Rebekah Koffler, is a former Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) intelligence officer and author of the upcoming book Putin’s Playbook: Russia’s Secret Plan to Defeat America and Scott Uehlinger, is a Retired CIA operations officer and Russian intel operations expert - today they discuss the abrupt and unscheduled end to the meeting between Biden and Putin. The press was shut out, and Biden left early. What is going on? The Sean Hannity Show is on weekdays from 3 pm to 6 pm ET on iHeartRadio and Hannity.com. Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
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Of course, President Sippy Cup needed his cheat sheets to negotiate with Putin.
You know, there was one thing.
A friend of mine sent this to me, pointed it out to me, and I said, there's no way this is true.
So I got my team just doing a quick double check on all of this.
That Vladimir Putin, in 45 minutes, took more questions than Joe Biden has answered in six months.
And by the way, there's not an easy press conference.
I mean, look, it's so embarrassing to me.
I think.
I think it's embarrassing.
It's such a sign of weakness that Joe Biden, the reality is his team, probably politically, probably in the best interest of the country, it's not good for Joe to stand on a podium and have a joint press conference with Vladimir Putin, who will publicly humiliate him because he's not up to the task.
The problem is, they all knew that before he ever got in this race, and it's only gotten worse, not better, over time.
And that is now a real clear present problem for the United States, to say the least.
Anyway, he appeared to be holding another one of his cheat sheets at his summit with Vladimir, and he seemed to be hiding the notes from Putin.
You know, Putin's not stupid.
He's evil, but he's not stupid.
It's a hostile regime.
He's a hostile actor, but again, he's not stupid.
President Xi is evil, but he's not stupid.
Same with the Iranian mullahs.
I don't trust any of them as far as I can throw them.
And they have long assessed Joe Biden's cognitive issues long before this shortened summit.
It didn't go on as long as they said it was going to go on.
And Joe just doesn't have the mental alertness and capacity to stand next to Putin and do a joint presser.
And I think the other thing is there was probably a great fear among his team that Joe would probably stick to the talking points that were probably even written before they left Washington and say this happened and this happened and this happened and this happened.
And if it didn't happen, he would be probably corrected immediately by Vladimir Putin, who's listening to it.
So they couldn't put Joe in that position either because now we have to make every decision and filter it through the prism of Joe's cognitive weaknesses.
There was a testy moment where Biden got combative with a CNN reporter, Caitlin Collins, and he wrapped up his press conference.
Why are you so confident he'll change his behavior?
Collins asked.
And here's what happened.
Why are you so confident he'll change his behavior, Mr. President?
I'm not confident behavior.
What the hell?
What do you do over there?
When did I say I was confronted?
You said for the next six months.
What I said was, let's get it straight.
I said what will change their behavior is that the rest of the world reacts to them and it diminishes their standing in the world.
I'm not confident of anything.
I'm just stating a fact.
But given his past behavior has not changed, and in that press conference, after sitting down with you for several hours, he denied any involvement in cyber attacks.
He downplayed human rights abuses.
He refused to say Alexei Navoni's name.
So how does that account to a construction meeting as President Putin?
You don't understand that in the moment.
If you don't understand that, you're in the wrong business.
I mean, he's just a jackass.
And I'm not really standing up for the CNN reporter.
I mean, that's how they treated Trump every second, every minute, every hour of every day.
At one point, we'll get to this later.
Biden actually saying, oh, I don't think Putin is testing me with cyber attacks.
I'm like, how stupid are you?
Of course, these are Russian-sanctioned attacks or else they wouldn't happen.
We'll get to this later in the program.
We have cyber experts that'll join us.
And these guys are watching all of this and they're scared to death because they know that we have a major national security vulnerability.
And now we got a president that's in denial.
Our commerce secretary is actually saying cyber attacks are here to stay and they will intensify.
That's not an answer to what is a real problem.
I mean, it's pretty unbelievable.
And it's now pretty clear why the press conference couldn't be held jointly, which historically usually happens, because the comparisons would be devastating.
You know, but then he goes, hey, you know, AWL, he's gone.
You know, Joe was two and a half hours late yesterday.
Still haven't gotten a reason for that missing in action moment.
Anyway, he gives Putin a clear field to attack America on the world stage again and again and again.
Putin had 45 minutes to beam what was just nothing but anti-American propaganda into homes and businesses all across the globe.
This worked in his favor, unobstructed, not that Joe would have stood up for us anyway.
Not that he's capable of even standing up for us, unobstructed by an opposing response.
You know, somebody made a comment, well, Hannity, you know, it sounds like you're not cheering for America.
I said, no, I feel awful that this is the mess that this country is in right now because weakness is not going to end well.
It's not going to be good for the United States, we the American people, and it's not going to be good for the world either.
So, you know, not facing reality is not something that I'm capable of doing.
You know, you think about this, you know, all of the three long years of Trump-Russia collusion, nothing but manufactured conspiracy theories, one after another, after another.
The unholy alliance, the Democratic Party, the media mob, big tech.
It went on for years.
And what do we find out?
What was the reality of it?
Is the only people in 2016 that colluded with Russia, and by the way, Ukraine, was the DNC and Hillary Clinton.
They bought the Russian disinformation dirty dossier.
They leaked the dossier.
They wanted America to believe that Donald Trump was compromised by Putin and was at the Ritz-Carlton in Moscow with hookers peeing on his bed.
That's the crap they peddled.
And this went on for three years.
And have we ever heard a correction?
No, nothing.
Are they ever going to correct the record?
Never.
And then the big Ukraine lie.
I couldn't believe my ears yesterday.
I hear Joe Biden literally say, Ukraine is too corrupt to join NATO.
And I'm like, hold on a second.
Now, we caught Joe two weeks ago.
He had said I'd never had any conversations with my son, Hunter, about his foreign business dealings.
Okay.
Then we have Joe on tape.
You're not getting a billion unless you fire the prosecutor who's investigating zero experience Hunter and the millions that he made.
And son of a B, they fired him because Ukraine wanted the billion dollars.
That's a quid and a pro and a quo.
And how is it somebody with no experience gets millions of dollars?
Imagine if their last name were Trump.
But then we got Kazakhstan and their oligarchs feeding money to Hunter.
You know, this has a name.
If you don't have experience, and the only reason by your own recognition, you have no experience, oil, energy, gas, or Ukraine, why do you think they chose you?
I don't know.
Because your father's in charge of Ukrainian possibly, probably.
Well, yeah, that's the reason.
It's called pay-to-play.
It's called buying access.
It has a name.
And it's the heart of corruption.
But according to Joe in the media, nothing wrong ever happened.
Well, Joe denied ever talking to his son about any of his foreign business dealings.
Now we got VIT pictures.
We got evidence of Joe as vice president having dinners with Hunter's foreign business associates and partners.
I mean, it is unbelievable corruption.
You know, the idea that Ukraine is too corrupt to join NATO, but it wasn't too corrupt for Hunter to do business with.
I mean, why is that not a big deal?
If it was Trump or anybody with the name Trump, it would be a big deal.
You know, it's this 45 minutes of, I mean, you think about it, it is pretty profound, isn't it?
That Vladimir Putin took more questions, and a lot of them were pretty hostile, actually, in 45 minutes than Joe took in all the time that he's been president in the last six months.
Vladimir Putin took more questions in 45 minutes than Biden has had in six months.
Think about that.
Putin didn't need to read from a teleprompter.
Putin didn't have any cue cards that I saw.
Biden always relies on them.
Unlike Biden, Putin didn't require that his questions be pre-screened.
He could have had his aides come up with the answers for him ahead of time.
Putin actually answered several hostile questions, which Joe never gets.
Old Joe gets puffballs and he still struggles.
And, you know, one CNN reporter mildly pushes him, and look what happens.
And you never heard Putin say, oh, I'm going to get in trouble with my staff.
How many times on this trip did Joe say, I can't, I'm going to get in trouble.
My staff doesn't like it when I answer questions.
I'm like, oh, my gosh, who's running this show?
How did we ever get such a pathetically weak, cognitively compromised president?
I blame the media, and I blame everybody around Joe because they all knew.
Everybody knew.
And it just is like the perfect storm.
We'll hide under the guise of COVID.
Unbelievable.
Just like we'll ignore laws and state constitutions when it comes to voting.
You know, partisan observers are supposed to watch the vote counting start to finish.
That didn't happen.
Laws were broken.
He's supposed to have voter ID.
Well, in some states, you only had it for in-person, but not mail-in balloting.
You know, you're supposed to follow the state constitution and you can't write a law to circumvent it.
You have to go through the constitutional amendment process.
That happened in Pennsylvania.
Then the 4-3 decision in Wisconsin.
You know, you didn't see Putin struggle.
I didn't see a 10-second brain fart from Vladimir, which is plaguing Biden at almost every media encounter.
Putin didn't look out of breath, tired, agitated, never lost his train of thought.
You know, there were no painful 10-second silences like we saw Biden on Monday.
I mean, it's an unmitigated disaster.
This is scary because the world sees it.
It's not just that Sean Hannity sees it and that you see it.
It's that Putin sees it.
President Chi sees it.
The Iranian mullahs see it.
The rest of the world sees it.
Kim Jong-un sees it.
You know, Putin ambushes Biden with this massive military exercise near Hawaii just before the summit.
That's not testing Joe.
Russian warships conducting the largest military exercises since the Cold War off the coast of Hawaii.
I mean, they got so close, you know, 300 to 500 miles west of Hawaii that the U.S. Air Force had to scramble hours before the start of this.
You don't think that was a message?
It was a message.
U.S. scrambling F-22 stealth fighters from Hawaii in response to the exercises.
You think that was just an accident?
It wasn't an accident in any way.
You know, the summit wraps up early, and again, we have no indication why or what happened.
Whatever they were going to tell us about how great this went, they had already written before they left Washington.
I can guarantee it.
It's the way they work.
And the media is not going to ask them any tough questions.
You know, if Biden decides to lift sanctions on Russia, Iran, guess what?
They might get their first spy satellite.
How great would that be?
It wouldn't.
On top of the Russian Navy conducting their massive drills 300, 500 miles off the coast of Hawaii.
Now we now discover the Washington Post reporting that Biden overrode the State Department recommendation to impose sanctions intended to block the Russian Nord 2 pipeline.
That's the one that Joe gave a waiver on.
Now, is that because the Biden family syndicate is compromised by Russia?
Why would you, while simultaneously eliminating building a U.S. pipeline, the Keystone XL pipeline, why would you give a waiver to him?
And why would you give the waiver when your own State Department recommended you don't do it?
What does that tell us about Joe Biden?
Mike Pompey, the decision not to hold the press conference shows enormous weakness.
None of this is good for anybody.
And I wasn't kidding.
Washington Free Beacon had a piece about if sanctions prohibiting the import of U.S. technology used in Russian satellites are lifted as part of a quid pro quo deal with Biden and Putin.
Yeah, that could be a major enhancement of Iran's military.
In other words, Iran could end up with their first spy satellite.
That wouldn't be good either.
It's just pretty unbelievable to watch all of this unfold.
And then the media doesn't get it.
They're just totally dumb and clueless.
And it's kind of sad.
You know, we didn't get any specifics.
We know that nine federal agencies now have been breached by Russian hackers in the last year.
We know 100 U.S. firms were breached by Russian solar winds and that hack.
We know that a Russian-linked group behind the cyber attack of colonial pipeline.
We know a Russian cyber criminal group known as Revel hijacked the meat industry, JBS.
FBI Director Ray, huge portions of ransomware traced right back to Russia.
Putin claiming, oh, the attacks are farcical, not true.
Russia continues to target our infrastructure.
Russia now moving at the lowest point ever.
And what did Joe do about it?
From what I can see, nothing.
Nothing.
And the same guy that said, oh, we got to hit the reset button in 2009.
A lot of good that did with Hillary.
John Kerry making America green one Learjet liberal flight at a time.
You just can't make this stuff up.
Sean Hannity is on right now.
All right, 25 till the top of the hour, 800-941.
Sean, you want to be a part of the program?
What does this mean?
You know, this constant, I'm going to get in trouble.
I can't answer question.
I'm going to get in trouble.
What is that?
Where does that come from?
I'm going to get in trouble.
You know, Joe, focus, Joe.
Pay attention, Joe.
I'm like, man.
This is so bad.
I don't know whether to laugh or cry.
I'm really crying because there is a seriousness to all of this that is extraordinarily dangerous.
I mean, it's so bad.
And the mob, the media, they just ignore it.
I promise you, the world is not ignoring it.
It's just not.
And you can see it in the foreign press.
I mean, it's pretty much everywhere.
You know, Sky News Australia.
Yeah.
What's wrong with Joe's mental capacity?
They're asking the question out loud.
Then you've got New York Post headline, bumbling Biden's G7 and NATO summit performance only boosts U.S. Euro foes.
Can you just think for one second, now that we know the State Department said, don't give the pipeline okay to Vladimir, and he did it anyway?
Well, now, if it was Trump, would that not raise questions of whether or not Donald Trump was compromised by Putin and Russia?
Why aren't those questions raised when we know for a fact that zero experience Hunter and his firm got $3.5 million wired from a Russian oligarch, the former first lady of Moscow, the mayor of Moscow's wife?
Do you think that the media might tie Russia to Trump if it was Trump?
I think they probably would.
If Donald Trump paid for a Russian disinformation dossier that then was leaked to the media mob, turned out to be totally unsubstantiated and full of lies and unverifiable, and that it became the, without which they wouldn't have gotten the warrants to spy on presidential candidate Hillary Clinton, and God forbid if she ever became president.
More evidence Biden is not doing well.
Another headline.
You know, nobody knows what he's trying to say half the time.
Joe Biden having to rescue him when he ends up just wandering around and a reporter shouting questions at him.
Come on, Joe, come on.
Then having to turn around, somebody says, we love you, Joe.
And he just stares at the person saying, I love you.
You know, Joe, pay attention.
Focus here.
It's, you know, then this whole thing about, you know, I need permission.
What do you mean?
It's like, is he raising his hand to go to the bathroom?
You know, I'm going to get in trouble.
I'm sorry I'm going to get in trouble with staff.
I don't do this the right way.
Jennifer Jacobs Boomberg.
Yeah, I'm going to get in trouble.
That's two of them going to get in troubles in one trip.
What was it with the 10-second pause?
I mean, just for a minute here.
Now, he's about to meet Putin, and he had referred months ago to Putin as a killer.
Now he has a chance to tell it right to his face.
Now, I'm going to be honest.
If I get an interview with Vladimir Putin, I'm going to say you're a murderer.
And I'll go through the list.
I say it right to his face.
Donald Trump wouldn't have any problem saying it right to his face.
The mob, you know, they, oh, the vapors, oh, Donald Trump tweeted out bad words.
Donald Trump is, he's a little bit more crude than the average president.
He's bombastic.
He went into the G7 and he rocked their world.
And he did it on America's behalf.
He did it to make sure that NATO allies paid their fair share.
He did it to get better, freer, fairer trade deals.
And it worked.
He did it to show that America really is back.
Joe's definition of being back means America lasts and always lasts.
And America will pay and pay and pay and pay and pay.
And of course, you know, European socialists love it.
But the world's not better off with a weak America, that I can promise you.
Or a cognitively weak and frail president either.
I mean, and then the disappearing act for two, who goes disappearing for two hours and 45 minutes late for a press conference?
How did that happen with no explanation?
Like, oh, the president had to take care of some urgent business.
Sorry for the delay.
Something.
No.
I'm not going to meet with Vladimir and do a joint press with Vladimir because we know, yeah, we know Joe's going to get his headhanded to him and embarrassed on the world stage, which already happened anyway.
Like when Boris Johnson had to say, I already introduced the South African president, Joe, and then everybody laughs because they can see it.
I know the media thinks just because they don't talk about it, although it is pretty fascinating.
I can tell you one thing.
There are media mob people that back channel to me.
They see it.
They see what we see.
They're just not allowed to talk about it or don't have the guts to talk about it.
You know why people don't attack me over it?
Because I'll just play the hits again and again and again and again and again.
And you know what they don't want?
They don't want these hits going viral.
I keep forgetting I'm president.
COVID is in, I know you all know, but a lot of people may not know what COVID is.
In Libya, we should be opening up the passes to be able to go through and provide food assistance and economic assistance.
I mean, vital assistance to a population that's in real trouble.
Russia has engaged in activities which we believe are contrary to international norms, but they have also bitten off some real problems.
They're going to have trouble chewing on.
And for example, the rebuilding of Syria.
I'm sorry I'm going to get in trouble with staff.
I don't do this the right way.
Well, look, I mean, he has made clear that 1,000, 2,000, 3,000, 4,000, 5,000.
The answer is, I believe he's in the past essentially acknowledged that he was.
Do you still think he's a killer, Joe?
That was what the question was.
Joe didn't want to answer it because he's about to meet Vladimir.
He'd have to say it to him face to face.
Vladimir is just doing military exercises off the coast of Hawaii.
It's pretty unbelievable.
And one cyber attack after another.
Now, do you begin to understand when you piece it together?
Zero experience, Hunter, Ukraine.
Ukraine, Joe, said, no, they're too corrupt to join NATO.
So Ukraine wants a clear yes or no on getting into the NATO membership action plan.
So what's your answer?
Depends on whether they meet the criteria.
The fact is, they still have to clean up corruption.
The fact is they have to meet other criteria to get into the action plan.
And so it schools out on that question.
It remains to be seen.
Remains to be seen.
Oh, he's telling them what to do.
That's like a quid pro quo, right?
According to the media.
And then Hunter gets to make more money.
So they don't meet the criteria to, I mean, it's actually laughable.
They don't meet the criteria to join NATO, but they certainly meet the criteria.
They're too corrupt to join NATO, but they meet the criteria that Hunter can do business with them.
Is it not now a fair question now that Hunter makes money from Kazakhstan, Ukraine, Russia, China, that maybe the Biden syndicate crime family is corrupt and compromised?
Because that's what you'd be hearing if it was Donald Trump as president.
Make no doubt about it.
You know, and it just went downhill from there.
You know, Ukraine's too corrupt.
Did I just hear that?
Perfect for the Biden's family syndicate with no experience.
Perfect for him to leverage a billion taxpayer dollars to fire the prosecutor investigating it all.
Now zero experience.
Hunter is going to be selling his paintings at a top gallery in New York City, expected to collect up to $500,000 for each, quote, masterpiece.
I don't know, maybe we'll call this, maybe we'll call it portraits of a crack addict.
According to the gallery, the buyers will remain anonymous.
I guess a lot of Russians and Ukrainians and Chinese will be buying them.
Communist Chinese.
You know, the rules apply only if your last name's Trump or you're a Republican or if you're a conservative.
If you're Biden, you can get away with anything.
Nothing bad's going to happen.
The media mob, big tech, they'll have your back the whole way, just like they did in the campaign protection program.
Now it's the presidential protection program.
No investigations, no negative coverage.
So-called mob in the media, journalists, as they call themselves, stick together, put their heads in the sand, and allow the most flagrant hypocrisy and double standard to be as glaring as it's ever been.
You know, it's a pretty amazing time.
It really is.
And I can't even believe in another way that this is even happening.
But it's happening in the United States, and it's happening every day.
You know, one of the Trump kids puts a gun in a, you know, what do you call it?
One of those wastebasks, not a wastebasket, one of those dumpsters.
Yeah, that's fine.
That's called illegal.
And I use crack illegal.
All the things that's on Hunter's laptop, we'll ignore that.
By the way, the economy not doing good.
Wholesale prices now soaring at the fastest pace on record.
And as a matter of fact, wholesale prices increased their fastest annual rate ever for May, driven by rising food prices, soaring inflation, now threatening to derail the entire economy.
The Producer Price Index measures inflation pressure before it reaches consumers up 0.8% in May, annual gain of 6.6%, the biggest jump since they first started compiling this data in 2010, according to the Labor Department.
Food prices, you know, through the roof.
Lumber prices through the roof.
Meat prices through the roof.
Everything's costing more.
Everything.
One bit of good news.
The Biden administration suspension of new oil and gas leases on federal land, that was blocked by a judge in Louisiana who ordered the plans be resumed to lease sales that were delayed for the Gulf of Mexico and Alaska.
Some hope.
By the way, Donald Trump has announced he will be going to the border on June 30th.
We will be down there with him and with Greg Abbott.
We can announce that.
Texas Governor Abbott, he's building his own wall.
He has no other alternative.
He's not allowed by law to enforce the laws of the land if Joe Biden doesn't enforce them.
I know it sounds ridiculous, but that's just a fact.
You know, it's pretty incredible the times we're living in.
I'll tell you that.
I am glad about that judge's decision.
I think that's going to be very helpful.
Joe, by the way, got slammed by Governor Christy Noam, South Dakota, after his administration unveiled plans.
They're going to have their Independence Day fireworks displayed at the White House.
Why can't she have it at Mount Rushmore?
They went through every hoop that they need to go through environmentally to make sure it's safe.
They did it when Donald Trump was there.
They know how to do it.
Anyway, it's another broken record on rising prices.
I am just telling you, these are the hidden taxes we're all going to pay, and it's only the beginning.
Now it's going to be the Democratic socialists.
They're going to now use the reconciliation process for this.
You know, Democratic infighting is real.
So their only alternative is they'll trigger, Schumer will trigger in the Senate reconciliation.
And they're going to force it down America's throat, just like they forced Obamacare down America's throat, because they can't get it done legislatively.
Now, they might not even be able to get it through with reconciliation if cinema and Joe Manchin were to hold the line and say, no, we got to put together a bipartisan bill, and we got to finally work together.
But they're trying to ram through $4 trillion in an effort to reshape the entire economy, embrace everything new Green Deal socialism.
In the name of daycare is infrastructure.
Healthcare is infrastructure.
Everything is infrastructure.
Axios is reporting this could cause this infrastructure bipartisan talks.
They're breaking down.
You have all these impatient new Green Deal Democrats.
They want to go it alone anyway.
So what's Manchin going to do?
What's Cinema going to do?
Politico is saying Democratic leaders to progressives lay off Manchin because he may just switch parties on us.
And the fake news media, they're all about every day beating up Manchin.
Why?
Because he believes in the Constitution on some level, looking out for the interest of the people of West Virginia.
That's his job.
Hour two, Sean Hannity Show.
Thanks for being with us.
800-941-Shawn are number.
You want to be a part of the program.
So Mike Pompeo, former Secretary of State, he's not the guy that's going to sit in a meeting and get lectured by the communist Chinese the way that Biden's team did in Anchorage, Alaska, nor is he going to put up with any of Putin's crap either.
And, you know, it's just a fascinating difference in terms of the utter approach.
I mean, the summit wraps up early.
Joe is incapable of holding a joint press conference.
The U.S. press, left in the dark, they seem perfectly fine with it.
Joe finally gives a presser, you know, just rambling, mumbling, bumbling, stumbling stupidity.
And it's embarrassing.
I mean, there's really no other way to put it.
Anyway, this is what Pompeo said as it relates to Putin using this as a stage for Russian propaganda unchallenged by SIPICUP.
It's the strangest thing, right?
He was allowed to go up there and spout Russian propaganda to create the context for moral equivalence between the United States and Russia on every front, whether he was talking about BLM or protesters or our judicial system, right?
He talked about his protesters.
When we have a problem here, it goes to courts.
We have a system, a constitutional foundation.
They have none of that.
And he got free reign to go on for all of that time and to the world spout this propaganda without an American standing beside him saying, no, that's not what we talked about.
That's not right.
And making the case for American interests.
And the reason is, is because Joe's not up to the task.
It's that simple.
Anybody that tells you any different is just lying to you.
It's transparent, it's obvious, and everybody knows it.
Here to weigh in on what the ramifications of all this are ultimately going to be, Rebecca Koffler is with us, former Defense Intelligence Agency, DIA intelligence officer, author of an upcoming book, Putin's Playbook, Russia's Secret Plan to Defeat America.
Scott Ullinger is back with us, retired CIA ops officer, Russian Intel ops expert.
Thank you both for being with us.
Now, Rebecca, you have an interesting background as it relates to Russia, and you understand Putin's mind as well as anybody.
You read him as well as anybody.
I am contending that Putin sees right through Joe Biden, and he knows he's dealing with a cognitively weak and frail American president, and has taken full advantage.
You're absolutely correct, Sean.
President Biden placed America in the first place in this, as you said, embarrassing position.
I agree with what you said.
By holding the summit in the first place with Putin, Biden going in was overmatched and outgunned with Putin.
And then on top of it, to make matters worse, Biden refused to man up and to show up and hold a dual press conference where he could have challenged right then and there Putin's propaganda.
And he was just not capable.
He's exactly inept.
He doesn't understand Putin.
And it appears to me that the entire administration, I don't know who exactly advises him, that he should show up.
I don't think anybody can advise him because I don't think he can retain the information, Rebecca.
I'm not even sure if he knows what day of the week it is or what country he's in right now.
It's very sad.
Apparently, he stumbled into a place where he ought not to have been, and his wife rescued him.
And trust me, the Russians do their homework before these summits.
They do what's called the profiles of our national security leaders and political leaders before they show up with them.
And he definitely knows what Biden's hot spots are.
He really does not want to appear like the quote unquote, like President Trump, who, quote unquote, was soft on Russia.
Nothing can be further from the truth.
President Biden pretty much has erased his own negotiating leverage and given away the store even before he met with President Biden.
So that meeting was doomed.
He lost before even he showed up.
Putin took on his own 40 more questions in his 45-minute press conference, and some of them were pretty aggressive questions.
He didn't blink an eye, and he didn't read from a teleprompter.
I didn't see any cue cards that he was using.
Then Biden's taken in six months.
One thing, Scott, that I think has not been emphasized enough, especially in the media, is, you know, Russian ships are conducting the largest military exercises since the Cold War off the coast of Hawaii, even sending our Air Force scrambling hours before this, quote, summit took place, literally 300 to 500 miles west of Hawaii.
U.S. Air Force has to scramble F-22 stealth fighters from Hawaii in response to these exercises.
And the bombers, you know, didn't enter air defense identification zones and were not intercepted.
But clearly, Putin wanted to send the message before today.
Oh, certainly, certainly he did, Sean.
And that would be a standard, you know, that goes back to the Soviet playbook to do these sort of things.
North Korea does the same sort of thing.
But this is exactly the problem, as Rebecca has pointed out, is that Putin realizes that Joe Biden is not a, quote, as a Russian would say, a serious president.
And as such, for instance, everything that Biden said to Putin about like U.S. strength or we don't want to tolerate cyber attacks that originate from your soil, et cetera, it doesn't really pull any water with Putin because Putin understands that, for instance, under the Joe Biden latest budget, U.S. defense is effectively taking a cut.
So at the same time that Biden is hyping up talk that America is back, what the Russians see is that the United States is not building as many ships, is not fielding as many active duty personnel as they have in the past.
So he realizes that they're just empty words.
And so he is positioning himself to fully take advantage of it.
I think it's very interesting, though, that Putin did not exactly spike the football with Biden.
In other words, what I think happened was Putin observed Biden's dismal performance at the G7 and realized that Russia would really gain nothing by like pointedly humiliating the president of the United States in a press conference.
So in other words, Putin was very happy to extol Biden's virtues, etc., and of course, hurl some barbs at the progressive.
That's the diplomatic nicety BS.
That's all that is.
It's bullshit.
That's right.
It's just crap.
It's garbage.
Right.
But he saw no reason to go out of his way to humiliate Biden because basically he feels that Biden has done that job for him already, sadly enough.
And so he can just continue to make nice with the Biden administration at the same time where he continues his moves abroad unchecked.
You know, I just, there was one moment in particular, Rebecca.
I'm not sure if you picked up on it.
There was some in the media that picked up on it where Biden seemed to respond affirmatively to the question about whether he trusts Vladimir Putin.
Now, why would you trust Vladimir Putin?
Vladimir Putin is, he was right, he's a murderer.
I mean, he gets asked the question just prior in the lead up to the summit.
I don't know if you saw the 10 seconds of the most uncomfortable silence by an American president ever.
It's breathtaking, Rebecca.
Now, Putin is a hostile actor.
He's evil in many ways.
He's corrupt as hell, but he's not stupid.
And nor is President Xi stupid.
And as evil as the Iranian mullahs are, they're not stupid.
And the reality is, is they're studying this guy backwards and forwards, and they're not going to be influenced by the media that ignores Joe Biden's cognitive weakness.
I agree with you.
Putin, yes, he's all of those things that you just said, but he also constantly reminds President Biden that he is there not to be, and this is something that actually what I'm about to say that I heard in the Russian press.
Putin said that we're not the two lovers who are there to basically swear to each other infinite love.
We are there representing the interests of our countries.
So there's no such thing as trust when it comes to Putin.
He's a highly trained former KGB officer.
And you know how the Russians viewed this summit to begin with?
They characterized it basically as an intelligence gathering opportunity.
Russian Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs, Sergei Rupov, said this.
It is impossible to impose on your spy counterpart your own thought process and your interpretation of what he says.
But what you hear from him and the conclusions you make as a result of what the counter spy says become food for thought.
So he basically summed up, we're going in to quote unquote, strengthen trust and mutual understanding, which in Russian intelligence parlance, and Scott, you weigh in, what that really means is a good intelligence gathering opportunity.
As a former intelligence officer for DIA and Russian born, I'm a native Russian speaker.
This is what that lingo means.
And Scott, go ahead and jump in if you want to comment on that.
No, I think that's an important point.
One question I have, Scott, is he's now twice referred to, oh, if I answer questions, I'm going to get in trouble.
Who are you going to get in trouble by, Joe?
Right, right, exactly.
I mean, are you going to get detention, Joe?
You're going to have to sit in the corner.
You're not going to get your warming milk and sippy cup tonight or what?
Who's going to get you in trouble, Joe?
And as you were saying, and as you were saying, Sean, you're exactly right about, again, the administration and the American left in the United States, they think that they're going to get a free pass from other countries' leaders in other countries the same way that they get a free pass by promoting all various lies that they put out in the United States.
And that's not true.
In fact, to quote another Russian source, a Russian think tank was writing a few days ago, and what they were saying was what's going to happen during the conference.
And for example, they wrote that Joe Biden will not push the Ukrainian topic because of certain corruption circumstances related to his son.
Now, you've got to freeze frame what you're saying here.
Is there too corrupt to join NATO, but is zero experience son, the guy that went on Good Morning America and was asked, well, what experience do you have in energy and oil and gas?
None, none, none.
I mean, but that's Ukraine.
That's Kazakhstan.
That's the former first lady of Moscow.
You know, so it's okay for Hunter to do business with Ukraine, but it's not okay for the U.S. to do business with them.
Unbelievable.
That's right.
And Twitter can kick off people who want to write about Biden's, you know, the corrupt dealings of the family.
But the bottom line is the Russians and Chinese are very well aware of this, and they use this, and they use this knowledge as a way of subtly intimidating Biden or the administration into doing what they want.
And hence why we have to avoid these corrupting influences when we elect a president, because it compromises their ability to keep us safe.
All right, quick break.
We'll come back more on the other side with our Intel experts, Rebecca Koffler and Scott Ullinger.
Then we'll get to your calls, 800-941-Sean, our number.
You want to be a part of the program.
And we've got a great Hannity 9 Eastern tonight.
Donald Trump will be calling in among our many guests.
Quick break, right back.
We'll continue.
All right, as we continue with our intelligence experts, Rebecca Koffler and Scott Ullinger.
Let me go back to Rebecca, then I'll ask Scott the same question.
So when I was in Singapore, I was warned by top intelligence officials that the Chinese, in the case of Singapore, more Helsinki, more the case, the Russians, that it was not 99%.
It was 100% likely that those intelligence agencies from these countries knew I had a relationship with Donald Trump and that they said to me I would be monitored every second I was there.
Is that true, Rebecca?
I would say 120%, Sean.
And they said people that work in the hotel, they will be spies.
They said people, they said if you get a burner phone, they'll find it.
That's what I was being told.
Russian intelligence tracks all of U.S. people who are connected all over the world, not just in Moscow, but they watch very, very closely because that's how they developed a nuanced understanding of the American psyche and also of the relationships between our business and political leaders.
All of that information is ultimately fed into the doctrine and into the strategy that was developed based on Putin's orders.
That is precisely why they launched these attacks, cyber attacks, because they understand that we're not going to respond because we have demonstrated unwillingly, obviously, unintentionally to them that they've been doing it for 20 years.
And that is all based because Russian intelligence services do their job.
They do their homework.
And unfortunately, we deprioritized Russia as an intelligence threat.
Russian threat has sort of fallen through the cracks.
Wow, Hillary Potter dossier from Russia.
You know, I mean, the great irony, the Bidens got rich off Russia and Ukraine and Kazakhstan and China.
But I would argue that probably the Biden family is completely compromised and they know it.
Rebecca, thank you.
Scott, we love having you back on.
Thank you.
800-941-Sean is our number.
We'll get to your calls when we get back.
We'll continue.
25 to the top of the hour, 800-941, Sean, you want to be a part of the program.
One of the funniest things that's actually emerged this week, although it's not really funny, it's not funny at all.
And it was Secret Empires and the incredible book by Peter Schweitzer that got this all out in the open and began a process culminating in Senator Ron Johnson, Senator Chuck Grassley even getting more details about how corrupt the Biden family syndicate is.
It wasn't just Ukraine.
It wasn't just Burisma.
It wasn't just Kazakhstan.
It was also Russia.
It was China.
It was the Bank of China with ties to the Chinese military, a Russian, Chinese national.
Hunter Biden, with all his depth of experience, making millions and millions and millions and millions of dollars.
I mean, you think of the irony here, and I said this earlier.
How is it Hillary bought?
the Russian disinformation dossier.
She brought that into the 2016 election.
She bought and paid for it.
And then the deep state took an unverifiable document and committed premeditated fraud on a FISA court to spy on a presidential candidate and a president.
And they did it even when they knew from Christopher Steele himself it was not verified and from his sub-source that it was all bar talk.
And they did it anyway.
And yet, oh, Trump is Putin's puppet.
No, it was the Bidens and it was Hillary.
They were the ones.
The guy that stood up to Russia, China, Ukraine, and other places was Donald Trump.
It's unbelievable.
You know, the great irony is Biden actually says, yeah, Ukraine is too corrupt to join NATO.
I mean, I'm sitting there and I'm like, did I just hear that?
Ukraine wants a clear yes or no on getting into the NATO membership action plan.
So what's your answer?
Depends on whether they meet the criteria.
The fact is they still have to clean up corruption.
The fact is they have to meet other criteria to get into the action plan.
And so it's, you know, schools out on that question.
It remains to be seen.
They got to clean up corruption.
That sounds like a quid pro quo.
That sounds like what Donald Trump said.
The guy that leveraged a billion U.S. tax dollars to protect his zero-experienced son who is being investigated by a Ukrainian prosecutor, that was Joe.
And then the media just runs with their phony fake lying narratives.
You know, people saying, well, conservatives, they're cheering for Joe to fail.
No, we don't want America to fail.
But, you know, we're not blind either and we see truth.
You know, what did I say when the George Floyd tape came out?
Our eyes aren't lying to us.
You know, I don't rush to judgment, but that can't happen what we saw in that tape.
Joe Biden's on tape.
You're not getting a billion.
You got six hours unless you're fire, Ukrainian prosecutor, which we now know, was investigating his zero-experienced son.
So Ukraine's too corrupt to join NATO, but it's not too corrupt for Hunter to make millions of dollars and Joe to leverage our tax dollars to protect him from a criminal investigation.
I mean, it is everything is topsy-turvy.
I mean, it is, it's just the information.
America media, the mob is just full of corruption.
There's no honesty in these people whatsoever.
It's all to advance the radical new Green Deal socialist agenda, and they lie and they lie daily.
And the things they're guilty of, it's a conspiracy theory.
Russia conspiracy.
Trump, Russia, collusion.
Three years of lies.
Quid pro quos, that would be Joe, you know, Putin's puppet.
That would be Hillary and the Bidens, the Biden syndicate, crime family syndicate, making money from Russia.
Wasn't the Trump kids getting $3.5 million from the first lady of Moscow?
Was it?
No, that was Hunter.
It wasn't Don Jr.
or Eric Trump getting money from Kazakhstan and oligarchs there.
That was Hunter.
Wasn't Donner Don Jr.
or Eric getting money from Burisma.
It wasn't Donald Trump threatening to withhold the billion tax dollars.
That was Joe.
And the millions were made by Hunter.
The $100,000 shopping spree with a Chinese national, that was Hunter and his family.
For what?
Why would a Chinese national just take you on a $100,000 shopping spree?
I wish I had that deal.
If I ever took it, I'd be in jail for the rest of my life.
And it wasn't Donald Trump Jr.
wasn't Eric Trump that got the billion five deal with the Bank of China.
Oh, Goldman Sachs isn't good enough.
Deutsche Bank isn't good enough.
JP Morgan Chase isn't big enough.
We're going to go to Hunter with ties to the Chinese military.
Unreal.
All right.
I can't stop myself today.
Patricia's in Florida.
Hey, Patricia, how are you?
Good.
How are you?
I'm good.
I'm glad you called.
So yesterday I was listening to your show and we were talking about Joe Biden's cognitive absence during that press conference the other evening.
And I saw something in him and recognized it clearly because I had an instance where my husband and I had to go to court to get guardianship of his elderly sister who was suffering from dementia.
And when I saw that pause in him, and just the look on his face, I immediately recognized I had seen that before.
And it was with her.
There were some people that were taking advantage of her financially and they were supposed to be friends.
We ended up having to go to court to get guardianship of her finances and of her.
But one thing that happened in the courtroom was the judge would ask her a question and she would be immediately like, I don't want them to have control of my finances.
I don't want them to have control of my finances.
And she asked that question several times.
Shane got the same answer, asked different questions several times, but got that same answer.
And it was almost like someone had coached her.
And then the judge finally said, well, why not?
And she says, I don't know.
She didn't know what to say because she had no one to coach her.
I don't, look, it's transparent.
It's obvious.
You know, there is this other whole question out there that we've kind of been skirting around, but you're kind of bringing up here.
Who knew what about Joe's condition and when?
And I would argue that everybody involved in this campaign knows and they knew that Joe was a cognitive mess.
They knew that he was weak.
They knew he's frail.
They knew that he's really not up to the job.
You know, David Axelrod would say things at different times like, if you can't cut it, you can't cut it.
And this is the most important job in the world.
It's the most demanding job in the world.
And I know because I've interviewed presidents my entire career, Patricia, and I see what that office, what it takes to do that.
It's never, the pressure never stops.
There's no off minute of any day.
Oh, well, he's playing golf.
There really isn't off time.
And especially if you're engaged, Donald Trump was engaged at the highest level every single day he was there.
And I know because I saw it and I heard it.
And I, you know, I worked my sources around him.
And I'm just telling you, he never stopped.
You know, I don't think Joe could do one week the way Trump does a day.
It just, it's sad.
And it's hard to watch.
Frankly, I feel a sense of just embarrassment.
It's embarrassing.
You know, Democrats, socialists, mob, media, tech, big tech, they used to say, they were so offended at Donald Trump's tweeting.
I'm like, this guy went into NATO and told him, hey, start paying your fair share.
He went into a G7 and said, no, we're changing these trade deals.
They're one-sided, and you're taking advantage of us.
And he fought for we the people.
That's America first, and now Biden back to America last.
I mean, it's a profound, distinct difference.
Do I think that the mob, the media were really as outraged as they pretended?
No, I don't.
Because I can tell you right now, there's nothing that any liberal has ever said about me that is really that bothersome to me in any way.
You know, it's they fake this phony indignation and, oh, oh, I get the vapors.
Donald Trump tweeted something I disagree with.
Is that what we've become?
Woke, you know, weak Americans that words so offend us that we've got to cancel people that utter words or sentiments that we don't like.
I don't think most people get that pissed off at words.
You know, I have every reason to get pissed off at people sometimes.
I'm being honest, Patricia.
I don't care.
I don't care.
I care about the country.
I want America to be strong, and I don't see a strong president.
No.
Thank you.
Good call.
Al is in Florida.
Al, what's going on, sir?
Glad you called.
Hi, Sean.
Well, I've been listening to you for quite a while.
I want to say I really appreciate you and what you're doing and trying to accomplish.
But I'm going back to like that Bruins game the other night when the crowd literally shut off the talent from finishing the song.
They're not great.
Yeah, it was.
I've been to a few.
I don't follow sports show heavily, but I've been to quite a few big games of various types, and I've never seen anything like that, for one thing.
I hope I'm very curious.
Now, the series is tied.
They played the first two games, the Islanders now in the semifinals, heading into hopefully the finals of the Stanley Cup.
They split.
Home Ice Advantage was Tampa's, but by winning one of the games in Tampa, the first game, the Islanders now have home ice advantage, which does make a difference.
I am very curious if it happens again tomorrow night.
Yeah, all I say, go bolts.
Okay, you want to get into this now?
You want to have a bet on who's going to win this series?
I'm all in.
I'm going to stop with you on it.
I'll miss that.
But I want to say, though, is that patriotism, there's been a renewed interest in it.
Gladly, I'm happy about it because I'm getting older.
And for years, though, even when I didn't know half as much as what I don't know now, I still would say to people in conversation that we've lost patriotism.
You don't see it.
You don't feel it.
You don't hear it.
And when I saw President Trump get into office, things started to change.
And they changed dramatically.
See, I think this might, we might look back at this game six of the Islanders and the Bruins, right?
I mean, you have that Boston-New York rivalry thing and the crowd singing our national anthem proudly and loudly.
And I would love to see this duplicated in football stadiums.
I'd love to see it duplicated in baseball stadiums.
I'd love to see it duplicated at, you know, before NBA games.
And if that ever happened, it would be basically the public taking their middle finger and saying to the woke cancel culture mob, we love our country.
We love people that protected our freedoms and we're standing loudly and proudly.
And you can go Adam Schiff yourself.
All right.
It's a beautiful thing.
It's all over.
I was at a concert.
I was at a concert the other night.
I went down locally to see some friends who play in tribute bands.
One of them was for a heavy metal artist, Ronnie James Dio, and the other one was for Ozzy slash Black Sabbath.
And the guitar player for the Aussie Black Sabbath tribute band when they announced the band members, and he had played with other bigger bands even at one time, but he went off into a lead break and then he broke into the Jimi Hendrix version of the Star Spangled Banner.
Very cool.
And these are metal heads, you call them, at a concert, and they went absolutely berserk for it.
You'd be surprised.
I've actually found some of these guys actually are fans of mine.
I'm like, huh?
It doesn't quite, you know, connect with me, but they, you know, like all my all my music DJ friends, they're all talk radio fans.
They don't want to listen to the same songs over and over again.
They're done.
Anyway, I got a roll.
Thanks, Al.
Appreciate you being with us.
All right, back to our busy phones.
Tim, North Carolina.
Tim, you're on the Sean Hannity show.
Glad you called.
Hey, Sean, thanks for taking my call.
Can I give a shout out to your call screener, by the way?
She was very friendly, and I appreciate her being.
So you're flirting with Katie.
Is that what you're doing?
You want to flirt with her?
Get it.
Get out of here.
Get out.
I'll get out of there.
Okay.
You know what the problem is?
You know what?
I could see right through this.
But go ahead.
I'll give you a pass.
Go.
I was wondering how strong the legal case is against the DNC and Joe Biden's handlers for elder abuse, considering the way that they're treating him.
And how obvious, if you just listen to him for more than two minutes, not that's my kind of comment.
And what I was calling for was, I have a day job, right?
I work in healthcare.
I have a side job, a big old suburban.
I drive people, right?
I drive a little side hustle.
And I talk to thousands of people and a small percentage of them about politics.
But nonetheless, I've talked to some people about politics.
There are three words that describe what I've noticed, regardless of side, that people are feeling both before coronavirus and now.
Okay?
And it's leave me alone.
No, I think that is real.
Listen, I'm telling you, I feel it.
The Islander game, one example.
What you're saying is leave me alone.
People have had it.
And I think people watching this shift show and feeling, I think, the way a lot of us are feeling, you know, pretty awful and embarrassed.
I just think it's going to result in a major wave election in 2022, which I hope and pray carries through 2024.
Anyway, thanks, my friend.
Appreciate it.
800-941 Sean, you want to be a part of the program?
All right, news roundup, information overload hour, 800-941, Sean, if you want to be a part of the program.
We'll get to your calls, bottom of the half hour.
So I was right yesterday.
The news broke during this program, but I wasn't able to independently corroborate it.
I mentioned it could be a possibility because we don't like to go out early.
I mean, we take meticulous care to get things right.
We really do.
We work hard.
It's important to us.
And anyway, so it turns out that Southwest Airlines ended up grounding flights all across the country yesterday.
And this was the second time this happened in 24 hours amid reports of nationwide computer issues.
And then air travelers, you know, were all over social media with reports of what airline staff were reportedly telling them was a computer system outage had occurred.
And this is hours after intermittent performance quote issues and with a third-party weather app forced to a similar group stop on Monday night.
We are aware of the system issue and we're working quickly to resolve.
We'll share more info soon.
Southwest posted on their Twitter account as of yesterday.
We haven't lifted a finger to have real cyber security.
And I can guarantee you the Russians are working on it.
I guarantee you the Chinese are working on it.
I guarantee you every enemy country in the world that hates us is working on it.
And there's obviously a vulnerability here.
And we're not doing much to take care of business.
Now, Joey Sipicop, you know, was asked if he thinks Putin was testing him with these cyber attacks.
Here's a short answer.
Do you think Putin is testing you?
Does the government have to do more to force businesses to protect themselves and their customers?
So I think the first thing we have to recognize is this is the reality, and we should assume, and businesses should assume, that these attacks are here to stay, and if anything, we'll intensify.
We should, that was Gina Raimondo, who's the Commerce Secretary.
She's telling us we should assume that cyber attacks are here to stay and that you mean you're not going to stop them?
Because that would be national security now that we're talking about being compromised.
I can't think of anything dumber.
And President Sippykup, oh, I don't think Putin is testing me.
No.
And what was that little exercise off the coast of Hawaii yesterday?
Just an accident?
It's pretty, it's beyond naive at this point.
Anyway, Brian Finch is the co-chair of the cybersecurity practice at Pillsbury Winthrop Shaw Pittman.
Dr. Peter Pry is with us, executive director of the task force on national homeland security, nonprofit congressional advisory board.
And he was also the chief of staff of the congressional EMP.
That's Electromagnetic Pulse Commission.
And on the staffs of the House Armed Services Committee and with the CIA, so these guys know what they're talking about.
Dr. Pry, we'll start with you.
Why do you believe that Putin is testing the U.S.?
Russia's testing the U.S.
And do you agree with the Commerce Secretary that we must assume that these cyber attacks are here to stay and just accept it?
These attacks are definitely from Russia, sanctioned by the Russian government, and they as much as told us that they were going to attack us about a month before colonial pipeline.
I know Washington has a short memory, but if people remember back to the Ukraine crisis we had, when Russia had mobilized supposedly an exercise, but it had mobilized enough forces so it could roll over Ukraine and possibly even attack the frontline NATO troops in Eastern Europe.
Even according to our own war games in the Pentagon, Russia can overrun Ukraine and the frontline NATO troops in 72 hours.
So the Biden administration was very concerned about that, as were our NATO allies, and we're demanding that the Russians stop it and stand down.
In the middle of that crisis, Margarita Simonyan, who is a spokesman for the Russian media giants RT and Sputnik, and is a friend of Putin, has gotten many awards from Putin, many medals, you know, is an unofficial spokesman for the Kremlin,
went on TV and said a cyber war between the United States and Russia is inevitable, that they were positioned to win it, and that they could do things to prove it, like black out Harlem in New York City or black out the state of Florida or black out the whole United States.
This could literally shut down every system we have and that means all of our national security defenses.
You said something that really caught my attention though, and that is you're saying you know that colonial pipeline, the attack on the meat industry was sanctioned by the government.
How do you know that?
Well, because the administration's arguments, you know, are that these are criminal acts by criminal organizations.
You know, the Russian mafia is not independent of the Russian government.
You know, it's a tool that's used by Russian military intelligence, the GRU, and by the SBR, the successor to the Russian KGB.
And on top of that, we have Margarita Simonian a month before Colonial Pipeline telling us that they could win a cyber war, and there were various ways they could demonstrate that they could prove that.
And then there was the attack on colonial pipeline.
Why colonial pipeline?
Well, it supplies half the petroleum products, not just for the civilians in the eastern part of the United States, but for our military forces, for our military bases on the eastern coast of the United States, which are the very forces that we would need to project power to protect Ukraine or NATO against a Russian invasion.
So it's just an interesting coincidence that the colonial pipeline happened to be the thing that got hacked.
I mean, I think that that was Russia demonstrating that, yes, they could win a cyber war, and that if Biden administration tried to deliver on its threats, you know, to protect Ukraine, to protect NATO, you know, that they could do something about that by doing by first shutting down the colonial pipeline.
You know, we're paying the bulk of the freight for NATO in part to protect our Western European allies from Russia.
And meanwhile, our Western European allies now are doing more business and getting the lifeblood of their economy, their energy from Putin.
And Joe granted the waiver to Vladimir to build the pipeline while simultaneously shutting down the Keystone exile pipeline.
That makes zero sense.
Brian Finch, how vulnerable do you believe the United States is to these cyber attacks?
Hey, Sean.
Always good to be here.
You know, the U.S. is pretty vulnerable.
I do think it's important to note that we have been doing a lot.
I mean, the U.S. government going all the way back to Bush II has been focused on cybersecurity.
The level of emphasis has waxed and waned depending on geopolitical events, domestic events, etc.
Certainly during COVID, for instance, the focus on cybersecurity has shifted or weighed a little bit.
I mean, it's a matter of record that there was funding that was spent for cybersecurity products, and the federal government was shifted over to COVID response.
And we can argue all day long whether that was right or wrong, but it happened.
But to the question of whether the U.S. is vulnerable, sure, we're vulnerable.
Does that mean we're the most vulnerable in the world?
No, I don't think so.
But it also means we can't protect everything at the same time.
And I think that's the question we really need to be asking right now, which is, you know, you assume that Russian criminal gangs, whether operating either at the direction or at the knowledge and benign consent of Putin, are conducting this latest wave of ransomware attacks.
You know, how does this benefit Putin?
I mean, that's the question that really needs to be asked in part because now you have U.S. law enforcement intelligence agencies and others focusing on ransomware, and they're starting to shut down some gangs here and there, which is good.
But if you're a fan like I am, and no endorsement, but I enjoyed Narcos, for instance, watching the story of the drug kingpins in the 80s, you ever notice the pattern where whenever one drug kingpin fell out of favor, all of a sudden that he got cracked down upon by the Colombian or the Mexican or whoever government and suddenly got captured?
Is Putin trying to do the same thing here?
All of a sudden, he's got some gangs that he doesn't like, wants the U.S. to do his dirty work for him, or maybe be like the solar wind situation where he's going to send out all these fake messages about, oh, we're going to hack the election.
There's going to be all this disinformation.
There's no confidence in the election.
And then in reality, they didn't do very much there.
They were too busy hacking the U.S. government.
So you've got to worry about the old problem of Maskarovka, as they call it, the Russian disinformation and misdirection campaigns.
And I feel reasonably confident our intelligence and law enforcement communities are paying attention to that.
But the rest of the media has got to get on board, too, and not just blindly assume that Putin's out there to make a few million bucks from shutting down a meat plane or a gasoline pipeline because he thinks much bigger than that.
He thinks billions and trillions, not millions.
All right, quick break.
We'll come back more with Brian Finch and Dr. Peter Pry on the other side.
800-941 Sean is our number.
We'll get to your call.
Final half hour.
All right.
Cancel culture, wokeness, indoctrination in schools.
The mob is after any and all things conservative in any way.
And by the way, that even applies to our friends at Tuttle Twins Books.
These books are selling by the millions.
Why?
Because they reinforce values of American parents that they know their kids are not getting at school.
They're amazing books for kids, toddlers through teenagers.
And anyway, now they're under attack.
Why?
Because they believe in entrepreneurship, capitalism, individual responsibility, love America.
Oh, think, oh, the vapors.
Anyway, Socialist magazine writing a lengthy hip piece attacking the Tuttle Twins books.
A heap of steaming garbage.
Why?
Because they teach freedom and liberty and responsibility.
I guess, you know, when a socialist attacks you, you know, you're doing something right.
Millions of these books have been sold because parents love them.
It is the antidote to the indoctrination that is now institutionalized in so many of our schools.
Your kids are going to love it from toddler to teenagers.
Just go to this website, tuttletwinshannity.com.
That's T-U-T-T-L-E-TwinsHannity.com right now.
And by the way, they're running a sale.
You can get free workbooks as well.
That's tuttletwinshannity.com, and your kids will love it, and you will love it as well.
Digging D D D D to expose how the government wastes your money each and every day.
This is the Sean Hannity Show.
Continue the threats of cyber
breaches everywhere.
We continue with Brian Finch and Dr. Peter Pry.
Listen, I'm probably the biggest technical idiot you're ever going to meet in your life.
This is not my wheelhouse in any way, and I'm the first to admit it.
I guess the next logical question, though, is simple, is do we have the means to quickly build up the defenses that would be necessary to prevent them from being successful with these cyber attacks, Dr. Pry?
No, not quickly.
You know, it can be done over time.
And the define time.
What's time?
A year, two years, ten years?
The significance.
Well, it depends upon the strategy that you follow.
Part of the problem is that we have a grand strategy that's doomed to fail.
You know, the policy that's been followed since the Bush administration and continued under Biden, and you could see it in some of the commentary from the Biden administration you had, is that this idea of a public-private partnership where the U.S. government is the junior partner in the partnership and the national security responsibility is basically shoved over, shouldered onto the private sector.
That's not going to work.
That's not going to work.
This is a national defense issue, a national security issue.
You studied and you were the chief of staff of the Congressional EMP Commission, Electromagnetic Pulse Commission.
How real is that threat?
Oh, that is related to this threat.
You know, this is not about ransomware.
This is about demonstrating a new way of warfare in which cyber attacks are the tip of the spear.
But in a real war, it would be followed by the use of non-nuclear EMP weapons as an additional means of sabotaging our critical attacks.
What would that do to the country?
And ultimately, even a nuclear EMP attack, which is considered a dimension of cyber warfare or information warfare by Russia, China, and North Korea.
It's not considered a nuclear attack.
And it would basically destroy our electronic civilization.
It would collapse the electric grids, all the life-sustaining critical infrastructures, and kill millions of people.
That was the conclusion of the EMP Commission.
And this is the test that everybody has been expecting the Biden administration to be put to by Russia.
They're putting them to the test, and he's failing the test.
Now, the President Biden, I will give him credit, that he is continuing to try to implement the EMP executive order that President Trump passed.
But there's another crucial executive order that has been suspended by the Biden administration.
That's Executive Order 13920, which is protecting the bulk power system.
And this executive order is designed to stop our utilities from importing transformers and SCADAs and other critical electronic equipment from foreign countries, particularly China.
We saw back in October of last year that China was able to black out the city of Mumbai, a city of 30 million people, during a border conflict with India, in part because India is very dependent on China-imported technology, transformers and SCADAs.
If we're serious about cyber warfare, we've got to stop importing stuff from China that's so crucial to the operation of our electric grid and other critical infrastructure.
Well, we believe, Brian Finch, for example, that TikTok was a means that the communist Chinese were using to spy on Americans.
Trump stopped it.
Biden opened that door up.
Yeah, I mean, you know, TikTok is obviously a threat.
I think it's, you know, it's a spying threat of all the scraping of information as a parent of teenage girls.
It's also a morale threat for anybody who's ever had to listen to TikToks and all that sort of thing.
But I would say on top of all that, you know, what the doctor is saying about investing more in critical infrastructure, cybersecurity, et cetera, yes, we need to do more than that.
I think, you know, Sean, I know you're a student of history and, you know, like me, a fan of World War II and all that good stuff.
You know, what we do have to realize is that every once in a while the enemy gets through, no matter what, right?
You know, even the Japanese were able to send some balloons armed with incendiary bombs that killed a few people in the United States at the end of the war.
So where we really need to go is we need to go to a situation where companies, governments, and people understand that, look, we're never going to get to a situation where we can stop every single cyber attack.
That's just not reality.
But what we can do, and you were asking this question earlier, what's success?
Success in this case means it doesn't really matter whether they get through or not.
Because in order to have a successful cyber defense, it's one where even if the enemy gets through and causes some quote-unquote damage, it doesn't really harm us that much at the end of the day.
Like in the example of Colonial, sure, they're able to get in and spread this ransomware, which cripples systems.
But in a really good cyber defense world, you would have Colonial saying, oh, we know it's only going to affect these systems.
We can isolate them.
We can shut them down.
We can keep 70, 80, 90% of the pipeline operating while we fix the rest of it rather than just closing the whole thing.
That's how you've got to look at success so that Putin looks at it and says, I'm not going to get much.
Or the Chinese area.
Well, the reality is you're both describing a level of vulnerability that is intolerable.
Pretty chilling.
I hope our government pays attention because this is going to be our future if we're not careful.
But we're just out of time.
Brian Finch, thank you.
Dr. Peter Pride, thank you.
800-941-Sean, you want to be a part of the program.
800-941-Sean, you want to be a part of the program.
I want everybody to remember one thing.
And this is a pretty fascinating expose on it's sort of like a barometer of success.
Because right now, the new Green Deal socialists, they're trying to convince Americans everything is going to be free.
You're going to get free child care, free early education for your kids.
You're going to get free college.
You're going to get free student loan forgiveness.
You're going to get a guaranteed government job, guaranteed government wage, guaranteed government health care, guaranteed government retirement, guaranteed government healthy food.
Everything is going to be free.
Everything.
Now, I say this all the time.
Well, how have all these people making these grandiose promises?
What does their track record teach us?
Because if you look at how these states that their number one responsibility is to keep their citizens safe, law and order, safety, security, so one can pursue happiness.
How have they done?
Look at any blue state, look at any blue city, and the numbers speak for themselves.
The violence, the crime, out of control, getting worse every single day.
Then you look at, well, how did that Social Security lockbox thing work out?
Yeah, they rated it, and it's going bankrupt.
Medicare is headed towards insolvency.
They didn't do good there either.
Those are promises they made.
Same people, same socialists, same big government, radical leftists.
How'd they make out with that Obamacare promise?
Keep your doctor, keep your plan, save on average $2,500 per family per year.
Every American, millions lost their doctors, millions lost their plans, and we're all paying about 250% more thanks to that promise.
So then you look at the school system.
I have in front of me today's edition of the New York Post.
And it says right at the top of the page, black families in Queens revolt.
Schools failed to us.
$27,000 spent per student for a terrible education.
The article goes on.
Schools in Queens are letting black students down.
Fed up parents are protesting despite high pupil spending, per pupil spending, and only 6% of kids at one elementary school proficient in math.
Only 6%.
How is that possible?
How do you fail on that huge level?
Families are fleeing to private charter religious alternatives.
You want to know why parents are putting up with the PCBS and shift, if you will, at schools like Dalton and Breeley and all these expensive private schools, 50, 60 grand a year, because the alternative doesn't exist.
Because then you're stuck in the public school system, which is an unmitigated disaster.
Anyway, and it goes on to say that in this article, it says inside the piece, schools child neglect.
And it goes an exodus of African Americans over low scores.
And they have all these kids holding up signs.
Report card.
Math skills, D minus.
English, D minus.
Science, D minus.
Social studies, D minus.
That's what their report card is.
So you've got African American parents in Queens saying that the city's Department of Education, again, $27,000 per student they're spending.
It's a lot of money, fueling an exodus from the public school system.
Fed up families in District 29, primarily African-American area, includes Hollis, Rosedale, Cambria Heights, and the Department of Education has tolerated these abysmal math and English proficiency rates despite high per-student spending.
So I ask you, now that they failed miserably in their promise to educate our kids, they failed miserably in law and order and safety and security.
They failed miserably on Social Security and saving and procuring that money and Medicare and Obamacare.
Here's my next question.
Why would you trust them with anything else or believe anything else that they say?
Good question.
Mike is in Virginia.
Mike, you're on the Sean Hannity Show.
Glad you called, sir.
Sean, how are you doing?
I'm in Virginia now, but I, like you as a Long Island boy, our similarities are ridiculous.
If you went point by point, Newsday, I delivered Newsday Daily News right on through dishwashing, and I became a cop.
And then I got injured and then I retired, went into education.
I've been down here for 25 years doing that.
I've been teacher for years and principal for 12 years.
I'm back in the classroom.
What led me to call you today was listening yesterday, the young lady from Columbia and her points about the indoctrination on a college level, which my family as conservatives, we've suffered through.
My children have gotten penalized in school for their outspoken points of view.
But I teach fourth grade here in Virginia, which is a fantastic year to teach in Virginia, primarily because of one of our curriculum points is something called Virginia Studies.
Virginia Studies is like a survey course.
It takes you from like Native peoples all the way through current day Virginia.
Civil rights goes through everything.
It's a great course.
And now we're being told slowly but surely they're dismantling it.
They're dismantling the time we're being given to teaching and they're dismantling the curriculum.
And our czar, Mr. Northam, is at the helm of this.
And it's killing myself and it's literally killing quite a few conservative teachers with whom I teach.
You know, look, schools now, at this point, I think it's sort of like we've got to get to a point of do no harm.
The best thing we could ever do is school choice.
Let schools compete for the dollars, if it's 27 grand in District 29 in New York, let the parents have a check for 27 grand and let them figure out where they want to send their kids to school.
And I'll tell you what's going to happen.
You're going to see schools emerge that will take on the public schools.
And these schools are going to be focused on the important stuff, you know, like reading and writing and math and computers so that these kids get the best education.
Because I'll tell you where the parents are going to flock to.
They're going to flock to the schools that do the best job educating their kids.
Next thing I would do is I'd send kids to school in uniforms.
And any kid that becomes a disciplinary problem, you're out.
Goodbye.
Stop interrupting the learning process of other kids.
I'd instill discipline.
And these kids should go to school, sit up straight, learn reading, writing, math.
A little bit of American history would be nice, but I'm not even asking for that at this point.
And prepare them for what the real world requires if you ever want to be successful.
The ladder to success in America is a good education.
And if, you know, look, I can't tell you, it's actually a passion of mine to that, you know, I'm in a position financially.
I've helped a lot of people out go to school, a lot of people, because it's that critical.
It's that important that if you want to have any competitive advantage in life, you know, and if we can't agree on sex education and you have some people wanting to teach masturbation to six-year-olds and first graders, I don't have any time for this crap.
If you want to bring in controversial, divisive.
critical race theory, I don't have time for that either.
You know, make those electives where parents can elect to let their kids stay after school and learn all about the crap that they want them to learn.
I don't care.
But stick to the fundamentals.
When you become proficient at math, reading, science, computers, then talk to me.
Learn the basics first.
Anyway, New Jersey, Moses is standing by.
What's up, Moses?
How are you?
Hi from the mountaintop.
Thanks for taking my call again.
I'm doing better.
How are you doing?
I'm good.
How are you?
All right.
So, Sean, so the thing I'm concerned about the most, right?
I'm not concerned about us taking back the Senate, taking back the White House, taking back the House.
So what I'm concerned about is how are Republicans going to fight back against the machine and the processes that the Democrats have created over the last six years that is effectively sabotaging and derailing Republican presidencies.
You have Adam Schiff launching unconstitutional impeachments with whistleblowers who are not named, who don't even know the exact details of the stuff that they're blowing the whistle on.
You also have Adam Schiff leaking the phone records of lawyers, journalists, and members of Congress.
Then you have a media loop that what they're doing is feeding false information that's being used in front of FISA courts.
You have the deep state that's getting bigger and bigger with people like Kevin Kleinsmith that's lying to the FISA court and unconstitutional and illegal warrants on presidential campaigns.
Not to mention, you also have on the state level, all these companies basically blackmailing all the people in their states by let me say this a little bit differently.
You have major institutional forces in the media, in academia, and the Democratic Party, big tech companies that are all aligned to advance an agenda.
And the antidote and the answer to me is just like conservatives found talk radio, just like conservatives, some conservatives have a voice on Fox.
Not everybody's a conservative.
We have to also become big tech competition.
We need our own Facebook, our own Twitter, our own Instagram, our own everything.
Because listen, Twitter, it's very interesting.
We actually have put out a number of trial balloons.
And the trial balloons are simple.
And that is that we will throw out a tweet.
And in the past, where so many people would retweet my tweet or follow my tweet or comment positively on my tweet, it's just the 99% leftist, hardcore Democrat.
You know, they have now successfully chased away conservatives from Twitter.
And we've tested this now numerous times and we've compared it to years past.
So it is what it is.
I'm not going to beg them to be fair.
I'm just saying that if we want, if you don't like it, we got to get good, smart, conservative, technical minds to build an alternative.
And so far, people have talked about it, but nobody's gotten it done.
I certainly can't do it because I don't know what the hell I'm doing.
I wouldn't be able to build such a thing.
Yeah, definitely.
But you know what?
The one thing you touched upon, which is the most important thing, is that I've been a Democrat all my life.
But when I started paying attention after Donald Trump got elected, it's voices like yours that helped me understand the conservative values I've always had and basically discover my political identity.
And I want to thank you for that, Sean.
But now what my concern is, is that with big tech basically shadow banning voices like yours, like Levin's, like Bongino's, that's going to be happening less and less.
And what I'm concerned about, along with the previous point I made, is that Republicans are not in this fight.
And once they get these gavels back, they need to be on day one.
Let me tell you, there is a battle for the heart and soul of this country.
There's such a philosophical divide at this time.
I don't see reconciliation.
You know, you either believe in open borders amnesty or you believe in secure borders.
You either believe in energy independence or you don't.
You recognize that lowering the cost of energy is in our best national security interest and financial interest.
You either believe in constitutionalists or you want judicial activism.
You believe in lower taxes, not confiscation of wealth.
You believe in less bureaucracy, more bureaucracy.
You believe the government should create a cradle to grave, womb to the tomb, socialist, you know, communist, Marxist utopia, or you don't.
You believe in strong national defense or you don't.
I mean, these are very fundamental things and the divide is great.
What I've found about conservatives, once you understand it, and how simple it really is, once you see how corrupt the media is with their abuse and bias, you can't unsee it.
Thomas Paine said, you know, government in its best state is a necessary evil, in its worst state, an intolerable one.
But lower taxes, less bureaucracy, secure borders, school choice, energy independence, free market solutions to health care, law and order, safety, security, constitutionalists on the bench, peace through strength.
That's simple.
It doesn't need to get any more complicated than that.
And if you have politicians, if they want to be rewarded with positions that they want, obviously, then stand and fight for those simple principles.
Anyway, I appreciate the call.
800-941, Sean is our number.
You want to be a part of the program.
All right, that's going to wrap things up for today.
Hannity tonight, 9 Eastern on the Fox News channel.
Complete wrap-up of the Biden and President Sippy Cup summit from earlier today.
Jim Jordan, Mark Meadows will join us.
Ryan's Prievis, Dan Hoffman tonight.
And then Donald Trump exclusively reacts to this summit and much more.