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Dec. 30, 2021 - Sean Hannity Show
31:43
The Power of Russia - December 30th, Hour 2
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All right, news roundup, information overload hours, Sean Hannity's show.
Well, Biden, another disastrous, you know, he did a Zoom call.
I guess it's too much for him to do what President Trump used to do, and that's, you know, fly to Singapore, fly to Vietnam, fly to Helsinki.
I mean, oh, we went on all these trips and actually meet world leaders in person and get spied on the way we did, but that's a different story for a different day.
Anyway, so now we have all these troops that Putin has now amassed a huge army on the Ukrainian border.
Every indication, even our own intelligence community is recognizing it looks like he's getting prepared to invade.
Now, next week, I guess Joe will speak to President Xi.
Now we know what China's been doing.
They've been flying their fighter jets over Taiwan airspace, and they keep talking about reunification.
And none of them seem particularly concerned at all with anything that Joe Biden has to say about any topic.
None whatsoever.
The Biden administration apparently is exploring options for a potential evacuation of U.S. citizens in Ukraine if Russia were to invade the country.
Okay.
Can we go and get the people that we left that Joe abandoned in Afghanistan first?
There are hundreds of Americans still there.
Here's what John Kirby says.
It's not entirely clear what Putin's intentions are with Ukraine.
I know what they are.
He just wanted to see if he could mobilize his troops and scare the crap out of Ukraine.
That's what it probably is, right?
Listen.
We continue to see a buildup of military, Russian military forces in the areas around eastern, northeastern and eastern Ukraine, but on obviously in western Russia.
This buildup is concerning to us.
It is still not entirely clear what Mr. Putin's intentions are.
Again, I won't speak for the White House.
I think my colleague at the White House has already spoken to the president's upcoming conversation with President Putin.
And what we have done here at the department is continue to have conversations with our allies and partners about this situation, sharing with them what we can about what we're seeing and making sure that they know that our commitment to NATO and to the alliance priorities is simply not going to change.
Putin's already figured out Joe is not going to lift a finger.
He already knows that.
We haven't figured out what Putin's intentions are.
I know what he's doing.
He's amassing all these armed troops on the border with Ukraine so they could have a block party.
That's probably what he's doing.
Have a big block party right there on the border.
How stupid can you be?
He's already done it with Crimea.
He's already done it twice with Ukraine.
We know where his mind is on this issue.
Joe Biden, you know, before this disaster of a teleconference, if you want to call it that, we'll show you on TV tonight.
We're going to have a long discussion with Putin to prevent Russia from invading Ukraine.
Vladimir Putin doesn't care what Joe says because he's already compromised by Ukraine and by Russia because zero experience Hunter made a fortune from both those countries.
And next week, when he talks to President Xi of China, that's another country that has the Biden syndicate compromise because of all the money dealings of Hunter and him there.
That's right, him, according to the laptop from hell.
Also, so we're going to play Biden talking about his long discussion.
That's Russia from invading Ukraine.
TAP is reporting that they're expected to continue to invade in 2022.
We've aware of Russia's actions for a long time.
And my expectation is you're going to have a long discussion.
You're going to accept Putin's red lines on your place.
I want to accept everybody's red line.
Yeah, what is Joe going to do?
Let's go through this.
Let's go through this exercise.
What do you think Joe's going to do?
Nothing.
He's going to, the worst sanctions you've ever had ever in the history of sanctions.
It's not going to work.
He just removed sanctions from Iran.
His sanctions have no teeth in them.
You know, Tony Blinken, the dope that he is, I mean, he's one of the dumbest secretaries of state this country has ever seen.
You know, vows high-impact economic sanctions if Putin invades.
Now, we don't know whether President Putin has made the decision to invade.
We do know that he is putting in place the capacity to do so on short order, should he so decide.
We've made it clear to the Kremlin that we will respond resolutely, including with a range of high-impact economic measures that we've refrained from using in the past.
High-impact economic sanctions.
That's really going to scare Putin away.
I'm sure of it.
Rebecca Koffler is with us, former Defense Intelligence Agency intelligence officer, author of the book, It's Coming Out Soon, Putin's Playbook, Russia's Secret Plan to Defeat America.
Scott Ullinger is back with us, retired CIA ops officer, Russian Intel ops expert.
He's written extensively on Russia.
Thank you both for being with us.
Rebecca and Scott, I'll ask you both the same question.
To me, it's pretty apparent what Putin's intentions are.
It's not to have a block party.
It's to invade Ukraine.
That's what seems to be in the very near future.
Your take, Rebecca.
Exactly right, Sean.
It's really, really maddening when I hear words like, we don't know what Putin's intentions are.
You don't need to be an expert to know.
And by the way, $85 billion a year that we spend in intelligence cannot provide us the visibility into our foreign Android intentions.
Then what's the purpose of intelligence?
Yes, please, you know, I tell the Pentagon, read my book.
It's spelled out right there, as you said.
Putin wants to keep everyone on edge and wants us guessing whether he's going to invade or not.
And he's testing our responses.
And he's amassing all the capabilities to make sure that if he is ready to invade, he can do so.
Scott, what are his intentions?
A block party or invasion?
Because I don't think there's any in-between here.
Well, I think I actually think there is, Sean, a little bit of in-between because I think he's using these forces as a big cudgel to intimidate the West and do it very effectively.
The man smells blood in the water.
He knows that the Biden administration has made so many foreign policy mistakes, it's like they've invented a neat dance or something.
And he's taking advantage of Biden's weakness to try to extract concessions such as a commitment that will never let Ukraine enter NATO and things like that.
Now, he doesn't really expect to get that, but he expects to intimidate Biden and intimidate the West.
And he's been very successful.
Well, I think he's also, I think China and Russia also are simultaneously trying to test America's military response capabilities by creating all these crises simultaneously.
Am I wrong in that assessment?
No, no, that's absolutely correct.
There's no question that they're doing that.
And there's no question that at some levels, the Chinese and Russians are talking about coordinating their efforts, whether it's the Black Sea, whether it's the South China Sea, or Ukraine.
They are coordinating their policies all to take advantage of what they perceive as U.S. weakness.
So there's no question about that.
The other thing to remember is that effectively, Putin does occupy eastern Ukraine.
Now, those are technically breakaway provinces, but everyone who knows knows that those breakaway provinces are controlled by Russia.
Their militias are officered by Russian military officers.
And so basically, he has effectively checkmated Ukraine because by having all these unsettled border disputes, it really makes it difficult for Ukraine to get into NATO.
And then by swinging around his 150,000-odd men along the Ukrainian border, he expects to get more concessions from the West.
And so he doesn't really need, he's gambling that he doesn't need to have a messy invasion or a war because the West is going to give him what he wants without any bloodshed being shed, except for the occasional unfortunate border skirmishes in the trench line between in the Donbas, between Western Ukraine and Eastern Ukraine.
You know, it's a really scary scenario.
Rebecca, now, your background is, if I'm not mistaken, from the last time I interviewed you, I remember, if I'm not mistaken, that you grew up in Russia, right?
Or the former Soviet Union.
Exactly.
Yes, exactly.
And I try to, when I worked in the intelligence community, I try to really explain that the mindset of Putin should not be mirror imaged.
He doesn't think like Americans.
As Scott mentioned, his real intentions are to reassemble, reconstitute this sphere of influence, which includes Ukraine.
And he perceives the Biden presidency as a window of opportunity for his takeover to reverse the outcome of the loss during the Cold War, you know, the collapse of the Soviet Union.
He wants to reconstitute what he has lost because he doesn't take Biden seriously.
We have withdrawn from Afghanistan despite the fact that we have superior military capability.
Putin knows that.
He knows that our Pentagon is more concerned about spreading Marxist ideology amongst the military officers than teaching them how to win battles.
And therefore, he has developed a strategy to take over Ukraine and former Soviet states in terms of spreading influence, not taking them over necessarily, you know, by force,
but, as Scott said, intimidating them in order to compel them to abandon their plans to join the Western camp, NATO, and EU, and therefore keep them within Russia's orbit.
And this is why it's dangerous, why the perception that President Biden is very weak is dangerous because the conflict could escalate and drag the United States into war with Russia, which would be a disaster.
As someone who participated in multiple war games, our losses would be catastrophic.
It would be disastrous for the world.
You're looking at two major nuclear powers and an unholy alliance that has emerged now between Russia, Iran, and China that very few people seem to want to point out.
Quick break, we'll come back more with Rebecca Koffler on the other side, Scott Ullinger on the other side as well.
All right, we continue now.
The danger that it represented by China and Iran and Russia in particular, Rebecca Koffler is with us, and Scott Ullinger is with us.
You know, with Trump, we were on the verge of literally reconfiguring world alliances.
I mean, I never thought prior to Trump that we'd ever see the United States, Israel, the Saudis, the Egyptians, the Jordanians, the Emirates, and other countries aligned together against Iranian hegemony.
Now, since Biden's been in office, that's now fallen apart.
And now you've got Iran aligning with China and Russia, and one has to worry that they might share nuclear information with them.
Right, there's no question about that.
And then also, I'm sure you've brought this up on your show before, our energy policy.
So literally, the United States is empowering Putin right now because at this moment, we're buying more Russian natural gas and oil products from Russia than ever before compared to the Trump administration, right?
So we are paying them, we are financing their military to do these types of things.
So this is why, you know, you can see why.
Well, let me put it differently, Scott.
You know what Biden's doing?
He's making Russia and Putin rich again.
He's making them great again.
He's giving them the money that they can amass these troops on the Ukrainian border.
And by the way, he gives Putin the Nord Stream 2 pipeline waiver while simultaneously firing Hestone XL pipeline workers, reducing our own energy production 38%.
And now he's begging OPEC and Russia to produce more energy so we can import it from them.
How stupid is that?
Right, exactly.
It's literally inconceivable that we have put ourselves in this own position.
And so for anyone who puts themselves in this position, we're surprised that a former KGB intelligence officer is going to take advantage of this when he basically sees the Americans are holding a gun to their own hip.
And I'll just help them pull the trigger.
They're loving it, Rebecca.
Putin loves a weak United States.
Qi loves a weak United States.
The Iranians love a weak United States.
And the press can cover up for Joe's significant cognitive daily decline.
But our enemies see it.
These hostile regimes see it and they're exploiting it.
Last word.
They absolutely exploited.
They exploit both.
The fact that we effectively finance Russia's military modernization program.
Why do you think they just launched a few weeks ago an anti-satellite missile test?
It's to demonstrate to the United States that they can blind and deafen us in the time of conflict, but also if Putin chooses so during peacetime, because our daily lives depends on satellite, and our entire military capability depends on satellites for navigation, precision strike, targeting, command and control, you name it.
So they definitely have a sense of what our weaknesses are and they're planning to exploit those vulnerabilities, all of them.
All the rogues, China, Russia, Iran, all of them that you named just now.
It's extremely concerning.
This is probably the most stabilizing period of international relationships we've ever had because he's supposed to be the leader of the free world.
This is what you get when you get a cognitively compromised, weak, frail mess of a president.
Rebecca, thank you.
Scott Ullinger, thank you.
800-941 Sean, you want to be a part of the program.
All right, 25 till the top of the hour, toll-free.
It's 800-941, Sean.
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We just had the 20th anniversary of 9-11, and every year, every hour on this radio program, we play a song.
It's called There She Stands.
It's written, composed, and sung by our friend Michael W. Smith.
He's been a part of our Freedom Concert tours, been a very dear friend for many, many years.
The thing that I love about Michael W., he's a Christian contemporary singer.
He's been way ahead of the curve of an explosion in the music industry, and that's contemporary Christian music.
And, you know, if you look at places like Hillsong and the music that they have there, it's become extraordinarily popular.
He's led the way and opened the door for so many people.
The movie is being released today, and it's also as a book companion to the film, released today, and it's in theaters nationwide.
And it's called The Jesus Music, a visual story of redemption as told by those who live it.
Now, it's bringing the history of this phenomenon known as contemporary Christian music to life.
I mean, you have all these anthem songs that have emerged.
I can't even begin.
I can only imagine by Mercy Me and Michael W's songs and, you know, Waymaker and Reckless Love of God.
And I can go on and on.
These are amazing songs.
And some nights I just put on YouTube on my big screen TV and I just watch them all.
And many nights I just watched Michael W. You know, put on a concert.
Every Christmas, he often goes out with Amy Grant, puts on the best Christmas tour of any.
In the movie, they have Michael W. Smith singing America the Beautiful.
It's an incredible rendition.
I want to play some of it for you.
Oh, beautiful for spacious skies, forembo waves of grave, for purple mountain majesties above the food and plain from Merica,
America, God shed His face on thee and crown thy good with run the good from sea to shiny sea.
God shed His grace on thee and crown thy good with run the good from sea to shining.
So every 9-11 we play our radio version and we do a TV version at 9.
And I write Michael every year and he's very gracious.
I said, do you mind if I you're supposed to get the rights to play these things, right?
Some people are such pains in the neck, it's ridiculous.
The thing that I know about Michael, there's been only a couple of people in my life, and I don't know why.
And I was raised Catholic, and I'm now a non-denominational Christian.
My faith means more to me now at this age and point in my life than it's ever meant.
It's everything.
You know, we're endowed by not a thing, the God, the creator of everything.
And Michael has played a very instrumental role in helping me get there.
But there are two people in my life that would call me and say, I just wanted you to know I was praying for you today.
I'd be like, the first person that did it was Jerry Falwell Sr.
You know, and I'm like, okay, hi, I'm just little old Sean Hannity over here at the dog shows.
You're probably wasting your prayers.
I was been incorrigible my whole freaking life, and I cuss a lot, and I like to drink vodka and smoke e-cigs.
I'm probably not the guy.
I'm the one that needs the salvation Christian guy.
And anyway, but that's where his heart is.
And I know he does it for a lot of other people.
And Franklin Graham, the same thing.
Another amazing man.
And this movement that Michael is really one of the great pioneers of, because he went out with Billy Graham for a long time.
And it's now blossomed into an area where younger and younger people now are drawn to the church and drawn to faith.
And I think there's a big, huge misunderstanding of what Christianity is all about.
You know, people think, oh, you're a Christian.
You're supposed to live the perfect life, et cetera.
That's not my understanding of Christianity.
My understanding of Christianity is you know you're flawed, you know you fail, you know that you sin, you want to be better, and you want salvation, and you're asking for God's grace to get there.
So in other words, it's the antithesis of the way the media often portrays it.
You know, there are corrupt people in every movement.
Yeah, that's why I'm not a Catholic anymore, to be very blunt, because what I thought was institutional corruption that was pushed under the rug, and I felt it was evil.
And does it mean every priest is?
No, not at all.
Do I still think the Mass is a beautiful thing?
I do, actually.
Anyway, Michael W. is with us now.
How are you, sir?
Hey, Sean, how are you?
Good.
Congratulations on the release of the movie.
And the book comes out Tuesday.
And that was an amazing version of America the Beautiful.
And I do need to thank you publicly for allowing us to always use There She Stands every year and rob your music company blind.
Well, well, thank you.
I thought the video was incredible, but what you did with There She Stands this year was amazing.
And I'm excited about the film.
I mean, I think it's going to be, I think, Sean, a lot of people are going to be surprised how this whole thing started.
I think, you know, probably over 90% of the people who love this genre of music will be shocked to know that it was, you know, that it was born and birthed out of this late 60s.
You know, we think things are crazy now.
Things were crazy back then.
It was Vietnam, civil unrest.
You know, a lot of assassinations.
Kennedy, Robert, and Jordan F. Kennedy, Martin Luther King, Malcolm X, right?
It was crazy.
And then what happened, you know, these hippies, you know, I guess Hendricks died, Janice Joplin, Morrison, you know, all these heroes of these hippies, you know, started dying.
And then they found out about some hippie preaching at a place called Calvary Chapel in Southern California, Costa Mason.
And the hippies started getting saved.
And they all were, a lot of those hippies were doing music.
And they thought, well, gosh, we don't want to change what we love.
We've been radically changed by Jesus crazy.
And so they just started changing the lyrics.
And literally, what was dubbed back then, which I think it still is, the Jesus music, they call it contributor Christian music, literally just born in six months.
There were 12 bands.
And all those records somehow made its way into my hometown of Canova, West Virginia in 1973.
It changed my life.
You really, I don't think you look at yourself this way.
By the way, this guy never ages.
I can't believe it.
He's got his grandfather, and he looks like he's 30.
It's unbelievable.
It's frankly annoying, as your friend, that, you know, I'm aging.
My hair gets whiter every day.
But anyway, as a side note, but you really are one of the pioneers of this.
And I know you've also been very instrumental in helping many young artists in the genre with their careers, giving them advice how to handle fame.
Fame is not healthy.
You know it, and I know it.
Fame is not healthy.
It's not normal.
And a lot of people we both know don't handle it well.
And you have handled it well, and you've navigated through these troubled waters.
And look at the movement that has grown into today.
You played a big role in that.
And I don't know if you really understand the role you played, but you were like one of the first.
And Billy Graham recognized the power of your music early on, and you went on many crusades with him.
And look, I'll say this: I do radio and TV, but the power of music is on a power a hundred times more powerful.
I don't make people cry.
I look out when you're doing a concert and I look in the audience and you're touching people's hearts in ways that I can never touch them.
And you're changing their life.
Well, thank you, Sean.
I mean, I really do believe that music is the most powerful universal language in the world.
I mean, I say that in the movie, how a three and a half minute song can completely change somebody's life for the good.
And God knows we need some force of positivity in the climate that we're living in now, especially here in America.
It's just insane, you know.
But I think when things kind of get rocky and people, there's fear and all that sort of thing, I think people start to go, maybe this thing really is true.
Maybe I'm not here by mistake.
Maybe there really is a place for me, you know.
And no pun intended, people are trying to find their place in this world.
And you know what?
They're trying to fill this hole that I think it can only be filled with one thing, and that's Jesus, you know, and this music.
Place in this world is one of Michael's breakthrough, one big crossover hit that made it into, you know, onto contemporary music stations.
You know, I'm really dying to see this movie, and it's put out by Lionsgate, and I like Lionsgate a lot.
And I had one little foray into this world.
It's hard, and I'm proud of the product that came out, Let There Be Light.
I think you saw it.
I don't think it's gotten out even completely.
I think the growth potential is much larger than maybe even both of us imagine today.
Because as things go bad, people start looking inward for answers, don't they?
They do.
Absolutely.
And that's what's happening.
It's pretty bad, Michael.
It's not the best of times, I'll tell you that.
No, it's not.
It's pretty ugly, you know.
But I think in the midst of all that, I mean, this is not the first time that we've been in trouble.
I mean, obviously, we're obviously in 21, and it's a whole different deal, and what's happening in D.C.
It's insane.
I'm with you on that.
But, I mean, we've been through hardships through centuries and thousands of years, you know.
So the good news is I know how the book ends.
I know how the story ends.
That's the good news.
But my hope for the movie is that people are going to go see this documentary.
It's powerful.
I mean, really powerful.
And they're going to go, oh my gosh, I had no idea.
And you're going to have a whole new generation of people.
I'm hoping tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands of people who will discover this music, and it will be life-giving and life-changing for them.
How do you find out what movie theaters this is now in?
Because it's in movie theaters tonight.
Yeah, well, I think it opened up in 200, I think it was a little over 250, and I think it'll increase probably next week to 500.
You just have to, you know, just have to Google your city.
You know, I'm sure it's all in the major cities.
And I'm getting calls left and right, going, gosh, where can I see this movie?
It will go to Hulu and streaming here in December.
But, you know, this week and the next month here is the big moment for people to get out in theaters to see it.
And I know people now are going out more than ever, and they're glad to.
And tell us how the newsboys roll in all this.
Yeah, they were a big part in this movie.
You know, Toby Mac, Amy Grant, Kirk Franklin.
That's some really, really, really great moments.
But yeah, Michael Tate, great friend, and they all did a great job.
I think what makes the, also, Sean, about the movie, what makes this so appealing is that this is just not all the good and all this is the really great stuff that happens with Christian music.
These artists get vulnerable.
So, JesusMusic.movie, if you want to look at one of the official websites in theaters now everywhere, and it's going to be all over the country by next week.
You know, it's an amazing, did you ever think you'd be at this this long and that it would experience this exponential growth?
We only have about a minute left.
Well, you know what?
Not really, Sean.
I mean, gosh, I just take it a day at a time.
I mean, you know, I cut that first record back in 82 and was grateful.
I got to do one record and thought, man, this is my dream came true.
And here I am 36 records later.
I just, I'm sort of pinching myself every day.
And I'm a grateful man.
I've survived success, which is probably one of my greatest achievements.
Thank God for a great wife and a great prayer group and great friends, you know, walking this thing out.
And as you said earlier, I think that's probably one of my roles in the future is just to father people to try to help guide them through this crazy thing called celebrity and trying to walk through the whole fame thing and be able to just keep your head on straight and just finish well.
Well, I urge everybody, it starts this weekend, tonight, actually, and it's called The Jesus Music.
It's about the contemporary Christian music explosion in the country, a documentary film, and a visual story of redemption told by people like Michael and others that have lived it.
It's kind of like I Can Only Imagine was a great movie.
I just don't know why they put a faked up Michael W. Smith in there when they could have gotten the real Michael W. Smith.
That's my only complaint about the movie.
But anyway, it shows the power of music to change people's lives, something you've been doing your entire career, and to be able to call you a friend is an honor.
Well, I'm feeling as usual, Sean.
Thank you so much.
I appreciate it.
All right.
800-941-Shawn is on number if you want to be a part of the program.
You want smart political talk without the meltdowns?
We got you.
I'm Carol Markowitz, and I'm Mary Catherine Hamm.
We've been around the block in media, and we're doing things differently.
Normally is about real conversations.
Thoughtful, try to be funny, grounded, and no panic.
We'll keep you informed and entertained without ruining your day.
Join us every Tuesday and Thursday, normally, on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
I'm Ben Ferguson, and I'm Ted Cruz.
Three times a week, we do our podcast, Verdict with Ted Cruz.
Nationwide, we have millions of listeners.
Every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday, we break down the news and bring you behind the scenes inside the White House, inside the Senate, inside the United States Supreme Court.
And we cover the stories that you're not getting anywhere else.
We arm you with the facts to be able to know and advocate for the truth with your friends and family.
So download Verdict with Ted Cruz Now, wherever you get your podcasts.
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