Sean Hannity Show - Best of Hannity: Fake News Is Real

Dec. 31, 2019 - Sean Hannity Show

01:21:26

Best of Hannity: Fake News Is Real

On this "Best of Hannity" Sean addresses the truth about fake news with Bill O'Reilly, Carter Page and Attorney Lin Wood. Plus, the legendary Mike Rowe stops by to share his thoughts on the future of American workers.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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	I'm Ben Ferguson, and I'm Ted Cruz.
	Three times a week, we do our podcast, Verdict with Ted Cruz.
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	So down with Verdict with Ted Cruz now, wherever you get your podcasts.
	The CIA had told the FBI it was true earlier, but it never made it through the system.
	Somebody got so rattled at the FBI, they asked Mr. Klein Smith to check it out.
	He checks it out.
	He communicates with the CIA.
	Is Carter Page a source for you?
	In an email exchange, they say, yes, he is.
	What does Mr. Klein Smith do?
	He alters the email to say, no, he's not.
	And you caught him.
	I don't know how you caught him because you got to dig into this email chain.
	Wow.
	What a powerful moment.
	That was Wednesday with the Inspector General Horowitz talking about Carter Page who's on our newsmaker line.
	Now, you know, one little side note before I get into this Klein Smith issue with you and what you explained on those phone calls.
	Do you know, Carter, how many people tried to warn me off you?
	You know how many people told me you would burn me?
	Do you want to know?
	I never told you this.
	How many people said me putting you on was going to be a career killer for me?
	I can only imagine, Sean, because when we had our first interviews years ago, I was just getting attacked nonstop by all sides.
	So those people that said that to you are just consistent with sort of the mass.
	I don't even remember.
	I'm trying to go back in the recesses of my mind.
	I can't even remember.
	I just remember people don't trust that guy.
	I remember.
	No, I remember that.
	Those momented you at the time, didn't they?
	You're diplomatic, Sean.
	You're very.
	So listen to what Lindsey Graham just said.
	I want you to tell this audience when you hear that, when you absorb that, what do you think?
	Well, Sean, again, what he's talking about are things that you and I have talked about for years.
	I'm just happy that we now have a document from the government, which, you know, a serious, in-depth investigation, which basically confirms everything you, your team have been digging into and reporting for the last several years.
	You know, I mean, it would never have been possible if it weren't for people like Chairman Graham and Congressman Nunes and so many people.
	And again, you provided a platform for them to actually state the truth, you know, in terms of times you actually told me that off air that I was over the target and more right than I ever knew.
	You remember telling me that?
	Absolutely.
	Yeah.
	So, you know, when you're doing like trying to put the pieces of the puzzle together, tell us about this guy, Kleinsmith.
	Well, the sad thing about him, I mean, again, there are a lot of allegations of wrongdoing with him.
	The thing that really disturbs me the most, again, I think the overarching the 17 separate instances of FBI misconduct and abuse that were exposed in the Inspector General's report is just, you know, as Chairman Graham has told you, just ugly and damning, right?
	I mean, this is that things might be.
	There are 17 significant failures, inaccuracies, and omissions, but it subsections into over 50 offenses, but go ahead.
	I know, and I know you've been digging into that as well with your whole ensemble team here.
	But the thing that bothers me the most in my interactions with FBI lawyer Klein Smith is when I, again, I had a long series.
	I spent over 10 hours with the FBI in March of 2017.
	I ended up getting more death threats.
	And, you know, and I told the FBI about the, you know, the terror threats that I was surviving then.
	And unfortunately, early the next month, they had another media report in the constant series of craziness there.
	And I got more death threats.
	And unfortunately, it was related to a disclosure in that instance of me being an FBI informant, right?
	So that gets out in the public.
	And, you know, and I tell Mr. Kleinsmith about that myself.
	You know, I had a direct email exchange with Mr. Klein Smith and also with, you know, I mean, one of the volunteer lawyers that was helping me at the time had already spoken with him a few times.
	And so it was on his radar scope.
	So yeah, I mean, I think what he did in terms of all the dishonesty, I mean, that's bad.
	But what's worse is the, you know, life or death situation that the FBI not only did nothing about Sean, they made it even worse, right?
	Because that was early April 2017, just a couple weeks later in the Washington Post.
	They reveal about the FISA warrants against me.
	And I get more death threats.
	And let's terror more than that.
	Let's go a little deeper into this.
	The threats are coming from associates abroad, like from Russia.
	No, actually, and again, it goes back to the report.
	Where is it going to in some sense?
	Because in many ways, I think you would fit as a, be defined in some ways as a covert operative.
	And certainly on this program with me, you were exercising plausible deniability to the best you could until I finally figured it out.
	Took a while and a little bit of digging and pushing and prodding and poking, but I got there in my own head.
	And I remember the moment I said to Linda, he works for the CIA.
	I promise you he does.
	And she, I think, Linda, you looked at me, you said, you're probably right.
	Yeah, no, I definitely did.
	I was like, I'm not surprised if you did.
	So did you get any threats from any of the people that you met abroad?
	Well, it's always a threat, Sean.
	But the specific ones that I informed Mr. Kleinsmith of, in which I had in-depth discussions with the FBI agents, members of the Comey McCabe team back in March of 2017, was,
	you know, were actually domestic threats and more specifically, all stemming from the false defamatory reports that were paid for by the DNC and pushed with their consultants that were part opposition research people and part bureaucrats in the DOJ and FBI.
	And you've been uncovering that for years.
	So, you know, I mean, you know all kind of the background on that part.
	All right.
	So let me go to this other area where we can.
	So you have these threats and all of this is unfolding in your life.
	And meanwhile, you're doing just the opposite.
	And who are the agents in the FBI?
	You said it was Mueller's team and Comey, I'm sorry, McCabe and Comey's team.
	Was it Peter Strzzok who interviewed you?
	No, and what's interesting, Sean, it's funny.
	And so I guess I can say it now.
	I don't like saying it, but I mean, the CIA guys that I've worked with over the years.
	I don't want to put anybody's life in jeopardy.
	Okay, but the players that are well known to us, who was it?
	No, it was none of those.
	No one, I mean, you know, there are abbreviations in the Inspector General report, which you've been looking through, you know, working through.
	And they're, you know, they have various code names.
	But, you know, similarly, and that's what I was leading into.
	So, you know, the CIA people that I'd meet with over the years would say, well, here's, you know, here's my name.
	Here's my business card.
	Here's my here's my email address, but it's not my real name.
	You know, I mean, they'd intimate to me.
	And unfortunately, the names that these agents gave me in March 2017, I tried digging a little bit, and I think they're not the actual names.
	Although they never admitted it to me like this.
	Do you know who they are now?
	All right.
	So I don't know.
	No, no, no.
	I don't know.
	I mean, I know I could, I mean, if they were standing in front of me, I would be able to identify them.
	You'd be able to identify them.
	At any point did anybody ever apologize to you?
	That may sound like a really dumb question.
	No, not only did they not apologize, Sean, in terms of, you know, people within the DOJ and FBI.
	And actually, I do have an exception.
	I'll mention that, but let's talk about a government context first.
	Not only did they not apologize, they've actually been stonewalling nonstop throughout the months and years since.
	I've sent several letters, several requests to FBI Director Ray, you know, asking for some disclosure, right?
	Because, you know, I'm trying to get to the bottom and kind of start rebuilding my life.
	But, you know, unfortunately, the rebuilding process has not really, at least that I've seen.
	I mean, I'm exceptionally grateful of Attorney General Barr and what he's doing.
	And obviously.
	Have you spoken with him yet?
	No, not yet.
	Not yet.
	I would imagine, have you spoken with Durham yet?
	No, nope.
	Okay.
	So at the end of the day, do you remember how many times I asked you, do you love your country?
	You love your country, right?
	And you'd say, of course.
	And you served your country.
	Would you say the work that you were doing for the CIA and other agencies and other groups, et cetera, was dangerous?
	It could be.
	Well, and it became dangerous in, you know, after on September 23rd, 2016, when the defamatory news report came out by U.S. government propaganda agencies and they're, you know, the media outlets they're funding, Radio Free Europe, based on the defamatory Yahoo News article, right?
	Which was then, you know, as we now know and now we'll see in the Inspector General report, was, you know, part of the basis for this abusive process in the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court.
	I'm Ben Ferguson, and I'm Ted Cruz.
	Three times a week, we do our podcast, Verdict with Ted Cruz.
	Nationwide, we have millions of listeners.
	Every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday, we break down the news and bring you behind the scenes inside the White House, inside the Senate, inside the United States Supreme Court.
	And we cover the stories that you're not getting anywhere else.
	We arm you with the facts to be able to know and advocate for the truth with your friends and family.
	So down with Verdict with Ted Cruz now, wherever you get your podcasts.
	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 Podcast, or wherever you listen.
	When I told people I was making a podcast about Benghazi, nine times out of ten, they called me a masochist, rolled their eyes, or just asked, why?
	Benghazi, the truth became a web of lies.
	It's almost a dirty word, one that connotes conspiracy theory.
	Will we ever get the truth about the Benghazi massacre?
	Bad faith, political warfare, and frankly, bullshit.
	We kill the ambassador just to cover something up.
	You put two and two together.
	Was it an overblown distraction or a sinister conspiracy?
	Benghazi is a Rosetta Stone for everything that's been going on for the last 20 years.
	I'm Leon Mayfook from Prologue Projects and Pushkin Industries.
	This is Fiasco Benghazi.
	What difference at this point does it make?
	Yes, that's right.
	Lock her up.
	Listen to Fiasco, Benghazi, on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
	You know, I just think, well, first of all, I'm fascinated.
	I think if one of the things that if I ever had my life to do live over again, besides like singing anthem songs like John Bon Jovi and songs like Garth Brooks and Kenny Chesney, I would love to do this work because it's fascinating to me.
	It's very important work.
	One of the things that worries me in all of this, Carter, is that we need FISA.
	We need, there are evil actors on the world stage.
	Russia is one of them.
	Hostile regime led by a hostile actor.
	You're absolutely right, Sean.
	And I think it when you interviewed both Senator Ted Cruz and I, he actually came on before me on Monday.
	And, you know, he said the exact same thing I was going to say to you, right?
	I mean, what we saw in Monday's report is just the first step.
	I want you to wrap this up and put a big bow on it in the Christmas spirit.
	What you want America to learn from this and also what you plan to do about this, considering they took away your civil liberties and they did it by design and on purpose.
	Sean, I think this is the start of a huge rebuilding process.
	I mean, I think I have been just so grateful to Chairman Graham and the entire Senate Judiciary Committee, Senator Kennedy, who was on your show this week as well.
	Just such a long list.
	And I mean, you've been on the forefront in terms of the media and actually starting to set the record straight.
	And I have, there's definitely a lot.
	This is similar to what we were just discussing, just a first step in a very long process, I think, both in terms of rebuilding our country, our intelligence community.
	It's critical.
	Yeah.
	And so, and I'm going to help it anyway.
	Well, I'm hoping to, you know, write and educate the country about this.
	And I think that, you know, the litigation process, our court system, we've talked about the problems in Congress.
	You know, some of those death threats I got were on March 20, 2017, when Congressman Adam Schiff is reading from that fake dossier into the congressional record.
	You know, that was actually the worst day of the terror threats that I lived through.
	I had him nailed from the beginning.
	A congenital liar.
	You deserve, you need your day in court.
	And I hope you sue the living crap out of every single one of these people involved in this.
	Because, you know, not only where you serve in your country and you love your country, then they spy on you for it because they don't like who is running on the other side.
	They abuse their power.
	It's corrupt.
	We better fix it or we're going to lose our Constitution and country.
	Carter, I want to wish you the best in the holiday season.
	I know you've been through hell.
	I hope you feel a certain sense of vindication now at this point.
	You certainly deserve it.
	Well, I really appreciate everything that you and the team have done for since the very beginning, Sean.
	You were really the.
	Well, you helped us put the pieces together.
	It was like pulling teeth, but you helped us.
	Carter Page, thank you.
	I'm Ben Ferguson, and I'm Ted Cruz.
	Three times a week, we do our podcast, Verdict with Ted Cruz.
	Nationwide, we have millions of listeners.
	Every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday, we break down the news and bring you behind the scenes inside the White House, inside the Senate, inside the United States Supreme Court.
	And we cover the stories that you're not getting anywhere else.
	We arm you with the facts to be able to know and advocate for the truth with your friends and family.
	So download Verdict with Ted Cruz now, wherever you get your podcasts.
	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.
	What I told people I was making a podcast about Benghazi, nine times out of ten, they called me a masochist, rolled their eyes, or just asked, why?
	Benghazi, the truth became a web of lies.
	It's almost a dirty word, one that connotes conspiracy theory.
	Will we ever get the truth about the Benghazi massacre?
	Bad faith, political warfare, and frankly, bullshit.
	We kill the ambassador just to cover something up.
	You put two and two together.
	Was it an overblown distraction or a sinister conspiracy?
	Benghazi is a Rosetta Stone for everything that's been going on for the last 20 years.
	I'm Leon Nayfak from Prologue Projects and Pushkin Industries.
	This is Fiasco, Benghazi.
	What difference at this point does it make?
	Yes, that's right.
	Lock her up.
	Listen to Fiasco, Benghazi, on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
	Joining us now, this is the launch day of his brand new book.
	It's called The United States of Trump, How the President Really Sees America.
	Bill O'Reilly is with us, billo'reilly.com, Hannity.com, Amazon.com, bookstores now everywhere.
	Now, he's been the best-selling author of 15 number one best-selling books.
	A lot of it is killing series.
	I kind of don't take this throw away.
	I do like your history books, but I think this is probably your best book.
	And I'll tell you why.
	Because you did something very unique and very different.
	And I've now finished the book and I've read it cover to cover.
	And I want you to sort of take what you get out of here because you don't go through a whole interview and you spent a lot of time on Air Force One with the president.
	You did a follow-up interview with the president.
	And you give us what he's saying about a particular topic and the question and answer back and forth between the two of you, and then you sort of navigate through the history of who he is in the presidency, which I thought was very clever and smart.
	But then we've got this whole other aspect of what was going on today.
	I saw your tweet earlier today.
	You read the entire document.
	You saw nothing.
	Nobody with any intelligence saw anything.
	And nobody seems to care that Biden leveraged the billion, but that's a different issue.
	Why don't you sort of bring it into today's controversy as you wrote this book?
	Okay.
	And stop me here if you.
	No, take your time.
	I'm not going to interrupt you.
	You go.
	No, no, no.
	I want you to because it's a little bit complicated.
	But I got really lucky because on the day that the United States of Trump was released, all of this Ukraine stuff came out.
	And I tell you in the book about the genesis of all of it.
	And that is that Donald Trump firmly believes in his heart that the Democratic Party and President Obama and Hillary Clinton all colluded to give money to people to dig up dirt on him in Russia.
	Do you disagree with that?
	So in the book, I say that in August 2016, Barack Obama was told by the CIA that Russia was trying to interfere in the presidential election.
	Barack Obama chose, for reasons unknown, not to say anything to anybody about it.
	Not to Hillary Clinton, not to Donald Trump.
	Now, you would think that once a president got intel that a foreign nation was trying to alter, no matter how, a presidential election, all the principles would be alerted.
	So Trump believes that Barack Obama thought that he was cooperating with Russia and wanted to sting him and wanted to surveil him.
	He's very bitter about that, Sean.
	And I know you know that personally.
	He's very bitter about it, Donald Trump.
	He sees it as fundamentally unjust and unfair.
	I don't think he's a bitter guy.
	I just think he's like disgusted.
	No, to me, he was bitter.
	How could this happen?
	Because he was hanging out with you, and neither one of you drink.
	If you had a cocktail, I think it would be a little more fun.
	Yeah, we could have been a little mellower, but we weren't.
	So I got the raw, unfiltered Donald Trump.
	So that's where it starts.
	And as you know, if Donald Trump thinks that you're trying to hurt him, he's never going to forget.
	So you fast forward up to July when he's on the phone with the new president of Ukraine.
	He knows that Joe Biden influenced an internal Ukrainian investigation involving his son Hunter.
	That's a fact.
	Joe Biden admitted it to the Council of Foreign Relations.
	You played the tape.
	I played the tape on billorilly.com.
	It's a fact.
	But did you know that today in the Associated Press, in covering the story, wrote the following, quote, in the call, Trump raised allegations unsupported by any evidence that the former vice president sought to interfere with the Ukrainian prosecutor's investigation of his son Hunter, unquote.
	That's the Associated Press.
	That's a lie.
	That's the second paragraph of their coverage of this thing today.
	That's a lie.
	All right.
	There is no question the vice president Biden held up a billion dollars in loans to Ukraine unless they fired the guy who was investigating his son's company in Ukraine.
	He admits it, yet the Associated Press lies, and this transcript goes out to every blanket newspaper in the country, which will then reprint the Associated Press article.
	When you say fake news, when you say it's way beyond that, the Associated Press knows this second paragraph's a lie, yet they did it anyway.
	All right, back to Trump.
	There are two things involved here.
	One is a constitutional violation, an allegation.
	There is no constitution violation.
	I read it.
	I talked to the best experts in the country about it.
	There's no constitutional violation.
	If you're a president and you're talking to a foreign leader and you want to find out something about an American citizen, you have a perfect right to ask a question about the American citizen, whether that person is running for president or picking up your garbage.
	Okay?
	If you're a president and you want information about an American citizen, you can ask anyone to provide that information.
	They don't have to do it, but you can ask.
	So there's no constitutional violation.
	The second one is the Nancy Pelosi, the election integrity.
	Donald Trump allegedly impugned the election integrity.
	Okay, that's a subjective thing, an opinion thing.
	You can't disprove it.
	You can't prove it.
	That's Ms. Pelosi's opinion.
	There is not going to be a conviction of Donald Trump on the Ukraine thing in the Senate.
	He is not going to be convicted of anything in the Senate.
	Pelosi and her married people can put a charade up in the House and alienate Americans further from themselves.
	We're in the middle of a social civil war now.
	No doubt about it.
	The hatred is at the highest level I've ever seen in my life.
	Okay.
	Well, Pelosi can keep doing this, but it's not going to go anywhere, historically speaking.
	Some believe that'll hurt the Democratic Party in the election.
	Again, that's speculation.
	But right now, there's no constitutional violation, and election integrity is a matter of opinion.
	Let me ask you from the standpoint, the very thing that they say that they are so outraged about, meaning the Democrats, okay?
	The very thing that they, they're going on and on.
	This is unbelievable.
	And they sold out the country, et cetera, et cetera.
	Yet the very guy that is leading in most polls, I guess Warren has now picked up in one national poll, is on tape, Bill.
	And on tape, he's bragging that he leveraged a billion U.S. dollars and demanded in six hours that they fire a Ukrainian prosecutor.
	Why would a vice president of the United States leverage our tax money and demand that a prosecutor in Ukraine get fired or he's not going to give them that money?
	Now we know the real reason because his son, who had no energy experience, no oil, no gas experience, no Ukraine expertise, well, he had a special consultancy deal with Burisma Holdings.
	And the prosecutor was looking into Burisma Holdings and this relationship with Hunter Biden.
	And then it gets even worse because they were talking about millions of dollars.
	But then we have Hunter Biden flying on Air Force 2.
	He gets back 14 days after he gets back.
	He has no experience with China, no experience in private equity, but he gets a billion-dollar deal for him and his partners, including Weidey Bolger's son and John Kerry's stepson.
	And it didn't go to Goldman Sachs.
	That eventually became $1.5 billion.
	And Joe Biden is on tape doing this.
	Now, where is the outrage there?
	Well, it's even worse than that.
	So Biden never in a million years should have evoked the power of the United States government to threaten a foreign nation with losing a billion dollars in loans because his son's company was under investigation.
	I mean, that's outrageous.
	Now, you can call it a conflict of interest.
	You can call it a whole bunch of things.
	But it's outrageous.
	So Biden's going to have to answer for that.
	You're not going to get away with that.
	China, a little bit of a different story, but there's no question it was nepotism.
	And at Hunter Biden, all toll, probably got about $20 to $30 million because his father was vice president.
	Okay, that's the way it is.
	You could make an argument that Trump kids benefited from their father being president.
	You could make that argument.
	But it's worse than that because this is something that, and talk about press corruption, my God.
	There is no doubt that the Democratic National Committee, the Hillary Clinton campaign, paid a Washington, D.C. firm, Fusion, to dig up dirt on Donald Trump when he was running for president.
	There's no doubt that's been established as fact.
	All right, Bill, only because of the constraints of time, we want to we're going to get right back to you.
	Bill O'Reilly will pick it up on Hillary Clinton paying for the dirty Russian dossier.
	You see, they only cared about Russian interference if it's Trump, not Hillary interference with Russia, or they don't care about Ukrainian attempts to influence our election.
	They were offering us that information.
	I'm Ben Ferguson, and I'm Ted Cruz.
	Three times a week, we do our podcast, Verdict with Ted Cruz.
	Nationwide, we have millions of listeners.
	Every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday, we break down the news and bring you behind the scenes inside the White House, inside the Senate, inside the United States Supreme Court.
	And we cover the stories that you're not getting anywhere else.
	We arm you with the facts to be able to know and advocate for the truth with your friends and family.
	So down with Verdict with Ted Cruz now, wherever you get your podcasts.
	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.
	When I told people I was making a podcast about Benghazi, nine times out of ten, they called me a masochist, rolled their eyes, or just asked, why?
	Benghazi, the truth became a web of lies.
	It's almost a dirty word, one that connotes conspiracy theory.
	Will we ever get the truth about the Benghazi massacre?
	Bad faith political warfare and, frankly, bullshit.
	We kill the ambassador just to cover something up.
	You put two and two together.
	Was it an overblown distraction or a sinister conspiracy?
	Benghazi is a Rosetta Stone for everything that's been going on for the last 20 years.
	I'm Leon Nafok from Prologue Projects and Pushkin Industries.
	This is Fiasco, Benghazi.
	What difference at this point does it make?
	Yes, that's right.
	Lock her up.
	Listen to Fiasco, Benghazi, on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
	BillO'Riley.com for all things, O'Reilly, including the release of his brand new book today, The United States of Trump, How the President Really Sees America.
	It's at 15 number one New York Times bestsellers, Amazon.com, bookstores everywhere.
	Are you doing any tour on this or what?
	I've been doing four shows.
	We're doing desert, Palm Desert, California, Phoenix, Arizona, Boston, Massachusetts, and Huntington, Long Island.
	Go to billy.com for details on that.
	But I want to give you a plug.
	You've been nice enough to plug the book, and I'm really happy you liked it and you read it.
	But last night, I get the cable ratings every day, and you, the Hanny program, dominated on a breaking news night.
	Now, people can say, well, Sean Hanni is a conservative or whatever.
	What difference does it make?
	More Americans trusted you to tell them the truth about the story than any of the other by far.
	Well, you know, by the way, I'm willing to let you go back to be a number one in cable news if you come back any day, because frankly, you know, when you're number one, you get the crap beat out of you twice as hard.
	I'd be very comfortable with you coming back and taking the number one slot, and I'll follow you and get great ratings and live happily ever after.
	You want to use me as a meat shield?
	Yeah, basically.
	I mean, you know, come on.
	I think it's pretty telling, though, that the American people now don't trust the hard news press at all, and they're going to you to get the story.
	So I segue back into, so you got Nancy Pelosi sitting up there going, oh, the integrity of the election, and we have to have an impeachment inquiry and all this BS.
	And it is BS because everybody knows and it's an established fact that the Democratic National Committee, Hillary Clinton, and perhaps the Obama administration, we don't know that for sure, but it certainly looks like it, all were fine with hiring foreign nationals to dig up dirt on Donald Trump.
	They have any problem with that.
	All right.
	If that dossier had turned out to be true, and thank God it did not for everybody's sake, all right, they would have gotten that through foreign nationals, through foreign governments, through people working for Putin.
	So it's okay for them to do it.
	But then when Donald Trump says, look, we need to know about Hunter and Joe Biden because it looks to us here in the Trump administration that the country was used to interfere in your politics in Ukraine.
	And we need to know that.
	That's what the call was.
	Now, I'm not naive.
	I know that President Trump wants to dig up dirt on Joe Biden and vice versa.
	That's the way the system works.
	When you run against somebody, you do ops.
	You try to find out about them.
	And Trump believes in his heart that Joe Biden is corrupt and did things overseas that he should not have done.
	So he wants to know.
	To me, if I were Trump, I'd want to know too.
	Wouldn't you?
	I think, you know, as I read this, and I, like you, I've talked to a lot of attorneys today, and there's not one that sees any impropriety whatsoever.
	I mean, the operative language, Donald Trump, I would like you to find out what happened.
	Now, remember, we've been playing the tape of Joe Biden leveraging tax dollars to fire the prosecutor looking into his own kid who's making millions.
	And that's already, he admitted doing it, so they don't have to investigate that.
	What they do have to investigate is why this prosecutor was fired, what was the pretense for doing it, and all that.
	But I mean, Donald Trump's not little bull peep.
	I mean, when you read the United States of Trump, it's not a pro-Trump book.
	It's not an anti-Trump book.
	It's a look at a tough guy.
	The guy is tough.
	All right.
	And if he could get dirt on Joe Biden doing untoward things in Ukraine and China, he's going to use it.
	So Nancy Pelosi is right.
	That's going to be used in the campaign.
	But you can't impeach somebody for trying to find out what happened in his rival's political career.
	That's insane.
	And that's where we are.
	That's what it's all about.
	There was a Democratic letter.
	Mark Thiessen in the Washington Post found this.
	It came from U.S. Senators Bob Menendez, Dick Durbin, Pat Leahy, and he reminded us of this.
	And remember, Nancy Pelosi declared yesterday, and there was no change from the day before.
	She just made it into a, well, it's official, but it was always official, that the mere possibility that President Trump had asked Ukraine to continue an investigation, just to continue to find truth of Biden even without a quid pro quo, there was no quid pro quo, would be enough to trigger impeachment.
	Well, in 2018, you know, he had forced Ukraine to remove the prosecutor in that particular case.
	But the Democrats in their letter to the Ukrainian government answer the, you know, answering their questions about the Mueller probe, but they had in there this line, Bill.
	It says, this reported refusal to cooperate with the Mueller probe sends a worrying signal to the Ukrainian people, as well as the international community, about your government's commitment more broadly to support justice and the rule of law.
	This is after they said, well, you know, we've supported you all these years.
	It's the exact same thing, but it doesn't matter, Bill, does it?
	Not in this environment we live in.
	You know, you mentioned earlier my ratings.
	You know, Bill, to me, it's about truth.
	I want to get the story right.
	I was right when I vetted Obama, and some people told me I was ruining my career.
	And we've been right on everything from FISA abuse to the dirty dossier to a rigged investigation to spying on a candidate, a transition team, and a president.
	And it's all been proven and the evidence is overwhelming and incontrovertible.
	Why does the 99% of media have no interest in any truth?
	Why should they?
	Because that's what their profession is supposed to be dedicated to.
	Look, this is an excellent question, but going back to my book, The United States of Trump, I explain in the book in great detail why the media hates Donald Trump so much.
	And just in a broad view, it's because he outsmarted them.
	And I was there, and you were there, and we saw how he manipulated the media in the campaign and how his apprentice experience gave him notoriety and an ID.
	Everyone knew who he was.
	Whereas John Kasich, nobody knew who he was.
	So Trump had a tremendous advantage because he used the media to his benefit.
	Now, the media never thought he would win and allowed itself to be used and too late found out, hey, now this guy has a good chance to be president, and we don't want him.
	They didn't want him from the beginning.
	But they said, ah, he's a clown show.
	We'll get the ratings and put him on and we'll get the headlines and get readers.
	But he's really not going to win.
	So he outsmarted the media, Hannity.
	He made them look foolish.
	And that's why they hate him so much.
	In addition, he is promoting some conservative principles and the media loathes that.
	You know, let me go into your book because I don't want to, I don't know, I've read the book and there's so much more to it.
	And we've spent all day on this one topic today.
	We're going to spend all night tonight.
	We're going to blow this wide open.
	Jay Seculo, we've got a whole investigative team.
	We have this nailed-down pat.
	What did you learn about Donald Trump?
	Because I learned some things about the president.
	I think we've known him about the same amount of time, you know, 20, 25 years.
	I don't remember anymore.
	And you asked him personal questions.
	Bill, and he's like, I don't want to answer this crap.
	Why are you asking me this?
	This is annoying, Bill.
	It was funny, actually.
	You know, I am an annoying guy.
	I admit it.
	You know it.
	Everyone knows it.
	I can be annoying because I'm persistent.
	And I went in and I wrote this book because I do not believe most of the American public have a clue about who Donald Trump really is.
	So I said, I'm going to write an honest book, no anonymous sources, everybody on the record.
	I'm going to tell you about him from a little baby until yesterday.
	All right.
	And then you'll know whether you respect him or not, whether you want to revote for him or not, whatever it may be, but you'll have facts.
	So I think what surprised me the most is the last chapter of the book when he tells me the toll emotionally that the Mueller thing and I'm sure this has taken on him personally.
	That was the first time I ever in 30 years have seen him be vulnerable.
	And that is a very important part of the United States of Trump, the last chapter.
	I have never seen anyone take this much, Bill, ever.
	And you and I have lived in a world we've gotten the living crap beaten out of us.
	Absolutely.
	And I can identify and so can you.
	He has taken an amazing amount of personal attacks.
	It's hurt him, his family, and everybody he knows.
	But as far as Donald Trump is concerned, he won.
	He's president.
	He's got the job he always wanted since 1990.
	All right.
	He won.
	But the ferocious attacks on him have taken their toll.
	There's no question.
	If you looked at him yesterday at the UN, he looked tired.
	He didn't have a lot of energy in his speech.
	He got energized later with the press because that always happens.
	But, I mean, anybody would say, look, every day of your life, you're going to get crucified, and that's what's happened.
	And there's not going to be any respite.
	It's going to go right on until the re-election vote.
	And he knows it.
	And it's brutal.
	It is absolutely brutal.
	And as I started this conversation with you today about the Associated Press outright lying, and there's no other word to use, in a very important article about the Ukrainian situation, I mean, you can imagine the frustration of the president saying, oh, look at this.
	Look at this.
	You know, the American people are being misled on purpose because these people hate me and they hate me because I beat them at their own game.
	And that's what it comes down to.
	You know, these are really incredible times that we are living in here because it's fact-free.
	Where do you think this ends up?
	To me, it's a massive boomerang, a massive overreach.
	The hypocrisy, it reeks of just political, disgusting hypocrisy.
	And more importantly, they've done this now to the country for three years.
	Is there a price to pay politically at some point, Bill?
	I don't know yet.
	I can tell you the anger level on politics is the highest I've ever seen it.
	I think it's the highest since the Civil War.
	As you know, I wrote the book Killing Lincoln.
	The bitterness on both sides, but the bitterness on the side of the Trump supporters is now rising.
	I can see it.
	I mean, because wherever I go, everybody knows who I am.
	All right.
	I got a 90% ID in America.
	90% of the people know who I am.
	So wherever I go, people stop me and they vent.
	They go, what is this?
	What's happening here?
	And I'm seeing the anger rise.
	And that's a horrible, horrible thing.
	And if I could pull Nancy Pelosi aside, I would say, do you not care about your country at all?
	If you have facts, put them out.
	But to put the country through a charade that you yourself know is going nowhere because the Senate will never convict to do that and to harm your own country?
	You know, beat them at the ballot box.
	All right.
	That's how you beat them.
	Not with all of this insane, trumped up, pardon a pun, of false accusations.
	Donald Trump's not a perfect man.
	If you read the United States of Trump, you'll see that.
	But did he get on and go, I want to violate the Constitution.
	I want to harm the United States of America.
	So I'm going to call up the Ukrainian president and do that?
	That's insane.
	That didn't even cost me.
	It was 14 seconds, Bill.
	This is all made-up hype, lies.
	And, you know, we've gone through three straight years of this.
	And I'll tell you the interesting thing is, and I think this is where the comparison, and there's always, I think this is a defining moment, tipping point election for the country.
	I've told you that privately.
	I'm telling everybody publicly.
	And if Elizabeth Warren ever becomes the president or anybody with her ideology, it's over.
	Freedom will be a thing of the past.
	It'll be state control of pretty much every aspect of our lives.
	And it will lead to an America that is impoverished almost immediately.
	As soon as they get rid of the oil and gas, they're going to get rid of in the combustion engine and give Medicare for all no private options and everything else is free.
	And then we're going to confiscate everybody's wealth if they saved anything.
	I agree.
	Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders are dangerous individuals.
	And I had no problem, by the way, with Bill Clinton.
	Not his politics.
	I didn't like the way he conducted himself, but I had no problem with that.
	Barack Obama, many discussions with him.
	They were all respectful.
	Okay.
	Democratic Party, I have voted for Democrats.
	But these individuals, these socialists, they do not believe in freedom.
	I wrote a column called The Promise.
	It's on billoreilly.com.
	And I hope everybody reads it because you are absolutely correct.
	These people get power.
	Our freedoms are gone.
	And that's what it's coming down to.
	I think it's your best book yet, The United States of Trump, How the President Really Sees America.
	Bill O'Reilly's brand new book just out today.
	It's on billo'reilly.com, amazon.com.
	We have it up on Hannity.com, bookstores everywhere.
	And Bill, thanks for spending the time.
	Thanks for giving us this interview, and we'll have you back next week.
	I really appreciate it, Sean.
	You're very kind to help me out.
	I'm Ben Ferguson, and I'm Ted Cruz.
	Three times a week, we do our podcast, Verdict with Ted Cruz.
	Nationwide, we have millions of listeners.
	Every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday, we break down the news and bring you behind the scenes inside the White House, inside the Senate, inside the United States Supreme Court.
	And we cover the stories that you're not getting anywhere else.
	We arm you with the facts to be able to know and advocate for the truth with your friends and family.
	So down with Verdict with Ted Cruz now, wherever you get your podcasts.
	Hey there, I'm Mary Catherine Ham, 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.
	What I told people, I was making a podcast about Benghazi.
	Nine times out of ten, they called me a masochist, rolled their eyes, or just asked, why?
	Benghazi, the truth became a web of lies.
	It's almost a dirty word, one that connotes conspiracy theory.
	Will we ever get the truth about the Benghazi massacre?
	Bad faith, political warfare, and frankly, bullshit.
	We kill the ambassador just to cover something up.
	You put two and two together.
	Was it an overblown distraction or a sinister conspiracy?
	Benghazi is a Rosetta Stone for everything that's been going on for the last 20 years.
	I'm Leon Nayfak from Prologue Projects and Pushkin Industries.
	This is Fiasco, Benghazi.
	What difference at this point does it make?
	Yes, that's right.
	Lock her up.
	Listen to Fiasco, Benghazi, on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
	We have, I said it in 2007.
	I said, media is dead.
	It's gone.
	Journalism's dead.
	It's buried.
	It doesn't exist.
	You know, and I've told the story many times.
	I won't repeat it now.
	I learned such a valuable lesson.
	I was a local host in Atlanta in the Richard Jewell case, and the AJC comes out.
	He fits the profile of the lone bomber.
	He lives with his mother.
	I'm like, that doesn't mean a thing.
	Maybe saving money to buy a house.
	How's that?
	I didn't know at the time.
	I was the only one that didn't go down the frenzy lane with all these conspiracy theories.
	They turned this guy, Richard Jewell's life, upside down.
	You think they would have learned, but no, they're wrong.
	Let's see.
	Cambridge police, wrong.
	Ferguson, Missouri, wrong.
	UVA, wrong.
	Duke La Crosse, wrong.
	Baltimore, Maryland, wrong.
	They're all three years of lies, conspiracy theories, and a hoax disproven.
	No corrections, no apologies, nothing.
	You know, and what happened with Nicholas Sandman, you know, this Covington high school student, 16-year-old kid, you know, the left's willingness, they never made a phone call to find out, okay, is this accurate?
	They had a 15-second clip and they attacked these kids viciously.
	And, you know, they began, then all of a sudden, whoops, they went.
	And when they knew the truth, they kept it up.
	It was so bad.
	Well, now that they're like trying to delete all their tweets and expressing regrets.
	Little late, Kara Swisher, tech writer, New York Times contributor.
	I was a complete dolt to put up this and several other obnoxious tweets yesterday without waiting to see the whole video of the incident.
	I apologize to the kids from Kentucky unilaterally.
	At least you had the decency to do it.
	Other media people kept going, you know, calling this kid a racist.
	This kid did not approach Nathan Phillips, the Native American.
	Just the opposite.
	Nathan Phillips ran up into his grill banging a drum and he just smiled when the black Hebrew Israelites were calling these kids all sorts of names and racist comments were being made.
	He's the one that turned around and said, yeah, don't respond to these guys.
	Let's just keep our cool here.
	I don't think I could have handled it as well as he did.
	And, you know, one of the things Swishers had put up there was finding every one of these beep beep kids and giving them a large piece of my mind.
	You know, we have the new republics.
	They had to delete a tweet arguing that Trump supporting students were racist and others deleting tweets that the kids should be punched in the face.
	That was at fake news, CNN.
	CNN's Ana Navarro deleted one denouncing the quote rear-end wipe parents of the students for teaching them bigotry and racism.
	Wow.
	And our old friend S.E. Cup, hey guys, seeing all the additional videos now, I 100% regret reacting too quickly to the Covington story.
	I wish I had the fuller picture before weighing in.
	Whoopsie-daisy.
	Lynn Wood was the attorney for Richard Jewell.
	That's when I got to know Lynn Wood.
	I had one of the first interviews with Richard Jewell because Richard Jewell actually heard me when the story broke about him saying, so what?
	He lives with his mother.
	That doesn't make him a terrorist.
	And he wasn't.
	He was a hero.
	He did save lives that day.
	Lynn, how are you?
	Welcome back.
	Sean, I'm fine.
	How are you?
	You got anything to talk about these days?
	No, you know, there's not much going on.
	I need to retire.
	I need to get out of here.
	No, we need you.
	We need you.
	We need somebody on the air that's telling the American public the truth.
	So don't go anywhere.
	How bad did it get as it relates to it?
	I know you've filed a number of lawsuits, and I'd like to know where all of this is going.
	What was the worst coverage that you saw as it relates to Nicholas Sandman?
	Well, the Washington Post was the first member of the mainstream media to jump out and go after Nicholas based on an edited clip that had been posted on the internet.
	But if I'm evaluating right now the three cases that we have pending, Washington Post, CNN, and NBC, I think hands down it goes to CNN because CNN not only re-broadcast and republished the false narrative of Nathan Phillips without investigation,
	but CNN went so far as to accuse Nicholas and the Covington Catholic students of attacking with slurs and other racist comments, the black Hebrew Israelites.
	And in fact, the opposite was true.
	So they went after him on two different fronts, both false, both putting him out there as the poster child for racist misconduct.
	And I'll give them first spot at the moment.
	You know, some of the days.
	For example, in the beginning, they took a snippet and they ran with, they built their own narrative that he walked over to Nathan Phillips and that these kids were racist and et cetera, et cetera.
	They didn't even make a phone call, did they?
	To ask, did this really happen this way?
	They did not.
	In fact, what they did is they took about a 59-second edited clip posted by someone with an agenda that showed Nicholas standing in front of Nathan Phillips while he was beating the drum.
	Now, anyone with common sense knows that something happened before that clip and something happened after that clip.
	They didn't bother to look at the videos of the entire incident that were available online to learn the truth.
	They jumped out and they let Nathan Phillips have their airways to tell his false narrative.
	And every interview he gave, the narrative changed because you can't tell the same lie twice.
	Nathan Phillips was a liar, but he fit their agenda.
	So they ran with his factual narrative of the events, which was total fiction.
	There was no taunting.
	There was no physical intimidation.
	Nobody, including Nicholas, tried to block him or to keep him from retreating.
	It was all a lie made up of several lies, but they were eager to go out there and to push that narrative from CNN's standpoint and NBC and the Washington Post.
	They did it because he was wearing a Make America Great Again cap.
	It fit their anti-Trump narrative.
	Truth was irrelevant.
	Their agenda was the priority.
	And that's just not true with Nicholas Sandman.
	That's true of their coverage in general, as we clearly have seen demonstrated recently with the videos of Jeff Zucker exposed by Project Veritas.
	Nicholas Sandman is a kid.
	He's not a public figure.
	Now, if they lie about me, which I've now been a public figure for 31 years, I have really no recourse, do I?
	But Nicholas Sandman does.
	Nicholas Sandman does.
	And don't give up on your own standing.
	I've successfully handled a number of cases for public figures because you can, once you get into court and get past a motion to dismiss, discovery produces the truth.
	Facts are stubborn things.
	And it is not impossible for even a public figure to show that the accusations that are false were published recklessly with a reckless disregard for truth or falsity.
	So if the accusation is heinous and it's clearly false, even a public figure, I believe, has a right to find accountability in a court of law.
	I think I need to reevaluate.
	I really need to reevaluate because I have let a lot go over the years.
	I'm not going to take this crap anymore.
	And now I can actually afford you as an attorney.
	In my earlier days in Atlanta, I would never be able to afford you.
	Well, let me give you a really good example.
	Look at Justice Kavanaugh.
	Yep.
	If Justice Kavanaugh was willing to be distracted from his duties on the Supreme Court, and if he was willing to withstand the slings and arrows of the media defendants, because what they do is they try to defend their wrongdoing by throwing as much mud as they can against the plaintiff.
	But Brett Kavanaugh, in my opinion, would prevail in a defamation case against a number of individuals and a number of members of the media.
	But obviously, for practical reasons, he's chosen not to do that.
	I don't blame him, but I believe that he's a great example of a public figure that could, in fact, file and win a defamation case.
	That is a great, great point.
	That is a great point.
	I mean, I wish we'd change the laws.
	I wish the standard, I know Great Britain has very different laws.
	I know that Charles Harder won the McCawker case, which was phenomenal.
	That was involved Hulk Hogan.
	They went bankrupt over it.
	I know the Daily Mail ended up paying Melania Trump.
	And by the way, I understand other people.
	Are you going to go after every outlet that did this?
	Because I think you should.
	Well, we've got another almost two years to file lawsuits for Nicholas because of his age.
	The statute of limitations is told until he turns 18.
	That will be next year in July.
	So we've got about a year and a half, I guess, to bring the wrongdoers into court.
	We hit a stumbling block with the Washington Post case, and the court, I believe, erroneously dismissed that case.
	We had a hearing yesterday on our motion to dismiss because we're preparing to take it to the Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals, where I am convinced it will be reversed.
	But I left the hearing yesterday, Sean, and I'm very optimistic that the judge understands the error in his ruling.
	And I'd give us a better than 50-50 chance of the judge reversing himself and allowing us to get discovery going.
	And when discovery starts, when the editors start having to testify, and the people that wrote their retraction, quote-unquote, retraction editors' notes, and Phillips is deposed, the truth is going to come out.
	My recollection, though, Lynn.
	He's going to get the release that he deserves.
	We're going to hold these people accountable.
	My recollection is even after we knew the truth, there were still people telling the lie about these are racist.
	He's this, that he couldn't, that he did it.
	I mean, how long after the truth was known did they continue?
	And did they retract and apologize in the interim?
	Some of them went on for days afterwards.
	And you don't have to go any further than Twitter today, and you're going to still find a large number of people who accuse Nicholas of being an arrogant, racist brat.
	You know, the lie, I call it the shout of guilty, is rarely overcome by the whisper of innocence.
	And so the lasting impact of the false and heinous accusations against this young man will follow him for his lifetime, even though they have been totally disproven by an objective view of the evidence.
	But there is no objectivity in the media any longer, Sean.
	Journalism is dead.
	I said in 2007, stay right there.
	Linwood, the attorney for Nicholas Sandman, I mean, it's just they are not journalists.
	These are not news organizations.
	They're phony.
	And fake news is exactly the right branding that the president has given them.
	I'm Ben Ferguson, and I'm Ted Cruz.
	Three times a week, we do our podcast, Verdict with Ted Cruz.
	Nationwide, we have millions of listeners.
	Every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday, we break down the news and bring you behind the scenes inside the White House, inside the Senate, inside the United States Supreme Court.
	And we cover the stories that you're not getting anywhere else.
	We arm you with the facts to be able to know and advocate for the truth with your friends and family.
	So download Verdict with Ted Cruz Now, wherever you get your podcasts.
	Hey there, I'm Mary Catherine Hammond 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.
	What I told people I was making a podcast about Benghazi, nine times out of ten, they called me a masochist, rolled their eyes, or just asked, why?
	Benghazi, the truth became a web of lies.
	It's almost a dirty word, one that connotes conspiracy theory.
	Will we ever get the truth about the Benghazi massacre?
	Bad faith, political warfare, and frankly, bullshit.
	We kill the ambassador just to cover something up.
	You put two and two together.
	Was it an overblown distraction or a sinister conspiracy?
	Benghazi is a Rosetta Stone for everything that's been going on for the last 20 years.
	I'm Leon Nafak from Prologue Projects and Pushkin Industries.
	This is Fiasco, Benghazi.
	What difference at this point does it make?
	Yes, that's right.
	Lock her up.
	Listen to Fiasco, Benghazi, on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
	All right, as we continue, Lynn Wood, renowned deterning the Richard Jewell case, now representing Nicholas Sandman, the Covington Catholic school kid that was wearing a MAGA hat.
	Everything that the media told about Nicholas Sandman was wrong.
	Every commentary was wrong.
	The facts were wrong.
	They did zero due diligence.
	And then in many cases, even after the facts were known, they stayed with the false narrative because it's their hate Trump narrative.
	I'd like to believe this kid becomes a billionaire at the end of this and that you don't let anybody off the hook.
	Where are we with that?
	And then I don't think it's about money, but you know what?
	He deserves his, he does what they did to him cannot happen anymore in this country, in my view.
	Well, you're exactly right, Sean.
	And it's not a matter of what is the dollar amount.
	The dollar amount needs to be determined as the amount of money that will punish the media for its wrongdoing and will, importantly, deter the media from repeating the wrongdoing against other innocent individuals.
	That, as you know, is going to have to be a big figure because these companies are owned by large, very wealthy corporate conglomerates.
	So we're going to have to get their attention.
	I hope a jury will get their attention.
	And Sean, I don't do this for political reasons.
	You don't do it for the money either.
	I'm going to do it.
	I don't do it for the money.
	I do this not for the money or for the politics, but because of the injustice inflicted on a 16-year-old boy.
	Now, if we look at it politically, you know as well as I know that the mainstream media has become another arm of the Democratic Party and the anti-Trump movement.
	I have always found that sunshine is the greatest disinfectant of them all.
	Stealing a quote from a wise jurist of the past.
	I would think that the media would be in an uproar over the secrecy that's being imposed on this so-called impeachment inquiry.
	Open records, open government.
	That's what the media always demands.
	Yet now they are silent and acquiescent in Congress investigating the president of the United States behind closed doors.
	That speaks volumes.
	You don't have to even have Project Veritas expose by video the bias.
	The bias is there every day, and it's reflected by their unwillingness to tell the truth and expose the American public to the truth.
	If people learn the truth about Nicholas Sandman, the results should be significant and hopefully enough to deter this type of conduct from ever occurring again.
	Lynn Wood, keep us updated, attorney for Nicholas Sandman, Covington Catholic school kid who did nothing wrong and acted frankly in a way that showed more discipline than you could imagine.
	25 to the top of the hour, toll-free.
	Telephone numbers, 800-941-Sean, if you want to be a part of the program.
	So I got addicted to one of these cable shows called Dirty Jobs.
	And I'm thinking this is my whole life unfolding before my eyes because I did all of them, not the ones that Mike Rowe did.
	But I mean, I just love the stuff that people do in their lives.
	And I love the fact that Mike would throw himself into whatever the work was.
	And some of it was pretty dirty stuff.
	And Mike Rowe, anyway, he's become a friend over time.
	Really admire him.
	And he's written a brand new book.
	It's called The Way I Heard It.
	It's part stories from his podcast and part memoir on his part.
	And Mike, by the way, Mike Rowe works.
	He has a foundation and they give scholarships to students pursuing a career in the skilled trades, which I think is amazing.
	One of the best things I ever did in my life was spend 10 years.
	Let's see.
	I'd built houses and I rehabbed houses and I was a painting contractor, learned how to hang wallpaper, was a wallpaper and painting contractor.
	Then I did rehab, fell off a roof three stories, hit my head, became a conservative, had a dislocated arm and a broken radial head, and laid tile.
	I love finished work.
	You should write a book.
	I'm not writing a book about that.
	Nobody cares.
	I'm writing a book, but it's not going to be about that.
	Here's some unsolicited observational advice.
	How are you, by the way?
	Good to see you.
	I'm great.
	You too.
	Get some cameras, dude.
	Get some cameras and put them out here and chronicle what your listeners can't see.
	Get it on video.
	I'm on TV an hour a day.
	Not like this, you're not.
	I like the intimacy of radio.
	I just spent 20 minutes with this traveling circus you call a crew.
	They're fantastic, by the way.
	They're the best.
	But you should hear what they say about you when you're not.
	They say it to my face.
	It's remarkable.
	It's remarkable.
	By the way, am I not the best boss?
	By the way, I buy everybody in there lunch, dinner, every day.
	Every one of those people in that room get big bonuses every year because I love them all.
	I do the same for my people, but I chew their food.
	I'm not chewing their food.
	And then I feed them like a mother bird.
	And I'll tell you, Sean, they keep coming back for more and more.
	Chew my food, Mike, chew it more.
	I mean, this is the unintended consequences of treating your people with that level of care and attention.
	It's just going to, you're going to be chewing other people's food for the rest of your life.
	I'm just warning you.
	Do you agree with me?
	I'm going to ask a serious question and ignore all of that because you got them in tears.
	Do you agree with me that fame is unhealthy?
	Yes.
	Do you agree with me that real work is extraordinarily healthy?
	And if you did real work in your life and then experienced some success later, you never forget where you came from.
	That's a complicated question.
	You phrased it in a somewhat awkward way, but I do believe that fundamentally you're asking me if hard work is its own reward.
	And to that, I would concur.
	But I'm never going to, it's in my DNA that I was a dishwasher and a paperboy and a cook and a busboy and a waiter and a bartender and a paper hanger and a painter and a builder and a tile layer.
	That was 20 years of my life.
	Let me tell you, I'll tell you what I think, where I think you're going with it and where I agree passionately is that as you get older and as you experience something like success or actual success, however you define it, the jobs where you started, the first rungs on the ladder, you're going to remember them with all of the import and more than you otherwise would.
	I've talked to so many people who have had a lot of success in their life.
	And invariably, what comes up first is the time in their life where they paid their dues, where they did the hard thing, where they sweated it out, where they delayed their gratification, where their attitude in hindsight was ultimately the thing that got them through.
	Those are the things we remember.
	And the tough jobs, the difficult jobs, the dirty jobs, those are the mini crucibles that allow us to pass through something that shapes us.
	In your book, you talk about when you got Dirty Jobs, the series, that, you know, you devise, you know, using a real pig on a pedestal.
	Oh, yeah.
	Yeah.
	Well, the network was trying to figure out how to promote the program and they had all sorts of ideas where I would be sort of portrayed as the epitome of a blue-collar working guy or where we would do all of these heightened, exaggerated homages to traditional versions of work.
	At the same time, I think it was MasterCard was doing that whole what's in your wallet campaign.
	Yeah.
	And I wanted to say, what's on your pedestal?
	You know, what is it that you actually admire?
	And so rather than put a person on it, I wanted like an icon.
	And a pig to me was the epitome of both dirty jobs, hardworking.
	They certainly make the ultimate sacrifice for us.
	So I put a pig on a pedestal, a white pedestal.
	And while we filmed a series of ads for the show, this pig crapped in a way that I haven't seen an animal crap in a long time.
	I mean, all different varieties of crap, right?
	It was a small, tasteful little pieces of poo and explosive diarrhea.
	And when we were done shooting this promo, that white set that we were on had looked like you had painted it brown many years ago during one of your first jobs.
	You get very personal in this book.
	You talk about your parents, the best advice about your grandfather, a betrayal of a trusted financial advisor you thought was a friend.
	Paul Harvey's influence on you, which I thought was fascinating.
	But to me, dirty jobs defines you because I watching it, I saw that you appreciate what real Americans do every day.
	Because I don't think America is great by these people in New York and Washington.
	I think those are the dirtbags in life.
	Well, look, it's flattering.
	I mean, as a broadcaster, I'm glad you liked the show, but I'd be curious on your thoughts about the way we shot it.
	And this is what I miss about TV.
	And this is the only time I've ever had a chance to work like this.
	But Dirty Jobs, we never did a second take ever.
	We didn't do any scouting.
	There was no pre-production.
	There was certainly no writing.
	There was no actors.
	So the viewer saw something that you almost never get to see on TV.
	They saw what I saw.
	They saw the day that I experienced it and their chronology that I experienced it in.
	And if you're going to labor in a form called reality TV or nonfiction, it just always seemed to me that you.
	There was no editing at all.
	Oh, no, we edited it.
	But when we put it together.
	I mean, we shot from sun up to Sunday.
	That's what I'm going to say.
	You get the story of the day.
	Right.
	But what you got on Dirty Jobs was the day itself laid out in the actual story that occurred.
	You got reality.
	This is why I'm sort of tying two things together here.
	And that is that I think me doing those jobs for two decades of my life defined me.
	I think you're probably right.
	And I think my belief in God, which is real, I mean, I'm not the best person.
	Christians actually believe they're the ones that need the forgiveness.
	And my work ethic and my parents, I know I stand on their shoulders.
	And my mom worked more 16-hour shifts as a prison guard than I could count for 25 years.
	And my dad, a probation guy, but also a waiter on weekends.
	And my grandparents with 10 bucks, all four of them from Ireland, 10 bucks in their pocket, the most they had.
	And how is it that I whine ever?
	I don't have any right to whine and we whine.
	Yeah, we whine.
	We like the way whining makes us feel.
	And we also like the sound of our own voices.
	And when you combine the sound of your...
	I hate the sound of mine.
	I like the sound of yours better.
	Well, you know, I mean, I just wish I had something fascinating to say, Sean.
	Honestly.
	Tell me about your parents and grandparents and Paul Harvey.
	So Paul Harvey, as you know, I mean, when I think of great storytellers, you know, geez, Charles Keralt and Studs Turkel and George Plimpton and Paul Harvey.
	And these guys are gone now, you know, and they had a way on the radio and they had a style and they had a point of view and a level of ownership that I think is missing today, by and large.
	I liked Harvey because he made history and biography interesting to people who would otherwise not be interested in either.
	And I dedicated the book to him.
	And I write in the style of the rest of the story because I sat in a long-term parking lot in the mid-80s, got to the airport late, was waiting to, you know, I had to run to catch my flight, but I couldn't get out of the car until I heard Paul Harvey say, and now you know the rest of the story.
	Good day.
	And I missed my flight, you know, because I sat in the car waiting to hear the end of the damn story.
	And so for me, you know, I always wanted to write stories that made people late, that they had to get to the end of.
	So that's why I do a podcast in that style.
	That's why the book is called The Way I Heard It.
	But it was my mother who you met who encouraged me to interrupt these biographies of famous people I'd never known with true stories of my own life that in some way rhymed with these people and maybe explained why I chose to write about the people I wrote about.
	And the result is the book you have.
	It's this weird mix of autobiography and biography, mystery and memoir.
	And it's the way I heard it because honestly, like you, I am tired of people who are just completely infected with certainty telling me without any shred of hubris or humility precisely how a thing has to be.
	I mean, we're, we're a nation now.
	Don't get me wrong.
	I love conviction and I'm a big fan of people who know what they believe and why.
	There is objective truth, you know.
	Absolutely, there's objective truth.
	But the question is, what's persuasive?
	Do you take the objective truth and beat somebody over the head with it?
	Or do you lay it out in front of them in a way that hopefully allows them to connect to some dots, right?
	And maybe arrive at their own conclusion.
	We're just out of time in this country.
	A lot of people feel like they're out of patience as well.
	And so we're screaming at each other.
	We're not saying, hey, I've been thinking about it and this is the way I heard it.
	We're saying, I've done my research and I've got my links and I've got my sources and now I'm going to instruct you.
	So there's a lot of lecturing and there's a lot of proselytizing and there's a fair amount of truth out there.
	But how we get to it, you know, Paul Harvey.
	There's a lot of lying.
	There's a lot of nonsense.
	There's a lot of propaganda.
	That's right.
	There's a lot of people that have an agenda.
	I'll tell you, I don't know how you would reconcile.
	And let's get into this whole political divide in the country.
	How do you reconcile that you got a group of people on the left that will every election say a conservative is racist, sexist, misogynist, homophobic, xenophobic, Islamophobic?
	They want dirty air and water.
	They want children to die.
	They want Granny and Grandpa to only eat dog food before a Paul Ryan lookalike throws them over the cliff or that can't accept the results of an election.
	Mint Romney is the nicest guy in the world, said everything Trump said, and he was nice.
	And they still called him a racist and a misogynist because he had women's binders with resumes.
	He wanted to hire them.
	I don't know how you reason with those people.
	Why would you?
	You can't.
	Why wouldn't you just say?
	Then it becomes a fight.
	Yeah, but look, how are you going to fight him?
	Me?
	I would step back and I'd say, okay, world, you just heard some evidence.
	Now you get to decide, A, is it factual?
	So you'll do your homework.
	But more importantly, is it persuasive?
	Are you hearing something you want to hear and therefore agreeing with it out of knee-jerk?
	Or are you hearing something you don't want to hear and therefore disagreeing with it for the same reason?
	How much time are you going to put into it?
	See, I would look.
	When it comes to saving the country, I don't think there's, we have, I have an urgency about it because I think this country is in trouble.
	I think what you're doing is really important.
	And I think this conversation and the fight has to happen the way it's happening in your slice of the media, which let's say it's a, it's a pretty big slice.
	Like you're in a knife fight, my friend, in a phone booth.
	And I've seen you do it.
	You do it every day.
	And I applaud it.
	Four hours a day.
	But.
	Here it comes.
	Here comes the Hannity hit.
	Go ahead.
	No, no, it's the, what's the old expression?
	Everything you hear before but is BS.
	Yeah, that's true.
	No, but I don't mean any of this as a backhanded compliment at all.
	The people in your audience, you got them.
	You persuaded them.
	It's the choir and it's a big choir and many of them are here because of you.
	But there's something else going on in the country that goes into another slice.
	How do you get the people who don't find you persuasive?
	How do you do that?
	I can only stand up for principles and truth as I know them.
	And I can only see that there's a group of people that, let's look at the deep state.
	The president was, there was a dirty Russian dossier that was used.
	They were warned repeatedly that it was not authentic.
	It was never verified.
	It says on the top of a FISA warrant verified.
	And they used it anyway to spy on a candidate, then a transition team, then a president.
	That's just truth.
	So the answer is those people that hate Trump, I will never be able to persuade them.
	So I will argue we must defeat them.
	That's why I think, look, the Second World War was a complicated affair.
	It was fought on a couple of fronts.
	It's not that complicated.
	It was good versus evil.
	Well, it's pretty simple when you look back at it.
	But when you're in the midst of it, you can't win in Tarawa.
	You can't win in the South Pacific and be in the Ardennes at the same time.
	You've got a German problem.
	You've got a Japanese problem.
	You've got to fight those wars in different ways.
	Sojo, Hitler, the last century, 100 million human souls destroyed.
	100 million.
	That's a fact.
	That's a fact.
	I wrote a book, Deliver Us from Evil.
	Person that works with you worked on that book.
	That's evil.
	Wait a minute, the person who works with me.
	Keith Jen worked on that book.
	Oh, good.
	Okay.
	She's the publisher.
	She is not the personification of evil.
	She's very nice.
	I spent the last 24 hours with her.
	You know what?
	She bought me lunch and she said some very kind things to me.
	I could talk to you forever.
	I wish we could get along like you're dreaming about.
	I don't think, I don't see it as possible.
	We now are fighting for the soul of America, constitutional republic, or we're going to have socialism and state run everything.
	You get the last word.
	So I can't disagree, but I think you have to agree, too, that when you frame it in a binary choice, you're going to get in a binary world and the shades of gray will go away.
	It's going to be a black and white thing.
	Now, you see it that way, and I'm not even disagreeing with you.
	I'm just saying there are people out there that can be persuaded.
	Do you agree with this?
	This is a live-free, choose freedom or America dies.
	Do you agree with that?
	Yeah, I actually do.
	But my friends who are inclined towards socialistic leanings aren't going to be persuaded by that argument.
	No, not at all.
	So I have friends that have Chep Smith and I got along.
	Nobody would believe that.
	I believe it.
	Yeah, you're a reasonable guy.
	The way I heard it, Mike Rowe, it's on Hannity.com.
	Do you have a website, microwave.com?
	Yeah, micro.com slash book is a fine place to get it.
	Or bookstores everywhere.
	Good to see you.
	You're good.
	Hey, man, thank you for having me.
	And honestly, I applaud what you're doing.
	I applaud what you're doing.
	Thank you so much.
	I applaud louder.
	Good.
	I deserve it more.
	Yeah, but I'm clapping for myself.
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