All Episodes
Previous Next
March 11, 2022 - Sean Hannity Show
31:15
EPA vs. America - March 11th, Hour 3
| Copy link to current segment

Time Text
This is an iHeart Podcast.
Breaking news or bold, inspired solutions for America.
This is a special edition of the Sean Hannity Show.
America trapped behind enemy lines.
Day number 209.
Coming up next, our final news roundup and information overload hour.
All right, news roundup, information overload hour, 800-941-Sean, if you want to be a part of the program.
So our energy secretary, Jennifer Granholm, you might remember this moment.
I think it was back in November of last year, asked about high gas prices.
Now, remember, we were pretty close to, well, up about $1.50 a gallon, depending what state you lived in, before Russia ever invaded Ukraine.
But now they're blaming the high gas prices, record high gas prices, and inflation.
It's all because of Vladimir Putin.
Meanwhile, we've had a 40-year high of inflation now for month after month after month after month.
And even the most recent numbers did not include but four days of fighting in Ukraine after the invasion.
That's it.
And they're just trying to make one excuse after another.
It's pathetic.
But this is Jennifer Granholm.
Jennifer Granholm, your energy secretary, when she was asked about the high cost of gasoline.
Listen.
What is the Granholm plan to increase oil production in America?
Oh, my God.
That is hilarious.
Would that I had the magic wand on this?
As you know, of course, oil is a global market.
It is controlled by a cartel.
That cartel is called OPEC.
And they made a decision yesterday that they were not going to increase beyond what they were already planning.
I don't know who's worse.
Who has the giggles more, her or our giggling vice president?
There's nothing funny about it.
The impact on especially poor and middle-class Americans is profound.
We've had five straight days of record high gas prices and it's only getting worse.
So she goes back on CNBC and says, oh, we should be boosting our energy supply by moving to green energy.
And then she shoots down the idea of drilling, saying Keystone wouldn't have helped.
Well, according to the Premier of Alberta, Canada, this Keystone XL pipeline would have been done by now.
And we would be able to get Canadian oil from Little Justin 900,000 barrels a day.
Where would you rather get your oil from?
Little Justin or the Ayatollahs and the Mullahs in Iran?
Or Maduro, the murdering thug in Venezuela?
Or how many more times is Biden going to beg and get on his hands and knees and beg OPEC nations that hate us?
I mean, it's incomprehensible.
Anyway, here she is.
Should we not be boosting energy production right now in this country to meet demand both domestically and in places like Europe?
We should be boosting all around the world and in the United States, and we should be investing in moving toward clean energy as well.
That's what our message is here at Sera Week.
We want to see increased supply.
We want to see it in the United States to the extent that the industry can do that.
We want to see us move as well toward solutions that don't have us relying on fossil fuels from countries that do not have our interests at heart.
We have to do both and we have to accelerate.
We are in an emergency.
We have to increase supply so that we cannot, you know, we can make sure that people are protected at the pump and we have to move to clean energy solutions with great accelerating both right now.
But clean is in the end where we should be so that we don't find ourselves in this position again.
There is nothing that would have increased production if the Keystone Pipeline had been approved.
It wouldn't have even been built by now.
So that is just a talking point.
There is this administration, under this administration, oil is almost at record production.
By the end of this year, it will be at record production.
Natural gas is at record production.
Liquefied natural gas is at record production.
Every molecule that we can liquefy, we are exporting in terms of natural gas if there was a facility to liquefy it.
There are six, excuse me, 9,000 permits that have been issued that are not being taken advantage of.
And I say that to encourage the oil and gas sector to take advantage of the permits that they have.
There are 20 million acres of public lie under lease right now by the oil and gas industry that are not being used, that are not being produced on.
And remember that 90% of oil drilling is on private lands and not public lands.
So this is not about that.
Those are talking points.
No, they're not talking points because all of those restrictions you and Joe Biden put on energy companies, they can't even get insurance.
They can't even get loans because of the restrictions you put on the industry.
You're just lying.
Now, the proof that this is all by design, let's go to candidate Joe Biden saying this will be his policy.
This is all by design.
This is what he promised to do.
This is why Donald Trump predicted it would be a disaster, and you'd be paying $4, $5, $6, $7 a gallon for gasoline.
And Trump was right again.
We're all dead.
Doing away with any subsidies for fossil fuels, number one.
Number two, holding them liable for what they have done, particularly in those cases where there are underserved neighborhoods and you know the deal, okay?
And by the way, when they don't or when they're deliberate, put them in jail.
Kiddo, I want you to just take a look, okay?
You don't have to agree, but I want you to look in my eyes.
I guarantee you, I guarantee you, we're going to end fossil fuel and I am not going to cooperate with you, okay?
Would there be any place for fossil fuels, including coal and fracking, in a Biden administration?
No, we would work it out.
We would make sure it's eliminated.
Oh, we'll work it out.
Make sure it's eliminated.
So that's been their plan.
Mike O'Neill is joining us.
He serves as the assistant general counsel and the Barbara K. Olson Legal Counsel at Landmark Legal Foundation.
That's the great one, Mark Levins Foundation, has written an article explaining just how much control the EPA has over Congress.
Mike, thanks for being with us.
How are you?
I'm well, Sean.
How are you?
How's the great one?
How's our buddy?
He's doing great.
It's an honor to work with him all these years.
It's been an honor to talk to you.
Thank you.
God bless us.
It's fantastic working with him, and it's an absolute honor, and it's an honor to speak to him.
He's a genius.
We love him.
That's why we call him the great one.
I'll say it.
Nobody else will say it.
There, I said it.
Absolutely.
All right, let's get to the heart of this issue here.
Because now we're in a situation where, for whatever reason, we have a 40-year high end of inflation, in large part because of the high rising cost of gasoline, long before Putin invaded Ukraine.
That was only a few weeks ago.
Right.
And now we have a problem where Joe Biden is willing to cut a deal with the Iranian mullahs and import gas from Iran.
He's sucking up to and willing to lift sanctions on Venezuela and Maduro, a murdering thug.
He's already been begging OPEC repeatedly to increase their production and Saudi Arabia to increase their production.
They don't even want to take his calls anymore because the answer is no.
And meanwhile, we have all the vast natural resources that he inherited because he inherited energy independence.
I don't think you can be any dumber than this group of people.
Well, you're absolutely right.
All the while he's kowtowing to dictators around the world, all the while hamstringing and completely kneecapping the American energy, the American energy sector.
Look, let's talk about what happened last week at the Supreme Court.
Here, the court heard oral arguments in an important case that will determine how our nation generates electricity.
You know, we're talking about gas for our cars, but an important part on the energy sector is also how is electricity generated in this country.
The electrical grid relies on coal and natural gas, in addition to nuclear and renewables.
So coal and natural gas play an important part in how our nation generates electricity.
And we all know what do we have in abundance in our country.
We have coal and natural gas in abundance.
You don't have to go to Venezuela.
You don't have to go to Saudi Arabia.
You don't have to go to Russia to find it.
It's in our country.
We have it, abundant resources, and yet the left and the Democrats are committed, you know, they're committed to destroying that resource and destroying our reliance on those proven sources that have served America so well.
So in this case, it's called West Virginia versus EPA.
And under the thinnest, very thinnest of legal pretenses, EPA is, again, wants to drive coal and natural gas power companies out of business and forces into wind and solar.
Let me just take a little bit of a background here on this because it's a little bit of a complicated case, but I'll boil it down to brass tax.
In 2016, the Obama administration released what was known as the Clean Power Plan.
And this is a massive regulatory framework cooked up at EPA and by the bureaucrats edited EPA that was designed to drive traditional power plants out of business.
And I mean traditional power plants, I mean coal and natural gas.
And when I say massive, I really mean massive.
And again, this is all pre work, this is 2016 numbers.
This is in 2022, war in Europe, inflation, all that stuff you were talking about.
The estimates were that it would cost the American taxpayer over $200 billion.
And energy consumers in some states would see their electric bills increase upwards of an additional 25%.
Now, keep in mind, again, those numbers were generated pre all of this inflation that we've seen in the past few months.
Well, what did Trump's EPA did?
They set that ridiculous clean power plan aside in favor of a much more modest regulatory framework.
And of course, what happens?
Biden comes into office and he attempts to revive it.
Well, there's two huge problems with this now.
First of all, there's the legal and constitutional problem.
What do you do?
You have the EPA, again, as I was saying before, you have these unaccountable bureaucrats in Washington, D.C. trying to impose this massive and costly regulatory framework on the American people without any kind of authority delegated to them from Congress.
Congress hasn't spoken on this with any kind of specificity or anything, and yet they want to take this massive and consequential regulatory framework that will impose hundreds of billions of dollars on the American taxpayer and increase energy bills upwards of 25% through this just barest pretense of legal analysis.
And again, Congress never spoke on this.
Congress never gave EPA this authority to impose this kind of major rule upon the American people.
And these decisions should only be made through Congress.
Number two, this is bad policy.
As you just said, energy costs are skyrocketing across the board.
How and why would it put it, would the Biden administration want to impose additional costs in this terrifying new reality that we're all facing in America, where every day you look to your gas station and you see that costs have increased 25 cents.
Gallons of gases are going $5, $6 a gallon.
We don't know what the future holds, and yet we're discounting reliable traditional sources of power for our own country.
What you're describing is incomprehensible.
All right, quick break.
We'll come back more with Mike O'Neill as we continue to talk about the insanity of Joe Biden's energy policies.
More with Mike O'Neill, assistant general counsel and the Barbara K. Olson legal counsel at the Landmark Legal Foundation.
That's the great one, Mark Levin's Foundation.
Look, once you artificially, this is Simple Economics 101, once you artificially reduce the world supply of energy, and even if demand remains constant, the price will go up.
If demand increases, then the price will really go up.
Now we're at a point, Joe's policies and restrictions on the energy sector, well, that has forced our European allies right into the arms of Vladimir Putin, and it's created a huge energy dependence problem for them because they're reliant on Russian energy.
That has then increased the prices to record prices.
Putin is getting billions, which is helping to fund this invasion of an innocent sovereign country.
And as you know, you have precious innocent children and women and men that are being slaughtered, entire neighborhoods just blown to pieces.
We're now seeing images of, I saw the image yesterday of a mass grave of 70 people.
I mean, these are human beings that are being slaughtered because of this guy's territorial ambitions.
And a lot of this is funded because of our stupidity in terms of economic and energy policy.
It's absolutely incomprehensible how in this time, in this day and age, right now, in this moment in history, we are casting aside our resources in favor of implementing this radical environmental agenda of the left.
And you can just see that that really is the commitment here.
And Biden didn't make any pretense of hiding that fact when he was running for office.
Obama didn't make any pretense of hiding it.
They will do whatever they can, even if that means having to drive up energy prices through the roof, continue to drive up energy prices, drive out coal power plants, drive out natural gas generating power plants in order to effectuate their radical environmental agenda, because that takes precedent over anything and everything.
It doesn't matter if they're trampling on the rights on the Constitution, if they're trampling on the rights of states.
They don't care.
They will do whatever it takes to implement their radical environmental agenda.
Well, it's insane to me that this is even allowed to happen.
And it's insane to me that people think this is smart politics.
Now we're paying the highest we've ever paid for a gallon of gasoline and we'll pay more for every product we ever buy in any store we go to.
It is disrupting the economy on a level that nobody anticipated.
And this mysterious reluctance and resistance to producing energy independence once again and begging the world's thugs and most unsavory characters and dictators is beyond any comprehension I have.
It is sad and it's also avoidable.
But anyway, I'll give you a quick last word.
We have about 20 seconds.
Sure.
What's imperative?
It's imperative that the Supreme Court rein in agencies like EPA who want to unilaterally impose these enormous costs on the American people.
And Congress also needs to act and step up and do its job and rein in these agencies.
If you want to check out more about this, I encourage anybody to go to our website, landmarklegal.org, and you can read up on some of our work regarding this issue.
Thanks a lot, Sean.
I really appreciate the opportunity to talk with you about it.
I really appreciate you being on.
Our best to the great one, Mark Levin, Landmark Legal.
Quick break.
Right back.
What's right with America.
You're listening to the Sean Hannity Show.
I 25 to the top of the hour, 800-941.
Sean is a number.
We'll get to your calls.
I want to play an extended cut, though, before we get to calls.
My interview with President Trump last night.
He was on for about 40 minutes, and he was on fire on every topic.
And as I'm listening to him last night during a live show, it was a live call, no tape.
And I'm just thinking, could Joe Biden last three minutes doing this?
No.
Anyway, here's this interview.
Well, my reaction is it's so sad because this would have never happened.
If we had the Trump administration, there was no chance that this would happen.
And I know him well.
And this was not something that was going to happen at all.
And next, you'll see.
I mean, let's see what happens.
Let's just watch.
But when this horrible, horrible situation happened in Afghanistan, it's not even believable how incompetent it was.
The way they withdrew or surrendered or whatever you want to call it, bad things started happening for our country.
The border's bad.
A lot of things are bad.
Inflation's bad.
But the way they got out of Afghanistan looked like a complete surrender.
And I'll tell you, Putin was watching, and President Xi was watching, and the leaders in Iran were watching, and Kim Jong-un was watching, North Korea.
They were all watching, Sean.
And I'll tell you, bad things started to happen.
They no longer respect our country.
And that's how this came about.
It would have never, ever happened.
And he understood that.
We talked about it.
It's a horrible thing to watch.
It would have never happened, and it never should have happened.
I just watched on your show, I just watched the vice president laughing about the immigration, that's this horrible situation with the immigration.
And I just watched the laugh, and it was almost like the laugh of a mad woman to be laughing about that.
It's a sad situation.
We have people in there that are grossly incompetent, and you know it, and so does everybody else.
And by the way, and so do the Democrats know it.
I'm going to get back to the issue of why Putin wouldn't do it if you were president.
You came under some fire when you said that Vladimir Putin's very smart.
I think I know you a little bit better than most people in the media.
And I think you also recognize he's evil, do you not?
Well, I was referring to the fact that he said this is an independent nation, talking about Ukraine.
And I said, that some said, this is before there was any attack.
He's calling it an independent nation.
Now, a lot of things are changing when you look.
This doesn't seem to be the same Putin that I was dealing with.
But I will tell you, he wouldn't have changed if I were dealing with him.
He wouldn't have changed.
You know, I supplied, and I know Biden is trying to take credit, and they're all trying to take credit about many of the things, incredible things that we did in the Trump administration.
But we supplied the anti-tank busters.
They're called javelins.
And without them, you wouldn't have anything like what's happening.
They're knocking out the tanks one after another after another.
And this has become a much tougher situation, much, much tougher.
Also, gunnery for the aircraft for knocking out aircraft.
You know, a lot of aircraft's been knocked out of the air.
That's why everyone's saying, how come there aren't very many Russian planes overhead?
Well, we hit them with the stingers and all of the other things that we supplied.
We supplied tremendous amounts of equipment so they could defend themselves.
And they've done a great job.
You look at what's happening, however, with the planes, that's all botched up.
The planes from Poland, that's all botched up.
And it's a lot of people.
Would you have a terrible thing to be watching?
Well, I would have done it a lot differently than they've done it.
And what they've done is just terrible.
Back and forth between the United States.
Look, Biden, every time he gets up, he says they are a nuclear nation.
He should say, we are a nuclear nation.
And, you know, I rebuilt our whole nuclear arsenal.
Stronger, bigger, better than ever before.
It's better, and it's bigger than Russia.
He should say, we are a nuclear nation, and we don't want war, and we don't want to wipe out anything to do, and we don't want to wipe out Russia.
This is the way he should be talking.
Instead, he's saying, we don't want war.
We're not, you know, he doesn't talk about our nuclear capability.
He keeps saying that they are a nuclear nation.
We don't want war.
And he's playing right into Putin's hands when he does that.
But Putin's having a lot of trouble right now.
He's having big, big trouble because he thought this was going to be a 48-hour deal.
And the Ukrainians are good fighters.
And largely, to a large extent, or certainly a big help, was the fact that we gave them a lot of javelins.
You know, they say, I don't know if you know, Sean, they say that Obama Biden gave them blankets and Trump gave them anti-tank busters and javelins.
Abdul knew that he would be hit so hard, like they've never been hit before, if they kill any American soldiers, because they killed a lot of soldiers under the previous administration, as you know.
And 18 months we went, and there was no reason.
I'm the one that got it down to 2,000, and we were going to pull out, but we were going to keep Bagram, and not because of Afghanistan, but because of China.
One hour away from where China makes its nuclear weapons.
We were going to keep it.
Billions of dollars spent, massive Air Force base.
We were going to keep Bagram, and we were going to be the last out.
They took the military out first.
So I don't know.
You play it every night, and you talk about the hostages that are left in Afghanistan.
It's a very sad thing.
We have American hostages right now, people, American citizens, and others that shouldn't be there, that should have come out.
They're right now in Afghanistan, and it's a terrible thing.
But they knew that they can't play games, they can't play around.
And he understood.
And we didn't have one soldier killed.
Not one military person was killed in 18 months.
And actually, Biden was the one that admitted that.
He said, whether you like it or not, there's been no soldier killed in 18 months.
Now, his people were not happy when he said it, but he said it.
Let me go back to that.
That was very unusual, actually.
Putin is for Russia, and you see what happened.
And that's all because they didn't respect our leader.
Look, there was nobody, and Putin would tell you this if he would, if he was telling the truth, and I'm sure he's sold it to all of his inner sanctum.
Nobody was tougher on Russia than me.
I closed down the pipeline.
Biden came in incredibly.
He opened the pipeline, closed the American pipeline and pipeline, by the way, very soon.
You'll be seeing that.
But I closed the pipeline going into Germany and other parts of Europe, Nord Stream 2.
Nobody had heard of Nord Stream 2 until I came along.
I closed it down.
It was a dead deal.
And then he opened it up.
I was sanctioning everybody.
Nobody ever.
And as we said, I gave them the javelins, the anti-tank busters.
I gave them weaponry in Ukraine.
Nobody was ever tougher on Russia than me.
Nobody was ever even close to being tough like I was on Russia.
And then you hear the Russia-Russia-Russia hoax.
You know, the whole hoax made up by Hillary Clinton and the Democrats.
And frankly, that was very bad for a country.
I said it very often.
Very, very bad, very dangerous, very bad.
And hopefully, a lot of things are going to happen with those people because they created a false narrative.
But nobody was ever tough on Russia like I was.
And Putin will tell you.
But Putin will also tell a very small group of people that he would have never gone in while I was president.
And he didn't.
You know, the fact is, he didn't.
They went into Georgia and they went into Crimea and they went into, now they want the whole ball of whack.
For years, Sean, for four years, they did nothing.
As far as the pipeline is concerned, I told Angela Merkel loud and clear, and everybody knew it, and there was a lot of reporting on it.
And they sort of laughed at me when I said it.
But I said, you are going to be a hostage of Russia if you don't do something with this pipeline.
You should never, ever make this deal.
And by the way, the previous Chancellor of Germany heads up the company, the pipeline company.
But Nord Stream 2, I said, if you make that deal, you are literally at the mercy of Russia, and Germany shouldn't make the deal.
I had an argument.
There are those people that say I sent her a white flag of surrender, which I did, because I said as soon as you have a problem.
Did I hear you right?
You sent Angela Merkel a white flag of surrender?
Oh, yes, I did.
I sent it to her.
What did she say?
Trying to send it in humor.
You know, at that point, you could have humor because nobody believed it was possible that what I said was true.
When you look at NATO, what we did with NATO, they were not paid up.
They were delinquent.
You have 28 countries.
There were only eight of them that were paid, including the United States, which was far more than paid up.
We paid for all of the people that weren't paying.
And I said, you have to pay your bills.
And if you don't pay your bills, we're not going to protect you.
They asked me that question.
We're not going to protect you.
If you're delinquent, we're not going to protect you.
And as soon as I said that, they paid hundreds of billions of dollars right into the till the Secretary General, who is a wonderful guy, Stoltenberg.
He's my biggest fan because he never thought it would happen.
Obama would go there and make a nice speech.
Everybody went there.
Bush, they all went there and made the speech.
Nobody said, hey, wait a minute, you guys aren't paying your bills.
We're protecting you.
So they took advantage of us on trade.
And on top of that, we took care of their military protection.
And that stopped.
So NATO now has at least the money, but it's a little bit of a, it has been a little bit of a paper tiger.
Now we'll see whether or not they hold together.
That was the president of the United States 45 from last night on the TV show.
You think Joe Biden can talk like that for 45 minutes, 40 minutes?
No, I don't think so.
Anyway, 800-941, Sean, if you want to be a part of the program, let us say hi to Andy is in Alabama.
What's up, Andy?
How are you, sir?
What part of Alabama are you in?
Mobile, buddy.
Roll tide or war eagle.
Which is it?
You got to be a Nick Saban guy.
I'm just guessing.
Roll tide, buddy.
Roll tide all the way.
No better coach in football.
Sorry for you, War Eagle people, but there's no better coach in college football than Nick Saban.
Period.
End of sentence.
You got that right, buddy.
What's going on?
Hey, Sean.
You're a true American Patriot, bud.
I appreciate everything you do.
No, thank you, sir.
I want to go.
You're welcome.
I'm a former truck driver.
I was an owner operator.
Tell you all the ins and outs of what goes on when fuel prices go up.
Back in late 02, 03, when fuel prices were $1.99 a gallon of diesel, we threw a fit.
I mean, all these, most of these trucks carry 300 gallons of fuel.
So you measure $5.5, $6 a gallon.
You're looking at about $1,600, well, $1,400 to $1,600 to fill up a truck.
Plus, you got these trucks where these roofing units got $60 gallon tanks on, so you're looking at about a little over $300 more to fill up them.
So, I mean, when your fuel prices go up for a trucker, for a trucking company, that means your shipping rates are going to go up.
Well, listen, truck drivers are not going to work and get paid less.
They're just not.
I have too many really close friends, people in my life that are in the trucking business, so I know a lot about it.
So what's happening is the cost is not passed on to the truck driver or the trucking company or the owner operator.
It's passed on to the consumer.
But it's not like you have a choice in this.
When you're paying two, three times what you were paying, guess you have no choice but to raise prices.
No, that's right.
It's a donut effect.
It goes all the way down to consumer that suffers.
But the truckers can suffer too.
They can.
If they can't afford these fuel prices, they'll have no choice but to park trucks.
That means drivers lose their jobs.
And that's what I'm doing.
At this moment in time, because of the supply chain crisis, it's just the opposite.
And I'll tell you why.
Because they can't get spare parts.
You cannot find a new truck anywhere in the country right now.
You can't buy one.
And let's say you are on a lease program, you're barely keeping the trucks that you have.
And I know because my friends are literally on the phone every day for hours trying to do it.
Demand is so high and they can't get enough trucks on the road.
And when they break down, it's hard to get a spare part.
It's very difficult right now for everybody in the business, but demand has never been greater.
No, but the thing is about buying a truck, bud, is it's not like paying a home mortgage or a car note.
You pay that truck note every week in that insurance.
And you're looking at about $800 a week.
And it's not easy.
I mean, you take 10% off the top for maintenance, and you got to pay fuel.
You got to pay tolls, scale tickets, whatever else.
Sorry, man.
I'm not really bringing anything home.
He's got a final support.
But my thing is about this clean energy, this green energy.
Real quick.
When I drove out to California, you could see about 50 windmills up on the hill and only about three turning.
And the thing is, where do they need to run?
They got to have fossil fuels, oil, and grease to run.
It's the lifeblood of the world's economy.
Windmills and solar panels won't cut it, buddy.
But listen, God bless you.
Thank you for all you do and you've done in your career.
It's amazing.
I think one thing that's come out of this that's a good thing, people now appreciate how important the truckers are to our economy.
I think that is definitely in people's awareness at this point, maybe before they didn't realize it.
Anyway, appreciate it.
800-941 Sean, our number.
All right, that's going to wrap things up for today.
The best coverage as it relates to the economy, which is a disaster.
The disaster that is Putin invading Ukraine, Joe Biden blaming Putin for everything that went wrong, even though it all was going wrong before Putin invaded Ukraine.
Anyway, Peter Ducey, Senator Tom Cotton tonight, Greg Jarrett, Kelly Ann, and Reince Prievis, 9 Eastern, Satan DVR, Hannity on the Fox News channel.
We'll see you tonight.
Have a great weekend.
Back here Monday.
▲
Export Selection