendant Smollett asking Abel when he would be leaving on his trip to Nigeria.
This trip was scheduled to take place on the evening of January 29th of 2019, and it had been planned by Abel and his brother, Ola Benjo Ola Osandaro, who's 27 years old two months prior.
After Abel confirmed the date and time of his trip, Defendant Smollett texted Abel stating, might need your help on the low.
You around to meet up to talk face to face?
The two then made arrangements to meet at the Sin Space studios that afternoon, where Defendant Smollett subsequently drove Abel home to Abel's apartment in the Lakeview neighborhood.
During the ride, Smollett from the state's attorney's office, I believe her name is Lisa Lanier.
It's actually Risa.
Or maybe Riza.
Might be Riza.
Anyway, so she's in the state attorney's office.
The lawyer, listen, I know people are going to hate me for saying this.
I actually like Mark Arakos.
Now, he is also representing Kaepernick.
And I called him one day.
I said, let me talk to Kaepernick.
I'll give him an hour.
And he, you know, he started laughing, but that never happened.
But, you know, he's been the lawyer for like people like Michael Jackson, Wyona Ryder.
Remember, she was going through a tough time, Chris Brown, Diddy, and others.
But anyway, so that's what's happening.
Look, it doesn't look good when you look at all of this and what the superintendent of police said, Eddie Johnson.
Let's play a little bit of Eddie Johnson, the best cut we have, JCON, and let people hear he was so pissed off as he laid out what really happened here and what was presented to the grand jury, which led to the indictment.
This announcement today recognizes that Empire actor Jesse Smollett took advantage of the pain and anger of racism to promote his career.
I'm left hanging my head and asking why.
Why would anyone, especially an African-American man, use the symbolism of a noose to make false accusations?
How could someone look at the hatred and suffering associated with that symbol and see an opportunity to manipulate that symbol to further his own public profile?
How can an individual who's been embraced by the city of Chicago turn around and slap everyone in this city in the face by making these false claims?
Bogus police reports cause real harm.
They do harm to every legitimate victim who's in need of support by police and investigators, as well as the citizens of this city.
Wow.
He was so impressive and so dead on accurate as he describes it.
Look, by all the evidence that we're hearing that is being presented, this doesn't look good for small.
I never knew small.
I don't watch a lot of these TV shows.
And like everyone else, I watch on demand all the time.
But, you know, apparently, well, I don't know, but Ben Jones, Mr. Whitelash, compared Jussie Smullett to Jackie Robinson.
Okay, Maxine Waters blames Trump for the attack on Jussie Smullett.
And honestly, you know, the president's right too.
What does this say?
All of this, you have people now being triggered by red hats that say make America great again?
What's wrong?
You look at the media.
Why did they jump in so hard?
Why did they jump in in this Covington high school kid?
Why do they dive in headfirst?
No background, no checking, no objectivity at all.
It's because they hate Trump.
It's a mob.
I told you in 2007 and 2008 that journalism's dead.
It's dead.
These are now activists, an extension of all things radical, extreme, socialist, Democrat.
The agenda is sickening.
You see it over and over and over and over again.
How are they wrong?
Go back to Richard Jewell, what Lynn Wood was saying yesterday.
It's gotten so much worse.
UVA, Duke La Crosse, Cambridge Police, Ferguson, and Baltimore.
Then they never vetted Obama.
They never told the truth about how his policies failed dramatically, which I told you every day in 2016.
Went down my list.
You think about, you know, they're missing the biggest story in the world and have been peddling the biggest lie in the world about Trump-Russia collusion.
Hillary Clinton does all of this FISA warrants, lying to FISA courts, spreading Russian lies before the election, ignoring Uranium One.
Bill Clinton triple his speaking fees, goes to meet nuclear regulatory people in Russia, but instead meets with Putin himself at a time, you know, his wife is signing off on 20% of our uranium going to Russia and also the $145 million kicked back by the same people involved in it to her foundation and their foundation.
Never mind that we had an FBI spy that was chronicling Putin's thugs in America trying to get a foothold in the uranium market and get 20% of our uranium.
Bribing, extortion, money laundering, kickbacks, and the abuse of power.
James Baker was right or, you know, whatever his name is, Baker, the FBI guy.
Yeah, James Baker.
She should have been indicted.
That's the top lawyer at the time of the FBI.
But Hillary's friends rigged that investigation.
The media ignores it.
There's something so sick about this media destroy Trump hate Trump media mob.
It's despicable and it's dangerous.
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See how all of this is connected?
How has the media gotten away with Russian lie after Russian lie and this breathless, hysterical day-by-day turns out not to be true?
Everyone's scared to death now.
CNN is like, you know, backtracking.
Well, it's not, it may not be what you expect.
The Mueller Report.
By the way, if it's handed over to the AG next week, you're not going to hear any details when the president's in Vietnam, which is where we're going to be with the president.
We'll have an interview with the president while we're out there.
We're doing radio and TV, same as usual, except it's 3 a.m. out there.
You know, this is what I love about what Lynn Wood is doing.
Finally, somebody is going to kick their ass for the smears, the slander, the besmirchment, the character assassination that they get away with regularly.
They lie constantly.
Journalism's dead.
They're an extension of all things radical, left, democratic, socialist, and all things a mob sickness, all things hating Trump.
It's interesting that the Covington Kid thing happens.
It's interesting what they do to Justice Kavanaugh.
It's interesting that, by the way, I agree with Smollett's attorney that he enjoys the presumption of innocence in due process.
Totally agree with that.
All I'm saying is, those videos of those guys and their testimony obviously was enough to get him indicted.
I think he's in huge trouble.
We'll continue.
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25 to the top of the hour.
Glad you are with us.
Cheryl Atkinson, by the way.
You know, she's been through all of this as a somebody.
I don't even know her politics.
I had Lara Logan on last night.
I don't even know her politics.
But Lara rightly observes what we all know.
90% of media in this country slants solidly hate Trump mob media.
Left.
That's it.
Love all things, Democratic, extreme, socialist, new Green Deal, barely even critical.
You see this new evidence that's come out that led to the grand jury indictment yesterday with these two brothers, I guess, allegedly paid $3,500, expecting another $500 buying the items that was likely used in, if it's true, a hate crime hoax, glasses, ski mask, red hat, rope.
And they're the ones that testified before the grand jury.
Now that bail has been set for Smollett, $100,000.
Doesn't seem like a lot to me.
And earlier, the attorney for the brothers is like, oh, this is all coming out.
Now, his attorneys have put out a statement, meaning Smullett's, like any other citizen, Mr. Smollett enjoys the presumption of innocence, particularly when there has been an investigation like this one where information, both true and false, have been repeatedly leaked.
Given these circumstances, we intend to conduct a thorough investigation to mount an aggressive defense.
I agree.
This is our system.
Due process, presumption of innocence.
With that said, you look at stuff that comes out, you begin to be swayed.
Now, maybe there's something that'll be exculpatory.
We don't know.
That's why you don't rush.
Doesn't look good for him.
Here's the interesting part.
Remember when Avenatti, Michael Avenatti, the lawyer for Stormy Daniels, was hit with these allegations of abuse?
And I went on the air, both radio and TV, and said, you know, all it was was one person's word against his at that time.
Not like this, where there's kind of a lot of evidence building and being released in the case.
And, you know, Michael Avenatti doesn't like, obviously, he doesn't share my politics, but I said it doesn't matter.
He deserves the presumption of innocence in due process.
I made a big deal about being consistent.
And as it turned out, there were three investigations.
And guess what?
He didn't do it.
They concluded he wasn't guilty of what was being alleged.
Now, even though, you know, he was the one that came up with Julie Swetnik and the most obscene allegations and untrue against Brett Kavanaugh, now a Supreme Court justice, which was, well, almost every weekend, they had these parties.
They spiked the punch and the girls were knocked out.
And then they line up in the hall and they gang rape the girls one after another.
Then she changed her story, which was, well, I never really saw Kavanaugh.
Well, he was near the punch ball, but I never saw him spike the punch ball.
I saw a red solo cup in his hand, and he was in a hall, but he wasn't lined up.
Okay.
Well, it's the same with Smullett.
If you look at his past tweets when the Kavanaugh thing was going on, dear survivors, I believe you.
I support you.
I love you.
I'm one of you.
And then it says, you know, hashtag prayers.
Listen when survivors speak.
Hashtag I believe Dr. Christine Blassey Ford.
Hashtag I still believe Anita Hill.
Hashtag F-rapist sexual predators and the people who protect them.
Okay, look at what happened.
Look at how they destroyed this man.
And unlike the 16-year-old kid, Nicholas Sandman, because you're a public figure, the standard is so high.
You have to prove, you know, malice.
And the standard is ridiculous.
And there ought to be consequences.
And I can tell you throughout my career, I've been lied about repeatedly.
I don't even pay attention to it because I can't.
I just, you know, it's so over the top half the time that it's just not worth it.
You know, if I did pay attention to it, I don't think I'd be able to do this job.
When I say I don't, I'm missing that chip that gives a rip at all.
I just don't care.
Anyway, when you look at what's happening here and you put it all together, because there were so many red flags in this case, why did the media dive so quickly into this?
Why did they dive so quickly into the 15-second clip that didn't say anything about what really happened in Nicholas Sandman's case?
Why didn't they make a phone call?
Why didn't they at least try to see if that's really what happened before their declarations of racist and, you know, vile, hateful Trump supporters, pro-life, et cetera, et cetera?
Why didn't they do any due diligence?
Lin Wood's going to crush them one by one.
Telling you, mark my words, he is like the president, he's tenacious as hell, unrelenting when he believes in something, which I love people like that.
And, you know, I had the good pleasure of meeting him in 96, the Richard Jewell case.
I never knew at the time.
I just went with my gut.
You know, when they said he fits the profile of the lone bomber because he lives with his mother, I said, this is stupid.
That's the dumbest analysis I've ever heard.
It turns out he was a hero.
Not after he had to go through hell.
You know, this is nothing new.
This is, you know, I keep having Hannity watch what is an abusively biased hate Trump media mob.
Remember, countless journalists, pundits, you know, threw caution to the wind because they like the story because it advances their narrative that they hate Trump.
The same with the Covington kids, pro-life, MAGA hat.
Well, if they would have done 10 minutes worth of work, they would have gotten the black Hebrew Israelites on tape like we showed, you know, excoriating these kids with the most vile language.
And they would have seen that the kids handled it perfectly, considering the circumstances.
They didn't say anything.
And one of the people encouraging not to say anything was Nicholas Salmon.
Don't respond.
You have an activist that walks along, you know, a distance to walk right up into the group.
I call it your grill.
Like that, I've had moments in my life where people get in my face.
I said, you better take your finger out of my face.
I'm going to break your finger.
And I'll probably break your jaw in the process.
There's a certain space.
When you get in somebody's grill like that, that's a threatening position.
Look how close that drum is of Nathan Phillips in the face of Nicholas Sandman.
In the Smallett case, we have what?
Glaring red flags all over the place.
My sources in Chicago, yeah, I have sources, literally were screaming at me.
Be careful.
I'm telling you, be careful.
I purposely avoided doing the story.
Linda was encouraging me to talk about it because it didn't smell right.
I don't, I just, my instincts, and I wanted to see more before I said anything.
That's what I, that's why we've been right when so much of the media has been wrong.
Ferguson, Baltimore, Cambridge Police, Duke, and so many other cases.
We vetted Obama.
Predictable.
Ended up, he was a rigid, radical, indoctrinated idoloc.
That was all he knew.
He didn't even have the capacity, like say a Clinton did after he got pummeled in the first midterm to change course.
End of welfare, as we know it.
What else did he say?
Said other things that were conservative.
End of era of big government's over.
So you have all these so-called journalists, all these pundits from all these outlets that we now know are embedded in an agenda to destroy this president, missing the biggest story in their lifetime, the biggest abuse of power, corruption, scandal in our lifetime.
When you have the upper echelon of the FBI and the DOJ, and we're getting close, I'm betting a lot of these people are going to be indicted.
Now we learn that the top counsel at the FBI said they ought to indict Hillary.
Comey and company, Comey with Strzok writing the exoneration in May before the investigation even really begins.
In other words, they rigged that case.
They fixed it for her.
The Espionage Act, the obstruction, that they literally, you know, warned by Bruce Orr in August of 2016, don't trust this dossier.
It's paid for by Clinton, put together by a Trump hater by the name of Christopher Steele, and also warning it's not verified or corroborated.
Then in October, they use it, still not verified.
They don't tell the judge Hillary paid for it, the FISA court judges.
That's a fraud against the court.
It didn't happen once.
It happened four times in three-month increments with renewal applications.
And then they allowed and even leaked members of the intelligence community leaking the propaganda to, quote, friendly journalists.
Why?
To disseminate the Russian paid-for Liza Hillary so that it'll influence the election in 2016 with Russian lies paid for by Hillary.
Sound familiar?
They ignore it all.
And then even worse, the insurance policy.
The people that call Trump loathsome, that said that he should lose $100 million to zero.
Do you realize that is an attempt to steal an election, followed up by an attempt to undo an election, unseat a duly elected president?
That's a problem.
And the media ignores all that in their pursuit.
They're all now quickly saying, well, it might not be what you think, the Mueller report.
I'm hearing them all say it.
Let me tell you what I'm going to do.
That report comes out, as I suspect, with only innuendo and no facts, no collusion.
I am going to ram their words right down their throat.
I'm going to go back for two years and I'm going to pull up every single solitary false report that they made.
Talk about fake news.
What a disservice to the country that your hate Trump mob media mentality literally transcends any sense of real journalism.
It's pathetic.
You know, and you know, at least in the Nicholas Sandman case, there's going to be justice.
Trust me, I guarantee, I can almost guarantee it.
Lynn Wood's going to get that kid paid.
Rest of his life.
I mean, Richard Jewell was never the same again.
I'll tell more of that story later.
I told it last night on TV.
Print media, cable news, network news, Hollywood.
There's going to be a thousand lawsuits filed.
And knowing Lynn, he's going to file them all.
They had easy access to confirm this story.
They didn't do it.
You know, it's, you know, one of the reasons I don't give a rip what these people ever think of me.
And I haven't for many, many years, is because if I followed them, I'd be wrong all the time.
That's why I say, you know, being a talk show host, I'm honest about what I do.
I'm a member of the press.
We do straight reporting.
I can produce hundreds of hours TV radio.
I do investigative reporting.
In other words, Obama and his radical friends.
I give factual information that the media doesn't give out, his failed record after eight years.
They didn't do any of that.
We also do opinion.
We also do sports.
Tim Thibaut's coming on in a couple of days.
You know, we're like the whole newspaper part of the press.
We do it all.
We say we do it all.
We're honest and upfront.
They say they're going to be objective.
They are anything but objective.
And as I dig in deeper here, all of this culminates in one huge conclusion: journalism is dead.
These people ought to be embarrassed.
Maybe they don't like the president's style.
That's fine.
Are you going to talk about the 5.3 million new jobs ever?
Every record in the economy?
It would take me the full hour to go over all the promises made by Trump.
Israel and Jerusalem, the capital.
Who thought Kim Jong-un would send back the remains from the 1950s and release hostages and never fire another missile since the beginning of the relationship with Trump?
Record low unemployment.
African Americans, I thought Republicans and conservatives are all racist.
Record low unemployment for Hispanic Americans.
Record low unemployment for Asian Americans.
Record low unemployment for women in the workplace.
Thought they hated women and we're all misogynist.
Record low unemployment for our youth, for our vets.
Biggest story this week should have been: James Baker wanted to indict Hillary, but that doesn't fit their phony Russia collusion narrative.
The biggest threat in this country right now is what they tried to do in the 2016 election and the media's complicity, their lack of any curiosity.
What is the biggest abuse of power corruption scandal ever?
And the media advancing false narrative, lies, and being wrong nearly all the time.
It's an information crisis.
It is now hurting the country.
All right, what am I up to here, Linda?
Which one?
Pick one.
Anyone you want.
Which one?
You were fired from the FBI and you were fired after the Inspector General of the Department of Justice found that you had displayed a lack of candor, which I think is FBI speak for not telling the truth, about a story that appeared in the Wall Street Journal and whether or not you authorized a leak of material that was in that article.
Why should anyone believe you when you were fired from the FBI for lying?
Yeah, there's two reasons.
Before the president started publicly attacking me, I enjoyed a 21-year career in the FBI at every level an agent can serve, can serve within the FBI, and with absolutely not a single blemish on that career.
Second reason, I believe very strongly I was fired because of the steps we've just discussed.
I was fired because I opened a case against the president of the United States.
I read the Inspector General's report.
That suggests the Inspector General is in on it and firing you for basically making up a pretext to fire you.
Is that what you're suggesting?
Here's what I can tell you.
I read that report very, very closely myself.
I've been writing and reading investigative reports for over 20 years, and that report was not like anything I have ever read before.
An investigative report includes all of the evidence.
It includes all of the information, not just those facts that support the conclusion that you'd like to draw.
So I have big problems with that report.
I disagree with the conclusions they drew.
And that is something that I'll be raising in a civil lawsuit that I'll be bringing against the Department of Justice.
It was quite detailed, and it states that you displayed this lack of candor, as it puts it, on four different occasions.
I mean, that's not just, well, we didn't understand.
I'm not sure I was distracted.
That's four separate occasions in which the Inspector General says, you were not forthcoming.
You did not tell the truth.
Yeah, and I would love to walk through every one of the points that I have for each one of those things that they've said in that report, but I can't do that with you this morning because of the lawsuit that we're about to file.
All right, that's Andrew McCabe.
Now, the favorite person in the media, the mob media, it is the hate Trump mob.
And that's exactly, and we see it over and over again.
We saw it in Covington.
Lynn Wood, who we interviewed yesterday on this program, is going to devastate all of these news organizations, and he's going to win.
I've watched him do it time after time after time.
He does it because it's a passion of his.
And also, you think of every incident where the mob media rush to judgment.
You know, start with Richard Jewell, and then you go from there.
And then we've got Ferguson.
Then we've got Cambridge Police.
We've got Baltimore.
We've got Trayvon and George Zimmerman.
Everybody thought they knew the outcome of that.
Then you got Duke La Crosse, an unmitigated rush to judgment and no due process, no presumption of innocence.
Even in the Smullett case, everyone wanted that story desperately to be true.
And his lawyers are right.
I stand by everything I say, that he deserves due process, presumption of innocence, but it's not looking good with all the videos of the two guys that have now testified before the grand jury leading to this indictment, buying the items used in the attack.
You know, if you have common sense, it does not look good in any way.
But it's also what the media chooses not to do.
They make the, you know, bias by omission.
The same media never did what we did.
By the way, our two, Sean Hannity show.
I'll just keep going here.
800-941 Sean is our number.
We're going to get to Cheryl Atkinson in a second.
But it's what they decided that nobody wanted to vet Obama.
He got asked one question about starting his political career in the home of unrepentant terrorists.
And it was fed to George Stephanopoulos by me the day before the debate.
They didn't talk about black liberation theology.
Reverend Wright was only interviewed by one person, me.
And then he stopped doing interviews.
Acorn, Alinsky, Frank Marshall Davis going through, you know, white folks' greed runs a world in need, his own words on his own book and on tape.
We're the only ones that ran that.
And we sadly turned out to be right.
I told you he was a rigid ideologue and his policies would fail.
I've given you those numbers too often.
You have them in your head.
And, you know, you look at that, you say, wow, for two years now, this March, John Solomon.
It's been two years when we first discovered that there were horrible things going on in the lead up to the 2016 election, starting with surveillance, unmasking, leaking raw intelligence.
The media has never dealt with that, never dealt with FISA abuse, literally committing fraud multiple times on FISA courts, disseminating Russian propaganda and lies to the American people on behalf of Hillary Clinton.
Is that not collusion?
Is it not collusion uranium won when we know because William Campbell is our FBI spy in Putin's internetwork in this country, wanting to get the foundational material for nuclear weapons?
And they're committing bribery, extortion, money laundering, kickbacks, all of that information.
And what do we find out happens?
Hillary Clinton, one of nine that sign off on this stupid deal to give our uranium, which we don't have enough of.
We have to import some.
20% of it to Putin and $145 million kicked back to the Clinton Foundation.
And at the time, Bill Clinton himself goes to Russia three times his normal speaking fee, looking to meet with nuclear regulators while he's there, but instead meets with Putin himself.
This is a sick, evil, twisted mob what we saw happen to this 16-year-old kid.
It would have taken all of three minutes to find out the truth that, oh, he didn't approach Nathan Phillips.
Oh, those kids never responded to the racist and homophobic and violent slurs hurled against them by the black Hebrew Israelites, all on tape.
We have a crisis of information in this country like we've never had before.
Cheryl Atkinson hosts Sinclair's Full Measure.
It's on Sundays.
She wrote a number of New York Times bestsellers, The Smear and Stonewalled.
She has been herself a victim of unauthorized surveillance with her home computers because of a work at the time on Benghazi and other issues.
And it's a pleasure to have you back.
How are you?
I'm great.
Thanks, Sean.
And by the way, I have no idea whatsoever what your politics are.
I've never asked you, I don't think.
Have I ever asked you that?
No, you haven't.
You know, because you're more of a journalist.
You consider yourself down the middle, right?
I do.
At least I try very hard to look at opposing viewpoints.
I'm often convinced on non-political stories that there's more to a story than I first thought.
So I try to be open-minded like that.
I work very hard at it.
Look, I'm not a journalist in the sense that I'm like you.
I'm a talk show host, but we do.
I can produce hundreds of hours radio and TV of me just doing straight interviews, straight reporting on, you know, big issues like, you know, hurricanes and Katrina and natural disasters, whatever they happen to be, or, you know, when America's in battle and war.
I'm just asking straight up questions.
Then we do investigative reporting, Obama, the deep state.
Then we give opinion.
And then we also talk sports with Tim Thibault and do some gossip at times.
I like to say, as a member of the press, I'm the full newspaper, but I'm upfront and honest about it.
A difference.
We have different job descriptions is what I'm saying.
Agreed, although I think it's become very blurred.
And I know you would agree at the national news level for many new databases now.
There isn't a clear distinction anymore in a lot of places.
What do you make of the McCabe Love Fest?
And I will give Savannah Guthrie over at NBC some credit is she went back, rightly read the Inspector General's report, and, you know, he didn't, lack of candor is just a polite way of saying you lied numerous times.
But the media is treating him because he hates Trump, you know, like some big media god star, if you will.
Yeah, you know, it's hard to know what to think when these top officials involved in two of the most important investigations, arguably of our time, that the FBI did, Russia and the Hillary Clinton investigation, when they disagree and one or the other is lying, that's pretty serious, regardless of which one is telling the truth.
It's pretty serious.
Talking about Rod Rosenstein and Andrew McCabe.
Yes.
I mean, even if Rosenstein, for example, were joking about, you know, wearing a wire to record the president, if one or two people thought he was serious or argued that he was serious, we're talking about a huge problem, in my view, that's not being, I think, addressed as seriously as it ought to be.
But let me say something in defense of McCabe a little bit.
I found it very interesting that of all the alleged abuses, and there are some big ones, Intel sources of mine say people inside ought to be going to prison over this and still think some may indeed do that.
But of all these giant abuses of surveillance and intelligence, the main thing that happened to anybody on that side is, oh, you leaked or lack of candor.
Not that those things aren't important, but in the scheme of things done to the American people or perhaps done to political figures, you know, weaponization of our tools, these to me are tinier distractions.
And no one seems to be doing much, including the Inspector General, about flagging these giant abuses that you mentioned in the FISA court and some other, I think, more serious things.
I think the greatest threat to this amazing democratic republic that has created, that has built up more power, abused it less, and used it for the good of people.
We're not perfect.
I acknowledge that upfront by any means.
Nobody is.
We're human.
But there's never been a country like this.
But I believe a clear and present danger now exists in this sense.
If we don't get right, what I am now 1,000% convinced of was an attempted, first, the attempted rigging of an election after they rigged and fixed obvious crimes committed.
The biggest news this week, James Baker was arguing Hillary needs to be indicted, the top lawyer at the FBI.
But then taking it even a step further, you know, the double standard on Russia with her paying for Russian lies with money that was funneled through a law firm.
Then that information never verified, never corroborated, bought and paid for by Hillary, put together by a Trump hater steal.
Everybody was warned it was unverified, but they had purposeful omissions in these FISA applications.
And then what you went through, surveillance, I'm masking.
And then the media is complicit in as much as they don't care about this truth because it serves their political ends.
We lose a country if we don't have equal justice in application of our laws.
Well, I hope that people, and your listeners probably feel this way, whenever they hear these common narratives or common things being discussed on the news in a one-sided fashion, they should immediately suspect that there's another side to the story, whatever it is.
I'm not saying that's always the case or that what's put out initially is fabricated, but too often it is shaped by this industry I call the smear industry that knows how to make us on the news go down a certain path.
So whenever you're hearing little about the FISA abuses, but a lot about something else, you should suspect in your mind, who wants me to focus on this thing instead of the other?
And what is the real story that we could be missing?
No, Cheryl, I'm pretty proud of the work we've done the last two years on this.
And we've been proven right.
And they've been wrong again and again.
When we come back, I want you to tell your personal story as it relates to all this.
Cheryl Atkinson is with us, 800-941-Sean, toll-free telephone number.
A lot more news and your calls coming up, and much more news roundup information overload as well.
And as we continue with Cheryl Atkinson, is with us, host of Sinclair's Full Measure on Sundays, author of the New York Times bestsellers, The Smear and Stonewall.
All right, remind people what happened to you both at CBS and, well, elsewhere.
Let's put it that way.
Prior to me discovering that there had been government effort to surveil me improperly, there were all kinds of interruptions of my electronic devices and phones and computers and television, anything connected to my Verizon BIOS line.
I never suspected the government was surveilling me because this was before we knew anything of this.
But I was covering some very important stories that the Obama administration was pushing back almost daily on, calling CBS, different people, and trying to stop them and censor them and controversialize me.
And I had sources inside the Intel agencies and connected to them approach me and tell me I was probably being monitored based on my stories and based on expanded practices they said had begun to be used under the Obama administration by Intel officials that were suspects.
Long story short, we've had five different independent forensics exams look at different aspects of these intrusions, and the forensics are undeniable.
It's like a fingerprint, I'm told, with the government nature of the intrusions, watching every keystroke I typed.
Someone planted classified documents in the computer.
They use the Skype app that I had to listen in secretly on conversations when you don't even know Skype's on.
They can exfiltrate files with that.
The list goes on and on.
And I'm in the fourth year of a lawsuit against the Department of Justice and unnamed John Does at the FBI to try to get justice because they won't investigate themselves for what I think was a crime.
So what do you do when Department of Justice is involved and won't launch an investigation?
Well, we're suing now in civil court.
That's an uphill battle because government has all kinds of immunity plus limited taxpayer money to fight.
But that's where we are today.
You know, Cheryl, I won't go into details, but let's just say, and I'm really in a good position to do this.
At the right time, people that maybe have done untoward illegal things towards me, I will go after with the full force the best, greatest dream team of attorneys that anyone has ever put together.
If it's true.
So we might be working together on that project.
Okay?
Wow.
Yeah.
You have the, let me say, I have written about the fact that the courthouse is out of reach for most ordinary Americans like me because of the cost and the time.
It's just a lot of people.
Yeah, I've been overpaid for too many years.
And I say all my colleagues are too.
Now, so what am I going to do with it?
I'm going to save as much as I can for, well, I can't save it for my kids because they'll come in and steal it all anyway.
So I might as well use it to get to expose.
Because if we don't fix this, Cheryl, we're going to lose the country.
We can't lose our country over this.
It is, and the media's complicity in this is disgusting.
You've been amazing.
Thank you so much for being with us, and I hope you'll come back again.
Some students harassing an older Native American man of Vietnam vet in the midst of a special ceremony.
Native American advocates say, video speaks for itself.
He got caught doing something that was incredibly racist and disrespectful.
He's not of sound mind.
That's somebody that clinically you look at and say, there's something wrong there.
Donald Trump, again, being a schmuck, we can surely say his words have absolutely emboldened white supremacists.
He has given oxygen to racists.
I think you're elevating Trump to evil.
Whereas having raised three kids, I just think he's a giant toddler.
Is it possible that she's not concerned with his mistresses because she was one of them?
Is that possible?
We can no longer say Trump's the bad guy.
If you vote for Trump, you're the bad guy.
All right, 24 till the top of the hour.
Do you see how this all now ties together?
I mean, when did I declare journalism dead?
As I was saying earlier, 2007 and 8.
Dead and buried.
Nobody vetted Obama.
It was a dereliction of duty.
It was because the media is an extension of all things now radical, extremist, Democratic Socialist Party.
They are an extension of what has become a psychotic, impulsive, hate-Trump media, all things Trump.
It now extends into the Smollett case.
It extends into the Covington high school kids case.
You know, whatever, they'll use anybody and anything and say anything about anybody if it advances the sick, ugly, twisted agenda that they now push.
And it's pretty much all of them.
Sadly, fake news abounds and they've gotten away with it.
You know, one of the things that Ben Franklin once said something amazing when you think about it.
He said, the sting in any rebuke is the truth.
What does that mean?
In other words, if it irritates you, if it bugs you deep inside, somebody probably told you the truth.
You ever in your life have to tell somebody, hey, knock it off.
You're drinking too much.
I have.
Usually the reaction is they get pissed at you.
Not a fun thing to do.
Or, you know, somebody that you care about, a friend of yours doing things that they shouldn't be doing, just knock it off.
What are you doing?
Knock it off.
You know, we all, listen, none of us are perfect.
I'm just saying, if somebody hits you with a truth that you really don't want to face, it's going to sting.
Truth about the media, why they react to Donald Trump even more when he says fake news.
All of them back there, it's the funniest thing in this, they're fake news.
By the way, when he says enemy of the people, oh, you're threatening journalists.
I take it very differently than they do.
When I take it as you, you are, this is malpractice, what you're doing.
It is you are hurting the American people.
You're hurting the country with your nonstop, agenda-driven, mob-like lies.
No greater example than the Trump-Russia witch hunt that's been going on.
I know, Linda, you seem very captivated by all this.
But I know you agree with us.
No, absolutely.
I mean, listen, I honestly, that superintendent, Eddie Johnson, he spoke.
We're going to play that again at the top of the R.
I tell you, man, that poor man, you know, I think it's funny.
He actually says something that you said all the time, which is like, you know, look at all these officers and the man time that we spent looking into things that never happened while all these murders are happening in Chicago and not a one of you are speaking out about that.
So we got a fake hate crime with a guy making a million dollars a year and he's sad about his million dollars.
And then we got people living in poverty, killing each other on the streets.
Well, it drove me nuts.
We'd always have the intense media coverage of one high-profile case, usually whatever the agenda was, race, whatever.
And, you know, one night I got so pissed off at that that I actually scrolled the names of all the people shot in Chicago whose names we've never heard of because to them, it's obviously they only pick and choose the one issue that advances their agenda.
It's wrong.
It's wrong and it's really it's egregiously deceptive.
Like it's one thing when, you know, like there were people that jumped on the bandwagon in many of these, you know, fake news stories and, you know, they've had to come clean.
And we've posted on Hannity.com, you know, the amount of stories that have been either misreported or fake news or they left out key details or whatever it is.
And then things that are glossed over because it doesn't fit to further the agenda against Trump because it hurts them or whatever it is.
But the long and the short of all of this is that they have they have one goal and the goal no longer is truth.
You know, the goal is this sort of, you know, collective unconscious of we're all going to work together against one person because we think that it makes us more popular with the dumbing down of America.
It's real sad.
And I just.
You know, remember how I've, you know, mean, what, you've been on the show.
How many years of going in my life?
14, 14.
14th year.
14th year.
Okay.
But, you know, I think I was past it by the time you started.
I don't, you know me.
Like James tried to for years hand me a packet of all the crap written and said about me.
And I just, I just don't care.
It just get this crap out of it.
I don't want to see it.
I don't want to read it.
The reason I don't care, because I don't respect them.
We've been proven right so many times and they get it wrong so often in a, in a way that is, you know, on a level of insanity.
They get so much wrong and they don't pay the price for it.
That's why I love that Lynn Wood is the attorney for Nicholas Sandman.
And look, he was pretty clear about it yesterday.
He actually has identified, he's got two and a half years because of the age of Nicholas, meaning underage, that he can identify all those people, all those news organizations, all of those Hollywood stars that do what they always do, viciously rush to judgment, no due process, straight to guilty by association.
And this was so simple to check out.
They didn't make a single phone call.
They didn't talk to a single person.
They ran wild with a 15-second clip and then the commentary upon commentary.
By the end of this, that kid, and by the way, there are other kids involved in this too.
He's just the highest profile, is going to be so wealthy because those media outlets, they will, they'll be begging for settlement agreements.
Listen, you know the respect I've had for Lynn.
I've told the Richard Jewel story how many times?
A lot.
You know why?
Because it's changed my life.
How is it that we are right on this show?
But you know what?
Lynn wrote you a very nice note to interrupt you for a brief moment, which was, it's not something that was open to the public, but I'll share it, you know, paraphrase it a bit.
I hate when anyone says anything good about me.
Let's cross over this part.
I can bash you if you want right after I say this nice thing if you let's even out.
Okay, cool.
So yeah, so Lynn, Lynn basically wrote this really night notice when we were emailing back and forth.
And he's like, you know, Linda, he's like, you know, Sean was always so good to me.
He said, especially during the Richard Jewell case, because he was the only person in the media that even gave us an opportunity to vet it out, to take a look at it, to even give the guy the benefit of the doubt.
And I was saying this morning to the team, I was like, you know, if we look at what's happening with, you know, Governor Northam and Lieutenant Governor Fairfax, I mean, it's just like silence.
Look at what they did to Kavanaugh.
So that's exactly what I said.
So that's why he can't.
He's a public figure.
And, you know, I actually mentioned to Lynn.
I said, they changed that law one day.
Oh, I will own these people.
And then also, what about the means?
It's your show.
I even defended Michael Avenatti's right to due process and presumption of innocence.
And guess what?
He ended up getting cleared by three separate investigations.
Michael Avenatti doesn't like Sean Hannity.
The same guy that wouldn't give it to Justice Kavanaugh.
I said, and I'll say the same thing about Smollett.
I'm looking at all the evidence now that it's being presented.
We're at the point where you pretty much see where this has gone and he's charged and you see the video.
Yeah, but see, I wouldn't have given it to Smollett because Smollett never gave it to anybody else.
Well, he didn't give it to Kavanaugh.
No, but he didn't give it to anybody.
It's like if you supported Trump, he called you a devil.
He called you a hater.
He said you were dumb.
He said you were this and that.
I mean, it's absolutely.
Do you remember you brought the Smollett case to my attention?
You said, I really think you need to do this.
And I said, I'm waiting.
I said, I had my sources in Chicago were telling me something's really off here.
And I just went, remember, you said, I think you should at least mention it.
Talk about what's happened.
And I said, I'm not ready yet because there wasn't enough information for me.
I just meant that I wanted to bring it up in the sense of, you know, everybody's.
But you're a good producer.
Sometimes if you see that on opportunities, you guys get that on tape.
Sean just said I was a good producer on Air May.
Well, you're not a good or a great producer.
Let's make a drop of that play at all.
You're going to be a total.
I had to.
You said to bash you after I said something nice.
So if I don't agitate you, then I'm not keeping my word, right?
Well, here's what he, and I mentioned this before.
I'm going to say it again.
What really hit me in the Richard Jewell case more than anything was a phone call I had with Richard.
And he said, I was listening the day this was unfolding as it was unfolding to you.
Now, I'm like, oh, the awesomeness of that responsibility, right?
And he goes, you were the only, only person that was fair to me.
And not only that, you didn't believe it.
Because I'm like, fits the profile of a lone bomber because he lives with his mother.
You guys have to be kidding me.
He died at 44.
We know stress contributes to heart attacks.
There's genetics.
There's all that stuff.
I'm convinced, and Lynn is totally convinced.
All the stress of being called a terrorist for all that time devastated him.
And I think impacted his health.
I have no evidence to prove that, just my gut.
But that lesson stayed with me.
All right, as we continue the Sean Hannity show, news roundup coming up next hour, we'll get back to the Smollett case.
Wow.
And it all ties together, as I've been saying all day.
You know, I'll give you, when I really began to realize the power of being in the media and radio, did I ever tell you the story about this guy that was a regular caller to me in Atlanta?
And one day he calls into the program and he goes, hey, Sean, I just want to call.
I just want to say, hey, listen, loved the show all this time, but I'm checking out.
I said, oh, what are you moving?
What's going on?
No, no, no.
I'm checking out.
Like, what do you mean you're checking?
So he started saying that he took a bottle of pills, drank whatever amount of liquor, and instantaneously, a guy gave slugo.
Eric Seidel, who was my program director at the time, called the control room and said, don't take a break.
Keep him on the phone.
We need to find his location.
I kept the guy on the phone.
I said, no, man, listen, listen, we'll get your help.
We'll do whatever you want.
Think of your family.
Think of the impact.
You know, just whatever I could think of at the time to help this guy, because it was real.
Well, I found out later.
It was totally real.
Long story short, that when I got his location, seriously, within while he was still on the phone with me, an ambulance was listening and showed up.
And about 100 cars in a minute descended on him to help him.
That changed my life too.
I mean, we have fun.
We can be a little reckless at times, but you think of that, and it ended up, the story ended up really well.
It was true that he had taken the pills.
It was true that he would have killed himself.
And at some point later down the line, when I got back in touch with him, he got his life together.
Thank God.
That's crazy, isn't it?
Yeah, I think it's amazing how one person can have such a dramatic effect on another person's life in a positive way when you try.
These people spend so much time trying to screw other people's lives up.
And the problem is that no matter the truth of the Sandman kid and his friends, you know, their reputation is tainted and they didn't do anything.
But the black Hebrew Israelites, I mean, I know what's happened to them.
What are they doing?
They didn't even run that story in a lot of places.
They didn't tell the whole story.
Those are grown men that are calling them incest babies and crackers and all sorts of racial slurs and silence, absolute silence.
And honestly, nothing makes me more angry than that.
That just ticks me off.
You know, I got to tell you, look at what they do.
Here, the country is succeeding.
5.4 million new jobs, 600,000 manufacturing jobs.
Economic record after economic record broken.
Little Rocket Man is about to, you know, maybe make a deal.
That's why we're going to Vietnam next week.
And by the way, the Mueller report, if it's handed over to the AG, he's not saying a word about it.
That won't break, nor should he, while the president's on foreign soil.
And the media can't say a single nice thing about him or the Democrats.
I mean, his policies are working for the forgotten men and women that elected him.
All right, quick, we got to take a break.
Quick break, right back.
News roundup.
We're going to get back into the Smollett case and your calls in the next hour as well.
We got an amazing Hannity tonight.
Tell you about that in a second as we continue.
Stay right here for our final news roundup and information overload.
This announcement today recognizes that Empire actor Jesse Smollett took advantage of the pain and anger of racism to promote his career.
I'm left hanging my head and asking why.
Why would anyone, especially an African-American man, use the symbolism of a noose to make false accusations?
How could someone look at the hatred and suffering associated with that symbol and see an opportunity to manipulate that symbol to further his own public profile?
How can an individual who's been embraced by the city of Chicago turn around and slap everyone in this city in the face by making these false claims?
Bogus police reports cause real harm.
They do harm to every legitimate victim who's in need of support by police and investigators as well as the citizens of this city.
We do not, nor will we ever tolerate hate in our city, whether that hate is based on an individual's sexual orientation, race, or anything else.
So I'm offended by what's happened, and I'm also angry.
I love the city of Chicago and the Chicago Police Department, warts and all.
But this publicity stunt was a scar that Chicago didn't earn and certainly didn't deserve.
To make things worse, the accusations within this phony attack received national attention for weeks.
Celebrities, news commentators, and even presidential candidates weighed in on something that was choreographed by an actor.
First, Smollett attempted to gain attention by sending a false letter that relied on racial, homophobic, and political language.
When that didn't work, Smollett paid $3,500 to stage this attack and drag Chicago's reputation through the mud in the process.
And why?
This stunt was orchestrated by Smollett because he was dissatisfied with his salary.
So he concocted a story about being attacked.
Now, our city has problems.
We know that.
We have problems that have affected people from all walks of life, and we know that.
But to put the national spotlight on Chicago for something that is both egregious and untrue is simply shameful.
I'm also concerned about what this means moving forward for hate crimes.
Now, of course, the Chicago Police Department will continue to investigate all reports of these types of incidents with the same amount of vigor that we did with this one.
My concern is that hate crimes will now publicly be met with a level of skepticism that previously didn't happen.
That said, Smollett was treated as a victim throughout this investigation until we received evidence that led detectives in another direction.
I only hope that the truth about what happened receives the same amount of attention that the hoax did.
I'll continue to pray for this troubled young man who resorted to both drastic and illegal tactics to gain attention.
I'll also continue to pray for our city, asking that we can move forward from this and begin to heal.
Wow.
Glad you're with us.
News Roundup Information Overload.
That was the Chicago Police Superintendent Eddie Johnson.
Every time I hear it, it's so powerful what he's saying.
And, you know, what about legitimate victims?
You know, you can't have a hate crime hoax.
Then you get into every issue here.
They all kind of blend together.
The fake news issue.
You know, why did the media treat Nicholas Sandman the way they treated him when it would have taken two minutes of their time to verify if what people said are true and get the tapes of the black Hebrew Israelites that were vicious to those kids and they didn't even respond?
Or Nathan Phillips' long walk right in the grill of Nicolas Sandman, who did nothing but smile, eviscerated him.
It was all over the place.
Racist, this, that.
And you got this hoax.
I mean, you know, for them to say that, you know, he sent that letter because he's dissatisfied with his salary and he's in custody.
He's, you know, now facing serious jail time.
Real serious jail time.
But what about real victims?
One thing that really frustrated me in the 2016 election is all the money that was sent to the Clinton Foundation by Saudi Arabia.
Yeah, okay.
They abuse women, treat them like third-class citizens.
They kill gays and lesbians.
And they persecute Christians and Jews.
I don't want one cent from them at all.
If they turn around and want to make peace with Israel, I'd be fine with that.
Anyway, joining us is Jonathan Gillum and Danielle McLaughlin.
Welcome both of you to the program.
And one other thing, Danielle, you know, there have been so many false stories.
The kids wearing a Make America Great Again hat.
What is this now?
The new trigger to send people off into the world of violence and mob hatred?
No, I don't think it is, Sean.
I think that obviously Nicola Sandman was treated reprehensibly by media, and he will be left to his devices.
Maybe there's a legal route to make him whole because his name and his face is known and he's a long way ahead of him.
So I agree with you.
I think that media didn't do what it was meant to do with the investigating and finding out what really happened.
They were reporting, right?
It's very important.
Why did everybody run with the story?
They do it again and again and again.
In the case of Nicolas Sandman, they're all about to get their asses kicked by Lynn Wood.
Maybe.
We'll see, you know?
No, not maybe.
You can't slander a 15-year-old kid and call him a racist and want to punch him in the face and deal with Linwood is going to win.
I'll put any amount of money on it.
I met this guy in 96.
Yeah.
Okay.
The question is whether there's a legal claim there for defamation, which is, you know, it requires more than we have on ear.
But I would say that the post was reckless and not figuring out what was really happening.
There was a full video.
You don't sound passionate enough about this for me.
This is, look at what's, you know, let me go to our friend Jonathan.
Jonathan, Mr. This is a white lash himself.
Van Jones over at Fake News CNN, you know, is comparing Jesse Smollett to Jackie Robinson, a fall of an icon.
This is the fall of an icon.
And I don't think people understand how important he has been in the black community.
Empire as a show.
Yeah.
To have him as a beloved character, I think did a great deal to knock back homophobia in the black community.
The fact that Empire has been celebrated, the fact that he has been celebrated, and you see homophobia in the black community through his eyes on this show.
This is a Jackie Robinson against homophobia in the black community, an icon, a beloved icon.
And now you have the fall of an icon at a time when we need icons, when we need heroes, when we need people who stand up.
So the level of betrayal, if this is true, is so deep.
You can see it in your voice.
You can see it in your face.
It's almost hard to get the words out because of how beloved he has been and how hurt we were when we thought that he had been hurt.
You know, it's been interesting trying to report on this particular story.
And we've done several reports on this show, just the facts straight.
Here's what we know, here's what we don't know.
Because you don't want to get into a place where you are just sort of speculating about things.
Right.
This is playing out every single moment.
Yeah.
In cable news.
Sean Hannity is going to eat Jussie Smollett's lunch every single second.
Tucker Carlson is going to eat Jussie Smollett's lunch every single second.
The president of the United States is going to eat his lunch.
And who does the President of the United States watch every night?
You.
Cable news.
Well, cable news.
And so that's all I'm saying.
That's all I'm saying.
The pushback on this needs to be that the framing cannot be that simply because of this one case, that all the other victims that come forward are somehow no longer.
But you know that's what the narrative is going to be.
It's been two weeks since that night left actor Jesse Smollett bruised but not broken.
And he's still processing the raw emotions.
A horrific middle-of-the-night attack on Empire's Jesse Smollett.
Brutal attack in Chicago.
Brutal beating.
A brutal attack.
Just as heinous as you might imagine.
The horrific details.
Yeah, troubling details there, Brooke, when you think about this.
Choked with a rope and doused with a chemical.
This is horrible to report.
This one is so hard to process.
It's a pretty disturbing incident.
And certainly there are many indications of a hate crime here.
Danny, this is a horrible story.
It gets worse.
One of the offenders wrapped a rope around Smollett's neck.
Of course, our thoughts and prayers with Jesse.
Absolutely despicable.
The circumstances are horrific.
And this is America in 2019.
Terrible.
Terrible on data.
This is stomach-turning, mind-boggling information.
Why do you think you were targeted?
I come really, really hard against the 45.
They are looking for two suspects who were apparently wearing Make America Great Again hats.
And there is no doubt in your mind what motivated this attack.
I could only go off of their words.
Mala told them his attackers also yelled, MAGA country, make America great again.
The president ought to come out and say, if his brand does not represent these kind of alleged attacks, that he stands to say that his brand represents something else.
His silence is deafening.
Support for Smollett exploding online from Hollywood A-listers.
Now, slowly, although I see Ocasio-Cortez has not deleted her tweet, but the biggest liar in Congress, Adam Schiff, has, and, you know, all the insults, this false narrative perception about people that like the policies of the president that are working dramatically, especially with record low unemployment for black Americans, Hispanic Americans, Asian Americans, women in the workplace.
This is now beyond psychosis, and the media wants to run with anything that advances their hate Trump mob mentality.
You know, there's one thing that I would love to see, Sean, and that is from an investigative standpoint.
You know, I've been an investigator in the FBI and law enforcement.
I would love to see Jesse Smollett's phone records and emails to see if he had any contact with media personnel before this happened.
Because just like the thing with the kids there in Kentucky, I would like to see if these things are not being set up because they're always exactly the same and they're always promoted and pushed out in the media exactly the same.
Now, it could be that these things are reporting and they just jump on it and blow it up.
But the way the media works now, and I know you've seen this with the left, and Tucker Carlson has especially seen this, the way they've gone after him and made up things.
I think that there is collusion amongst the media and some of these people that are doing these things.
It may not be all the media, but I just would love to see these phone records and to see these emails to see if any of this stuff could be corroborated where other people are involved in coordinating these things.
You know, look, I don't know the answer to all, I don't have the answer to all these questions, and I will say that this psych, look, go through all the cases.
They're wrong.
Richard Joel, UVA, Duke La Crosse, Ferguson, Missouri, Baltimore, Maryland, Cambridge police.
They never vetted Obama.
They're too lazy, and they agreed with his radical ideological worldview.
And, you know, and they ignored what I think is the most dangerous moment in our history with this entire, you know, let's rig the investigation into Hillary, let her send out and disseminate false Russian lies to influence the election, and then let's bludgeon Trump with unverified lies and not tell FISA courts the truth, Danielle, because that's what they've done.
I'm sorry.
But the idea, going to Jonathan's point, the idea that there are somehow Jesse Smollett somehow told the media before this happened, I would be shocked.
I mean, this came out of local.
The media is not the media anymore.
Danielle, respectfully, their journalism is dead.
Yeah, I was wanting, Danielle, to heed the words of what Van Jones says is a great American icon, who said, who is more to blame?
This is from a tweet.
Who is more to blame?
A devil who spreads obvious lies or a fool who chooses to believe those lies and pass them along.
That was Jesse Smollett, kind of being, you know, forward-thinking the exact thing that he did with the American people.
I mean, what we see, and we face this every week, every Thursday when we go back and forth between Danielle, you, and I, is that the public must start to question what the media is saying because the media,
what they are doing is they are taking snippets of things that happen in the world or being reported to have happened, and they're alleging that they're truth with no proof and putting them out there so that they can basically perpetuate the divide in this country.
That is what they're doing.
And it's obvious.
There's no way that Danielle could say, Daniel, there's no way that you can say that that's not happening because it is happening.
Daniel, I'll give you the last word today.
I'm so magnanimous.
Go ahead.
You are.
You are.
And I always appreciate it.
Look, I think the answer is to read broadly, right?
To read broadly, because I agree, there are narratives and there are ideologies out there, and our media has become really, really divided.
So, okay, if you're going to listen to Alex Jones here, read the New York Times.
We have to be smart.
We have to be critical thinkers and we have to think for ourselves and don't let other people think for us.
All right.
I'm going to thank you both.
800-941.
Sean is our toll-free telephone number.
You want to be a part of the program.
Other news, and I promise your calls next half hour, as so many of you have been very patient.
Straight ahead.
All right, let's get to our busy telephones here as we say hi to John in Tennessee.
I love Nashville, Tennessee the most.
How are you?
I'm doing well, Sean.
Thank you for taking my call.
Well, you're very welcome.
And where do you live in Nashville?
I'm sorry.
Where do you live in Tennessee?
Well, in the Memphis area.
I'm actually in the Memphis suburbs.
Oh, Memphis is awesome, too.
I've been to Memphis.
It's great there.
B.B. King, right?
Oh, yeah.
I actually got to meet him one time.
He's a very nice man.
One of the greatest ever.
Yeah, absolutely.
The reason I called, I've been hearing you talk for a while now, but over the last couple of days, I've heard you making reference to people who are fleeing high-tax leftist states and moving to low-tax conservative states.
And as someone who lives in a low-tax conservative state, and as someone who has a lot of friends and keep up with a lot of people on social media from this part of the world, it might sound funny, but I feel very confident in speaking for all of them when I say that to the people that want to leave those states, if you've actually seen the lights, if you've actually understood the folly that is Marxist leftism, then come on down.
We've got a place for you.
But if all you're going to do is bring your Marxist Bolshevik nonsense down here, stay home.
I'm telling people that, and I live in the swamp in New York.
New York is the highest tax state in the country when you combine state, local, federal income taxes.
By far.
If I told you what I paid in property taxes, it would blow your mind.
Now, I have to be here because my job is here in New York.
You know, it's in my contract.
I have to be in New York.
I'd be out of here so fast, it'll make your head spin.
And my accounting guy says, don't die in New York.
I'm like, yeah, okay.
I'll try not to die living in New York.
That's funny.
Oh, that's funny.
You're going to be laughing if I drop that in New York.
Well, Hannity got screwed.
Another 10% for the state.
No, no, it's just funny that he would tell you that.
And I mean, the sad thing is he's right.
I mean, and this is what I wanted to say, basically, is to all those people that want to come down here and continue to vote for your leftist nonsense.
You made your bet.
You lie in it.
Listen, come down to the corner.
If you want to move to Tennessee, this is what I'm saying.
You want to move to Florida.
You want to move to the Carolinas.
You want to move to Texas.
Okay.
You know what?
These are salt of the earth.
This is the heartland of America.
The nicest people.
They're going to welcome you.
But if you bring your dumb, idiotic, socialist, you know, redistribution, tax, tax, tax-to-death policies with you, stay home.
Don't destroy the state you left.
Don't destroy our state because we've been smart enough not to elect stupid people like you guys have.
Exactly.
That's exactly correct.
I agree.
If you're a liberal, don't go there.
Leave these people alone.
You already ruined your own home.
Yeah, exactly.
You made your bed.
You lie in it.
That's exactly right.
That's a good question.
Thank you for giving me the opportunity.
If I say this, the media is this is a joke, but we ought to have a, I promise to be a conservative voter and not screw up your state like the state that I came from was screwed up.
Anyway.
Blue state to a red state that you have a five-year moratorium on voting.
You say that and people are going to go nuts.
All right.
John, love you, man.
Thank you.
I love Tennessee, too.
So such a cool place.
All right.
Let's say Mike in Jacksonville, W-O-K-V.
What's going on, Mike?
How are you?
Hey, Sean.
I was just going to kind of extend what the previous caller said.
Unfortunately, the Democrats are a lot like locusts.
They have destroyed your state.
They've destroyed New Jersey.
They've destroyed California.
Now they're going to swarm to Florida.
And unfortunately, they're probably going to destroy Florida.
We barely escaped Andrew Gillum down here.
And that is a very scary proposal when you have somebody who wants to put in socialistic views into our state.
We've got a great state.
Like the previous caller said, if you're going to move down here, please vote with me.
Listen, I've been going down to Southwest Florida.
Anyone who listens regularly knows I don't take a whole lot of vacation.
And at the end of the year, I always take two weeks.
And I usually spend it in Southwest Florida.
And I think it's one of the most beautiful places with the nicest people I've ever met.
I've been to the East Coast of Florida.
Nice people there, too.
But it's almost like New York.
That's the liberal part of the state.
I want to be in the more conservative part of the state, which is Southwest Florida and the Panhandle.
There's a saying in Florida, the further south you go, the more north you get.
Well, not Southwest Florida, though.
You've got to look at Fort Myers, Naples, Sarasota.
No, they're fine.
Just same with Pensacola.
All good.
And I'll tell you, without Southwest Florida and the Panhandle, you don't win any election.
I mean, what I do on election nights is I'm obsessed with numbers coming in.
Well, obviously in Broward and Palm Beach counties because of what goes on down there.
But secondly, then I'm looking in Collier, Lee County.
I'm looking up in the panhandle because if you don't have a good, strong turnout for conservatives, you're going to lose.
No, you're right.
And I won't tell you it's 83 and sunny here today, okay?
All right, don't take this the wrong way.
I hate you.
That is so mean what you just said.
It's actually not a bad day in New York.
I don't mind the cold.
When you get down to zero, I'm like, oh, this sucks.
But otherwise, I don't mind snow.
I can drive in the snow.
None of that bothers me.
All right, my friend, Mike.
Have a great time.
Let us go to Jill in Pennsylvania.
Jill, how are you?
Glad you called.
Welcome to the show.
Hi, Sean.
Good to talk to you.
Just to tap into what they were saying, I'm in Pennsylvania, and I've seen firsthand how formerly red districts have turned blue because we've had a lot of transplants from neighboring states such as New York and New Jersey.
Bozo wants to take down the wall.
You saw that, right?
Yes, yes.
He's a genius.
He's a real genius.
I think it's a little bit by design because combined with all of the illegals that get funneled into all these little spots strategically in red states, it's a wrap.
I'm kind of nervous.
You've got to get out there and run for office.
Who me?
Yeah, you.
What office would you like me to run for?
Where do you think I'm going to get elected?
Well, like they're saying out there, start anywhere and everywhere.
I think you'd be great as a senator.
You know, hell will freeze over before Sean Hannity ever got elected senator in the state of New York.
It's impossible.
It's not that way.
Look at some of the people that are out there.
You're spot on with your thinking.
We need fighters.
We need more Trump supporters.
We need people like you to get out there and activate.
Well, I actually, I'm trying to do my little part here every day and on TV.
And this is how I look at life.
We're all spokes in a wheel.
And right now, Trump is like the center of the wheel because he's out there and has the position he has, thankfully.
But, you know, it doesn't, everyone that even just votes for him, you're a spoke.
People that speak up and support his policies and counter the narratives and the lies of the left, you're helping.
And we all got to just stand together because there's a lot at stake here for the country.
And I love this country.
And I feel it slipping away, especially with the deep state and that corruption.
That's why you got to take some power.
You got to be in a power position.
Well, you do a lot.
You educate people, and that's critical.
You're woking us, right?
But we need some people of stature to, you know, grab the reins.
We're so low on that level.
We're kind of overmatched because most of those Republicans are, if you ask me, they're closet Democrats.
So we need true conservatives in power positions where they can actually, you know, I've never planned my life.
And I've, you know, all I did was every time a door opened, I jumped.
All I knew is I wanted to be on the radio.
And I worked for free on the radio.
And then when they took my microphone away from me, then I wanted to be on the radio more.
And I was willing to jump through, you know, go to a state at the time, Alabama, where I'd never been, didn't know a single person except Dave Stone.
God rest his soul.
He's such a nice guy.
And Bill Donovan, the owner.
And Dave was my program director.
And these guys, you know, I'm still friends with every boss I've ever had.
Can you believe that?
That's pretty cool.
Yeah.
And I will tell you that I never thought I'd have any success.
I just wanted to do it.
And I just think that every one of us, I really believe in this.
This is my, I believe this whole planet, solar systems within solar systems is so majestic.
I don't think we really can comprehend the depth of a living God.
But I believe he's there and created us all.
And I think every person truly is born with talent, every human being on this earth.
And we just got to, you know, allow the sun and the water and the feeding and kindness to enter that person's life.
It's going to happen.
And, you know, whatever you do, you should be proud of.
I have friends of mine that literally save lives every day.
And I talk about it because they're great surgeons.
I had no two brain surgeons in my life, if you can believe it.
And another doctor friend of mine in particular, my own doctor, they save lives every day.
And if I bring it up, they're like, oh, that's not easier than what you do.
I'm like, I'm not a brain surgeon.
And teachers and firemen and first responders and cops.
You know what I hate more than anything, though, Jill?
I hate having to criticize the greatest law enforcement agency ever, even though it was only a few at the top.
That's not the story.
That's not the story I wanted to break.
It's a few bad apples, right?
It's only a few.
Yeah.
And rank and file, don't ever think they're them because they're not.
And look at all, think of all the filibusters you can do.
I mean, you're on TV, you've got radio shows.
I mean, your energy is amazing.
Oh, my God.
You really want me to run for office.
I do.
I mean, I want you to run.
I want Mark Levin to get in there.
And let me tell you one other thing, Mr. Speaker.
Let me say it.
I'll say it.
Nobody else will say it.
All right.
You know what, Jill?
I could talk to you all day.
God bless you.
And God bless all our friends in Pennsylvania.
We love Pennsylvania, too.
They're great.
Like everybody in the middle of the country.
I'm just mad at New York for stealing all my money.
And I have to pay it.
What would happen, Linda, if I didn't pay my taxes?
A lot of bad things.
Yeah.
What would happen if I ever deleted subpoenaed emails?
I would have to bring you a cake with a file.
Yeah.
And what would happen if I violated the Espionage Act or if I lied to a Pfizer court?
What would happen to me?
We would never hear from you again.
You wouldn't even come visit me.
You'd be like baking a cake.
Become the Linda McLaughlin show.
Oh, the Linda McLaughlin show, it would never air because I'd never passed the test of not cursing for more than an hour.
We have to bleep Linda more than any caller on this show.
You're welcome.
I'm just saying, I like have to, I have to warn people to come work for us.
If you can't handle that, you can't work here.
You can't handle the truth.
How many times, Ethan, a day do I put, and Jason, do I put my heads in my hand?
I'm like, oh my gosh, how does she say this stuff?
Well, on that happy note.
Oh, by the way, have a safe trip.
Linda's headed to Vietnam to set up everything for us when we get there.
Good morning, Midnight.
Oh, great.
What time are we doing the show?
3 a.m. in the morning there.
It's going to be a punchy show.
3 a.m. in the morning.
All right, Hannity, tonight, 9 Eastern Fox News Channel.
All right.
So much happening in the news today.
All of the drama unfolding in the Smullett case, just how corrupt the media in this country is.
It is a national disgrace.
We'll get to all of that.
We will have the latest 2020 Democratic primary election watch.
It is insane what these people are now proposing.
The latest, oh, let's lower expectations on Trump-Russia collusion.
We'll do it now because it's not going to look good later, probably in a few weeks from now.
They'll release the Mueller report.
Anyway, full coverage, all of this.
That's 9 Eastern tonight.
Hannity on the Fox News channel.
And we'll see you then.
And we'll be back here tomorrow.
Thank you, as always, for being with us.
Oh, quick note.
The Roger Stone case, which we mentioned earlier, Roger didn't have to go straight to prison.
He fell on the sword.
The judge lectured him.
And, you know, we'll see the ramifications on that.
