Sean dedicates this show to covering the latest news surrounding talk radio host Rush Limbaugh's announcement that he has lung cancer. The pioneer of all talk radio, Sean covers the full impact of this legend and gets into more details about his illness and just why your prayers are so important. Plus, the latest from the Iowa Caucus.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.
You want smart political talk without the meltdowns?
We got you.
I'm Carol Markovich.
And I'm Mary Catherine Hamm.
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 Delaware, verdict with Ted Cruz now, wherever you get your podcasts.
When I told people, I was making a podcast about Benghazi.
Nine times out of ten, they called me a masochist, rolled their eyes, or just asked why.
Benghazi, the truth became a web of lies.
From Prologue Projects and Pushkin Industries, this is Fiasco Benghazi.
What difference at this point does it make?
Listen to Fiasco Benghazi on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
All right, uh, glad you're with us.
Welcome aboard 800 nine four-one Sean.
If you want to be a part of this extravaganza, you know, there's a the song by Tim McGraw, and it's called Live Like You're Dying.
Such a great song.
And it's like we have all these great plans in life, and then something just hits you so hard, it just it makes us all pause.
And honestly, I had an entirely different show book for the whole day, and I was listening to the end of Rush's show, and he made this announcement, and it's that moment.
It just hits you on a dime.
Um, I don't think talk radio would ever be anything like it is, or I'd be here.
If it wasn't for all that Rush has done.
Now I want to be very clear.
Rush announced uh at the end of his program today that he has stage four lung cancer.
It's being treated.
Just said, um I just need to be honest with your audience.
So incredibly stoic and courageous because uh just you know, like everything else he's ever done in his career, inspiring and he's always forged a path.
Um, he said good news that he didn't have any symptoms, which is good.
Um, just something that he noticed and they picked up on it.
Uh I know every single one of us now taking and absorbing this.
We've all lived through this.
Probably everyone listening, and if you haven't, thank God you haven't, I hope you never have it.
When you get a call at three o'clock, 3 30 in the morning, and the phone rings, and you know it's never gonna be good unless it's a bad, you know, unless it's a call that you you know wasn't for you.
It's never gonna be good.
Um I find sickness and all of it associated with it.
Now, my three sisters were nurses, my brother-in-law is a doctor.
Uh, I know more, have two of my best best, three of my best best friends in the world are doctors, two brain surgeons, literally, and uh, you know, my own personal doctor.
I can call him at four o'clock in the morning, and he'll come over to my house.
Um, and doctors are amazing people, and but it is it just hit me like a dime, like a ton of bricks, like a mat truck, I don't know, whatever cliche you want to use, that's it.
Um I just as he said, let me let me just let Rush say it in his own words.
The one thing that I I know about Rush.
His brother David has been my agent for my entire career.
Now going back 30 years.
Uh, I know his family.
Uh I know him.
Uh his niece is one of the best workers we've we have on our team.
Uh I love this family.
They are incredibly brave people individually.
And but let me just let Rush say it in his words, just announcing it moments ago.
I have been diagnosed with advanced lung cancer.
Diagnosis confirmed by two medical institutions back on January 20th.
First realized something was wrong on my birthday weekend, January 12th.
And I wish I didn't have to tell you this.
And I thought about not telling anybody.
I thought about trying to do this without anybody knowing, because I don't like making things about me.
But there are going to be days that I'm not going to be able to be here because I'm undergoing treatment or I'm reacting to treatment.
And I know that that would inspire all kinds of curiosity with people wondering what's going on.
And the worst thing that can happen is when there is something going on and you try to hide it and cover it up.
It's eventually going to leak, and then people are going to, why didn't you just say it?
Why just did it?
Why do you try to fool everybody?
And it's not that I want to fool anybody, it's just that I I don't want to burden anybody with it, and I haven't wanted to.
But it is what it is.
And you know me, I'm the mayor of Realville.
So this has happened, and my intention is to come here every day I can and to do this program as normally and as competently and as expertly as I do each and every day, because that is the source of my greatest satisfaction professionally, uh personally.
I've had so much support from uh family and friends during this that it's it's just it's it's been tremendous.
And I told the staff today that I have a deeply personal relationship with God that I do not proselytize about, but I do, and I have been working that relationship tremendously, um, which I do regularly anyway, but I've I've been focused on it intensely for the past couple of weeks.
I know there are many of you in this audience who have experienced this, who are going through it yourselves at the same time.
I am at the moment experiencing zero symptoms, other than I don't look, I don't want to get too detailed in this.
What led to shortness of breath that I thought might have been asthma or um, you know, I'm 69, could have been my heart, my heart's in great shape, ticking away fine, squeezing and pumping great.
It was not that, it was uh a pulmonary problem involving malignancy.
So I'm gonna be gone the next couple days as we figure out the treatment uh course of action and have further testing done, but as I said, I'm gonna I'm gonna be here as often as I can,
and as is the case with everybody who finds themselves in a circumstance, you just want to you want to push ahead and try to keep everything as normal as you can, which is something that I'm going to try to do, but felt that I had to tell you because that's the kind of relationship I feel like I have with those of you in this audience.
And I say it every Christmas, which is when I feel more thankful than at Thanksgiving, and I feel thankful at Thanksgiving, but Christmas it really gets to me.
But over the years, a lot of people have been very nice telling me how much this program has meant to them.
But whatever that is, it pales in comparison to what you all have meant to me.
And I can't, I can't describe this, but you know, I know you're there every day.
I can see you.
It's it's strange how I but I know you're there.
I know you're there in great numbers, and I know that you understand everything I say.
The rest of the world may not when they hear it expressed a different way, but I know that you do.
You've been one of the greatest sources of uh confidence that I've had in my life.
So I hope I will be talking about this as little as necessary in the coming days.
But we've got a great bunch of doctors, a great team assembled.
We're at full speed ahead on this.
And it's just now a matter of implementing what we are going to be told later this week.
So I'll be back here.
I hope to be back on Thursday.
If not, it'll be as soon as I can.
And know that every day I'm not here, I'll be thinking about you and missing you.
Thank you very much.
All right.
That was uh Rush just moments ago as he closed out his uh show today.
It's sort of like what I was saying is, you know, I have a very different show planned, and there's the Tim McGraw song.
We've all experienced this where you know a moment comes and stops me on a dime.
This is one of those moments.
And all of us have gone through this, and as I sit here and as I think and I kind of absorb it, and you know, um, know that when he allowed me to fill in for him, it paved the way for me one day to get my own show.
It's deeply personal.
And his brother, who I love and is his whole family that I know and love, and and obviously I know in love he is with his wife, and it's just very, very hard to know that somebody's gonna go through a hard time.
But I think that there's a message in there for all of us.
Number one, okay, Rush as stoic as he always is, and as you know, he wants this to be as normal, talk about it as little as possible.
You know, um I of course, right?
He's he now he talked about he has a deeply personal relationship in with God.
I do.
Uh most of America does, and that's where I like to put my hope.
And I want to make sure that we're very clear on one thing.
I know that it's never good when you hear that C word.
I know when Don Imus described when he had it at the time, it's like your knees buckle at the word.
And it does.
I lost my father from the week he was diagnosed, you know, pancreatic cancer.
One week later, he's gone.
And all of us know when those moments come and stop us on a dime.
And that kind of how it was today.
But I I want to just ask everybody that knows how much this guy has done.
Uh you know, everyone says, well, National Review, William F. Buckley, okay, all credit due.
But Mary Matlin once said, I don't know how I would have survived the Clinton years without Rush on the radio.
You know, how would we have survived all these years as he has educated us, entertained us, advanced the cause with a love of country and family and patriotism and all the things that we value and and life too.
So that deeply personal relationship in God, I would just say, Rush, we are praying for you.
Everybody, everybody that knows what you've done, how you've taken a lot of hits over the years, standing up for this country, our constitution, your belief in God, your belief in life.
You you fighting fights every single solitary day to make this a more perfect union, a better country.
And we just, as you go through this, we're all praying for you.
We are praying for a speedy recovery, and for years more of excellence in broadcasting.
First day I filled in from, of course, I dropped the it was a golden mic, and it actually fell.
Anyway, Sean Hennedy broke my microphone.
You know, unbelievable.
All of us in this business, talk radio.
I always talk about the pioneers because I admire them so much.
Because I wouldn't be doing what I do, what I love to do every day, but for the Barry Farbers, the Barry Grace, you know, the Gene Burns, the David Brudnoy's, the Jerry Williams, the Bob Grantsk's, and a Cerbic Talk Radio, hard-hitting.
IMUS, Stern, all pioneers.
And they made this thing called freedom of speech possible.
And Rush for Conservative Talk Radio.
I remember when I first I was in a radio studio just starting out on a college station in 1987, and he syndicated in 88.
When some guy goes, You gotta listen to this guy Rush.
I remember where I was.
You gotta hear he does these homeless updates.
They're hilarious.
And they were.
And he paved the way for all of us.
Me and Mark talk about it.
Levin, the great one, all the time.
He's going to call in at the bottom of the hour.
I don't know.
And but I just want to make sure everybody understands here.
We are so lucky in this country that we have the greatest, the best scientific minds with the greatest medical advancements.
I know Russia's raised money for leukemia all of these years and donated millions.
By the way, the if everyone knew the rush I knew that gives away millions.
You know, and I'm putting my faith, my hope, and all of my prayers into his speedy recovery and taking his lead on this.
Because, you know, it's just hard when you when you when you hear somebody you know and admire that also helped you in life.
Rush helped me.
His f his brother's family to me.
You know, uh his niece is one of the nicest and best people that's ever worked for me.
And always gracious to me.
And I know he's been that way with everybody else.
And there's nobody better.
Neil Bortz once called them the babe Ruth of Talk Radio.
Well, Portz nailed it.
He's it.
There's only one babe Ruth.
Nobody else.
Nobody else comes close.
Rush, we love you.
We are praying for your speedy recovery.
We're praying for God's blessings upon you and your health and your entire family, Catherine, David, Lisa, Kristen, all the kids, everybody.
And for what you've done so far and will continue to do for your country.
Thank you.
For what you've done for me personally, thank you.
And I'm just praying for your quick recovery.
We love you.
We're sorry you have to go through this time.
We'll be here waiting for the next broadcast.
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 a verdict with Ted Cruz now, wherever you get your podcasts.
Hey there.
I'm Mary Catherine Hamm.
And I'm Carol Markowitz.
We've been in political media for a long time.
Long enough to know that it's gotten, well, a little insane.
That's why we started normally a podcast for people who are over the hysteria and just want clarity.
We talk about the issues that actually matter to the country without panic, without yelling, and with a healthy dose of humor.
We don't take ourselves too seriously, but we do take the truth seriously.
So if you're into common sense, sanity, and some occasional sass.
You're our kind of people.
Catch new episodes of Normally every Tuesday and Thursday on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen.
What I told people, I was making a podcast about Benghazi.
Nine times out of ten, they called me a masochist, rolled their eyes, or just asked why.
Benghazi, the truth became a web of lies.
It's almost a dirty word.
One that connotes conspiracy theory.
Will we ever get the truth about the Benghazi massacre?
Bad faith, political warfare, and frankly, bullshit.
We kill the ambassador just to cover something up.
You put two and two together.
Was it an overblown distraction or a sinister conspiracy?
Benghazi is a rosetta stone for everything that's been going on for the last 20 years.
I'm Leon Nafok from Prologue Projects and Pushkin Industries.
This is Fiasco Benghazi.
What difference at this point does it make?
Yeah, that's right.
Locker up.
Listen to Fiasco Benghazi on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
All right, as we uh roll along, uh our prayers today with Rush Limbaugh as he made this announcement and he begins a treatment, a course of treatment for uh his cancer.
Uh I do know that we have the most amazing people ever that work diligently every single day to make to find the cures for all of this.
Uh, you know, I'm really convinced, having lost, especially I lost my father, well, you know, six months after I started at Fox.
And, you know, the advancements are dramatic.
And I and that, and that's where we're we all put our hope.
When you when you have family members, we all know somebody that was able to overcome a bad diagnosis.
Um, but it it does hit you like a dime, it stops you on a dime.
And I guess that's what makes us special, isn't it, as human beings?
Because we care, we love life, we know life is precious.
We, as a country, our founding document, it is God get given rights endowed by a creator.
And we only have a short time on this earth.
Very short time.
You know, if somebody in your family is sick, or just for the hell of it, tell everyone you love them tonight.
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 Hamm.
And I'm Carol Markowitz.
We've been in political media for a long time.
Long enough to know that it's gotten, well, a little insane.
That's why we started normally a podcast for people who are over the hysteria and just want clarity.
We talk about the issues that actually matter to the country without panic, without yelling, and with a healthy dose of humor.
We don't take ourselves too seriously, but we do take the truth seriously.
So if you're into common sense, sanity, and some occasional sass.
You're our kind of people.
Catch new episodes of Normally every Tuesday and Thursday on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen.
What I told people I was making a podcast about Benghazi.
Nine times out of ten, they called me a masochist, rolled their eyes, or just asked, why?
Benghazi, the truth became a web of lies.
It's almost a dirty word.
One that connotes conspiracy theory.
Will we ever get the truth about the Benghazi massacre?
Bad faith, political warfare, and frankly, bullshit.
We kill the ambassador just to cover something up.
You put two and two together.
Was it an overblown distraction or a sinister conspiracy?
Benghazi is a rosetta stone for everything that's been going on for the last 20 years.
I'm Leon Nafok from Prologue Projects and Pushkin Industries.
This is Fiasco Benghazi.
What difference at this point does it make?
Yeah, that's right.
Locker up.
Listen to Fiasco Benghazi on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
All right, 25 till the uh top of the hour, 800 941.
Sean, if you want to be a part of the program, just really hard-hitting news for this industry for what we do in talk radio and rush Limbaugh's announcement that he he announced he has uh stage four lung cancer, or at the end of his show today.
So it kind of took all of us by shock.
Uh I want listen, he's he he I know him.
He does not want us talking about it all day.
I know him.
And I want to honor his wishes, and more importantly, he's gonna be getting a treatment, and he says as often as he can, he's back on the air and he's gonna be out there fighting every day.
I'm just you know, it's moments like this that you really remember, you know, okay, what what is this life about?
We appreciate our friends, our family.
You appreciate gifted, talented people that give their all for what the what their passion, their heart, their soul tells them.
Uh the great one Mark Levin is with me.
Uh we were, you know, to be honest, texting and balling before, you know, as well hearing it, because we know what he's done for both of us prior to coming on air, and uh, you know, it hits you like a dime, and but I you know, this is quintessential rush,
stoic, and he didn't even he, you know, he wants this to be normal, he's gonna get his treatment, and you know, I just put my faith and my hope in God and in medicine and in science that is advanced, Mark, and uh and I'm gonna follow his lead.
That's where w he wants us to go, and he's asked people to pray for him, and I'm praying for him.
Yeah, that's uh that's exactly right.
And uh you know, Sean, uh I think about Rush.
I just uh what he's done he's done for all of us, but even more than that, you know, uh this country do without him.
What we do without him.
So we must pray in the best science possible.
And um he uh I I had to be honest with you.
I I pulled over the side of the road, you know.
We knew a little bit earlier than most people.
And uh it's uh it's and and uh you're right.
There is uh there's all kinds of breakthroughs in the science and so forth.
We know Rush, I'll fight like hell.
And uh and what a class act this man is.
Um he so loves his audience.
That's not a joke.
He talks about it all the time.
And I I want people to know talk writers are very small circle of us who speak to each other, very small circle.
But uh Rush, in terms of his audience, in many ways it overlaps with all the audiences because it's so big, has a special relationship with the people who listen to him.
He's loved, he's liked, his words have meaning.
He's a man of great compassion and humanity.
All the people who've attacked him, he never he rarely ever strikes back.
He's got you know, he's in that in that sense.
That's that's like you, Louvin.
You're you never strike back either.
You know, you never throw a bunch.
He's got a lot more self-control than I do.
But I'll tell you, now's the time to be positive and strong and to find ways where we can help each of us in our own way, prayer.
Um best doctors in the world, excuse me.
Um that's the way we have to think, and that has to be our focus.
And uh Mark I don't care if the left or anybody else has to say this is our man.
We love him.
The nation so much the nation loves him.
And uh his impact on our lives and uh on the country has been so important and so positive.
And so that is what we will do.
He will fight.
We will fight with him, we will pray, and if and if anyone get through this, he can.
You agree with me?
That's true.
Yeah, that's so true.
That's so true.
Well, both of us personally owe a debt of gratitude to him, gratitude to him.
And are you kidding?
Let's be honest.
I mean around this whole damn ministry would be dead.
Do you know how many do you know how many his talk stations there were when he started 200?
There's thousands.
Thousands.
At the time he made the AM band, now he's saving the FM band.
I mean, it's you know, we play such a big part of it.
Um how many national how many national talk show hosts did you look at?
I never listened to one.
I'd listen to local hosts.
He was The first.
I think you had Larry King live at midnight going, What's the question?
That was about it.
Exactly.
But it he transformed the radio.
But it's more important, you know.
Um, and I love what Mary Matlin had said about the time.
He this, you know, we talk about the impact of National Review.
You know, you and I talk about how we we we all have our you we're very different in many ways.
We all have our unique gifts.
You have your, you know, uh a cerbic side, your your keen constitutional intellect.
You know, I I always felt Russia's one of his greatest gifts was a monologue and the fact that he he'd see things and say things that on another level, another dimension, and have the ability to communicate for uh it to uh people and it dazzles me.
And you know, we all have different gifts from God and and he brought us to a fruition.
I'm just gonna say this.
I don't want to belabor this because I know he's he's probably going to kill you and me both for saying all this, but we wouldn't be here without him, and we are we're just we're very we're just taking a pause and we're just saying, okay, our friend is sick, he's gonna get the right treatment, and he's gonna be on all of our prayers uh every single day.
And you know what?
If we can only hear him for a while two days a week, I'll be thankful for the two days, and then till he gets back to five days a week.
And you know, Sean, he's he's the energizer Rush.
He always has energy, he he's always there, he's always fighting.
And I and I and I I'm serious about this.
I think that if anyone can get through this, he can get through this.
And there are tens of millions of us who're gonna be praying and rooting for him, and there's gonna be wonderful doctors who are gonna be trying who are gonna be taking care of him, and you're right.
He's got an enormously close special family, it's a huge family.
Enormously close special family.
His brother David is dear friends of ours, as are so many other members of his family.
And people need to know this is a family man.
This is a down-to-earth man, this is a happy man, this is a humanitarian, despite what his enemies have said about him and everybody else.
And uh and uh I I really think he'll fight his way through this because he fights his way through so much.
Do you know what's amazing though?
Because when you think about it, look at it like a forest, and it's there's no opening.
He single-handedly for syndicated conservative talk radio, chopped down every tree, and by doing that, he's taken every hit.
And then all of us that come behind him, and we all owe a debt of gratitude.
That path exists because he opened it for us.
And that's why we love and appreciate him.
And and he took a lot more, you know.
I take a lot of crap every day, I get the crappy out of me, you get the crap beat out of me.
But it really, when you think about it, he took the crap, you know, he he took the hits early, so it was easier for us.
Because we knew it was coming and and we knew how to deal with it because we watched him deal with it.
And but anyway, I love you, brother.
Um, we're praying for our friend.
You're damn right.
And and I'll just say one other thing.
There's really a handful of people during your lifetime who affect the world.
And I'm not overstating this.
A handful of everybody thinks they changed the world.
There's really a handful.
And he's one of the handful, and that is a remarkable thing.
So we'll get the best doctors, we will pray for him.
With God speech, he'll get through this.
Amen.
All right, my brother.
God bless you.
God bless you.
Uh 800 941 Sean.
Somebody just sent me this, and I'm not gonna get into all analysis of all this, but there is one thing from Science Daily that did catch my attention that a friend sent, that lung cancer in particular, there, you know, the rates have dropped 51% since 1990 alone.
In the years I know when Rush does his his radio thon, his leukemia radio-thon, I mean, I I lost a remember a cousin of mine many years ago to Hodgkin's disease, and nobody ever dies from Hotchkins' disease, hardly anymore.
Uh somebody very close to me in my life has had lymphoma for twenty-two years, and the medicine stayed ahead of it.
And look at Dick Cheney, had a heart attack in his 30s, eventually culminating in a heart transplant.
I remember interviewing him when he had the machine to to to hold him over till he got a heart.
He's you know, for these people, we have such genius in this country.
And sometimes we forget, but this is this is what they do every second of every day is they're looking to figure out how to cure disease and illness.
I had Anthony Fauci on about the coronavirus on TV the other night, and there's and I asked the president in the interview last night we had um during the Super Bowl about coronavirus.
Nobody does it better than we do.
Nobody does it better than America and Americans and freedom and ingenuity and advancement.
I've always said Barry Farber, another great radio pioneer, always said there's never been a country in the history of man that has accumulated more power and abused it less than the United States of America, and I I very humbly gently add there's never been a country in the history of man that has accumulated more power and used it for the advancement of the entire human race and its condition.
Because if you have the freedom, you know, there's there's these gifts.
If you believe as I do, we are we we are all created by one God.
Every human being on earth.
What separates us from the animals is we have this capacity to understand.
We don't know fully, nor are we designed to know fully.
And I don't even know.
I wish I knew a lot more.
I, you know, I just look at the majesty and universes within universes of creation, and I'm like, I'm blown away.
And that God created every every single human soul.
The word education comes from the Latin, educated, to bring forth from within.
And that that is predicated on a belief that it's already there.
We don't have to ram stuff into kids' heads.
We need to bring out of them the gifts that God gave them.
That's why endowed by our creator.
We're not the perfect country, but we're you know, we're we're we're the country where freedom allows us that opportunity.
I have two friends of mine, uh fellow talk show host on our station in New York, WOR, uh Mark Simone, Joe Concha, media writer for the Hill.
Uh I know you've been listening, Mark, and it's just like you know, Tim McGraw says, in a moment comes and stops you on a dime, and that was about 10 to 3 today.
Yeah.
Rush has some things going for him.
Uh, you know, he's had some real medical difficulty in the past, battled through it and uh won and succeeded.
Uh obviously have the best doctors in medical care in the world.
He is uh got some pretty good karma.
He's one of those guys, Sean won't want me to mention this, but Sean is too, that uh has done a lot of good deeds for a lot of people.
That's Rush, you know, people in trouble, they need help, money, doctors, uh, employees, ex-employees, strangers he read about in the newspaper.
I I I could tell stories that would take entire shows.
So you're right.
And we could tell those stories about you, but I know you don't like to mention.
And that's one thing, but people that do that, they don't want credit, they don't want even anybody to know about it.
But that kind of karma can really help.
Well, he's gonna hate me for doing this, trust me.
I am I'm fully aware.
I'm on a I'm on his blank list right now, and I hope he'll forgive me.
Yeah, and nobody could ever explain to people today what he meant.
You know, it's like the Beatles or Frank Sinatra, everybody knows they were the best, the greatest, but they don't realize how they changed the whole landscape.
They just change music.
And Rush did that for radio.
He wasn't just the best.
He he totally changed uh everything about radio, AM, talk radio.
AM was dying.
They didn't know what to do.
They were uh practically going under.
And Rush just saved it and created a whole new world of AM radio.
And then they everybody tried to be the next rush.
Everybody filled in for it.
No, it never worked until Sean came along.
Did you you filled in for like a year for him, and everybody realized this is the other rush.
This is uh No, no, I'm not in the same category.
Well, you know what it is, but when we build Mount Rushmore, you two guys go up for the there's only one babe Ruth, as my buddy Neil Bortz would say.
But I I do want to keep this positive, and I want to I want to take his lead on this.
And that is he's coming back to work, he's gonna get his treatment, we're all gonna pray for him, and we're uh and I just believe in that.
I believe there is a God that can answer our prayers and hears our pleas and our cries and our calls.
Uh Joe Concha.
Yeah, he had said, Sean, uh, when he was signing off there before you mentioned around 10 to 3 that he hopes to be back on Thursday.
In other words, he's gonna get treatment Tuesday, Wednesday, and then he wants to get right back to work because this is something that he has done syndicated for 31 years, sure.
But he got into broadcasting at age 16.
I mean, he knew that this is exactly what he wanted to do, and you could tell when you listen to Rush Limbaugh that he enjoys his work.
He enjoys it every day.
He doesn't have to scream to make a point and drive it down your throat.
He comes to work, and I and I've said this to people that uh have some influence in this business.
I said, you know what?
I always marvel at his prep that every day he has that stack, he calls it, right?
And it's just so seamless, one thought to the other.
And you always know when you tune into Rush Limbaugh, you're gonna hear perspective that you didn't hear from everybody else that's that's in this industry.
And that's what made him so unique.
So that this is something that for me, uh personally, unfortunately, I'm an expert in this.
My mother passed away from lung cancer back in 2012.
Uh if he has advanced lung cancer, you know, we want to keep this positive, of course, but uh it just depends on you know where this may have metastasized to and if surgery can be successful in getting the tumor out, and then hopefully it could be uh extinguished.
So again, you're talking about who Talkers Magazine called in 2002, the greatest radio talk show host of all time, and you cannot deny his influence uh from everybody to the president currently, right now, just like he does with you, you know, listens to what Rush has to say, and then the millions of listeners, I mean 14, 15 million people listening on a daily basis.
There has never been a broadcaster like him, and we're not going to talk in past tense, we're gonna talk uh in future tense.
In other words, I have a feeling that he's the type of guy who's gonna beat this thing and you're gonna be hearing from Rush Lemon.
The hard part is when you get that call, or that moment that came and stopped you on a dime, uh go back to that phrase.
It just it it gives you the pause, you see life differently, you appreciate everything a little bit more.
I mean, in that song it talks, you know, all right, when it sinks in, all right, this is real, I gotta I gotta fight this, and what am I gonna do?
I go, you know, skydiving, rocking, mountain climbing, I 2.7 seconds on a bull name uh Boo Manchu, and you love deeper, you speak sweeter, you give forgiveness, you've been dying denying, and everybody that I know that has survived cancer, and I'll end it this this hour this way, and I'll get to the news in the next hour.
Every single person in my life that has survived cancer is just like that.
Speak sweeter, love deeper, give forgiveness, you've been denying, and then you they live at a level that most of us don't because they came to the edge.
Our prayers are with Rush, his family, everybody, and we can't wait to hear him back on the air sooner than later.
Thank you, Joe.
Thank you, Mark Simone.
When we come back, we'll get to the news.
We have a lot to get to, and uh your calls too.
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 Dell 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 Podcasts, or wherever you listen.
When I told people, I was making a podcast about Benghazi.
Nine times out of 10, 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?
Yeah, that's right.
Locker up.
Listen to Fiasco Benghazi on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
All right, as we roll along, Sean Hannity Show, toll free 800-941.
Sean, you want to be a part of the program, our prayers for Rush today.
You know, somebody writes me in the thing, eh?
He goes, Hannity is 274 days.
I know as we're praying for Rush, we want him back on the air as soon as possible.
I know what he wants.
He wants us to go kick some serious ass and win this election in 274 days.
Uh, and I'm like, you're right.
Uh, a ton of news.
Uh, obviously, we had the Super Bowl.
I thought the president's ads were spectacular.
I mean, it was a touching, terrible story in the in the Bloomberg ad.
I felt so bad for the mother of this child.
I'm like, okay, you know, if you look at the violence, what have cities have been run by liberal democrats done to stop violence and poverty and bring solutions.
Not a lot.
Um, and it is uh, and is uh, you know, his whole ad campaign is about either hating Trump or guns.
I have my interview with the president.
We'll try and get some of that in uh throughout the program today.
Uh, you can't believe how the Democrats cannot still get over their loss in 2016.
That's why in 274 days, what do I say?
I say it every day.
The ultimate jury exists, because this is a busy week.
We got obviously the caucuses tonight in Iowa.
We begin that process.
You know, which radical leftist socialist are they gonna pick?
That's what it comes down to.
Then we've got the election in 274 days.
You'll be the ultimate jury that can shock the world again.
And the people that we have now, the those that have done this to this country, done nothing for the American people, but have dragged this country through all of this because the acquittal scheduled about four o'clock on Wednesday.
All but a certainty at this point.
This is all they've done.
Conspiracy theories, lies, uh, hoax after hoax.
Um, we have some other election news stuff.
I'll tell you what's happening in the Democratic Party.
They are losing it.
There is now a never Bernie as somebody put it in uh in a mail email fax to me today, apocalypse coming.
They can't believe it's Bernie.
And that starts from Obama straight on down.
All every Democrat.
They're now hoping that uh-oh, Sanders is now up pretty much everywhere.
Bernie Sans, okay.
You know, Trump was funny yesterday when I was interviewing the president for the Super Bowl, the the interview that aired.
And he goes, uh, yeah, communist, because I did a lightning round because there's only so much I can do in eight and a half minutes of airtime in the pregame of the Super Bowl, and I knew people at home.
It was just supposed to be a short news segment.
How do I get if I ask him two other questions?
That would be eight and a half minutes.
So I figured out, all right, how can I make it a little more interesting?
And I we did a lightning round with the president.
I brought up Bernie Sanders.
He goes, communist.
I know they call him a socialist, but he's a communist.
And he goes, Whoever thinks of weddings in Moscow.
Because I guess that's where Bernie, we've reported on before, uh, I guess went for his uh honeymoon.
This former Soviet Union.
Yeah, let's go to communist Russia.
That's real former.
Let's go to let's go hang out there.
Great.
Um, and you can see it, like you got the MSDNC crowd, Ram Emanuel, Deadfish, his crowd, the Clinton crowd, the Obama crowd, the Hillary crowd, they all hate Bernie Sanders.
And it's fascinating because the president said, I can see it.
They're they're setting him up to steal it again from this guy.
And it's so funny, I never understood and stated so many times since That whole primary.
It was rigged.
Remember Donna Brazil in her book, or and I know I interviewed her about it.
You know, she said, I'm going to investigate it.
This is after Wasserman Schultz was escorted out just prior to the convention in the summer of 2016.
Donna Brazil was brought in in the interim, promised to get to the bottom of the Bernie thing and said, Yeah, I had to cry.
And I called Bernie Sanders, and basically, yep, it was rigged against you.
Now we were told that they had put, I guess, some type of safety measures in place, but that hasn't happened.
But you can even see that, oh no.
You got top Democrats now facing the prospect with Bernie Sanders being the top of the ticket, and they're pretty nervous about it because he's not only in the lead in Iowa, but also New Hampshire and also South Carolina.
And by the way, Michael Bloomberg is just spending a fortune, dropping money.
Michael Bloomberg is the dullest human being on the face of this earth.
You know, 12 years mayor of New York.
Basically a caretaker for the Rudy Giuliani policies out there supporting the stop and frisk that Rudy put in place and fought for and was called a racist about every day, and the murder rate dropped precipitously as a result.
And here we are, you know, 18 years later, you know, him acting like he's crying that he ever supported it.
Because he's thinking, of course, like all Democrats think, identity politics, how will African Americans, you know, support me if I supported stop and frisk, etc., etc.?
Uh, but you got some old-time Democrats like Chris Matthews, this is a disaster for the party, and the prospect of having Bernie win the Iowa caucus, and then he's gonna win New Hampshire, and uh it's like, oh no.
But I don't see anybody that's gonna be able to beat Trump based on if we judge elections or re-elections, are you better off than you were?
Yeah.
Did the president lose any of his support from 2016?
I don't think so.
I think they're more energized because of the horrific treatment by the Democrats and the media mob.
Uh, did the president keep his promises?
Yeah, pretty substantial list.
Uh does the public get feigness outrage that the mob and the media over everything that Donald Trump says and does.
No, the American people, they've come to understand what a disruptor is, what an iconoclast is, and what draining the swamp and the sewer is, and they're used to his tweety.
You know, the number one comments I got from friends and people I know yesterday, you know, what he says about Sleepy Joe, Elizabeth Warren, Pocahontas, communist, Hunter Biden.
No, but how does everybody literally act like Hunter did nothing wrong?
He's all innocent.
That's the breathtaking hypocrisy you take on as a liberal and the double standard.
It reeks of just an irrational hatred of Donald Trump.
You know, John Kerry, you know, I'm not effing running.
Whoops, let me delete that.
I'm not running.
A warning that Bernie Sanders is gonna take down the entire Democratic Party, Deadfish Emmanuel announcing the same thing.
And you have Bernie himself is announcing a plan to nationalize the energy industry.
Says his green energy push would muscle many of the country's biggest companies out of business.
Uh, nationalizing health insurance, Medicare for all, said he'd laid out a $16 trillion climate change plan.
That's four years of income that the government has, and that's not spending another penny on anything else.
It's the lifeblood of our economy.
Anyway, so they're talking about a never Bernie apocalypse coming.
Uh Biden, I I don't even know what to say about Biden anymore.
Now he's telling everybody, don't vote for me.
He's losing it almost on a daily basis.
I mean, we get more cuts of Biden saying something stupid.
I I think if I ran it on this show or on TV, it would be a never-ending, you know, shift show to use a phrase.
You know, Tom Brokaw weighing in that Sanders 2020 chances, hard to see how people will say I'm for socialism.
Hey, Tom, I don't know where you've been.
Almost, well, not almost all of these Democrats are supporting some Version of this idiotic new Green Deal or Medicare for All.
You know, Deadfish Emmanuel.
I mean, hey, Deadfish, who are you to lecture anyone on politics?
What did you do to stop the violence in Chicago?
Nothing.
Not happy with this field.
MSDNC, Area 51, Roswell Rachel Maddow's, you know, channel, state-run Democratic TV, uh, saying the 2020 Democrats can't beat Trump.
Joe Biden snaps.
Oh, man, at Savannah Guthrie for the Hunter question, you don't know what you're talking about.
Has it occurred to you that there's a certain irony here that here the president is accused of and has acknowledged wanting to get information about your son Hunter and his dealings with Ukraine?
And this process of impeachment has ensured that everyone knows about Hunter's dealings with Ukraine.
That's a good thing.
And no one's found anything wrong with his dealings with Ukraine except they say it sets a bad image.
Well, do you agree that it sets a bad image?
And my son said that.
Do you think it was wrong for him to take that position?
No.
Knowing that it was really because that company wanted access to you.
Well, that's not true.
You're saying things you do not know what you're talking about.
No one said that.
Who said that?
What don't you say that?
Don't you think that it's just one of those things where people think, well, that seems kind of sleazy.
Why would he have that job if not for his who his father was?
Because he's a very bright guy.
I guess the question I'm kind of asking is Was it right?
His appearance.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Well, he said he regretted having done it.
Yeah.
Speak for himself.
It's a grown man.
I regret it.
It's a grown man.
Yeah.
Okay.
And why do you think you got?
Do you have any experience in gas?
No.
Oil?
No.
Energy?
No.
Any experience with Ukraine?
No.
Why do you think you got the millions of dollars?
I don't know.
Maybe because your vice president father's in charge.
I told him, you're not getting the billion.
Fire the guy.
I still cannot get over it.
By the way, Senator Graham vowing to investigate this Ukrainian impeachment conspiracy theory hoax, but the double standard is breathtaking.
I don't know how these people can bifurcate and compartmentalize such hypocrisy and such lying to themselves.
Jake Tapper calling out Joe Biden for not taking or talking on the Sunday shows.
Hey, uh, fake Jake.
Nobody gets ratings on these stupid shows anymore.
Nobody watches them.
I know you can convince yourself that there's all this prestige involved with it, but it's it though, you're not Tim Russert.
Tim Russ, David Brinkley, they're gone.
They they were uh that's a bygone error.
Now you have people like Michael Moore, apoplectic that guys like uh Mayor Bloomberg might be able to buy his way onto the debate stage, which by the way is true.
They're changing the rules just for Mayor Bloomberg, so he can get on there.
And he literally, he was at a Bernie Sanders rally in Iowa, and you know, talking about how the DNC lowered the standards, allowing candidates to participate in the next primary debate, saying that the rule change is just an effort to for the Democratic establishment again to screw Bernie like they did in 2016 and buy his way onto the stage.
I watched the debate in Iowa two weeks ago, and the all-white debate he said, and the fact that the Democratic DNC will not allow Corey Booker on the stage, not allow Julian Castro on the stage, but they're gonna allow Mike Bloomberg on the stage because he has a billion blanking dollars.
There's a lot of truth to what he's saying here.
And the DNC is now eyeing this rule change in this bid to block Bernie.
Here we go again.
This is in the politico, small group of Democratic National Committee members has privately begun gauging support for a plan to potentially weaken Bernie Sanders' presidential campaign in conversations on the sidelines.
DNC executive committee members meeting calls, text in recent days about a half dozen members discussing the possibility of a policy reversal to ensure the so-called super delegates can vote on the first ballot at the party's national convention.
They're trying to screw Bernie one more time.
Isn't that nice of them?
I cannot believe this is happening.
I'm literally about to kill myself that I'm not kidding.
You better fix it right now.
I literally am gonna die.
I need an ambulance.
And now we know in the Hill, they're reporting Bloomberg is surging past warrant.
Nobody knows Bloomberg.
All you do is paying for ads.
Mike is great.
I hate guns.
You know, Mike will get it done.
Give Mike a chance.
Nobody knows.
I'm telling you, it is they're just like throwing anything up first.
They couldn't impeach him.
Muller report fails.
Russia conspiracy lies, three years, Ukraine impeachment all falls apart.
And now you got progressive groups, they're getting pissed, and they're now uniting behind Bernie Sanders.
And he's introducing uh legislation that will end U.S. energy independence.
Oh, and by the way, Bernie leads the 2020 field in private jet spending.
Oh, Bernie's a hypocrite, just like Al Gore, shocker.
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 Hamm.
And I'm Carol Markowitz.
We've been in political media for a long time.
Long enough to know that it's gotten, well, a little insane.
That's why we started normally a podcast for people who are over the hysteria and just want clarity.
We talk about the issues that actually matter to the country without panic, without yelling, and with a healthy dose of humor.
We don't take ourselves too seriously, but we do take the truth seriously.
So if you're into common sense, sanity, and some occasional sass.
You're our kind of people.
Catch new episodes of Normally every Tuesday and Thursday on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen.
What I told people, I was making a podcast about Benghazi.
Nine times out of ten, they called me a masochist, rolled their eyes, or just asked why.
Benghazi, the truth became a web of lies.
It's almost a dirty word.
One that connotes conspiracy theory.
Will we ever get the truth about the Benghazi massacre?
Bad faith, political warfare, and frankly, bullshit.
We kill the ambassador just to cover something up.
You put two and two together.
Was it an overblown distraction or a sinister conspiracy?
Benghazi is a rosetta stone for everything that's been going on for the last 20 years.
I'm Leon Nayock from Prologue Projects and Pushkin Industries.
This is Fiasco Benghazi.
What difference at this point does it make?
Yeah, that's right.
Locker up.
Listen to Fiasco Benghazi on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
Alright, as we roll along, 800 941 Sean is our number.
I will get your calls in too in the next half hour.
Uh, we, the only guest we have is Congressman Scalise is in the final half hour of the program today.
So all of this about Bernie's announcement about the environment, and you know, he's surging and the Democrats are freaking out, and his new plan, by the way.
We're gonna we're gonna get rid of oil and gas.
I'm like, oh, okay.
Now Bernie is getting screwed again, and they're trying to do it right in front of everybody, which cracks me up.
But then I find out I read this.
Oh, headline.
Bernie leads 2020 field in private jet spending.
Oh, we can't drive a caravan or an escalade uh or a car that uses, you know, whatever.
You know, we've got a fly less, the new Green Deal.
We're gonna get rid of oil and gas and the internal combustion engine, and everything's gonna be free, and it's gonna be 94 trillion or some version thereof.
His latest one is 16 trillion.
That's four years of income, assuming that our economy's still standing after they take away the lifeblood of our economy.
And so he introduces legislation that will end U.S. energy uh independence, but he's flying around in private jets to the tune of 1.2 million dollars just in the last quarter alone.
Must be nice up there in the sky, not having to worry about going through TSA and Having, you know, your cocktails in private, whatever you do up there.
Uh, progressive groups, though, are uniting behind Bernie.
The New York Post never Bernie a cop uh apocalypse is coming.
Democratic insiders.
And now you could see you got the Obama faction, you got the Hillary Clinton and Bill Clinton faction.
You got uh, you know, now literally trying to, and then you got the DNC hierarchy.
You want to talk about a swamp?
Well, they already ripped this guy off once.
Why not do it again?
They're now planning it, and even the mainstream media is picking up on it.
And Joe Biden is fading in South Carolina.
Now they're gonna change the rules.
Maybe, maybe it's gonna be Bloomberg.
All right, we'll get to that.
Super Bowl latest on impeachment disaster for the Democrats and the fallout coming up.
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 verdict with Ted Cruz now, wherever you get your podcasts.
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 Mayfock from Prologue Projects and Pushkin Industries.
This is Fiasco Benghazi.
What difference at this point does it make?
Yeah, that's right.
Locker up.
Listen to Fiasco Benghazi on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
Hey there.
I'm Mary Catherine Hamm.
And I'm Carol Markowitz.
We've been in political media for a long time.
Long enough to know that it's gotten, well, a little insane.
That's why we started normally a podcast for people who are over the hysteria and just want clarity.
We talk about the issues that actually matter to the country without panic, without yelling, and with a healthy dose of humor.
We don't take ourselves too seriously, but we do take the truth seriously.
So if you're into common sense, sanity, and some occasional sass.
You're our kind of people.
Catch new episodes of Normally every Tuesday and Thursday on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen.
All right, 25 now till the top of the hour.
800 941 Sean, you want to be a part of the program.
We talked about Rush.
He announced on his program uh at the end of his show today that he's being treated for lung cancer.
And uh we talked about it for a good part of the first hour.
And uh just want to remind people our thoughts and prayers are with him.
He thinks he'll be back on the air on Thursday, and um what a what a what a profound impact.
Mark was right when we had a little bit on very few people actually really impact history.
What an impact he's had.
We're all blessed, and we want that impact to continue for decades and decades to come.
Uh, a lot happening today.
So you got the caucus tonight.
Looks like Bernie is surging everywhere at this time.
There is an all-out freakout within the Democratic establishment.
You've got, you know, the the Clintons, and then you got Obama stating pretty publicly and behind closed doors, and it's been reported they they're not interested, and all team Clinton doesn't seem too interested.
And then you've got state-run TV, MSDNZ in a total meltdown with Chris Matthews.
These 2020 Democrats can't beat Trump.
Then the Democrats are now DNC is now changing the rules so that Michael Bloomberg could actually buy his way into the debates, and uh Joe Biden is falling like a rock, as is uh Elizabeth Warren.
And Bernie's surging pretty much in every poll.
Now looks like, by the way, he has a shot at South Carolina, and they're trying to build in a stopgap, and now the DNC, well, I think we're gonna go back to the old rules where on the first ballot, the superdelegates matter again.
Wow, pretty amazing.
John Kerry, among those freaking out as well that Bernie Sanders will take down the entire Democratic Party.
Notice they don't get nervous until he starts to win.
Just like the last time.
And that's when the whole thing was rigged.
That's when Donna Brazil had to call Bernie Sanders and say, yeah, it's true.
I never understood why people within the Democratic Party that like Bernie, you have a right to like Bernie.
You like a socialist.
Pretty much they're all socialists now, pretty radical socialist.
And they literally rigged the system so he can't win.
So the establishment candidate Hillary emerges.
And I don't understand why so many people in the Democratic Party are willing to take it.
And I'd say on this program and on TV a lot.
I'm like, why am I like the only one that thinks rigging an election, or in this case a primary, is really bad.
And probably shouldn't be happening in the United States of America.
Just, you know, random thoughts.
Because I think if it happened, and somebody I supported as a conservative that was running for the Republican Party nomination, and they rigged the system against them, uh, I think I'd end up being pretty ticked off.
But the DNC finally announces there's going to be two pathways now to qualify in the New Hampshire debate.
And that is one, earn at least one pledge delegate from the Iowa caucus.
And then, of course, well, meet the donor requirements of contributions of 225,000 unique donors, and one of two polling requirements, two polls at 7% or more in New Hampshire, Nevada, South Carolina, and then the three early states qualifying polls for the New Hampshire debate will include national polling in New Hampshire, Nevada, South Carolina.
But all of this now is you've you've got, okay, maybe we were gonna have to go with Bloomberg just to screw Bernie again.
And this again from the politico.
Nobody paid attention to Politico January 11, 2017, when they did a long expose, investigative report about Ukrainian election interference, and how in fact they were successful at it, separate apart from what they do with Russia.
Anyway, got to give some props to Politico.
DNC members discuss rules change to stop Sanders at convention.
Now, Carl Rove has been keeping his eye on the possibility of a brokered convention now for some time.
I do have some friends of mine that are thinking this is the Clintons.
Hillary wants to get in.
I'm like, well, you never know.
I mean, I have no idea.
Um, but you do know their motives aren't particularly pure.
What they're really saying is they don't like Democratic voters.
That's what they're really saying.
They're really saying we know better than you do.
It's sort of like when, you know, you watch fake news CNN and they're laughing, oh, Trump voters, ha ha her, and them lines and them map and all that stuff that they were doing the other night on what Don Lemon's show.
Well, I think that's pretty revealing.
They don't particularly like uh Donald Trump supporters because they think they know better than we do.
That's why the term irredeemable deplorable is so obnoxious.
Peter Strzok could smell them all the way far away.
Or Obama, you know, these bitter, you know, uh people in Pennsylvania that cling to God.
Oh, okay.
I cling to God, guilty is charged.
Our constitution, guilty.
Uh, yeah, our Bibles and our religion.
Guilty, guilty is charged.
Irredeemable, yeah, deplorable, sure.
If you want to call me that, whatever you want.
Smelly, I like Walmart.
You know why I like Walmart?
They have everything and it's all cheap.
You got you save money.
That's a good thing.
Michael Moore's not standing for this.
He's ticked off of this.
It looks like every Bernie supporters are gonna get pissed off this time, and I don't know how that ends.
I don't know if it's gonna end particularly well for them.
Um, well, the the show, if you will, is almost over.
Um, now it's all but Done, and that directly has to do with the issue of this sham impeachment.
This is all we've gotten from these Democrats for four consecutive solid years.
Have they done a thing to make this country safer or more secure?
Nothing.
Even those that supported a border wall.
Soon as Donald Trump supported it, no, that's racist.
No, it's a manufactured crisis.
I mean, that's spectacular hypocrisy.
Then it was Russia, Russia, Russia, impeach, impeach, impeach, all through 20, the end of 2016, immediately thereafter.
Washington Post, within hours of the inauguration of Donald Trump.
Talk of impeachment has begun.
Wow.
Guess they don't like what the who the American people chose either.
That's why I say you have the power as the ultimate jury.
You now have the power.
We the people have the power.
They can't stop us.
They can't stop you.
By the way, if you want voting information, we try to make it information friendly.
When to register in your state, who might be running for Congress in your district, early voting time periods, absentee voting process.
We put it all up on Hannity.com for your convenience.
So if you're interested in shocking the world in 274 days, maybe you'll go to Hannity.com.
I was glad that Senator Lindsey Graham made it very clear today.
While impeachment may be over, his investigation of these Democrats and this impeachment hoax, which is the latest hoax.
They've done nothing to keep us, you know, safe or secure.
They've done nothing for prosperity, haven't created a single job.
They've done nothing but hate Donald Trump and just viciously attack him and his supporters for three years.
I don't think that's a good platform to run on.
And then when you hear what they want to do, it almost makes Barack Obama look like a moderate.
Obama didn't work out very well for the country with 13 million more Americans on food stamps and eight million more in poverty and the lowest labor participation rate since the 70s, and he took on more debt than you know all 43 presidents before him combined.
Donald Trump's now, well, I think he's doing all the things that somebody needs to do if you want to be re-elected.
Are you better off than you were four years ago?
Check.
Okay, did you keep your promises?
Check.
I think he kept almost all of them.
Did you know, are things better?
8 million new jobs, millions out of poverty, 8 million fewer Americans on food stamps.
Check.
What about those trade deals?
Check China 220 billion in two years to help farmers, our service industry, our energy sector, our manufacturers, our car manufacturers.
Wow.
Nobody thought the China deal would get done.
No, you got the deal now with Canada, Mexico.
Got the deal done with Japan.
By the way, as far as Mexico, we have a better deal.
That means we'll make it more money.
They're kind of paying for the wall in a roundabout way, aren't they?
Better deals with our Western European allies.
Has he gotten us into these long established entanglements abroad?
Nope.
Showed a lot of restraint with Iran after they shot down two drones that people didn't think he'd show.
Or when they were taking tankers hostage in the Straits of Hormuz.
I think the president did a pretty good job even after they tried to interrupt the free flow of oil at market prices and take out the Saudi oil uh industry.
He didn't respond then either.
But when the Iranians killed Americans, he responded.
He responded then, he did take out the caliphate in Syria when he just simply removed the handcuffs, which are the rules of engagement of Biden and Obama, and let the military do their job and bomb them on the living hell out of them.
Baghdad's dead, Solomon's dead.
Iran's number one state sponsor of terror.
That terror was led by Solomonny.
That's a pretty big deal, I guess, except if you're a Democrat.
But they were too busy Russia, Russia.
Impeach, impeach.
Ukraine, Ukraine.
Now, I know the inspector general's report validated everything I told you about the dirty Russian dossier that Hillary paid for, and how that was the bulk of information in the FISA applications and the DOJ affirming, yep, uh They were fraudulently obtained.
To spy on Carter Page, deny him his civil liberties, and his basic fundamental civil rights.
And that it was used as a backdoor to spy on a presidential candidate.
Wow.
They cheated Bernie.
They tried to, you know, cheat Trump.
Remember, even the New York Times finally came around.
That Russian dossier, full with full of nothing but now but debunked lies.
Hookers, bads, urinating in Trump's Ritz, Carlton room and in Moscow.
It was all false.
Leaked to conspiracy theorists, the compliant, you know, state-run media, the mob, the 99% of media.
You know, is a cough corn.
Yeah, they're all leaking all this crap.
You know, and what's Pelosi saying today after knowing it's all over?
Ukraine is done.
Well, we'll see what we do next after Trump is acquitted.
Oh, she wants to drag the country through more of this.
And more unhinged, Pelosi suggesting Trump's impeachment lawyers should be disbarred.
Why?
Because they won?
Because they did a good job.
Pretty amazing.
Because I thought Justice Roberts, frankly, showed more gave more leeway to Democrats than I even thought was ever permissible.
All the hearsay, witness testimony, he allowed.
All of the opinion testimony, he allowed.
He even allowed the Mueller report to be dragged into this.
But still, there was no case.
Well, John Bolton may say that the president said he's going to link funding to any release of funds.
But the truth is he didn't, did he?
And neither, and the Ukrainians say it.
And they got all the money.
Every penny.
And they announced nothing.
They wouldn't never announce an investigation.
All true.
You know, so it this is a spectacular win, but it's so sad and the damage so real for the country we all love.
Impeachment Democrats raging.
Foreign election interference.
You know, they can't explain the dirty Clinton dossier.
You got Hakeem Jeffries, New York Congressman, arguing on uh Thursday that steel and the dossier did not constitute foreign meddling in an election because it was purchased.
That's how nuts they got.
You know, they all exonerate quid in pro and quo and Joe and zero experienced hunter being paid million uh millions of dollars, eighty-three thousand a month.
Average American family of four makes under 54 grand a year.
There's a great piece, Georgetown law professor.
I've not heard of him before.
His name is Randy Barnett, he's a professor.
He points out that uh they brought an incomplete case to the Senate.
That was my point.
And it's not the Senate's role he said to finish it.
By the way, the biggest loser in all this is Joe Biden.
Because the one that did it was Joe Biden.
You're not getting the billion unless you fired the prosecutor that's investigating my zero experienced son being paid millions.
They brought an incomplete case to the Senate.
It's not the Senate's role to finish it.
This professor's right.
They're tasked in the Senate with reviewing the evidence gathered by the House and making a judgment on whether or not to remove the president.
Too bad Senator Romney didn't understand the simple basics of the Constitution, beyond disappointing from Mitt Romney.
Based on what I've seen, the professor goes on with my own eyes these last few years.
I am convinced the U.S. would be very well served to intensely review every single case that Adam Schiff is ever prosecuted.
Wow, I like that a lot.
By the way, Lindsey Graham said so, as said as much, and Lindsey Graham's going to go forward with that.
And, you know, it's even interesting because in a rare moment of candor, even over fake news CNN, they're lamenting the fact that the president having survived the Mueller conspiracy theory hoax and now the Schiff show, the Schumer Schiff show, sham show, that quote, he will be stronger than ever.
Good.
You know what?
Because he's getting good things done for the country.
For we, the people that they're all supposed to serve.
Oh, they seem to be serving in their own personal interests.
I desire what caucus they will have the latest on this.
All right, all closing arguments done.
Uh the acquittal vote is now in scheduled.
It'll happen on uh Wednesday around four o'clock during the show.
This vote is scheduled.
Uh we will get to all of that.
The Democratic Party in complete chaos meltdown and the trying to again cheat Bernie.
Uh, we will get your calls in.
I know a lot of you have been calling about Rush.
Yes, our thoughts and prayers are with him as he moves towards his recovery, and we look forward to having him back on the air on Thursday.
Uh, we'll get to all of that.
800-941 Sean is our number.
Quick break, right back, final hour free for all straight ahead.
All right, Clad you're with us, toll-free 800-941 Sean.
If you want to be a part of this uh extravaganza, if you're just joining us, um there is sad news today, but I am I just believe in in medicine and science and miracles too.
And uh I know um I know what Rush means to this conservative audience because I know what he means to every conservative in the country, and as I said in the first hour of the show today, I would not be doing this job if people like him didn't pave the way for all of us that followed behind him, all of us.
And um, anyways, getting treated, he announced that he had lung cancer, that he's being treated, and he will be doing his show as often as he can and going through the treatment, which you know it's just so we all know people have gone through this.
It's so hard.
Uh you know never want that for people you love and care about, and in his case, somebody that has almost single-handedly advanced the conservative movement in the modern day since he first syndicated in 1988, and my prayer and what his prayer was is for a speedy recovery.
That's what we're looking for.
That's what we're hoping for.
Um, anyway, we got a lot happening.
So you had all this chaos with the Democratic Party.
Yeah, the Iowa caucuses today.
Uh, we have the State of the Union tomorrow, then you got the acquittal on Wednesday.
Um, and at what point, though, does the media mob, at what point do the Democrats ever pay the price for the damage, the destruction, the divisiveness, the wreckage, the lies, the conspiracy theories, the hoaxes, the slander, the smears, the besmirchment.
Because that's all we've gotten out of them for three years.
You know, I used to always complain every two and four years, we always get the same thing.
Republicans are racist, they are sexist, they're misogynist, homophobic, xenophobic, islamophobic.
Their plan is for dirty air and dirty water, Obama once said, and of course, they don't care about old people.
They want grandma and grandpa to eat cat food or dog food before a Paul Ryan look-alike will show up in a commercial.
I guess now it'll be Kevin McCarthy, and throw your grandmother and grandfather over the cliff.
That's pretty much.
But now it's even worse than that.
And it's never been this bad with the mob in the media.
It's never been this bad.
Because, you know, look at, for example, this Schumer, the Schumer Schiff Sham impeachment show.
Now, to get there, the mob in the media and the Democrats, they have to ignore a real quid pro quo with real laws in play.
The good news is that Lindsey Graham says, you know what?
I'm looking into this.
As are other people.
But we see even three years, the Muller hoax.
All right, we got the inspector general report.
Inspector General doesn't have the ability to convene a grand jury and push charges.
Now he did make referrals, and that means criminal referrals for Comey and McCabe, lacking candor.
People like Michael Flynn, General Flynn, he ends up getting charged.
When is Comey going to get charged?
Because it sounds like the same thing.
Or McCabe, the same issue.
We're struck in page.
The only difference here is it takes forever to get to the bottom of the great injustice.
And I hope we better get that fixed because otherwise we won't have anything that resembles equal justice under the law in this country.
We would never will.
We'll never have it.
Equal application of our laws.
Now, John Durham and the Attorney General Barr, they're not living in the con with the confines that General Inspector General Horowitz had, because he could only narrowly look at what he could see within the Department of Justice and the FBI.
By the way, not the 99%.
Great people.
And this investigation has taken them far and wide and abroad.
They've now even said, yeah, a spying on a candidate occurred.
On a transition team occurred.
Deep.
Attorney General Barr's words, spying into the presidency.
They've now even confirmed.
Yeah, those FISA applications.
Yeah, yeah, they were issued.
Yeah, no, that was improper.
Meaning laws are broken.
So I'm going to tell you, but one good piece of news on that front, by the way.
There's a there was a piece in editorial board piece in the New York Post about how the case against General Flynn is now in a full collapse.
This is how we treat people that serve their country for 31 years, including in war zones.
Yeah.
Combat.
Guess that's how we do that.
We do things.
If you're a conservative, you get one set of justice.
If you're a liberal, you get a whole entire set of justice.
Pretty sad and pretty sick, but more importantly, even more day.
It is so dangerous.
I was going to play today.
I won't do it today.
We might get to it tomorrow.
We'll definitely get some of it on TV.
Um, I was very happy.
I've been in radio 31 years now, and I'm now my 24th year, believe it or not, at Fox, and I got an opportunity of a lifetime.
And by the way, we were up, I think two and a half million viewers from whatever the interview that Margaret Brennan did with the president last year.
I was pretty happy about that.
Thank you for watching and the part of the pregame show, but you only have eight and a half minutes.
So that's why I did the lightning round that made a lot of news.
We'll we'll play some of the we'll play some of what we played yesterday and some of what we played that we didn't play, but the interview went on a little bit longer.
He gave us some extra time, which was nice.
And um, anyway, so it was uh it was interesting, and what a football game it was.
It was amazing, wasn't it?
I don't, you know what I football to me is like our our gladiator sport.
I mean, it's just the athleticism.
And I know there was criticism of the halftime show.
Yeah, it was a little racy.
I'm kind of used to it now, so it doesn't really surprise me.
Wasn't a wardrobe malfunction, so I guess we're on the upside of it.
But I will tell you just the athleticism of you know, athletes, how hard they work to play their season to stay strong and fit at the top of their game.
Only a tiny percentage of college football players ever make the pros.
And then I saw incredible athleticism during the halftime show.
I was blown away.
I mean, incredible athleticism coupled with the music.
Um, and I I've that impressed me a lot.
I'll tell you, the two ads that the president ran were pretty amazing.
They'd been given a heads up from a source that this might happen, and that there was uh going to be, I was told maybe an ad on Alice Marie Johnson, but then I saw it for myself.
Now she's one of the most inspirational people I've ever known.
I've interviewed Alice Marie Johnson, she's gonna be on the show tomorrow.
She's gonna be on TV.
Amazing woman.
She was sentenced to life in prison.
I'll play the ad, but you gotta remember that a lot of it was actually written on the screen.
And she never thought she was ever getting out of prison.
And rather than just give up, she does she built her own prison ministry.
And she would counsel younger inmates and do Bible studies with younger inmates to help change their lives, and she did.
She never she never thought she'd get out.
So the ad has written, Alice Marie Johnson, Alice Johnson was sentenced to serve life in prison for a nonviolent drug offense.
Thanks to President Trump, people like Alice are getting a second chance.
Then you're gonna hear the moment when she came out.
I remember one moment, it wasn't part of the ad where she said, I want to thank the American people.
I won't let you down.
Thank you for giving me a second chance.
But in this ad, it says, I'm free to hug my family again.
Free to start over.
Politicians, you know, it's written that they all talk about criminal justice reform.
President Trump got it done.
Then you hear Alice again.
This is the greatest day of my life.
My heart is bursting with gratitude.
Then it says, written, thousands of families are being reunited.
Then you hear Alice Johnson, and Donald Trump says, Well, I won't, I'll let you hear the rest yourself.
I'm Donald Trump.
I approve this message.
Listen.
I'm free to hug my family.
I'm free to start over.
This is the greatest day of my life.
My heart is just burst with gratitude.
I was a thank President Donald John Trump.
Woo!
I'm Donald Trump.
And I approve this message.
You know, if you look at the statistics, amazing, isn't it?
Liberals, big cities, decades of rule.
How's it working out in San Francisco, Los Angeles, Chicago, Baltimore?
How is it?
You know, we're promised, oh, you get to keep your doctor your plan and save money.
On average, $2,500 per family per year.
Well, we're now all paying almost 200% more.
Almost 40% of this country only has one health care, Obamacare exchange option.
One.
That's it.
What happened to keep your doctor in plan?
Lies.
What do you think the new Green Deal is?
Lies.
What do you think free everything is?
Lies.
It's unsustainable.
Nobody ever asked them in the mob because they just hate Trump.
They want Trump out.
Now, the second ad.
Well, I'll just play it and let you hear it yourself.
America demanded change.
Donald Trump wins the presidency.
And change is what we got.
Under President Trump, America is stronger, safer, and more prosperous than ever before.
Best wage growth, I think we've seen almost a decade.
Unemployment rate sinking to a 49-year low.
Unemployment for African Americans at fell to a new low.
Unemployment for Hispanics here at all-time record low.
And ladies and gentlemen, the best is yet to come.
I'm Donald J. Trump and I approve this message.
Biden, Obama had eight years, 13 million more Americans on food stamps, 8 million more in poverty.
Now millions out of poverty, about 8 million off of food stamps, and about 8 million new jobs, including the manufacturing jobs that Obama said are never coming back.
They're back.
And then the trade deals.
And then the originalist justices.
And then dollar amount, the largest tax cut in American history, the biggest reduction ever in the bureaucracy, ending burdensome regulations.
Wow, conservatism works.
Trade deal with China.
Get this 220 billion in two years only.
That helps farmers all across our country, our the greatest farmers in the world.
Nobody's better than us.
And our service industries are benefiting.
The energy sector, the car industry, manufacturing.
They all benefit from that 220 billion dollar deal alone.
Nobody thought he'd get that done.
He got it done.
Then a new deal with China, uh, Japan.
Then a deal with Mexico and Canada and our Western European allies.
And then he takes out the entire caliphate because he let the military do their job.
Wow.
And we're not having, we don't have boots on the ground.
Then he took out Baghdadian associates.
Then he took out Solomonny.
Not one good word from Democrats on that either.
These are amazing times.
But they'll exonerate quid and pro and quote Joe, you're not getting the billion.
And they'll come up with a new conspiracy theory after three straight years of lies and conspiracy theories.
It's unbelievable.
It's unbelievable.
You know, these are.
We have this is beyond an information crisis.
Uh Linda, you can tell James what to bring in here.
Thank you.
Um, if you don't mind, please.
Um, these are amazing times, but here's the good news.
274 days, the ultimate jury is you.
And you can shock the world again.
Imagine for a second.
We at fake news CNN.
We at Conspiracy TV, state-run TV, MSDNC, can now project Donald J. Trump has been re-elected the 45th president.
I can't make that happen.
But you can.
All right, I know a lot of you've been out there.
Uh, Steve Scalese at the bottom of the hour.
Let me get to let's say hi to Rhonda, Indiana.
Hey, Rhonda, we'll be watching you in 274 days from now.
How are you?
I'm great, Sean.
It's so nice to hear your voice again.
Hey, I want to tell you something.
Um, personally.
I was listening to the impeachment the other day, just here in my home, and I just was feeling the heaviness and the bruising that this whole debacle has laid on our country.
And I remember something that um Vice President Pence's assistant had told us recently at the White House.
She just said we need encouragement.
And I thought of you.
I thought of you and the way that you fight to bring truth.
And I thought of the Trump administration.
And so here in the quietness of my Midwestern home, I got down on my knees on the floor, and I prayed for you by name.
And I prayed for Trump and his administration.
Because I wanted God, I want God to encourage your hearts to strengthen you uh with resolve for the battle.
And I pray, as the mother of four boys, believe me, I'm acquainted with the power of prayer.
And there's nothing like having a praying mother on your side.
And so I pray, as a mother, I pray for my fellow Americans, because even the ones who are doing their worst are still my fellow Americans, and I may disagree strongly with their ideas, and I may work hard to see them defeated.
But if I allow my heart to slide into hatred for them, then it will only entrap and ensnare me, and I refuse to let that happen.
Well, first of all, let me let me let me because I only have a few seconds.
Let me just say something.
I humbly thank you.
I believe in prayer.
Um Rush's announcement today makes me pray for him.
Uh it's not, you know, you worry about us taking these barbs or whatever.
It's an honor for all of us to be able to do this every day.
And I'll tell you, there are things worth fighting for.
And the future of our country is one of them.
And what some have done the last three years is beyond despicable, culminating in, you know, what will end on Thursday at four o'clock.
Two hundred and seventy-four days, Ronda.
There you can pray for that too.
Remarkable is you now have uh Republican senators coming in out and saying, Yes, the House proved its case.
So the House proved the corrupt scheme that they charge in the articles of impeachment.
The president did withhold hundreds of millions of dollars from an ally to try to coerce that ally into helping him cheat in the next election.
Uh that's pretty remarkable when you now have uh senators on both sides of the aisle admitting the House made its case, and the only question is should the president be removed for office because he's been found guilty of these offenses.
I think it's enormously important that the country understand exactly what this president did, and we have proved it.
I also think it's important that the Senate take the next step, having found him guilty, if indeed that's what they have found, they need to remove him from office because he is threatening to still cheat in the next election by soliciting foreign interference.
There it is.
I mean, it's just endless, never-ending, never-ending, nonstop fixation, lies, propaganda, misinformation, and that of course the congenital liar himself who's compromised in the case.
The only guy we know that is colluding on tape with somebody he believes to be a Russian that has compromising material on uh Donald Trump.
What's the nature of the compromise?
Uh naked pictures Trump.
And does Vladimir know?
The only guy, it is the only guy that is on tape doing it.
But he exonerates quit and pro and quo and Joe and zero experience hunter.
That is the breathtaking hypocrisy that is the Democratic Party today that is now that they they ought not and can never be rewarded for this type of behavior.
Because I'll tell you, if they are, it is it will be the biggest travesty of justice ever.
Now, this this acquittal is real.
It is spectacular.
This was a failure from the get-go.
There's a uh I don't know the guy, a Georgetown law professor.
His name uh is uh Randy Barnett, and he wrote this piece.
It was devastating and about the articles of impeachment.
And he pointed out that criticizing senators for rejecting the substance of the House case is different than criticizing them for not allowing the House to correct the deficits in the Senate's in the case in the Senate.
That's not their job.
Quote, they brought an incomplete case to the Senate.
It's not the Senate's role to finish it.
They are tasked with reviewing the evidence gathered by the House and making a judgment on whether or not to remove a president based on what I've seen with my own eyes these last few years.
I am convinced that the USA would be very well served to intensely review every single case that Adam Schiff ever prosecuted.
And wow.
And Lindsey Graham, by the way, agrees with that that sentiment here.
You know, did he orchestrate the whole scheme now?
You know, what role did he and his office play in all of this?
Because look at what he's now done to the country twice because he lied for three years on Russia Russia.
Remember when Devin Nunes, he said Devin Nunes didn't tell the truth, the new Dunez meant memo.
Everything Nunes put out was true and accurate and confirmed by the inspector general.
Everything that Schiff said about oh no, no, the he we he stood up for the dossier as credible and said, No, no, it was not the basis of the entire FISA applications.
He's lied spectacularly again and again and again, and at some point here, um, I would say that we need to know whether or not this guy in his office, the congenital liar in his office, coordinated with the whistleblower to create a case of impeachment against the president.
And as this professor says, I would go as uh so far as to say he may belong in jail.
Not only distracted the country, he has created further division between Americans.
I find Schiff to be a malevolent, dishonest figure.
And it goes on from there.
Anyway, we have with us uh the Republican whip, our good friend Congressman Steve Scalise, Louisiana.
You know, I have not asked you in a long time.
I I need to take a minute.
I know that your recovery has been long when you got shot in the ballfield that day.
Um I know you faced other surgeries since then.
How are you doing?
Hey, Sean, uh great to be back with you.
And appreciate it.
I'm doing really well.
Uh in fact, my New Year's resolution in 2019 was to end the year not having to use my crutches anymore.
And uh starting in January, I've been walking without a crutch.
So uh God has been good and uh recovery keeps going well, still doing physical therapy, but uh getting better every day.
Well, and I'll never forget one year later that incredible play you made.
Well, you're playing second base.
Wow, it was amazing.
Uh all right, so look, I think this professor from Georgetown has a really interesting point.
And you know, Pelosi is now warning, we'll see what we do next after Trump's acquitted, and and saying his impeachment lawyers should be disbarred.
There's something so ugly and twisted about this tempered tantrum now that has gone on three years.
Yeah, it's been disgraceful.
It's been such a personal political vendetta, Sean.
And that's been clear from the beginning.
This was never a search for truth.
In fact, they hid the truth.
They wouldn't let us bring the witnesses we wanted, who could clearly contradict their narrative, the false narrative that Adam Schiff and so many others said.
But even with their witnesses, we took their witnesses one at a time and they were asked under oath.
Can you name an impeachable offense?
Not one.
Was there bribery?
No, was their answer under oath.
And yet they still moved forward because their radical left base wanted to impeach him since the day he took office.
And I think everybody has seen that through this trial.
The the kind of the personal seething hatred they have for him.
And as President Trump has pointed out, it's not just President Trump they're going after.
These are the millions and millions of people, the hardworking men and women who had been left behind by Washington, people in both parties that this president has fought for and delivered for time and time again.
That's who they really are going after.
And President Trump is not letting it get him down, and he keeps doing his job, keeps focusing on what he needs to do to deliver for those people.
And uh, and I think that's why he's gonna get re-elected in 2020 in a few months.
Well, that's why the ultimate jury speaks in 274 days.
I, you know, and uh and whatever satisfactory, well, he's impeached, that's forever.
We stuck impeachment on his, you know.
I'm like, uh nobody really cares, Nancy.
I mean, because we know where he he will he will end up going down as is one of only two presidents in history to be acquitted with a majority vote of the Senate.
And so the acquittal will be forever, too.
If Pelosi did this just to try to put something on him or to put a skin on her wall so that she could go home to a radical base who who said we won't let you be speaker unless you impeach him.
And that with the AOCs of the world, you can go back and look at their tweets.
They bullied and threatened Pelosi into doing this, and that's why they did it.
Not because there were facts.
Uh the phone call, everybody's read the phone transcript, and Zelensky himself said there was no pressure.
The foreign minister of Ukraine said they got the money, there was never pressure.
Uh Trump did, by the way, more than Obama and Biden ever did to help Ukraine.
I never heard them calling for helping Ukraine back when Obama was president when he said, No, I won't sell you javelin missiles to stand up to Russia.
Trump stood stood up for Ukraine, stood up to Russia.
He's the one who delivered.
Let me let me go.
You know, we're still in the process.
We had the inspector general report, Michael Horowitz, it confirmed nearly three long years, Congressman, of digging deep, a deep dive on this program and unpeeling every layer of the onion.
And yeah, it's all true.
The the espionage act was violated.
Yeah, she did delete subpoenaed emails and bleach bit, and yeah, Hillary played paid for a dirty Russian dossier that even the New York Times now refers to as likely Russian disinformation from the beginning.
That became the bulk of information to deny an American a civil liberties and civil rights, so that would be Carter Page.
But more importantly, using Carter Page to spy on a campaign, the Trump campaign, then the Trump transition team, then the Trump presidency, and now we're looking into whether there was outsourcing of even further spying, and that will be in Durham's reign, uh under, I guess, I guess under his umbrella, when that comes out maybe in May.
We never get to the bottom of it.
When are we going to get to the bottom of a report, all the lies of Adam Schiff, starting with what he's done and said on Russia and ending with this colossal Ukrainian lie?
Well, he if it would be the longest dossier we've ever seen, but you just go back to uh the the initial Mueller report, the investigation, uh, and the whole time throughout 22 months and all of the 2500 subpoenas, the whole time you heard Schiff saying he had more, Sean, more than circumstantial evidence that the president colluded with Russia, and of course there was no colluding with Russia.
The report comes out and shows that.
And does Adam Schiff get held accountable by the mainstream media?
Who in the mainstream media said, Hey, Adam Schiff, show me what that evidence was that you had, because clearly he didn't he didn't see it, Mueller didn't see it, because it didn't exist, and yet he was still given a free pass to go on to these other things.
But the Durham report to me, Sean, is going to be really important because that goes to the heart of the United States.
Well, Durham, unlike the Inspector General Horowitz, Durham has the ability, his his purview goes well beyond just the DOJ and the FBI.
So in many ways, Horowitz was in a bubble, nor does he have the ability to convene a grand jury and indict.
Now he did make referrals against Comey and Pay, uh, I guess Comey and McCabe and others, but nothing ever comes of it.
Why, you know, where's the equal justice under the law, Congressman?
Yeah, there needs to be.
And look, I mean, I I have the full utmost respect for our intelligence agencies, but there were serious problems within those intelligence agencies, and we've already uncovered some of it.
Devin Nunes, as you you alluded to, started to expose this, and that were that there were people within those agencies that were using their badge, their privilege uh as members of our intelligence agencies to carry out uh their dislike of Donald Trump, to use you know, as they called it the insurance policy.
Uh when you when you have a badge, you check your political views at the door, and you're there to just carry out the laws and administer justice, and that's not what some of those people were doing, and it gives everybody else a black eye.
And so I would hope that they go back and and name names and put people in jail who abused their power uh to try to literally take out a sitting president at the time a candidate for president, and now to this day, still some of it that are using their positions of power to try to take out a sitting president just because they disagree with his views, not because he did anything wrong, but because he got elected in 2016 and they're scared to death because the Democrat field is so weak.
I mean, even John Kerry, For goodness sake is talking now about getting in the race.
How how much Joe Biden feel?
He's got John Kerry as a surrogate out there, and Kerry is now talking at Joe Biden events about maybe getting in the race himself because their field is so weak, and Donald Trump's got done such a great job delivering.
Yeah, that was very entertaining when he said not effing true.
Then he said, not true.
Except he except he said it.
Except apparently he said it because uh apparently it was captured by other people.
The Republicans in the House in particular, you know, I listen, I'm I'm I'm not happy with Senator Mitt Romney, and I've made my opinions known and clear, and for whatever reason he cannot get over that he doesn't like Donald Trump's style.
And I think it's I think it's connected directly to his loss in 2012.
I may be wrong.
But for the House, Republicans seem for the first time in many, many, many years like they're getting their backbone back.
If you m uh look, I but you know how critical I have been over the years of Republicans.
I'm not even a Republican.
I can't stand the Republican Party because at times they are so weak.
But my question to you is am I right in my perception that it's changing and changing for the better?
Sean, it really is.
You know, and I've been so proud of of how our conference has come together.
And you know, within our uh Republican conference in the House, we have a lot of different factions, but all of the factions came together.
And it's not only supporting President Trump's agenda, and look, we worked very hard to cut taxes, even when Democrats said they were gonna make it partisan.
I said, Hey, put me in the party that's for cutting people's taxes and making our country competitive, and it's worked.
Uh, but then it's it's all of the other things that this president's done too, and then they go after him for it.
They try to remove him from office uh for for literally for following through on the promises because they don't want him to follow through on those promises.
And so to see everybody sticking together, it's been uh I think it's been important, and it's it's even some other senators have cited that in the trial.
They said, you know, Lamar Alexander you saw the other day he cited uh when he said he wasn't gonna call for even more witnesses as we already had uh over a dozen witnesses uh in in everybody else that's given all this innuendo.
He said, you know the fact that it was a partisan impeachment that all the Republicans stuck together in the House.
It's enough time for the Senate to get the right.
I think it's time for everybody in Washington to get a message.
You know, you're there to be servants, serve the people.
What does it mean?
Uh when you have a waiter, you're a server.
I was a server, I guess is you don't say waiter, waitress, whatever, server.
Serve the people.
And that means get them their drinks, get them their food on time, ask them if they like more butter.
Can I get you something else with that?
That's what politicians never do.
And certainly the president's keeping his promises.
I respect it and I appreciate it, and the country's better off.
Uh Democrats do nothing but hate the president.
If Republicans will learn from what the president is doing, I think it's good politics, but more importantly, it's fulfilling a promise to the people there to serve.
So Steve Scalia, glad you're doing better.
He still every day goes to work, and he cares about those people, uh, the blue-collar men and women who are forgotten by Washington.
President Trump is standing up and delivering real results for them.
We all need to be there with him.
And those people that don't want this for the country, they've got an opportunity in November to go make their case with whatever socialist comes out of the Democrat primary.
I'm here in Iowa on behalf of the president's campaign.
We're gonna be putting up a strong United front uh tonight at the caucuses throughout Iowa, and I think you're gonna be able to do that.
Yeah, I hear Meadows and Jordan are there too.
Have fun.
Yeah, Steve Scalise with me, all of us.
All right, Steve Scalise, the House um Republican whip 800, 941.
Sean, you want to be a part of the program.
Hannity tonight, nine Eastern on Fox.
Yep, Democratic establishment trying to rip off Bernie again.
We'll have all the details.
It's Iowa caucus night.
The collapse of the latest hoax of the Democrats.
We have uh Lawrence Jones is in Iowa tonight.
We'll get to them.
Bill Hemmer is there.
Our reporters are on the ground there.
Also commentary.
Eric Trump, Carl Rove, Ari Fleischer, Sarah Sanders, Matt Gates, Chad Pergram, and Mike Huckabee.
We'll load it up.
Tonight at nine.
We'll see you then.
Many prayers for Rush.
And he says we'll be back Thursday, and we will be back here tomorrow.
We'll see you tonight at 9.
You want smart political talk without the meltdowns?
Now I'm Carol Markovich.
And I'm Mary Catherine Hamm.
We've been around the block in media and we're doing things differently.
Normally it's 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 a verdict with Ted Cruz now, wherever you get your podcasts.
When I told people I was making a podcast about Benghazi, nine times out of ten, they called me a masochist, rolled their eyes, or just asked, why?
Benghazi, the truth became a web of lies.
From Prologue Projects and Pushkin Industries, this is Fiasco Benghazi.
What difference at this point does it make?
Listen to Fiasco Benghazi on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.