John Jordan, Commander in the Naval Intelligence community, and businessman, and Daniel Hoffman, Fox News Contributor and 30 Year CIA Operations Officer, discuss the attacks on Saudi Arabia, by Iran and what the ultimate effect of the oil and threats are to the rest of the world. The Sean Hannity Show is on weekdays from 3 pm to 6 pm ET on iHeartRadio and Hannity.com. Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
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All right, a lot of breaking news.
Happy Monday.
Hope you had a great, great weekend.
The New York Times corruption, it it shouldn't shock, it shouldn't surprise the magnitude of their attack on Justice Kavanaugh is uh is so beyond the pale, but it's now pretty much their business model, lies, hoax, conspiracy theories, uh character assassination, besmirchment, slander, libel.
It's just par for the course for these guys.
It is.
We've got to change these laws.
We'll get to all of that today.
Um, oh, we do have some uh deep state news updates today coming.
Kevin McCarthy predicting both Comey and McCabe will be indicted in this attempted coup, abuse of power, corruption scandal.
Um, I want to begin with what happened over the the weekend, because we better understand something that if the Iranians keep this up, and that is they're denying, but there's no denying.
We know who did this.
The president, I think, was smart to say that, okay, well, we're gonna super double, triple, quadruple check the intelligence, but there's very little doubt that the Iranians, because they are supporting the Yemeni rebels in their battle against Saudi Arabia.
They're the ones that are funding that proxy war, just like they're the number one state sponsor of terror.
It is not something that we really have to spend a lot of time agonizing about, but it is at this point, it is a fact.
The president said he saying on Sunday that U.S. investigators had real reason to believe they knew who launched the crippling attacks against the Key Saudi oil facility, vowed that America was locked and loaded depending on verification.
There's also a report out today, they may have seized yet another tanker in the Straits of Hormuz.
Um, before we even get into what and what has happened here, what the geopolitical consequences of all this are, it is important to point out one thing that these drone attacks by these Iranian-backed rebels, these Yemeni rebels against Saudi Arabia and their production of oil and their oil facilities.
Well, it's literally it's it shut down a good five, 10% of the world's oil production.
I say this all of the time.
People don't seem to want to pay a lot of attention to it.
Maybe it's not the sexiest issue on the table, but whatever.
But the lifeblood of every economy in this world is oil and gas.
That's it.
That's why the new Green Deal is insane.
You know, we're unilaterally disarming our economy.
And it would result in an immediate and dramatic economic, precipitous decline, depression, you name it.
It's all gonna be bad.
We're gonna take the the greatest wealth and opportunity creating nation on the face of this earth that America that has, you know, never abused its power.
We're not perfect, but we've never there's never been a country in the history of mankind this powerful that is never abused that power, but used it to advance the human condition and raise the standard of living of more people, not only in the United States but worldwide than this country.
That's the country that liberals always want to talk down all the time.
Now, what's happening here is we now are in a position, let's start with where we are.
For the first time in 75 years, we are energy independent.
We are producing enough energy that we, the United States of America, we don't need Middle Eastern oil.
It did the Straits of Hormuz, the 20 by 20, what, 22 feet wide, you know, where all this a large percentage of the world's oil passes through every day off the coast of Iran.
Yeah, where they keep taking these these tankers, may have done it again, but you gotta understand it is less, it is now the least significant in terms of our geopolitical strategic need than ever before.
In other words, this isn't really all about the U.S. in any way, shape, matter, or form, but it is about the free flow of oil at market prices.
It is about the lifeblood of every economy on the face of this earth.
And if this had happened before President Trump unleashed our domestic oil and gas industry, well, which has now turned us into the world's number one oil producer on the planet.
A lot of people haven't been paying attention to that.
Well, I could tell you right now that all bets are off, and the stock market and everything in between and rising gas prices would be in our immediate future without any no doubt whatsoever.
But because the president made the world, made America the world's number one oil producer, angers every liberal in the country.
Well, we're not as vulnerable to this shutdown in global oil production.
But it does have an impact on the American economy if it's impacting every other economy in the world.
I've said so often, you want to raise the standard of living in every America in every give every American an opportunity to raise their standard of living, unleash America's potential.
We've got more oil, gas reserves, coal reserves than the rest of the world combined.
You don't like Vladimir Putin, we can bring him to his knees, the hostile actor he is in the hostile regime of Russia by outproducing him in energy and oil and gas and finding a cheaper way to get our resources into the hands of our Western European allies, so they are no longer dependent on the hostile regime of Putin.
That would be good for the safety and security of the world, but simultaneously, yeah, that's gonna hurt Russia in a major way.
They'll get the message not to mess with our elections in the future if we can outproduce them and outmaneuver them and find cheaper ways to get it across the pond to our allies that are now dependent.
You know, Angela Merkel making what?
The making Putin rich again.
Now, oil prices, by the way, have spiked after the attack on the Saudi facilities.
That is not surprising.
The stock exchange is not down by a lot at all, very, very minor at this hour.
But if it happened before President Trump did this, if it happened before, you know, he unleashed our domestic production.
It would be, oh, by the way, I said 22 feet.
Yeah, 22 mile wide.
Thank you for correcting me, Ethan.
Sorry.
Sound like Joe Biden for a second.
But anyway, but we now have an ability.
Now, three days before Christmas, 1975.
I know I grew up with gas lines.
I saw them.
But if we want every American to get rich, you unleash this production to its highest level.
Not only will we never need a drop of oil or energy from the countries that hate our guts, but we'll also be helping every American get wealthy.
You know, during the North Dakota boom, they were training truck drivers, training them and paying them to drive the trucks.
And it was $80,000 a year on average, and in some cases, even a place to stay and all the overtime you can handle.
Well, if you're making 30, 40, 45, 50 grand a year and you get trained in how to drive those trucks and you can double your income in a year, uh, and maybe save your money by cheap housing compared to where you're coming from.
Well, that means that, yeah, you're gonna get your F 150 or whatever other truck you have, Silverado, whatever you happen to like.
You're gonna get whatever car you like.
You're gonna get a nice house and a safe neighborhood and have a better life for your kids, and you'll even have extra money to save for retirement, Disney when your kids are of that age, uh, your vacation that every kid wants to take, and have the ability to take the family out for, you know, pasta at Buca de Pepo, which I love, and And have a great night and not worry about the finances of it all.
But remember, before Christmas in 1975, Gerald Ford signed a law creating the United States' first emergency stash of crude oil.
Now the nation had been traumatized by that oil embargo a few years earlier.
And at the time, OPEC, the cartel of oil producing nations had a stranglehold on the world supply of crude.
That is not the case today.
We are now the world's largest producer of oil and gas and energy.
Um I gotta tell you, we are it.
And I'm gonna tell you one other thing.
We can make every American uh rich again if we would just literally unleash these resources.
Anyway, so now the president has a decision to make.
So the president says the U.S. is locked and loaded.
Now you're saying, well, why do we have to get involved in this?
We maybe we don't.
But if the Iranians look, you gotta understand why this is all happening.
The Iranians now are in a panic.
The Iranians are lashing out in the hopes that they can convince all the appeasers like Macron and all our Western European allies to get back on board with that stupid, dumb, ridiculous Iranian deal that still allows the Iranians to produce nuclear weapons and doesn't have any place anywhere, anytime inspections.
That was a dumb deal on top of the 150 billion dollars in cash and other currencies.
And you got Macron and others begging Donald Trump to get back in.
He's not gonna get back in.
And the president, well, I think Pompeo was clear.
We know who is responsible for this.
Now, what happened on Saturday?
That's now interrupting about 5.7 million million barrels of crude oil production over 5% of the world's daily supply.
And Yemen's Iranium-backed rebels have claimed responsibility for the drone assault.
But the U.S. accused Iran of launching the assault.
Tehran has denied it, but Tyron is lying.
And if you ever allow the Iranian mullahs that chant death to America and Israel that want to wipe Israel off the map and want to wipe the U.S. off the map, those that believe or convert and die, if they ever get nuclear weapons, it's a simple formula.
It's mathematical, A squared, B squared, C squared, radical mullahs, convert or die, plus nuclear weapons equals the potential for a modern-day Holocaust.
That is not hyperbole, that is not the misuse of Nazi concentration camps.
We could see tremendous death and destruction if that moment ever happens, and how they would then use that nuclear power to blackmail the entire world.
And then everybody is gonna be on pins and needles.
But the reality is we that's why the Israeli elections tomorrow are so critically important.
The one guy of moral clarity until Donald Trump, the sole voice of moral clarity on the world stage, the Churchillian figure that is Prime Minister Netanyahu.
He br we we've never had a better relationship with Israel.
And the president announced, and the Israeli prime minister announced over the weekend that they have begun talks for a mutual defense pact.
That is huge for the Middle East.
That is huge for the only democracy in the region.
And I it is clear that the relationship with Donald Trump and Prime Minister Netanyahu have never been better.
Now, do I want the president to race in?
No.
Do I think the president is gonna get boots on the ground in a long drawn-out conflict in the Middle East with the Iranians?
No.
I think the president is probably when he does act at some point, and I would imagine he probably will, they would probably use the model that is what I've told you before, and that is you know what we did in ISIS to beat back the caliphate.
And does this not, you know, reverberate and resonate with my call that in this world of politicizing war after we start them and not having the will to finish them, i.e.
uh Vietnam, Iraq, and Afghanistan, that we need the next generation of sophisticated weaponry, both offensive and defensive, so that we can obliterate whoever needs to be obliterated at the right time if they push us.
This will not be an easy military action against Iran, but we do have the military capability to knock their sights out.
And I hope that this can be done because it's probably the only thing that the Iranian mules will understand.
Now they seized another tanker in the Straits of Hormuz, according to the UK's uh one of the UK papers, Pompeo laid it right at the door, accusing Iran of these unprecedented attacks.
And Iran is blasting Pompeo, and you know, they're they're hoping for some conflict, so they say.
President rightly, I think, released the strategic oil reserves.
That's gonna help ease some of the pain around the world.
This is, as the Wall Street Journal said, this is the big one.
And that, and we have to watch out now that these drones, I mean, it's not like the Saudis don't have defense capabilities.
They do, and it's solid.
Hey there, I'm Mary Catherine Hamm.
And I'm Carol Markowitz.
We've been in political media for a long time.
Long enough to know that it's gotten, well, a little insane.
That's why we started normally, a podcast for people who are over the hysteria and just want clarity.
We talk about the issues that actually matter to the country without panic, without yelling, and with a healthy dose of humor.
We don't take ourselves too seriously, but we do take the truth seriously.
So if you're into common sense, sanity, and some occasional sass.
You're our kind of people.
Catch new episodes of Normally every Tuesday and Thursday.
On the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen.
All right, as we uh move along, 800 941.
Sean, you want to be a part of the program.
Now take this a step further.
Now you got the Green New Deal.
Now we're gonna eliminate oil and gas, the lifeblood of our economy.
After for the first time in 75 years, we are energy independent.
The first time in 75 years.
By the way, if you are voting in Israel, and I know we have a lot of friends in Israel that listen to this program, you gotta vote Lakud.
Because we can't go through another Netanyahu victory, and then he can't form a government because the system is so screwy over there, and you know, you then gotta form a coalition government, and then one guy decides, uh, I'm gonna hold all the cards.
They prevent any progress in terms of Israel being able to move forward with the new government that was rightly elected.
But I would take this seriously.
This is I I honestly believe this is what the Saudi uh, this is what the Wall Street Journal said is right.
This is the attack.
This is the big one, and it's gonna rock the energy market in the world in the short term.
The long-term implications are very, very clear.
We better not go down this rabbit hole of a green new deal that was cost 94 trillion dollars and eliminate all gas and oil production and the combustion engine and eventually cows and airplanes, so we can give everybody everything for free, which is never gonna happen.
Or having Alexandria Casio Cortez want to pay it for it by we'll just we'll just print more money.
Okay, that's not gonna work, or Kamala Harris, same type of insanity.
We'll just print more money.
All right, we'll get to more on this.
We do have uh we have the GM strike going on.
We have the Trump economic boom.
We have 650,000 kids out of poverty.
Yeah, that didn't happen under Biden Obama.
We got 2020 information we're gonna hit today, and the New York Times scandal next.
Well, the latest scandal next.
Hey there, I'm Mary Catherine Hamm.
And I'm Carol Markowitz.
We've been in political media for a long time.
Long enough to know that it's gotten, well, a little insane.
That's why we started normally, a podcast for people who are over the hysteria and just want clarity.
We talk about the issues that actually matter to the country without panic, without yelling, and with a healthy dose of humor.
We don't take ourselves too seriously, but we do take the truth seriously.
So if you're into common sense, sanity, and some occasional sass.
You're our kind of people.
Catch new episodes of Normally every Tuesday and Thursday on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen.
All right, the president saying looks like Iran behind the Saudi oil attack.
Do uh does not war want war with Iran, but the U.S. is prepared.
Uh the images that we're now getting out of Saudi Arabia after this drone strike over the weekend on their oil facilities is uh pretty massive, very bold.
Remember, all of this, every bit of it, is Because of the president's successful sanctions on Iran, squeezing their economy dry.
And the idea that that there are people still that don't take this regime as the e as evil as they are seriously should shock everybody.
Now it doesn't surprise me because, you know, the appeasement peace in our time ideology philosophy has been around forever.
I mean, we just look at look at Neville Chamberlain versus Churchill.
Um now we've got to move on to something else.
You know, this shouldn't surprise you.
It's more fake news, but it's serious fake news, and you know, it should shock people, but it there's nothing that can shock us anymore in terms of the corrupt news media in this country.
It just isn't even possible.
So we have this whole scandal that's involving Justice Kavanaugh and the New York Times.
You know, and all the New York Times ends up doing is further humiliating themselves.
Just weeks after the New York Times executive editor, Dean Backett instructed his staff to go after President Trump, hammer uh and you know, all over him by covering as many wild-eyed baseless allegations as they can find.
It looks like, you know, they're taking the directive and now it's fired back big time.
Remember, they said we we devoted an entire newsroom to one story, and we're proud of you, but but it ran into some challenges, obstacles.
And uh, yeah, the obstacle was they lied.
The obstacle was they were wrong.
The obstacle was that they missed the biggest abuse of power corruption scandal in history because they have their agenda.
Miranda Devine in the New York Post wrote a great piece today.
And, you know, and if you look at the political side of this, the Washington Post, and this dovetails nicely into the whole Kavanaugh media lie, they now plan to identify three people that they want to demonize as villains for the 2020 election.
One is the president, obviously, two, Justice Kavanaugh, three, Mitch McConnell.
And they will be the three villains defining the three branches of government for the 2020 campaign.
Now, each of them, why it matters according to the New York Post, they are white men, they will argue, symbolizing Republican corruption and rule bending.
Nancy Pelosi has told advisors that it is hard to move the public mood on Trump alone.
She's gonna urge her caucus to crank up anti-McConnell attacks and of course try and impeach Kavanaugh.
Now, why is Kavanaugh back in the news?
Why is this matter?
Why is the New York Times going after him at this point?
They're already lost.
Because you got to remember there's always an agenda here.
What is the agenda?
Just like climate change was never about climate change.
Even AOC's chief of staff at the time said it had nothing to do with climate change.
It has everything to do with the socialist agenda.
And similarly, this isn't about Kavanaugh, this is about Democrats wanting to now control the judiciary and even stack the bench if they ever get power back and add as many justices as they need so that they can get the outcomes they want.
And what they want are judicial activists on the court, and they want people that will legislate from the bench and cite even foreign law as a means of justifying whatever they are justifying that would otherwise be unconstitutional.
In other words, what Democrats can never ever get done at the ballot box, what they can never ever, ever get done in terms of legislation passed.
They want the courts to dictate.
They want the courts to take over.
They want the courts to legislate.
They don't want the courts, they don't want constitutionalists.
They don't want three branches of government.
They they want basically everything, every every single agenda item passed through the courts.
And that's how that's been their plan for a long time.
You know, what happened with Kavanaugh is not an accident.
You know, that they just can't let it go.
And as the New York Times and this piece by Miranda Devine, I think nailed it.
This smear is buried in the 11th paragraph.
New York Times writers, they're writing a book.
This is adopted from their upcoming book, The Education of Brett Kavanaugh.
They name their alleged witness to An alleged incident as Max Steyer, a Washington lawyer, former Yale classmate of Kavanaugh, described as a respected thought leader on federal government management, but who also appears to be the same person that was then President Bill Clinton's on his legal team during the Lewinsky scandal.
How convenient in 98 working for the law firm Williams and Connolly.
Anyway, the piece goes on that he allegedly claims that he saw Mr. Kavanaugh with his pants down at a drunken dorm party where his friends pushed his penis into the hand of a female student when Kavanaugh was a freshman at Yale.
And the New York Times goes on to explain how Steyr notified senators, notified the FBI about this account, but the FBI didn't investigate, and that he is now Mr. Steyer declined to discuss it publicly.
Now we corroborated the story with two officials who have communicated with Steyr.
Okay.
Now, the problem with the New York Times authors and the New York Times piece is the actual truth and veracity of what they're claiming and what they're reporting in their book.
The alleged victim in this case does not remember any such incident.
And also won't talk about it.
That would be journalistic malpractice.
I agree with Devine.
So no corroboration, no evidence, no victim, no witness, only hearsay of one person and the paper of record, the media mob.
Why do I call him a mob?
I say mob on purpose, because they act like a mob.
Manufactured crisis.
Lies, a hoax, conspiracy theories every second minute hour of every 24 hour day.
This is what they do.
They want to slander smear, besmirch.
There's no, it is no line they won't cross.
If it means Nicholas Sandman wearing a MAGA hat and running wild with something that was provably false with about five seconds worth of due diligence, they could have found out, oh, that 15 second snippet that they kept playing over and over again was taken out of context.
That Nicholas Sandman did everything he could possibly do as a 16-year-old kid to prevent, you know, the black Hebrew Israelites that were taunting those kids with racial epithets, et cetera.
And Nathan Phillips, the protester who walked up to him, not the opposite, banging the drum right in his face, and he just smiled and handled it better than I could have handled it.
You know, that but let's call him a racist and let's do it for a week and a half, even when we know the truth.
Now, Nicholas Sandman, well, his life's never going to be the same, but he's gonna be rich as hell.
He now has Lynn Wood as his attorney.
Lynn Wood represented Richard Jewell.
Lynn Wood is taking this case out of a passion for what they did to this kid, and how reckless you talk about reckless disregard, smear, libel, besmirchment, character assassination, and they never made a phone call to even check a single thing about the story, and they locked into it no matter what evidence was coming out.
Anyway, you look at this New York Times.
This is only the latest, you know, claiming their fresh allegation about Kavanaugh echoes previously uncorroborated 35-year-old claims by other people at the time.
You know, but yet, you know, in the case of Deborah Ramirez, for example, but she admitted to the New Yorker, which broke the story last year that her memory was hazy.
She had been drinking heavily during another dorm party at which Kavanaugh allegedly thrust his private parts in her face and caused her to touch it without her consent.
She wasn't even certain it was Kavanaugh.
And you have the, let's see, uh Michael Avenatti, Julie Sweatnik.
Oh, yeah, they lined up in the halls.
At first, they would, they would literally spike the punch, and the girls would pass out.
Then they would take turns gang raping them, and it happened almost every other weekend.
And then when questioned, well, now that I think about it, I never saw Brett Kavanaugh spike anything, but I saw him near a punch bowl Once, and I never saw him give anybody anything to drink, but I saw him with a red solo cup.
No, he wasn't lined up in the hall after all, but he was in a hall at some point during a party.
This is not it, you know, they destroyed this guy.
And the other point of this is he's not turned out to be the best justice that I really wanted.
A little disappointed in Brett Kavanaugh, very frankly.
There's never any evidence that any of these allegations were true, but that didn't stop them.
You know, we have all of these instances of the New York Times fake news.
And this is what they now do.
And you have all the presidential candidates, you know, Beto Bozo, Robert Francis, it looks like Cavanaugh lied under oath.
Julian Castro not only calls for impeachment, but calls Kavanaugh a sexual predator.
I don't know, I'll ask Greg Jarrett at the top of the hour, but I got to tell you something.
You know, I I've accepted in my 31 years in the public eye that people are going to slander, besmirch, use character assassination, because they don't like my political points of view.
But the standard is so high if you're a public figure that, you know, unless you can show that they they had intent, unless you could show the absence of malice of any kind, the standard's so high you can barely win.
Maybe in this case he can, I don't know.
I think that standard is way too high and should be adjusted.
You got uh over there at Conspiracy TV MSNBC.
They're saying, well, Kavanaugh is the fifth guy in a in the gang rape.
Oh, okay, maybe they need to be sued again.
Because they're gonna end up paying Nicholas Sandman a fortune in my opinion, or Klobuchark, Kavanaugh confirmation process was a shave.
Well, they're all rushing to judgment.
Whatever happened to due process or the presumption of innocence, even Michael Avenatti.
I gave him the presumption of innocence when the allegation of him and his girlfriend came up, and it turned out three separate investigations cleared the guy.
But, you know, and I'll say the same thing, you know, about anybody.
You know, but if you if the accuser doesn't recall the alleged incident, and then the New York Times now has to make a major revision to their bombshell concerning a resurfaced allegation of sexual assault by Brett Kavanaugh hours after every 2020 presidential candidate virtually cited the original article as a reason to impeach Kavanaugh because that they want to impeach Kavanaugh and they want to stack the court because they want judges that will legislate from the bench.
This smeared does not hold up.
Hold up in any way, it doesn't.
It is a clear miss.
It is it is malpractice, but it is part of an ugly pattern, and it's not just the New York Times.
You know, look at the latest Turnberry hoax of Roswell Rachel Mattow and MSNBC.
But now, in addition, he's got this money-losing golf resort in Scotland that was about to lose the money-losing airport that serviced it.
I mean, the golf question.
I don't have time for the bottom line is Roswell Rachel got it wrong again.
Two and a half years lies, conspiracies, and she's the face of MSNBC.
She's it.
NBC News.
She runs their election night coverage, along with Tom Brokaw and Brian Lyon Williams.
But, you know, now the New York Times finally, they finally said, you know, it looks like the dossier, the dirty Clinton bought and paid for Russian dossier, was Russian disinformation from the get-go.
Well, what about the Times?
The New York Times had to correct the Manafort Russia collusion bombshell.
And Manafort passed along polling information to a Kremlin connected businessman.
Oh, excuse me.
Oops, C Daisy, or the fake news about Nikki Haley's 52,700 $1 curtains.
Or, you know, blaming Sarah Palin for a shooting.
Yeah, that happened after the Jared Lofner case.
That shooting in Arizona 2011.
And let's blame her.
You know, or, you know, what about their anti-Semitic offensive cartoons?
What about their editor that had to apologize for anti-Semitism and racism?
What about the New York Times?
We built our newsroom around Russia collusion, but then he came a little difficult because we got it all wrong, but we'll just move on to the issue of race now.
We'll take Trump down that way.
Or the New York Times changing a headline to appeal to the far left because they didn't like the headline.
And so they got the New York Times to change.
I mean, pretty amazing amount of power.
They switched that Trump urges unity against racism.
The left freaks out, then they change it, assailing hate but not guns.
And the New York Times describing a fetal heartbeat as embryotic pulsing, or New York Times, by the way, their office was once treated for bed bugs.
Five times the New York Times defended communism.
I I'm not making any of this stuff up.
You know, for everything from North Korea.
I'll I'll lay all of this out on TV tonight, or deleting a tweet calling Mao one of history's great revolutionary figures.
Or the case the New York Times admitted that there are that one percent of illegal immigrants, you know, you know, the migrants and the migrant caravans that were being attacked and raped.
They they finally had to admit it.
Or the New York Times calling Trump's, you know, son's Fredo, or the New York Times uh Trump tax story left out New York State real estate crash as a factor.
Yeah, facts matter.
And I can keep going.
This is what this is a mob mentality.
This is mob.
This is a mob mindset.
Hey there, I'm Mary Catherine Hamm.
And I'm Carol Markowitz.
We've been in political media for a long time.
Long enough to know that it's gotten, well, a little insane.
That's why we started normally a podcast for people who are over the hysteria and just want clarity.
We talk about the issues that actually matter to the country without panic, without yelling, and with a healthy dose of humor.
We don't take ourselves too seriously, but we do take the truth seriously.
So if you're into common sense, sanity, and some occasional sass.
You're our kind of people.
Catch new episodes of Normally every Tuesday and Thursday on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen.
For every American who cares about women's health, about protections for people with pre-existing conditions, about civil rights, labor rights, LGBTQ rights, environmental rights.
Now is the time to fight.
Now I'm gonna withhold my consent.
For this nominee or any other nominee.
Not off the narrow list of those pre-cleared, pre-approved by far-right organizations like the Heritage Foundation and Federalist Society.
He could be here today discussing a nominee who was potentially someone with a wide open record, someone who might command a bipartisan majority.
We are going to look into what went on and what assurances were made that brought this name to the top of the list.
Judge Kavanaugh does not, should not get the benefit of the doubt.
He bears the burden of proof to convince all of us and the American people that he can indeed be a fair and objective justice.
I'm here with sadness to say, Judge Kavanaugh, you don't belong in this building as a justice.
Judge Kavanaugh, you should not be serving in this building as a Supreme Court justice.
Judge Kavanaugh is your worst nightmare.
All right.
As we continue along, glad you are with us.
Then, of course, Justice Kavanaugh defending himself.
We'll play that in a second.
One of the more heartbreaking moments and a despicable display of what is just absolute reckless slander, smearing, besmirching, character assassination.
This smear buried in the 11th paragraph, as Miranda Devine wrote today in a really good piece in the New York Post, where the reporters from the New York Times adapted from their upcoming book, The Education of Brett Kavanaugh.
They name their alleged witness to the alleged incident.
A Washington lawyer, former Yale classmate of Kavanaugh is described as respected throughout respected thought leader on federal government management, but who also appears to be the same person who was on then President Bill Clinton's legal team during the Lewinsky scandal in 1998 and worked at the law firm Williams and Connolly.
She allegedly claims that that he saw Kavanaugh with his pants down at a drunken dorm party where friends pushed his penis into the hand of a female student when Kavanaugh was a freshman at Yale.
The alleged victim doesn't remember the alleged incident and refuses to talk about it.
And as she concludes, this is journalistic malpractice.
Now, okay, so now because they've been shamed, the New York Times has suddenly made a revision to this bombshell piece after all of this was exposed hours after virtually every single uh 2020 Democratic presidential candidate had cited the article as the reason to impeach Kavanaugh.
We know that they want a post-constitutional America.
Levin wrote about it in one of his books.
Yeah, we're living in it.
And they, yeah, they want to stack the courts.
They want to impeach anybody and everybody that they just disagree with for no real reason at all.
They're willing to suspend the presumption of innocence.
They're willing to engage in at the highest level of smearing and and character assassination to achieve their goals.
And what this really is about, if we want to dig down even deeper, is what Democrats can't get done at the ballot box by convincing people to vote for their agenda, what they can never get done legislatively because it's not going to happen.
They then look to the courts to stack the courts with activists, liberal justices that will even go as far as citing foreign laws, not our own Constitution as a justification for legislating from the bench.
Listen to Kavanaugh's voice.
Listen to what they reduce this man to when in fact there's no evidence that any of these allegations were true.
This confirmation process has become a national disgrace.
The Constitution gives the Senate an important role in the confirmation process.
But you have replaced advice and consent with search and destroy.
This has destroyed my family and my good name.
A good name built up through decades of very hard work and public service at the highest levels of the American government.
I am innocent of this charge.
I intend no ill will to Dr. Ford and her family.
The other night, Ashley and my daughter Liza said their prayers.
and little Liza, all of 10 years old.
Said to Ashley, we should pray for the woman.
I mean, if that doesn't just break your heart, they don't care about Greg Jarrett, author of the soon-to-be-released uh sequel to his number one bestseller called Witch Hunt, the story of the greatest mass delusion in American political history.
Um, we all watch this.
Now we know a lot more about this.
And, you know, the accuser doesn't recall the assault, but it gets posted and everyone runs with it.
This your reaction.
Robin Pubrican and Kate Kelly, the two New York Times reporters who wrote this op-ed should be fired by the New York Times.
And the New York Times should issue a public apology to Brett Kavanaugh on their front pages in large headlines.
What they have done to him is an unconscionable smear.
It is absolute defamation.
And the second part of the equation is Brett Kavanaugh should sue Pogravin and Kelly and the New York Times for defamation.
It's true that in a defamation case, you have to prove actual malice that the authors uh knew that what they were publishing was false.
It is absolutely clear that Robin Pogerman and Kate Kelly knew that what they were publishing was false because the truth was actually in their book, and they omitted the passage from their book in their over the weekend uh op-ed for the New York Times.
So it it's it to me, it's an obvious case of defamation.
Kavanaugh should sue.
and how these two reporters have managed to keep their jobs.
The first thing the New York Times should have done was to fire them for uh rank malpractice of journalism.
And this is just a shameful affair but the New York Times New York Post had it right in their uh front page when they said this is a supreme smear.
It is you know why is it I look I've just accepted a long time ago that anything and everything is now going to be said about me and there's pretty much not a darn thing I can do because if you're a public figure people can lie about you legally they can pretty much say and over the course of my 31 years in in the public eye they pretty much have said so many slanderous things so many libelous things so guilty of defamation I I I ignore it.
It's just a now a matter of course I don't even process it frankly hardly anymore but it really shouldn't be that way why this double standard that if you're a public figure that you have this high bar to reach which is now you got to prove intent or absence of malice as we call it came in the 1960s in a in a case called New York Times versus Sullivan which actual malice was established by the Supreme Court as the new standard it was wrong then it's wrong now.
But as I pointed out, these two reporters, Pokerbin and Kelly, knew that what they were writing was false.
And so Kavanaugh can easily meet the malice standard of defamation, which is why I say he should sue.
Now, you know, he strikes me as a very kind and honorable man, and we heard it in the clip that you played.
So I'm not counting on the fact that even though he has an absolute actionable case against the New York Times and these two terrible reporters, you know, he probably won't bring such a case because, you know, he's a guy who has a thick skin and a group thick.
I don't know if he has such a thick skin, and I'll be blunt.
I'm not particularly enthusiastic or impressed by his rulings either.
You know, Republicans, you know, appoint more moderate people to the bench all the time, and they get burned all the time.
Look at the decision last week.
John Roberts apparently, again, just like in the health care decision, deciding for for people.
political reasons to shift his vote on on the decision last week what was it on asylum?
I mean, that's unbelievable to me.
Yeah, listen, I agree with you.
For those liberals who thought Brett Kavanaugh was going to be a rock-solid conservative, his first year on the court has proven otherwise.
And so why they are so insistent in impeaching him and removing him from the high court is baffling.
But, you know, I do think that somebody has to step up and file a defamation lawsuit against the New York Times and these reporters.
Enough is enough.
But isn't this sort of like, Greg, climate change?
Climate change, even AOC's chief of staff admitted, oh, this was never really about climate change.
This is about socialism.
This is about redistributionism.
This is about state control of every aspect of the economy.
And similarly, the agenda to go after, and you can see they use the same talking point, both the media and their cohorts, the Hollywood left, everybody in between, this is about stacking the courts this is about impeaching Kavanaugh this is about about Democrats using the courts to legislate that which they would never get through themselves or win on in the arena of ideas at the ballot box so that's what this really is all about.
It's it's deeper than that.
They don't care about the the guilt or innocence of Kavanaugh they didn't care about the guilt or innocence of Clarence Thomas or or Robert Bork either.
You know in my new book I spent chapter six fifty four pages of story after story that was wrong that was fake news that journalists uh got wrong and did so intentionally.
And uh and and most of them, except in one instance, all of them kept their jobs, and they, you know, they're still doing it.
Uh, and you know, this it was a shameful affair uh by brand branding the president of the United States with one of the worst crimes possible in America, and that is treason.
I mean, the media was absolutely complicit in this, along with Democrats like Adam Schiff, uh, you know, Jerry Nadler, Maxine Waters, the list goes on and on.
But this was uh cabal of the media and Democrats that were determined to undo the election results and to remove the president from office based on nothing.
Uh there was never any credible evidence that he had colluded uh with Russians.
There was never any evidence that his words and deeds constituted obstruction of justice.
It was all a fabrication.
And uh this is why I'm very anxious to see the inspector general's uh report, which should be forthcoming in the next few weeks, because the people who did this should be held accountable.
Well, I agree wholeheartedly, and I think they they will ultimately be.
But quick break more.
Greg Jarrett on the other side, also back to our other top story today on Iran and what they did in Saudi Arabia and what America's response will be.
Hey there, I'm Mary Catherine Hamm.
And I'm Carol Markowitz.
We've been in political media for a long time.
Long enough to know that it's gotten, well, a little insane.
That's why we started normally, a podcast for people who are over the hysteria and just want clarity.
We talk about the issues that actually matter to the country without panic, without yelling, and with a healthy dose of humor.
We don't take ourselves too seriously, but we do take the truth seriously.
So if you're into common sense, sanity, and some occasional sass.
You're our kind of people.
Catch new episodes of Normally every Tuesday and Thursday.
On the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen.
As we continue, Greg Jarrett, his uh soon-to-be released book, Witch Hunt, the follow-up to his number one bestseller, the story of the greatest mass delusion in American political history.
I will tell you one of the things I like about Lynn Wood and the I think Nicholas Sandman is going to be a billionaire at the end of this process because of what the media did to this kid with a MAGA hat on after he went to a rally in DC.
Yeah, listen, uh Lynn Wood is the foremost uh slander and libel attorney in America.
Um and I would love to see Brett Kavanaugh hire Lynn Wood to represent him in a defamation lawsuit against uh Kate Kelly and Robin Pogervin and the New York Times.
Um to me it's a slam dunk case.
Uh because by their own admission, but uh with that said, I don't necessarily agree with you, and I rarely disagree with you because I just think the standard is so high.
But saying that, I will say that we need to change these laws.
That you cannot slander public people just because you you know you can get away with it.
And I think that has to end.
Well, listen, I agree with you a hundred percent.
You know, the New York Times versus Sullivan uh case is uh uh what is a wrong decided case.
Uh they established this out of thin air, this new standard of actual malice, which makes it nearly impossible to win a defamation case against a public figure.
But this is a case that can be won under the actual malice standard.
All right, I gotta let you go.
Uh all right, Greg Jarrett, thank you.
Looking forward to your book When's it out, by the way?
October 8th.
All right, it's called this is a sequel to his number one bestseller.
It's called Witch Hunt, the story of the greatest mass delusion in American political history.
You can sign up, get your copy now at Hannity.com, Amazon.com, bookstores everywhere in a couple of weeks.
Thank you, Greg Jarrett.
Well, when we come back, uh yeah, more on our top two stories.
This one on Kavanaugh, and obviously the president and the decision to keep the free flow of oil at market prices, and saying he's locked and loaded and what it all means and much more straight ahead.
Hey there.
I'm Mary Catherine Hamm.
And I'm Carol Markowitz.
We've been in political media for a long time.
Long enough to know that it's gotten, well, a little insane.
That's why we started normally a podcast for people who are over the hysteria and just want clarity.
We talk about the issues that actually matter to the country without panic, without yelling, and with a healthy dose of humor.
We don't take ourselves too seriously, but we do take the truth seriously.
So if you're into common sense, sanity, and some occasional SAS.
You're our kind of people.
Catch new episodes of Normally every Tuesday and Thursday on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen.
Hi, 25 till the top of the hour.
Toll free are numbers 800941 Sean.
If you want to be a part of the program, uh following a lot of stories today, the corrupt, abusively biased news media in this country.
What the New York Times did, as we've been discussing to Justice Kavanaugh and his listen, I hope Greg is right and his family.
I I we've got to change these libel laws.
And it's not for me.
I've just, I've I've accepted it.
Now you might say, look, don't cry a river for me.
I don't give a rip.
It doesn't matter.
But I am saying I know people in this industry.
They don't care what they say about anybody.
They will go with any smear, slander, besmirchment.
And the record is now astounding.
And they don't apologize, they don't make corrections.
They just move on to the next conspiracy theory.
The next quote, manufactured crisis talking point.
You know, you think back.
And I mean, for the New York Times two and a half years late to say, oh, yeah, the dossier was likely Russian disinformation from the get-go.
Think about that one for just a second.
Well, what does that mean?
That means that the New York Times is admitting that, oh, Russia knew about it.
They knew there were lies in the dossier that Hillary was paying for that they were going to use to smear Trump to help Hillary get elected, or to just create chaos.
You know, go through the list that I went through in the last hour.
Correct.
After correct Manafort Russia collusion bombshell.
Um, and other big so-called stories.
And they're proud, they now they say they're proud of their work.
They missed the biggest abuse of power corruption scandal in history.
You know, Nikki Haley's uh 52,700 $1 curtains, or the fake news blaming Sarah Palin for a shooting, or the memory, you know, just the entire list or the anti-Semitism, or deleting the tweet calling uh Mal one of history's greatest revolutionaries, uh revolutionary figures.
Huh?
What?
Hello?
You kidding me?
Anti-Semitic or offensive cartoons, uh, an editor apologizing for anti-Semitic racist tweets.
You know, we built our entire newsroom around the Russia collusion hoax.
The New York Times changing the Trump headline to appease far left extremists.
Oh, sorry, did I say a good word about Trump urges unity versus racism?
Then the mob, their biggest supporters freak out, then they just cave, and then they change their own headline, or describing fetal heartbeat as embryonic pulsing, you know, or I don't know.
It just it's never ending.
It is never ending and it's not gonna end, you know, or it just so many different issues that have come up here.
Now they have to walk back these salacious allegations against Kavanaugh.
All right, so we got that on the table.
Also, we're following the story, obviously.
It's getting uh really dicey in the Mideast, and America is not vulnerable to the latest Mideast oil crisis.
The Straits of Hormuz are literally less important strategically, geopolitically for us than ever before.
But the world economy, the lifeblood, as I've said, is oil.
The Straits of Hormuz, you cannot allow the Iranians to keep taking these tankers hostage as they are doing, or that their funding now attacking the Saudis' oil production and capability.
May not, we look, we we can survive.
We will survive.
We have more energy than the entire Middle East combined.
Long as we don't allow these crazy people to get a hold of yeah, uh the reins of government so they can implement the elimination of oil and gas.
That'll be the destruction of our economy.
Uh, some other news.
Michelle Obama, I saw this.
She's charging four grand per ticket to see her speak.
Wow.
The $65 million the Obamas got to write their memoirs.
100 million dollars the Obamas are believed to have made from their Netflix deal.
Now 4,200 bucks a ticket for a sweet level seat.
Wow.
Michelle uh Obama's New Jersey Tour Stop is offering a $5,000 VIP package for two people.
Floor seats hike up to around $1,300.
You want to meet and greet with the floaters in person?
Well, that'll set you back $2,500.
Woof.
Something nobody's paying attention to.
Week two of the NFL, their 100th season.
And Jason, have you noticed this?
All the empty seats.
It was an amazing piece.
I'll probably be seeing a lot of them in Giant Stadium in the next uh yeah, they had a great opening two weeks.
Yeah.
They lost they got they lost to the Cowboys.
They got killed by the Cowboys, then they got killed by the Bills.
Forget it.
Season over.
And they'll see what the Jets can pull off tonight.
I guess their franchise quarterback is now in out with mom or something.
Yes.
Mononucleosis.
But I'm just not as interested as I once was.
The officiating sucks too.
Oh, God, it's awful.
Uh, all right, let's hit our uh busy telephones here.
All right, let's say hi to David in Texas.
David, hi, how are you?
Glad you called, my friend.
Hello, I'm glad to talk to y'all.
What's going on?
Oh, another fun field day of retirement.
And my part-time job.
But uh, I was listening to your show last week, and y'all, you were making comments about how many people are leaving New York, the rich folks just getting out of Dodge and whatnot.
And I'm kind of curious, as smart as you and your group are.
How come y'all are still there beside your contracts?
Well, okay, just slow down.
The last words of your of what you just said answers your own question.
Besides your contracts, uh, I have contracts.
That's it.
And it does call for me to be in New York to do the show.
That's the answer.
My staff listen, I'll take a quick vote.
And Linda's out for a day, but a rare day off.
And uh, but uh Jason, Florida or New York, where do you pick?
Texas or New York, where do you pick?
Texas.
Yeah, don't know Florida.
No Florida.
Okay, Texas, New York, or Florida, eth it.
Anywhere but New York.
All right, who else is in there today?
Katie, Texas, Florida, New York.
I'm from Texas, so Texas always.
Kylie, what do you got?
I think I would choose Florida.
Really?
Okay.
Um, either one is fine with me.
My staff is begging me to move.
They're begging.
And the same with my TV staff.
I can't move at this point in my life.
Believe me, you know what?
You know what it's like to get David every year when you talk to my when I talk to my accountant and I have to sit through that insane meeting once a year, whatever.
I can only imagine the pain you go through living in that common state.
Whatever you do, whatever you do, they tell don't die in New York.
I'm like, I'll work on that.
I'll really try not to die in New York.
But when you're when your contacts up, I can care, I can promise you Texas people would welcome you with open arms.
Listen, I I I'm I was welcomed by Rick Perry.
I'm an honorary Texan.
I got that award.
I have it proudly in my studio right here.
And I I listen, I want out.
Listen, I don't care that other people are moving to Texas, but if you're gonna bring your liberal policies from California and Illinois and New York and New Jersey to Florida, Texas, Tennessee, the Carolinas, wherever else you're moving, don't bother because you already ruined one state.
Don't ruin the next state you go to.
And that is a real concern and fear of mine.
That they'll they'll say, oh, well, we got to be more liberal in Texas.
No, go stay in California then.
Don't bother.
Uh, their problem is not me and the Democrats.
Their problem is themselves.
Who are they?
Who are they?
These extreme conservatives who are right to life.
I am guilty.
I'm not anti-game.
Because if that's who they are, and if they are the extreme conservatives, they have no life in the state of New York.
Pro life pro-second amendment.
Pro life pro-second amendment.
The governor of the state doesn't even want me here.
And I and I I was humbled by Rick Scott when he was governor, Rick Perry when he was governor, the North Carolina governor, uh, the South Carolina governor, the Tennessee governor, all inviting me to their states.
And I'd love to take them all up on it because I'll do a lot better economically if I can just leave Dodge here.
Uh, but it is What it is.
It's not about me.
I you know, we're all spokes in a wheel right now.
Everything I will tell you, all our focus is to preventing what would be this is now emerged into a choice election, unlike I've ever seen in my lifetime.
And we've had choice elections before, but never this stark, never this, never this dire.
This is about freedom versus America dying, because they will rip the lifeblood of our economy away from all of us, and it will lead to absolute poverty and the destruction of the greatest standard of living, the greatest wealth-creating system with opportunity for all the United States.
A lot at stake here.
All right, quick break.
We'll come back.
Uh 800-941 Sean, if you want to be a part of the program.
All right, as we continue back to our busy phones.
Brad, Utah, next, Sean Hannity show.
What's up, Brad?
How are you?
Hey, Sean.
Uh, thanks for taking my call.
Thank you for calling.
Glad you're out there.
We're in Utah, are you?
Uh, we're out in the uh high UNA mountains in Duchein, about 7,000 feet, the ranch.
Wow.
That's pretty serious.
Listen, I I had a hard time in Salt Lake City once playing tennis, breathing.
I couldn't breathe.
Yeah, it's uh it's a little stressful here when you first come, but you get used to it.
You get used to the beauty of uh the face of God.
Listen, I get it, but I mean, I I honestly I never I the same thing happened once I once I went to Aspen because I used to be a an avid skier.
I'm not anymore.
My son broke his leg.
I never went back.
I said, I'm done.
That's it.
It was too traumatic for me.
But honestly, uh, but I went there and I like I couldn't breathe the whole time.
I couldn't wait to get out of there.
Yeah.
Yeah.
The lack of oxygen, the hypoxia is a little tough on the body at first.
I uh we used to live in California.
Somebody told me that there's altitude pills.
Is that true?
Yeah.
It uh I I uh I was a police officer in California, retired, and we moved up here, and when we had traveled back and forth to see family there to come up here, it's two weeks before you can really survive again.
It's it's tough.
Wow.
It's it takes two weeks.
Yeah.
All right, what's on your mind today?
Listen, two things for you.
Um, one, uh I wanted to help you a little bit with the mindset of first responders.
Being uh retired first responder, uh I hear a lot of people on the radio, including Sean Hannity, say that uh, you know, when these first responders, for example, uh 9-11 are running into the building, they're probably wondering if they're ever gonna come out again.
That is so untrue, Sean.
First responders never think of themselves, they are so trained.
Well, I no, I listen, I I get all that, but their courage is instinctive, the courage is rooted in their training, but I'm sorry, you see what they walked into.
I watched a lot on 9-11.
I watched a lot of Nat Geo, and they had by far the best documentaries.
They had the greatest documentaries on 9-11.
And with all the video, there was no editing.
I didn't edit anything on my show either.
But I will tell you, it is you had to know, you had to, that this is not really looking good for me today.
You just have to.
I'm not saying they stopped.
I'm not saying they hesitated.
I'm not saying they blinked.
I'm saying just the opposite.
Their call to duty, they did what every other person, you know, what a lot of people would never do.
Everybody's racing down the stairs to get the hell out of there.
And these brave men in blue, these brave firemen, America's bravest, you know.
I uh that what do they do?
They went up.
They knew they knew they knew they may never make it back.
I'm telling you, you can't look at that.
See it.
You see it everywhere.
You see it with with any of the shootings or any uh any event that's going on.
You see the first responders going through the crowd going in.
They're not thinking of themselves, they're thinking of getting this taken care of.
And you know, when it's all over, we always sit back and go, wow, that was spooky.
I might have not come out of that.
But it just never, it just never dawns on you when you're going in.
Well, it doesn't.
Uh I listen, I think in that case, uh I I look, I I I know they didn't give they didn't blink an eye, but I don't think you could walk into a situation like that and not really realize holy this may be it.
I just and they did it anyway.
What makes them who they are, what makes them the bravest, the toughest, the most courageous, and what makes them you know, the people that we want to put on a pedestal and admire the most is that is that it factor, the factor that they're gonna do it anyway.
And when you say what is a hero, that's the definition.
Listen, I have many, many friends of mine over the years that have been on the NY uh fire department and other friends, so many people I know that are cops.
I mean, it's ridiculous.
My whole family was full of cops.
And I will tell you that I I would give my my firemen friends so much grief.
I'm like, what do you mean you get rack time?
Like they would work 24 on, 24 straight hours on, then they get two days off, 24 on, three days off.
I mean, it's and I I kid them.
And the way they always shut me down and shut me up, because they get to cook dinners when it's slow.
No, it depends what firehouse.
Some are slower than others, some are really busy and you're working all night every night, and I'd give them a hard time.
Oh, you get to cook dinner.
And you get rack time, meaning, you know, if there's nothing happening, they can, you know, take a couple of hours' sleep if they can get it.
Because 24 on is a hard shift.
And then they'd always get back to it.
Some point in the conversation, they're gonna say, okay, talk tell talk to me about 9-11.
And I'm like, check mate, I lost.
They win because what they're right.
It's that one day that may come in the course of their career where their life, their ass is on the line.
And that's what we love about them.
And, you know, every one of my firemen friends is just an amazing human being in their own way.
Every one of my cop friends, every one of my law enforcement friends, they're all amazing people.
They do it because they're called to do it.
It's a calling.
They want to serve, they want to protect.
It's um it's a special person that can do all that.
Anyway, quick break.
We got a lot to get to.
More of your calls also coming up, and at the top of the hour, you know, we'll look at the latest with the Iranian situation and what the president's options are straight ahead.
All right, news roundup and information overload hour, 800 941 Sean.
If you want to be a part of the program, we go back to our other top story today, and that it is the president and the showdown with Iran and what happened over the weekend, the drone attacks on the Saudi Arabian oil facilities.
The president saying very clearly the U.S. is locked and loaded against the attackers of this Saudi oil facility.
Now, look, we know what's going on.
We know the Yemeni rebels are being funded and supported completely by the Iranian mullahs.
Uh, we know that the sanctions of the president are having a dramatic impact on Iran.
Uh, we know that all of the action in the Straits of Hormuz is a direct result of the president's policies.
But I also would argue that this shows that the president was right from the get-go uh when he pulled out of this ridiculous Iranian deal.
And I think now the question is all right, the president says he's waiting full complete confirmation of everything that has happened.
But in the meantime, we now have Iran as believed to have seized yet another oil tanker passing through the Straits of Hormuz.
And Pompeo couldn't have been more blunt, accusing Iran of this unprecedented attack.
Uh, this is all about the money.
This is about the free flow of oil, the lifeblood of the world's economy at market prices and Iran blasting back, and they're talking tough.
And uh, I think it shows more than anything that the president was right to pull out of this ridiculous deal.
And the president has now also authorized the release of strategic oil reserves after the attacks on Saudi oil.
And I think the Wall Street Journal is nailed this saying, yeah, this is the big one.
And they talk about the technological sophistication and audacity of this attack.
Um, it's why I've been telling you the election in Israel, another main reason is a key, you know, component to keep the Churchillian figure that is Bibi Netanyahu, who for many years prior to Trump was the sole voice of moral clarity on the world stage uh in office.
They have such a messed up parliamentary system in Israel.
He won the last election, but couldn't form a government because of one holdout.
It's ridiculous.
There's some talk about the possibility of oil being at a hundred bucks a barrel.
That none of that would surprise me.
Uh, but then we go back to what I've been saying for a long time.
For the first time in 75 years, the United States of America is energy independent.
For the first time ever, the lifeblood of our economy is in our hands.
For the first time in our history, if you look geopolitical strategies, the Straits of Hormuz has never meant less strategically than now to the United States.
You got this very narrow passageway.
I think it's what 20, 22 miles wide with a very narrow path for these tankers to go through.
Well, A very high percentage of the world's oil supply passes through those straits, but we don't need them like we used to.
But with that said, we are an interconnected economy in the world.
I think there's a moment in history here where we may never see this again where we have the United States, its closest allies, Israel in the Middle East, the only democracy, especially with Prime Minister Netanyahu, the Jordanians and King Abdullah,
El Sisi running Egypt, and the Saudis, in spite of my very frequent criticism of all of that, all of what they do and how they treat people, putting that aside for a minute, uh coupled with the Emirates, they're all aligning.
They're all sharing intelligence like never before, as they all stand equally against Iranian hegemony in the region.
But the fact that this happened with a drone strike and it went undetected by the Saudis, and the Saudis have a sophisticated defense system, is should be a scary thing for everybody in the world.
Anyway, joining us now to uh discuss and debate all this.
John Jordan, commander in the naval intelligence community and businessman, Daniel Hoppman, Fox News contributor, 30-year CIA ops officer.
Thank you both for being with us.
Daniel, welcome back.
It's good to hear your voice again.
Look, you and I have discussed this at length for many on many occasions.
It seems like Iran is now, because of the financial pressures of the president's sanctions, they are now trying to intimidate the world into going along with another bad deal.
And I don't think they're going to get that from Donald Trump ever.
Now, Iran is trying to induce us to eliminate the sanctions which have caused them so much pain.
They're practicing nuclear blackmail by uh stockpiling low-grade uranium at levels not allowed by that flawed nuclear deal you highlighted.
And they're also um weaponizing or uh enriching uranium to weapons grade levels, which is also a part of their nuclear brinkmanship uh plan.
And as you pointed out, they have been targeting merchant vessels in the Persian Gulf.
They shot down our drone.
They've been launching a repeated series of attacks on Saudi Arabia, including this most recent one, which we're not exactly sure officially the U.S. government hasn't said whether it was launched from Iran, Iraq, or Yemen.
Uh, but all indications are it's it's cruise missile and some drones from from Iraq or Iran.
So this administration has stood firm.
We are not going to eliminate those sanctions.
It is a precondition to getting back to the negotiating table, which is the right thing to do.
Let me ask you, John Jordan, um, look, uh I'm very cautious about any military intervention anywhere now.
And I have been an advocate after Vietnam, Iraq, and Afghanistan.
You know, because wars now become politicized every single time, and we don't finish the job, and then we put rules of engagement in place to tie the hands of our brave soldiers, and then if they don't abide by the insane rules, then we throw them in jail in Leavenworth and elsewhere.
Clint Lorance's case comes to mind.
But the reality is the next generation of warfare, both offensive and defensive, is the answer to all of our our problems.
And I'd rather these wars be fought from Tampa, Florida, and use the technology like we used in Syria to beat back ISIS and defeat the caliphate.
Two things here, Sean.
First of all, the Iranian regime desperately wants an American attack.
The Iranian regime needs to change the political dynamics here so that pressure may be exerted on the United States to relax the maximum pressure campaign and give the Iranian regime some breathing room.
The Iranian real, their unit of currency, has lost over two-thirds of its value since the withdrawal from the JCPOA.
Eight to 17 of 18 Iranian pension funds, including those for the security services, are in the red and at risk of collapse.
So the Iranians are back on their heels, but they need to change the dynamic.
An American attack affects for the better domestic politics inside of um Iran and would allow the Iranian regime to spin this as, you know, uh uh for nationalistic reasons that we're being attacked by the West.
The Iranian regime desperately needs that due to its own unpopularity.
The second thing this dog hasn't barked here at all, Sean, is the fact that the Iranians are now trying to rope in Asia in this.
Um 54% of all Iranian oil exports go to Korea, China, Japan, and India.
And you can't help but wonder if oil prices go up, um, that the Iranians are hoping that those four countries might be trying to put some diplomatic pressure on the United States to relax the sanctions or might be willing to work with the Iranians to find a workaround like the instex uh uh project that the Iranians work for the Europeans on.
Well, the bottom line is, and I uh again, I think the president will be cautious, but I do think our military might needs to rule the day here.
If if this is not met with a with fierce resistance from the world community, uh Daniel Hoffman, I I honestly worry that the Iranians are just gonna feel more emboldened to take any ship they want going through the Straits of Hormuz and a never-ending, you know, series of attacks against, like, for example, Saudi Arabia in this case.
We know it was the Iranians.
I I don't think it's the Yemeni rebels, do you?
No, no.
Well, I mean, either way, it was Iran who was behind the world.
Exactly, because they're funding the rebels in their battle against Saudi Arabia.
Right.
Right.
First on the Persian Gulf.
We're working in concert with the UK, Royal Navy, and with Australia to keep uh the Persian Gulf and the merchant fleets there as safe as they could be.
And keep in mind too, Sean, that the president said what he said to deter Iran from future action.
It wasn't just about the the strike they took on Saudi Arabia, it's also about the future.
Now, Iran, make no mistake, was probing us.
They were targeting Saudi Arabia because they want Saudi Arabia out of Yemen.
They want to raise the cost of that, and of course they want to raise the cost of oil.
If they can't export oil, they don't want anyone else doing it either.
I think we have reached a point, though, where the administration needs to think about how we target Iran.
The president was not that interested in launching a kinetic attack after our drone was destroyed by the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps.
In this case, I'm sure it's a very important thing.
Which by the way, shows, you know, for all those people that were predicting Donald Trump would be, you know, this cowboy on the world stage, they weren't listening to Donald Trump because Donald Trump is a non-interventionist.
But there are times, like in the case of Syria, that the United States will act.
And it's in our best interest to act, but he's not gonna do it with boots on the ground.
He's going to use our superior defense weaponry to to in any of these conflicts or any of these skirmishes that arise.
I mean, the Iranians will escalate in their view to set up a de-escalate scenario.
So the question for the administration, for the Trump administration is are there targets in Iran, perhaps the Iranian oil facilities that we might now strike as a response and make it clear that we did that to counter them and deter them from future action.
I'm sure again that that the administration is looking at all available options and we'll hear about it very soon.
Yeah, and um to to me, I think this is a no-brainer, but I think it's gotta be very strategic, John Jordan, very quick.
I also see a time in a day where the world's gonna have to r reckon with with this truth that is it's a simple mathematical formula that A squared and B squared equals C squared, that radical Iranian mullahs that believe in a philosophy of converter die coupled with nuclear weapons equals a potential modern-day Holocaust.
And if you doubt it's possible, the last century we lost over a hundred million human souls when you add in Stalin and communism and and Mao and fascism and Nazi Germany and the killing fields and Tojo and Japan.
You got a hundred million people slaughtered in the last century alone.
So it can happen.
Absolutely, absolutely it can, Sean, but at the same time, we need to be very smart here.
The Iranians would like nothing more than an American attack that they can turn into a propaganda horror show to exert political pressure in the United States, both at home here and abroad and prop up their regime with these types of you know, Western attacks, bodies, dead children, all that stuff.
The Iranians are praying for something like that.
General Jack Keene was very smart, wrote something from Fox News.com today.
We have the Iranians right where we want them.
And by using kinetic kinetic military action, we might be letting them off the map.
Well, I yeah, look, I think at the end of the day, do you see what I see?
We've talked about this at length.
We see a potential opening, a moment in time where we might be able to thread a needle and get Jordan, the Saudis, the Egyptians, the Israelis, the Emirates, and the United States to really create a universal opportunity for peace in the Middle East and come up with real solutions that could Uh make the world a much better place considering all the instability that comes out of the Middle East.
Yeah, and I and let's include our European NATO allies in that equation as well, because look, Iran has demonstrated that they are a nefarious revisionist, revolutionary power in the Middle East, and we need to counter them.
I don't think our European allies, those signatories to the flawed Iranian um JCPOA nuclear deal have been on the same page with the United States.
But every time Iran escalates this crisis, um I think that should be another step that drives our European partners, France in particular, on our side, so that we can speak with one voice, hammer them economically, and drive them to negotiate a position.
You mean like Macron, who who's been begging us to go back into the stupid deal that Obama and and him and others signed on to?
Um, yeah, I think that's a bad idea.
I agree a hundred percent.
And I think again, this Iranian attack on Saudi Arabia has to convince Macron that he's wrong on this.
I gotta take a quick break.
Uh John uh Jordan is with us, our good friend Daniel Hoffman, 800 941 Sean, if you want to be a part of the program.
All right, so the president says he's locked and loaded.
Um what does that mean?
What can we expect in the next 12 week or so?
John Jordan, commander in the naval intelligence community.
Now businessman Daniel Hoffman, Fox News contributed, 30 years, CIA opficer.
Uh okay, John, what do you think happens and what do you think should happen?
We got about a minute each.
Well, first of all, to build build on what you were saying.
Um, this is an opportunity for Saudi Arabia, the United States, and the other uh Persian Gulf of the States to come together and build an international coalition and build political support for an alliance against Iran.
The good news, if there's a silver lining out of all this, is we're starting to see a paradigm shift away from the Arab Israeli conflict, the Palestinian question being the defining issue of the Middle East, to now Iran being it.
And so you're starting to see Israel move closer to those states with whom it's ostensibly at war, and ultimately perhaps a broader peace in the Middle East might be the result in the long run, you know.
And last word, Daniel Hoffman.
I just uh I think John made some great points.
I'll just highlight what I think is going to happen from the intelligence community.
Um the CIA, NSA, the rest of the community will assess what happened in Saudi Arabia, determine definitively.
Let me interrupt.
You you agree with me.
They probably have already made that assessment, correct?
Yeah, I think they probably have, but they're going to share it with now with probably the House and Senate intelligence oversight committees, uh, and they'll work with the administration to consider a range of options for how we can respond and whether that will induce Iran to behave the way we wish they could behave.
And and Secretary Pompeo has been clear about that.
This is about changing the way Iran behaves, modifying their behavior, and ensure they don't take these sorts of strikes in the future, and they pay a price for the strikes that they've already launched against us in the past.
And so I think the next few days are going to be critical.
Look, this can't go on very long as we've highlighted.
Um you've got to de assess the situation and make a quick response, otherwise you kind of lose the effect.
All right, guys, we'll wait and see what happens.
I would not expect the Iranians to get away scot-free here this time.
That's my prediction.
Quick break.
We'll come back.
We'll have more on our two top stories, including the just how divided as a country we are, and your calls coming up straight ahead.
You cannot be civil with a political party that wants to destroy what you stand for, what you care about.
That's why I believe if we are fortunate enough to win back the House and or the Senate, that's when civility can start again.
If you had to be stuck in an elevator with either President Trump, Mike Pence, or Jeff Sessions, who would it be?
Does one of us have to come out alive?
Yes.
I'm angry.
Yes, I am outraged.
Yes.
I have thought an awful lot about blowing up the White House.
When was the last time an actor assassinated the president?
I don't know.
I want to clarify.
If you see anybody from that cabinet in a restaurant, in a department store, and a gasoline station.
You get out and you go to them.
And you tell them that you'll come anymore, anywhere.
Donald Trump is a guy who you understand he hurts you.
And you and my testosterone sometimes makes me want to uh uh feel like punching him, and uh, which would be bad for this elderly, out of shape man that he is if I did that.
But when he was elected, what I wrote on Twitter was we should impose martial law until we make sure that the Russians weren't involved in the final tallies of the vote.
And people were like, Marshall law, what's wrong with you?
You're a lunatic.
Well, he wants to send the military to the border.
So I want to send the military to the White House to get him.
You know, I had a dream the other night about that I was playing golf with Donald Trump, and I was standing beside him with a club in my hand, and I was, you know, considering my options when I suddenly woke up.
Oh, I won't is gonna be our saving grace, you know, when he's about to nuke Finland or something.
She's gonna walk into the bedroom and you know, yeah, Daddy.
Daddy.
Don't do it, Daddy.
He's a punk, he's a dog, he's a pig, he's a con, a bull artist, a mutt.
He's an idiot.
He talks how he wants to punch people in the face.
Well, I'd like to punch him in the face.
Trump.
It's no longer Donald Trump.
It's Trump.
And in that orderly and formal way and lawful way, we need to overthrow the government of the United States under Donald Trump.
But Michelle says that you know, when they go low, we don't know.
If they go low, we can go.
That's what this new Democratic Party is about.
All right, that is the never-ending hatred of the left.
Washington Post actually had a article.
Democrats, they have three villains for the 2020 campaign.
Obviously, the president, now Brett Kavanaugh.
We saw the smears all weekend there, and Mitch McConnell.
Because each of the these men, they will argue symbolizes Republican corruption.
Uh, okay, that's what they're playing.
What are they going to do for America?
When are they ever going to think about helping the American people, you know, get out of poverty, maybe have better lives.
You know, one economic statistic that really uh struck me this weekend.
I saw it.
I hadn't seen it before.
Since Donald Trump's been president, 650,000 children are out of poverty.
We already know 6.2 million are off of food stamps.
13 million were added under Biden Obama, 8 million in or you know, 11 million in poverty, or uh as a result, millions also out of poverty.
The jobs have gone to the forgotten men and women in this country, and their policies are working for people.
Lowest unemployment rate for African Americans, Hispanic Americans, Asian Americans, women in the workplace, youth unemployment.
It's not by accident that these things happen.
Now kids are getting out of poverty.
Now we're going to stop progress.
Okay, I don't think it's a particularly good idea, but running on hatred, I don't think is an agenda.
And, you know, running on taking away AK-47s is not an agenda.
And Medicare, Medicaid for all, that that's not really an agenda either, especially with the new Green Deal costing 94 trillion.
Bernie Sanders, 16 trillion just for the new Green Deal.
And we went over the cost of well, how much is it going to cost for Medicare?
Yeah, that's going to cost a fortune, also.
That's going to be like, oh, over 10 years is another, you know, 40 trillion dollars or more with no options of private care.
So this is where your modern Democratic candidates now this is what they have at impeachment at all costs.
Anyway, Jackie Cushman, uh, Gingrich Cushman, daughter of Newt, by the way, longtime friend of mine, author of the brand new book, Our Broken America, why both sides need to stop ranting and start listening.
And I would, this is a country in crisis, and it's so extremely politically polarized.
Listen, Jackie, I'm it's simple for me.
If Donald Trump cured cancer tomorrow, if he gave every American five million dollars tomorrow, if he co-opted even their insane climate change agenda, he'd still be hated.
It's it's a blind psychotic rage at this point.
Well, you're absolutely right, Sean.
And thank you for having me on.
But you watched even on election night when Donald Trump won, you could tell, especially if you watched the Washington CNN.
You could think about the body language of the anchors, and by the fact they took their time to call the state.
I think they were secretly hoping it wouldn't happen.
And finally they realized Donald Trump was going to win.
I know you could have went earlier in the night, and I'm sure you did too.
They are so upset and they're so distraught at having Donald Trump president.
And quite frankly, they don't know what to do.
Um, and you're right.
I mean, now they're talking all I did is talk about grievance.
And what's wrong, what's wrong, what's wrong.
And quite frankly, we live in the best nation in the world.
And we need to acknowledge that and be grateful we live here.
Well, I don't think that's gonna happen.
And I don't think the divide is going to be bridged anytime soon.
And I, you know, look at, for example, the New York Times embarrassing themselves over the weekend.
Uh, but I, you know, this is just par for the course in this environment we live in.
You know, it does it doesn't it doesn't matter.
Truth doesn't matter.
Journalism's dead.
They're just the willing accomplices of, you know, every second, every minute, every hour of every 24-hour day, every seven-day week, every month, every year, of just waking up hating Donald Trump.
It doesn't matter what it's for, it doesn't matter how many lies they tell, how many conspiracy theories they spin.
Well, no, you're exactly right.
But I think the challenge we have, and the reason that our horses took our broken America, um, and it comes out tomorrow and I'm very excited about it.
Because I'm very concerned about the political culture that we have today and what I'm gonna leave for my children.
I mean, I've been involved in politics since I was very young, as you know, to campaign for my father, Nick English.
And I found it becoming more and more polarized.
And what I've what I've found is that if you actually work in the community, like you have to know the New York Times and the people on the phone left that are screaming.
But if you get in and work in a community and meet people, then a lot of those people in the summer will become to realize all the terrible things they heard about Republicans just aren't true.
They're not true.
Well, that's been a pet peeve of mine forever.
You know, it's uh and that is Republicans, racist, sexists, uh uh, they're guilty of their monogenous and um, you know, they they want 30-year water, they're uh homophobic, xenophobic, islamophobic, and they want to kill grandma and uh kill children.
First they got to feed grandma and grandpa dog food, then a Paul Ryan look-alike or a nuke gingrich look alike, will throw grandma over a cliff.
But no, but only after a year of dog food.
Absolutely.
But here, here's here's our challenge.
And this is this is what I've been trying to work on, at least at least for myself.
And you know, they've been terrible live for about my family and my father that I've had to deal with for years.
And the reality is you can't, if you constantly yell back at them, then no one can.
But if you can, if you actually can pause for a second, if you I mean you gotta you gotta say it's not right.
Okay, the canal stuff, terrible, nasty.
Well, what do you do is focus on the progress we're gonna make, which is what you did in the beginning.
The chalks are up, people come out of poverty.
Look at what's happening.
But if every time they manage to pull us down and to rage with them, then we're both lost.
And we end up turning to this like feeding frenzy.
Well, look, and the other problem is the Republican Party.
I mean, they are weak.
Let's be honest here.
Many Republicans are weak.
Seven Senate Republicans voted in 2015 to just a straight repeal of Obamacare.
Seven of them wouldn't vote for it two years later when it mattered.
And the same with, you know, the 68 votes, show votes on repealing and replacing Obamacare in the House.
When it mattered, they weren't there.
And they had no alternative seven years to build up a consensus plan that would include health savings accounts, uh, health care cooperatives, like our buddy Dr. Josh Umber, Atlas MD, and they didn't do it.
And the president pretty much has to do the heavy lift on his own, like with getting the border funding and finding a law and finding, you know, authority to reallocate funds from the defense department to build it.
That I mean, that that's just a fact.
Republicans are not there.
They're not fighting like he's fighting.
Well, and I think they're also not funny.
I think to your point, Sean, I think I think they constantly get dragged down into the most Democrats, instead of being able to say, no, you're wrong, that's not true, and then continue to focus exactly what you're talking about on solutions for people, right?
So instead of instead of worrying about how can we actually fix the healthcare system, they're worrying about defending themselves from these ridiculous claims about you're a terrible person because you're Republican when that's in fact not true.
The sad thing is that 64% of Democrats and 55% of Republicans have few or no friends in the opposite party.
So if you think about it, 64% of Democrats really don't know any Republicans more than just maybe passing them by because we have this huge gap about, you know, to your point, all Republicans are terrible.
And part of that work, I think has can't be done in Washington and can't be done anywhere else, half to done the local communities and has to be owned by people getting involved in those communities and working together and realizing that you know we're we're good people and want to help America.
I mean, that we've definitely focused on what can we do.
You know, last exit question.
One of the things about your dad, and I've been I was there MCing the night.
You remember it well in '94 when he became speaker, but I would like to see 2020 Republicans, you know, sit down.
That means McConnell and uh the House Republicans and then Kevin McCarthy and actually come up with a positive solution-oriented agenda to nationalize the elections.
Elect us.
This is what we promise we're gonna do and work with the president.
You know, you can build it out on 80, 20, 70, 30 issues, and there's a lot of work to do.
Absolutely.
You're exactly right.
Being able to put everybody on the same, like a same plan and to be a positive vision for what we're going to do in the accomplishment.
You know, the contract of America was incredibly successful.
Um, we're coming up on the 25th anniversary, and there'll be a special, as you know.
Um, but that's the only way to really get people galvanized.
It's the method of terrify people so they can vote.
That's what it's interesting, right?
Let's terrify people so they'll vote for us.
We need to, you're exactly right.
We need to inspire people to the ground and work for us and vote for us.
All right, the book is called Uh Our Broken America, why both sides need to stop ranting and start listening.
It's up on Hannity.com, Amazon.com, bookstores everywhere.
Uh Jackie Gingrich Cushman, thank you for being with us.
Uh, a great read.
Well done.
Thank you for sharing it with us.
Thank you so much, Sean.
I appreciate it.
All right, to our busy telephones we go as we say hi to Missy is in West Virginia.
Missy, hi, how are you?
Glad you called.
And how are you?
Um, I just wanted to point out the obvious that every single thing that they do every two and four years, just like the sex thing with Kavanaugh.
This is all about money.
The new Green Deal is is not about saving the environment, it's about money.
We have four seasons.
We have solar eclipses, we have Haley's comet that all comes on a cycle.
Weather is cyclical and God controls it.
Next time it rains, go outside, throw it down a quarter, see if you can make it stop raining.
You can't.
Kavanaugh, that is all money grab.
They were worried if he got onto the Supreme Court, he was going to overturn Roe versus Wade, which means people were going to lose money for the plan B pill, which Large Ford was heavily invested in.
Well, let me just say one thing.
I mean, and we got to be clear about this because all of that happens during every single confirmation hearing.
Yeah, they bring over he's gonna overturn Roe v.
Wade.
Okay, all that would do is would and it was bad law, and uh frankly, it never should have gotten as far as it has gotten, in my view, constitutionally, it will go back to the states.
Now, how many states are gonna outlaw all abortion?
Maybe two, if any.
I don't see it happening.
And if that's even the case, I can promise you, abortion on demand, even late-term abortion.
Well, that'll be that that will be the laws in New York and California and New Jersey, and well, we know what the uh commonwealth of Virginia governor said.
First, we'll deliver the baby and make the baby comfortable, and then of course, then we'll let the mother decide whether we're gonna keep it.
Uh, it's insane.
Not everybody's gonna be able to do it.
Listen, I'm not just out of time.
I can tell you you need your own show.
You're doing great, but I I've got to move on.
Uh, I do appreciate it, Missy, but the constraints of time are pressuring me to move forward.
All right, Hannity tonight, nine Eastern Fox News Channel.
The president ran the showdown, locked and loaded.
What does it mean?
What's the right thing to do?
Also, the smear of Kavanaugh continues, and yeah, the New York Times screwed up big time again.
We have the Israeli elections we're gonna be following, the latest news on the economy, and yes, the Democrats' new Green Deal hysteria all coming up tonight.
Hannity nine Eastern.
We'll see you then.
We'll be back here tomorrow.
As always, thank you for being with us.
What smart political talk without the meltdowns?
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