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Feb. 22, 2022 - Sean Hannity Show
32:40
Russia's Next Move - February 22nd, Hour 2
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If Russia further invades Ukraine, the United States, together with our allies and partners, will impose significant and unprecedented economic costs.
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America Trapped Behind Enemy Lines.
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All right, hour two, Sean Hannity Show, toll-free, our number 800-941.
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And what was this like, you know, five, six-minute rambling, incoherent, incomprehensible, you know, pabl from President incoherent cognitive mess Joe Biden?
You know, he announces all the tough sanctions.
They're going to get tougher.
It's sort of like, I couldn't believe the vice president and how humiliating it was over the weekend to say, yes, it's likely to deter Putin from invading Russia, but we fully expect they're going to do it in the same breath.
Anyway, here's Joey from earlier today.
I assume he's probably about ready for his nap by now.
We've said all along, and I've told Putin to his face a month more than a month ago, that we would act together.
And the moment Russia moved against Ukraine, Russia has now undeniably moved against Ukraine by declaring these independent states.
So today, I'm announcing the first tranche of sanctions to impose costs on Russia in response to their actions yesterday.
These have been closely coordinated with our allies and partners and will continue to escalate sanctions if Russia escalates.
We're implementing full blocking sanctions on two large Russian financial institutions, VEB and their military bank.
We're implementing comprehensive sanctions on Russian sovereign debt.
That means we've cut off Russia's government from Western financing.
It can no longer raise money from the West and cannot trade in its new debt on our markets or European markets either.
Starting tomorrow and continuing in the days ahead, we'll also impose sanctions on Russia's elites and their family members.
It was the Russia ambassador to Sweden that probably put it best.
Moscow doesn't give an atom shift about sanctions.
And by the way, last year, 2021, Joe Biden's first year as the rambling, mumbling, bumbling, stumbling, incoherent cognitive mess of a president, he himself imported into the United States over 232 million barrels of oil from Russia.
So who has all the leverage here and what impact?
Now, it's Biden's economic and energy policies that have paved the way to push our allies, Western European allies, our NATO allies, right into Putin's arms.
He artificially reduces the supply of oil in the world market.
Demand remains constant, even maybe going up.
And that's why we have $100 a barrel oil.
And Putin has gotten rich thanks to Joe Biden.
And meanwhile, American energy production has come to a standstill because he canceled the Keystone XL pipeline.
He put all new drilling efforts in Alaska, including Anwar, on a permanent hold.
Donald Trump had opened that up.
He disrupted new exploration and development auctions in the entire country.
He suspended new exploration on all federal land, and he hurt the American liquefied natural gas production by lifting sanctions on Russia's Nord Stream 2 pipeline.
Gee, oh, you're doing great.
Now, if you look at the language that Vladimir is using in reference to the Baltics and Belarus and the situation that's on the ground there, and then annexing Crimea in 2014 with little to no concern,
you know, it makes relevant what I played that Donald Trump said to NATO in 2018 when he beat the crap out of them over, number one, them not paying their fair share for the NATO alliance, and number two, and the whole purpose of the alliance is to protect European countries from Russia, and yet here it is, they're making Russia rich again.
And more specifically, it'd be pointed out Germany in particular with these multi-billion dollar deals that they keep making.
Anyway, we go to our experts, Daniel Hoffman, Fox News contributor, 30-year CIA ops officer, a lot of that time doing work with Russia.
Rebecca Koffler, former defense intelligence agency, she was born in Russia, currently a strategic intelligence analyst with the Lindsay Group.
She wrote the book, Putin's Playbook, Russia's Secret Plan to Defeat America.
Rebecca, let me start with you.
As I look at Crimea annexed in 2014, as I look at him basically now annexing these two republics, and I look at what's happening in Belarus, and I'm starting to think to myself, and some of the rhetoric as it relates to the Baltics,
I think these territorial ambitions go way beyond, and Dan had said this yesterday, way beyond what we're going to see unfold in Ukraine, which I believe ultimately is going to be Putin taking over the entire country because he doesn't even recognize it as a country.
Absolutely, Sean.
Putin's actions are part of a very big, extensive master plan, which is to reintegrate their former USSR or an alliance just like it.
And regretfully, President Biden is clearly incompetent and ignorant of who Putin is.
Sanctions have no ability to change Putin's behavior because A, Putin has sanctioned proving Russia's economy.
And B, it's because we're talking about minuscule amounts.
Russia's GDP is $1.48 trillion.
U.S. trade with Russia is $34.9 billion.
There's nothing to sanction, really.
And on top of it, it's the same folks who keep screaming how Russia is, Russia's economy is the size of Italy or Spain.
Russia is a gas station, net trading as a state.
How are they going to sanction it if there's nothing to sanction?
It's not going to do anything in terms of tampering down Putin's ambitions.
Well, especially because the price of oil has been rising dramatically, especially because of Biden's energy and economic policies.
That has emboldened Putin and made Russia rich again and made Putin rich again, which probably even is helping to finance these territorial ambitions.
What's your take, Dan Hoffman, after these quote sanctions were announced today?
So Rebecca makes some really important points there, and I agree with her wholeheartedly.
The sanctions, absent diplomatic, use of diplomatic and military tools.
Vladimir Putin's calculus.
When we sanctioned Russia in 2014 after Russia invaded Crimea, it was as if that was the easy thing to do.
It was something our government could agree on.
And we took out about 1% of Russia's GDP.
Again, it never changed Putin's calculus.
And the reason why is because Ukraine is an existential threat to Russia.
Not because of Ukraine's military prowess or anything of the sort.
It's because Ukraine is a country that wants to develop a democracy and to be tied with the West economically.
And Putin knows that if liberty and freedom and democracy made their way to his own country from a neighboring state like Ukraine, then his regime is over.
And that's why he has launched repeated attacks on Ukraine for the better part of the past decade.
So how far is this?
I'm just going to add one last about the sanctions.
One thing to watch for.
Russia now, for their hydrocarbon, increasingly is going to lead to China.
And Russia is the junior partner in that alliance, and Russia will likely grow more dependent on China.
I would believe that our analysts in the intelligence community will be tracking that closely.
Well, I think that's already happened.
And I think that you're going to see a situation where Great will support your territorial ambitions, but you're going to support ours when we take over Taiwan.
Fair analysis?
I think that China is absolutely watching the extent to which the Biden administration has been unable to deal with this threat from Russia, as well as, of course, our chaotic withdrawal from Afghanistan, where we just disengaged and left behind a terrorist state with massive swaths of ungoverned space, which we know from 9-11 is a threat to our homeland.
We did that, and I think that emboldened both Russia and China.
Let me ask you, Rebecca, you wrote this book, Putin's Playbook.
You understand Putin's mind.
Where's Putin going with all of this?
What should we expect in weeks, days, months from now?
So in the days and more likely months, we should expect Putin to make certain moves to take control over the entire country of Ukraine.
This is what he actually laid out the legal basis for in the rationale.
As you mentioned earlier, Sean, he said that Ukraine is not even a country.
Russia created Ukraine.
It never had its own statehood.
He also laid out how Ukraine presents a threat to Putin.
So this is what Dan just mentioned, except Putin portrayed Ukraine as a threat because it may become part of NATO, and then the distance between Russia and NATO forces would be dramatically reduced.
And Putin believes that while NATO is saying that it's a defensive alliance, Putin is paranoid.
And he believes, having watched what happened with Kosovo, Iraq, Afghanistan, he believes he is next.
And he fears regime change.
And therefore, I believe he would move in to the entire Ukraine.
He has the capability to do it.
It is not by chance that he has assembled a formidable force there of 190,000 troops, kind of weaponry, pretty much surrounding Ukraine, practice nuclear tests and all of these things.
This is all a deterrence posture, and it's also to demonstrate to NATO stay away while he's taking care of his business.
Don't you think that's a good question?
I think NATO has no choice because NATO is two, these NATO countries.
Our Western European allies are too dependent on Putin, right?
Daniel, how do you negotiate from that position of weakness?
Joe Biden imported 232 million barrels of oil from Russia himself last year.
Right.
I mean, Russia is trying to drive a wedge between the United States and our Western allies.
It's an old strategy that the Soviets used.
He's using, for sure, he's using Russia's natural gas and oil as a way to do it.
And even just today, the Deputy National Security Advisor, Mita, who once served as prime minister and as president, he was telling the Germans that now you can expect incredibly high prices for your natural gas.
And he was kind of laughing that off.
And, you know, he knows there will be an impact on the German economy.
And Russia, you know, we live in democracies.
Say about the foreign policy.
And Vladimir Putin, you know, he's got a black belt judo.
And he knows that the best way to target us is by using our own strength against us.
That's our freedom of the press and democracy and liberty.
And so when we face higher gas prices in Europe and in the United States, that's going to put pressure on our political system.
And that's exactly what Putin wants.
Well, it's going to work.
And the obvious alternative would be to return to energy independence and being a net exporter of energy and supplying the energy needs of our NATO partners and our Western European allies.
That isn't going to happen.
Rebecca Koffler, thank you.
Daniel Hoffman, thank you.
800-941-Sean, our number.
You want to be a part of the program?
We'll get right to the phones for the rest of the hour.
At the top of the hour, Paul Sperry has a really, really good investigative piece on Real Clear Investigations as it relates to the status and what these new Durham filings are really all about.
Sean Kennedy.
I was just calling to say first, thank you for always doing your best to expose the truth about the corruption that's going on in our upper government.
And then my second thing was a question, but it has a little bit of frustration with it, is this all started for me when James Comey came on TV years back and explained to us that federal laws were violated when it came to Hillary Clinton, but nobody would prosecute her.
And then you have this daisy chain of other things that she's been involved in that we know is corrupt.
And then you have Joe Biden's son and his corruption.
And, you know, it's just like when Republicans win in the presidency and in the House and Senate, all of a sudden there's these tons and tons and tons of investigations and nothing really ever comes out of it.
And believe it or not, you're the only one besides the great Limbaugh who would expose the truth about what was really going on.
But it never really comes out in the House or the Senate.
It's just that, you know, I guess everybody gets together and has a good old boy conversation about what's going on.
I'll tell you what would be the game changer, though, is November's coming pretty quickly here.
I mean, we're almost at the end of February.
It's the 22nd today.
And the game changer is going to be in November.
Republicans take the House and the Senate.
Things will change dramatically in Washington.
And it will give the country an opportunity to right the ship.
And if Republicans, I really loved Senator Rick Scott of Florida laid out his vision for what Republicans need to do.
Kevin McCarthy is doing the same thing in the House.
And I see, I don't know how it'll ultimately unfold, but what I'm seeing is a set or a list of very specific America First, Make America Great Again, conservative policies that I would imagine in some way,
form, or fashion that Republican candidates are going to sign on to, like with the contract with America, and that Americans are going to respond to because it'll all be the antithesis of what we've been living through for now over a year.
And there's not a single policy that we can point to where Biden's been successful.
What's happened with the economy and with gas and energy prices, what's happening abroad is not by accident.
These are very specific policy issues, and you can tie it directly to the things that Joe Biden has done or refuses to do.
Like in the case of Russia, I would just outproduce them with energy.
In the case of China, I'd go after them on trade, and I'd create an alliance so powerful that it would literally stymie their entire economy.
I don't think that's in them.
We'll continue.
Sean's got more behind-the-scenes information.
More contacts than anybody.
More friends behind the curtain.
Sean Hannity is on.
All right, 25 now to the top of the hour, 800-941, Sean, our number.
You want to be a part of the program?
All right, a lot of you have been wanting to get in, get your thoughts in on a lot of what's happening here.
Let's say hi to Travis.
He's in New Mexico.
Travis, how are you?
Glad you called, sir.
Thank you so much for taking my call, Sean.
What an honor it is to talk to you.
And thank you for defending the Constitution every day.
Hey, thank you for giving me the mic.
What's going on?
The reason why I wanted to talk to you is, you know, it seems like this administration is thirsty for war.
And, you know, you and I are both students of history.
We look at this thing, and we've studied world wars.
We've studied world conflicts.
We see that something isn't right here.
And when you look at the economic situation in the world, you look at what's going on in Russia and Ukraine.
You look at what's going on in China with Taiwan, Iran, and Israel.
I mean, over and over, you've got all these countries, all these sparks flying.
It's not going to take much to ignite the powder keg.
And what I'm worried about especially is the personal relationship that the Biden family has with both Ukraine and Russia.
It seems like there's something.
Well, hang on a second.
You're forgetting Kazakhstan and you're forgetting the big relationship with China, but go ahead.
Oh, that's absolutely true.
I mean, they've got ties all over the place where they've been taking money.
So I just see why it looks to me like there's a little bit of a CYA situation there.
And of course, Biden, with his poll number so low, maybe he's looking at a way to raise these poll numbers.
But also, is he trying to protect something that's going on with his family, both between Ukraine and Russia?
And sanctions?
What good is sanctions going to do?
He already gave Vladimir exactly what he wanted with the pipeline, giving him all the energy he wants.
This reminds me a lot of, you know, like when Hitler went into Romania, you know, started taking the oil deals down there.
Let's state the obvious to just follow through on your point here.
I saw that Glenn Greenwald had made a similar point.
Under Obama and Biden, Russian annexed Crimea.
Under Biden, Russia recognizes the sovereignty and independence of two territories of Ukraine.
Just takes them.
Under Trump, none of this happened.
Now, does that cause any media reevaluation about whether Trump was in fact the puppet of the Kremlin, as the media mob claimed, or that he had colluded with Russia in any way?
You know, especially in light of, well, Paul Sperry will be on at the top of the hour, this latest revelation about data that was mined to create a false narrative.
I think all of this we were lied to.
But I'll tell you this.
If it was anybody with the last name Trump made a $1.5 billion deal with the Bank of China, $31 million more from China with connections to the Chinese military, millions from a Russian oligarch, former first lady of Moscow.
We know about the burisma money in Ukraine and then Kazakhstan money and God knows where else the Biden syndicate made money.
I think you have to look at it through the prism of how compromised is the Biden family?
Because it seems from the outside to me very compromised.
I think they're incredibly compromised, and you're absolutely right, especially about Trump.
The way they've gone after him, the hypocrisy is mind-blowing.
You know, and we see it now.
I think one of the best things that Trump did was expose the hypocrisy.
You know, he called him the fake news all the time.
And at first, we kind of laughed at it a little tongue-in-cheek, but then we started seeing it.
We started seeing it for ourselves.
And you're right about Crimea.
What did Obama do with Crimea?
Nothing.
Not a stinking thing.
No, you know, you have to ask, why didn't it happen under Trump?
Now, I'll give you my short answer, and it's not really complicated.
And that is, and General Kellogg said it on the TV show last night, is Donald Trump was extraordinarily unpredictable.
And more importantly, is when he said he would do something, there was a belief that he would do it.
He followed through.
And there was a certain fear that he, literally like a stake in the knife that paralyzed the likes of Putin and Kim Jong-un and President Qi.
You know, everyone got mad.
Oh, he met with Kim Jong-un.
What did he give Kim Jong-un?
Nothing but time.
That's all Kim Jong-un got.
We got the return of Americans that had been left behind.
We got other concessions from North Korea that we hadn't gotten.
He stopped firing his missiles, test firing his missiles every other day.
There's not that respect for Biden, and there's not that respect.
Right now, I see Putin very strategically just driving a massive wedge through the NATO alliance, and it's crippling.
And I think the next shoe to fall is probably going to be China reunifying, to use their term, ridiculous term, of taking over Taiwan.
I think that's the next shoe that will drop.
Hear that as well.
Sean, your take on this.
I mean, Putin says that he wants to reunite.
Essentially, he wants to reunite the glory of the Soviet Union.
Do you think there's more to it than that?
Because it seems like he might be going after natural resources or something as well.
But Biden's not doing anything to stop him.
He's not going to stop him.
Putin doesn't fear him, not one bit.
Well, if you look at where they are with Belarus, I mean, you got to wonder, is that the next stop on Putin's grand territorial ambition tour?
I don't know.
And, you know, everybody that's saying that you've got to stop it.
I want to be very clear.
I'm not supporting getting into a shooting war with Vladimir Putin.
But that tape that I played earlier, I'll play it again later.
It's about a five, six-minute tape of Donald Trump with NATO leaders beating the crap out of them over how Germany and other NATO allied nations were making Russia and Putin rich again, and they're not paying their fair share, and he's not going to put up with it anymore.
And he's the only president in our lifetime to have done that.
And he was dead on accurate that a lot of what Putin is now doing is made possible because Joe Biden's ridiculous economic and energy policies, artificially reducing the world supply of energy.
I mean, we're importing oil from Russia right now.
How much leverage does Joe really have with Russia?
None.
How much leverage, and I give, look, I give the Germans credit.
They stopped the Nord Stream 2 pipeline, and that's going to be costly.
But I don't, the answer would be America beats the living hell out of them in out-producing the lifeblood of the world's economy.
And we get it to our allies at a cheaper price.
It's good for national security, and it's good for inflation.
It's good for job creation.
It's good for everything.
But it's not going to happen with the climate alarmist cult that is governing everything Joe Biden does.
Anyway, good call, Travis.
Appreciate it.
You seem very dialed in.
Keith is, I'm sorry, Beth is in Georgia.
Hey, how are you?
Glad you called.
Hi, Sean.
It's an honor to speak with you.
Thank you.
The honor is all my.
I am wondering why no one asks, with us supporting NATO and sending our troops to the United against the Ukrainian invasion, why we can't send troops to our own border to stop the invasion of human trafficking and fentanyl and illegal aliens.
Listen, you're asking me a question that makes every bit of common sense that any American has would be you control your southern border.
And for people that are coming into this country, you don't aid and abet lawbreaking.
We have a legal process.
You know, Joe Biden swore an oath to uphold the laws of this land, our Constitution, the foundation of all of our laws.
He has now brought back basically process and release.
He's now in the dark of night.
They call 2 a.m. early morning flights.
They're dropping illegal immigrants all over the country.
They're not COVID testing them.
They lie to us and say, well, they're not going to be here very long.
There's no vaccine mandates for illegal immigrants.
And then states are forced to bear the brunt of the cost of food and housing and health care and education.
And we can't afford it.
And why is Joe doing it?
I really don't know, except that I think the Democrats generally don't care where people come from.
But I think they're hoping, and they've tried many times during this build-back broke negotiation in the Senate, at least, to sneak in a provision that would allow amnesty for all these illegal immigrants.
So something of great value that people would get and receive from the Democratic Party, I'm sure, in the hopes that they would be lifelong Democrats.
So I think everything they do is in a power grab.
Go ahead.
And building their voter base is what they think they're doing.
I think so.
Yeah.
I mean, what other reason?
Listen, we're a nation of laws.
If Joe wants to change the law, if he wants open borders, there's a process for that.
He's got to get the approval.
They have both houses of Congress.
Go change the law.
Do it legally.
But what he is doing, I can tell you right now, if you did it or I did it and we aided and abetted people and brought them into this country and transported them to whatever state they wanted to go to, we'd get arrested, rightly so, for violating the law and probably for human trafficking.
That's what would happen to us, Beth.
Anyway, good call.
Appreciate it.
800-941-SEAN.
Um, back to our busy phones.
Bob, Long Island, New York.
Bob, what are you doing in Long Island, New York?
My hometown.
Because you and I are pretty stupid because we need to get out of here and we'll save a fortune and we'll live in better weather.
I agree with you, Sean.
I'm in Leathertown, by the way, and I'm part Ukrainian.
And as a matter of fact, I'm part Ukrainian, Polish, and Russian.
So I have an internal conflict with all three parts of my family.
And now that we understand that the Budapest memorandum is worthless, Iran and North Korea have no incentive to give up their nukes.
And having said that, I wanted to ask you this for a while.
The last time I saw this gentleman with you was probably over 10 years ago.
And I think it would be great if we got his input on your show.
And the last time I saw him was with you at the...
Wait a minute, who are you talking about?
I'm talking about General Tommy Franks.
We haven't heard from him.
We have not heard from him.
We did hear from General Petraeus, and he said he's not sure what Putin is planning.
Tommy Franks is a great guy.
I loved it.
General Franks was awesome.
Now, I had General Kellogg on last night.
I don't know if you saw that.
I don't know what General Franks is up to.
I've not talked to him in a long time.
He was a great guy.
Well, as a fan of his and when we saw you at the book review, all I can say is please reach out to him, and we'd love to hear what he has to say.
You know what?
That's a great idea.
Let me see if he's around if we can track him down, okay?
Terrific, Sean.
Appreciate it.
All right, Bob.
God bless you, man.
Morgan is in Oklahoma.
Morgan, how are you?
Thanks for checking in.
I'm doing good.
How are you doing today?
I'm good, sir.
Oh, wonderful.
I'm looking at it, and I can see, I think that any of us, any American that looks and see what's going on, can see that we're just in war.
We've been in war for a while.
It's an asymmetric war, and we've got people in charge that basically, basically, Biden's going to be worse than Neville Chamberlain.
If you look at the strategic points of what's going on, look, 90%, according to TechSet, they came out with a report on February 1st, 90% of U.S. semiconductor-grade neon comes from Ukraine.
That is going to completely disrupt our semiconductor production.
And 35% of the U.S. palladium is sourced from Russia.
So we're going to have a huge cut in our ability to even produce the key component for warfare.
Listen, there are two very, very critical strategic defense initiatives that America needs to engage in yesterday, frankly, years ago.
And one is we have got to give up all our dependence, for example, like we saw this during the pandemic, on medical equipment, on PPE, on medicines, et cetera, and the production thereof coming from China.
I mean, that's insane.
If we want to battle China, it's not about a shooting war.
I don't want to get in a shooting war.
Nobody wants that.
No, no one wants a war.
We shouldn't send one single American over to Ukraine to get involved in this mess.
But we need to send a message to the world that America is not going to roll over, that we understand the geopolitical dangers that are out there.
And the way I would attack or fight back against Putin, I would out-produce him in the energy sector, and I bankrupt him as quickly as possible.
And we have more natural resources than he does.
And we'd have the ability then to strengthen our alliances with our Western European allies by providing them the lifeblood of their economy.
And on the China front, I think the nations of the world better be ready because their territorial ambitions will be on full display soon, too.
And the single, you know, with Russia, half their economy is energy.
With China, it's all imports.
And I would stop importing everything from China.
Stop it.
If they're going to crack down on Hong Kong, unleash COVID on the world, they're going to oppress the Uyghurs and have forced labor camps and then take over Taiwan, again, a sovereign country.
There's got to be some punitive measure available short of getting into shooting wars, which we can't with nuclear powers.
So the answer is, you go back to the Cold War, Reagan defeated the Soviet Union.
He bankrupted them.
And that would be the answer to me in both the case of China and in the case of Russia.
And frankly, it would apply to Iran as well.
If anyone wants to ever listen to me, but what the hell do I know?
Anyway, I should run for president, right, Linda?
Oh, yeah, I think that's a wonderful idea.
Oh, it'd be great.
You know, I'm sure, I'm sure my family.
I mean, we're all living such a peaceful life already.
Why not?
Why not add more pain to the current condition of our lives?
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