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May 25, 2022 - Sean Hannity Show
30:12
Senator Jeff Bartos - May 24th, Hour 2
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Five states holding primaries today.
And it's going to get very, very interesting.
You got, obviously, Georgia is the big state to watch for the night.
Alabama is interesting stories there.
In Texas, you got two runoffs drawing a lot of attention, including the Attorney General Ken Paxton and his battle with George P. Bush.
Henry Quayar is now trying to fend off progressive challenges there.
You got Arkansas.
We expect that Sarah Huckabee Sanders will win that primary.
A Minnesota congressional race is going on there.
So, you know, it's a lot of interest.
Here's the problem.
And I brought this up yesterday on this show, and I brought it up on TV last night, and it's worth going back to today.
One week ago today, we had a primary in the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania.
As of now, we still have counties.
One county I hear in particular, Greene County, has not reported their results.
And I'm looking at this.
How is this possible?
You know, why are we one week away from the election?
In my mind, we should have not only had the results the latest Wednesday of last week, but we should have had the recount done by Friday of last week at the latest.
And we still don't have a definitive answer on these ballots.
I don't think there's many ballots out there that are left.
It is unacceptable.
You have major democracies all over the world.
They're able to produce nationwide results in a single night.
But we have some states in this country that cannot do a simple election.
I think there was 1.4 million ballots cast, right?
So last year, for example, if you look at France, well, look at France in the more recent runoff that they had for the presidential election.
In less than 24 hours, with 32 million ballots cast, they declared a winner.
Last year, Canada, they were able to confirm their results countrywide in a single day.
And it was a very close election there.
In 2016, if you look at the UK, well, it took them, what, 33.5 million votes during the Brexit referendum.
And guess what?
It took them about a day to get the results there.
It's now taken the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania an entire week, and we still don't have the results in that race.
And then on top of it, they're leaving two weeks open for a recount.
Why would you need two weeks for a recount?
You know, for any state to have true election integrity, you need several things.
I've always talked about voter ID laws, signature verification, partisan observers at every polling location, watching the vote count start to finish, chain of custody protections for ballots.
The minute a ballot gets into a precinct, it ought to be on camera the entire time until the counting occurs.
You got to update your voter rolls every election.
And you need to count the votes and have a plan in place to count the votes and give people at the very latest the results the next day.
I mean, it's inexplicable to me.
It's just wrong on every level.
And it really does.
Then people don't have confidence in the results.
Then people don't have confidence in the integrity of the system.
Anyway, Jeff Bartos is with us.
He's a former Senate candidate himself, Republican Senate candidate for Pennsylvania, a friend of this program.
He didn't win this election.
It's now come down to Dave McCormick and Dr. Oz.
But he's a great guy and somebody we've liked for a long time.
How are you, sir?
Sean, good afternoon.
Thank you so much for having me and all the best to you and your family and all your listeners.
I mean, you know what your problem is?
I said this to Ben Carson once.
I said, Dr. Carson, please don't take this the wrong way.
You're too nice for politics.
Your heart's too good for politics.
You got to be mean and you got to fight ugly and you got to be a street fighter.
And, you know, as much as I love you, and we both love the flyers and the Broad Street bullies.
But all right, so why is it taking so long in Pennsylvania to get a result?
This election occurred a week ago, Jeff.
Well, I think you hit the nail on the head.
It's pre-canvassing.
It's the ability to be able to take those mail-in ballots.
And look, we could have a longer conversation about the constitutionality.
And our Commonwealth Court has recently ruled credit to my friend Doug McClinko and Kathy Rapp and other brave leaders and Tom King and his legal team.
But our Commonwealth Court ruled mail-in balloting unconstitutional.
Our Pennsylvania Supreme Court is going to have oral arguments on that later this summer.
So push that off to the side for a second.
But having pre-canvassing, meaning that they can count those mail-in ballots as they come in and keep them in a very secure location, but not wait to start counting them until Election Day or till the next day, that is why we suffer from this.
It is, trust me, it is not for lack of dedicated professionals and volunteers in all 67 counties, great Pennsylvanian patriots who care about our elections.
It's an antiquated system that really kind of puts the burden on these counties and ought to give them some breathing room.
You hit the nail on the head.
But Sean, step back for a second.
If I had told you a week ago, eight days ago, that a week after the election, one of the leading candidates, in this case, David McCormick, would be suing to say that undated, unsigned, naked ballots should be counted, count every vote, as it were.
And he would be opposed by the RNC, the PAGOP, and anybody who cares about election integrity.
And the people cheering his team on are Hillary Clinton's 2016 counsel, Mark Elias, and his crowd.
I don't think that Mr. McCormick would have received so many votes in the primary a week ago.
And that is not a slight on David in the least.
It is he is getting terrible advice.
And listen, in fairness to Dave, I had a conversation with him about this, and I said, I've laid out pretty much the arguments you have.
In a close election, I get it.
I understand it.
But in the long term, I think it's a bad idea for the Republicans.
Look, we have laws and we have standards.
And to me, you got to follow the law.
If eventually you don't like the law, You have a process by which to change laws, just like you have a process.
I cannot believe your state, for example, through legislation, circumvented the exact language in your own constitution.
So, a lot of this is played on all sides here.
I don't see that there's enough votes out there that would actually impact this race anyway to go down this road, but I guess that's their decision.
And I'm not going to get in the middle of a fight with the RNC and the Pennsylvania GOP and any candidate at this point.
I just would like a winner declared, and I'd like that candidate to take on John Fetterman and kick his ass because his positions are god-awful.
Isn't that ultimately what this is about, right?
It's about party unity, it's about coming together.
And I was going to say, this is nothing personal to any individual candidate.
We have to think big picture.
We have to think general election 2022.
We have to think about the 2024 presidential.
And when Mark Elias, who is no friend to conservative causes or frankly following the law, the plain, unambiguous text of the Pennsylvania legislation, which I believe will be upheld as unconstitutional later this year, but right now it's operative.
Mark Elias is cheering on last night saying this is the lawsuit we couldn't wait to bring, and now a Republican brought it.
We can't be doing this as a party.
We have to come together and we have to, the law is unambiguous in Pennsylvania.
Sean, you know, our Supreme Court is not a conservative bastion, quite the opposite.
It is a left-wing.
Oh, that was a big win.
And the RNC and the PA GOP, Pennsylvania GOP, won a case that they fought really hard for.
You know, I'll give you an example.
I felt this race, generally speaking, got very unnecessarily ugly.
And I hate when Republicans, and I'm not mentioning one candidate or another candidate, it just generally got very ugly.
And then I got dragged into this because all of a sudden you saw it.
I think you were the only candidate to see this coming before anyone else, the sudden rise of Kathy Barnett.
And I'm sure she doesn't believe me, but we always liked having her on the show.
And when the rise happened, everybody realized nobody's vetted her.
And we went and I've had my team do what we always do, full background, and we found tweet after tweet after tweet after tweet after tweet.
And you know, I don't, I'm not piling on Kathy here.
I would hope she deals with it.
And by the way, these are complete sentences.
These are complete thoughts.
I know that she's been saying they're not, but they're pretty complete to me when I read them and pretty unambiguous.
But when I read them, and I don't know what your feeling is, I felt she was unelectable in a general election.
And this is a must-hold Senate seat for Republicans.
We cannot mess around and put somebody at the top of the ticket that we know the Democrats are going to be pounding day in and day out and bringing up all of these things in ways that are far more harsh than I did by just pointing them out.
Yeah, and I think, so look, now stepping forward to today, as I mentioned, when you have one of the leading candidates for the Senate who's in the middle of this vote counting battle, if you take the name off of it, right?
If you take David's name off of it and you just read the transcript from one of his interviews yesterday and scrub the name, you would think you were reading Chuck Schumer, Nancy Pelosi, or Eric Holder's words.
I mean, Sean, I have campaigned around this Commonwealth for the better part of five years.
I have been on the campaign trail nonstop for 15 months.
Voter security, ballot integrity is the number one issue that we hear from conservative voters.
Now, more recently, inflation, of course, has become the number one issue.
But over the course of a 15-month campaign, ballot security, election integrity is the number one recurring issue we hear.
We cannot, as conservatives, be fighting about the plain meaning of Pennsylvania law.
We have to come together as a party.
I feel like, you know, a lot of people blame me for getting involved at all.
And then to those critics, I say, excuse me, it's about the balance of power in the United States Senate.
And I'd rather Chuck Schumer not be the majority leader in the Senate.
So it is important to every American.
Quick break, we'll come back.
We'll continue.
800-941 Sean, if you want to be a part of the program, your calls are coming up more with Jeff Bartos.
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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.
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We arm you with the facts to be able to know and advocate for the truth with your friends and family.
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All right, Jeff Bartos is with us.
He was one of the Senate primary candidates in the great Commonwealth of Pennsylvania as we discuss why we don't have a result a week later.
I don't know, maybe there's a way.
You probably have the personality for it and know everybody.
Maybe this is a moment where all of the candidates get in a room alone, push the lawyers out and have a discussion about it.
Again, I'm not getting in the middle of this thing at this point.
You know, we have a count going on.
I believe most votes have been counted now.
I would expect in the next day or two that we're going to have a final count and then you have a recount process and then we'll have a winner and then we'll have a candidate.
And I hope at the end of that process, everybody rallies around who the candidate is.
It looks like it's going to be Dr. Oz to me and recounts usually don't change 900 plus votes.
It usually doesn't happen.
Yeah, I'm with you.
Like I made that pledge before the election.
We get asked all the time in those closing weeks, especially if you're me and you weren't necessarily leading in the polls.
You get asked, well, if it's not you, will you support the nominee?
And I said, I've been a 20-year committeeman, almost 20 years in Montgomery County.
I love this party.
I love this Commonwealth.
Of course, I'll be working for our nominee.
And that answer hasn't changed.
I would very much, and I'm going to give every benefit of the doubt to all the candidates here.
I just believe some, you know, one of the candidates is getting terrible advice from his advisors to go against what is clear Pennsylvania law.
Well, let me ask you this.
Why don't you, you could pick up the phone and call any candidate and they'll take your call.
Everybody in this race knows you're a great guy.
Everybody knew that.
My advice is to pick up the phone and maybe have all the candidates have a private meeting at somebody's home and you all talk about it and talk about the future of the party and what's the right course moving forward.
I just think at this point, that's something that the party's going to have to do.
And I understand both sides of it, but I'm on your side as much as I think this would be a very dangerous precedent, but we'll see what happens.
But, Jeff, you really have.
I know you've been on our show before.
You're a great guy.
You might be the person that can bridge the gap between these parties.
I hope you can.
I'm going to work on it, Sean.
I really appreciate you saying that.
I did see my job coming out, or not my sole job, but one of my responsibilities coming out of this election was to help in whatever way I could to bring the party together and move us forward to win what's going to be the most, as you said, the most important Senate race in the country.
It's going to decide the balance of power, and we have to start to hold the Biden administration accountable.
We have to bring inflation under control.
We have to get energy independent, like all the issues that actually matter to our fellow Pennsylvanians.
We just have to get through this craziness over the next couple of weeks.
It's insane.
We won't know a winner until, I think, until June 6th, if my calendar is correct.
D-Day.
We'll call it D-Day.
Unbelievable.
I mean, it's like a month later.
You got to be kidding me.
That's insane.
It literally, it's so embarrassing for the country and other states in this great United States.
They get it right.
Pennsylvania needs to fix this problem.
It's bad for everybody.
Anyway, Jeff, we love having you on, my friend.
God bless you.
And we'll keep following this as it moves forward.
Thank you for your time, as always.
Thank you.
God bless you.
We'll speak soon.
All right.
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Kamala Harris, it's getting a little scary.
Joe has his cognitive problems, and Kamala Harris just simply cannot communicate.
And she just, you know, says things over and over and over again.
We had the instance last week.
We'll play that for you in a second.
But this is her talking about when we talk about children of the community, they are children of the community.
Listen.
You know, when we talk about our children, I know for this group, we all believe that when we talk about the children of the community, they are a children of the community.
They are.
When we talk about the children of the community, they are the children of the community.
Okay.
This is what she did last week.
When it comes to the climate crisis, which is why we will work together and continue to work together to address these issues, to tackle these challenges, and to work together as we continue to work, operating from the new norms, rules, and agreements that we will convene to work together on to galvanize global action.
With that, I thank you all.
This is a matter of urgent priority for all of us, and I know we will work on this together.
We're going to work on it together.
Wow.
We have a new mantra.
Do you find that as scary as I do?
I'm beginning to think she is incapable of basic fundamental communication at a high enough level to be the vice president and one heartbeat away from the presidency.
It's getting downright scary.
Now, here's another Kamala Harris moment where she says, please clap when talking about yellow school buses.
This makes no sense to me.
Because think about it.
Yellow school buses are our nation's largest form of mass transit.
How about that?
How about that?
Every day.
So, yes, and let's apply because they get somewhere they need to go.
And then, and then we get the inappropriate laughter.
I'm wondering what the hell is going on.
You know, a lot of people say, Hannity, it's clear Biden's not up to the job.
Neither is Kamala Harris.
And then next in line is Nancy Pelosi.
She's got her own cognitive struggles going on here.
I mean, this is an unmitigated disaster.
Anyway, all right, before we get to your calls, let me just play one other cut here.
We have the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland.
And Michael Evans is posting about an individual carbon footprint tracker to monitor what you buy, what you eat, and where and how you travel.
This makes George Orwell's 1984 look like a comic book in comparison.
We're developing through technology an ability for consumers to measure their own carbon footprint.
What does that mean?
That's where are they traveling?
How are they traveling?
What are they eating?
What are they consuming on the platform?
So, individual carbon footprint tracker.
Stay tuned.
We don't have it operational yet, but this is something that we're working on.
Well, they can track all the private jets that are lined up in Davos, Switzerland, because that's how most of the people got there.
Not that I'm against people affording and traveling in private jets.
You know why that's good?
Because the people that build those private jets usually make a pretty good living, and there are career jobs for a lot of Americans and others.
And it certainly would be better if the private jets and the commercial airlines had jet fuel that is available.
Now we're headed towards a shortage, as I mentioned earlier, and gets us to and fro.
Unbelievable.
You know, now ticket prices to get on an airline is going to be so much that people aren't going to be able to afford to travel.
Now, what's next?
All right.
You can't afford to go on a long drive in your car either.
I mean, the average person that drives a car regularly is going to pay two grand more, at least this year, in gasoline costs.
You know, Biden inflation, this is real suffering, unnecessary suffering of the people that make this country great.
Yes, elections matter.
Mike in Pennsylvania, Mike, how are you?
Glad you called.
Here we are, one week later.
No winner declared in the Senate primary.
Unbelievable.
Yes, Sean, it is.
It is.
Sean, listen, we're a very splintered state right now.
And you know, the thing is, the people of Pennsylvania, just like, look at the tweets.
Everybody criticized tweets.
Everybody looked at the things that really weren't so.
You know what, Sean?
I think you did that.
I think you did that with Kathy Barnett.
You didn't really vet her.
You had your people look at her tweets.
You had your people, but you spent a lot of time with Oz.
You had him on the show.
You pushed him like crazy.
You spent a lot of money on him.
And Trump pushed him and pushed him.
Imagine if you wouldn't have done that.
You know who would have in Toomey's seat right now?
We'd have Kathy Barnett.
Speaking of Toomey, he's over in Davos.
Isn't that something he's always?
So let me ask you a question.
Do you want me to be an honest talk show host that gives you my straight-up opinion?
I don't hide the fact that I'm a conservative.
I vetted Donald Trump and I got on the Trump train very early and I got the crap kicked out of me and I told my audience and reading them.
And I'm trying to listen, Sean, I'm from Pennsylvania.
I know.
I heard her answer to questions.
Her answer to the way, her answer was, no, no, no, no, no.
Her answer was they're not complete thoughts.
That's not true.
That is not an accurate statement.
You didn't report them as complete thoughts.
Oh, I did.
I put them up on the screen in total so people could read them.
I literally put the whole tweet in context, the whole thing up.
Now, I'm just going to tell you something.
Listen, you have every right to support anybody you want.
This is a free country.
But I am telling you, based on my 35 years on radio and my 26 and a half years on Fox, as much as I personally like Kathy Barnett, she has to be able to answer for these extraordinarily incendiary, controversial statements.
And her answers were flimsy at best.
I reached out to her.
My team reached out to her.
We tried to get context and we tried to get her to give us answers on these questions.
And she ducked and she dodged.
Then she tweeted out that she wanted to debate Oz on my TV show three and a half days before the primary election.
I wrote back that's logistically impossible.
I said it wouldn't be fair and balanced not to invite all the candidates.
But if you want, I could probably arrange a radio debate on 675 stations more than any other show if she wanted.
And she never answered me back when I made that offer to her.
Is that my fault too?
No, Sean, it was unprecedented what you did.
You never did that any time before.
That's not true.
That's not true.
An a state race?
On a state race?
100%.
I've done it many, many times.
I've told people...
Hey, Mike, I'm going to jump in here.
It's Linda.
I actually live in Pennsylvania, and I'm one of those people that reached out to Kathy personally and put her on the show and asked her questions.
And I'm telling you from behind the scenes, they didn't answer the questions.
And if you watch shows every night, you would have seen she didn't answer the questions.
Do you really want her to go up against Fetterman?
And by the way, you're asking me if I've ever done this before.
I'm supporting Herschel Walker in Georgia.
I am supporting.
You have supported every candidate that you like in every state.
Senator Tim Scott.
I'm supporting.
Rubio, Cotton, Hawley, Tim Scott.
But I'm supporting in North Carolina, Johnson in Wisconsin, J.D. in.
This is a career-long thing.
What happened was the Kathy Barnett supporters were unhappy with the fact that the truth was not working in their favor.
If the truth was in their favor, then she would be the candidate.
She's not.
Well, I heard her explain.
Okay, let's break that down for a minute.
Pennsylvania to Pennsylvania for a hot second.
Can you tell me?
I love this.
Linda's now in a Broad Street bully fight here.
Go ahead.
No, because I like to talk to people from my state and ask them.
Because I was at the polls.
I voted that day.
I love Jeff Bartos.
I liked Oz.
I worked with his people.
I voted for the candidate that I thought could be Fetterman because Fetterman's the worst.
Okay.
Can you tell me what you thought Kathy did well, what she explained?
I would love to know.
I'm asking you sincerely.
Especially on issues.
I want to be specific here.
Her anti-Trump tweets, her tweets about gay lesbian issues, Muslim issues, banning Islam.
You tell me.
You read all of those tweets.
Do you think that could render her unelectable?
And do you think, to Linda's question, did she give a satisfactory answer to you?
Tweets are not a conversation.
Excuse me.
Those are her words.
Okay, let's take it out of the tweets, Mike.
Let's take it out of the tweets.
You know, Mike, let me take it out.
Hold on.
Okay, let's look the script.
So she went on all the Sunday shows and all the morning shows.
She was on Zeoli and Dawn in our neighborhood.
Let me ask you, when she was asked about them, what did she say?
When she was asked about what specific one.
No, no, no.
For everyone, they asked her generally.
I'll give you the answer.
The answer was she said they weren't complete thoughts.
No, then she also said, I don't remember ever writing that.
That's not the way I. By the way, my team asked her.
I even asked, do you believe your Twitter account was hacked?
If so, you need to say so.
Look, I'm not going to get into the weeds in Pennsylvania.
I'm just going to say this to you.
Mike, I'm endorsing Rubio.
I'm endorsing Herschel proudly.
Bud in North Carolina, Tim Scott, Ron Johnson, JD Vance, Laxalt.
I'm supporting Bernovich out in Arizona.
You know, you're acting like I've never done this before.
I've done it my whole career.
So, you know, and there are certain congresspeople, Evans, I'm supporting in the sixth congressional district in Georgia.
There are certain people, certain races I stay out of, and those that I think are most important, and Pennsylvania is most important because this is a must-hold seat.
I'm supporting Oz proudly, and I made it very clear.
And I'll tell you one other thing that you may not know.
I invited all of the candidates at some point on my show.
All of them.
Well, I agree with you on most of your choices, Sean, and I agree with you on almost everything.
Let me ask you.
This is a minor, and I'm not going to major in a minor.
All right, we'll have more with Mike on the other side from Pennsylvania.
We're not going to let this go so quickly.
Mike, I want to give you a thorough, complete answer.
More with Mike on the other side.
Then we'll get to your calls.
800-941-Sean is our number.
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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.
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