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Feb. 24, 2022 - Sean Hannity Show
30:56
Marco Rubio - February 24th, Hour 3
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This is an iHeart podcast.
All right, News Roundup, Information Overload Hour, Sean Hannity Show, 800-941-SEAN.
You want to be a part of the program.
A lot happening all throughout the day today.
Going back to Joe Biden's statement and sanctions that he's putting on Russia in light of the invasion of Ukraine and the president's pledge that we will follow through Article 5, an attack on one NATO country is an attack on all, and what that actually means would be interesting.
The president reiterated, we are going, we are in discussions with oil-producing countries, and we'll go into our petroleum reserves, which he's already done.
The one thing that I'm kind of a little shocked and expected, and it would have been the most natural answer, is consider restricting, lifting the restrictive policies he put in place on the entire energy sector of our economy, bring America back to being energy independent, return America to being a net exporter of energy to help out our NATO and Western European allies.
Nobody asked the question if he's going to stop importing oil from Russia.
Last year, Biden imported 230 million barrels of oil, even a million barrels of oil from Iran.
And this Iran deal now, is that going to be part of the deal?
Oh, a wink nod will open up world markets for you if you just, quote, cooperate.
Remember that deal with Obama and Biden and the mulls in Iran did not have any place, anytime inspections, so they were meaningless.
Anyway, joining us now, it was 9.15 last night in the middle of my show.
I got a text from Senator Marco Rubio, and it said the invasion has started.
He was the first person to tweet it out, and it altered my show dramatically right from the get-go.
Senator, I do appreciate the heads up on this.
And this is well beyond, I think, what everybody was predicting, except maybe people like you and me.
I expected the worst here, and I think it's as bad as I've been predicting.
The question is, how far does Putin's territorial ambitions go?
Because I don't think he's going to be particularly upset at all or give too much of an Adam Schiff about these sanctions.
Well, I mean, there's two things happening at the same time, Sean Ben.
Thanks for having me on.
The first is that you're going to see global oil prices climb, which actually helps him, right?
Because their main export is oil and natural gas, both of which will go up.
And I'm guessing, and I think there's reason to believe they've probably ordered some cash and gold reserves as a buffer between now and the time that Europe has to sort of capitulate.
I mean, 40% of the natural gas going into Europe, 50% from some countries, come from Russia.
So there comes a time where they're going to have to cave in because energy prices will be high and people will be in the streets complaining.
And that's what he's back.
I think it's important that the U.S. probably hundreds and billions of dollars in oil from Russia ourselves.
In fact, it's recently as yesterday evening.
People were trading commodities, buying Russian oil and so forth.
And you sort of sit there and wonder, at the same time as Joe Biden's waging war on oil and natural gas here in America, when under Trump in 2018, the nation, for the first time in a long time, was exporting more than importing.
And now in just two years, we've reversed that.
So it's almost like helping out Vladimir Putin.
And it's one of the things that gave him great confidence in moving forward on this.
Senator, let's go to the sanctions that, you know, Biden is blocking all these major Russian banks.
He's going to convene a summit with NATO tomorrow.
On the energy question, he says that he knows Americans are hurting.
And he says, we're going to be coordinating with all the major oil-producing and consuming countries towards our common interest to secure global energy supplies.
The one thing he did not mention is the massive amount of natural resources we have in this country because he purposely, as part of the Green New Deal socialism, abandoned American energy independence and abandoned America being a net exporter of energy, something Trump accomplished that hadn't been accomplished in 75 years.
Yeah, that's exactly right.
I mean, look, for him to announce that we're going to expand global, that we're going to expand production is to go to war with a squad.
You know, just today there's an interview out there with John Kerry saying, oh, I hope stuff with Ukraine doesn't distract from the global warming agenda.
I mean, it's a radical left-of-center, far-left position, and either he doesn't want to take it on or he believes it, and he wants to go along with them.
But you're absolutely right.
I mean, last year, I think we bought 230 million barrels of oil from Russia.
And when he talks about working with the energy-producing countries, what he's basically saying is at a time when we're producing less, he's going to go around and ask other countries to produce more.
In essence, we can't make it.
Can you explain this to me?
I really would like to understand it.
If, for example, you're drilling for oil, and the rationale behind not drilling in America is that it's bad for Mother Earth.
Okay.
What is the difference if you drill for that barrel of oil in the continental United States or in Anwar, in Alaska, whatever?
Or if you drill for that oil in Russia or you drill for that oil in Saudi Arabia or anywhere else in the Middle East.
Can you explain to me why it might have any different impact on Mother Earth?
No, it doesn't.
The only impact it has is that if you're doing it in America, you're going to have people chaining themselves, the pipelines and protesting.
You know, the people that got him elected, people that are volunteering and giving money to his campaigns.
If it's happening halfway around the world, they won't notice it and they won't care.
They only don't want it to happen here.
Look, ask Europe what happens when you walk away from nuclear energy, coal, oil, and petroleum, natural gas, and you depend on other countries to provide it.
You get held hostage, and that's what's happened.
You now become vulnerable to this sort of extortion, which is what Putin's holding over the head of all Europe right now.
Can you explain when the president was asked about China and whether he's urging China to help isolate Russia?
He said, I'm not prepared to comment on that.
We've been watching the territorial ambitions of China play out.
China seemed to give a green light to Putin's actions in Ukraine and the rationale behind it.
I'm expecting that probably, well, we're going to let you take over Ukraine and maybe the Baltics, but we're taking Taiwan.
And we've seen how aggressive President Xi has gotten.
Ironically, the New York Times points out today that the Justice Department yesterday said it was ending the Trump era effort to fight Chinese national security threats and target professors and ferret out potential Chinese spies that are in this country.
And I would assume this is something you're familiar with being in the position that you're in on the intelligence community.
Yeah, so two things on the China thing.
He's not, is he talking to China?
He's not going to do anything about this thing with Russia.
They're probably not going to come out and cheer it on.
They'll attack America.
We'll say America provoked it.
But ultimately, what China wants is to be nice to Russia on this because they expect Russia to be supportive of them two, three, four years down the road when they make their move on Taiwan.
And on the FBI.
But, Senator, why do you think it would be that far down the road?
Why wouldn't it be soon?
It could be soon, but I think China's preference with Taiwan is to go to them and say, did you guys see what happened to Ukraine?
Did you see what happened?
NATO didn't do anything about it.
America could do anything about it.
And no one's going to do anything about you guys.
So you might as well say that.
Is my interpretation of fighter jets over Taiwan airspace on a regular basis, am I wrong to think that this is imminent?
Well, I think that it's, I don't think we'll finish this decade without them acting on it.
There's no doubt about it.
The reason why I don't think it's overnight is because I think China actually believes they have a chance to get Taiwan to just cave in.
Convince Taiwan that, listen, you guys are.
My mom, here's the problem I have.
Explain to me.
Now, the president was clear.
We will defend NATO and we will stand by Article 5 of NATO.
Okay, attack on one country is an attack on all countries.
All right.
Well, the Baltics are members of NATO.
So explain to me what options that the United States and NATO might have if, in fact, he goes after a NATO country next.
Because it seems, you know, once he went for the capital last night, it's clear that he wants the entire country.
And he's going to take the entire country.
And he'll make up any story that he has to rationalize it.
So if, in fact, that happens, I really don't see the U.S. and NATO strong enough to stand up to and be willing to participate in a war against Putin and Russia, even though there really would be no option at that point.
Yeah, so if he takes all of Ukraine, it'll put him right at the border of Poland, Romania, and so forth.
And even now, those strikes they're conducting near that border could lead to miscalculation.
At that point, if he made a move against the NATO country, one or two things is going to happen.
There's going to be a war that could be proved to be catastrophic, or NATO will no longer exist.
It'll be proven to be a paper tiger and just a piece of paper.
The problem is we have American forces embedded in those countries.
We would have American casualties at that point.
We would have Americans on the front line, their tripwire force.
There would be a war.
I think, you know, NATO has more conventional capacity than Russia, but it wouldn't be a conventional war for long before Russia escalated to tactical nuclear weapons in the battlefield to try to force everyone to the negotiating table, escalating in order to de-escalate.
Yeah.
All right, quick break.
More with Senator Rubio of Florida on the other side.
Then we'll get to your calls, 800-941.
Sean, if you want to be a part of the program, I know a lot of you want to react to all of the unfolding events today.
Senator Marco Rubio from Florida is with us.
Of course, he's on the Senate Intel Committee.
So what do you think the best move?
You've heard the president outline the sanctions that he has in place.
I don't see them as that punitive to Putin.
I would imagine that the Chinese probably will make a deal and probably be buying a lot more oil and getting their energy from Russia as their alliance now gets stronger.
Now we have to worry about both Russia and China also aiding and abetting and assisting Iran in their pursuit of nuclear weapons.
I think that's very real also.
Yeah, I think the sanctions on the two big banks, the ones they just announced today, those are the ones they should have announced three days ago.
They should have released that in the middle of the speech.
Like while that speech was being run, they should have announced it in the middle of that, almost as a message that we're not waiting around.
I think the second piece now has to be, look, we're not going to send American soldiers to fight in Ukraine.
They're not a member of NATO.
We have no obligation.
Ukrainians aren't asking for it.
But there is going to be, if they remove the government from Kiev, there's going to be a government in exile.
And we're going to work with those guys and we're going to help them help themselves.
In essence, Ukrainians will fight.
And even if Putin takes over that country, he's got to occupy it.
And these people are not just going to let him roll over.
They're going to be shooting at him.
They're going to be striking at him for months and years for as long as they're there.
And it's going to create real problems.
He laid out his intentions and his manifesto, if you will, back in July, on July 12th, to be specific.
And he's followed through on every level of what he said he was going to do.
There's been a long troop buildup on the border of eastern Ukraine, including the military buildup of Putin.
And I guess what I'm wondering is, as this was happening, why didn't the NATO countries, including Joe Biden and the United States, start arming the Ukrainians so that they would have at least a fighting chance for what was seemingly inevitable?
Well, let me tell you something.
The Ukrainians have inflicted more punishment already on the Russians than the Russians thought they were going to have.
And they're going to do more of it.
These guys are brave people.
Eventually, they'll be overwhelmed by just the sheer volume.
You know, I will say the U.S. now, lately, not under Obama, but now under Trump, and then most recently leading up to this, and the U.K. most recently, Lithuania, others, have been providing some of this weaponry that you're seeing out there.
But let me ask you, because I have the numbers in front of me, Russia has 900,000 troops, armed forces, Ukraine, 209,000.
If you look at tanks, Russia's got nearly 3,000, and Ukraine doesn't even have 1,000.
Artillery, Russia has 4,684 versus 1,800 for Ukraine.
Army attack helicopters, Ukraine has 35, and Russia has 400.
Armored personnel carriers, Russia has 6,100, and Ukraine has 600.
I mean, they don't even have an Air Force, and Russia has 1,000 jet fighters.
Yeah, and that's what I'm saying.
Ukraine, there's no way Ukraine could win a straight-up head-up conventional war.
But what they can do is inflict a tremendous amount of punishment, especially an insurgency.
I don't know if people know a lot about Ukraine, but you're going to see old men that haven't in their 70s and 80s out there shooting at these guys.
I mean, these guys are not just going to lay around and let the Russians occupy and govern that country.
And even now, I think they've had more success than the Russians thought they were going to have against them.
Obviously, we'll learn more as the facts come out.
But already, even as we speak, they've inflicted far.
This has been much longer and harder so far for Putin than he thought it was going to be.
His defense people probably knew that, but they don't tell him because they're afraid to give him bad news.
And now it's bearing out.
But ultimately, look, the weight.
Why am I seeing this a little bit differently?
It looks to me like Putin doesn't have a care in the world.
Looks to me like Putin made a calculated decision.
He's been playing chess the whole time, and he knew that there'd be little to no resistance to taking over the entire country.
And he used as a pretext the recognition of these two regions to send in so-called peacekeeping forces, surrounds the entire country, and then bombs every area pretty much within the country, including the capital.
It doesn't seem like there's any fear on his end at all.
No, I don't think he had any fear going in, and I'm not sure how much of this real-time information he's still getting, although I'm sure he's getting some of it.
My point being is that now you've got to run the place, right?
Now, if anyone knows how painful it can be to occupy a country that doesn't want you there, it's the United States who've had to go through that in multiple places, and it's Russia who had to steal that in Afghanistan as well.
And he's going to have to face that factor.
He's going to have to face that factor.
And he's also going to have to face the fact that even as we speak in Russia, there's a growing number of people in Russia that are protesting.
Like, why is my son?
I don't know if you've seen some of these pictures.
Some of these are 16-year-old kids, 17-year-old kids that he sent over there as cannon fodder.
I mean, there are going to be some bodybacks coming back and some angry Russian mob, mom, asking, why did my son die to take over a country that doesn't want us?
Senator, we really appreciate your heads up last night and coming on last night and coming on today and on tonight again.
This is a fluid unfolding situation, obviously.
Senator Marco Rubio of Florida, thank you, sir.
As always, we appreciate you being with us.
Thanks for having me, sir.
Break right back holding them accountable.
Sean gets the answers no one else does.
America deserves to know the truth about Congress.
All right, 25 to the top of the hour.
800-941, Sean, you want to be a part of the program?
I just see this differently than I guess a lot of other people see in this.
I see Vladimir Putin planning every single solitary step of this, knowing, predicting the West and NATO and our Western European allies' reaction.
And I think it went exactly as he had planned.
That's my take.
I saw Zero Hedge pointing out that China jets are approaching Taiwan yet again and going over airspace.
But don't worry, that hard-hitting news show, the view Joy Behar is devastated at the invasion by Putin because it might impact her vacation to Italy.
You can't even make this up.
Well, I'm scared of what's going to happen in Western Europe, too.
Yeah.
You know, you just plan a trip.
You want to go there.
I want to go to Italy for four years.
I haven't been able to make it because of the pandemic.
And now this, you know, it's like, who's going to, what's going to happen there?
Yeah.
Yeah.
I mean, and you know, this guy, he's a singular sensation in a certain way.
You know what I mean?
I don't know that the whole, that he has that much support in his country, like you say.
And maybe that has to be addressed because we've seen this movie before.
This has impacted my vacation schedule.
Oh, the thought of it.
You know, there was a tweet out from John Berman over at Fake News CNN.
Didn't age particularly well.
The Ukrainians will fight like hell.
If every Ukrainian takes a gun, Russians don't have a prayer.
I mean, the military can fight, but Ukrainians, they're really ready as of today.
Okay, they didn't look too ready to me.
We now see in Europe natural gas up 60% as of last night.
And I go back to the, you know, this ridiculous, you know, return of nuclear weapons by Ukraine with the promise of the United States and Russia and others and Great Britain that, oh, no, no, no, you're giving up nuclear weapons, but it's going to work out well for you in the end.
Thomas Friedman, I think nine days ago, writes, the Ukraine story is far from over.
But if Vladimir Putin opts to back away from invading Ukraine even temporarily, it's because Joe Biden, that guy whose right-wing critics suggest is so deep in dementia, he wouldn't know Kiev from Kansas or the AARP from NATO, has matched every Putin chess move with an effective counter of his own.
I'm like, how can you people be this dumb?
I can't believe they're in this industry of ours and they're that dumb and ignorant.
Anyway, 800-941, Sean, if you want to be a part of the program, Bonnie is in the great state of Florida where we should be.
Bonnie, how are you?
Glad you called.
Hi, Sean.
Thank you for taking my call.
How are you doing?
I'm good.
Thank you for calling.
I'm just trying to keep my litter anger and frustration over Bite Me what he's doing.
He's so smart in making all these strategic moves, but Putin is just plowing right ahead.
My God.
Why would it surprise you?
Show me where Joe Biden has made a single decision that has worked out well for the people of the United States.
Name one.
It hasn't.
I can't think of one.
And I read news hours and hours and hours and hours every day.
I can't think of one.
No, neither can I. You know, in the media today, the most obvious question is this.
If you want to beat Putin, we're not going to get into a shooting war with him.
And the idea that he's committed to Article 5 of the NATO alliance and an attack on one country is an attack on all.
Now, Ukraine is not part of NATO.
Okay, understood.
But, okay, the Baltics are.
And the same rhetoric that Putin used in the lead up to invading Ukraine, he's using that same language as it relates to the Baltics and even other countries.
And my question is, do we really believe that NATO and Joe Biden, under any circumstances, are going to stand up to this guy militarily and really break him economically?
To me, what Joe Biden should have said today, I have now spoken with all of the energy-producing corporations and companies in the United States, and I have told them all that I, as of immediately, as of 12 o'clock today,
I have lifted all restrictions on exploration and production of energy, and I have asked every single company to, he wouldn't use this term, to warp speed production of energy so that we can get our energy supplies, of which we have so much, to our allies around the world so they are no longer dependent on Russia and Vladimir Putin.
That's what I would have done today.
Now, am I talking about putting one boot on the ground in Ukraine?
No, Ukraine is a corrupt country.
I understand that.
But it was also a sovereign country.
And how far do his territorial ambitions go?
I don't know.
And as it relates to China, the message I would send to China today, he said, well, I can't talk about it.
I would say, I'm going to send the message to China.
They've been showing they have territorial ambitions against Taiwan.
Now, is he going to announce that he would help defend Taiwan?
I doubt it.
And I don't think I want one single American boot on the ground in Taiwan either.
But I would say, as of today, I have phone calls with all of our allies, and we are prepared to immediately end all imports from your country as soon as you show one more hostile maneuver.
I'd say, thank you all.
God bless America.
And God bless the people of Ukraine tonight.
That's what I would have done.
What do I know?
I'm just the talk show host.
I'm not the president.
I wish you were.
You're going to run anytime soon.
Why would you hate me that much, Bonnie?
You see what they do to the entire Trump family.
Who wants that headache?
God bless you, though.
Thank you.
It's sad.
Bill of New Jersey.
Bill, you're on the Sean Hannity show.
Congrats again to our New York affiliate, WOR, 100 years of incredible broadcasting.
Bill, how are you?
Great, Sean.
But, you know, honestly, as a third-generation American, as an ethnic Pole, my heart just bleeds for the Ukrainian people today.
I know that it has to be awful.
You know, I really don't understand certain mindsets.
And when I wrote the book in 2004, Deliver Us from Evil, and I was researching the last century and 100 million human souls, Mao, China, Stalin, and Russia, and Hitler and Germany, and Mussolini, and fascism, and communism, and imperial Japan and fascism and the killing fields in Cambodia.
I've concluded that it's really hard for good people, and I think most people are good, to understand real evil.
There is real evil in this world.
That's why I called the book Deliver Us From Evil, Defeating Terrorism, Despotism, and Liberalism.
You're calling liberals evil.
No, I'm saying that liberals have the wrong philosophy to deal with evil because there only is one way to deal with evil, and that's from a position of strength.
In spiritual warfare, it would be the strength of your belief, your faith, if you're a Christian in Jesus Christ.
If you're dealing with military strength, if we're dealing with a country, then you're talking about military might.
It's called peace through strength.
The meanest, toughest, baddest, kick-ass military on the face of the earth so that nobody would dare ever mess with you.
And you know what?
Every time a Democrat gets elected, our military might begins to dwindle.
And every time a Republican gets elected, we start to have to build it back up again.
And we did so under Donald Trump, and we'll have to do it again in 2025 when hopefully a Republican is back in the White House.
Well, that's part of the problem.
Biden does not understand that oil is a strategic weapon, whether it's the Cold War or an increasingly hot war.
That's why they call it the strategic oil reserve.
Basically, Biden pursued a policy of unilateral disarmament as far as the petrochemical industry was concerned, allowed Germany into a position where up to 40% of the German gas supply comes from Russia.
He pushed all of our Western European allies and all our NATO allies into Putin's arms.
He did it de facto.
I mean, you say unilateral disarmament.
I'd say it a little differently.
He artificially reduced the world supply at a dramatic rate.
And in doing so, he compromised our national security, our economic security, hence a 40-year high in inflation.
And we would have been in a position to easily ratchet up production now in the lead-up to all of this and start supplying all of our partners and allies around the world with all of their energy needs.
And that would have bankrupted Putin.
And all he did was drive up the price of energy worldwide today, over $100 a barrel for oil.
He's making all of the OPEC nations rich again, begging them.
It's pathetic.
The fact that he's even talking to the Iranians is pathetic.
The fact that he imported 230 million barrels of oil from Russia last year himself was pathetic.
And we have more natural resources than the entire Middle East combined.
Why?
What difference?
Somebody explained to me.
If he's so afraid of these new Green Deal socialists and the climate change cult alarmists in this country, tell me the difference between importing a barrel of oil from Russia, the Saudis, the OPEC nations, or extracting it on our own in this country.
Because we have enough resources.
Number one, we don't have to care about the Middle East, except for Israel, in my opinion, the Straits of Hormuz.
We don't have to worry as much about Iran.
We don't have to worry about Russia.
Russia will be broke.
Putin will be bankrupt.
And hopefully change would then come.
And he would not have the means and he would not have the motivation to do what just happened.
Joe Biden helped make Russia and Putin rich again.
And he's not lifting a finger to fix what he damaged.
And that to me is the biggest fallacy in all of his response to date.
We're going to talk to oil-producing nations, and what are you going to say to them?
Are you going to tell them that we're going to produce enough energy?
Can you tell our allies in Europe we will mass produce energy immediately and we'll get it to you within a month, two months, three months?
How long would it take to ratchet up to our full capacity?
That's what I would have done.
And I've been saying it in the lead up to this entire situation because it was obvious where this was headed.
You didn't have to be a brain surgeon to figure it out.
When China does take Taiwan, remember you heard it here first.
Not that it's something we'd ever be proud of being right about.
I don't want sovereign countries invaded by these dictatorial, power-hungry regimes.
But if we are foolish and reject what history has taught us, and this is where I go back to the last century, over 100 million people slaughtered in the name of communism and Mao and China and Stalin and Russia and Nazism and fascism and Imperial Japan.
If you doubt that could happen again, you're not living in the real world.
You know, a lot of the economy, a lot of the conflicts we have are all based on a fundamental formula, which is that it's all predicated on a foundation that energy is the lifeblood of the world's economy.
And then that becomes problematic because you need to protect the free flow of oil, energy, at market prices.
And a lot of the conflicts in the world come from that very equation.
Now, somehow, some way, some genius inventor comes up with a real cheap, effective way to produce energy, it would be transformative and probably would end a lot of the world's conflicts.
There was this guy that wrote this book.
I always would go to the Invention Convention.
This guy was from New Orleans.
I forget his name.
And I read his book, and he had this theory that if we could somehow attach or tap into the gravitational pull of the earth, that there would be enough endless free energy for everybody.
And I thought about it for a long time, and I thought, first, my first thought was, wow, that could be the answer that would transform the world.
Then my next thought was, yeah, but evil people will find a way to misuse that technology as well and use it to kill other people.
I think the guy's name was Joseph Newman, if my name is correct, my recollection is right.
All right, that's going to wrap things up for today.
We'll have the very latest on Russia's invasion of Ukraine tonight with reporters all throughout Ukraine.
Peter Ducey also joins us.
We'll check in with Lieutenant General Keith Kellogg.
Jack Keen will join us tonight.
Dan Hoffman, Mark Meadows, Kaylee McInaney, Senator Rubio, and a man who is in Ukraine trying to rescue Americans because Joe won't do it.
It's all happening 9 Eastern tonight.
Hannity on Fox News.
We'll see you then back here tomorrow.
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