Larry Kudlow President Trump’s top economic advisor and head of the National Economic Council, and also a former Reagan administration economist and author of JFK and the Reagan Revolution: A Secret History of American Prosperity. He is here to talk about the economy, negotiations with China, and 2.1% rate of growth in the second quarter.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.
This has been a great week in the sense that everything that we have been telling you as it relates to the deep state, your corrupt media mob, and the abuse of power and corruption, we haven't been wrong.
And here's even the better part of news that I know that I can pass on somewhat cryptically to you, that I know for a fact that there is going to begin now, next week, what will be an avalanche of information that will come out.
We've been calling for it for, wow, at least a year and a half, right, Linda?
We've been wanting this information out.
I did ask the president about it last night on Hannity, and I said, well, we've wanted this material, the 302s and the Gang of Aid, and we wanted the FISA applications and all of the stuff that we've been talking about.
And he gave the authority to the Attorney General.
And the president said, I did it because I want to stay out of it.
I want to be objective.
That's what an attorney general does.
That's not what I do as president.
I want to serve the American people.
I want to keep the economy humming, which it is.
I want to create more jobs.
I want to build the wall.
I want energy independence.
He's also got to deal with, obviously, the Iranian mullahs.
And Kim Jong-un thought he was cute this week by firing two little baby missiles to see how we would react.
I keep having to remind liberals about that, too.
What did Donald Trump give Kim Jong-un?
All right, let's just, all right, what did he give him?
What did Kim Jong-un get from the United States of America with Donald Trump as president?
The only thing he got was time.
And in the interim, it's been a full year and a half.
We've got remains of our soldiers from the Korean War back.
We've got hostages back.
We have stopped for the longest period now missiles being fired over Japan and threatening the entire region with a nuclear holocaust and war breaking out.
And the president gave nothing else but an opportunity for Kim Jong-un to build a relationship with the rest of the free world if he would stop pursuing his nuclear weapons program.
And in exchange, Donald Trump did give Kim Jong-un something.
He gave him his time, his time and his willingness to have a discussion.
Now, I'll take the remain.
You offer me, I'm the president for a second here.
I know, don't laugh.
And you offer me the remains of our American heroes for time.
I'll take that deal.
How much time do you want?
I'll give you a lot of hours for the remains of for those families that want the remains of their loved ones back.
Yes, sir, I would do that for our soldiers.
Absolutely.
Well, I want your time, and I also, I'll release a hostage if you will talk to me, have a conversation with me.
Okay, I'll take that deal too.
You're not going to get all my time.
I have a busy day.
I'm the president.
Sure, you can have the time for that too.
I'll stop firing missiles and threatening the world every day.
Okay.
You're going to do it for 18 months?
Deal.
How much time do you want?
That's it.
It's a very different approach than the past presidents that have been offering bribes.
Kim Jong-il, that would be King Jong-un's father, got literally everything he wanted with a phony promise to Bill Clinton, then president, including the ability to spend centrifuges and everything, but it's a good deal for the American people.
Prevent them from acquiring nuclear weapons.
Nope, wrong.
Bribery fails.
Appeasement fails.
Now, the president, too, always says, well, we'll see.
We'll see on Iran.
Not offering them anything either.
And everybody said, oh, no, he's going to nuke them.
He might eventually have to use a tactical nuke or some serious bunker-busting bombs to knock the hell out of their nuclear sites.
I can see that day.
Oh, it could be imminent.
I could see it happening because there's a full alliance now that's already there.
I know more.
My sources, again, something other people in the media don't seem to rely on.
Well, tell me that, in fact, this alliance with Israel, the U.S., obviously Great Britain now.
I don't, I'm glad Theresa May is out at least.
What do you think of Barce?
He seems a little nutty, but let's see if he can make Brexit work.
I don't think he's going to make it work by negotiating with the European Union.
I think he's just going to have to pull the trigger or do what Nigel Farage says, which is call for elections.
And if he does that and the conservatives unite with Farage, then they'll get enough votes to just get the hell out of the European Union and get their own currency back and the pound and be free of the insanity of the European Union.
Just making dumb decisions.
They're saying they won't do it.
Anyway, we'll see over time.
And so I can tell you that I think the president, if you look at his track record of keeping promises, we can make certain determinations and predictions about his behavior.
Well, Hannity, you talk to the president a lot.
Well, nobody knows my relationship with the president, and I'm not going to tell anybody my relationship with the president just because people think they know.
And the fact is that nobody has gotten it right ever in the news media.
And you know what?
You're never going to get it right.
And I'm never going to talk about it, and I'm never going to write about it just to keep you guys guessing.
It's more fun.
You know, just like I wasn't given a tutorial to the likes of Devin Nunes.
He doesn't need me or Jim Jordan or Matt Gates or Doug Collins and John Ratcliffe.
They know this better than I do.
And they have more access to what really happened than I had.
I just, I have to dig for everything that we're getting.
We're layers behind them only because of, you know, they have to protect intelligence information and they're not going to share it with Sean Hannity no matter how much they may like Sean Hannity.
Although we get it more than you might think.
We're pretty good at it.
And then when push comes to shove, I'll always say, am I over the target?
It's just to know if I'm heading in the right direction or if I'm about to steer off course.
But anyway, the president is not going to have boots on the ground in Iran.
He's never going to do it.
Now, I think probably the president will remain with a very limited number of troops for intelligence purposes in Afghanistan to prevent the Taliban from ever rising.
The only reason ISIS and the Caliphate NISIS was wiped out in Syria is because the rules of engagement were changed.
And Donald Trump did what he said he was going to do.
I'm not putting boots on the ground.
I'm not engaging in a long, protracted war.
And if you look at the cities that were taken over in Syria by ISIS, well, he just worked his way backwards and he allowed the generals to do their job and basically bomb the living hell out of each area and ISIS stronghold until they went to the original city and they took that back.
Well, the same will be with Iran.
Iran's going to push this too far.
Now we've got the Brits and we've got Jordan and we've got Egypt and we've got Israel and we've got Saudi Arabia and we've got the Emirates and they're all aligned against a nuclear-armed Iran and fearful of Iranian hegemony in the region.
And that's why Vladimir Putin is the nut that he is.
So I'm just, I am telling you that this is, these are interesting times.
You can predict what Donald Trump is going to do.
He said he's going to cut taxes.
We got the biggest tax cut.
He said he's going to deregulate.
He deregulated.
He said he's going to incentivize businesses to spend and invest in factories and manufacturing centers here.
And if you dare go abroad, I'm going to punish your products when they come back into the U.S.
And it's worked.
And he literally is fighting like a dog every day to get the borders secure.
I saw Griff Jenkins on Fox and Friends this morning.
He was down there.
He actually got a tour of the detention facilities that AOC and is it Omar?
Is it, I forget what who made the analogy?
I know AOC did, that they like concentration camps.
I'm like, no, they're not.
We saw they're playing soccer.
They have soccer fields.
They exercise.
They'd be in food, water, medicine, healthcare, everything they need.
The only people that voted against it was people in the squad.
So we've got a lot of stuff happening.
And I'm just telling you, it's been a good week because truth has prevailed.
And it's also been a good week because I know what's coming.
And what's coming is going to validate what we have spent a good two plus years reporting.
And here's the thing that I also know, it's going to shock the conscience of the country.
What is going to be revealed on now a regular basis is going to make every American aware of those that were in that we entrust at the highest levels of the premier agencies that we provide the strongest tools of intelligence to literally to impact a presidential election and then to destroy a candidate.
And then later, the guy that wasn't supposed.
to win, and have they had an insurance policy to go after the transition team and then the presidency, and there were numerous avenues by which they went about spying and trying to undermine the will of the people.
And I went over this yesterday.
They hate us, we, the people, much, much more.
They blame, they can't believe we're so stupid that we don't agree with them.
Well, I think we're actually smarter than them with better economic results and a country that's stronger than we've ever been before, like with energy independence, the first time in 75 years.
Look at what's happening in the Straits of Hormuz.
They're strategically less important now than they've ever been since the lifeblood of our economy became more necessary year after year.
We now have our own energy.
We don't need them.
Not only do we not need them, we can bring them and Putin and Russia and that regime that hates us to their knees when we outproduce them and get it to our Western European allies and those in Asia, Australia, whoever needs it.
And in the meantime, we'll literally be raising the standard of every American because those energy jobs, by becoming energy independent and becoming the biggest net exporter of energy, we haven't even begun to tap into the vast resources that will supply energy for the entire world for hundreds and hundreds of years.
Clean burning gas, clean burning coal, oil as needed.
We've got it all.
And now we're going to start benefiting from it.
But unlike countries that, well, well, they keep it for the leadership.
Venezuela is one of those countries.
You got some of these Middle Eastern countries.
You ever notice that the leaders are rich as hell?
And the people, they're basically given crumbs.
I was watching the day when our good friend Jorge Ramos was interviewing the president of Venezuela and showing him a video of the people.
This could be one of the richest countries that everybody could be rich in Venezuela.
They have so many resources of oil and energy.
No, the people are eating out of garbage trucks.
And then, of course, he got hung up there.
I did come to his defense.
Didn't I say I'd bail him out?
I said I'd pay for it.
Didn't I say that?
And he and I argue, I don't want to see any American held hostage by anybody.
I'll tell you right now, I am so pissed off about the Iranians holding these tanker guys hostage under the flag of Great Britain.
I'm ready to roll.
We'll see what happens.
I don't know how long.
I don't think it's going to go on 444 days.
I don't believe that.
But obviously, Britain in the middle of a political change right now makes it a little more difficult.
But I see it happening.
All right, as we roll along, well, that's what I'm saying: is that there's all of this now is noise on their side.
My prediction about the media is very clear.
They're never, ever going to admit that they're wrong.
They're never going to self-reflect and not going to analyze and say, what did we get wrong here?
No, they're going to watch their ratings continue to tank.
Their credibility is shot and shot forever.
I don't think it's anything they could ever rebuild.
CNN will always and forever be known as fake news.
And if you look at, you know, Roswell Rachel Maddow over there at MSDNC, they are going to be known as the conspiracy channel forever.
There's nothing that you can do about it.
And if you like conspiracy theories and you like to be disappointed and you like to be set up like a bowling pin only to be knocked down every other month by hyped up lies that they promise are going to bear fruit and never come to fruition and turn out to be false, then go with them.
We take very seriously our responsibility to get to the truth on these issues.
Look, we'll tell you later in the program, Linda's been down at Leavenworth.
We've been really digging deep into the Clinton Lawrence issue.
And we've followed this case now for many, many years.
It's sad that there are a lot of these guys that have served this country.
Here's a guy that is serving his country, takes over a platoon.
A week to 10 days prior, a bunch of guys in that platoon, including their leader, are killed.
They're killed by IEDs that were delivered by men on motorcycles.
So in comes Clinton Lawrence, he's the new platoon leader, knows exactly what had happened to the platoon and how they lost members.
And then what happens?
A bunch of guys fly past the checkpoint on motorcycles.
Now, I guess it's really easy sitting in the comfort of an office in Washington, D.C., or, you know, in some courtroom somewhere, and you never get your shoes or your boots dirty.
And to second-guess what is a split-second decision about saving the lives of young Americans that you have the responsibility to protect.
And then it turns out later there's other evidence like, oh, DNA evidence.
Yeah.
Those two that got this guy sent to jail, the platoon leader.
Yeah, their fingerprints.
They're DNA all over IEDs.
All right, 25 till the top of the hour.
You don't want to do it now, right?
You don't want, well, do it.
No, but you know, what you, you know, first of all, thank you, Sean, because, you know, there's very few people who put their neck out on the line, and you always do.
I mean, you've done it a thousand times throughout your career.
Yeah, by the way, one day I'm going to go out on that limb on that big, on the tiniest branch and the smallest twig hanging on the leaf that's left over from fall.
And one day it's going to drop.
You know that.
It's not going to work out great.
I don't know, dude.
I got to be honest with you.
I mean, with track records, good.
When we broke the news in 2007, along with Eric Rush at the time about Reverend Rice.
I haven't had him on in a long time.
Contact him.
I miss him.
He's a great guy.
Eric, I'm reaching out.
We'll let you know we miss you.
All right.
Okay.
All right, go ahead.
Okay, then.
So, but, you know, what you were saying about Clint Lawrence is so true.
You know, these stories of these men, you know, in Clint's case, it literally was a life-altering decision between a two and 10 second mark, you know, and he's got to trust his platoon.
He's got to trust his men.
You know, these military guys, they put their lives in one another's hands.
And so, you know, Clint's in a ravine.
He's not the lookout guy.
He can't see what's coming down.
They're describing the exact scenario that killed six men a week prior.
He's been in the platoon a day, one day.
And it's like, okay, I don't want any more men to die.
The biometric evidence comes out that these guys were bomb makers, that these guys had their hands all over the bombs that killed the platoon, the guys in the platoon the week before and this week.
It's unbelievable.
And I'm telling you, when we tell this audience what brigadier generals did to these lieutenants, when I went to Fort Leavenworth, I tell you, it was like when I went to the ICU, we were at Siroka Hospital off the Gaza Strip.
It's seeing these people who give their all.
And I'm sure there are people in Fort Leavenworth who absolutely deserve to be there.
And when I met with Clint, he told me that firsthand.
He goes, there's people who deserve to be here.
But I'm looking at this guy.
And you know what, Sean?
He doesn't want a pardon.
He wants a disapproval of the findings because a pardon means you did it.
He's like, I didn't do this.
I want to disapproval of the findings.
And that's what we're going to fight for for this guy.
Also, another point, a funny point.
People love, love, love what we played yesterday for the My Cousin Vinny mashup that we did with the audio and Bob Bowler.
That's great.
So we made a video version.
The video version.
You put it up yet?
It's on Hannity.com, front and center.
It's hysterical.
Forget about it.
You're going to love it.
Forget about it.
Marissa Tomei is the woman at my own house.
I'm being honest because you sound like her.
Yeah, that's why I like her.
So let me see.
You got the little deer prancing in the woods, drinking sip of a little water at the park.
That's pretty good, Sean.
And it goes.
Bam!
And then you shoot the little deer and you kill it.
Oh, she says, boom, a bullet hits you right between the eyes.
Exactly.
It's the greatest.
You got to watch that movie.
My favorite scene is.
You want to know why that movie has significance for me?
Because I was a New Yorker that lived in Alabama.
And they all said, Sean, welcome to Alabama.
Good to hear from you.
Roll Todd, War Eagle.
And by the way, you talk funny.
And by the way, I didn't listen.
No, I talk funny.
I went to get coffee in Kansas with John Maher and Don Brown, which are Clint's attorneys.
So they're both amazing guys, military guys.
So John's from Chicago and Don's from Charlotte.
And they both have their own accents in their own right.
But we're sitting in the car.
We're getting some coffee through a drive-through there.
It was really good.
And John's like, oh, Linda, you want a coffee?
And I said, yeah, let me get a latte coffee with some cream.
And the whole car just turned around, including the girl in the window.
She's like, oh, God, you must be from New York.
I'm like, oh, hi.
How you doing?
Yeah.
So anyway, back to my coffee.
And they're just dying laughing because there's just nobody talks like that unless you're from New York or Boston.
You know what I'm saying?
Like the accents are just like ridiculous.
But to me, they sound like they had such strong accents.
And they're talking about us.
I was like, yeah, it's not me.
It's you guys.
Just so you know.
But I was outnumbered, so I didn't have a lot of attention there.
You know, we do.
We really have, and I joke about this all the time in a sense, but I'm really serious about it.
If you're not serious about really digging in and this is what we do, we don't really talk about it.
I mean, I describe what I do for a living.
People say, well, you believe in a free press?
Are you a part of the media?
Yeah, of course I'm press.
What do we do as talk show hosts?
It is a unique job.
It's very different than being a quote journalist.
I'm not a journalist.
We do journalism.
It's part of what we do.
We do investigative journalism, i.e. vetting Obama when nobody else will.
We do reporting.
How many hundreds and hundreds of hours TV and radio could I produce, me just reporting news, straight news, talking about, you know, a coming hurricane or natural disaster, God forbid, talking about war and peace.
I'm not doing any opinion.
I'm doing news, straight news.
So that's part of what we do.
We're investigating the deep state when nobody else would.
We did a lot of news gathering and investigative reporting with a big ensemble crew of investigators that did a lot of hard work and a lot of vetting.
And we did it with Obama.
We did it on the deep state.
You know, before we jump in front of, you know, we're not part of the no due process, no presumption of innocence crowd.
I even said it about Avenatti.
I said, okay, let's see.
I don't know.
I mean, it doesn't sound good.
He ended up having three separate, but this is before when charges were made about him and some woman, maybe it was ex-wife or somebody or a girlfriend.
I don't remember.
And I said, he deserves the due process, presumption of innocence.
He didn't give Kavanaugh.
But look at what they did with Kavanaugh, just like they did with Bork, just like they did with Thomas, just like they recently did with Nicholas Sandman, just like they've been doing for two and a half years, lying about Trump and conspiracy theories.
You know, we took a whole separate independent path than everybody else.
And we take a lot of crap for it.
And by the way, the people that we've been investigating, let me tell you a little, without giving it all away, do you think they like Sean Hannity?
The people whose names we talk about and expose every day.
Do you think these powerful people like us, like the ensemble cast?
You know, Linda has a little bit of anonymity, sort of.
Well, you used to in this work.
I had a woman younger.
Do you think they like Greg Jarrett?
I'll tell you.
Well, you know more of exactly, you know exactly what I'm telling people without telling them.
They don't like us doing this.
Oh, no, no, not at all.
And if they had their way, I guess they'd probably silence us too in some way if they could.
And it's just, it goes with the territory.
And you think about it.
You know, I had a friend of mine in the military like, thank me.
He goes, you know, you're really putting your neck on the line on this.
And I appreciate it.
I also appreciate that you always point out rank and file.
We're rock solid because we are, and we're as disgusted as you are.
And I said, you know, I'm sorry.
I just, you can't put me in the same category.
If you have to carry a gun every day, your job's tougher than mine.
I have a carry permit.
I've carried a gun.
I've had, you know, I've had a carry permit in New York, Rhode Island, California, Alabama, and Georgia.
I've carried a weapon all of my adult life.
Let me see.
Yeah.
About two-thirds of my life, I've had a carry permit.
Can you believe that?
I believe it.
Yeah.
I don't like to shoot as much anymore because I get that ringing in my ears, which is not as fun.
But I think.
That's just me yelling at you.
That's all.
That rings in my ear, too.
I have happy news.
You want to do happy news?
Oh, come on.
There's no such thing.
A little bit of happy news.
Oh, anyway, I'll do that.
Yes, we do happy news.
We do sports.
We do cultural stories.
I'm so furious at these videos of these cops getting hit with water and these attacks against police officers in New York.
They better stop it.
And they better get, we have the faces of every person.
They didn't have masks on.
You better find every one of them.
And I saw the charges.
The first one, I'm like, are you kidding me?
No, that's assaulting a police officer.
A felony.
Charge them with felonies.
It's outrageous, but what's the good news?
And we do opinion, too.
Go ahead.
What's the good news?
Are you sure you're ready?
Because you're doing a lot of rapping.
Well, we do have a new member of the Hannity family.
Oh, my God.
You know what you like?
You like that person who's like, go ahead, tell the story, but let me tell it.
No, you tell it.
No, I'll tell it.
You're going to let me tell it or you want to tell it.
Well, I told it yesterday, so I want to.
Why, but today I had the name.
Oh, that's true.
That's the whole point.
How many days has it been?
She was born on Wednesday.
Oh, and what's her name?
Her name is Anna Lee Barbara Ray.
Anna Lee Barbara?
Barbara.
So my mother's name is Barbara.
Barbara.
Yeah, and then her mother used the name Ray.
By the way, we're talking about Lauren, who worked on the show for a long time, and she got married to Linda's brother.
I mean, this is lucky day to become a McLaughlin, let me tell you.
Oh, let me tell you, don't ever expect to be able to cut tomatoes on that family.
I'll tell you that.
That's right.
No need.
It's my salad.
I'll cut the tomatoes.
By the way, look at Ethan.
Ethan's dying, and so's Jason.
Everyone's got a big spot on their tomato story just keeps coming up and up.
And most people probably have no idea what you're talking about.
No, yeah, you probably should explain that.
Linda's the type of person that if you're cutting a tomato, let me do that.
You're doing it all wrong.
It drives everybody nuts.
Well, you know what?
You know, well, you can't take the fact that I decide to work as often as I do, and it annoys you.
Oh, now you know.
Sean Hannity show.
How far do you want to go down that road?
And the Sean Hannity show, Sean Hannity gets to decide, you know, I think I really want to do the show today.
And you don't like it that I don't take vacations that you think I ought to be taking.
You know what?
Look at, for example, we're one year away now this weekend from the national holiday, which was Kristen and Sam's wedding, right?
That took place in Chicago.
It was the national holiday.
And we're one year out of that.
And they're having an anniversary thing.
They have traveled more around the world together in a year than I have, again, for leisure, my entire life.
And I sit there, and everybody that works for me, it's the same thing.
The only thing I don't let anybody who works for me do is either go out to lunch or go out to dinner.
Listen, I'm excited that you're working today.
I love that you work Fridays.
I'll be watching you tonight on TV just like I'm listening to you today on radio.
But you know it's true, too.
And by the way, and don't ever like do a favor for Linda when she's getting an award, like send her to the best, greatest hotel in San Diego history.
And, you know, because it might rain and there might be construction and I might decide to do a show and Ethan's baby is due 24, 48 hours later.
And forget the fact that I actually have a real plan to ensure that he'll be there when needed, but that doesn't matter either.
And it's like, oh, by the way, can we do okay, guys, the one day, if Linda says she's off, can we handle it?
I think we can, right?
Can we, Ethan?
Yes or no?
Can we handle it?
I am not getting in between you two.
Oh, you know what?
You know what that makes you?
The biggest baby in the...
You're going to stop picking on him.
Why don't you pick somebody up?
Pick on Jason for this week.
All right, I'll ask Jason.
Jason, is that true or false?
We can deal, but you really do need the supervision.
You guys, you know, I love you.
Unless you want me to do it.
Jason put the fear of God into all of your hearts.
I fear both of you equally.
Well, it's still the Sean Hannity show.
Let me just educate everybody.
There is no argument.
Well, it's always alleged talent.
It's never real talent.
No, you're the talent.
I'm the boss.
All right.
We're going to have more on Clint LaRan's coming up.
Our best love, prayers, wishes, congratulations to your brother, Don, and Lauren, who's just a wonderful woman and her first baby.
How do you say the name again?
Annalee.
Annalee Barbara Ray.
Analee Barbara.
Okay.
McLaughlin.
McLaughlin.
Analee Barbara.
Barbara, Barbara.
Not Bob.
Barbara.
No, it's Boba Ray.
It's not Boba Rand.
Are you thinking of like a 1960s rocket?
It's probably Bob O'Reilly or something.
What the heck's wrong with you?
Yeah, Teenage Wasteland.
Hey, all right.
Natler's full speed ahead on impeachment.
The cowardly shift, though, is backed off, which is interesting.
Oh, we have now congressional investigators want to grill Andrew Weissman, but they don't want to grill him in person.
They want to do it behind closed doors.
That's interesting.
Let's see.
Oh, the people that want to interview Andrew Weissman are John Ratcliffe and Jim Jordan, Matt Gates, Mark Meadows.
That would be interesting when we get that from Doug Collins one day.
We have nine.
We've identified nine specific Russia gate crimes that Mueller's pit bull, Andrew Weissman, refused to investigate.
And it was in the Wall Street Journal.
Did you see this?
For example, it's a great list.
Was Mueller familiar with Fusion GPS, the opposition group?
Outside my purview.
What did Weissman know?
Well, we know Weissman was warned about the dirty dossier by Bruce Orr in 2016.
Did he know the Fusion GPS was working with that woman, Natalia, who went to the Trump Tower meeting, but first before and then after met with Fusion GPS?
Huh.
And that she only really wanted to repeal the Magnitsky Act?
Uh-huh.
That's why everyone was bored.
What about the notorious Steele dossier?
You know, based on Russian sources.
Now, think about this.
Did the Russians really want to help Hillary?
Well, it appears if the New York Times is right that this was Russian disinformation, likely from the get-go, that would mean that the Russians knew that Clinton was going to use it to screw Donald Trump, but they were helping with the lies.
Oh, that whole narrative is blown out of the water.
By the way, there may be smoking gun tapes that will blow the lid off of Obama's FBI Russia Gate hoax.
Trey Gowdy, the tapes can be a game changer.
Now, we have John Solomon.
We'll give you a preview in the next hour.
But the internal review of the Russian investigation is zeroing in on transcripts of recordings made by at least one government source who met with former Trump campaign aide George Papadopoulos overseas in 2016.
Maybe it's Joseph Mithstad, the professor.
The recordings in question, I can confirm today, exist.
Pay very close attention to that, what I just said next week.
That's all I'm going to say.
Is that fair that I tease people like that, or does that make me arrogant?
Like you said this week, don't sound arrogant on the air.
Oh, by the way, Bernie Sanders got slopped with a labor board complaint over the crappy wages he pays his team.
James Clapper now is even trashing Mueller.
Well, I think people learned a lot yesterday watching a very poor performance and watching things that they couldn't believe when they saw what was going on.
And hopefully we're going to be able to find out how a thing like this started.
It was a disgrace to our country.
It was a disgrace from every standpoint.
And I would say that most people have never seen anything like it.
And then on top of it, you watched that performance.
It was shocking.
How much of the Mueller testimony did you actually watch?
So I wasn't going to watch it all.
And then I started thinking about it.
And then I watched a little bit at the very beginning.
And I couldn't believe what I was saying.
And I ended up watching more than I wanted to.
And then I watched the afternoon because, you know, it was such a big crater at the beginning.
And I said, now I have to watch.
I have to watch Shifty Shift because he just went through three hours and now he has to go through Schiff.
And I said, this is going to be very interesting.
And I've never seen anything like it, actually.
It was sort of good television.
So I couldn't watch it all.
I had meetings.
I had economic development meetings and I was saying, fellas, maybe we could move it to another time.
But I didn't want to do that.
But I got to watch enough, and it was shocking.
I thought the Republicans represented themselves brilliantly, actually.
John Ratcliffe and Jim Jordan and I mean, all of them, Louis Gomert, I could mention 15 names or however many they have that spoke.
It got fairly close to that number.
I guess maybe it was a little bit less than that.
But I will tell you that everybody representing the Republicans, I thought was really good.
And I thought the other side was typically biased, but they were stuck with a situation that they couldn't believe.
All right, that was from my exclusive interview last night with the president, going into great, great detail about his thoughts of what happened, what unfolded this week.
You know, I got into a, I have a friend of mine.
I wouldn't say he's a friend.
He's in the media.
He's not a conservative, but I kind of like the guy.
And he was outraged the fact that the president used the word treason.
And I said, well, let's forget about the president saying the word treason for just a second.
Let me ask you this.
If in fact you have what the New York Times called a dirty Russian dossier that likely was Russian disinformation from the get-go.
And that, in other words, that the Russians know that the money came from Hillary, that Fusion GPS got Christopher Steele.
Christopher Steele hadn't been in Russia in 10 and a half years.
So they know he's looking for dirt, being paid to get dirt for her.
And if the New York Times is right on this piece, they're not right on a lot.
They've been two and a half years late on everything.
But if it was likely Russian disinformation from the beginning in the dossier, and then we see what they did with it.
I mean, all right, two hookers urinating in a bed in the Ritz-Carlton in Moscow, Donald Trump's bed, which, you know, that's why they had the spreadsheet, John Solomon reported.
90-some-odd percent of this is all garbage.
The FBI knew it was all garbage.
But in spite of warnings, multiple warnings, Kathleen Kavlak, Bruce Orr, everybody else, Steele hates Trump.
Hillary paid for it.
It's not verified.
Now we know it's unverifiable.
The dossier's author, Christopher Steele, doesn't stand by it.
Okay, but you use it anyway.
You use it.
It gets disseminated to the American people, the hookers urinating in the bed story.
It doesn't sound like the Russians, if it was Russian disinformation likely from the beginning, it sounds like the Russians weren't trying to help Donald Trump, which has been one of the main points and main conspiracies and main lies from the get-go.
Anyway, joining us now, good friend of the program.
He's done great work.
Oh, boy, do we have news coming next week?
Isn't it great when you know something awesome has come in and you can't share with everybody and you tell your audience and your audience is like, you jerk.
But only because we are very careful.
I said this last night on TV.
We double check, triple check every source.
We don't want to get a story wrong.
Thankfully, we have not on this big, you know, two and a half years of unpeeling layers of an onion.
But let me start with this.
You're the executive vice president, investigative columnist at the Hill.
And you've broken so many of these stories.
But I think what you really hit on just this week prior to Mueller could be the biggest piece of the puzzle.
And that is about Joseph Mitsud is a guy that, well, didn't the Mueller report suggest he was part of Russian intelligence?
He did.
And listen, he's the flashpoint, the start of the entire Russia collusion narrative.
If you don't have Joseph Missud reaching out to George Papadopoulos in March of 2016 and offering to introduce him to the Russians, you don't have a predicate.
Because as we know, it was that set of conversations in March and April that the FBI said prompted them to open up an investigation that became known as Operation Crossfire, Hurricane, and which gave us this whole bogus Russian collusion narrative for two and a half years.
So he is the starting point of this entire investigation.
And the great lawmakers who questioned Director Mueller drew out some very important information during the hearing, which is they kept asking, why didn't you charge Mifsud if you believed he lied?
The man who starts the entire investigation, you don't charge him any, but you accuse him of lying.
And Director Mueller could not provide an answer why he charges everybody else with lying, but not Mifsud.
And of course, that predated by one day the story I had, in which Mifsud's lawyer says John Durham, the new U.S. Attorney investigating the Russia collusion misbehavior, the abuses by the potential abuses by the FBI, has reached out and sought an interview with Mifsud.
What does that tell us?
It means that the Justice Department isn't confident with Mueller's conclusions about Mifsud.
And two, we know from Mifsud's lawyer that Mifsud's lawyer is prepared to provide evidence to the Justice Department.
And sit back, buckle your seatbelt for this, that his client wasn't some Russian stooge.
He was a long-term Western intelligence cooperator, collaborator, who was tasked, asked, directed to approach George Papadopoulos and offer to make introductions in Russia, meaning it could be a setup, a Western intelligence setup.
That would flip the entire case on its head.
Okay, now it flips it, and it goes to the heart of the issue, something we have discussed from the get-go too.
People talk about it as the five eyes, an alliance of intelligence with the United States, Great Britain, Italy, and Australia.
Yeah, Australia, right.
And by the way, interestingly, did we outsource some intelligence gathering in ways that would circumvent American law, but our friends do it for us and we're basically ordering it done for us?
How big a story is that likely to become here?
Well, that's a great question.
Listen, I think there's multiple theories prevailing.
First off, we don't know if Msud or his lawyer telling the truth yet.
I've seen some documentation, which I put in my story.
You can go to it and download the actual documents that would suggest that there's some credence to what they're saying.
There's some clear evidence that Mifsud was being directed to introduce Papadopoulos to the Russians.
And secondly, there was some trickery, chicanery going on.
Remember, everyone in the media was gasping a couple of years ago that Papadopoulos might have met with Vladimir Putin's niece, a woman who was supposed to be Vladimir Putin's niece.
I have seen clear and convincing evidence that the woman who was introduced by Mifsud to Papadopoulos was not a niece, but in fact, a student posing as a niece that Missud took off of his campus.
That's the sort of trickery or undercover work that often goes on in either private intelligence ops or government ops.
I think one of the theories here is it could be a government, right?
MI6, America, who knows?
Another theory, it was a private intelligence op.
Someone had paid to have this dirty trick staged.
We don't know yet, but the fact that John Durham is looking at it tells us the answers Mueller gave the Justice Department don't seem to be satisfying enough to the Attorney General.
Let me ask you this.
I was recently, I got a call from somebody, and I've always felt that George Papadopoulos, you know, he even said, and it was reported that he said just the opposite of what people accused him of saying when they accused him of lying.
He said, I would find it traitorous if somebody colluded with the Russians.
That's what I'm saying.
That was your column, John Solomon, correct?
That's right.
And somebody recently said, no, don't trust this guy.
Don't trust this guy.
And I looked at them and I said, well, I have no reason to doubt what he said here.
And I've been told that there might actually be exculpatory evidence that proves him right.
That's exactly right.
Remember, we've heard multiple times on your show, lawmakers have come on your show referencing transcripts, Sean.
And as I have many times before, and you have called for the release of those transcripts, if they exist, I think those are in the process of being declassified.
I think we're going to see some news on that in the next few weeks.
But if there are transcripts before the FISA warrant was issued in which the FBI knew that George Papadopoulos not only was not interested in getting Russian dirt and emails from the Russians, he actually said if doing it, the campaign would have considered it treason and they would never do that.
If he used those words, it would have undercut the entire allegation they were asking the court for permission to investigate.
It's the sort of information you're required under the law to tell the court, we think something went on here, but we have some evidence that goes the other way.
We need to show that to you.
We've heard from Devin Nunez.
We've heard from John Ratcliffe that there's a belief that some of this evidence was not given to the court.
If that gets declassified and we see really what the FBI knew about Papadopoulos, it could really go to the heart of abuse by the FBI and the Justice Department in the fall of 2016.
Well, I got to tell you, if all of this is true and all of this is coming out, and now John Durham is seeking to interview Misfud, and we know he spent almost 16 hours with Steele, and Misfud's lawyer is saying he was a longtime cooperator with Western intelligence.
I hear especially close to Italy.
That's been what my sources have told me.
Definitely true.
The owner of his campus or the director of his campus is a former Italian intelligence officer.
So there's definitely ties between Mifsud and Link University, the place he worked in Italian intelligence.
But there's also ties to MI6.
And here's something that a lot of people don't pay attention to.
In a letter in May, Devin Nunez sent the intelligence committee a really crazy revelation.
In September of 2016, at the height of the beginning of the Russia collusion investigation, the FBI mysteriously showed up at Link University, where Joseph Mifsud worked, where the Italian intelligence former director or officer teaches and leads, and they did a training seminar signaling that the FBI has some connection to this campus.
That's a very big revelation that a lot of people didn't notice in the Devin Nunez letter from May.
You know, I want to go a little bit deeper than this.
So if he's part of this sophisticated intel operation targeting Papadopoulos, and then we also have the Australian diplomat, Stefan Halper, he's a spy on Carter Page, Papadopoulos, and even Sam Clovis, who he wasn't even asked to target.
And Misfood gives a deposition where he discloses the woman he introduced to Papadopoulos as Putin's niece.
And no, it was a student.
And he's really Western intelligence.
But as you wrote a great column, The Omissions of the Mueller report, and they got this key point wrong.
What else did they get wrong, John?
And by the way, has anyone at any point ever proven beyond with any evidence that the hackings were really done only by Russia?
I suspect Russia probably did it, but I wonder if others could have as well.
Listen, I think that on that point, I've done a lot of investigating, and I was fortunate enough about a year, year and a half ago to be shown a very detailed analysis that I believe was really the work of the FBI.
There's a pretty compelling case that Russia was involved in these hackings.
And I don't want to listen.
I've always by the way, I believe that too.
I think there, and there are intelligence sources I have that said, Sean, I'm telling you, listen, they did it.
But you know, it's funny because if it was, think about the New York Times saying it was likely Russian disinformation from the beginning, the dossier, doesn't that kind of change the narrative that they were helping Hillary and helping Trump?
That would mean now they're helping Hillary.
We haven't had a chance to talk on air since Wednesday's hearing, but there's a moment.
I encourage everybody to go look at the transcript of the Mueller hearing where Matt Gates is questioning.
And Matt is very intense, so he's firing these questions at a very rapid pace.
And Mueller is not quite catching up.
But here's the question that Gates answered, asked him, and he said, is it possible, why didn't you investigate whether the Russians use the steel dossier to try to influence the election?
In other words, the Russians used the British National to feed fake information into the 2016 election to hurt Donald Trump.
And here is what Director Mueller, when he finally caught up to the question, said, I think it's so important for people to hear this.
He confirmed that the Justice Department is looking at that issue now.
Bob Mueller confirmed Wednesday the Justice Department is currently investigating whether the Russians used Christopher Steele to influence the election.
Now, if that turns out to be the prevailing theory that comes out of the investigation, think about where we came from.
We went from Donald Trump's campaign colluding with Russia to influence the election to Hillary Clinton's opposition researcher colluding with Russian to hurt Donald Trump.
It would be a complete 180-degree flip.
30 seconds, preview of coming attractions next week and in the weeks to come.
I think there are three things to watch for.
I think we should watch for a change at the top of the intelligence community.
Maybe Dan Coates moving on finally.
Two, release of some unclassified documents, the declassification of documents related to Russia that detail the first abuses.
And three, perhaps the beginning of grand jury activities related to John Durham's investigation.
Those are three things I'll be watching for the next couple of weeks.
All right, John, a tip of the hat to you.
A lot of us went out on a limb, and you were one of them.
Well, I mean, it's true, because we got the crap beaten out of us for how long?
And we just never let anybody and their words stop us.
I know how hard you worked.
You didn't sleep many, many weeks because you were upworking.
And thank you for all you've done.
You've helped, you've done an enormous service for the country, to be honest.
Quick break.
You too.
Thank you.
Quick break.
Right back.
Larry Kudlow, the president's top economic advisor.
We'll talk about the economy and much more straight ahead.
You've been asked by Indian Prime Minister Modi to mediate between India and Pakistan.
India says that that's not even close to true.
Did the president just make that up, sir?
No, the president doesn't make anything up.
That's a very rude question, in my opinion.
I'm going to stay out of that.
It's outside of my lane.
It's from Mr. Bolden and Mr. Pompeo and the president, so I'm not going to comment on that.
The president doesn't make things up.
Larry, how do things stand right now between the U.S. and China in terms of the negotiations?
Well, let's see.
Again, as I said, they're going to meet next week in Shanghai.
Secretary Minuson, Ambassador Liehiser.
I think I wouldn't expect any grand deal.
I think talking to our negotiators, they're going to kind of reset the stage and hopefully go back to where the talks left off last May.
We were doing well, no deal yet, but still on the structural issues regarding IP theft, forced transfer technology, cyber interference, trade and non-trade, tariff barriers and so forth.
Certainly the enforcement mechanisms.
But If we were 90% there with 10% to go, I call it the seven-yard line, I think our negotiators want to go back to that spot.
And again, let me repeat the very, very important note that we anticipate, we strongly expect the Chinese to follow through goodwill and just helping the trade balance with large-scale purchases of U.S. agriculture products and services.
All right, that was our friend Larry Kudlow.
We have the economy growing at, well, compared to the rest of the world, 2.1% in the second quarter.
Part of the slowdown blamed a little bit on the trade issues involving China and the uncertainty.
As for the job market, well, we continue to create millions of jobs.
We have more now available.
According to the Fed, they said we have 7.5 million more jobs available than we have people to fill them.
That is a spectacular number.
You know, the best employment situation since 1969.
You know, for all the talk, Donald Trump is racist and all this crap that people do because that's, well, the latest trendy thing to trash Trump with.
It's either Russia, Russia, collusion, collusion, stormy, stormy, S-hole, S-hole, or now it's racist, racist.
Has there ever been any recognition in the press that we have record-low unemployment for African Americans, Asian Americans, for Hispanic Americans, women in the workplace, youth unemployment?
Especially that's important.
That's what kept me out of jail as a kid because I wasn't hanging out with my dopey friends.
Larry Kudlow is with us.
He's the president's top economic advisor and head of the National Economic Council.
By the way, who was the jerk that approached you the other day and tried to verbally get in a fight with you?
Yeah, it really pissed me off.
Really pissed me off.
He's a jerk.
I'll let him remain nameless.
The president doesn't lie, and it was a rude question.
And we're kind of going to put that guy on the shelf for a while.
We're not really going to call on him for a while.
Let me ask you about, as we look at this world economy, and I'll be honest, I've never thought the stock market is the greatest indicator of how well the economy is doing.
Now, it's an indicator, but a lot of people don't invest in the stock market.
And the more important thing to me is to look at these unemployment numbers.
And then, more importantly, I think the trade deals that the president has gotten have paid off handsomely for the country.
I think the incentives deregulation has kept a lot of businesses in America that would otherwise leave.
And looking at the alternative, which is no lifeblood of our economy, which is oil and gas and no combustion engine, and we'll get rid of cows and planes and everything's free.
And it doesn't seem very promising to me.
And the tax cuts and the tax cuts.
And the tax cuts were huge.
You know, I like the way you put it.
So our quarter was only 2.1.
Well, I'll talk about that in a minute.
But nobody else in the world's growing at all.
That's a point.
And by the by, all of our friends, my good friends on the other side of the aisle, and they're economists, they're friends of mine.
They used to come on the CNBC show.
They all said we couldn't even get 2%.
So we've had 2%.
Now, President Trump's been in office two and a half years.
The first full two years, he was at 2.7%.
All right.
Now, we wanted three.
And by the way, we're going to get three to four.
But he got 2.7, even though the Federal Reserve gave us huge, severe monetary tightening with seven rate hikes, even though there's no inflation.
We still got 2.7.
Now, in the prior eight years under You Know Who, the average growth was 1.9.
So we're at 2.7.
That's 1.9.
We have picked up the trajectory of growth by over 40%.
I say that's a good start, a very good start.
You know, it's very hard.
The engineering economy, there are a lot of outside factors.
One of them that I think is really going to pay the biggest dividends of all.
You're right.
This is the biggest tax cut in history.
I didn't mean to keep it off my list.
But deregulation has also put us in a position that, number one, we're now in the process of building an entirely new economy because of deregulation, which has now led us to a point where energy independent for the first time in 75 years.
And this is only the beginning.
We have two pipelines being completed.
We now have more natural resources than the world combined.
And when we open up Anwar and we really tap into the natural gas resources and the coal, clean-burning coal that we have, we now will be the biggest net exporter of energy if we want to be, if we're smart enough to be.
And that everyone, every job I know in the energy sector, every job I know, they pay truck drivers $100,000 a year after they train them and as much overtime as you can handle.
These are career jobs that literally raise the standard of living for everybody that gets in that industry.
And this would then make it a permanent shift in our economy, which means we have decades of growth ahead of us.
I agree.
It's transformational.
We are rebuilding it.
Look, this president said we want to reward success, not punish it.
He said to businesses, go ahead, take a swing at the ball.
We're going to lower your taxes and regulations.
And they are.
You see all this tremendous small business creation.
You're right about the unemployment across the board, every single category, women, blacks, Hispanics, Asians.
By the way, the lower skilled and less educated have done the best in this recovery.
Okay, it's the best since the Reagan years.
And I think that goes to all these points, taxes, regs, energy, and so forth.
All of them.
If we get this USMCA deal passed, NAFTA 2.0, the growth impact is phenomenal.
It'd be about half a point a year in extra GDP, almost 200,000 jobs per year.
Help the car workers, help the manufacturing workers, help the farmers, help the techies, stop the theft of intellectual property.
By the way, that really does have to stop.
You know, a buddy of mine, I never told you this story.
My buddy Keith, Linda knows him and James knows him.
This guy was the inventor of the year.
I don't want to give away his company or what he does.
You know, every company rips off what he has patents on worldwide constantly.
He got inventor of the year.
And you know how many millions of dollars have been stolen from this poor guy?
It's unbelievable.
Well, that's why it's important.
You know, it's law.
It's his fruits of his labor, right?
It's his brain power.
I know.
That's a big issue with China.
But you know what?
We got it in the USMCA deal, which is very important.
So it's going to help our growth quite a bit.
I mean, you know what, Sean?
Some of this stuff is factual and analytical.
Like, you know, we go through the numbers and so forth, but a lot of it's attitudinal.
So President Trump comes in, and like I say, he's saying to folks, I'm not going to penalize your success.
I'm going to reward your success.
I'm not going to beat you up if you're in business.
I like business people.
Go take a rip at the ball.
Go swing from the heels.
You can fail a couple of times.
Go back at it.
We're going to reward you after tax.
That's terrific stuff and a complete change from what we had in the prior eight years.
You know what?
It's like the zeitgeist.
The spirit has changed.
The psychology has changed.
And President Trump is urging people to work, invent, invest, save.
That's a whole different thing.
That's incalculably positive for the economy.
I always like that psychological side.
But look, you know, your other point: so we have about seven and a half million job openings, about six and a half million unemployed.
We got people coming out of the woodwork who dropped out of the labor force.
They're coming back into the labor force because they see better wages and better opportunities.
By the way, doesn't that mean what I think we're up to seven and a half million because Obama Biden added 13 million to food stamps?
Are we like six, seven, seven and a half million Americans off of food stamps since Trump's president?
Yes, we're making, yes, buying.
And about seven million more Americans working and millions more out of poverty.
Am I wrong on that?
No, you're right.
And by the way, it's not a coincidence.
It all goes to prosperity, wages.
Listen, my dear friend and colleague, Ivanka Trump, she unveiled yesterday her plan, you know, to help people working.
This is reskilling and retraining, Sean.
So she's signed up now 300 companies covering possibly 12 million workers.
These companies, I'm not talking about the government because the government job training programs never worked.
These are in the states, in the counties, in Main Street, private companies who need workers are now training them on their own.
And this was Ivanka's idea, and it's working.
We got all these people signed up.
That's part of the success.
So look, the jobs, employment's going up, wages are going up, incomes are going up.
And you look at the GDP today, even with 2.1, the consumer side was up over 4%, which is a fabulous number.
And that comes from jobs and incomes.
So that's why I'm very optimistic.
We are on the right track.
Yeah, I mean, it's, I got to tell you, you know, quick break.
We'll come back more with Larry Kudlow on the other side on this Friday edition Sean Hannity show.
All right, as we continue with Larry Kudlow, one of the things that I'm most thankful for in my life is that I never relied on my parents for any money since I'm 10.
I really, I had a paper out at eight.
I mean, I mean, I did have a roof over my head.
They always had a full refrigerator of food if I wanted to eat, but I always bought my own food out of the deli or the pizza place and paid.
They never gave me a dime for college.
They never gave me a dime in my adult life.
And I worked in restaurants all throughout my years from 12 years old on.
And then I got into construction and framing and roofing and painting and hanging paper and laying tile and doing every job imaginable and had built the business and felt the pressure of keeping everybody working.
I was 21 years old, 22 years old, and I had people that were married and had mortgages that were dependent on me keeping work going.
That was a hell of a life lesson.
I got to tell you, the pressure I felt at that time, I felt so guilty if I didn't have enough work.
Working, working, working, Sean.
No, I mean, the best thing I ever did.
Work is so important.
We speak to all these groups here, particularly young people.
We had a couple of hundred student body presidents in here yesterday, and I gave a talk just about this, by the way.
You're on Target Work.
I said, you know, everything I learned really, all right, I went, I have some advanced degrees and whatnot, but everything really threw the job, working hard.
So you have to work, and then you have to push yourself to work even harder, Sean.
And then when you think you're working harder, you have to work even harder still.
You know, it's so funny because everybody on my staff takes these vacations.
I'm like, how do they do it?
They're so better traveled than I am for, and they know how to.
Linda, what am I like on vacation?
Nobody wants to be on vacation with me ever.
A lot of fun.
Let me ask you, Larry Kudlow, do you understand the people that can go on vacation and sit on a beach all day?
I could never, I'd rather blow my brains out.
I know.
I've never been any good at it.
I'm sort of a 24-7.
As my new hip heels, I'm going to get back on the tennis court.
Yeah, I might need one of those too.
Lucky me.
One more point.
I want to make this point.
Work is godly.
I agree with you.
It is godly.
You know how much trouble it kept me?
Listen, everybody has to understand in life that you have to serve other people.
Everybody, you're providing goods or services that people want, need, and desire.
And when you go to a restaurant, you want to be served, and you want to buy a house.
Well, somebody served you by building that house.
And then when you do your job, you want to serve other people.
I mean, we're in the business of serving news and information and investigations that you won't get anywhere else because the media is so corrupt and biased.
And, you know, I look at, we take that job seriously.
Everybody that works for me is just like me.
To one extent or another.
And that is, I'm not letting my radio team go out for lunch.
If they ever ask me, I tell them to go home.
I'm eating right now.
I got a BLT here at my desk.
Anyway, Larry Kudlow, we love you.
Thank you.
Thank you, John.
You're the best.
You're the best.
Well, I want to keep this country strong.
I want the economy strong.
I want every American to have the opportunities that I've had to work hard.
Stay right here for our final news roundup and information overload.
A lot of conservatives in particular would say that the rise in Islamophobia is a result not of hate, but a fear, a legitimate fear, they say, of quote-unquote jihadist terrorism, whether it's Fort Hood or San Bernardino or the recent truck attack in New York.
What do you say to them?
I would say our country should be more fearful of white men across our country because they are actually causing most of the deaths within this country.
And so if fear was the driving force of policies to keep America safe, Americans safe inside of this country, we should be profiling, monitoring, and creating policies to fight the radicalization of white men.
Maybe we shouldn't be eating a hamburger for breakfast, lunch, and dinner.
You make more than $10 million in one year.
Your $10 million and $1 gets taxed at 70%.
Capitalism has not always existed in the world and it will not always exist in the world.
Is it okay to still have children?
But we're here to say that an agency like ICE, which repeatedly and systematically violates human rights, does not deserve a dime.
The thing that was interesting in the class was every time the professor said al-Qaeda, he sort of like his shoulders went up.
And, you know, he's in command here.
Al-Qaeda, you know, husband.
He's an expert.
And it was, you know, as a matter of fact.
That's his name.
What a putuz.
What does it mean?
You probably get to see him on Sienna.
Yeah, of course.
I love those guys.
But it is that.
You don't say America with an intensity.
You don't say England with an intensity.
You don't say the army with an intensity.
But you say these names because you want that word to carry weight.
You want it to leave something with.
It has a cultural meaning.
Exactly.
So it's said with a deeper voice.
CARE was founded after 9-11 because they recognized that some people did something and that all of us were starting to lose access to our civil liberties.
So recently I introduced the Boost Act.
This legislation completely repeals the GOP tax scam that is totally helping wealthy individuals, the rich, the corporations.
And do you know what I did with that money?
Do you know what I said?
We're going to go ahead and put it into the pockets of folks like everyday Americans.
If you make less than $100,000, you're going to get up to $6,000 in your pocket.
And if you make less than $50,000, you're going to get $3,000.
That's what we do with our public dollars.
We give it back to the people, the people that earned it.
All right, that is the squad.
The most relevant, most impactful in terms of an agenda item and agenda items on the 2020 Democratic Copels.
It's certainly not Chucky Schumer, and it's certainly not, oh, let's see, Nancy Pelosi, speaker of name only.
But it's getting bad.
By the way, does anybody, Delinda, do you ever, did you ever see me, who loves hamburgers, eat hamburgers for breakfast, lunch, and dinner?
Have you ever, you know how much I love hamburgers?
Absolutely.
It's a handity rule.
It's what we do every day.
White castles, how we fit the stereotype.
I love white castles.
Okay.
So I have hamburgers for breakfast, lunch, and dinner.
First of all, I can't.
First of all, I'm on my diet perpetually now, but you know when we all have been on the road, if I can get white castles or in-and-out burger or I'm getting it.
The things you eat on the road are inappropriate.
I have no words for that.
It is.
Well, the things you eat every day, the disgusting lime goes to the bottom.
Oh, you mean healthy, green?
Yeah.
The more colorful your plate, the healthier you're disgusting orange.
Yeah, of course your bones break.
They must have no nutrients in them.
Oh, listen, Mr. Ninja.
I challenge you to a bone density test.
Bone density test.
I doubt it because all we do is pain training, which is we get more dense, more dense, and build more calcification.
Exactly, which is why my bones have none because I do things like a normal person, like ride a bike.
Yeah, and green puke, like it's the exorcist after she, you know, projectile vomiting.
I guarantee you that Danielle and John is going to agree with me.
It's so disgusting the stuff you eat.
I mean, I can't even believe.
Look, I have to look at it.
Anyway, news roundup information overload.
We heard and we played the full clip of Omar saying that Americans should be more fearful of white men.
We should be, she said that, and then goes on to say, because some people think it needs to be said, I don't see she said that just because she adds, because they're actually causing most of the deaths within this country.
And so if fear was the driving force of policies to keep save Americans safe inside this country, we should be profiling, monitoring, creating politics to fight radicalization of white men, she said.
Now, we also have the anti-Semitic issues and America's garbage.
And I think my favorite, though, that came out just in the last week has to do with money and the idea that Talib says we're going to take money from the rich and give it back to the people, those who earned it.
Did the rich steal it?
Anyway, Jonathan, Jonathan Gillum, Danielle McLaughlin, good to hear from you both.
What do you think, Danielle, after you say, hi, Sean?
How are you?
Hi, Jonathan.
How are you?
We got that out of the way.
Go ahead.
I'm just going to jump straight in.
And I'm going to defend Amara Hanna.
She talked about white supremacist violence.
The FBI director earlier this week said that the majority of domestic terrorism cases in this country, he was appearing before Congress, were motivated by white supremacist violence.
So her point is, you know, this is where the largest domestic terrorism is coming from, and this is a problem.
So I don't see an issue with what she said at all.
You don't have a problem with that at all.
Well, the fact, I mean, she's accurately portraying where the vast majority of domestic terrorism is coming from.
And in that sense, she's accurate.
And the FBI director said the same thing to Congress this week.
What is your reaction to that, Jonathan Gillum?
Well, first of all, I think the FBI director is wrong.
A lot of the statistics that they put together and present in front of Congress are based on manipulative or facts that can be manipulated.
And quite often, that's what happens.
would go in front of any of the FBI directors that are in office, go in front of Congress, and they report about statistics.
So say, for instance, terrorism.
You always heard Comey say there was a thousand investigations going on for terrorism at any given time.
The statistic that they don't give you that matters is that only a handful of those actually result in actually being terrorism.
The rest of them are just cases where somebody was from Pakistan is mad at somebody in America, and so they call the FBI and say the person's the terrorist.
We have to follow them 24 hours a day until we vet out the problem.
When we look at the domestic issues that are going on here in this country, it is not white supremacy.
It is not white supremacy.
And for him to say that is wrong.
And for her to take that statistic and then push it out shows me that there's organization in the way that these statistics are being presented so that they have something to put out.
Let me ask you about this.
Now, I know you have liberal views, Danielle, correct, on a lot of things.
Yes.
And you don't have a problem.
Like, I'm sure you love Obamacare.
Keep your doctor, keep your plan, and save less.
That really worked out well for America, didn't it?
Well, I know a lot of people didn't keep their care, and I know a couple.
Did millions of Americans lose their doctor?
Yes or no?
Yes.
Did millions lose their plans?
Yes or no?
Yes, and millions more got to be a lot of people.
Is every American now, everyone now paying considerably more than they were?
Well, and healthcare prices have been rising, not rising not just because of Obamacare, but because of insurance companies.
Insurance companies are making billions of dollars, and regular Americans are paying insane amounts of money for their care.
And we've got to stop that.
Jonathan, all I know is, so now we're not even going to have a private health insurance option if they have their way.
We're going to have a 70% top marginal rate.
Then we're going to have a 90% top corporate rate.
Then we're going to get rid of oil and gas, the lifeblood of our economy, and no more combustion engines.
We're going to have to retrofit every home.
Everything in life is going to be free, though.
And then eventually planes and cows go away.
That's why I'm thinking about investing heavily in cows.
You know, the clip that you played when we came in of this squad talking and saying the things that they say, I didn't think anything could get dumber than the view.
But they have proven that they can actually go the distance and say things that are dumber than the view.
And I think this is one of those things.
When it comes to health care and the way that things are being looked at now and the stats that they're putting out and the way that they want to do it, it is just dumb.
It would bankrupt this country.
And by far, it does not have a solution.
It's just wishful thinking.
That's what they keep putting out.
And you have to agree with that, Danielle.
No, absolutely.
You know, one of the most stupid rules that this government has made is it has stopped itself from being able to negotiate with drugs, with healthcare providers.
So if you're a Medicare or your Medicaid, those organizations, those agencies are unable to negotiate down prices with pharmaceutical companies, with any number of health care providers.
And that is lobbying.
That is lobbyists who have made sure that the government has to pay top dollar.
And that, to me, is insanity.
Why can't our taxpayer money be used carefully?
And why can't our own government negotiate down so that prices are lower across the board?
This is insanity.
All right, quick break.
We'll come back and we'll continue more with our friends, Jonathan Gillum and Danielle McLaughlin.
All right, as we continue, final free-for-all hour, Jonathan Gillum, Danielle McLaughlin.
Do you want to get rid of oil and gas, Danielle?
Do you think that's a good idea in 10 years?
No, not in 10 years.
We will eventually run out of that.
Those are non-renewable resources.
I think it makes sense to look to the future and to have a system and an economy that runs on renewables and non-renewables.
Jonathan, I'm just the reality here is this is who they are.
This is what they stand for.
Now, I haven't even addressed their anti-Semitism.
It's all about the Benjamins and the Nazi comparisons.
And Israel's just like Nazi Germany.
Therefore, they deserve boycotts like Nazi Germany.
Do you think those are good people that say that or say that the United States of America is a garbage country?
Do you support that, Danielle?
Because that's who has the most influence.
So first things forest, AOC did not say that America was garbage.
She was talking about policies that were no good for the American people.
She never said that America is garbage.
I don't like some of the anti-Semitic things that some of these women have said, and I will never, ever, ever defend them.
I do think that we have to have a rational and real conversation about Israel and Palestine.
The Palestinian people.
Okay, you know, you're just trying to minimize and deflect here.
You know, I don't like this.
You always deflect.
This is virulent hatred and anti-Semitism.
Will you say that?
Can you say that?
Yeah, it's unacceptable.
It's unacceptable.
It's unacceptable.
Okay, then why do they have the most influence of every other person than any other group of people on the 2020 candidates that are sucking up to them every single day, Jonathan?
That's the question I have right there.
And I know I would like to ask Danielle this as well.
And everybody that's listening, whether they're liberal or conservative, if you had a friend, close or not, or an acquaintance that spouted anti-Semitic or hate-filled rhetoric, would you hang out with that person ever again?
I know I wouldn't.
So why in the world are they voted into office?
And why are all these Democrats running to get as close to them as possible?
That makes no sense whatsoever.
Well, I want to clarify the issue and some of the statements that have been made about Israel and Palestine.
There's a reason that America has been looking for a two-state solution for so long because there's an understanding that Israel needs to have secure borders, sovereignty, a full defense, but that Palestine and the Palestinian people, not the terrorists running it, but the people themselves need a state as well.
So I think those comments were directed at the idea that ordinary Palestinians, who are all terrorists, of course, live under this occupation, live with a lack of sovereignty, and that they deserve to have sovereignty as well.
I don't think that's a good question.
It still doesn't answer the question.
Even if you are having a debate with somebody in a public setting about this and they spouted off something that is anti-Semitic, you would probably get up and walk out of that room.
You wouldn't try to get close to them.
And like I said to Sean, I'm not going to defend any anti-Semitism, but I will clarify when somebody says something that I don't believe to be anti-Semitic, but is actually talking more generally about the problem with Israel and Palestine and the issues that we need to get through to get peace in that area.
That's all.
But I think if you want to clarify it, you could just say that they hate Israel, period.
They don't want to understand the situation.
They hate Israel.
It is sad in the comparisons to Nazi Germany.
You know, if any conservative ever did this, the outrage would be loud and it would be, well, pretty much never ending.
A conservative calling America garbage?
No, we're not a garbage country.
We've liberated the entire free.
The free world is what it is today because of the United States.
And we have done more to advance the human condition than anyone else in the world, in the history of man.
We've defended the cause of freedom, the God-given state of freedom, you know, that we're endowed with by our Creator.
We've done that too.
And the price has been heavy.
Our national treasure, our children.
We've got enough, you know, grave sites around the world to prove the cost.
It's been enormous against evil during different periods of time, our history.
All right, Danielle McLachlan, thank you.
Jonathan Gillum, thank you.
When we come back, I don't know what we're doing.
It's Friday.
How about our Friday concert series?
Big and rich rock stars.
Straight ahead.
Breaking news all afternoon.
When you get off work, be sure to check in first for everything you miss during the day.
This is the Sean Hannity Show.
All right, 25 now till the top of the hour, 800-941, if you want to be a part of the program.
We haven't talked about it yet, but, you know, like every other thing that we do, we like to do it to the best of our ability and really get the story ourselves.
I'll give you an example, Duke La Crosse.
I went out in Garden City, Long Island, where a number of these kids lived from, and they were being charged with horrible crimes, 85 professors, full-page ads and newspapers.
This corrupt, what was his name, Nyfong, whatever his name was at the time.
He ended up, I think, going to jail himself and being disbarred.
Another example of prosecutorial abuse.
Those kids never did this.
And I knew after I met with them and their parents and started talking to them that, you know, they were already beginning to have to prove their innocence and they were doing it.
Nobody else in the media took the time to do that.
Yeah, it was Mike Nyfong.
Mike Nyphong.
I remember I went down to talk to the people down, not just George Zimmerman, who I did interview, and Barbara Walters was furious with me at the time because she wanted that interview and she was there.
And, well, George Zimmerman did the interview with me.
But more importantly, what do we do?
We went around and we started doing some legwork and asking questions.
And we've done that many times.
You know, we have, remember our sheriff friend from Ferguson, Missouri?
We had another sheriff friend out in Baltimore.
Yeah, Darren Wilson.
Right.
Darren Wilson was the police officer.
We knew early on that there was eyewitness, and I couldn't report it because I gave my word.
I said I wouldn't.
I had sources telling me that they had numerous eyewitnesses corroborating Darren Wilson's story.
What did the media do?
The media went in the other direction, got shot in the back, and Michael Brown was innocent.
And you know how many, you know how many witnesses we ended up with?
Well, if they maybe made some calls and did some homework, they'd find out.
The same thing.
Everyone was saying these officers are all going to be convicted.
Remember that aggressive prosecutor in Baltimore, Maryland?
And again, all these politicians, they go out there, they say things, people's expectations rise.
And then when it doesn't come out the way that they were told it's going to come out, look at liberals today.
You know, they really thought that this Mueller thing was going to be very different.
That was Marilyn Mossy.
It was going to be in the Freddie Gray FYA.
What's up?
Marilyn Mosby.
Man, it was Marilyn Mosby.
Marilyn Gray.
What's she doing now, running for president, or is she running for governor?
Hopefully you're hiring on her right.
Nobody gets held accountable.
The media gets it wrong.
Look at the way they treated Nicholas Sandman.
This poor kid, 16-year-old kid.
This kid did everything we now know perfectly.
He showed restraint and an unbelievable maturity.
Hardly any 16-year-old is going to be that mature.
But the news media sees a 10, 12-second clip.
They're told a lie.
They repeat the lie.
They start to believe the lie.
Well, now the media mob is going to pay.
I promise you, they're going to lose hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of millions of dollars from Lynn Wood.
The same thing happened with Richard Jewell.
I just happened to be on the air.
Story breaks.
Atlanta Journal Constitution fits the profile of a soul bomber.
He lives with his mother.
I'm like, well, he's a security guard.
Maybe he's trying to save money to buy his own house one day.
Would that be so, so uncommon?
He lives with his mom and dad.
Big deal.
And I didn't know Richard Jewell was listening that day to my radio show.
I didn't know that Richard Jewell told me years later when I got to interview him that I was the only one, the only person in media, nationally and locally in Atlanta that defended him and said, oh, hold on, everybody.
That doesn't mean anything.
He might still be the hero we thought he was.
Turns out he was.
He died, I think, at 44 years of age of a massive heart attack.
He was kind of a heavy guy, but Lynn Wood swears, his attorney, that the stress and what the media put him through, he believes contributed greatly to this guy's death.
Stress is a killer.
For most people that don't deal with the crap I deal with every day, you know, to have their name in the newspaper of CNN was doing, how many segments did they do over the weekend or the last few about my tutorial?
They were fixated.
I did the tutorial for the Republicans in Congress that may not know the whole story.
Linda said, make sure you tell people that you're just saying for those that don't know.
I was just saying, you know, you were just talking out loud and just sort of brainstorming on the best way to get some answers out of Bob Muller.
Bob Muller.
Not that he had any answers to give, as we clearly saw.
The Fox TV talking points were on full display at the Mueller hearings on Wednesday.
How Republican lawmakers took their cues from Sean Hannity.
John Avlon has been connecting the dots.
He has big report.
Hey guys, well, look, during the Mueller hearings, it sometimes sounded like Republicans and Democrats were living in different worlds.
With the exception of Congressman Will Hurd, Republicans essentially ignored the findings of the Mueller report, preferring to focus instead on alternative facts, half-baked deep state conspiracy theories.
And a perfect example of the Fox Trump feedback loop, it turns out that many of the GOP questions yesterday came straight from Sean Hannity.
This is CNN.
Fake news, CNN.
Can we not get it right?
By the way, I do love the voice.
Who does that?
James Earl Jones isn't there.
Yeah, James Jones is amazing.
Does that sound the greatest voice ever?
Yeah, it's a shame.
It's for CNN.
It should say, this is fake news, CNN.
Exactly.
That's what it should say.
That sounded awesome.
Well, it's like Scott Shannon doing if I play as Scott Shannon, I mean, you know, Scott, I'll tell a funny story.
Scott Shannon invented, this is how smart a radio guy this is.
He invented Morning Zoo Radio and was well known at, you know, still a great station in New York.
Z100 is a top music station in New York, one of the top ones.
And at Z100, he took him from last to first place by putting in place Morning Zoo Radio and had years of success on WPLJ at the time, and they're gone.
And then we have him now.
He's the number one rated morning show in all of New York City.
Now, that's, you got to understand, we're talking about a metro area when you include New Jersey and Long Island and New York City alone.
You're talking about 30, 40 million people here can hear this guy.
And his shares are massive.
Now that we made some money for our sponsors, let's go back to making the liberals crazy.
The handman is back on the radio right now.
Anyway, let me just, behind the scenes, and I'll turn back to where I started.
He does our liners early in the morning, first thing when he gets up, because his voice is even more deep.
Isn't that incredible?
I wish I had a voice like that in radio.
All right.
If only you can make a success of yourself in radio.
Oh, a man can dream.
I know.
I mean, I wish I sounded like that.
I can't stand listening to that.
What's the matter with you?
Your success in radio.
Listen, I have 620 now of the best radio stations in the country, but I cannot listen to my own voice or watch my own TV.
Yeah, nobody can.
I can't stand it.
It drives.
It's just, I remember, remember John McConnell.
I'm still friends with him.
He's a great guy.
Great, great guy.
Friends with Lawrence Jones.
And he goes to me one day, he goes, well, we got to do an air check on your show.
I said, I don't do air checks.
No, no, no, it's going to be fine.
I said, I'm not doing an air check.
And he goes, no, no, no.
We're just going to see maybe what you can improve upon.
If you've got something for me to improve upon, tell me what it is.
Send me a note, one sentence, preferably, and I'll look at it.
And if you're right, I'll read it.
Now, meanwhile, I read audience research and I have for 20 years.
I even stole research from Sluggo in Atlanta at the time because I wanted to know what people had to say about me and the show.
And frankly, they were all people were always right, brutally honest.
And every time I listened to them, I got better.
I learned more.
I don't need to listen to my own show to determine whether or not the show's doing well.
I definitely listen to my audience on what they want in terms of, well, you can't shut up.
I'm like, that's my job.
Or you step over people anyway.
Or you digress like I just did because we do research, which is the point.
And the research that we now have done, we sent Linda to Leavenworth this week.
We didn't want to tell anybody beforehand, and there's a reason.
We know what happened in the Eddie Gallagher case.
Mark Mucase and Bernie Kerrig did a phenomenal job.
I know Mayor Giuliani was a part of that as well.
When I read the New York Times report on Eddie Gallagher, I said to you, what, Linda?
I said, there's no way.
It's over.
This reads horribly.
And it turned out injustice.
And I called Bernie.
I said, Bernie, read this.
Bernie, I've been in this business 30 years.
If what they're saying here is true, he's done.
He goes, it's not true.
Bernie, I'm putting my credibility on the line.
Tell me why it's not true.
And I had long hours and hours of discussions with Bernie Kerig about it.
And Bernie, man, did he stay firm.
He was telling me, and I'm listening because I care.
I want to get it right.
And on another story, we now have seen a number of people.
Finally, the president did give a pardon after this poor guy took, Christian Saussier took pictures in a submarine, but we have been following for years the case of Clinton Lawrence and hence your trip to Leavenworth.
Pick it up.
Yeah, so I went to Fort Leavenworth to meet Clint face to face.
God bless him.
And we're going to talk more about this on Monday and a lot next week, but there's going to be some really big news coming out on this guy.
This is a lieutenant in the Army, joined when he was 18 years old.
He's got nine Army commendation.
The guy is a true patriot, a lover of God and country.
And, you know, he killed two ISIS fighters, not by his own gun, but by the order that he gave to his men because his platoon had been struck just a week prior where it killed six men on his platoon.
And there are some higher-ups in the Army that are spreading around misinformation willfully.
They've been informed that, you know, Clint never did this, and we are going to expose them for all of their lives.
And we have some really great support behind us.
So we ask our audience to check out Clinton Lawrence online.
Stay tuned to Hannity.com for more updates on him because we're going to need a lot of support, just like we did for Eddie Gallagher, just like we need for a Hatley, just like we needed for Derek Miller.
What's so sad is Clinton Lawrence took over a platoon whose platoon leader got killed, if I'm not mistaken.
It was, what, 10 days prior to his arrival?
A week before.
He had only been in charge of the platoon that he was in charge of one day.
It was the second day of so he's called in, and he had a situation where he's taken over a platoon where platoon members have been killed with seven to ten days prior by guys with IEDs on motorcycles.
And he had to make that decision.
That's correct.
Individual is in fact obligated to provide what's being demanded by the regulation or statute, meaning you don't have any wiggle room, right?
I'd have to look more closely at the statute.
I just read it to you.
Are you mocking me?
It's a yes or no answer.
Page 180.
Page 180, volume one.
Okay.
This was from your report.
Correct.
And I'll leave it with the report.
What are these pictures of?
My house and stuff.
House and stuff.
Did your investigation determine who requested the polling data to be shared with Kalimnik?
Well, I would direct you to the report.
Doubt what we have in the report with regard to that particular issue.
And what is this brown stuff on the windows?
Dirt.
Dirt.
How could the Russian government have used this campaign polling data to further its sweeping and systematic interference in the 2016 presidential state?
That's a little bit out of our path.
What is this rusty, dusty, dirty-looking thing over your window?
It's a screen.
A screen.
It's a screen.
To explain the prosecution or declaration, declination decisions reached.
This is one of those areas which I decline to discuss.
Okay, then I would direct you to the report itself.
And what are these really big things right in the middle of your view from the window of your kitchen to the sack of suds?
What do we call these big things?
Trees?
Trees, that's right.
Don't be afraid to shout them right out when you know.
When you talk about the firm that produced the steel reporting, the name of the firm that produced that was Fusion GPS.
Is that correct?
Well, I'm not familiar with that.
What are these thousands of little things that are on trees?
Leaves.
Leaves.
And the owner of Fusion GPA was someone named Glenn Simpson.
Are you familiar with him?
This is outside my purview.
Okay.
Glenn Simpson was never mentioned in the 448-page report, was he?
Well, as I say, it's outside my purview, and it's being handled in the department by others.
Are you aware of that?
It's outside my purview.
And these bushy things between the trees.
Bushy.
Which president appointed you to become the United States Attorney for Massachusetts?
Which senator?
Which president?
Oh, which president?
I think that was President Bush.
According to my notes, it was President Ronald Reagan.
Is it possible you just saw two guys in a green convertible and not necessarily these two particular guys?
I suppose.
All right, that's going to wrap things up for today.
And we're going to Hannity.com.
I think you're going to like this video that we put together.
It is funny, though.
Marissa Tourme has never been better than my cousin Vinny.
I mean, this was like my cousin Bobby this week.
was so such a knockout in the end you know and then of course marissa tourme plays this new yorker in alabama she's great and she um says oh you're going hunting and let's see little deer prancing along sees a brook takes a sip of water and then all of a sudden blank and bam you kill the blankin' deer all right that's all the time we have have a great weekend trust me next week I'm keeping my word on this,
