John McLaughlin, Pollster and Strategist, takes a look at the latest polls and the town halls, from Gillibrand to Warren, Sanders and Biden, and the slumping numbers for Beto O'Rourke and Peter Buttigieg. Joining him is Retired Syndicated Columnist and Pollster, Matt Towery. Who will win the battle for 2020?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.
If you want to be a part of the program, we may dip in.
The NTSB, there's been a situation in New York where a helicopter crashed into a high-rise building.
One now confirmed dead as we speak.
According to the fire department, it happened around 7th Avenue and 51st Street in New York City.
And preliminary information shows the chopper made a hard landing on a roof or rooftop, probably having some type of mechanical problems.
And a fire that was up there has since been extinguished, which is good news.
Hoping others weren't hurting this as well.
But we might get some of those details in a press conference.
We might dip in and out of it as the day unfolds.
We have a lot of new information we're going to get to as it relates to the witch hunt, the deep state, the election of 2020, the Democrats now killing each other.
It's a circular firing squad.
And, you know, whether or not we're going to have, it looks like, well, let's start with, it looks like Nadler is holding off on his criminal contempt charge with the Attorney General.
Remember, they were asking the Attorney General Barr, and we got to go back here, and I've gone over this history before, but it's important.
We used to have the independent counsel statute.
That was the statute where Ken Starr literally listed 11 specific felonies that he believed should be charged against the sitting president.
At the time, that was Bill Clinton.
Now, as a result of that report, and it was a report that had to be made public.
He had to testify.
There was no option for him to testify or not testify.
I don't think you're ever going to see Mueller go before any committee because I don't think Mueller can answer the tough questions.
And I think at some point the Democrats are going to realize that this is going to backfire and boomerang, although never underestimate their stupidity in all of this.
And, you know, what they're missing is a big picture here.
There's four separate investigations.
All four have concluded the exact same thing.
These investigations, in some cases, went on for years and still the same conclusion.
The nine-month investigation by the FBI, they had nothing in the lead up to the appointment of Robert Mueller.
They found no evidence of any Trump-Russia collusion of any kind.
Then the House Intel Committee investigation, the only thing they discovered was deep state operatives abusing their power at a level that was unprecedented.
And we're really only in the beginning stages of getting to the bottom of what is a real abuse of power and corruption.
And we're going to get to it eventually.
And then, of course, you had the bipartisan Senate committee conclusion, then the Mueller report conclusion.
Anyway, so they're making a big deal that the Attorney General made this decision.
Guys like Nadler never wanted Ken Starr's report to ever go public.
Guys like Gerald Nadler are responsible for the fact that now the person that makes the ultimate decision, which has been made as it relates to President Trump and collusion, because ultimately it's his office that appoints a special counsel and he has the final determination.
And as he said to Lindsey Graham, he had the time, he had the money, he had the resources.
He was not impeded in any way.
And he came to the, for the fourth time, to the same conclusion as everybody else.
There's no evidence of Trump-Russia collusion.
And the fact that he had to be corrected and send out a correction and clarification after his nine and a half minute press conference, well, we were not able to because of Justice Department policy to consider an indictment of the president.
That was not factored in by him.
And he had to correct himself made me think that somebody else wrote whatever it is he was reading that day.
And that embarrassed him because then he had to make a clarification.
And frankly, the Attorney General Barr, as far as I'm concerned, threw him a lifeline to bail him out of the stupidity and the trouble that somebody probably like Andrew Weissman got him in.
So Nadler is now holding off on criminal contempt charges.
Now, if Nadler or any of these top Democrats ever wanted, they can go over and see the unredacted Mueller report.
The only thing they would not legally be allowed to see was the only thing they can't see, which is one sentence in the Mueller report and seven partial sentences.
That's it, because they referred to grand jury material.
And to force or try to force and pressure an attorney general, the chief law enforcement officer in the country to violate the law to accommodate whatever sick political agenda they have.
You cannot ask the Attorney General of the United States to break the law.
Now they want some of the supporting materials released.
So apparently there was some type of agreement that had been reached there between the House Judiciary Committee.
And so the criminal contempt thing is not going to happen and that's not going forward.
Then, all right, so they've been trying to call everybody back, everybody that had already testified before the House committee, before the bipartisan Senate committee, and before Mueller.
Now, if you look at the amount of materials that were sent over, let's just start with the White House.
The president allowed every single person that was requested to testify before any of these committees, meaning the House investigation, the bipartisan Senate investigation, then Mueller's investigation.
Everyone that worked in the Trump White House, not one person was told not to cooperate.
Just the opposite.
They were all given permission and encouraged to testify.
Frankly, it was unprecedented that they even allowed the White House counsel at the time, Don McGahn, to testify before Mueller for 30 hours.
That's insanity.
You know, there's got to be a line in the sand somewhere.
They sent over one and a half million pages of documents to the special counsel's office.
You know, not one time during this process did the president, who had the right to invoke executive privilege, did he ever invoke executive privilege.
The Senate Intel had their own investigation.
The House had their investigation, and they conducted scores of transcribed interviews.
And by the way, we're waiting to get some of these closed-door interviews released so we can know more about the deep state and what happened and who did what, when, and where, and who said what, when, and where.
And, you know, now watching these deep state actors all turn on each other is getting interesting.
So you've had all of all these investigations that have gone on repeatedly, and they've come up with nothing.
And they're not going to come up with anything.
That's the problem.
And when you look at the law as it is as it is written, you know, there's only so many times that you're going to cooperate before it becomes abuse of their power and also a considerable cost to the people, the individuals that they want to ask the same questions over and over again.
There's no obligation.
Secrecy may be imposed on any person except in accordance with Rule 6E2B, but unless these rules provide otherwise, but if you look at times the Obamas used executive privilege, they used it for fast and furious.
Why did they invoke executive privilege?
And the Justice Department at the time released 7,600 pages of documents, but they didn't turn over their own records related to the agency's response to the fallout of the operation.
Okay, well, that resulted in a dead officer and many other dead people because the Obama administration foolishly handed out guns to cartel members and other criminal elements, and they didn't even put serial numbers on it and they didn't put tracking devices on it.
And the committee's dissatisfaction with the response promoted them to vote to hold then Attorney General Eric Holder in contempt of Congress.
And on the morning of June 12th, the vote, Obama invoked executive privilege over the disputed documents, marking, by the way, the first such assertion in his presidency.
You know, in the case of releasing Cuban spies, the Obama restored relations with Cuba in a secret deal.
And in that particular case, the Obama administration gave no notice to Congress about the decision, no justification for the release of Cuban spies.
Again, they claimed executive privilege.
In the Benghazi case, same thing.
The Obama administration refused the House Select Benghazi Committee subpoena for emails between the two regarding Libya policy.
Then you had Bill Clinton.
Well, he used executive privilege 14 times, asserting the Senate Whitewater investigation over notes kept by the White House counsel.
Well, that's not what President Trump did.
He allowed Don McGahn to testify 30 hours.
Clinton, again, he asserted it before a congressional committee during the Travelgate investigation.
He did the same thing over an FBI DEA drug enforcement memo.
He asserted it before a congressional committee over Haiti and political assassination documents.
He asserted grand jury investigation involving communications with the White House counsel and private counsel for Hillary Clinton.
He asserted it during grand jury investigation of the Secretary of Agriculture.
He asserted executive privilege with his chief of staff to claim privilege during the Webb Hubble grand jury investigation.
He asserted it in the Lewinsky matter.
He asserted it with the director of Oval Office Operations in the Lewinsky matter.
He asserted it by White House aide Sid Vicious Blumenthal in the Lewinsky matter.
He asserted it with White House counsel Cheryl Mills in the Lewinsky matter.
And I can keep going on and on and on.
And Lois Lerner, the executive director of the exempt organizations unit of the IRS, remember they were targeting conservative groups inappropriately, Tea Party groups in particular.
Well, Ben Rhodes was not allowed to testify on the Iran deal.
They just simply refused to testify.
Lerner refused to testify.
Treasury officials blocked from testifying on Obamacare subsidies.
This happens all the time.
Nobody in the media is going to point any of this out.
And now they're bringing in their new big star witness.
Why is John Dean of Watergate fame being brought in as a big witness for Nadler?
He has zero specific knowledge.
None whatsoever.
He's a convicted felon.
He's a disbarred attorney.
You know, his claim to fame now is that he supposedly flipped on former President Richard Nixon, but he did serve prison time for obstruction of justice.
And he's supposed to now, what, speak about the abuse of executive power because he did it?
And he became a central figure when after he approached prosecutors, he was hoping to get a deal and said he committed as the White House counsel an act that, you know, was illegal.
He was disbarred for his unethical, unprofessional, unwarranted conduct in the Watergate affair.
That's according to the New York Times.
Dean moved on, has no legal career.
Now he's hate all Republicans at all times.
He said about George Bush, well, what Bush did is worse than Watergate.
And the tactics of deception would end up doing more damage to the nation than Nixon and is worse.
He says the same thing about every Republican president.
Now he's saying the same thing about Donald Trump.
He's even worse than Nixon, more dangerous than Nixon.
He has no legal expertise.
He's a disbarred lawyer.
What wisdom does he have that he can impose on Nadler's committee?
He's a master manipulator.
The special counsel at the time found 19 material discrepancies between Howard Dean, John Dean rather, sworn testimony and White House recordings.
So he lied at least 19 times.
So what is he going to bring to this investigation?
Nothing.
All it is is a witch hunt and angry Democrats that can't fathom how they have blown it so bad.
And their great hopes in Robert Mueller shattered, as have their egos been shattered.
All right, as we roll along, Sean Hannity Show.
So at the time, Dean was declared, he's like the master manipulator of the cover-up, which is how the FBI at the time referred to John Dean, the master manipulator of the cover-up in the Watergate scandal.
Former attorney general said that Dean, quote, quote, was at the center of the criminality of Watergate.
The special counsel at the time, this is Nadler's big witness.
Well, found that 19 material discrepancies between Dean's sworn testimony and the White House recordings.
Remember the tapes?
Yeah, those recordings.
So think of it.
He lied, which was provable because there were actual recordings that contradicted John Dean's statements 19 times.
So is it any wonder he got hired by fake news CNN?
And it seems like someone the Democrats can rely on.
So that's what they want him there for.
Dean turned state's evidence, received a reduced plea deal, and only one count of obstruction of justice was sentenced between one and four years in prison.
In reality, Dean didn't do time.
The sentencing judge gave Dean time served for the months Dean had been spending in the special federal witness facility.
And while in the facility, Dean was typically driven daily to an office to work on his book.
He has enriched himself with book sales and speaking tours.
And Dean spent the years since his conviction and disbarment trying to rehabilitate himself.
And he's the quintessential boy who cried wolf because every single Republican president since Watergate, according to Dean, has committed acts that were worse than Watergate.
And presumably Dean's own part in the cover-up.
President Trump is just the latest because he said the exact same thing about then-President George W. Bush.
So this is now, you talk about a clown show in a circus.
This is it.
John Dean, the big witness of the week for the Democratic Party with credentials like that.
I mean, it is bizarre.
Convicted felon, disbarred lawyer who has said the exact same thing about Trump that he said about Bush that he says about every Republican president.
So this is a huge get for Nadler because he's going to testify and say the exact same things.
And yet, we're going to take his word on any of this.
How did fake news CNN even bother hiring this guy with that track record?
We'll continue.
All right, 25 till the top of the air.
How many times, Linda, have I said on this program that people don't get Trump?
It's like it's so obvious.
People don't get a lot of things, but they definitely don't get Trump.
They do not get look.
How many times have I said the president doesn't want a trade war with anybody?
The president has to convince whoever he's negotiating with that he means it.
And there's a big difference.
Now, if he has to do it, he'll do it to make the point, as with China, for example.
And so last week, when the president said to Mexico, either you get going and you start securing your border and stop letting these people by the tens of thousands march from Central America to our borders and cause and wreak chaos and havoc in our society.
We're just going to put this on you because it is, they have the ability to stop it.
And so negotiations went through, I guess what, late into Friday.
And the political significance, because Mexico caved.
The president never wanted to impose the tariff on Mexico.
It's not good for the American economy.
It's not good for, it'll kill the Mexican economy.
And we had plenty of leverage.
But if the president's not believable, then he's not going to be able to strike the deal and get the deal done.
And that's the art of the deal.
That's the art of negotiation.
And almost immediately, you know, the Mitch McConnells and all the other people come running out.
No, no, we're going to be protectionists and the president's going to start a trade war.
He doesn't want to start a trade war.
The president uses the power and leverage he has to get the best deal done that he can possibly get.
And you can measure the political significance of the president's tariff victory over Mexico by the hysterical protests we're now hearing from Democrats and, of course, the media mob, nothing but a mere extension of all things radical Democrat extremist.
Because it was a huge win for the president.
Matter of fact, it was so big, the New York Times literally invented their own bizarre conspiracy theory to claim that Mexico intended to make all these major concessions all along, even before Trump threatened the tariff.
I mean, that's how little credit they're ever willing to give a president.
Just think how ridiculous the whole thing is.
If the agreement was already in the bag, then why not tell and release the good news when it happens?
Because there was no deal until the president called Mexico's bluff with the tariff threat.
And you got to be clear about something else here.
Donald Trump stood alone in this.
Chamber of Commerce, they were scared to death of it.
Wall Street Journal, they opposed the tariffs.
Mitch McConnell and company, they opposed the tariffs.
Democrats, they didn't support the threat.
They said it would destroy the U.S. economy.
Republicans didn't support the tariff threat either.
And they agreed with the Democrats so much so that some GOP senators were actively planning a mutiny and Mitch McConnell openly trashing the president and his plan last week.
In fact, the only Senate Republican that was out there defending the president because he knows him better than any other senator was Lindsey Graham.
He said, do you expect him to just give up on border enforcement?
Mexico has an obligation in all of this, and you use the leverage you have.
And sometimes you got to take a shot and you got to understand what your opponent's weaknesses are.
You know, a few others stood with the president, but they certainly weren't particularly loud about it.
But the overwhelming majority, you know, they ran for the hills because they're not willing to take.
And this is part of Washington's problem.
This is the swamp's problem.
This is why Trump is the disruptor that he is.
This is why that he was elected.
This is what makes him the iconoclast he is.
This is what makes him the disruptor he is.
This is what makes him effective as he is, is he's willing to take some risks.
He's willing to put it all on the line for what he believes in.
He's willing to fight for the things he said that he wants to get accomplished.
And the best thing Republicans could ever do if they wanted to be a real party one day and they're not.
It's sort of like you have these establishment lines and on one side, you've got weak Republicans, but there's still establishment and they're only going to act in a certain way.
They'll sound as conservative as they can be, but when push comes to shove, you know, their arms can be twisted and they are more about self-preservation and keeping their power than they are about serving their constituents.
Same on the Democratic side.
Then you got some, you know, when you have somebody that is just totally from outside the system that does not understand the concept that if you make a promise that you're going to repeal and replace Obamacare, that you're going to get it done.
Or you make a promise you're going to cut taxes.
You mean it, you cut them.
Or you're going to get rid of bureaucracy.
You actually start signing away the bureaucracy.
And you're going to fight for energy independence and get the jobs and the national security benefits.
You actually do the job.
I mean, it's an alien concept, seemingly, to so many that, you know, we have hope for every once in a while.
And they're going to Washington.
We think maybe they're actually going to shake things up and they all end up capitulating.
You know, in this particular showdown with Mexico, Donald Trump took a stand, stood alone, and won.
And even the AP grudgingly conceded that maybe Trump's critics were wrong.
The AP wrote, well, Donald Trump's deal to avert the threatened tariffs on Mexico includes a few new solutions to swiftly stem the surge of Central American migrants flowing over America's southern border.
But it delivers enough for Trump to claim a political win.
They actually had to write that.
Because the AP is wrong, by the way, even with their snark included, few new solutions, that's not true.
We've never had Mexico, as they are now doing, deploy 6,000 National Guard members along their southern border.
That's new.
We've never had Mexico agree to let the U.S. deport thousands of asylum seekers back to Mexico.
That's also new.
In fact, most of this deal is completely new.
And the decision ended the showdown that business leaders warned would have disastrous economic consequences for the U.S. and one of their largest trading partners, driving up consumer prices, driving a wedge between the two allies.
No, Mexico caved.
Mexico knows they would have been on the worst end of that tariff that would have impacted their country, their society more.
And so they started doing what was ultimately their job.
It's just like when the president said to NATO, start paying your fair share.
We're paying a much higher percentage of the bill in real dollars a ton to protect Europe while Angela Merkel is not pulling her weight and Germany's not pulling their weight.
And then they're even helping to make Vladimir Putin rich again by doing billion-dollar energy deals with the hostile regime of Russia.
It's ridiculous.
And the president goes and says, no, you got to stand up and pay your share of NATO costs and stop doing business with the guy that you're most afraid of.
I know.
So, in the face of many naysayers, the president delivered a huge victory for the American people.
I saw Marco Rubio praise the deal as an important victory for the American people, and it is.
This was needed.
Somebody needed to stand up.
Somebody needed to take a stand.
And it seems like the only person in Washington that's willing to do it these days is the president.
He goes it alone almost all the time.
We have some deep state news that is coming out.
This is interesting.
We have new emails show close ties between Christopher Steele and the Obama State Department.
This was in the Daily Caller, State Department official who played the key role in handling Steele's dossier facilitated meetings between Steele and the private consulting firms.
Jonathan Weiner is a longtime associate, former John Kerry, former Secretary of State John Kerry, working a long time with him, set up a meeting in 2014 between Christopher Steele and an executive of APCO worldwide.
They're an international consulting firm where Weiner worked before.
And after his most recent stint working for Kerry at the State Department, anyway, Weiner attempted to set up a meeting in November of 2014 between Steele, the former MI6 officer, and executives at McClarty and Associates.
Now, that's a consultancy funded by Bill Clinton's first chief of staff, Mac McClarty.
He also put Steele in contact with a former ambassador of Morocco and APCO partner related to a Morocco immediate need.
And another email shows that Weiner gave Steele and his business partner, Christopher Burroughs, advice on how to handle a commercial dispute in Mongolia that involved International Monetary Fund and the World Bank.
Anyway, the State Department released the emails as part of the lawsuit.
Judicial Watch, of course, again involved in this.
They filed this on behalf of the Daily Caller, and the lawsuit seeks Weiner's correspondence related to Steele, as well as a hundred-plus intelligence reports that Steele reportedly provided Weiner on issues of Russia and Ukraine.
So that's going to be interesting to get a hold of that.
Now, one thing we are waiting for, I can't give you the reason why, but the Washington Examiner shed some light on why haven't we gotten the IG report yet?
And Mark Meadows revealed Sunday that there had been some new developments with the Inspector General Horowitz investigation into FISA abuse, which might delay releasing his final report.
And what Meadows told Maria Barrettaromo is that he is not as optimistic.
The report will be released this month.
He said, obviously, the Attorney General indicated that he had hoped to see it in June, but I'm not as optimistic now.
He said one of the reasons for that is additional information has been given to the Inspector General for them to investigate.
One significant piece of new potential information could be Steele's interest in being interviewed by Horowitz's team and the fact that he's agreed to be interviewed by Durham.
And Steele has conditions for an interview, including that the Inspector General's team needs to come to London and they can only focus on his relationship with the FBI, for whom he was a confidential source, and the U.S., and he has to get permission from the U.K. government first.
So that might delay this for however long that takes.
Meadows stressing, though, that his prediction about the Horowitz inquiry was just his opinion based on reports that he'd seen.
I can tell you the Inspector General obviously has not communicated that, to my knowledge, to anybody on Capitol Hill.
Based on what I'm seeing in terms of additional information shared with him, I think it could be a little bit longer.
So we're going to have to wait and watch and see what comes of all of that.
We also, you know, Linda, do you follow these like special days?
I had no idea there's no way to do it.
Every day is special, Sean.
Every day.
Okay.
Did you know that there's happy hashtag best friend day?
Do you ever hear that?
You know, I never did until Joe Biden.
Okay.
I had no idea that we have happy hashtag best friends day.
And former senior advisor to Obama, David Axelrod, was basically ridiculing Joe Biden after the former vice president celebrated his hashtag Best Friends Day with like a friendship with Obama by tweeting an image of a friendship bracelet.
What's a friendship bracelet?
Do you know what they are?
You know, I think I did this when I was in kindergarten.
It sounds like, you know, something that kids would do in second grade.
Had some daisies and some flowers and a smiley face.
Well, now that he's flip-flopped on abortion and the Hyde Amendment and he's making apologies for pretty much everything he stood for his entire career, I would say that, and they're pretty much hiding him.
I would say that sleepy, creepy, crazy Uncle Joe is having trouble.
And by the way, Biden's lead in Iowa is imploding right before our eyes.
I mean, he was the top choice, but he got 24%.
Bernie gets 16%.
Warren, 15%, and Mayor Pete got 14%, which surprised everybody.
I do not understand how Mayor Pete is getting any percent.
Is anybody aware of this guy's stats in his own?
No, no, no, no, no, no.
Stop giving away.
We have dossiers here on the Hannity show.
We have a dossier on all of these people.
And we didn't use a foreign spy to put it together.
We actually used real hard research to put it together.
Anyway, what else do we got?
Natural's agreement.
Who cares?
It's a waste of time.
I got to say, for those of you who have the time later, you go and watch the Jim Jordan Louis Gomer beatdown of John Dean.
It's pretty great.
We're going to play some of it on tomorrow's show.
It's fantastic.
We'll play it tomorrow.
No, I mean, why would you ever bring this guy in?
You know, let's bring in the biggest crook that we know lied 19 times because of the Watergate tapes.
Why don't we just bring him in?
He's the expert.
And every Republican president he's compared to Richard Nixon is worse than Nixon.
And nobody was worse than him.
And then it raises the question, why would fake news CNN hire him?
Well, he obstructed justice and he lied 19 times.
I guess he fits right in.
He's ridiculous.
I mean, you look at the people that CNN has hired from James Comey's little, you know, groupie to having, you know, Brennan and Clapper and everybody else on there.
I mean, it's absolutely absurd.
By the way, you have a poll in New York shows that Trump is more popular than Confront de Blasio.
Oh, my God, de Blasio.
He's never, I mean, what he has done.
No, I want him to start doing well on the polls.
I want America to really embrace de Blasio.
Go right ahead.
Thank you, Iowa.
Congratulations to tonight's honorees and welcome to my fellow candidates whom I consider we are all a part of being the Avengers.
The Republicans in 2016, that was the Hunger Games.
He promised health care and then he tried to rip health care away from millions of people.
What's that called?
Healthcare fraud.
He said he was for working people.
Then he passed a tax bill benefiting the top 1% and the biggest corporations in this country.
That's tax fraud.
He believes the president of Russia and a North Korean dictator over the word of the American intelligence community.
Securities fraud.
And then he claims to be the best president we've seen in a generation.
Well, I say let's call Barack Obama because that's identity fraud.
I'm running for president because we can't take four more years of Donald Trump.
We are for every American having access to health care.
And make no mistake, abortion is health care and health care is a right, not a privilege.
The days of dismissing maternal mortality or adoption rights or paid leave or affordable daycare or universal pre-K or equal pay for equal white, right?
Work is just a woman's issue.
Those days are long gone.
When I saw the program for today, I thought the same thing you all did, which is this.
Joe Biden must really not like to travel.
And I am the man for that job because the opposite of Donald Trump is an Asian man who likes math.
Thank you very much, Iowa.
Love you all.
Thank you.
All right, there you have your crop of 2020 candidates in Iowa over the weekend, some of it very entertaining.
And you have an Iowa poll out that shows Joe Biden leading with Sanders, but Warren and Mayor Pete Budajudge are gaining a little bit of traction in at least that state.
And the Democrats on Democratic attacks now have begun.
Who's liberal enough?
Who's more radical?
The most radical to take on Donald Trump.
And the only one that took a realistic view of beating Donald Trump being hard was Bernie Sanders, which is pretty interesting.
And of course, Biden was nowhere to be found.
So you have almost even with Biden.
Warren is surging in the Iowa poll.
Not sure what that means.
We do have news of the big announcement and accomplishment that, of course, Mayor Pete never really wants to talk about, apparently, because he was able to coax the city of 4,500 undocumented immigrants in South Bend, Indiana, out of the shadows and help them access services in South Bend.
And what he ended up doing was a first of its kind governmentally endorsed privately run program that he could tout on the campaign trail where illegal immigrants, he's out there.
He set up a system to make it work.
He signed an executive order requiring local services and institutions and law enforcement and schools and water utility and libraries to accept what is a card put together by a nonprofit saying that they are a community resident.
So meaning legalizing them without really legalizing them.
Anyway, here to look at where do we stand, where are the polls, what do they mean?
We have John McLaughlin, pollster strategist, and Matt Towery is with us.
He says he's retired, but then he sends me these great notes on polling that I keep saying to him, you know, we're dragging you back to work every day, whether you like it or not.
And last week sent a really interesting note as he looks at the president and all the recent polls about him.
And you have the same perception that I do.
You don't think the president polls like any conventional politician.
You think he's about five points higher than what is coming out in the numbers.
But you see the president beginning to surge and you think there's a reason for it.
What is it?
Yeah, I do, Sean.
First of all, greetings from your other state of Florida where we're having a little rain today.
I think he's surging for various reasons.
First of all, let me give you an example.
Here in Florida, I had dinner with the chairman of the Republican Party, Joe Gruyters, you know, over the weekend.
And I feel really good about Florida, which I didn't feel good about four years ago.
So there's certain areas where the president's surging.
I don't think the media picks it up.
But on a national level, I'm beginning to see, and I'm sure John's seeing this, the president's numbers, and these numbers are off because they overly rely on cell phones, as I told you before, and that leans heavily to the left.
A lot of reasons, the fact that they don't weight them properly, the president's usually about three points ahead of where he shows.
But what I'm seeing is the president is beginning to see a consolidation in his numbers.
He's drifting upward.
Most of this nonsense is now out of the way, no matter how much they try to push impeachment and the like.
And think about this.
There's a theme that's beginning to emerge.
The president seems to be fighting for the American people.
Let's use Mexico as an example.
This morning, you had a guy named Mr. Brilliant from the U.S. Chamber who decided to get on and lecture the president on not using tariffs in order to bring about what we want in terms of border security.
Well, the president took him right on immediately.
So you have a president who appears to be fighting for the public and for the American people.
And then you have all of these self-interests, whether they're on the Republican side or Democratic side or these candidates carping about issues that people don't really care about.
When you look at the polls, it's just a complete dichotomy.
And the president now, you're beginning to see people who didn't support Donald Trump are beginning to say, forget it.
The economy's great.
What he does works.
I may not like watching the sausage being made, but the results are fantastic.
And those numbers are coming home for Donald Trump.
And the thing is, did the president lose any voters from 2016?
I think that's something we're going to have to look at.
And then we always have the main question, which is, are we better off than we were four years ago?
Well, if the election were held today, the records economically speak for themselves.
Say if it's somebody like Biden, you get to compare and contrast eight years of their economic record.
If you want to talk about Russia and impeachment, all of this deep state, these deep state shenanigans happened under Biden-Obama.
And then if you look at the more radical Democrats that want the new Green Deal and they want to impeach Trump and they want a fifth investigation into Trump-Russia collusion that didn't happen, John McLaughlin, I think people perceive that for what it is, and that's pure politics, putting themselves and their desire for power over serving their constituents.
And I don't think that's ever a good strategy.
No, it's not.
And as Matt was saying, the president's number, he's grinding up.
I mean, he gave a great State of the Union back in February.
His policies were outlined.
People who saw that were overwhelmingly favorable to him.
And the Democrats are doing their best to get him off track.
And it's real clear that Mueller, you know, basically that report came out, exonerated the president, said there was no collusion, and it was the biggest myth going.
And you've got a straight shooter like Bill Barr as AG, who's really a true law enforcement professional, a Justice Department professional saying, we need to get to the bottom of where this started and how did this come about?
Because all it's been has been an attempt to stop the president from moving ahead from raising his job approval.
And as Matt has pointed out, last month we had him at 47% job approval.
Rasposs and the ones who poll likely voters, we've got him in the high 40s.
And actually, if you look at those people that say, I may not like his style sometimes, but I like his policies, he goes over 50 percent.
And and the president is about most of your career.
You've had a certain level of clientele at different times that you recognize will never pull.
Well, very one.
Years ago, when you did Jesse Helms or Prime Minister Netanyahu, you do the president.
These are not people that poll traditionally because they're not traditional candidates in many ways.
Well, first of all, you can't trust the media polls in a lot of these exit polls because they're not like Matt's polls or my polls where you're really looking at voters.
And then once you get by that and you're looking at it, yes, there's things in the polls that say these people that are undecided aren't really undecided.
Gee, they look like Trump voters.
And there's what we've called a hidden vote.
It's really not hidden if you can analyze a poll.
You can see that they like the president, they like his policies.
And now what's going on is Joe Biden, their frontrunner, there's a poll Des Moines Register poll.
He's only a 24% in the Iowa Des Moines Register poll.
Caucus goers have to show up in Iowa for four hours, go through the rules, all that.
You know, you just may not want to stand there for all that pressure with Biden.
And all of a sudden, the ones who are really zealots, whether it's Sanders, Warren, Buttigieg, and there'll be more coming, are picking him apart.
And once they start picking them apart, it's only June.
They haven't even had one debate yet.
There's a gauntlet ahead for Joe Biden, and the president looks very good up against this derangement, Derby, where their policies of extreme liberalism, socialism, and really a breakdown of values where they just abhor anything American, and they want to apologize for anything good that we've done.
I think all of this is going to come into play.
I think even the issue of the borders, you know, Bozo, Beto, Robert Francis wants all the walls that already have been built taken down.
Then you have others saying walls are immoral.
Then we've got a crisis at our southern border.
Then people now have benefited from the tax cuts.
I mean, when you have record low unemployment for African Americans and Asian Americans and women in the workplace and youth unemployment, and the economy's humming, and we have peace and prosperity abroad, the president successfully brought Mexico to its knees.
They capitulated out of the fear that the president meant what he said when he said he was going to impose a tariff.
So that's another win for him.
Meanwhile, other Republicans don't seem to understand.
It's like Matt, they've never negotiated a deal in their life for crying out loud.
Well, here's the thing.
I can sit here this far out, and every word that John said, I agree with.
Every single word.
And he's been around for a long time.
We've known each other.
He's an old man.
We all know that.
Hey, today's my birthday.
See?
You're even older today than yesterday.
But I will say this.
I believe Donald Trump will be reelected.
And I believe there's only one state that worries me, believe it or not, Sean.
And you'll be shocked when I say it.
Georgia worries me immensely because that state, because of demographics, it has nothing to do with Stacey Avery.
It has nothing to do with policy.
But the demographic shift in that state is not our friends.
We're going to have to work extra hard at Georgia and North Carolina to an extent because it blends over.
And I'm sort of a North Carolina, Georgia, Florida expert.
Beyond that, I leave it all to John because he's the expert.
But what I could tell you is, even with those problems lying out there, right now, I feel so confident in saying that I expect the president to be re-elected.
And not only do I expect him to be re-elected, I think he's going to carry states that we don't even see on the radar right now because you're going to have a Nixon-McGovern-style, Mondale-Reagan-style election in which the other side goes so far to the left and looks so crazy that we pick up states that we're not even looking at.
Maybe John is because he's actively out there every day.
But I wouldn't name them, but I think they're going to be there.
And we're going to be really shocked.
And the Democrats are really going to be shocked when they look at the results in this next election.
Listen, anything's possible.
I'm always just, it's the Irish in me.
It's just, you know, let's get to Election Day.
Let's see what the issues are that day or the day before and the week before because you never know what can happen last minute.
Now, another problem is, you know, people are voting now months in advance, which I think lends itself to corruption, but that's a separate issue.
But it is an issue.
All right, it's John McLaughlin's birthday today.
I don't know if that means he should get the left.
First or last question.
All right.
So, you know, is it going to help Democrats in California when they're going to give health benefits for illegal immigrants, which is their new proposal, like it's the proposal of Comrade de Blasio in New York or the wealth tax of Elizabeth Warren or the 70% personal income tax rate, the 90% corporate rate?
Is this going to sell overall?
Because that's pretty much where every Democrat is.
Absolutely not.
It's not going to sell.
And if they think that that's a way to reclaim the working middle class back from President Trump, they're absolutely wrong because there's one thing people in America don't like.
Because last time, four years ago, we were appealing to people who were like one paycheck away from disaster.
We got working class voters, whether it was the Rust Belt or the Sun Belt, they came out of the heartland to vote for the president.
Now, they're not only talking about turning things back, they're talking about raising taxes on them to pay for things for people that are here illegally that don't even vote.
And maybe they'll let them vote.
I don't know.
But it's going to cause a real middle-class backlash against the Democratic Party.
And I don't know what they think they can do where they're promising free to everybody and the actual working taxpayers don't believe it.
Let me get a final thought, Matt Towery.
Well, I think that, I mean, you mentioned earlier, of course, any election comes down to the very last day.
So my predictions, although I feel strong about them, anything can happen.
That said, this election will turn out to be a couple of things.
One, turnout, obviously.
That's always the major driving force.
How motivated are the various sides?
I think in the end, you're going to have a lot of people.
If Biden didn't get the nomination, you have a more extremist candidate, which I thoroughly expect to emerge.
You're not going to have that middle class, that sort of swing vote that the Democrats relied on in the past.
They're not going to be motivated to turn out the polls in huge numbers.
And if you don't have an African-American nominated, historically, we've seen that, no matter what they say, you don't have the demographic push that you saw with Barack Obama.
With President Trump, the intensity is just over the top.
And I expect that intensity to continue to grow as now he's not under assault every day on this impeachment nonsense and the Mueller investigation and the shoe ends up on the other foot and the other side is on the defense.
All right.
Thank you both for being with us as we get a snapshot view.
I'm going to start counting down the days to 2020 and it's going to come fast.
And watching these people form their circular firing squad in Iowa this weekend was pretty entertaining.
All right, 800-941, Sean, if you want to be a part of this extravaganza.
The first sort of mainstream African American who is articulate and bright and clean, nice looking guy.
I mean, that's a storyboard.
Now is the time to heed the timeless advice from Teddy Roosevelt.
Speak softly and carry a big stick.
End of quote.
I promise you, the president has that big stick.
All right.
Of course, that's creepy, crazy, sleepy Uncle Joe Biden.
And, you know, he just can't help himself in any respect.
It's getting more interesting by the hour as you watch the Democratic Party.
So their big get for, now remember, they want to hold the Attorney General Barr in contempt.
They want to hold Don McGahn in contempt.
They want to revisit now for the fifth time this Trump-Russia collusion issue because they want it desperately to stick, even though the nine-month investigation by the FBI found nothing, zero, as evidenced by the words of Strzok and Page.
They didn't have anything.
And that's before the appointment of Mueller.
We had a House Intel Committee investigation.
It found nothing.
Now, it did find a lot of deep state corruption and abuse of power.
And that is all being addressed.
And things are getting even more interesting with the Inspector General and why his report is taking long, as I mentioned earlier in the program.
We did have the bipartisan Senate Committee.
They came up with the same thing.
And now many people are saying they're not going to show up and hire lawyers for, in some cases, a third, fourth, and fifth time because they can't afford it.
Because it's just regurgitating the same answers, the same questions.
And if anything, they then render themselves into a perjury trap, having testified for dozens of hours in the past.
If there's one thing that might contradict, or if they remember it slightly differently than they did a year ago, then you're going to have Democrats making criminal referrals and trying to set up perjury traps for any individual that, in fact, goes to testify.
Now, if you look at the amount of time and you look at the number of hours that were spent, this was not an administration that was obfuscating in any way.
They were cooperating.
You look at the numbers.
They're as plain as day.
Everybody in the Trump White House was encouraged to testify before Mueller, before the committee.
Nobody was denied their opportunity to testify.
They had one and a half million pages of documents that they gave to Mueller's special counsel.
The president, his entire White House staff, top to bottom, including White House counsel Don McGahn, who spent 30 hours testifying before Mueller.
The Senate Intel, they had their own investigation.
The House, even under Republicans, Chairman Nunes, they conducted scores of transcribed interviews and 50 such transcripts sent to the Senate Intel for the purposes of declassification.
There's been a Senate House special counsel investigation, and all four investigations have concluded the same thing.
Zero evidence of Trump-Russia collusion, but that does not stop them.
So they figure, well, we can't get them to come, so who do they turn to?
Well, they go back to the Watergate days.
Who is John Dean?
What do you remember about?
He's a convicted felon.
I mean, and a disbarred attorney who has gained fame during every Republican administration following Richard Nixon as saying that that is a corrupt administration.
I mean, the guy served prison time for obstruction of justice in front of the Judiciary Committee.
And, you know, now he's supposed to speak out and be the real source of truth to speak about abuse of executive powers.
You know, after he, by the way, he was the one back in the Nixon days that approached the prosecutors hoping for immunity for the criminal acts that he said he committed as Nixon's White House counsel.
So those are his own crimes.
In February of 74, Dean was disbarred in Virginia for his unethical, unprofessional, unwarranted conduct in all things Watergate affair.
New York Times reported that.
He moved on from his legal career to become a full-time frequent critic of only Republican presidents, a frequent critic of George W. Bush.
You know, the authored the book about the Bush years worse than Watergate, which argued the Bush administration, their tactics of deception would end up doing more damage to the nation than Nixon at his worst.
And he's saying the same thing about Trump.
Now it's Donald Trump, even worse than Nixon, which is what he said, more dangerous than Nixon.
Now, I don't know what his legal expertise is.
I don't know what's the worth of a disbarred felon and lawyer, what he will impart to the committee, because he has no firsthand knowledge at all about any of the happenings in any of the matters that are before even Nadler's committee or the Cowardly Shifts Committee.
So it seems to me to be a big act and a big show, and a guy that has an agenda and is going to say the things that people on that committee want to hear, but he has no factual basis to be there except to put on a show for the Democrats.
The FBI at the time referred to Dean as the master manipulator of the cover-up in the Watergate scandal.
The special counsel at the time found 19 material discrepancies between Dean's sworn testimony and the White House recordings.
Think of it.
He lied, which was provable because there were actual recordings that contradicted his own statements 19 times, and he went to jail.
So he turned state's evidence, received a reduced plea, only one count of obstruction, and was sentenced to between one and four years in prison, but he didn't do the time.
The sentencing judge at the time gave him time served for the few months he'd been spending in the special federal witness facility.
But he's their number one star witness.
What great qualifications he has.
Joe Concha, you would think it's the second coming of Jesus himself, the buildup to John Dean testifying.
Yeah, one part of that, Sean, that you missed in Mr. Dean's resume is that he's also a CNN contributor as well.
So he's offering up analysis on that network.
But I wonder if John Dean is your first witness, then is your second going to be Bernie Madoff?
I mean, who do you have in that lottery?
Exactly.
But the bottom line is that in terms of these investigations, and you mentioned them before, we've had them in the House.
We've had them in the Senate, the FBI, the Mueller Report.
Americans do not have the appetite for all this going forward.
They want problems solved, the crisis at the border, opioid crisis, pick your problem.
They want Congress and the president to be concentrating on that, not on these investigations.
The most recent poll I saw was incredible, that 65% of the American people say that we should accept the Attorney General's final conclusion on obstruction of justice.
Obviously, there was no collusion with Russia.
Therefore, you're not obstructing a crime that doesn't exist.
In the court of public opinion, this will go very badly if Democrats continue to go down this road, Sean.
Well, I mean, this guy, he has no credibility.
And look, if they go forward with these contempt citations and they want to try and demand that every single person have to be brought before their committee, but what they were asking the Attorney General of the United States to do, which he refused to do, was to violate and break the law.
In reality, the totally, completely unredacted version of the Mueller report was available for people like Jerry Nadler.
The only thing missing, the only grand jury material, was one sentence and seven partial sentences.
And at that point, it would be illegal for the Attorney General to acquiesce to such a request.
I don't think the Attorney General could be more accommodating.
I don't think he could be any more cooperative as it relates to executive privilege now being exerted by the White House.
Well, they're only following the pattern of the Obama administration, the Bush administration, the Clinton administrations that did it way more than Donald Trump ever did.
Donald Trump, throughout the entire Mueller investigation, not once, not one time, did he invoke executive privilege when he very well could have.
Frankly, I thought it was bizarre and unusual that Don McGann, the White House counsel, spent 30 hours in Mueller's office, but they still found no collusion and no obstruction.
And Rod Rosenstein, the deputy AG that appointed Mueller, couldn't have been more clear this weekend and saying without any consideration of DOJ department policies or the constitutional question or policy on whether you can or cannot indict a sitting president, that was not a factor in their decision.
There was not the evidence that rose to the level of charging Donald Trump on anything, period, end of sentence.
And the Attorney General has also been clear that he is not getting the right answers.
The story does not add up as it relates to the Hillary investigation and to the email server.
The dossier, we expect to hear from the Inspector General any day, now, at any point.
Then, of course, we have John Durham is on the case.
There's going to be an interview with Christopher Steele.
We had a dirty dossier that was the bulk of information in what became a premeditated fraud against FISA courts and what was a spying campaign against the Trump campaign, transition, and administration, all of which I think will eventually get to the bottom of.
And I think a lot of people are in trouble.
I think you may be right on that, Sean.
And look, all we hear from the House Speaker, Nancy Pelosi, is that the president committed a crime, that he's involved in a cover-up, that Bill Barr is involved in a cover-up.
Cover-up of what?
I wish we had some reporters out there that would try to nail her down on this and say, what crimes specifically are you talking about?
Let's hear what they are.
Because either Bill Barr and Rod Rosenstein and even Bob Mueller, because he says he doesn't want to testify before the House, either they're all involved in this cover-up or there's nothing to cover up.
And the whole thing we heard for two years was collusion, collusion, collusion, and it doesn't exist.
So what are we talking about here?
It's a big waste of time.
Democrats know this.
But if they go down impeachment, there's a great column in the Hill today that automatically probably re-elects Donald Trump because after Bill Clinton was impeached, day one in Gallup.
73%.
Why do you think it, you see, there's another aspect of this that I don't think people are paying attention to is that, you know, the American people actually expect their politicians to work for them.
And if this is going to be their consuming agenda, that and giving themselves pay raises and, you know, out in California, free health care for illegal immigrants.
And if they're going to talk about walls being immoral and we see the crisis at the border and the president, you know, stands down Mexico and forces them to capitulate to start doing their job with Central America and the economy keeps humming along the way it's been humming and the president keeps his promises going.
I don't see what they run on.
And I don't care which of the 29 people that are running eventually get the nomination.
They still pretty much have the same message.
High taxes, 70% personal rate, 90% corporate rate, more burdensome regulation, some version of this Green Deal insanity, and probably capitulation to the Mullahs in Iran.
And maybe we'll try and bribe them with more money and then they'll be nice to us.
And prisoners voting or 16-year-olds being allowed to vote or the Electoral College being abolished, you know, just the Constitution, but it being quite clean.
But I can see now why the president almost seems to be relishing a run against, I almost called him Jed Biden.
That could be a good nickname for him.
Forget sleepy and creepy.
Just call him Jed Biden.
Boy, that's sick, doesn't it?
He's looking a lot more like Jed Bush than 2016.
Low energy, doesn't do a lot of events.
When he speaks, it's one gaff after the other, not the cutsy gas that he did in the past, like really serious ones like his foot-flop flop on the Hyde Amendment last week.
He's not a good candidate.
He never was.
He wasn't in 2008, and he certainly wasn't when he ran the time before that.
All right, Joe Concha, host on WOR in New York, also writes for The Hill.
Congress has the job to do.
They now have the green light if they want it from Mueller's statement that it's the ball is in their court and now they've got to pick it up and run with it and do the right thing.
The Democratic-controlled Congress will have no choice but to open an impeachment inquiry into President Trump.
Every single day that the president sits in that office, he's obstructing justice, right?
Because if he spoke in plain language, what he would have said today was, anyone who read my report and said, no collusion, no obstruction, total exoneration, is a big fat liar.
That's what he would have said.
In English, no lawyer.
If he had my body mouth or yours.
All right, as we continue, Joe Concha is with us, media expert that he is.
Do you see any change in the media at all?
Now that the whole Mueller conspiracy theory hoax has just collapsed and really blew up in the face of the media because they've lied now for over two years.
Do you see any changes of any of these networks, any of these personalities, any discernible shift on their part to get it right?
Once they've gone down this road and they do the same thing over and over again for two years, you could argue for 10 years or even 20 years or 50 years.
I mean, think about this.
In 1976, the approval rating or the way the media was looked upon favorably, 74% of the country.
That's according to Gallup.
Now that's something like in the 20s in terms of that percentage, like 50 points, God.
So yeah, it's been going in a bad direction.
It's way too much opinion, not enough fact, and the opinions often almost always are against the president, against Republicans.
You think they're going to change now?
Of course not, because bad habits, they just simply don't go away overnight, and some never go away, period.
All right, Joe Concha, thanks for being with us.
We'll give you an update, by the way, on this helicopter crash that took place earlier today in New York.
Also, Kerry Pickett, she was there when Chairman Nadler earlier today, you know, that the Justice Department reached an agreement with the committee over getting, quote, key evidence of the Mueller report.
Anyway, we'll get to that much more straight ahead.
Stay right here for our final news roundup and information overload.
Now, Mr. Starr, in his transmittal letter to the Speaker and the minority leader, made it clear that much of this material is Federal Rule 6E material, that is material that by law, unless contravened by a vote of the House, must be kept secret.
It's grand jury material.
It represents statements which may or may not be true by various witnesses, salacious material, all kinds of material that it would be unfair to release.
Are we going to have a new test?
Someone wants to run for public office.
Are you now or have you ever been an adulterer?
We are losing sight of the distinction between sins, which ought to be between a person and his family and his God, and crimes, which are the concern of the state and of society as a whole.
On one level, we could say, I suppose, that you reap what you sowed, but that gives us no joy.
It gives me no joy.
And I wish that Mr. Livingston would reconsider, because I don't think that on the basis of what we know, he should resign.
But I don't think, but the impeachment of the president is even worse.
Because again, we're losing distinction of losing track of the distinction between sins and crimes.
We're lowering the standard of impeachment.
What the president has done is not a great and dangerous offense to the safety of the republic.
In the words of George Mason, it is not an impeachable offense under the meaning of the Constitution.
And as you heard from Mr. Conyers, the allegations are far, far from proven.
And the fact is we are not simply transmitting evidence to the transmitting a case with some evidence to the Senate, as evidenced by the fact that we already heard leaders of this house say he should resign.
God forbid that he should resign.
He should fight this and beat it.
That was back in 98.
That was Nadler.
The Nadler, again, we had a very different law.
It was the independent counsel statute.
It was guys like Nadler that didn't want the Ken Starr report brought to the public's attention.
11 specific impeachable charges, felonies that were outlined by then independent counsel Ken Starr.
And it was people like Nadler that then wanted to revise the law, which they did.
And we now have the special counsel statute, which then puts the power in the hands of an attorney general who makes any final determination and is under no obligation whatsoever to release anything to the public or anybody else except a summary of a report to high-ranking members of Congress.
That's it.
It didn't have to be released at all.
Anyway, so apparently Nadler announcing today that the Justice Department reached an agreement with his committee over getting the key evidence of the Mueller report.
It's already been handed over.
It's a joke.
It's been nothing but a circus and a show, except for one sentence.
And the Attorney General was very clear that it was grand jury material, which would be illegal for him to do so, and seven partial sentences.
And anyway, that they believe will show possible obstruction by the president.
We've been down this road now five separate times, but they want to go down this road yet again.
And a criminal contempt vote was originally scheduled for Tuesday against the Attorney General.
But following the agreement, according to the chairman, all members of the Judiciary Committee, Republicans and Democrats, will be able to view the evidence.
And as of now, the criminal contempt charge against Barr is held off.
Only a matter of time, though, because this is all they've got.
And then, of course, we have the all-important testimony of John Dean, who knows nothing about anything except he's a convicted felon himself that likes to say about every Republican president since Nixon, he's worse than Nixon.
And, you know, obstruction was what he was guilty of.
So anyway, this contempt vote, he said, I'm pleased to announce the Department of Justice has agreed to begin complying with our committee's subpoena by opening Robert Mueller's most important files to us, providing us with the key evidence that the special counsel used to assess whether the president and others obstructed justice or engaged in other misconduct.
Well, the problem with what he's doing here is that decision is not his.
Now, if he wants to make this a political issue, a political impeachment, that's fine.
That'll be political suicide that'll guarantee Donald Trump's reelection.
But in terms of the real law, even this weekend, Rod Rosenstein couldn't have been more firm that, no, we didn't consider the Department of Justice policy as to whether you can or cannot indict a sitting president.
It did not rise.
No evidence rose to the level that the president obstructed.
And of course, Mueller couldn't be even any more clear that the underlying charge crime didn't exist.
Now, these are the same people that love the Clintons so much that they don't care about clear violations with incontrovertible evidence of multiple felonies committed and violations of the Espionage Act.
And that is, yeah, top secret classified information was discovered on the private server that was in the mom and pop shop bathroom closet of the Platts River Network.
And yet then there was the cover-up, the obstruction that followed with an underlying crime on top of it.
And that was to destroy the evidence.
Evidence destroyed by deletions and bleach pit and hammers and removing SIM cards.
These same people never talk about it.
And it's the same time period.
Well, why do you bring up Clinton?
Because we're happening in the exact same time period.
All it does is show their selective moral outrage, their inconsistency on the law, how this is all a political witch hunt for them that they've been losing every step of the way.
A false narrative, a hoax conspiracy theory that they just keep doubling and tripling down on.
It's like doubled down on stupid, knowing that you're going to lose the hand again.
But if this is what the Democratic Party represents, this and the new Green Deal, it is you're looking at creating a political environment that could lead to a landslide for the president.
If this is what they're going to do and this is what they want to do, and this is how they view their service to the American people, I can tell you right now, it's not going to end well for them, no matter what they decide here.
Kerry Pickett is an investigative reporter, KerryPickett.com.
She was in the room.
All right, take us inside the room.
Tell us a little bit more about, give us, you know, some of the feeling in the room about what was going on.
Well, Sean, keep in mind, even before the members came into the room, there was a sort of feeling as to whether or not this was going to be a bit of a circus atmosphere because on Friday night, you had ranking member Doug Collins who sent a letter to Chairman Nadler who warned him about the issue of decorum that could possibly be an issue in today's hearing.
Because for the past few weeks, we've seen the Democrats at previous hearings accuse the president of lying, accuse the president of crimes.
And you had Doug Collins who said in his letter, look, you cannot do this at these hearings because according to long-standing rules of a conduct in the House going back to the days of Jefferson, according to the Jefferson Manual, you cannot do this in these hearings.
You can't accuse the president outside of an impeachment hearing of a crime, of lying, unless it is an impeachment hearing.
And that's what a number of Democrats have been doing.
So all these statements have always been out of order.
So he was kind of hinting to Jerry Nadler, look, if you keep on making all of these statements that are completely out of order, then what's going to stop Republicans from being out of order in these hearings?
We're not going to take your mock impeachment inquiry seriously.
So today, opening up over at the statement that Nadler said, he recognized that.
And he said, okay, quote, but the rules of decorum in the House of Representatives are a shield, not a sword.
The rules are designed to focus the debate on the facts and the law and can therefore help us discuss the findings of the special counsel with the seriousness that they deserve.
The rules are not, however, an opportunity to avoid discussing serious allegations of misconduct altogether.
And so he goes on to say that they are not going to attack the president personally, but it also means that they're not going to not discuss the allegations.
So that's something to really think about.
Well, yeah, I mean, at this point, you know, the John Dean thing, I mean, it's almost like a joke based on his record, which I've been going through for a better part of the day.
What could he possibly add, except, you know, when we look at his background and we see who he is and we see that this guy is a convict that knows nothing about this particular case and, you know, a disbarred conducted convict of that.
And, you know, he flipped for the sake of saving his own skin in all of this.
And remember, he was a guy that lied himself.
He was disbarred for his unethical, unprofessional, unwarranted conduct in the Watergate scandal, removed from his legal career.
Every president post-Nixon, he is accused of being worse than Nixon and worse than Watergate, Bush and Trump.
So, you know, what's the point of bringing him in?
Great point there, Sean, because the moment it got to Collins' opening statement, he said, you know, I don't understand why we have John Dean here because I can get his statement on this issue just by watching cable TV.
Why is he even here?
At one point, you had Collins saying, hey, you know, the S70s want their star witness back, referencing Obama's statement about how the 80s were calling when he was making fun of Romney and his concerns about Russia.
But still, there's a lot of concern about why John Dean is there.
And ultimately, Sean, what we've been seeing for the past few months is the fact that you have the Democrats who are trying to put this whole Russia probe kind of into this sort of like Watergate kind of peg.
And frankly, it simply isn't really fitting.
Oh, it's not the crime.
It's the cover-up.
And frankly, that's what we're seeing here.
Well, gee, there is no crime.
But you know what?
What we have here is obstruction.
And a lot of people are sort of getting tired of it at this point.
Well, you know, I don't see how this is going to resonate.
Whatever they're going to get.
Look, the reason we have the special counsel statute is that ultimately it's the Attorney General that has the authority to make the decision.
Not only did Attorney General Barr quickly determine that there was no obstruction, because we know there's no underlying crime, Rod Rosenstein came to the exact same conclusion.
Robert Mueller made a fool of himself for nine and a half minutes saying that, well, we didn't have the authority to make a decision on this one.
In fact, he said there was at no time any consideration to make a final determination and Justice Department rules and regulations about sitting, whether a sitting president can or cannot be indicted.
It's the opposite of what he had been saying.
So Attorney General Barr bailed him out with a joint statement with the special counsel saying this is our position.
And of course, the media didn't really pick up on all that.
So there's really nothing here to go after that is going to have any teeth except they want a political witch hunt trial.
And if they want it, they're going to get it and they can do it.
But the political backlash to this will be massive.
The country is not going to accept it.
The Senate will never convict.
And it is going to be a colossal waste of everybody's time that will, and the net result will be a re-elected Donald Trump.
Well, that's what a number of people are predicting.
But keep in mind, Sean, they figured that, well, gee, we got all this evidence now from the Justice Department.
So now let's see if we can try and squeeze Don McGahn because he still isn't out of hot water as far as he's concerned.
So they figure one down, one to go.
And that's how they are looking at this at this point.
All right.
Kerry Pickett is with us.
CarriePickett.com and investigative reporter.
As always, good to talk to you.
Thanks so much for being with us.
All right, let's hit our phones real quickly here.
Don is in Iowa where all the Democratic candidates were this weekend.
Don, hi, how are you?
Glad you called, sir.
Hi, Sean.
Thank you for taking my call.
I've been listening and watching you since Hannity and Combs, and I appreciate everything.
I appreciate that.
I've gotten a little bit taller, skinnier, younger.
I'm just joking.
People come in the studio.
They go, you look shorter on TV, and you're skinnier in person.
You look younger in person.
So I'm like, okay, so I'm short, fat, and old on TV.
Great.
Thanks a lot.
Thanks for watching.
Anyway, what's going on?
Oh, nothing.
I see this show trial that Jerry Nadler is trying to put on and bringing in John Dean.
He should have invited James Dean to make it a better show.
But it's all just to get people in the mindset that this is the same thing as Watergate.
That's all this is.
Nothing but a show.
Well, it's a show, but it's a show that I think the American people are going to rightly see as one we don't need.
They're going to see it as a show that is hurtful to the country.
We're going to see that it is a rage and psychosis that drives this new extreme radical Democratic Party.
It's not a party that is serving their constituents and serving the American people.
And meanwhile, the president goes about his business every day, and he brought Mexico to its knees this weekend, and nobody seems to really give a rip.
Well, I care because you know what?
That's good news to now know that the Mexican military is going to stop all of these, quote, migrant caravans from Central America, which they should have done from day one.
But now we're getting that done.
Then we can go through the process of building the wall and keeping America safe and secure, stopping the drugs and the cartels and the human trafficking and the gangs and having a legal immigration system where we get to vet people and ensure that they have the ability to take care of themselves when they are in this country.
Not that complicated.
800-94-1 Sean, if you want to be a part of the program.
Who specifically are you accusing of treason?
Well, I think a number of people, and I think what you look is that they have unsuccessfully tried to take down the wrong person.
If you look at Comey, if you look at McCabe, if you look at probably people higher than that, if you look at Strzok, if you look at his lover, Lisa Page, his wonderful lover, the two lovers, they talked openly.
You know, they didn't use their private server because they didn't want to get caught.
So they used the government server.
That was not a good move.
He talked about the insurance policy just in case Crooked Hillary loses.
And that didn't work out too well for them.
So you look at them.
They want an insurance policy so that should she, for any reason, lose, remember?
100 million to one.
Maybe he said 100 million to nothing.
But should she lose, we'll have an insurance policy and we'll get this guy out of office.
And that's what they said, and that's what they meant.
Now, we've known about the insurance policy.
Remember, they were involved from the get-go, Strzzok and Page.
They were also appointed by Mueller.
Interestingly, James Baker, the general counsel top lawyer at the FBI under Comey, said, no, I'm the one that got them out of there.
It was not Robert Mueller.
Robert Mueller did have the phones of Strzzok and Page wiped clean and sent back to the manufacturer, which is of particular note to me.
But anyway, despite studios and some prejudices, et cetera, this Russia collusion hoax has been exposed.
And the idea is we want the American people to even know more about this because there are a lot of people, maybe they don't follow the news the way some people listen to talk radio and watch Fox do.
So we have our friends, investigative journalists, is with us, and McElhaney and also Philim McAlier.
They're here to talk about this new film that they have been working on based on the true story of Page and Strzok.
And with all the Trump hating organizations, events, movies, speeches, plays, you'd think that maybe theaters would be open once in a while to at least one diverse point of view.
We can see why Hollywood is forever gone.
Hollywood's done.
They just don't know it yet.
I was looking at their so-called blockbusters over the weekend, and they all died.
You know, most of them are going to be losing like $100 million each.
And then you have all these small, successful movies that are about, you know, uplifting movies, spiritual movies, faith-based movies, and other topics, great stories that they'd never tell because it didn't fit into the Hollywood formulaic way of doing movies.
You know, let's do Jennifer Aniston falling in love for the 5,000th time.
Let's do another cartoon character.
You know, this is chapter 29.
Anyway, so it's interesting that, in fact, this project is underway.
And welcome back.
And Philo, welcome back.
And tell me what you're doing.
And what is the plan here?
Oh, we're so glad to be here.
Thanks so much, Sean.
So we have Dean Kane, the great Dean Kane, and Christy Swanson.
A lot of your listeners will know, remember her, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, playing Lisa Page and playing Peter Strzok.
And we're going to have it on stage in Washington, D.C. on Thursday night, this Thursday night, the 13th, and we're going to film it, edit it, and put it out so everyone can see it for free on YouTube.
And, you know, when you, exactly as you've just explained in your introduction there, what Lisa Page and Peter Strzok were up to was extraordinary.
And these are not just any old FBI agents.
These are the very highest level.
Peter Strzok was the head of espionage.
He was the head spy.
He's the guy behind the Russia investigation.
Here's what he's doing.
He writes to her at one point.
He's in Southern Virginia and he says, I could smell all caps.
I could smell the Trump supporters.
And, you know, they had these congressional hearings behind closed doors.
And he's asked by one of the congressmen, what do they smell like?
What do the Trump supporters smell like?
And, you know, as a Trump supporter myself, and many of your listeners, you know, I'm, you know, they're having a sniff under their arm right now and wondering, what did Peter Strzok mean by that?
Exactly, what does he think we all smell like?
But this is who he is.
But you know, listen, it's very obvious.
When you think, you know, here's the guy that interviews Hillary.
I mean, you got to put this in context.
He's writing Hillary's exoneration in May of 2016.
And at the behest and participation of James Comey, he removes very important words, gross negligence, which are the exact legal language in the statute, in the Espionage Act, that would be a crime, and they replace it with extreme carelessness.
That was not done by accident.
That was done by design.
And then he doesn't finally even get to interview Hillary till July 2nd of 2016.
And he allows a witness and one other person in the room.
And this is supposed to be an interrogation, an investigation into crimes she may have committed.
That is not only highly unusual, that never happens.
That would never happen to any other American.
Now, in fact, they did have top-secret, classified information marked as such on that private computer network they set up.
It was in a mom-and-pop bathroom closet of this group, you know, Platts Rivers Network.
And in fact, they found this information.
Then Comey decides, because after the debacle of being caught, Loretta Lynch, who Strzzok and Paige both say, you know, had the fix in and that she was running every decision the FBI was making, and she was protecting Hillary Clinton, which would make sense because they met in the tarmac in Arizona and they weren't talking about grandchildren for 45 minutes with Bill Clinton just on the eve of making her decision and final determination.
Anyway, so then you have, he does the interview with Hillary in what is an unconventional way.
Comey admits that all this material is on that computer network.
All of it is a crime, but then he says, but well, there's not a prosecutor that would charge.
That's bull.
That's a lie.
And then as it relates to the smelly Walmart people, then it was Strzz that said, I can smell the Trump Walmart people from a mile away, but that's in fitting with irredeemable deplorable by Hillary Clinton, as it fits in with Obama saying, you know, there are people in Pennsylvania cling to their God, their guns, their Bibles, and their religion.
So it shows a contempt of the American people, in my view.
Sean, I mean, but Strzok was investigating Trump for collusion.
I mean, Lisa Page said to Trump, or said to Strzok in a text, Trump's not going to get elected, is he?
Strzok responded, No, we're going to stop it.
Then, when it looked like Trump might win, he was doing well in the polls, Strzzok said, It's time to open the insurance policy.
Three days later, he started the Russia investigation.
This is, you know, deplorables is bad.
A politician saying that, a senior FBI agent who's got the power to open investigations into Donald Trump to bring him down, saying this.
This is not lovers pillow talk.
This is malfeasance.
You know, this is bad stuff.
The American people need to know this.
That's why we're putting it on stage.
And it's all verbatim.
They're only going to read the text messages and their responses during the congressional inquiry.
So where is this going to air?
Where are you guys going to do this?
And the Reagan Amphitheater in D.C. Details are FBILovebirds.com.
People have been great.
Dean, it's really funny.
We were at the rehearsals the other day.
The text messages are hilarious for something so serious.
We're talking about the overthrow of an elected president.
It's amazing.
You should come, Sean.
You should come on Thursday night.
We would love to see you.
We're going to have to.
Well, I'd love to go, but I do have a day and night job, so I don't know if I'm going to be able to make it.
But anyway, it sounds like a lot of fun.
It's really funny.
But people can go to the FBIlovebirds.com and check out all the information about it.
But we'd love people to come.
It is hilarious.
It is laugh out loud, hilarious.
And as Philim said, despite the fact this is incredibly serious, deeply disturbing, when you realize the power these people had and how they were wielding it and what they were saying to each other, it is frightening, actually, because you really understand the origins of the Russian investigation when you hear how these people spoke about Trump's candidacy.
First of all, candidacy.
And then once he became the president, their efforts to stop that.
Well, it's going to be this Thursday, and FBI Lovebirds will put it up on Hannity.com.
And Philip, good to talk to you.
All right.
800-941, Sean.
By the way, I hate to hear this, but we had this helicopter crash into a high-rise building earlier in New York City, according to the New York City Fire Department, and massive emergency response still ongoing by 7th Avenue, Manhattan and 51st Street.
It's, you know, just sad when these accidents happen.
All right, let's get to our phones.
Let's say hi to Steve is in Virginia.
Steve, hi, how are you?
Well, glad you called.
How are you doing?
Thank you for taking my call.
Yes, sir.
My question is: how many of these radical young radicals in the Democratic Party think that if Trump is impeached, Hillary automatically becomes the president?
Hillary doesn't become the president if Trump is impeached.
If Trump is impeached, he's impeached.
He's still the president.
He'd have to be convicted in the Senate.
It's never going to happen.
But if it was removed, how many of them actually think that Hillary would become the president?
You know, I don't know.
I mean, are there people stupid enough that might believe that that's what the result would be?
I guess.
I mean, you have to really have zero knowledge of how government works to come to that conclusion.
Well, I don't have zero knowledge.
Well, look, I do think there are people that believe this would be great for the Democrats.
They think, you know, the harder they go at Trump, the meaner they become, the more extreme they are that they think this helps the Democratic Party.
It does not.
There's only one thing that I think works in politics, and that is having a plan that will successfully make us more peaceful, safer as a country, more secure, and also one that makes us more prosperous and has more opportunity and grows the economy and gets government off of people's backs.
That's what I think works.
And, you know, I've been a conservative my whole life.
Every time it is attempted, it works.
Every time we slide backwards into the appeals of lies and promises and socialism, well, you get the results that are predictable.
Socialism, redistribution, it all fails.
Being weak before foreign leaders fails.
Peace through strength works.
It's deep and it's profound on the one hand, but it's really simple on the other.
The principles of limited government, greater freedom, less government bureaucracy, low taxes can almost guarantee a growing, thriving economy.
And those that are forgotten, you know, when government comes to help, watch out because all they want is dependency.
All they want is the power that comes with you needing them.
And that is the corrupt side of the political field.
Abe is in Houston, Texas, next on the Sean Hannity Show.
What's up, Abe?
How are you?
Yeah, I'm fine, Sean.
How's it going?
It's going good.
What's going on?
Okay, real quick.
I'm just thinking, you know, into the Russia probe.
Now, these people was not looking for no Russian collusion because they know it didn't exist.
Their whole thing was to investigate people around Trump, get dirt on them so that they can blackmail them to go along with their little scheme that they had going on to get rid of Trump.
It never was about that.
Why waste your time investigating something that you know ain't there, that you created?
So that was the bottom line on that.
They wanted to blackmail these people, get dirt on them to make them go along with their little scheme.
And I believe all these people should be exonerated because they destroyed their lives, innocent people, because they want to take down Trump.
I don't think any of these people that testified in the past, they're under no obligation to have to hire expensive lawyers, go back and answer the same questions.
Look, that's for them and their lawyers to decide.
But you know what?
When you're questioned, you do not have to answer.
And I know that's hard for many people to believe.
You don't.
And maybe, you know, if you've already testified and you've done it twice and in some cases, three times, and you've answered every question imaginable, and now you go back and they want you to pay for more lawyers to answer the same questions again and set a perjury trap for you.
I see no upside in anybody doing that.
I wouldn't do it.
That's my own personal view.
You know, it's a pretty sad, pathetic day when, you know, people that would normally want to help the country, you know, now this has become an abuse of power.
They're now abusing the power of their office and they're using it for political purposes, nefarious purposes, so that they can bludgeon, keep a dead story alive, and drive people nuts.
I'll give you the final word.
We got 15 seconds.
Yeah, I agree with it.
But the bottom line, I just don't like how they're using the power of the government to go after people to just destroy their lives.
You know, it's sad that we come down to this and the media's right along with it.
That's it.
Well, that's what they do.
Listen, they're not.
The end of the day, are you better off than you were four years ago?
At the end of the day, are we more safe, more secure?
At the end of the day, is America more prosperous?
Is the economy better?
Do we have more opportunity?
That's what determines elections.
All right, that's going to wrap things up for tonight.
Full investigation into, all right, why is the Horowitz report?
Is there new areas that he's now investigating?
When will we get that report?
And we'll have the latest on the deep stating.
Greg Jarrett, Pam Bondi, Sarah Carter, and Carter Page.
It's all coming up.
Nine Eastern Hannity Fox.
The best coverage of the deep state and their unfolding and undoing tonight at 9 on Hannity.
