John McLaughlin, Pollster and Strategist, Matt Towery, Syndicated Columnist, Attorney and Pollster, and Scott Rasmussen, Independent pollster and Editor-at-Large for Ballotpedia and author of "The Sun is Still Rising: Politics Has Failed but America Will Not" discuss the public perspective of the handling of COVID 19.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.
And, you know, we've been through a lot of contentious times politically in this country.
And I am just saying in my 31 years in radio, my 24 years at Fox, I've never seen this level of madness, psychosis, rage, insanity that we're now living through.
And that is, and I want to make sure I bifurcate this line really tight because it's the same groups of people.
And it's obvious what this is all about in the end for them.
If you cannot be a member of the media mob and they're a mob, it is a mob mindset.
You know, it's like, you know what Ellen DeGeneres' big sin was?
She laughed with George W. Bush.
That's unacceptable.
Can't do that.
You can't possibly like somebody who you politically have disagreements with.
I'm telling you, that is a huge part of it, I think.
And, you know, for Ellen to crack a joke, I think Ellen's funny.
And I think, you know, the I, well, you're not taking the virus seriously enough.
Why?
Because Ellen told a joke and I laughed.
Or Dennis Miller was on last night.
He was funny last night.
No, it is so bad that it is, you know, never thought in all my years I'd get accused of murder.
Let's put it that way.
And they had their facts wrong, completely wrong, provably wrong.
You want to talk about malice, libel, slander, you know, it is, these are just very strange times we live in.
But a lot of it is, it's the same people, the same ones that have lied for three straight plus years.
It is, they just hate Donald Trump at the bottom of it, and they hate anybody that likes Donald Trump.
And I'll tell you, it's a fear that they see a different Donald Trump is my interpretation and opinion here.
And that you watch these marath, I could read the old and new testament probably faster than these press conferences go on.
But what you see, a president that is, he is so locked in.
And I've known Donald Trump for many, many, many, many years, over two decades.
And I watch him.
He is dialed in, locked in.
He's zoned in, whatever you want to call it, you know, all hands on deck.
And it's like there's nothing that he will be able to say ever that the mob and the media will say, you know what?
You really got, you pulled that off.
And it's not going to happen.
The Democrats are not going to ever admit he's done a single thing right in all of this.
Nobody's ever going to go after the governors that were so ill-prepared and the mayors so ill-prepared that they needed everything handed to them from the federal government.
That's why de Blasio, Comrade de Blasio's comments, you know, you're telling New York to drop dead?
I'm like, wow, the guy just built you a 3,000-bed hospital.
He manned the hospital with his personnel, not yours.
He converted the hospital, not originally intended to accept COVID-19 patients.
He had to fix the ventilation system.
He sent the Navy ship, then converted that to COVID-19.
They also put the personnel in there.
Or that New York City was, they were warned to buy nearly 10,000 ventilators, over 9,000 ventilators, if in fact there's a pandemic.
They were told to buy them.
New York State was told that there'll be 15,783 short.
They didn't do it.
They didn't buy it.
They didn't spend the money.
They wasted the money all over the place.
And that's a big issue.
I'm glad Mitch McConnell rightly saying, you're not going to balance your budgets.
And we're not going to fund everything that you've screwed up in your states.
We are going to fund COVID relief and COVID relief only, period, end of sentence.
And that includes, you know, everything else.
I mean, to watch all of this, all the mobilization, 25,000 hospital beds around the country built by our great Army Corps of engineers, our great National Guards men and women, our military men and women, the greatest medical professionals.
You know, the comments about opening up, opening up, opening up.
Well, you know, did anybody not notice?
Because I noticed in New York and Long Island, in the epicenter of this crap, that every time I've been to the store, which is fairly regularly, I got to get out of the house, now wearing my mask and gloves.
But every time, the guys were there stocking the shelves every single solitary time.
There's no plan for them to get back to work.
They never stopped working.
And if they didn't work, reopen, if they closed, there would be no food for anybody in New York.
But they kept working.
I go to my local pharmacy, nice people, right-aid pharmacy.
Go in and say hello every time.
Very nice.
They know me.
Hey, Mr. Hannity.
Hi, how are you?
How's your kids?
They worked the whole time.
They didn't close down.
The restaurant still stayed open and they're still suffering providing food for people.
And as I've been saying, and I really can't say it enough, because the farmers farmed, the Packers packed, the truckers trucked, and they kept New York supply lines up and in place.
And the guys that stocked the shelves, I did have a couple of weeks ago.
I gently, I was really nice about it.
I'm like, watching this guy, he's working, he's stocking the shelves.
And I said, I said, thank you for what you're doing.
Please, please put your mask on.
He had it at his neck.
He put it down below his neck.
He's probably sick of wearing it.
I said, please, you know, be careful.
Thanks for what you're doing.
Try to tip a guy.
I got yelled at by the manager.
Not yelled at, but whatever.
And it's like, if the mob and the media cannot acknowledge a couple of simple things, there's no point ever in having any conversation with them.
And I will tell you, it's impossible to have conversations with them because they're so full of rage.
But it's the same two groups of people.
It's a democratic, radical, extreme socialist that are now even openly saying that they want to use COVID.
I'm excited, Joe Biden said, excited because COVID-19 creates an opportunity to change everything into new green policies.
I'm like, you've got to be kidding me.
As people in the middle of a national emergency, the mob in the media, we can't take his press conferences.
They're lies.
If you can't acknowledge that what you and the mob called and Biden called racist, xenophobic, hysteria, fear-mongering, the travel ban of the president, the quarantines for the first time in 50 years, and the subsequent travel bans, but the first travel ban from China 10 days after the first known identified case of coronavirus in New York in the United States.
If you can't say in retrospect that was a game changer and it saved an incalculable number of Americans from contracting the disease and then exponentially saving the lives of Americans, then there's no more need for any discussion with these people.
You know, I've often said, you know, I can be friends with liberals.
I am friends with liberals.
I have liberal friends of mine.
They don't like my politics.
I'm still friends with them.
You know, maybe we just, you know, we're friends for other reasons.
I'll eat dinner with them.
I'll probably pay.
Way it works.
Liberals, distribution, redistribution.
I'm teasing, but I'll live next to you.
I'll talk to you.
My kids will play your kids.
I just don't want them in power.
What matters, truth does not matter even at a moment like this.
Truth has become a casualty in all of this.
People that give really strong advice based on what we know at any given moment, and I'll use Dr. Fauci.
I think everybody likes Dr. Fauci.
Dr. Fauci, you know, I don't know what his politics are.
I probably guess he's probably more left of center.
Likely, probably.
I'm pretty sure of that.
But Dr. Fauci, you know, February 29th said the risk is low.
March 9th, he said, yeah, young healthy people can go on a cruise.
Now, you know, did Dr. Fauci do it maliciously?
Of course, this guy dedicated decades of his life.
And I will tell you his work, his life work has resulted in the saving of human life.
I admire the guy.
Doing his best.
China lied.
We all had misinformation, a ton of misinformation all over the place.
If Democrats cannot look at 25,000 beds, hospital beds built around the country, if New York didn't get the Javits Center converted to COVID, personnel manned by the president's team, same with the UN, the Navy ship, the comfort, the hospital ship.
If they, every ventilator, they never ran out of ventilators.
They have an overstock in supply, and we're going to end up with more ventilators than they ever dreamed of.
Every bit, all the facial masks, all the respirators.
Why did that happen?
Because all the manufacturers, they didn't close either.
Manufacturers didn't close.
You know, if they did, then all those brave and they're brave frontline medical workers from custodians all the way up through the ranks, doctors and directors, including nurses and orderlies and other medical teams that go into the, if those, if they closed down, they wouldn't have had any protective gear.
If the pharmacies closed down, they wouldn't have any medicines either.
But the ability to get the ventilators, the 25,000 hospital beds, converting many of them to COVID-19 hospitals, manning them for New York, getting the gloves and the shields and the masks and the respirators and the gowns and the medicines and the test kits, then the next iteration of testing, then the next iteration of the next iteration of testing.
And, you know, everyone thinks they can snap their freaking finger.
Oh, we got 100 million ventilators.
Good luck.
Even the geniuses, and they are genius engineers at GM, they had a hard time getting that sucker right, but they did.
Same with the testing, 5 million tests now.
It is like, if you can't admit that this four, five-week period medical mobilization from even the point where Dr. Fauci was saying, yeah, the risk is low, February 29th.
If you can't admit that, there's no discussing anything with you.
They, I do not see the same people that lied, smeared, slandered, besmirched, advanced one conspiracy theory after another conspiracy theory, the ones that were impeaching, the ones that were ripping up State of the Union addresses, the ones that were saying come to Chinatown, the mayors that were saying go out, go to a play in March, and the health people,
if they had no help from the federal government, if the workers in the country had closed down, we can't calculate how many people would have died, just like we can't calculate how many people would have contracted the disease and also died had the president not bravely withstood the criticism.
They can't do it.
Truth is the biggest casualty.
Doctors that will tell you, you know, do no harm.
There's no better expert on hydroxychloroquine than Daniel Wallace.
I'll read his letter again.
Nobody wants to print his works.
They can get one flawed negative study.
They're dying.
No, they're not.
Read directly from what he said.
You know, a guy that peer-reviewed this, peer-reviewed.
42 years of practice, no patient of mine ever has been hospitalized for an HCQ complication.
The risk of taking 400 HCQ a day followed by a single 600 milligram HCQ loading dose for 30 to 60 days.
Nobody was getting it for 30 or 60 days.
It was 5, 10, maybe 20 max.
He said the risks are nil, but for an allergic rash or an upset stomach.
But they don't care.
If they can hurt Trump, bludgeon Trump, never give Trump credit.
That's their goal.
194 days to go.
It's only going to get worse.
All right, as we roll along, 80941, Sean, if you want to be a part of this extravaganza.
So I got some interesting data.
Look, it's hard.
You're looking at numbers, numbers, you know, when you look at numbers and people are dying, it sucks.
It's, you know, the lowest number of deaths in New York, 438 in New York.
There's a lot of new information that I'll share in the next half hour about New York in particular.
But there is, if you look at, we do have some numbers to share, probably subject to change.
New York City, if 21% of 8.4 million New York City residents were infected, that's 1,764,000.
New YorkCity.gov lists 15,411 confirmed probable deaths.
That would be an infection fatality rate of 0.87.
Some calculations for New York State.
If 13.9, which is the number governor Cuomo used today, 19.45 million New York State residents, that would mean two million seven hundred and three thousand infected that would be and fifteen thousand seven hundred forty, you know, deaths in the state, that would work out to an infection fatality rate of 0.58 percent.
Remember they were talking about three and a half percent at one point.
All right, 25 now, till the top of the hour, 800 941 SEAN, you want to be a part of the program?
So I mean, that's the New York state numbers.
Death rate again, if you're using the state's numbers uh, and I don't want to get um, you don't want, you know, you got to remember.
Every statistic we're talking about here is a death.
There were times they were talking about, oh, it could be as high the.
The death rate could be as high as 3.5 percent.
In other words, infection fatality rate.
If you look at the New York State numbers, governor says 13.9 percent.
19.45 million New York State residents.
Two, two million seven hundred three thousand five hundred fifty infected.
New York State lists fifteen thousand seven hundred forty dead in the state.
But um, that would work out to be an infection rate according to the Census Bureau, NEW YORK State Department OF Health, of 0.58 percent in the city of New York.
I won't go over their numbers again, 0.87.
They do a little bit different math than that, but i'm just.
You know, you look at it and it's still.
You know it's now the.
The third drop um, third day in a row that deaths have been below now, 500 since april 1st, 438 today, the lowest uh, you know, in a long time.
And so you have a net decrease hospitalizations, 10 straight days.
Fifty uh, you have a net decrease in intubations 11 straight days.
Uh, you have preliminary antibody showing tests showing 3 000 people infection rate, 19 counties, 40 localities, 13.9 percent testing positive with the antibody.
That's pretty high in the one sense, but in the other sense the infection rate is high, which would mean the death rate may be lower.
Again, doing the math, where we are now today subject to change um, and what's happening in New York?
Well, now you have the attorney general in New York in the middle of a pandemic national emergency.
She now wants to sue president Trump over his decision to suspend all immigration uh, so he can save American jobs and get all these people back to work.
Wow okay, understood.
You know this is where people's heads are at at this particular moment point in time.
Um, and some other stuff that we're learning now.
We went over last night.
One state I was so worried about was Florida, because Florida has a very high elderly population.
Um, i've been down to the villages, America's friendliest hometown, very cool place.
I mean, let's be honest, you know they're all retired, they want to enjoy the rest of their life.
They have a zillion golf courses, they have a zillion Concerts.
They have movie theaters.
They have restaurants.
They have bars.
They play pickleball and tennis and all those others.
They're having a good time.
And if somebody doesn't want to go outside, they usually make them go out.
Like they make you be happy whether or not, you know, if you want to shut yourself down and be an old person, they're like, no, come on.
They got arts and crafts and reading and fun stuff for people to do all day.
But if you look at the hospitalizations down there per 100,000, well, for example, Michigan's 33.6.
Florida's 10.3.
How did they do that?
Then you look at the fatalities in Florida.
Again, highest percentage of old people.
And per 100,000, they're at 4% in Florida, 27% in Michigan.
This Michigan governor just botched this whole thing.
Hospitalizations currently in the ACU, ICU per 100,000, 3.2 Florida, 13.5 Michigan.
How did they do it?
Well, one of the things they immediately, and Ron DeSantis, remember he was criticized for all the spring breakers down there.
But at the time, if you remember, we were told by the experts, they changed their opinions a lot.
My timelines are definitive on all of this.
And it's on Hannity.com.
We were told, oh, young people, they're not at risk of getting this.
Then that changed in New York.
And I remember asking the first interview with Cuomo, what happened?
And he goes, right, you're right.
He goes, we were told young people aren't getting it, but we're not seeing that in New York.
At one period, we were.
Now, we're seeing the look, it really ended up being what they had originally predicted in terms of those with underlying conditions, those with compromised immune systems.
Apparently, obesity.
Listen, if you want to do one thing for your health, and I'm not a doctor, I say it all the time, lose weight.
But they deployed early in Florida, while nobody was watching, mobile testing teams with the Florida National Guard to long-term care facilities.
They used their Division of Emergency Management.
I give a ton of credit here to Ron DeSantis.
You know, they sent the protective, personal protective equipment to long-term care facilities immediately.
They issued a directive requiring all staff with residents in long-term care facilities wearing masks almost immediately.
The Agency for Health Administration made on-site visits.
That's where they put their focus.
And they were right.
Ron DeSantis handled it really well up to now.
I mean, it doesn't mean he won't make mistakes down the road, but good job because he went after the most vulnerable population.
We see in New York, I mean, there was a New York Post editorial.
It's devastating.
The New York nursing home debacle is by far the worst.
And it says, if Donald Trump had merely been accused of what Governor Cuomo did here in New York by forcing nursing homes to take coronavirus patients, I didn't know this until two days ago.
Like, what?
I mean, nursing homes were required.
Now, the New York Post writes, of all the missteps in the early days of the coronavirus crisis, New York State's health department may have committed the worst, ordering nursing homes to accept residents who tested positive for COVID-19.
Instead of quarantining the folks most vulnerable to the disease, the state encouraged its spread.
85% of the state's confirmed deaths from the bug are people over 60, with nearly a quarter of all corona fatalities coming in nursing or adult care facilities, and at least 2,210 such deaths tallied in the city.
Now, the governor was asked about this, and he said it wasn't our job.
What?
It was up to privately run homes.
If they needed help, the governor said he offered.
They should have asked, he said.
Well, actually, no, it would be up to the state to contain the spread.
That's what Ron DeSantis did.
And his numbers are bearing out.
He nailed it.
Absolutely nailed it.
For the people in Florida, forget the spring break video.
I am telling you, they nailed it down in Florida heretofore.
You know, Dr. Howard Zucker, the state health commissioner, made his order so patients could be released from hospitals.
But the president, we never came near filling the Javit Center or the Navy hospital ship comfort.
Never.
Unbelievable.
You know, the same Howard Zucker who decided not to buy the ventilators that New York desperately needed when they did the November 2015 story.
Anyway, but this indicates the coronavirus mortality rate, NBC News even reporting, wow, occasionally they even get something right, is far lower than previously thought.
Remember, they were up at three, three and a half percent fatality rate.
That's a mortality rate.
That's what they were saying.
You know, the much predicted surge did not materialize in lockdown-free South Dakota.
Now, they had a problem at a meat packing plant.
Iowa had a similar problem, but they literally dove on it really quickly.
And from what I hear, anecdotally now, that most of those people are getting up and running again.
There is a study that shows a growing number of recovered corona patients can get reinfected.
That's from doctors in Wuhan.
I just can't, I can't report, and it's being covered, but I can't report that because it's just ridiculous.
This is how sick people are.
And then we're going to get to a friend of the program, former professional baseball player, Dan Venezio, is with us in just a second.
So local Democrats in Detroit are actually going to hold a vote this weekend to censor a lawmaker who met with President Trump and credited him with saving her life after he touted hydroxychloroquine.
Now, I'm only saying this, I'm not getting involved in the whole medical mess, data, et cetera, but early data, New York State's hydroxychloroquine clinical trial now being reviewed by federal agencies.
So we'll have some results there.
You know, by the way, they're now debunking, by the way, this widely cited non-clinical trial, which was so flawed, and everybody raced to run the results.
One of the things that, remember, Dr. Oz kept saying, you fight with the army you have, not the army you wish you have.
We kept saying, and again, I'm not a doctor, consult your doctor, blah, blah, blah.
But it showed enormous hope, and we have all these stories about it.
And then I read the letter of this board-certified rheumatologist at Cedar Sinai.
This guy's name is Daniel Wallace.
Nobody in the media wanted to print his letter.
He inherited the largest lupus practice in the U.S., 1985, cares for 2,000 patients with the disease.
Most of his patients take or have taken HCQ.
He's authored over 400 peer-reviewed papers, written the principal lupus textbook, past chairman of the lupus Foundation of America, Rheumatology Research Foundation, blah, blah, blah.
He's authored numerous articles on anti-malarials.
This is his words.
Hydroxychloroquine, HCQ, Plaquenol, is a very safe drug.
It's been given to tens of millions of individuals in the world since its approval in 1955, 65 years now.
And as a therapy, monotherapy has not been associated with any deaths in the recommended dose.
42 years of practice, no patient of mine has ever been hospitalized for HCQ.
Then he says there are no protocols.
You don't get EKGs before prescribing HCQ, never had a problem.
Talks about the fact that it's also been given with azithromycin, no problem.
Then this is his conclusion.
He says the risk of taking 400 milligrams HCQ a day following a single dose, 600 milligram HCQ loading dose for 30 or 60 days, the risk is nil.
His words.
Unless one has an allergic rash or upset stomach.
And he said, contrary to all these articles.
And then we find out this Brazil thing, apparently tons of doses were like five times higher than anything anyone has ever heard of.
All right, Dan is with us.
Dan Venicio.
He is a friend of the program, former professional baseball player with the Minnesota Twins and author of Coach Dan on sportsmanship.
He got the coronavirus.
How are you feeling?
And I'm sure that sucked.
Hey, Sean, yeah, no, I got hit by a Mac truck.
And luckily, I'm getting better day by day.
And, you know, as I get older, there's no doubt my faith gets stronger.
And first thing I want to do is give the grace to God.
And along with the power of prayer, my family, friends, and the parishioners at the Cathedral of St. John the Baptist in Patterson, they prayed for me every day.
And because those masses are now virtual, people are tuning in from all parts of the country.
I had over 5,000 people praying.
Those prayers worked.
This brutal disease tried to take over my mind.
It was successful at taking over my body, luckily, for a short period of time.
But the one thing it couldn't do was break my spirit.
How bad did it get?
And how long now are we talking about since you contracted it?
Okay, so 28 days from my first symptom, exactly, to the day where I had a fever.
And then I went and got tested two days later.
It took them about four days to send me the results.
I didn't need the results.
I had every symptom in the book that you're hearing about, the fever, the dry cough.
I had aches and pains.
I had a tremendously bad headache.
And so I get the results on Thursday.
And then that following Sunday comes around.
And it was just the shortness of breath started to get.
I had one of those little finger monitors that monitored my O2 level.
And it got so bad where I had to take myself to the hospital.
You're like classic.
Everybody I've talked to, and I've talked to so many people late at night, all day long.
So how old are you, by the way?
48.
Formerly said, formerly.
Do you have any underlying conditions?
I do have slight asthma, but I have a rescue inhaler that I probably use once or twice a year when I'm around cats.
I think it's not a problem.
That doesn't help with this disease, though, especially because it's the lungs.
How did you get better?
How did I get better?
Well, there were many, many reasons that got me better, but I tell you, the first 10 days, I was just taking Tylenol, and that was not working.
I was getting worse.
And I asked for the hydroxychloroquine when I got to the hospital, and they said, there's no guarantee we're going to give it to you.
They actually diagnosed me with pneumonia as well, but my numbers weren't that bad, I guess, in the ER.
So they said, we can send you home or you can spend the night.
But there's still no guarantee we're going to give you the drug.
And it was then that I called a friend, a doctor friend, Dr. Charles Thorne from New York City, and he said, you should stay tonight.
And I'm glad I took that advice.
So they ended up giving it to me.
They gave me, and they didn't give it to me with, you know, you hear the stories about with zinc or with the ZPAC.
They gave it to me straight up.
It was twice a day for five days.
I didn't get it.
200 milligrams a day for five days?
Correct.
And at the end of those five, and at the beginning, I tell you, that first night in the hospital, my darkest hour, middle of the night, your mind starts to go to that place.
You know, we've all been there, fear, anxiety, doubt.
You question God.
You see the death tolls.
And I didn't allow myself to go there, though.
You know, I had a very small conversation with the Lord, and I said, simply, if this is your will, I'm not ready.
I have a wife and boys, but you know, two boys at home that need me and so much more to do.
And I started getting better each and every day.
But there were many other factors that led to my recovery.
But do you, do you, and from your experience, do you think it helped you?
Well, absolutely.
I'm not a doctor, but I do know that when I didn't take it, I was hoping that.
He's saying that like every second.
And he says, he's saying, I never said that.
I always tell consult your doctor.
You know, the best thing that I got out of it was it doesn't hurt people.
That's what Dr. Wallace's letter says.
There's no more, you know, preeminent expert on this thing than him.
And when you see there's no harm, okay, what's a doctor's first mission?
All right, do no harm.
And what Dr. Oz always says, you got to go to the war with the army you got, not the one you wish.
We always wish we could have those trials.
But listen, we're praying for you.
Get well.
Next time I see you, dinner's on me.
Okay, buddy.
I'm sorry you went through all that.
I'm glad you're better.
If you could go to Dan Vanesia23 Instagram, I'm documenting my progress and an intention to help others battling this disease.
Appreciate it.
All right.
Got to take a quick break.
We'll come back on the other side.
Dr. Oz with us, Nuke Gingrich.
Our pollster's here and much more.
And your call straight ahead.
All right, hour two, Sean Hannity show.
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We bring back our friend, cardiac surgeon, host of the highly rated Dr. Oz show.
Also, somebody I just have come to admire a lot.
I know him.
I know how hard this man works day and night.
And, you know, there's a lot of art in medicine.
It's not all science all the time.
Now, what I mean by that is, well, what does Dr. Oz say?
He says, you go to war with the army you have, not the one you wish you have.
Now, think about that.
So it's not like, oh, here is the definitive answer.
You're looking for answers.
You're looking for what is a doctor's first job?
Do no harm.
So you're looking for ways that you can thread a needle and save a life, save a lot of lives.
These new numbers are extremely interesting.
I think probably too early to tell where it's actually going, but I think it's something that we should really pay attention to.
And I think it really goes to the heart of, well, okay, what is the real mortality rate?
Because we now got newyorkcity.gov.
They list 15,411 confirmed probable COVID-19 deaths in New York.
21% of 8.4 million New York City residents infected.
That's 1,764,000.
That in New York City, which they kind of do their numbers different than New York State.
Why, I don't know.
The Census Bureau, New York City Department of Health.
Anyway, it would be an infection fatality rate of 0.87 for the state of New York.
13.9% is what the governor said today.
19.5 million people in New York, 2,703,550 infected, 15,740 deaths.
That infection rate for the state, again, infection fatality rate at this point in time, 0.58%.
Now, Dr. Oz, I remember people saying it might be 2%, might be 3%.
I even heard 3.5% at one point, which was really scary.
It's petrifying if that had happened.
This is now the third report with using antibodies.
And admittedly, antibody tests are not perfect, but it's the third report from here, Southern California and Northern California, three areas that were clearly exposed to the virus, that has reiterated that a lot more people were exposed than were tested and proving they've had COVID-19.
And of course, there are two possible reasons.
Anyone who lives in this area, as you and I do, recognizes that for a long time we were told not to go to the hospital if we thought we might have COVID-19 because we didn't have enough tests and we needed to save those for people who are really sick so we can make quick diagnoses.
And the other reason, of course, is that a lot of people don't know they're sick.
The symptoms are minor.
They don't know what they are or they had no symptoms.
And so this speaks to the fact that there's a lot of folks out there who did better than we expected.
Two caveats.
There's a risk when you say this because there's a, you know, it makes it harder to identify people who are suffering COVID-19, so they might inadvertently contaminate people around them.
But at the same token, it gives you a bit more confidence that most of us weather this.
And I was struck by that publication from Northwell, the biggest hospital system in this area.
And they shared their results with 5,700 cases.
And they showed that 88% of people who came into the hospital, again, almost 9 out of 10 people come to the hospital had not one, but two chronic underlying issues, like high blood pressure or high body mass index or elevated blood sugar, which speaks to the fact that we actually have a bit more control over this potentially than we initially felt.
So God forbid you get infected with COVID-19.
If you have been able to help yourself by dealing with your blood pressure, your diabetes or lost weight, all things that you have some chance of influencing your lifestyle, then you could reduce your incidence of being hurt.
And that's good news because as the CDC guidelines roll out, you're allowed to leave in phase one and two.
Otherwise, the people who get called vulnerable, the vulnerable folks aren't supposed to leave the house for fear they'll end up in the hospital if they get COVID-19.
Unbelievable.
And, you know, we see the numbers going down.
I mean, you're still talking about a lot of people, but it's only this week did New York finally go below 500 deaths a day since April 1st.
Today, the lowest death rate.
We're learning some things, and I'm not trying to drag you in any political controversy here in any way, but there was a New York Post editorial today, and it talks about of all the missteps in the early days of the coronavirus crisis, the New York State Health Department may have committed the worst because they were ordering nursing homes to accept residents who tested positive for COVID-19.
And instead of quarantining the folks most vulnerable to the disease, which we knew that very early, the state, in that sense, you know, that was a death sentence for people, in my view.
85% of the state's confirmed deaths from the bug are people over 60.
And we know that nearly a quarter of all corona fatalities coming in nursing adult care facilities.
Now, compare that to, you know, I know that Ron DeSantis, he got criticized because of the kids were on spring break, et cetera.
But what they did in Florida is fascinating to me.
And let's compare it to Michigan.
I won't compare it to New York, but I was worried because of their high population of the elderly people down there.
And I've been to the villages, America's friendliest hometown, et cetera.
But their fatality rate per 100,000 is 4, 4.0.
Michigan's 27.0.
And what they did early is deploy all of their mobile testing teams with the Florida National Guard to long-term care facilities.
Their Division of Emergency Management sent the personal protective equipment to their long-term care facilities immediately.
They issued a directive requiring all staff that work with residents in long-term care facilities wear masks.
And the Agency for Health Administration, they were making on-site visits everywhere.
They worked with the villages almost from day one to prevent any big outbreak down there.
And again, on every level, current hospitalization, 10.3 per 100,000, where it's 33.6 in Michigan, or I mentioned fatalities, 4.0 to 27.
If you look at ICU per 100,000, it's 3.2 in Florida, 13.5 in Michigan.
And then learning what we learned about New York, it seems like Governor DeSantis made a hell of an early smart decision.
Well, I'll tell you, we've understood for a while where the real vulnerable population is.
You know, even without this version of the coronavirus, the older coronaviruses, the ones that normally are circulating in our population that cause sore throat and the like, they'll kill thousands of folks a year, almost all elderly folks as well.
So this virus picks on older people.
And I think the cautionary and big opportunity here is that if you start to protect and focus in on people who are most likely to suffer badly from being infected, it'll make a disproportionately good outcome.
I mean, what former Mayor Mike Bloomberg is doing, I think, is very wise.
He's building out, helping to build out the city's testing and tracing programs.
We have about 500 contact tracers in New York right now.
It's just an example.
Extrapolate this with the whole country.
But imagine if we could do 40,000 tests a day, which is the goal here, and you quadruple or further the number of contact tracers.
Then you've got people in Florida and in Michigan going around, first targeting nursing homes, populations at risk, be really laser-focused on public transportation, and then most importantly, help people who test positive not have to go back to a place where they're likely to infect others.
Those moves are hugely effective as we're showing in Florida.
So I think those are lessons that other governors, I hope, are taking into their states.
And of course, we've got the federal CC guidelines, which is get two weeks of trending data that you're effective in what you're doing so you keep in score and then keep doing it.
If you move that way, the iterative process, I think most Americans get comfortable with this.
We're going to have some place we've got to pull back.
Everyone's going to trust the system because nothing's perfect.
And then we'll go back and forth, back and forth till we fix this.
But eventually, all the states will be completely open if we do it the right way.
You know, I know the governor of Georgia, Kemp, is taking a lot of heat.
I don't get it, to be honest, my own humble opinion.
I don't get tattoo parlors opening.
I really don't.
I don't get nail salon, hair salon places opening yet.
I want to know more.
I've given you, for example, I think New York City faces all these unique challenges.
And anyone wants to get in a building, temperature check, masks, gloves in the workplace, and half the workforce has to stay and work from home, at least for the interim.
Am I missing?
And when you can get testing on board to a high extent, you're going to have to test people, but then you have to test them three days later, right?
I don't know what second test is not clear yet, but I'll tell you something.
I'm struggling with this.
You are as well.
How about my own folks?
I want them safe.
I want them feeling comfortable.
I want them making the choice to come.
And if someone's got to take three different subway stops to come to the office, that's a risk.
And I want them to feel that the subways are safe before I expect that of them.
I do think a lot of us can work outside the main office we used to go to, at least for now.
But ideally, our leadership will create steps that we all want to take.
So we're not challenged.
We don't have to be brave to do these things.
We should say, you know what, that makes sense.
I got a family to take care of.
I feel that's a safe thing for me to do.
If not, I'm comfortable voicing that opinion.
People around me have the same culture.
But it begins to slowly create expectations that are different.
None of us thought, I'll even go back.
On March the 1st, I challenge anyone listening right now to have predicted what happened over the next month.
It's easy to look back and pick on people, but there are very, very few folks who could actually predict that.
And whoever they were, I don't think we were listening to.
So now we are a month into this plus, into this, and everyone sort of has different expectations.
And now we've got to get everyone on the same page again to make the next step.
Otherwise, half the population will move, have won't go, and they wind up with this argument internally.
It's your fault.
No, it's your fault.
Yeah.
Well, I mean, all of that is true.
All of that would happen.
Look, I don't, you know, a lot of people go to this.
I don't like the fact that there's been so much criticism of the president.
I think a lot of it, I think, the travel ban, it's incalculable how much worse this could have been to me.
How many more Americans would have been infected?
And he got the crap beat out of them.
And, you know, Democrats politicized it.
But, you know, I know you respect Anthony Fauci, and I'm not being critical, I promise you.
But he was even saying February 29th, yeah, the risk is low.
And March 9th, he said, yeah, young, healthy people can take a cruise.
China lied to us.
That was a big part of it, wasn't it?
I don't think we had good insight into what was really happening, not just in China, but around the world.
I think a lot of folks were, you know, it's hard to judge motivation.
You can only judge action.
But I don't think most of us had a deep appreciation of what was going on.
And a lot of it, I got to say, was driven by the fact that we didn't have any testing.
So for my best guess, we had, you know, tens of thousands of cases in New York before we realized we had a problem.
It might have been more.
And so you look at those numbers, you think, oh, my goodness, you know, there's a huge forest fire, and we didn't even smell the flames or the charred ember while we were trying to figure out how to slowly, gently shut down.
Meanwhile, the infrastructure was burning up.
Yeah.
Well, I want to thank you.
I know that you work day and night.
I know you're looking for answers.
I know you care about health.
Oh, last thing.
You agree with me.
The best thing everybody can do is lose weight, right?
No, I don't have a panacea.
I did it with the NJ diet.
It's a pain in the neck.
I hate it.
You don't drink for 40 days and you like 3.5 ounces of protein a day, two 12-ounce portion of vegetables a day, and two fruits a day.
That's it.
And I lost the weight, and I've been able to keep it off.
I just want people to be healthy, live longer lives.
And isn't that one of the best things you can do?
Yeah, it might be the easiest, simplest thing to do right now.
And I tell you, it's good for you anyway.
And if Anthony, you pick a way that works for you.
We've got lots of programs.
Your officer, Sean, have had great success with this.
You look like a greyhound these days.
But yep.
Not exactly.
Oh, that's funny.
A lot of people are sitting at home.
It's trying to figure out how do I make a difference?
This is a good way of doing it.
You know what I do?
I drink a lot of chicken broth.
That may sound stupid, right?
I drink a ton of them.
No, not at all.
You know, broths are very effective because they fill your stomach and you actually digest them slower.
So it's one of the smartest things you can do, soups and broths.
No, honestly, just a ton.
By the way, everyone's laughing.
My whole staff mocking me because you call me a greyhound.
Thanks a lot.
All right, Dr. Os, thanks for all.
I know you work day and night helping people.
You were born to do this.
I can see it.
I know your passion behind it.
I wish everybody knew the side of you that I now know.
And thank you for all you do.
All right, as we roll along, 800-941, Sean, toll free, telephone number, you want to be a part of the program.
So much that, you know, I've been talking to a lot of friends.
Linda, we were discussing this earlier, too.
Everybody's like, man, they're like, everyone needs a break.
And when they attacked Ellen, I'm like, really?
Now we're going to attack Ellen for telling a joke.
Yeah, I think people are.
I want to say, Ellen, don't stop telling jokes.
Keep doing it.
They're just taking themselves too seriously.
I mean, her job is to be a comedian.
It's to provide levity in a time of struggle and people are freaking out.
They're upset.
So why shouldn't she tell a joke?
She's doing all the right things.
She's practicing social distancing.
She's in her home and she's making fun of herself.
I mean, what is the big deal?
I mean, honestly, I mean, that's what I'm like.
I'm looking at people.
And then this is what else I hear.
You're doing it from a mansion.
All right.
Well, okay.
That's where she lives.
God forbid somebody be successful and living in the world.
What would you prefer?
She live in a tent?
Exactly.
She doesn't care about the suffering of others.
I'm like, she's actually trying to relieve this constant stress.
And quite frankly, she's a very giving person.
She gives a lot to all of us.
She gave a million dollars for COVID relief.
So everyone needs to shut up and leave Ellen alone.
Ellen, if you ever hear Sean Hannity talking about you, please keep telling jokes.
This is the Sean Hannity Show.
All right, 25 now till the top of the hour.
Toll-free, it's 800-941.
Sean, if you want to be a part of this extravaganza, you know, early on, former Speaker of the House, he's been a dear friend of mine.
I mean, he's like family to me at this point.
I'll forever be so proud of the fact that I was the MC the night that Newt Gingrich became Speaker of the House in 1994.
I was the MC of that event that night.
I think it was the Cobb Galleria Center.
My mind's not as bad as Joe's.
And we just have been friends all throughout.
And we've had parallel lives careers.
He's a mentor.
He's smart as hell, a great historian.
And he also gave this country a very, very accurate, dire warning.
And it helped.
And that was he was in Italy.
His wife, Callista, as we all know, is ambassador to the Vatican, the Holy See.
And he warned us about what was going on in Italy.
And he goes, you better take it seriously.
Got in touch with everybody from the president, Congress, Senate.
Everybody got the lowdown.
And to that extent, Mr. Speaker, we owe you as a country a debt of gratitude.
And I know you did it.
You were firm.
You were tough.
You said it loudly and you were very clear.
And I think people listen to you.
Well, thank you.
I think that's probably right.
And, you know, I'm talking to you from Rome where Callista and I are still.
This is our seventh week of, in effect, being locked in the house.
They're slowly starting to get better, but it's been a really long grind.
I will say, by the way, to any of Callista's fans, that she has a great new picture on Facebook because today she had a dental emergency.
And in the middle of the pandemic, if you go to the dentist, they really wrap you up.
And they took a picture of her, which those of you who know her well will find a collector's item.
But it's also just a reminder: this is changing, you know, this experience is changing something for every one of us everywhere in the world.
And we should start with that recognition that we're going to rebuild America and we're going to rebuild the world.
But it's from a new baseline forced on us by the Chinese dishonesty and the Chinese manipulation, which has caused unbelievable human and financial costs.
You know, it really, and nobody saw, you know, I like the way the president characterizes this as an invisible enemy.
Look, it's the same predictable people that have sadly politicized this.
It is incalculable to me the number of lives that were saved, the number of Americans, the president's travel ban 10 days after the first identified case of corona in the United States.
I've been brought in.
People were in the room I've talked to, and not a single person agreed with the president about the travel ban.
Not one.
And he did it anyway.
And that one decision.
Yeah, go ahead.
I can tell you, because Callista and I are right here in Italy, where the Italian government, for political correctness, took the opposite track.
They had 100,000 Chinese workers in northern Italy.
They allowed the airplanes to keep coming from Wuhan three flights a week for weeks after the pandemic occurred.
And they were just flying in the disease.
I mean, you look at the impact in Italy, a much smaller country, less than one-fifth the size of the United States, and you look at how close they came to collapsing totally.
And it's because they didn't have a Donald Trump who had the courage to say, I'm going to protect people in my own country.
And I think no historian is going to look back and ever say that the president was wrong.
It was the right decision.
It took a lot of guts.
And people like Joe Biden and others all attacked him when he did it.
And their efforts nowadays are pathetic to try to hide from their responsibility because their strategy would have led to a lot more Americans dying.
You know, what bothers me, and I think every candidate, we're 194 days away from an election.
And right now, I know nobody's really focused on it except the Democrats.
But there's such a level of intellectual dishonesty because I think every Democratic candidate, Congress, Senate, local, whatever, it doesn't matter, Joe Biden, was the, in retrospect, was the racist, hysterical, xenophobic, and fear-mongering travel ban in retrospect was the right call.
What did Donald Trump do right here?
Because, Mr. Speaker, in a month's period of time, remember, Anthony Fauci said, you know, the risk is low on February 29th.
Remember, you know, Andrew Cuomo said, oh, no, we're prepared.
We're not like these other countries.
We're New Yorkers.
We're New Yorkers.
You know, look what happened in New York.
That was March 2nd.
Anderson Cooper, fake news CNN, March 4th was saying that you should worry more about the flu than Corona.
March 9th, Anthony Fauci, who we all respect, said, yeah, if you're young and healthy, you can go on a cruise.
And in a month's period of time, the president built 25,000 hospital beds around the country, the biggest hospital, the Javits Center in the country, and manned it, all personnel from the federal government.
Then they converted it to COVID-19.
Then the comfort was sent to New York Harbor.
Then they converted that for COVID-19.
The millions of masks, respirators, the gowns, the gloves, the medicines, all, no state was ready at all.
They had nothing.
And they did it in four weeks, the largest medical mobilization in history.
And not one thing can anybody in the mob and the media or the Democrats, you know, Nancy Pelosi with her designer ice cream on comedy shows, delaying aid so she can change election and immigration laws and give money to the endowments for the arts and humanities and the Kennedy Center.
They didn't do a thing.
They were impeaching him.
She was ripping up his speech while he was talking about Corona.
She was telling people in Chinatown February 24th that, oh, come to Chinatown.
I'll let you talk about it.
It angers me.
You have no idea.
They're so dishonest.
They're such liars, in my view.
Well, look, I think that's all true.
Look, I had Tony Fauci, you know, I do a weekly podcast at News World.
We had Tony on, he's an old friend, and we'd worked on HIV AIDS back in the 1980s.
And he said in early February that this looked a lot like SARS.
It was going to be controllable.
It was not something to panic about.
But the reason he said that, and we should never forget this, the reason experts like Fauci said that is because the Chinese communist dictatorship was methodically and deliberately lying to the world.
I personally believe there are at least 160 or 170,000 people dead today because of the Chinese communist dictatorship.
And that we need to recognize how truly destructive and how dishonest they were.
And that they were the starting point.
And remember, at that point in time, people like Joe Biden were defending them and protecting them and saying, oh, let's not be hostile to these people.
Well, the truth is, what they were doing was deliberate, I think, and malicious.
The doctors who warned about this virus were locked up.
And they were told, you know, you're not going to get out until you sign something to say that what you said was not true.
It's just unbelievable when you go back and look at how bad the dictatorship is.
How should we have the courage to do it all?
The president and you, I'd say one and two, were the two people that have been warning us about China the longest, both of you.
Now the question is, well, they hold a lot of our debt.
I don't think we pay it back.
Can we do that?
I just, first of all, as you know, I wrote a book on Trump versus China back in October outlining how bad they would be.
And then they have lived out exactly what I described in the book.
I just did an article this week, my newsletter, and made the argument that they are clearly guilty and that we should both create a right of suit for private citizens, so every family who's lost somebody should be able to sue the communist dictatorship.
In the case of the Lockerbie terrorist bombing over Scotland, it amounted to about $8 million per person.
And after inflation, there'd be probably about $11 million today.
And then second, every government in the world, not just the U.S. government, every government in the world, the Italian, the Spanish, you name it, should calculate The economic cost of Chinese communist dishonesty, and we should charge them for that.
We can, frankly, impound the debt that they hold.
We can impound all their assets in the United States.
We can establish a virus debt repayment tariff and say to them, until we collect what you have cost us, we're going to not allow you to ever send anything under traditional rules, period.
But it would be a disaster for the world if the dictatorship in China was taught the lesson that they could lie to everybody, kill hundreds of thousands of people, and it'll be over 200,000 before this is done, cost the rest of the world trillions of dollars, and have nothing done.
And that's an enormous danger because our friends on the left just can't bring themselves to defend America against the Chinese communist dictatorship.
Let me ask you, because I think this is very, very important.
If we do all of that, what consequences are they?
Is that going to be viewed as an act of war?
Because I think one of the, you know, beyond lying, remember, there was a study out of Great Britain that said 95% of this could have all been prevented.
Have they invited in the world's experts?
And I asked Secretary of State Mike Pompeo if they gave you a call and said, hey, we need help, what would you have done?
He said, we would have sent our best.
But they did that.
But then they set off.
We offered to send people.
Right.
But they remember when they did this thing.
They would not allow travel within China to Wuhan or Wuhan to any part of China.
But they kept open international flights, so they knew it was dangerous.
Right.
Right.
Look, I think you have to have an assumption here that the Chinese communist dictatorship was deliberately and methodically lying, that it has been manipulating this entire situation for at least four months.
And when people say to me, well, what if they retaliate?
My answer is really simple.
If we haven't got the guts to stand up to them now, what are they going to be like 10 or 20 years from now?
I mean, this is a decisive turning point, and it's exactly what Churchill talked about in terms of Hitler in the 30s.
I mean, you reach a point where you either stand up for your principles and you stand up for what's right, or you allow the dictatorship to dominate.
It's exactly what Harry Truman was faced with in the late 40s.
He could have caved into Stalin.
He could have given up Berlin.
He could have allowed the Soviets to dominate.
And he said no, and he took the risk.
And a lot of people said to him, boy, that's really a big risk.
Well, let me tell you, it's a big risk to take on the Chinese communist dictatorship, and it's a bigger risk to not take on the Chinese communist dictatorship.
I've never seen the mob as bad as they are in the media and Democrats as awful as they have been all throughout this.
We have an election in 194 days.
These are uncharted territories that we're in, uncharted waters rather, that we're in here and uncharted territory.
What is your guess?
How does this play out?
You see the vitriol.
Donald Trump could do nothing right.
They wouldn't give him credit for anything.
Right.
Right.
Let's ask three quick points.
One, Trump is the most hated president since Abraham Lincoln.
As Alan Guelzo, a great scholar at Princeton, has pointed out, you have to go back to the slave owner newspapers in South Carolina attacking Lincoln in 1860 to have anything like the level of vitriol you get out of the modern left.
So that's part one.
They hate him.
They get up every morning.
They know they hate him.
They're not sure what he did bad, but they know something was bad, and that's just reality.
Part two, the number one thing for the president is to pick up a lesson from Franklin Delano Roosevelt and be: doctor, defeat the virus and doctor, create jobs.
He should not be a candidate in his own head until Labor Day.
From now to Labor Day, he should be the commander-in-chief, the person helping America, the man getting the job done, which, of course, shrinks Biden every single day because there's no possibility that Biden can compete with somebody who's an effective commander-in-chief.
Three, this is my prediction.
We can come back to this later on this fall.
The weaker Biden is, the more indefensible and impossible Biden is, the more vicious the news media will become.
That is like, you know what?
That's a layup prediction.
Come on.
I make that prediction.
Let me ask you this.
Do you do this?
I'll take the layup.
No, you already took the layup.
You could have fed it to me, but you decided to take it for yourself.
You know, I understand.
Some people are selfish on the court.
I'm teasing in every way.
Do you think they're going to try and steal this from him?
And they're going to say, ah, he's really not doing well.
We can't run him.
Oh, you mean Biden?
Yeah.
I don't know.
I just got a note tonight from somebody who's a pretty good expert who says he doesn't see technically how they can do it.
But does Joe Biden step in and does he do a Hail Mary and bring in Michelle Obama as a running mate?
I don't think the Obamas would do that.
If you watch President Obama's reluctance to endorse him and then you look at how weak the endorsement was, that didn't strike me as somebody who's eager to go out and have, you know, the Obamas right now can say, we were this heroic, wonderful couple.
We have a great life.
We're doing fine.
Why would they want to tie their career and history to a guy who's as weak and clearly incompetent as Joe Biden?
Mr. Speaker, thank you.
You're the best.
Stay safe.
800-941, Sean.
We have a solemn duty to ensure these unemployed Americans regain their jobs and their livelihoods.
Therefore, in order to protect American workers, I will be issuing a temporary suspension of immigration into the United States.
You heard about that last night.
By pausing immigration, we'll help put unemployed Americans first in line for jobs as America reopens.
So important.
It would be wrong and unjust for Americans laid off by the virus to be replaced with new immigrant labor flown in from abroad.
All right, that is the President News Roundup Information Overload Hour.
70% of Americans favor a ban on entry into the United States.
69% believe false information from China made the pandemic worse.
And only 10% believe that China is telling the truth.
Now, our pollsters are all back.
John McLaughlin, Matt Towery, Scott Rasmussen.
Scott, let's start.
Those are your numbers.
I think the backlash towards China is really only just beginning.
I think you're absolutely right about that.
You know, a few weeks ago, we were polling, and people weren't sure whether to blame China.
They weren't quite sure.
We were even having that debate about whether it's appropriate to call this a China virus or a Wuhan virus.
Well, now, 69% think that they made it worse.
Only 8% disagree.
This is a situation where China has lost all credibility.
And I think what we're seeing is an issue that is going to get bigger and bigger as November gets closer because people are really angry at what China has done to not just the United States, but the entire world.
Yeah.
What's your take, Matt Towery?
Oh, I think Scott's completely right.
The ire that China is going to feel over the next six months to a year is going to be phenomenal.
I think you'll see production. manufacturing come back to the United States, even if it costs more money.
And I think you're going to see it become a huge issue in the election.
And I don't see how the Democrats can really defend the positions they've taken with regard to China, with the president ending the travel early on, the statements made by Biden.
Those are going to become very difficult to defend as you get to the last days of the election.
John McLaughlin.
I'm seeing the same thing.
I mean, we've got a poll coming out tomorrow that a businessman from Long Island, who's one of your neighbors, one of the good neighborhoods out there, Lawrence Cade, has paid for, 70% think China knowingly kept coronavirus data from international health care professionals.
Only 12% of the voters said no.
75% think we need to end our dependence on Chinese imports, 75 to 16.
They think that they've got to change our trading relationship with China, 72 to 15.
And they think we ought to mandate that we got to bring technology companies, essential manufacturing companies back to the U.S. 70%.
Especially pharmaceuticals and medical equipment, right?
Absolutely.
I mean, these are big numbers, but these are not small.
This is across the board.
All parties, all ideologies, every region of the country.
This is a wake-up call to America.
This is a huge aftershock.
Let me ask you all this question, because if there was one guy that was out there front and center warning about China, warning about open borders, which I think now are big issues, and I've been saying it for years too as it relates to the border.
Why do you want to secure the border?
90% of our heroin comes from there.
We have 300 dead Americans a week from opioids and our fentanyl crosses that border.
Then you have potential terrorists and people with gang ties.
I think we'd have to do background checks, make sure before people enter the country.
You certainly need to secure the border in terms of people need to be able to provide for themselves.
And now I would add health issues to it.
These are two of Trump's signature issues, Scott Rasmussen, by in 194 days.
How do those two issues factor into people's voting patterns?
Well, they factor not just into voting patterns, but to things that are going to be happening throughout the next decade.
This is going to be a fundamental change in the way we look at America's relationship with the rest of the world.
We saw last year that a lot of people recognized that tariff wars were going to hurt us economically.
People wouldn't have to pay more, but they still supported them because they recognized there were other issues involved.
Right now, you know, you mentioned the ban on immigration.
Our polling showed that among people who strongly disapprove of this president, the resistance to this president, 57% of them support the idea of this temporary ban.
The idea that we're going to have open borders, the idea that we're going to go back to the way things were, is just a losing issue at every level.
And I think the larger debate is going to be how are we going to approach security in all of our travel and trade relationships with the rest of the world when something like the coronavirus can disrupt global patterns.
Your thoughts, Matt Towery?
Well, when you live by the sword, you die by the sword.
So we've had, I don't want to say an exaggeration because this has been a terrible crisis.
But when you hype something beyond measure, it comes back to bite you in the end.
And that's when it's going to bite in the elections season because you're going to look back and see that Donald Trump has done a magnificent job of dealing with an impossible situation.
And by the way, one that was made even more impossible because of bad decisions from prior administrations, whether it's globalism or whether it was decisions not to do certain public health measures.
Trump had to build an entire public health system, a secondary public health system, in a matter of a month, and he did it.
And people are going to start to realize that when we get to November.
It's been the biggest medical mobilization, the fastest medical mobilization in the history of this country, John McLaughlin, starting with the travel ban that was labeled racist and xenophobic and hysterical and part of fear mongery on the president's part.
I think Joe Biden will eat those words.
But Matt is right here.
The states, there was no preparation in New York.
Donald Trump built the Javits Center, the largest hospital in the country, converted it to COVID-19, and all the personnel came from Donald Trump.
The same with the hospital ship, the comfort.
Every ventilator New York needed, the masks, the gloves, the respirators, the gowns, the medicines, all came from Donald Trump.
New York had zero preparation.
Early March, the governor, the mayor, the health officials were all saying, no, we got this covered.
They didn't have anything covered.
Does he get credit for that?
Well, he should, but you've got to get the press to get around the press distorting the truth.
But the amazing thing is in New York, the deaths that we had, they had a policy.
We now find out the state had a policy that they would send coronavirus patients back into nursing homes.
Can you believe that?
That's why you had this massive death, because it was this highly contagious disease among all people.
And the state ordered it.
Governor Cuomo's state health commissioner ordered it.
So they were sending people with coronavirus.
Well, the governor said today, well, that was their decision to do that.
I didn't do that.
Terrible.
This is so sad.
This is so sad.
Thousands of deaths.
Does he get credit for this, Scott?
Do you think?
You know, I think that by November, we're not going to be talking about getting credit for these types of issues.
What we're going to be looking at is the way society has reopened.
And I think it's really important that we talk not just about reopening the economy, but reopening society.
And people are going to be saying, what's been happening?
How has life begun to return to something semi-normal?
If that's happening, if we're making progress in that way, the president will get credit for that.
And these other arguments will have become ancient memory.
Matt, your thoughts, where are we going to be in 194 days?
We're not going to be where we were in February.
We know that.
There's a lot of adjusting that has to take place.
We're going to have to walk before we run.
And we don't know what the cycle of this virus will be.
But I predict one thing: regardless of where we are, the president has a magnificent opportunity to remind people of what he's accomplished pre-virus and post-virus.
And I believe this president, I just want to note, you know, networks really have no business polling in states because they do a terrible job.
But I noticed the CNBC came out with a poll in almost all of the swing states yesterday, Trump up in every single one of them by one point.
That's in the middle of all this stuff going on.
So anybody who thinks this man is not going to be re-elected needs to go back and study again.
The media can't say a single good thing he's done, John McLaughlin, then never.
The mob and the media, Democrats, they can't name one thing good that he's done here.
Not one.
All they do is trash him.
No, and we just put, we just, by the way, we just put out, and granted I work for the campaign, but this is our monthly national survey that we do, not necessarily for the campaign.
But we put it out and we said, we basically asked people, do you agree or disagree with the statement that the Democrats and liberal national media are trying to move the blame from the spread of coronavirus away from China to President Trump for partisan political gain?
And the plurality of Americans agree with that, 49 to 42.
And then we asked the question like, and it was kind of a tough question because we're saying, would you say that too many members of the media have been unfair, biased, and even disrespectful to the president?
Or has the media been fair and biased and always respectful?
They said they were unfair and disrespectful, 48 to 42, and it's higher among the 56% that regularly watch the briefings.
So they know that the media is not telling the truth.
I mean, these briefings have really exposed them.
They're hostile to the president.
At a time we're in the same poll, 79% of all Americans want to be united and don't want to have anything to do with partisan politics.
So Donald Trump may have to fight for the credit that he deserves on what he's doing to save American lives and bring our economy back.
But we will fight for that, and the majority of Americans will recognize that.
Let's go to Biden.
How does Biden stack up to Trump?
He seems so diminished.
The ever, the poor, ever-confused quid pro quo Joe.
Okay, if the election's held today, Scott Rasmussen, who wins?
Well, right now, our latest polling shows that in the last couple of weeks, Joe Biden has actually gained a couple of points, and that's probably because he's been out of the public eyes so much.
But this is a poll of registered voters.
It's early on, and it's a national poll.
If the election were held right now today, I think we would be looking at places like Pennsylvania, Michigan, and Wisconsin to see who wins the Electoral College.
It would be a close race.
I think the president emerges on top.
But as I said before, it all depends on what happens in the next few months and how we come out of these lockdowns.
Matt Towery.
Well, I mean, I think Scott alluded to something which I believe, and that is Biden has gained only because he hasn't been out talking.
And at some point, he has to come out of his basement and start campaigning again.
And he's just, you know, by the way, he's been a disaster in his basement.
It is embarrassing.
He's a disaster.
The sad thing about it is for him, seriously, he was much sharper three or four years ago.
And it seems like this during this campaign, he's just become increasingly confusing.
His words get jumbled.
We know what's going on here.
Now, if the American people want to vote for that, they can.
I don't think they will.
I think when President Trump and Biden debate, you're going to see a clear demarcation, and the president is once again going to come out on top.
And as we roll along, Sean Hannity, Cheryl Polster, Scott Rasmussen, Matt Towery, John McLaughlin.
All right.
We see Joe Biden.
Well, we don't see him.
Seems very diminished, you know, very confused.
His readings are, well, now a thing of fame.
He's now claiming that this is a great opportunity.
I can't believe it.
In terms of, oh, we can do things that we weren't able to do.
I'm excited by this.
He made in a statement yesterday.
Anyway, did the Democrats try to dump him, John McLaughlin?
There's nobody running against him.
He's won the race.
Everybody dropped out.
All right, does Joe Biden come in and say, you know what?
He's not feeling up to it.
You guys pick someone else?
Well, you know what?
Remember back in 2016, you brought me out to do radio in Milwaukee, and we met with then-candidate Donald Trump, and you had me tell him he was going to lose Wisconsin to Cruz.
But then once all we had to do was we said, okay, we're going to go win Indiana and that will win New York, Northeast, Indiana, lock it up in two weeks.
Once we did that, they kept spinning for an open convention.
It wasn't going to happen.
What about that Matt Towery?
And what about all this talk?
Well, maybe we'll put Michelle Obama on the ticket.
Well, I'm a little more skeptical about Joe Biden's future than perhaps others.
I think that this could be a real crisis for the Democrats because as I said, this is just one person's opinion.
He doesn't seem as sharp as he did when he started his campaign, which I find very interesting.
So I think there's always a possibility, Sean, that something could happen.
And he could bow out.
That's not out of possibility as far as I'm concerned.
And then they'd steal it from Bernie.
Good luck with that because Bernie fans will, you know, no pun intended.
They'll be burned.
That's the problem.
Yeah, that's the problem.
Scott, what do you think?
And any of you have any thoughts on the Michelle Obama rumors?
Well, look, Sean, what I think is that if for some reason Joe Biden had to step aside because of health or any other concerns, the Democrats have a choice.
They can either give it to Bernie Sanders and put forward a very weak national candidate or give it to somebody else and really divide the party at that point.
There are no good options.
There are.
Would Michelle Obama do it real quick?
Last question, yes or no, John McLaughlin.
No, because she wants to be the top of the ticket, not the bottom.
Matt Towery.
No way.
She's not going to do it.
Scott Rasmussen.
I agree.
Not going to happen.
All right.
I want to thank you all.
When we come back, final half hour, wide open phones.
Hannity tonight at 9-800-941.
Sean, you want to be a part of the program?
And we're awaiting coronavirus task force briefing.
If it happens, we'll take it straight ahead.
All right, 25 now till the top of the hour.
We don't know when, but sometime soon the coronavirus task force briefing will begin.
And for stations along the Sean Hannity Show Network, we'll continue to follow our usual protocol and give you all the discretion you want, need, necessary to take your breaks as warranted.
I want to remind everybody, look, Mother's Day is coming.
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All right, let's get to our busy phones here.
Let's say hi to Louie's in New Mexico.
Louie, how are you doing out there?
I know it's not as crazy as here.
Hopefully not.
What's going on?
Hey, I just want to thank you for being a champion for small businesses.
You know, it's interesting.
I got interviewed because I own shooting ranges and gun stores here in New Mexico.
And our governor deemed essential any place that in her mandate that anybody who serves law enforcement and military, and we have Albuquerque Police, State Police, ATF, always in our shooting ranges.
And it's interesting once our story got out about caliber - I'm sorry, wasn't supposed to say that.
I'm sorry, I didn't even hear what you said.
I didn't even hear what you said.
Okay, good.
I'm glad you didn't hear the name of my store because I wasn't supposed to say that.
But yeah, all of a sudden, the governor deems this non-essential and closes us down.
And she's doing it to all small businesses.
She's literally picking winners and losers in New Mexico.
You know, and as I said.
It's just so stupid.
It is ridiculous.
You know, because listen, I'm telling you right now, and again, I go to the stores all the time.
If I, and I talk to everybody, I can't shut up.
I'm a talk show host.
And I talk through my new, you know, my respirator, my mask.
And, but I see every time I go to the store, our stores are filled in in New York and Long Island.
They're packed.
They're fully.
Yeah, guess what?
And I talk to the guys stocking the shelves.
Now, excuse me, they never close down because otherwise New Yorkers would have starved to death.
You know, if farmers didn't farm, Packers didn't pack, truckers didn't truck, pharmaceutical companies didn't do their thing, and those manufacturing all this medical equipment that saved New York because New York government failed on a spectacular level, we'd be dead.
We were dead without if America closed down.
Now, if all those people can do it, why can't others do it?
To tell her, if we can control how many people we allow in our store, we can do social distancing.
And the interesting thing is, you know, New Mexico is last in so many categories in business, but yet she's allowing hundreds, hundreds of people into the big box stores at a time.
And we knew we were getting targeted because we are a gun store in a shooting range.
But the fact of the matter is that she's literally picking winners and losers.
And where we're looking at 80% of small businesses in New Mexico will never open their doors again.
And it's, you know, we're not even asking to open up 100%.
We're at 100%.
I'm telling you, listen, for example, I just mentioned Pro 1-800 Flowers.
I mean, you know, they're going to do contactless delivery.
Okay.
I go to all my, I go grocery shopping.
I go to Mario's, my favorite pizza place.
I go to all my favorite restaurants.
I have, you know, Chris and Tony's and La Pazetta, Rothman's, when they reopen.
I go to my local deli.
I go, you know, I'm going everywhere I can trying to spend money.
And I'm not, I'm not saying that.
I'm saying I feel so bad for people.
You're trying to keep their freaking doors open.
And, you know, they're all struggling.
And it's like everyone else around the country saved New York's ass because they got up and they went to work.
They didn't close down.
And we got to find the ways to do it safely.
Okay.
If it means that in New York, you have half your workforce in New York City work from home.
All right.
You just built in all the social distancing that never existed.
Then you put everybody in a temperature check to get in a building.
When you have more testing, you can do that too.
Then you put everybody in masks and gloves in the workplace all day long.
You know what?
Open the city up.
Do it safely.
Same with Yankee Stadium.
I talked to Randy Levine.
The Yankees.
All right.
Maybe you start Bill O'Reilly's way and you just show it on TV.
I'm cool with that.
But then, you know, if everyone gets the temperature check, they actually have these turnstiles I told you about.
This company makes them where everyone's you walk through and it takes your temperature that fast.
Pretty amazing.
So the equipment's there.
The Yankees will build, you know, Randy Levine.
I don't want to speak for him, but I'm sure they'll make Mass Week Yankee emblems on it or Mets emblems or Jets or Giants emblems.
Let the MLB, let the NHL, MBA, NFL, let these guys do their thing, work with the health officials to make it safe.
And if you're sick, compromised immune system, underlying conditions, take the year off.
Don't go to a game.
Don't go.
I'm sorry.
I would recommend you not go.
But there's ways to do it.
Do it safely.
You can test everyone that works at every stadium.
Give them the real test.
Nobody, no food handler, no ticket taker can't be working unless they're tested.
Same with the players, coaches, trainers, et cetera.
You can do it.
If you want to do it, you can do it.
I don't know how you open a bar.
Maybe I just, Louie, if you have any ideas, you know how to open a bar?
I have no idea.
I don't know how you pull it up.
No, I just own shooting ranges.
But, you know, we did everything.
She asked.
We separated every other stall.
We had curbside service.
But, you know, this isn't only about my shooting range.
This is about tennis shoe stores.
This is about florists, restaurants.
And these places can't even afford to pay their mortgages.
And we're trying to hold on.
And the fact that she's picking winners and losers where the big box stores are going to record these record earnings at the quarter.
And New Mexico is going to be recording record bankruptcies from small businesses.
That'll never open our doors again.
It's, you know, it's to the end of the day.
We can't afford this.
Right.
We got this.
We're too smart not to pull it off.
We're too smart.
And here's the issue.
New Mexico only has 2 million people, the fifth largest geographic area.
And she just pushed us back from May 1st to the 15th and made a statement that she'll only open once the vaccine is out.
Well, that could be in December.
By that time, the only, you know what?
She's not going to have to worry about reopening New Mexico because everybody's going to be closed, but the big boxes will still be going.
And it's going to put the rest of us out of business.
But thank you for that.
Again, New York's dead.
If the whole country shut down, we were dead.
We'd starve to death.
We'd have no medicine.
Our frontline medical heroes would have nothing.
And they're the ones that they saved the day.
They saved New York.
Without that logistical support, supply chain support, we wouldn't have no food.
We wouldn't have any medicine.
We wouldn't have any protective gear.
Nothing.
They did it.
Good call.
Louie, I wish you the best.
What's the name of your place, by the way?
We'll give you a plug.
What's the name?
Calibers Indoor Shooting Ranges in Albuquerque, New Mexico.
Yeah, I had a guy in Florida, Felix.
He just down in the Sarasota area.
I bought some stuff from him recently.
Really good stuff.
I'm actually really happy about it.
Thank you, Felix.
Thank you, sir.
All right, Amy Colorado.
What's up, Amy?
How are you?
Hi, Sean.
Thank you for taking my call.
You'll be happy to know that funding is going to marijuana shops in Colorado, I read apparently today.
I know, right?
I know.
It's pretty crazy, but at least our governor decided to open the state up starting on the 27th.
And just a little example of how we can do it in a smart way.
I go to a nail salon, and my nail salon actually sent me an email today saying they're opening on the 1st of May, and that they're deep cleaning the entire place.
They're doing their spacing so that we have social distancing.
They're only taking a certain amount of customers.
They're all going to be wearing PPE masks.
They asked their customers to wear masks.
And that's all they're asking of us is to wear masks, and they're going to do the rest pretty much.
So there are ways of getting a happy medium between taking things seriously and doing things smartly so that we can get our economy going again.
Listen, I just want the best for all of you.
I'm a little concerned about nail salons.
You know, I've never been to a nail salon for myself, but I used to take my daughter.
I mean, she hated when I took her.
And Linda hates when I tell this story because I never knew the process of going to a nail salon.
I mean, you do the whole thing, right?
You stick your feet in the pool that they have, right?
You get the massage that they offer.
You do the whole thing, right?
Yeah, usually I do a Pedicure and a manicure.
Right.
It takes forever.
You know, I'm like coming out of my skin.
So I would hire two people.
Then I'd hire three people.
I tipped everybody really well.
So they all wanted, when they saw me come in, they love me.
But my daughter was like, daddy, it's embarrassing.
You know, nobody else here has two people working on them.
Why are you doing this?
I'm like, because we get out faster.
And I guess that apparently takes away from the experience.
Linda's shaking her head.
Yeah, I mean, I don't really understand.
If you're supposed to be getting your nails and your feet done and it's supposed to be relaxing, I don't think having you standing around chomping at the bit to get out of there is exactly the most relaxing experience.
Quite frankly, I think you should wait in the car.
But that's just me.
Okay, I just, I don't know how people do it.
I don't understand on the beach.
How about this?
How do people sit on the beach?
Let's do it all day and hang out.
First of all, all day.
I can't talk about that because I'm 18 shades of see-through white and I burn at the drop of the sunlight.
Okay, all right.
But it's not that.
It's just even if you sit under a, what do you call it, umbrella?
Who can sit there for all day?
I want to blow my brains out sitting there.
I'm bored to death.
I think we should have a poll after COVID and we're allowed to go back out and the salons are back open.
How many people think you should go into a salon and experience this for yourself so that you have a better understanding of the relaxation that's possible when you allow yourself to sit there?
When I allow myself.
What do you think?
What do you think?
You want to go get a pedicure?
There's one right up the street from the studio.
I think I'll pass on all of it.
How's that?
I think we'll do a poll.
I think you're going to have to do it with the audience once.
No, I'm never doing it.
I'll not take a poll on it either.
You know why?
Because the audience would do it just to torture me.
I think it would be hysterical.
No, nobody wants to touch.
It's disgusting.
And you know what I'll do?
I'll stand right next to you the whole time and I'll tell them to hurry up and hurry up.
Do you think it's safe?
All right.
So because they're doing this in Georgia, I'm a little worried about what Kemp's doing down there because if Kemp fails and the tattoo parlors sound dumb to me, but if he fails down there.
He's very dumb.
Okay, which he might.
You know what they're going to do?
They're going to say, see, you open too soon.
That's what they're going to do.
Listen.
You've got to open the right way and do it safely.
We have to understand that as soon as we open, there might be some increases in what we see as people that are going back out after not being out for so long, right?
So there's a potential for a raise in this.
But I think ultimately, if people are doing what they're supposed to be doing, we could be okay.
We have to be safe and smart.
I got to leave it there.
The president just steps to the podium, to our stations.
Hannity tonight at 9.
We'll let you close this out.
We'll see you back here tomorrow.
See you tonight at 9.
Thank you very much.
Later this evening, we expect the House to pass Paycheck Protection Program and Health Care Enhancement Act.
I'm grateful that Congress is answering my call to deliver these additional $320 billion in relief for the American worker and for small businesses.
At a time when many Americans are enduring significant economic challenges, this bill will help small businesses to keep millions of workers on the payroll.
You see, states are starting to open up now, and it's very exciting to see.
I think it's very awe-inspiring.
We're coming out of it, and we're coming out of it well.
And we're really, I'm very happy the governor's been, the governors really have been doing a really good job working with us, and it's really pretty impressive to see.
I've spoken to numerous leaders of countries over the last 48 hours, and they are saying we're leading the way.
We're really leading the way in so many different ways.
I'm also very pleased that Harvard, as you know, Harvard and Stanford and Princeton and numerous other universities and colleges, as also large businesses, have sent funds back to us.
And in some cases, I stopped funds that I looked at.
And we are pleased to report that the funds have either not gone out or it's about $350 million.
And they've either not gone out or we've renegotiated it, and they're not getting them.
So in a couple of cases, they're sending them back and sending them back immediately.
So I think it was very nice.
I want to thank Harvard in particular.
They acted very quickly and decisively.
And they agreed when they heard the facts that they should not be getting it.
So we appreciate it very much from Harvard, Princeton, Stanford, and other institutions.
The bill also includes $30 billion to support small lending institutions serving distressed communities, helping countless African American and Hispanic American small businesses.
As we continue our battle against the virus, the data and facts on the ground suggest that we're making great progress.
In 23 states, new cases have declined in the peak week.
40% of American counties have also seen a rapid decline in new cases.
46 states report a drop in patients showing coronavirus-like symptoms.
That's a big number.
To keep America gaining momentum, every citizen needs to maintain the vigilance, and we all understand that very well.
We've gone over it many, many times.
This includes practicing good hygiene, maintaining social distance, and the voluntary use of face covering.
A safe and phased reopening of our economy.
It's very exciting, but it does not mean that we are letting down our guard at all in any way.
On the contrary, continued diligence is an essential part of our strategy to get our country back to work, to take our country back.
We're winning this, and we're going to win it, and we're going to keep watching.
We're going to watch very closely for the invisible enemy.
With each passing day, we're learning more and more about this enemy.
The scientists at DHS have released a report offering a number of insights about how the virus reacts to different temperatures, climates, and surfaces.
The findings confirm that the virus survives better in colder and drier environments and does less well in warmer and more humid environments.
I have to say that very excitingly, we're going to have somebody up.
The bill will be up in just a little while.
It was a great report you gave.
And he's going to be talking about how the virus reacts in sunlight.
When you hear the numbers, you won't even believe them.
U.S. trials of the COVID-19 have been going on and have been approved in the United States, Germany, UK, and China.
That's big news.
And a lot of trials are going on.
We have a lot of great, brilliant minds working on this, both from the standpoint of a vaccine and therapeutics.
We must be careful in all conditions, but we will get this done.
We're very close to a vaccine.
Unfortunately, we're not very close to testing because when the testing starts, it takes a period of time, but we'll get it done.
And I want to thank the head of DHS Science and Technology, Bill Bryan, for what he's going to be doing and what he's going to be saying and the report that he's about to give.
I think it's going to be something that nobody's ever heard.
It'll be brand new information and very important information.
My administration continues to leverage the Defense Production Act to dramatically increase the manufacture and delivery of critical medical supplies.
We finalized three contracts to produce 39 million more N95 masks in 90 days.
And as you know, we're also using a sterilization process, some great equipment that will sterilize the masks up to 20 times per mask.
So that's like ordering 20 times more masks.
And it's working very well.
We just want the hospitals and the institutions where it is to use it.
A lot of people don't use it.
They're so used to getting a new mask, they don't want to use it.
They want to go and immediately get a new one.
We're asking them to use the sterilization process.
Every bit as good, up to 20 times, think of that.
In addition to ramping up our domestic assembly lines, we also have airlifted nearly 750 million pieces of personal protective equipment into the United States through our Project Airbridge, which has been an incredible thing to watch.
It's really a military operation.
The Vice President is now providing each governor with an exhaustive count-by-county breakdown of the privately distributed personal protection.
And this is equipment and things that are incredible.
It's personal protective equipment.
It's incredible, and it's all brand new and at the highest level.
We're getting only the highest level.
And also, we're looking at essential gear within their states, and it's being delivered to different states quickly and as we speak.
This way, the governor should know exactly what's being delivered through a private sector supply chain within their states as well as through the Project Airbridge.
We're trying to get it immediately from the plane to the state when we can't do that.
We bring it into our facilities and get it to the governors.
And we're getting them fast, and we're notifying them very strongly so they know it's there.
Governors can use this information to quickly ensure that they get materials where and when they are needed.
Today I also want to extend my special thanks to our nation's incredible county emergency management teams who have been working relentlessly for weeks around the clock, end on end, to serve their communities, help distribute critical supplies, and save countless American lives.
We salute these heroic officials on the front lines.
As we continue to develop potential therapies, the FDA has recently begun a national effort to expand access to convalescent plasma donated from the blood of those who have recovered from the virus.
The blood of these donors contains antibodies that can potentially reduce the severity of the illness and those who are sick and frankly those that are very sick.
Nearly 3,000 patients are now enrolled in the expanded access program receiving transfusions nationwide and I want to thank all of the people that recovered for what they've done.
As I said yesterday, they raised their hand when they barely can walk and they're saying, I want to donate blood.
I want to donate whatever it is that you want because we want to help people.
It's really quite incredible.
Convalescent plasma will also be used to manufacture a concentrated antibody treatment that does not have to be matched with a particular blood type.
This concentrated antibody treatment could be used as a preventative measure to keep health care workers and other high-risk jobs.
