Senator Mitch McConnell, who bestselling book, "The Long Game," is now out in paperback, is here to talk about the slow walk of the impeachment papers from Speaker Pelosi. The same woman who said the impeachment of President Trump was urgent has not handed over the documents to the Senate for a vote. 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.
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.
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I don't know what to make of this, what's going on with an airplane, this plane that was shot down in the middle of all of this mess.
I just saw this cross the wire with CBS News.
I don't have this, but I'm looking at it and reading it, and I'm like, really?
CBS News reporting that officials are confident Iran shot.
Now, Linda, I see your interest in this, and we'll explain why in a minute, but are confident that Iran shot down that Ukrainian jetliner.
It was odd.
They wouldn't even consider handing over the black box to Boeing.
It was a 737 yet again.
Anyway, according to their saying, hours after the Iranian missile attack on U.S. targets earlier this week, CBS News has learned the Ukrainian International Airlines plane crash Wednesday soon after takeoff.
I did watch one commentator on TV suggesting that, well, it happened at 8,000 feet, 8,000 feet.
A plane wouldn't just dive right down to the ground if it lost its engine power.
But anyway, intelligence picked up signals of radar being turned on.
And U.S. satellites, they're saying, according to CBS News, detected two surface-to-air missile launches, which happened shortly after the plane exploded.
And federal officials were briefed on the intelligence on Thursday.
Source who was in the briefing said it appears the missile components were found nearby.
Hang on.
I got to get page two of that.
So I don't know the answer to a business insider.
I'm giving you, again, their coverage.
Flight 752 is now believed to have been hit by fire from a Russian-built Tor M1 SA-15 surface-to-air missile operated by the Iranian military.
Citing a U.S. official ABC news reporting, U.S. intelligence was confident Iran painted the Ukrainian airliner with radar.
In other words, they tried to hide it, firing two surface-to-air missiles.
That would then raise questions who might have been in that airplane.
Images appearing now show missile fragments said to have been found outside of Tehran, circulating on social media.
There's been a lot.
Look, I want to give everyone a heads up here.
I don't want everyone to get ahead of themselves.
There's been a lot of lying, fake video all over social media.
And look, there's a lot of good information out there.
I just, I, we just want to be careful.
I don't want to give you fake information, but ABC and CBS are now going forward with that.
So we'll watch, we'll wait, and obviously report to you at any point we get new information about it.
Now, oh, Mitch McConnell, the Senate Majority Leader, is going to join us.
Doesn't do a lot of interviews.
Glad to have him.
There's a lot of news, obviously.
War Powers Act, the impeachment sham trial that I guess is going to take place.
He seems to have won his battle against Nancy Pelosi, and she's not going to dictate to Mitch McConnell how he's going to handle the impeachment as the Senate majority leader.
We got new tape of Chucky Schumer.
Schumer ran on the fact that he was going to acquit Clinton.
That's how abusively biased he was.
To get lectures from him is ridiculous.
We'll play that in the course of the show too today.
Now, I will say, you know, you watch all of what the mob and the media is doing and saying.
You watch the shift show.
Remember, he had the audition shift show.
That was behind closed doors.
I still don't think we've gotten every transcript either.
Why he's hiding it?
I don't know.
Person that ought to have been auditioning and interviewed and put under oath and still should be is Schiff himself because he lied as usual.
He's a congenital liar.
He's compromised in this particular case as it relates to the non-whistleblower hearsay whistleblower wasn't really a whistleblower and the contact he and his office had with the whistleblower non-whistleblower.
But anyway, all during that process, leading straight up until Christmas, they took us, you know, I had to work one of those.
Again, I came in a few days, stayed more days than I had planned by the end of the year, which is when I take my long vacation every year.
And I stayed because it was too important.
And anyway, remember what the Democrats were saying.
Now, Pelosi is saying that she will keep now the articles the Senate agrees until the Senate agrees to her terms for a trial.
Well, that's not what the Constitution of the United States calls for.
That is, well, I guess what Nancy Pelosi wants to have, but that is not exactly what the process is.
Article 2 of the Constitution is very, very clear on the issue of impeachment in the United States.
You know, it was very clear in the Constitution, establishes the executive branch.
Federal government carries out and enforces federal laws.
Article 2 vests power of the executive branch, the office of the president, lays out the procedures for electing, removing the president, establishes the president's powers, responsibilities.
And if you just go down a little further, you talk about Section 1 lays out procedures for the Electoral College, which Democrats would like to change.
It's like they would like to change the issues involved.
They want to stack the courts now.
Article 2 lays out the powers of the presidency.
Yep, the president is the commander-in-chief.
The president gets pardons.
There are certain limits set to the executive branch power.
I certainly think that all of this is very, very clear.
And then you get, for example, articles being laid out.
Article 3 lays out responsibilities of the president.
State of the Union address.
Commander-in-Chief, receiving foreign representatives, granting the president the power to convene both houses of Congress.
Then you get to section 4 and you get to the impeachment part of this.
President, vice president, all civil officers of the U.S. shall be removed from office on impeachment for conviction of treason, bribery, or other high crimes or misdemeanors.
It also allows for involuntary, if you will, removal from office for the president by cabinet secretaries.
We've talked about that in the course of all of this.
But it's very clear as it relates to who gets what power where, and how does the process of impeachment work?
Well, the House of Representatives, they have the power solely as the House of Representatives.
President, vice president, all civil officers shall be removed from office.
That is in the hands of the U.S. House of Representatives.
I can give you the background and the history of it, but I don't think it's even that important because the House brings impeachment charges against federal officials, in this case, the president.
That's part of their oversight, their investigatory responsibilities.
You have individual members of the House can introduce impeachment resolutions.
We've seen a lot of that, like an ordinary bill.
House could initiate proceedings by passing a resolution authorizing the inquiry.
We watched that.
The committee of the judiciary ordinarily has jurisdiction over impeachments.
We saw the weird little power play that Nancy Pelosi moved it over to the House Intel Committee and the compromise corrupt shif instead of Nadler.
And then Nadler had his little say in the whole process.
We know it has not been used a lot three times in the case of presidents.
15 judges have been impeached by the House, 60 times total when you include federal judges, only eight in that particular case, and that the Senate holds a trial.
Nancy Pelosi would like to say it doesn't.
Anyway, what did the Democrats say all this time leading up to Christmas?
They were telling us again and again that they want this.
Pelosi assured the public, we want this done expeditiously.
Pelosi said we can't wait for the courts to weigh in on the subpoenas, meaning the executive privilege question that the Supreme Court agreed to take up, fulfilling its constitutional role of resolving conflict between the executive and legislative branches of Congress.
Then we had the Judiciary Committee's report declaring, quote, we must act immediately.
You had the compromised corrupt congenital liar shiff arguing it is an urgent matter that cannot wait if we are to protect the nation's security and the integrity of our elections.
Then you had the hypocrite Jerry Nadler.
He didn't even want the star report released, which, by the way, under the Independent Counsel Statute mandated it be released, but yet he was demanding the special counsel report be released and everything that consisted as the predicate for it, that also released.
And that statute doesn't even call for that.
They didn't have to release anything.
You know, all of we've got to act now to protect our elections.
We have a sense of urgency, one after another after another.
Democrats argued impeachment was time-limited, an urgent task.
Okay, well, then where is it?
They did their thing.
Now what's happened is the crack, the dam is broken.
Floodgates are now open, if you will, because we have 58% of the American people think Pelosi should send the articles over, and I would argue it's probably much higher.
And I think Dianne Feinstein pretty much summed it up for everybody because I think she's fed up with all of this garbage.
Because for her to actually say, if it's serious and urgent, like you've been telling us, send them over.
If it isn't, don't send them over.
That's Dianne Feinstein.
And then she goes on to say, if we're going to do it, I don't see what good delay does.
Now, Senator Chris Murphy said, I think the time has passed.
Send the articles over.
Joe Manchin, it needs to start now.
Angus King, it's time for the speaker to send the articles.
Doug Jones, he wants to get reelected in Alabama.
I don't think the odds are good, but anyway, hoping Pelosi will submit the articles because most people are ready to get moving on this.
Blumenthal even saying we're reaching the point where the articles should be sent.
John Tester is saying it.
Even Chris Koons, the partisan he is, is saying it.
Now, why?
What happened to all the urgency on this?
Where did it go?
House Democrats also are now losing patience.
Now, Pelosi, she said earlier today, she will send the articles when I'm ready.
Oh, okay.
No, I'm not holding them indefinitely.
I will turn them over when I am ready, and that will probably be soon, probably.
Congressman Adam Smith, Democratic Chairman, House Armed Services Committee.
I think it is perfectly advisable for the speaker to try and leverage that to get a better deal.
But at this point, it doesn't look like that's going to happen.
Looks like Mitch McConnell, who will join us at the top of the next hour, has won.
And by the way, he won the constitutional argument on all of this.
And Pelosi apparently hit the roof after hearing Smith's comments.
Sounds like she sent out the enforcers to browbeat the poor guy and make him change his mind.
And within hours, Smith would say, oh, I misspoke this morning.
I love how they give in to the pressure.
But you know what they do, right?
Maybe you don't know.
They'll tell people either you vote this way or you're not going to get the committee assignment you want.
Oh, there's like a quid pro quo?
Like Joe?
Oh, sounds that, because I know that goes on.
Maybe we should investigate all the quitting and proing and quoing that goes on in Congress.
You want to sit on that committee that impacts your particular district in homeland security, defense?
You got to come through me.
You want that?
I need your vote here, here, here, here, here, and here.
Whether you like it or not, I need your vote.
I wonder if that happens in Congress.
I would say, yeah, that's probably true.
Rasmussen's survey revealed today only 12% of Democrats believe the Senate will oust the president.
So we're wasting our time.
Meanwhile, the president is going about the business of what?
More great economic news.
President is battling Iran, even getting harassed on the issue of the War Powers Act.
I'll give you a history of that coming up.
And the country's doing fine.
And the only problem is they don't have a candidate that I think that can beat Donald Trump.
So they got to go the impeachment route.
And unfortunately, that's unfortunately for us, that's not working for them.
American people understand this for what it is.
You know, the American people barely blink an eye now at this.
They know what it is.
It's been three years of I hate Trump.
That's what they wrote.
I hate Trump.
Nothing to help the American people make us safe, more secure, make us more prosperous, no economic opportunity.
And their ideas are insane.
$94 trillion new Green Deal.
Everything's free.
No gas, no oil, and no combustion engine.
Great, brilliant.
Then we'll have $52 trillion Medicare for all, 10 years.
Yeah, great.
No choice of private insurance.
I don't think that's going to work.
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 at 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 tax.
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.
So finally, it looks like this is going to move in the House.
Democrats now insisting that Nancy Pelosi, you know, do her job.
You're impeaching the president and you're playing games with it.
And this dithering on impeachment, now you got everybody giving up on it, and we know it's not going anywhere anyway.
One of the questions I want to ask Mitch McConnell is about the process.
Now, constitutionally, the House has the sole power to impeach, and it is handed over to the Senate, and they are to hold the trial.
Based on the rules that they adopt, Senator McConnell, who'll join us later, said clearly we'll adopt the same rules we had for Clinton.
House managers appointed by Pelosi will then present their case.
You have the Chief Justice of the U.S. Supreme Court, John Roberts, will be presiding.
Okay, now, if it's their constitutional role to impeach and they present their case to the Senate, well, after they present their case, we all know how weak it is because we watched the shift show unfold.
And of all the people we heard from that made the cut after the audition behind closed doors smoke-filled room hearings, those that made the cut and went public, well, they were either hearsay witnesses or opinion witnesses.
Hearsay evidence under the federal rules, admissions of evidence is not allowable.
So I would assume wipe all them out.
That leaves us with one witness, fact witness, who also did his own two plus two equaling, whatever.
That's irrelevant.
That's inadmissible.
And the question is, Ambassador Sunlin.
Well, his testimony was exculpatory for President Trump.
So the abuse of power part, get rid of.
The fact that the president has done what every other president has done, invoke executive privilege, and the fact that the Supreme Court has agreed to rule on it probably by June of this year would mean the obstruction article of impeachment is rendered mute also, because the executive branch, when in conflict with the legislative branch, does have the right to go to that third branch of government, the judiciary, to seek remedy.
It's a sham.
It has been from the beginning.
No Republican should even give this even a thought.
It's done.
Quick break, right back.
Past election coverage, 299 days to go.
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 a 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 Podcast, 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, 25 now till the top of the hour, 800-941.
Sean, if you want to be a part of the program, you know, I will say this.
There is one little addendum to what I've been reporting here, and that is now the House Republicans have had it.
They're fed up.
Mitch McConnell is going to join us.
He says, send him by tomorrow.
We're going to start the trial next week.
So he won that battle, which is good.
House GOP is moving towards censure of Pelosi for abusing the impeachment process.
Now the Democrats are all caving, so it's inevitable.
Now it gets sent over whether she likes it or not.
But it's just the fact that this is how sick and ugly and twisted and political they want to turn everything.
And they have their willing accomplices and the media mob out there doing it with them.
You have the New York Times, you know, reported.
They have the New York Times report.
They have this reporter literally saying in Iran, Soleimani, Soleimani's death is like MLK's death in America.
Oh my gosh.
This is how bad this mob in the media is.
It's not hard.
We've laid out the history of killing Americans and the depravity and evil and the carnage that this man has wreaked and everything from Hezbollah on.
And, you know, can they not do that in the mob themselves?
Is that too much of a task for them, a heavy lift for them?
It would have to pull them out of their box, their minds, their heads, and actually get them to think and do some real work for once.
Besides, oh, how can we hate Trump with this story?
How can we spin it against Trump?
We got to do it some way, even if it means propping up a murdering terrorist like Soleimani.
You think they'd be happy Soleimani's dead?
Apparently not.
NBC's taking a lot of heat.
They were promoting their live coverage.
I told you about Area 51, Roswell Rachel Maddow's conspiracy TV station, the propaganda state TV arm of the Democratic Party, MSDNC.
But anyway, their live coverage of the Soleimani burial.
That was bad enough on the night that Iran was firing those ballistic missiles.
They were reporting Iranian propaganda.
CNN actually had the 79 hostage propagandas for Iran.
Can't get any more propaganda-like than that.
But then they reported, oh, 30 deaths reported.
Source?
The Iranians.
Oh, okay.
There's a real reliable source.
We'll double-check that.
We'll confirm our facts here.
How is it that the media, they lie for three years?
They lie about Trump, Russia, collusion, collusion.
Russia, Russia, Russia, Russia.
They lie, lie, lie, lie, lie, lie, lie.
They ignore the biggest abuse of power corruption scandal in history.
Now, we're proven right.
The Inspector General, Michael Horowitz, everything we've told you for nearly three years is proven true, and it's about to get even validated more.
More vindication is coming.
And it's not about being right.
It's that if I got it wrong or any of my conservative friends get it wrong, oh, you know, that would be the death penalty for me ever talking again.
Anyway, so on top of reporting erroneous Iranian propaganda and lies, by the way, for most of the night, it wasn't just once.
Now they, apparently, they were promoting their live coverage of Soleimani's burial.
Wow.
Okay.
Soleimani's funeral publicized, thousands took to the streets of Tehran.
50 people died in the streets of Tehran.
How did that happen?
I don't even know where to begin.
Then NBC News, they won't even take a Trump rally.
Donald Trump, here it is.
People want to see him.
They won't even take a Trump rally.
They can't take a Democrat rally because nobody shows up at them.
Anyway, watch live coverage as General Soleimani is buried in his hometown of Kerman, Iran.
NBC tweets it out with a link to watch the burial.
Now, some people have picked up on this.
The guy was responsible for carnage and destruction and death of American soldiers in Iraq.
I mean, you're kidding me, right?
Anyway, if you look at the Fox News report on this, and he's buried, you know, the last man was a guy by the name of Norris Waleed Hamid, who worked for the military, buried last Saturday in Sacramento.
What the hell is wrong with you, author?
Afghanistan vet James Hassan reacted.
Why?
And I can't stress this enough.
The hell are you streaming this?
Really?
We're going to watch terrorist burials now on NBC News.
Tom Brokaw, spent your whole life there.
You proud of that?
One has to wonder.
You have one Democratic lawmaker.
Yep.
Guess what?
We're back.
Literally, Washington Post reporter saying that an unnamed Democrat in Congress suggested to him that unlike the United States, Iran doesn't have a crazy leader who would lead to war.
That's the Washington Post.
Now, I told you yesterday, I said, you know, well, fake news, CNN, we didn't get the figure, but Nicholas Sandman was paid a lot of money because Lynn Wood, who I know personally, I got to know Lynn Wood very well because I was in Atlanta doing my radio show in Atlanta as a local host when the bombing took place at Centennial Park, the Olympic bombing.
We were the official news radio station of the Olympics.
And long story short, one day I'm on the air when it breaks.
AJC, he fits the profile of the lone bomber, Richard Jewell.
No, Richard Jewell actually ended up saving people's lives.
He was a hero.
And Lynn Wood became his attorney.
Their argument was he fit the profile of a lone bomber because he lived with his parents.
Okay, he was a security guard, probably didn't make a lot of money.
And, you know, we see this more and more with kids.
They live at home, save money, rent's expensive.
They're preparing to buy a house, perhaps down the line.
They do it for a whole bunch of reasons.
That doesn't make you a bomber.
That doesn't profile you as a bomber, the loan bomber.
Anyway, he ended up getting Richard Jewell a lot of money.
It didn't help him because the stress of all of this.
Lynn Wood has said on this show, you know, this guy died in his 40s because all the stress and what the mob and the media did to him.
Taught me a valuable lesson, and it's paid off dividends big time.
That's how come we're right all the time and the mob is wrong.
That's how come, you know, when the issue of the Duke La Crosse case came up and even had all those professors at Duke University rushing to judgment and assume the big, I guess, letter or whatever they put in a newspaper, student newspaper, school newspaper.
They're just all rushing to judgment.
Oh, they're lacrosse.
They're athletes.
They're this.
They're that.
Well, I didn't rush to judgment.
I took the time and actually went to meet with some of the family members and parents and the kids themselves.
Did my own investigative work.
We did the same thing with Zimmerman and Trayvon.
I didn't rush the judgment there.
I was told very early by multiple sources when the Ferguson, Missouri case happened.
I had a lot of sources.
I made a lot of calls.
It's called reporting.
It's called being, I am a member of the press.
Yeah, we do investigative reporting as a talk show host, you know, like the deep state and vetting Obama that nobody else does.
And I had sources telling me very early on, the mob and the media is dead on wrong.
Multiple, a multitude, if I recall the exact word, of people witnessed what had happened with Officer Darren Wilson and the case in Ferguson, Missouri.
And I was told that one eyewitness after another confirmed Officer Wilson's account and that that would all eventually be coming out.
I was given it on background, so I didn't go with it.
In other words, not to be no attribution, just background.
Be careful.
People that liked me enough to help me get it right for you, my audience.
That's what happened.
And the same thing happened in the Freddie Gray case.
I happen to have friends in law enforcement that are looking out for me.
And I'm asking questions before I go on the air and say something stupid.
These people, they peddle their lies, their conspiracy theories, which is so hurtful to the country because it's, you know, they'll slander, they'll smear, they'll besmirch with abandon.
They don't care.
Then we saw Nicholas Sandman.
Now that the truth is out, I don't think any 16-year-old kid could have ever handled it more perfectly, this situation, now that we know the truth, than Nicholas Sandman.
And he's there, first time in his life in Washington, D.C., and he's got to make America Great Hat on again.
So they're trigger for the left.
And then immediately, based on a 15-second clip, this whole narrative emerges about this 16-year-old kid.
All of it was false.
He's not a public figure.
You know, it's interesting.
You know, you look at like the Garker case with Charles Harder, who's a great attorney, Lynn Wood, a great attorney.
They're probably the top two in the country on this particular issue.
And that is, as a public figure, it's, you know, you have to prove an absence of malice.
But Nicholas Sandman is, he's not a public figure.
He's got a whole different standard.
So whatever the settlement was, there was a $250 million lawsuit against CNN fake news, and they paid.
Non-disclosure in terms of what the amount is, but I know Lynn Wood, and I know it wasn't cheap.
If I had to venture a total guess, I'm actually acting now like the mob, but I'm telling you, I'm guessing.
It has to be over 100 million.
Linda's shaking her head, right?
Linwood wouldn't take less because he's going to win.
Because they went on for days and days because nobody one time ever bothered to say, can we ask the kid what happened?
Do we have any other eyewitnesses there besides the black Hebrew Israelites that were calling Nicholas Sandman and his fellow schoolmates racist names?
And then the tape emerged.
Oh, Nicholas Sandman tells his fellow students, calm down, don't react, don't respond.
Then, of course, Nathan Phillips was protesting there.
He didn't walk up to Nathan Phillips, just the opposite of what they were telling us.
Nathan Phillips walked up to him and got right in his face, banging a drum.
I think it's interesting that they're quicker to defend Hunter Biden than Nicholas Sandman.
And Hunter Biden's 49 years old.
It's absolutely ridiculous.
See, you're now, you get mad when I do Quid Pro quo and Joe.
I don't get mad.
I get mad that you say it.
Let's play the audio.
That's why.
Because it takes too long.
I can say it faster.
But it doesn't have the same effect.
You're not getting the billion.
You're not getting the billion.
Unless you fire the prosecutor.
It's better when we play it.
Play it.
Go on.
We're not going to give you the billion dollars.
They said, you have no authority.
You're not the president.
The president said, I said, call him.
I said, I'm telling you, you're not getting a billion dollars.
I said, you're not getting a billion.
I'm going to be leaving here.
I think it was, what, six hours?
I looked.
I said, I'm leaving in six hours.
If the prosecutor's not fired, you're not getting the money.
Oh, son of a got fired.
Oh, son of a bitch.
So they're the very thing they say they're upset about fired.
Anyway, so I'm just guessing now they got the NBC.
You know, you should be happy that you don't sound like a sleazeball like Biden.
And that I want people to hear his own words.
You're not getting the billion.
Unless you fire the prosecutor that is paying millions to my zero experience son, Hunter.
You're welcome.
Investigating.
You know, now Democratic, all of this is so corrupt.
When do they ever admit that they're wrong?
When do they ever revise and extend their remarks?
When do they ever say, we're sorry?
We're sorry.
We got it wrong.
The whole Mueller, Trump, Russia collusion thing wrong.
We missed the biggest corruption abuse of power story.
Hannity was right the whole time.
I'm waiting because they got like stalkers on CNN.
You know, what's that guy's name?
Humpty Dumpty.
Humpty Dumpty and some, I guess his assistant or something, some guy named Oliver that keeps coming up to me whenever he sees me and says, hi, it's me.
I'm like, me, who?
It's Oliver.
Oliver, who?
It's Oliver over at CNN.
And I go, oh, fake news.
I don't know who this guy is.
But they're obsessive and compulsive.
It's like they are stalkers at this point.
Rather than try and get their own ratings up, they just bash me and bash Fox constantly, 24-7.
Sean Hannity called into his own show.
Let's tweet it out last Thursday night.
Okay.
Yeah, because I had information nobody else reported.
They certainly weren't reporting what had actually happened.
So I do their job.
And it's just, they don't care.
This is a problem for the country.
You know, now they're saying this about, I mean, you would think Solomani's death is like MLK's death in America.
Now we're going to promote live coverage of the burial of Sola Mani?
The Democratic lawmakers saying that Iran doesn't have crazy leaders, unlike the U.S. I'm not making any of this up.
Avoid being Iran's lawyer.
Democrats, Democratic insiders are literally begging.
They're 2020 contenders.
Don't be like Iran's lawyer.
I mean, you have to tell them that.
These are incredible times we live in.
They really are.
And corrupt times.
And I didn't get to the war parasite, but we'll get to that in the course of the program.
Mitch McConnell joins us at the top of the next hour right after the news.
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 a verdict with Ted Cruz now, wherever you get your podcasts.
Hey there, I'm Mary Catherine Hale.
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.
All right, 800-941, Sean Tolfrey, telephone number, you want to be a part of the program.
The short answer on the issue of the War Powers Act is it's unconstitutional.
The 1973 War Powers Resolution was and is unconstitutional, reflecting John Bolton out a great line about this in an interview that he gave with, I guess, with a Hill.
The fundamental misunderstanding of how the Constitution allocated foreign affairs authority between the President and Congress.
The resolution should be appealed.
He's right.
And then he wrote about this in his memoir, that that act was an example of Congress overreacting during the Watergate era.
That's the whole history of it.
I'd bore you if I did the whole history.
I have it here in front of me.
We'll talk more about this.
We'll talk about the impeachment issue.
Mitch McConnell joins us next.
Rare interview.
And also the latest news of the day, 299 days best election coverage on your radio and TV dial.
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.
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 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.
What I would like to hear, Hunter Biden, Joe Biden, Adam Shifty Schiff, and some others.
The informer that never showed up.
You know, once I released the transcript, you know what happened?
The informer, he never showed up.
And the second whistleblower, John, whatever happened to the second whistleblower, the second whistleblower disappeared.
There probably was none, or maybe we know who the second whistleblower was.
Maybe we do.
But he never showed up.
All of a sudden, they don't talk because they were really unexpectedly met with the actual conversation, the exact conversation.
So yeah, if we do that, I would like to have those people plus others testify because it's the greatest hoax ever perpetrated on the United States government.
This has gone on since the day I came down the escalator.
This isn't just here.
This isn't just the Ukraine hoax.
This is the witch hunt.
This is the whole thing with Russia that turned out to be a total fabricated plot.
The ones who are guilty are the Democrats, the DNC, and all of the dirty cops that were involved that we caught.
Senators Lee and Paul railed on this briefing just now.
They say it was the worst briefing that they've ever had.
I think there was a lot of concern about a game plan, you know, what we do next.
But, you know, they're libertarians.
The Department of Defense, I think, made a compelling case.
They have all the legal authority they need to hit Suleimani, who isn't any but belligerent by any definition of the law.
That if we hadn't done something and Americans had been killed, all these people would be tarred and feathered.
So they thought that a war powers debate might send the wrong signal to the Iranians.
I think they're right.
They didn't say you can't debate.
I think they're overreacting, quite frankly.
Go debate all you want to.
I'm going to debate you.
Trust me, I'm going to let people know that at this moment in time to play this game with the War Powers Act, which I think is unconstitutional, is that whether you mean to or not, you're empowering the enemy.
I know you don't mean to, but we live in the real world here.
So debate all you want.
This is a constitutional democracy, but get ready for a lively debate.
All right, hour two, Sean Hannity Show, toll-free our numbers 800-941.
Sean, if you want to be a part of the program, no shortage of news as it relates to the United States Senate.
And we're honored to have back on the program.
It's been a while.
Senator Mitch McConnell, I spent part of the holiday reading his New York Times best-selling book.
It's called Long Game in the Federal Judiciary.
It's now out in paperback, and the president has written a forward for this, three pages long, and the president's exactly right.
Senator Mitch McConnell is with us first.
Let me say the work that I know on the amount of judges and appointments the president has made and you have navigated through the Senate, which can be, you know, kind of troubled waters at times, has been amazing.
It's transformative, actually, for the courts.
Well, thank you, Sean.
I think it's the single most long-lasting thing the president, with our assistance, has been able to accomplish that will make the longest impact on the country.
50 new U.S. Circuit Court judges, which is about a fourth of all of them in the country already.
We've done more working together in three years than Barack Obama, almost, well, slightly fewer than Obama did in eight years.
So we'll surpass in four years what he did in eight.
And I think it'll be a lasting contribution of significance from the Trump years.
You know, I like the line the president used in the forward to your book.
He said, transforming the federal judiciary is the ultimate long game.
And he's even expressed surprise at how many vacancies Obama left for him that he has now been filling left and right.
Well, of course, I was in charge of the agenda the last two years of the Obama administration.
And I think it's probably not incorrect to say that we were not rapidly filling vacancies with Obama appointments the last two years.
Let me read a headline.
Report McConnell's win, keeping GOP Senators United amid impeachment were months in the making.
And I know Nancy Pelosi, for whatever reason, is now being called out even by our Democratic Senate colleagues, Diane Feinstein, among them, literally said these words.
If it's serious and urgent, as they had claimed, why they had the rush impeachment in the House, send them over.
If it isn't, don't send them over.
And she's been joined by Chris Murphy, Joe Manchin, Angus King, Doug Jones, Blumenthal in Connecticut, and John Tester and Chris Coons, all saying it's time we get on with it.
You have said that you would adopt the same rules that the Senate passed unanimously for President Bill Clinton's impeachment in 1999.
Tell us where you think this stands now.
Well, I think that's what we'll do when we finally get the papers.
And I think you correctly pointed out that the resistance is cracking among Senate Democrats who understand that it's now time for us to take this up.
And it was never envisioned that the House of Representatives would impeach somebody and then just sit on it and not transmit the papers.
So I believe Pelosi is going to go on and do that.
I think she's under enormous pressure now from Senate Democrats to send the papers on over.
And we'll get started.
And I think we all know how it's going to end.
The president's not going to be removed from office.
If we do end up calling witnesses, which could well happen, I assure you, it won't just be the witnesses that the Democrats want to call.
It'll be ones that they'd rather not hear from.
And you can just imagine.
Well, I would name Adam Schiff.
I'd name him the whistleblower, non-whistleblower, hearsay whistleblower.
I think we could probably add Joe and Hunter to the list.
I mean, the list would be pretty obvious, wouldn't it?
Yeah, I think that's exactly right.
If we go down the witness path, everybody should understand it won't just be the witnesses the Democrats want to hear from.
Are you as surprised as many in the country that she's basically trying to dictate to the United States Senate how you ought to do your business?
Because, you know, look, the Constitution is pretty clear as it relates to the impeachment clause, Article 1, Section 2, Clause 5.
If anybody is following along at home in the House of Representatives, they have the sole power of impeachment.
And as for the Senate's role, you are to conduct the trial.
It's not that difficult.
Yeah.
Well, I mean, what I thought was laughable, Sean, was that she thought she had some kind of leverage here by withholding something, frankly, that a lot of us are not actually to do anyway.
I mean, it brought a smile to my face to try to figure out what leverage she thought she had.
And, look, she doesn't have any leverage, and she'll come up with some excuse to send the papers on over in the next couple of days.
That's my prediction.
Yeah.
It's funny that they rushed all this through.
There's two articles here, you know, and neither one of them make any sense.
Abuse of power.
What does that mean?
We watched, for example, and maybe you can help clarify some of this for our audience, but their role, as I just said, is they go forward with the impeachment, abuse of power, obstruction, because the president, the executive branch, dared to seek remedy from the judicial branch when there was a conflict with the legislative branch, which is, by the way, and the Supreme Court has agreed to take it up.
So they would just have to wait for, obviously, for that decision.
The case that the Democrats made, House managers will be chosen.
They will be given, if we're going to follow the 99 model of the Clinton impeachment, they will present their case.
There was only one fact witness that I identified, Ambassador Sondlin, and his testimony was exculpatory for the president.
All the other witnesses in the Schiff and Nadler committees were either opinion witnesses or hearsay witnesses.
Now, I would imagine the federal rules of evidence would apply with the Chief Justice presiding.
Am I wrong on that?
Really, I don't know.
You know, this is not like a real trial.
This is a political process.
If you had a real trial, none of us would be qualified to sit in the jury because we all have opinions.
So it is a hybrid created just for this situation that is really not like a real trial.
It looks that way because you have this Chief Justice in the chair, but you can see why the founders put the Chief Justice in the chair because the Vice President could potentially be the beneficiary of a presidential ouster.
So you wouldn't want to have him presiding.
So it's an odd proceeding, not replicated anywhere else.
By the way, Chuck Schumer said exactly what you just said back in 1999, that he was not an objective player in this, that he had opinions in this.
Let me play it for you.
This is not a criminal trial, but this is something that the founding fathers decided to put in a body that was susceptible to the whims of politics.
Also, it's not like a jury box in the sense that people will call us and lobby us.
You don't have jurors called and lobbied and things like that.
I mean, it's quite different than a jury.
Today, we are upping the ante.
The president could be removed from office over a matter that most Americans feel doesn't come close to the level of high crimes and misdemeanors as written in our Constitution.
I expect history will show that we've lowered the bar on impeachment so much.
We have broken the seal on this extremely extreme penalty so cavalierly that it will be used as a routine tool to fight political battles.
My fear is that when a Republican wins the White House, Democrats will demand payback.
Wow, looks like they're looking for their payback, Senator.
What are your thoughts on his comments from 989?
Yeah, that was Schumer back in 98, 99.
You know, talk about being disqualified.
He was actually running for the Senate, promising to vote to acquit the president.
So, you know, they gave me a bunch of grief by saying I wasn't impartial on this.
Honestly, I don't think there's anybody in the Senate who's impartial about it.
Almost everyone has made up their minds.
They've already announced it in many instances.
And so we shouldn't pretend this is something that it isn't.
Impeachment is a political matter, not a judicial matter.
The House made a political decision, and not a single Republican supported impeachment.
The Senate will make a largely partisan decision in the end, I suspect, as well.
So let's don't get confused here.
There's nothing wrong with people saying how they feel about it.
I certainly intend to and will continue to do so.
If the sole power to impeach that power rests in the House of Representatives and the trials to take place in the Senate and the House managers present their case to the U.S. Senate, and again, the Chief Justice presiding, then my question is, they present their case.
They had their witnesses.
Their basis for their impeachment.
If you brought in other new witnesses that they either didn't call or viewed as being protected under executive privilege, which will be resolved by the judiciary, the U.S. Supreme Court, probably sometime by June, then the question is: why would the Senate do the House's job and then go deeper if they can't present the case themselves, considering that's their constitutional role?
It's a very good point.
Basically, what Schumer's trying to do is to pursue witnesses the House never seriously pursued.
They didn't go to court to try to compel anyone to come.
They were in such a hurry to get this done before Christmas, they did a slapdash, you know, kind of halfway job, pondered it over to us, at least they will do that soon, and expect us to not make a decision based on the record that they built, but to build a whole new record.
And we'll be debating all of that at some point during the impeachment trial.
What I'm hoping is that we can at least get forward, go forward before we get into all the witness stuff, go forward, listen to the House managers, listen to the president's lawyers, have a period of questioning of both sides before we get into the issue of witnesses.
And if we go down the witness path, I assure all of the people who support the president, it won't just be a list of witnesses that we think will be hostile to the president.
It'll be both.
In my opinion, that would be lending credibility to what it's been an entirely corrupt, unjust, unfair process.
Everything that Newt Gingrich afforded Bill Clinton in 98 and his attorneys in 98, none of that was afforded President Trump.
Let me ask you and get your thoughts on the killing of Solomani.
And I know that there are some now talking about the War Powers Act and resolutions, et cetera.
And Mike Lee was apparently offended yesterday.
But more importantly, even General Petraeus, his comments are very interesting to me.
Somebody I admire a lot and take his opinion seriously.
He thought this was bigger than bin Laden and El Baghdadi.
And I wanted to get your thoughts on the killing of Solomani number one and why this was important.
Well, it's extremely important.
This is probably the, you know, the most heinous killer walking the face of the earth at the moment, who is, as we all know, we've been following this guy for a long time.
Been in charge of providing IEDs that have killed and maimed U.S. servicemen, estimated directly responsible for 400 to 600 U.S. service people losing their lives.
This is a real bad guy.
The president did the right thing.
He didn't need to give us advance notice.
Let me tell you how Sean and I handled when President Obama's team killed Osama bin Laden.
Number one, I was part of the gang of eight then, supposed to be in a prior position for notice.
I was not notified in advance.
I was notified afterwards.
What was my reaction?
I said, congratulations.
Great job.
And issued a public statement supporting it.
All right, Senator Mitch McConnell, stay right there.
We'll continue to keep you on the line.
New forward in his release of his bestseller about transforming the judiciary called Long Game.
We'll put it up on Hannity.com.
Quick break, right back.
We'll continue.
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 Podcast, 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 Navok 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, 25 to the top of the hour.
Senator Mitch McConnell, the Senate majority leader staying with us, all the news.
Obviously, all focus is on the U.S. Senate.
We put up on Hannity.com.
He has now out his bestseller, long game, and paperback.
The president has now written a forward for the paperback and rightly saying transforming the federal judiciary is the ultimate long game, as we continue with Senator Mitch McConnell, the Senate majority leader.
And on the issue, I think the president was dead on in his comments and the forward.
He makes the point that transforming the federal judiciary is the ultimate and long game, and it is, because this now impacts the country now for generations.
On the issue of killing Soleimani, I thought the president, and I want to get your thoughts, showed, and I know the media and I know Democrats have created their own little cartoon caricature of the president that I know not to be true, and I know a fact it's not true, but that he's impetuous, that he doesn't show restraint.
But we had two U.S. drones shot down by the Iranians.
He didn't act.
The president watched as tankers were being taken hostage in the narrow straits of Hormuz, where a third of the world's oil supply passes through daily.
He acted, he didn't act then.
We also saw the attack on the Saudi oil fields unprovoked, and that was done to impact the lifeblood of the world's economy, which is oil.
The president didn't act there.
The president drew a line in the sand.
Contractors were killed at the end of December.
Military personnel were hurt.
It was all led by the Iranian-funded group Hezbollah.
Then they went into our embassy, and the president acted expeditiously so we wouldn't have another Benghazi.
And then, when he had the shot at the guy that was orchestrating all the murdering of our troops in Iraq and all this terror, he took the shot.
I can't believe that's been politicized, but let's talk about the president that you work with every day.
Were you surprised at the amount of patience that he showed the Iranians?
Because I frankly was.
Yeah, he was more patient, frankly, than I might have been had I been in his position.
Look, he did the right thing.
It should have been applauded on a bipartisan basis.
Joe Lieberman, the other day in the Wall Street Journal, made that point.
That, you know, why was this viewed decisively?
I think it's because of the Trump derangement syndrome that almost all the Democrats are suffering from these days that don't even allow them to compliment the president when he does the right thing.
If the Democratic president had done this, believe me, they'd have all been applauding.
And the difference is, us Republicans would have applauded as well.
You mentioned Joe Lieberman.
I've been friends with Senator Lieberman for a long time.
I've had my disagreements.
He was once the vice presidential candidate for the Democratic Party.
The Joe Lieberman that I know and that I knew, I don't see any of that in this modern new radical Democratic Party that would spend in 10 years $94 trillion on a new Green Deal, no more oil or gas or combustion engine, and everything's free, and another $52 trillion in 10 years on Medicare for all and no choice of private insurance.
What do you see being on the inside?
What has happened to the Democratic Party that had at least some reasonable figures in it?
I think they've gone hard left, Sean.
And you know what they'll do the next time they get the whole government, if they do, they'll make the District of Columbia a state that'll provide two sort of permanent Democratic senators.
They'll alter the makeup of the federal courts to try to diminish the success the president's had in reforming the courts with strict constructionists.
They'll pass Medicare for all, which is basically socialized medicine.
They'll do that all the next time they get control of the government.
That's why the president's reelection is absolutely essential, as well as holding the Senate so that we can still confirm the president's outstanding nominees to the courts.
With that said, I think you would probably agree that the need for cloture supermajority would probably go away if the Democrats ever took control of the Senate chamber again.
And I know the President might have a slight disagreement with you on that issue.
I know you take a different position as it relates to judges, but you want to hold on to that tradition.
Why?
Well, look, the supermajority on legislation is the essence of the Senate.
And the President now, I think, more fully understands what could happen when the other side gets control.
And so I think the executive calendar, that is the approval of personnel, over 1,200 executive branch appointments that come to us in the course of a presidency, all should be handled with a simple majority.
I don't think that's true with legislation.
And if Schumer didn't respect that age-old rule of the Senate, they could run roughshod over conservatism for as long as they were in power with a majority in the House, the Senate, and the White House.
dire prediction you seem to have a very good that doesn't happen You seem to have a very good working relationship with the president.
I would argue, and I've known him probably as long as anybody in media, 25 years at least.
And I told my conservative friends, and many of them didn't believe me, that he would govern as a conservative.
And I believe I've been proven right on just about every issue.
Like usual, Senator, I put my neck on the line on my opinions, but I usually end up being correct, thank God.
But here's my question.
He's an outsider.
He's a disruptor.
He's an iconoclast.
He will never be that establishment figure.
Now, it's my belief that the American people have adjusted to the new style because he's getting a lot of good things done.
How is your relationship with him personally?
Because you work closely with him.
What have you discovered about the Donald Trump that maybe the public doesn't know?
Well, he's got a really good mind, good political instincts, and he's done a good job.
I mean, we've been in the trenches together on judges, on tax reform, on regulatory reform.
I support what he's doing on foreign policy and to build up in the Defense Department.
He's had an excellent record.
Look at the economy.
I mean, the best economy in 50 years.
The president clearly deserves reelection.
If he's a little different from the people who've occupied the office in the past, so what?
I think what we're interested in is results.
And the president, I think, has a lot of results to point to in the 2020 election.
Last question, Senator.
I've watched a couple of videos now.
One was in, and I happen to be fond of your wife.
I've known her.
I've met her.
I've interviewed her.
And I watched one particular point.
You're just at a diner in Kentucky and, you know, just hanging out with the people of Kentucky and eating breakfast or lunch or whatever it was.
And you have these people now that have been stalking and attacking you and your family, relatively new, but seemingly more dangerous than ever before.
How do you see, how has that impacted your life?
Well, it's a shame.
I mean, I read Justice Gorsuch's book, and he said he thought the biggest problem we had in the country was the lack of civility.
In a civil society, you know, you have regular debate with people you disagree with.
What many of us have been subjected to are these outrageous people who come in and want to scream at you and have embarrassing incidences.
You know, maybe it makes them feel better, but it seems like we've sort of lost our ability to discuss issues in a confident way and to conduct our own affairs with civility.
So I agree with Justice Gorsuch.
I think that's a problem in today's America.
And I hope this is a phase that we will all get past sometime soon.
Senator Mitch McConnell's with us and his now best-selling book out in paperback, Long Game in the Federal Judiciary, with a forward now written by the president by President Trump.
I particularly liked your afterword when you went into great specificity and detail and more specifically about the importance of the courts and some other issues that you address.
For me, it's informative because it brings people inside the process of what I think Donald Trump labeled correctly, transforming the federal judiciary as the ultimate long game.
And on that single one issue, Senator, you have had a profound effect on the future of the country.
I know you don't do a lot of interviews.
We do appreciate the extra time you've given us.
Thanks for being with us, and we're going to watch very closely, obviously, in the next couple of weeks, what's going to happen in the Senate.
Thanks again, Sean.
We'll be okay.
It's all going to work out all right in the end.
The president's going to get re-elected.
Okay.
I'll take that outcome.
299 days, Senator, but who's counting?
Not me.
I'm not counting.
Yeah, right.
All right.
Thanks.
You know what the good news is?
We, the people, get the final say.
The people get to decide.
And my guess is they shock the world again.
Senator, thank you.
All right, 800-941.
Sean, if you want to be a part of the program, let's go to our busy phones.
All right.
Also, swing state.
A lot of swing state people today.
As we check in in Ohio, Ben, no Republican has won the White House without the Buckeye State.
How are you, sir?
I'm doing great, Sean.
It's a real honor and pleasure to be on your show today.
If I can just tell you one quick story, my 97-year-old grandpa passed away this past year, and one of my favorite memories during Christmas time is watching your show and O'Reilly and all the good Fox News shows, but the volume turned up to about 75.
So by the way, I'm with him.
I've been doing radio.
I've had cans on my head for 31 years.
Well, 97.
God bless him.
We should all live so long.
World War II, Vietnam, and Korea bet.
So heck of a guy.
Wow.
Sounds like an American hero to me.
He was a good grandpa.
Isn't that the best?
You know, I do miss my grandpa.
My grandfather, I used to drive him crazy.
My grandfather had a tattoo for when he served in the Navy.
And I go, grandpa, I'm young.
I was always a wise guy.
Grandpa, I love that tattoo.
He came from Ireland.
You're a damn fool, you are.
You're a damn fool if you do that.
I'm going to get one just like you.
And I drive him nuts.
That drove him over the sent him over the edge every time.
I believe it.
Yeah, he was not a fan of my 10 feet.
There you go.
Well, I never got it.
So I'm too chicken.
Anyway, what else you got today?
What's going on in the Buckeye State?
So what I want to call him out, I've noticed when you swipe out on your phone, you get all the news, they always kind of make it seem like this guy was a good guy.
This guy we killed in Iran saw money.
And I spent two years as an EOD team leader.
I'm sorry, 10 years, an EOD team leader overseas disarming roadside bombs.
And we experienced firsthand exactly what guys like him and the Iranian influence that they had on IEDs in Iraq and Afghanistan and the sophistication that grew over the years.
I just don't think that people will really appreciate.
You know, you hear the news, yes, guy was responsible for killing Americans, but I don't think people really realize how he did it and what we've dealt with on the ground and how and how efficient those devices became over the years.
And for me personally, I'm retired now.
It's really good to know he's not there anymore.
Look, it's now in our hands.
Now, think about this.
We all stand on the shoulders of our parents and our grandparents, right?
And in the case of my parents and grandparents, they were just, they were poor, hardworking people.
And the working men and women, that's, I mean, I have such an affinity for the people that do all of the living and working and building in this country.
It's sort of like I watch once a year.
I watched it over Christmas.
It's a wonderful life.
You know, well, they might be whatever to you, Mr. Potter, but not to my dad.
My dad believed that, you know, if somebody's going to work and bleed for their country and fight and live and pay taxes, they ought to be able to do it in a decent home with a bath and a decent neighborhood.
I mean, it's the people that make this country great.
I mean, I know everyone, we kind of always focus on the New York and the DC and the LA and San Francisco, but the rest of the country is filled with people that do all of the building, manufacturing, hard work that makes this country the great country it is.
And we have the freedom to pursue our dreams and build for our own families in the process.
I agree.
Since I retired, I've worked in manufacturing and aviation and in the steel industry.
And I have the honor of being a union manager now and doing maintenance.
And just I've saw the earth people working for me, and I'm very blessed for the way everything's turned out.
Pretty happy.
All right.
Thanks for a good call.
God bless you, grandfather.
Sorry about your loss.
800-941 Sean, you want to be a part of the program?
We've got a lot to get to.
Some breaking news with Kim Strossel, Sean Davis, at the top of the hour.
Quick break, right back.
End your calls.
Final half hour, Sean Hannity Show.
All right, news roundup and information overload hour 800-941 Sean.
If you want to be a part of the program, it just keeps getting worse.
But the entire, well, I guess, scheme, plan, corrupt, you know, where was the urgency?
It's so urgent.
We have urgency of impeachment.
She kept telling everybody, announcing the impeachment inquiry that she wanted this done expeditiously.
We can't wait for the courts to weigh in, she said, meaning Nancy Pelosi.
The Judiciary Committee's report declared we must act immediately.
The compromise, corrupt, congenital liar starring in the shift show, arguing it is an urgent matter that cannot wait if we are to protect the nation's security and integrity of our elections.
Nadler, impeachment, a matter of urgency.
And it goes on and on and on.
Now, even Diane Feinstein, if it's so urgent, if we're going to do it, send them over.
I don't see what good delay does.
Chris Murphy, I think the time has passed.
She should send them over.
Mansion, I think it needs to start.
Angus King, it's time for the speaker to send the articles.
Doug Jones, Alabama, hoping Pelosi will soon submit the articles of impeachment.
Most people are ready to get moving.
Blumenthal, Tester, Senator Koons, time to get on with it.
Same thing.
Why won't they send what happened to the urgency?
Well, they have no case.
They're the ones that made a non-impeachment case, and they have no case.
So they're like, well, maybe we will let the Senate do our job.
Well, that's not what the Senate's job is, as Mitch McConnell discussed earlier on this program today.
Sean Davis, co-founder, Federalist Kim Strossel, Wall Street Journal columnist.
We have some other news we're going to get to on the deep state in a minute.
But first, Sean, we'll start with you and your reaction to all of this.
You know, it's kind of been shocking to watch the whole spectacle unfold.
We know that Pelosi seems to have been bullied into impeachment from the beginning by the squad and by the left-wing face of her conference in the House.
And then to watch it actually unfold, they had no case to hide everything in the basement of the Capitol to keep stuff secret.
And then when they said there was a dire threat, that he was an urgent threat to American national security that had to be dealt with, they then did nothing for three, four weeks.
They're still doing nothing.
It is remarkable to me how incompetently and poorly it's been handled as a political matter by the Dem.
Somehow they keep making each decision, which for them is the most painful and most damaging one possible.
The smart thing for them to do at this point would be to just cut bait and move on, but I don't think they can pull that off with the left-wingers in their conference.
I tend to agree with Sean, Kim Strossel, your take on this.
Well, look, Nancy Pelosi has two problems here.
The first is she did want this done urgently.
She wanted it done by November.
The problem is, is that it just got delayed and delayed.
And because of the farcical way in which they had done it in the basement, and then they had to stage that hearing with Nadler to bring in the experts, got pushed along to the point where now it's January.
And Nancy Pelosi is aware that she has five Democratic senators who are all running for the presidency who are going to have to take all of January off and come back to sit for a trial.
So she doesn't want necessarily to put them in that position.
You had Corey Booker today actually say, look, if this happens and I have to go back for a trial, I might have to drop out of the race.
I can't do fundraising.
I can't be involved.
So that's one problem.
Our other problem is from the very beginning, Nancy Pelosi has always understood that the end result of this is acquittal in the Senate.
And she's in no hurry to give President Trump that victory.
And so she's sitting on it.
The problem, though, is it's beginning to look extremely cynical.
Well, cynical.
I mean, it just is who they are, what they do, and their obsession.
Both of you have done a very deep, compelling dive every step of the way on the issues of the corruption, abuse of power, the 1% in the Intel community.
No matter how many times I say, well, you didn't trust the Intel community in the last three years.
I'm like, yeah, I did.
The 99%, not the 1%, that abused power and turned the powerful tools of intelligence we entrust them with to protect us on the American people illegally, like the lying FISA applications.
It's beyond bewildering to me at times where people go.
But there are two articles out.
One is in the Federalist and the second in The Hill.
It appears if you look at all of this, and by the way, in Kim Strossel's book, she did a great job how Trump haters are breaking America.
I thought it was amazing.
Anyway, it appears Stefan Halper or his handler exaggerated the circumstances of Halper's mid-July 2016 meeting with Donald Trump campaign advisor Carter Page, raising more questions about Halper's role in Spygate.
The Federalists did ask Carter Page whether the Inspector General report, which documented 17, it breaks down into 50 some odd significant inaccuracies and omissions in the secret surveillance applications accurately portrayed his various interactions with Halper.
And according to the IG report, after the launch of what we now know to be Crossfire Hurricane, the FBI did, in fact, task Helper as a confidential human source, targeting Paige, Papadopoulos, and Sam Clovis.
And Halper's handling agent told the IG it was serendipitous that Source 2, the moniker they used for Halper, had contacts with three of the four subjects, including Carter Page, and they couldn't believe their luck.
And the handling agent noted upon learning that Halper knew Michael Flynn, Paul Manafort, and had crossed paths with Page weeks before.
Sean, let's get to your piece first in the Federalists.
Isn't it curious how all these coincidences stack up?
And that IG report, for those who read it, I think was pretty eye-opening in how it confirmed so much of what many of us had said for years, which was basically that much of this surveillance and this operation against the Trump campaign waged by the FBI was done under false pretenses.
One thing that was in the IG report that Democrats glommed onto was this suggestion that everything was okay and kosher in how the FBI case was opened against Trump, which isn't really what the IG report said, which led Barr and both Durham to come out and say, you know what, we're not sure the thing was properly predicated.
And the piece today in the Federalists from Margo Cleveland gets into that.
Long before that case was opened, Stefan Halper, who was prior to that and became after that, a confidential human source for the FBI, was sniffing around the Carter Page camp, inviting him to events.
And in one case, he even told the FBI, a claim which Carter Page denies, that Carter Page offered him a job on the Trump campaign.
It's just fascinating to me that the more we learn, even given everything we know, the worse the FBI and the intelligence apparatus look.
And I, for one, can't wait until Durham finishes his investigation and we can actually get all the answers to our questions about what happened in 2016 and beyond.
And what's your take on this, Kim Strossel?
I mean, what I love about Kimberly Strassel is she reads all this stuff.
She reads it in detail.
John, the problem with the IG report, in my mind, and it did a good job on many aspects of this, but it basically started the narrative on July 31st, 2016, which is when the FBI says it officially opened its counterintelligence investigation.
There was lots of stuff going on before that, and we still don't know the answers to it.
And it's one of the narratives I lay out in my book: you go back, you've got former Attorney General Loretta Lynch acknowledging that Jim Comey came to her in the spring and said, hey, we've got eyes on Carter Page, who's working for the Trump campaign.
Okay, so the same Carter Page that we now know to have been working for years, the CIA, that Carter Page?
That one.
And this conversation looks to have happened just a few weeks after Carter Page was brought on to the Trump campaign.
So what was the FBI doing all the way back then?
And nobody has ever given an explanation.
You know, and what was Halper being asked to do at that point?
Who else did he know?
What are the connections with British intelligence?
What are the connections with outside groups like Fusion GPS?
Stuff was happening in the spring.
We still don't know what it was.
It may have involved intelligence agencies as well, too, domestically.
This is what Durham's looking at and what we still need the answers to.
Well, and I think when we get to the bottom of it, I mean, just look at the words, Sean Davis of the Attorney General.
Yes, that would be spying.
We now know that both Durham and the Attorney General Barr have been spending quite a bit of time, apparently, with some friendly countries, Western European allies like Italy and Great Britain, and apparently a lot of contact with Australia as well.
And now the question is whether or not the outsourcing of intelligence gathering, spying on American citizens, maybe even a candidate, a president-elect and a president, took place to circumvent American law by a top Intel people, not the 99% that I always distinguish between.
Right.
It's fascinating when you look at a key character named Joseph Misoud, who is allegedly the guy who kicked off this thing based on a conversation he had with George Papadopoulos, which was in relay to an Australian diplomat and then eventually to the FBI.
We're told that that's what started this investigation.
And ahead of that IG report coming out, there are a couple leaks, mainly to the Washington Post, claiming that the IG would say that Misued, he wasn't being used to set up anything.
He wasn't an asset in any way.
But when you actually look into the IG report, what the Inspector General found was one, that Misoud wasn't anywhere in the FBI's books as a source.
Anything after that was completely redacted.
And so what we suspect, I think along with a lot of other people, is that this character who is central to the whole narrative against the Trump campaign was actually working with, on behalf of, or perhaps unwittingly for, some sort of Western intelligence agency.
And when you look at what he was doing, with what Halper was doing, with so many of these meetings that were held overseas, it paints a pretty clear picture that there is a lot of intel nonsense going on, potentially involving our intelligence agencies, but definitely involving so-called friendly governments helping with it.
And we all deserve answers on this.
We deserve them now.
It's absurd it's taken this long, but we deserve them now, a full accounting of everything that happens.
Well, it's coming quickly.
If I had to guess, sometime, and I guess, you know, justice, the wheels of justice move slowly, especially if you're being complete and thorough.
And from what I understand, and my sources have told me repeatedly, Durham and Barr have made incredible strides in getting to the bottom of the origins of this witch hunt and other issues.
Stay right there.
Sean Davis, Kimberly Strassel, Wall Street Journal.
Continue, Sean Davis, co-founder of the Federalist Kim Strassel, Wall Street Journal columnist, her best-selling book, Resistance at All Cost: How Trump Haters Are Breaking America.
Well, we'll actually find out in 299 days, Kimberly Strassel.
But going back, Devin Nunes was on with Laura Ingram last night on the Fox News channel.
I happen to be very fond of the work that he was proven to be correct in the Nunes report.
And we know that the congenital liar and compromise corrupt Adam Schiff basically told lies in his report.
Well, they barely use the dirty dossier.
How is it, Kimberly, that your colleagues in the media mob and these people in Congress that just lie, they never apologize, retract, revise and extend remarks.
They never, they just dig into the next group of lies.
And it seems to work for them, I guess.
Yeah, I mean, that was one of the most important aspects of the IG report out that we were talking about.
Is that he did not say so in so many words, but he basically said Democrats and the media purposely misled the country.
Well, I should say at least the Democrats did.
Adam Schiff saw all of the same documents that Devin Nunes did, and yet he presented a narrative that was absolutely false.
And the media mob, as you were talking about, chose to rely on him despite a proven track record of overstating things or, again, misleading the country.
And so you have this embarrassing spectacle.
Nobody has yet apologized.
I don't necessarily expect them to.
But this is terrible for the media industry.
And it's why so many Americans have lost all faith in so many of these outlets.
Last 15 seconds, Sean Davis.
Yeah, I think it's about time we do something about the unholy alliance between the media and the deep state, because without that, this entire hoax could never have been perpetrated.
And somebody there needs to be accountable to make sure it doesn't happen again.
All right.
Thank you both for being with us, Kimberly Strassel and Sean Davis.
Let me play again here what we've been playing earlier in the program, and that is, oh, let's listen to the hypocrite.
And even Mitch McConnell pointed it out, Chuck Schumer ran on not convicting Bill Clinton from 98 and 99, the best of Schumer, the hypocrite.
This is not a criminal trial, but this is something that the founding fathers decided to put in a body that was susceptible to the whims of politics.
Also, it's not like a jury box in the sense that people will call us and lobby us.
You don't have jurors called and lobbied and things like that.
I mean, it's quite different than a jury.
Today, we are upping the ante.
The president could be removed from office over a matter that most Americans feel doesn't come close to the level of high crimes and misdemeanors as written in our Constitution.
I expect history will show that we've lowered the bar on impeachment so much.
We have broken the seal on this extremely stream penalty so cavalierly that it will be used as a routine tool to fight political battles.
My fear is that when a Republican wins the White House, Democrats will demand payback.
Oh, I guess it's payback time because that was Schumer in 98, the first cut of him in 99.
Oh, wow.
What a difference here.
You know, you got, you know, Schumer panned because the Clinton impeachment testimony called theater.
Oh, now he wants witnesses in the Trump trial.
I mean, it's just like, you know, Gerald Nadler did not even want Ken Starr's report.
That was under the old independent counsel statute.
He didn't even want it released.
Oh, now, oh, we've got to release everything.
Although, when they changed the independent counsel statute, now I have the special counsel.
There's no obligation to release a single page of what Robert Mueller put out.
But we want everything.
We want the underlying materials.
We want the Hannity 302s.
Oh, that's going to help him out a lot.
You know, from people that they determined that lied to them.
Let's find out what they say about Hannity.
I mean, you can't, look, Linda's laughing because you know it's true.
It's so dumb.
It's so hypocritical.
I mean, I don't know whether to laugh or cry sometimes.
The crying part is because it's all serious.
This is our country here.
And there's in their twisted, sick, psychotic rage.
I wish there was some medication we could offer them.
But I don't think anything is going to help these people.
Oh, I have the perfect medication.
What's the perfect medication?
Retirement.
Goodbye.
Maybe, well, yeah, that's true.
But you and I both know that 99, 98% of incumbents win re-election because the one thing Democrats and Republicans do agree on is gerrymandering.
You know, I have a real issue with Pelosi in particular because this is a woman who wanted us to pass health care, and we did because we had to pass the bill to find out what was in it.
And we were in such a big hurry to have the impeachment hearings all throughout the Christmas holiday because such a sense of urgency with the president.
And now she's sitting on the articles because she wants to know how the Senate's going to do their job.
That's none of her business.
She's not in the Senate.
She's in Congress.
Yeah, that's not her constitutional role.
That would be the Senate.
And Mitch McConnell, he seems, you know, pretty comfortable with the idea.
We'll do what we did with Clinton.
And first, we're going to let the Democrats, the House managers, whoever she chooses.
I wonder if she's going to put in the congenital liar.
I doubt it.
I wonder if the compromised, corrupt, congenital liar Adam Schiff is going to lead the House managers in presenting their case.
After all, he led the audition behind closed door witness moments.
Let's see who's going to be the best public witness.
And remember, he still, I don't think, has released all of those transcripts, which is interesting.
And then we had the Schiff show publicly, and unfortunately, they only had one fact witness, a lot of opinion, a lot of hearsay witnesses, but only one fact witness.
And that fact witness offered information exculpatory towards the president.
So they've got, they know they've got a bad, they know what they did has now gone to overreach.
And that's why you see Senate Democrats a little bit more sober than their House colleagues recognizing the horrific position that the House has put them in.
They're going to lose.
They're going to lose badly.
And some of them may lose their jobs over it.
So if it's so urgent, like they claim, send them over.
Who knows what they'll do?
You know, Schumer, you go back.
Schumer, back in the day, impeachment double standard.
Historically speaking, you're also voting against admitting new evidence in the Senate trial.
Whoopsie-daisy.
What's different saying in 99 if I don't want any evidence?
I want no new witnesses.
You know, it's like you can't make this stuff up half the time.
Then you say, all right, we'll do it.
The difference is actually Newt Gingrich was fair.
Newt Gingrich, they didn't afford one consideration that Newt Gingrich and Republicans in 98 afforded Bill Clinton and his attorneys at the time.
You pick the date.
We'll give you any date you want.
Take as long as you need.
Yes, you can bring witnesses.
Yes, you can cross-examine.
Yes, you can present evidence.
Yes, you can object to evidence.
All of that was there for them.
All right, let's get to our phones here, as promised.
800-941-Sean, you want to be a part of the program.
We have a lot of swing state callers today.
Laura is in North Carolina.
Gotta win North Carolina for a Republican to win.
How are you, Laura?
Glad you called.
Happy New Year.
Hey, hey, Sean.
I'm not glad that we're a swing state.
The reason I'm calling, obviously, impeachment is everything you said is true.
I'm calling because I am absolutely furious and I am scared.
The reason I'm furious is because of the reaction to the killing of Solomoni.
I'm a daughter of a United States Air Force colonel from intelligence and a mother of a son that's about to go to basic training.
My dad was in the position of having to put people in position to die for our country.
And it's something that he cheers up at now.
Trump got information, same information, great information from our community and acted on it based on history.
And even if Solomoni had not been planning something in the future, he had earned his death from 20 years of American blood on his hands.
Trump did exactly the right and the very hard, hard thing.
And Nancy Pelosi and Schumer and all the idiots that are running for president should be calling Trump and saying, you know, I don't agree with you.
I'm running against you, but I'm just going to say thank you for saving American lives and some of those voters, those crazy voters that are going to vote for me.
And they didn't.
And they're trying to make this all about them, Ilhan Omar giggling in the background.
And I am just frustrated.
The reason I'm scared is not because of Trump or the Iranians.
I'm scared because of the media, who is now not DNC TV, but Iranian TV for us in America.
And I'm scared that this has gotten out of control.
And if Trump does not win, we're doomed as a nation.
Look, I'm not going to lie in terms of, I think we're on the brink.
I remember what I said when it was Obama made the tough call to get bin Laden and meaning to execute the mission.
My only criticism at the time was there was so much controversy.
Only three people had been waterboarded, only three.
And the intelligence that led us to the courier that led us to bin Laden happened because of Bush-Cheney policies of enhanced interrogation, which I think are the right policies.
And that's where Khaled Sheikh Muhammad, one of the three, were involved.
And I talked to Jose Rodriguez.
He was in the room at the time.
They had doctors there when they were waterboarding these guys.
It's meant to scare the living hell out of you.
That's what it's designed.
It's uncomfortable.
Yeah, of course.
That's the idea to get them to talk.
I'm a Christian woman and I am an American and tortured, yes, it's awful.
But, you know, burning up a Jordanian fighter pilot and chopping up people with machetes.
All the stuff that they do to their own people, our people, and our NATO allies.
I think that's a little more than waterboarding with doctors in the room and the intelligence that we need to keep ourselves and not only the West, our NATO partners safe.
We need to do it.
Listen, it got us bin Laden.
You got to give credit to Obama.
One of the few things I thought he did was dead on right and gutsy.
It was a gutsy decision, but it wouldn't have happened but for enhanced interrogation, which is my point.
Now, here's a way to look at enhanced interrogation.
Anybody out there listening to this show that has kids, okay, two guys come into your house, they take your child and they're running out of the house.
You race out to go save your child.
You tackle one of the two.
The other one gets away with your child.
Now you've got that guy in custody.
What are you going to do to get the information?
Or what wouldn't you do to get the information of where his partner in crime is taking your kidnapped child?
I don't think there'd be a whole lot that I wouldn't consider doing in that moment.
And I wouldn't feel bad about it.
Does that bring it home?
If you make a choice to be a terrorist and do those things, then you need to expect that you're going to be maybe treated a way to give the information because these are acts against humanity and people call Trump Hitler.
These people are Hitler times 100.
Look, radical Islamists have made it clear.
That's why we can't.
A day of reckoning is coming.
Prime Minister Netanyahu, and by the way, thank you for a good call, Laura, has made it clear.
We're the big Satan.
Israel's the little Satan.
These mullahs, in their radicalism, their fanaticism, they think God and their theocracy is instructing them and will reward them for killing the infidels.
That's a pretty ugly, twisted ideology that if you ever combine it with nuclear weapons, we're in trouble.
Then we're talking about great potential, great potential for a modern day Holocaust.
And that is not hyperbole.
That's not overstating the fact.
It's an obvious existential threat to the world, a clear and present danger.
You can see the urgency because you wouldn't have expected Egypt, Jordan, the Saudis, the Emirates to align with Israel and the U.S. to fight back against this Iranian hegemony.
You wouldn't.
And speaking of the mob, you know, I mentioned this earlier.
You got the New York Times.
In Iran, Soleimani's death is like MLK's death in America.
I don't make this up.
Then you got fake news, MSDNC, the conspiracy channel news channel.
They're live coverage promoting Soleimani's burial, widely publicized.
Thousands took to the streets in Tehran.
And NBC News takes it a step further, providing coverage of his burial in his hometown.
Watch live coverage as General Soleimani is buried in the hometown of Kerman, Iran.
NBC tweeted.
Why do I have a problem with that?
A lot of critics have slammed the network for promoting the terrorist mastermind's burial on social media, responsible for killing hundreds and hundreds of Americans.
I just, it's hard to fathom.
Then Democratic lawmakers know better.
Iran doesn't have crazy leaders, unlike the U.S.
That was a real clear investigation.
Mark Hemingway's piece at on foxnews.com.
Avoid being Iran's lawyer.
Democratic insiders have to warn their 2020 contenders how to frame the issue.
None of this I'm making up.
All right, Michigan, another swing state.
Dan, next, Sean Hannity Show.
We need you in 299 days, sir.
Glad you called.
Thanks, Sean.
And we need you too.
So don't forget that point.
I tell you, I am annoyed on the Iranian thing, not because Trump has to justify killing Salamani, but because we didn't bomb 100 targets throughout the country of Iran and devastate them.
And then, in the example, I told the person I talked to before I got to you is Israel.
We got to learn from them.
When Hamas fires missiles at Israel, they don't sit there and say, well, do we want to go to war with Hamas?
No, but you got to remember that Israel, they are always measured in their response.
They absolutely respond back.
They could have literally blown them into smithereens, the entire place, the Gaza, wherever you want.
But they've shown restraint.
We care about human life.
Nobody's really picked up on the fact Solomani was flying commercial.
We could have taken out the jetliner.
We care about the other passengers in the plane.
That's who we are.
That defines us.
They fire weapons into Israel from schools and from hospitals.
Why?
To make it more difficult for the Israelis to fight back because they put a value on human life.
So I think the president was measured.
He always has that option that you're referring to.
That option's still on the table and it might get used one day.
Dan, good call.
All right, that's going to wrap things up for today.
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We've been around the block in media, and we're doing things differently.
Normally is about real conversations.
Thoughtful, try to be funny, grounded, and no panic.
We'll keep you informed and entertained without ruining your day.
Join us every Tuesday and Thursday, normally, on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
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.
