All Episodes
Previous Next
Aug. 23, 2022 - Sean Hannity Show
28:14
Jared Kushner - August 22nd, Hour 2
| Copy link to current segment

Time Text
This is an iHeart podcast.
All right.
Hour two, Sean Hannity show, 800-941.
Sean, if you want to be a part of the program, I don't think the history books are finished with Donald J. Trump in any way, shape, manner or form.
Is he going to run in 2024?
Anybody could speculate.
I'm focused right now on 2022.
Certainly, he has hinted repeatedly publicly that he's considering it.
Um...
You know, I like real history books, people that were there in the room that were a part of it.
And I've not been able to put it down since I got my copy.
Jared Kushner has his new book out just today.
It's on Amazon.com, Hannity.com.
It's now in bookstores everywhere.
If you want a signed copy, there's a special website set up from our friends at Premiere Books at jaredkushnersignedbook.com.
That's jaredkushnersignedbook.com.
Jared joins us now.
Sir, how are you?
Good to be with you, Sean.
Doing very, very well.
Thank you for having me.
You don't love interviews, do you?
I was never really one of the front people.
So, you know, luckily, President Trump was willing to communicate with the American people all the time.
And so he allowed me to stay in the background and just try to get things done for him.
I won't talk publicly too much about it, but I did, the day it was announced that you and Ivanka were going to go to the White House, I did send you a note, and I warned how intense it would become in an effort to destroy your father-in-law, and they want as much collateral damage as possible.
Could I ever have been any more right when I wish I was wrong?
I'll be honest with you, Sean.
I think you understated it.
I don't even think you understood the depraved level that they would go to to try to disrupt him.
But as I was listening to your intro, I was thinking that two things about the Trump presidency are very, very true that I've seen from watching your show and listening to your radio over the last years, which is, number one, Donald Trump and his administration got more things accomplished during his four years than any presidency in history.
And number two, he was one of the most attacked and maligned and falsely investigated presidents in history, too.
And so one of the reasons I felt that it was so important to write the book was really to show people what it was like to be next to President Trump and in the White House as true outsiders, you know, people who were formerly businessmen, who were results-oriented, not slaves of Washington, not people who cared about the process, people who just wanted to get things done and what it was like to do it, all the things that were accomplished, how they were accomplished, and what they were accomplished despite the efforts from the opposition to try to do.
So that's really what I tried to do in the book is take people inside the White House next to Donald Trump, show people how his personality, how his approach, which was very different than any politician, which is part of what drove the media and his opponents so crazy, but how that led him to accomplish things that no other politicians could accomplish.
And you mentioned a lot of them before, like peace in the Middle East, trade deals that brought jobs back to America, energy independence, gas prices were $2, whereas now they're double.
The list goes on and on and on.
Record low unemployment.
In 2019, before the pandemic, the wealth gap in this country was shrinking.
The people in the working class were getting the biggest pay raises.
Inflation was non-existent.
And so it really was a very, very consequential and successful presidency.
But then again, I'd watch your show at night and I would see how they were accusing us of treason and of collaborating with the Russians on the campaign.
And we all know it was untrue, but it took us two years for them to look through everything.
They spent $35 million only to find out that what we were saying from the very beginning, which is Donald Trump ran a great campaign and he was representing the American people.
That was the only truth.
But they wanted nothing to do with that.
And this book really takes you inside of how those two things worked in concert together.
You make a great point, and that is that he accomplished all of these things under never-ending, as he would call it, and I agree with it, witch hunt.
I spent three years debunking the Trump-Russia collusion lie.
And I did it with a very small cast, ensemble cast.
And the rest of the media were all wrong.
Every Democrat was wrong.
We got it right.
We were vindicated by the Horowitz report and by every other bit of evidence and information that has come out since.
You said something with Levin last night that really struck me, that the president drives his enemies so crazy, they always over-pursue him.
You know, looking at that line through the prism of what happened at Mar-a-Lago, what are your thoughts?
Well, I think that's exactly it, right?
So they've been promising you that if Donald Trump was elected, we would have World War III and the economy would crash.
Well, Donald Trump gets elected, and all these experts who promise you that have been very surprised that he made six-piece deals.
There was no war.
Russia was under control.
China was under control.
We were making trade deals.
The world was peaceful.
Then President Trump, he would put tariffs on.
He used them to fight for American industry in a way that American industry had never been fought for before.
And whereas the previous President Obama had said that we needed a magic wand to bring our manufacturing jobs back, President Trump cut a historic trade deal with Mexico, Canada, with China, with South Korea, with Japan, bringing our auto manufacturing back.
I write about this in the book, how he made those deals, how he outsmarted other leaders and outmaneuvered and built really strong friendships where they respected him, but they also feared him and they feared his unpredictability.
And the economy was booming.
And then they accused him of colluding with Russia.
And I thought that was crazy because I was on the campaign from the very beginning.
And I joked with friends that on most days I couldn't even collude with him.
We couldn't collude with our field staff in Iowa.
And we pulled off the victory there.
And that was really incredible, the job that President Trump did.
And then they attacked him again by wanting to investigate corruption in Ukraine.
They tried to impeach him.
And I write about how we fought that off as well.
And every time they would fight President Trump, they just made him stronger.
And they've been promising for six years that Trump was this terrible person.
And now they're looking at basically parking tickets and saying, can we find anything on this guy, whether it's the Attorney General in New York looking at valuations?
It's one of the most asinine things to be investigating over when you have rampant crime in New York.
And then you have a situation with the FBI where they're raiding the home of the leading political opponent.
I said this on Levin last night, but Bukeley, who runs El Salvador, said that if he would raid the home of his political opponent domestically, the U.S. government and the media would go crazy and call him a tyrant and a dictator.
And what they're doing in this country is very much lessening the faith that Americans have in the justice system and fairness.
And one of the issues that I thought of, which I got a lot of conservative support and you were a great supporter of, and President Trump was the champion of this, was really bringing more fairness to our criminal justice system because there are opportunities where overzealous prosecutors who are left unchecked try to pursue aims that are motivated by politics or by personal ambition.
And unfortunately, what we have here is a system that is totally, completely out of control.
And anyone who says that these are conspiracy theories, you don't have to look much further than to look at what they did by spying on the campaign in 2016.
They then denied that Trump was a legitimate president for two years.
And then in addition to that, it's all been exposed through the Horowitz report and through the Mueller report that they basically tried to entrap people.
They were spying on American citizens.
The FBI was falsifying affidavits to get warrants, all in the attempt to get Trump.
And, you know, that's been their whole motto, which is we have to get Trump because he's so bad.
I'm still trying to figure out why he's so bad.
He brought peace in the world and he had a booming economy.
But because they deem him so bad, they're willing to break every rule and every convention in order to get him.
And, you know, unfortunately, or I guess fortunately, it always backspires on them because every time they go too far, they just remind people that they want to get him because he is a threat to their power.
You know, I see Trump not as a right or a left.
I always saw him as an outsider, you know, taking on the establishment in Washington, the career political class, and saying, I know who's electing me and I am going to deliver for them.
And I'm not going to come in and become part of that crew.
And it drove them crazy.
And so they saw him and still see him as an existential threat to their grip on power.
And that's why they've been trying to get him so badly.
But every time they try to raid his home or they try to do another subpoena, they just remind his supporters and other people who may be on the fence that this is the only guy who's willing to stand up to this corrupt, deep state in Washington.
And that's why people rally around him with the strength that they have.
All these hostile actors in the world seem to fear your father-in-law.
He told me the story on air about the Taliban, and he said, before we ever talk about any type of withdrawal, I want you to know without any certainty so that we have no ambiguity, I will blow you to smithereens if you dare kill another American.
And that basically was his foreign policy, peace through real strength.
100%.
And that's what he did over and over.
And again, the New York Times and others, they don't want you to read my book because my book tells the truth.
It takes people inside of what actually happened inside Trump's interactions with all these world leaders, with Vladimir Putin, with President Xi, with Bibi Netanyahu, and how Trump worked with everybody in order to create outcomes that the media predicted would be the opposite.
And if you remember the world that President Trump inherited when he became president in 2016, ISIS had a caliphate the size of Ohio.
They were killing journalists, killing Christians.
They were running rampant.
Syria was in a civil war.
500,000 people were killed, civilians.
You had Libya and Yemen were destabilized.
And President Trump came in and he re-established alliances with Israel, with the leaders in the Gulf and the Arab world, with Egypt, with President El-Sisi.
And he basically said, okay, everyone, let's get on the same page.
And at the time, we had a real threat at home with radical Islamic extremism.
We had the Pulse nightclub shooting.
We had the shooting in San Bernardino where people who were radicalized online.
But President Trump didn't run from the problem.
He went to Saudi Arabia.
He got all the leaders of the Muslim countries together.
And he spake with the king.
And we said, look, we are going to get these Islamic radicalists out of our mosques, out of our home, and off this planet.
And we put together a big effort that really got everyone aligned, had a pushback against Iran.
He moved the embassy to Jerusalem.
He got out of the Bad Iran deal.
And ultimately, he made six peace deals in the Middle East by getting Israel and the Muslims to come together with China.
Everyone thought that China in 2016 was the great champion of global free trade and environmentalism.
But President Trump took it on and said, you are stealing jobs from Americans.
You are playing unfairly.
You are not playing by the rules.
And everyone said that if he put tariffs on China, the whole economy would explode.
And you know what?
He did it?
Because he said, I promise to do it and it's the right thing to do.
And the next morning, the sun rose, and the next evening, the sun set, and the world moved on.
And Trump really outplayed these guys in order to get great deals for America and to create a more even playing field so that the American business sector, which is the greatest in the world, has the ability to compete fairly and create jobs.
And that's why wages were rising and our economy was doing gangbusters thanks to President Trump's efforts.
So those are the stories that I tell.
I really try to go in depth into how he did it, how he, you know, people say he's erratic.
I think that his decision-making ability was very measured.
He was able to really calibrate, build relationships, surrounded himself with a lot of people.
They didn't always agree with each other.
Again, he had hawks, he had doves, he had free traders, he had protectionists.
But ultimately, he was the decider who made these decisions.
And the way that he did it was very, very beneficial to America and to the American workers.
Quick break more with Jared Kushner on the other side, Breaking History, a White House memoir.
If you want a signed copy, it's jaredcushnerbooks.com from our friends at Premier.
Sean gets the answers no one else does.
America deserves to know the truth about Congress.
All right, 25 now till the top of the hour, 800-941-Sean, our number.
You want to be a part of the program?
All right, let's get to our busy phones.
We start in Alabama.
Maria is up first.
Maria, happy Monday.
Glad you called.
Thanks for checking in.
Just a quick comment: I have a concern that if the November midterm elections go the way I would like them to go, I'm afraid that we'll see again the protests like we saw in Portland, in Minneapolis, and around the country, where those people were not arrested, punished, nor received any kind of prison sentence for what they did.
I know someone who knows someone who was at the January 6th get-together, because I refuse to call it a riot, and said it wasn't anything like it was portrayed.
Well, look, the video showed what the video showed in the summer of 2020 and on January 6th.
We have to protect our institutions.
We can't allow criminals to take over city blocks.
We can't watch and do nothing as cops are being pelted with bricks, rocks, bottles, Molotov cocktails, and worse.
We can't watch as people loot and arson.
We can't watch people break down barriers and race into the Capitol and put elected officials in danger either.
We believe as conservatives in law and order.
And the problem is, we see a disintegration of law and order and safety and security because it's Democrats that resist it.
They don't want it.
They want to defund it.
They want to dismantle it.
They're the ones pushing no bail laws.
There were numerous opportunities.
Every person in the room on January 4th is on record in the Oval Office, five people saying that the president authorized the use of the National Guard, knowing that there were a big number of people coming to Washington, D.C. on the 6th.
Why did Muriel Bowser in writing reject that?
Why didn't the committee ask Nancy Pelosi why she didn't call up the guard?
Why didn't they listen to the D.C. police chief?
So look, violence in that sense is wrong.
There's only one way to bring about change.
One side politically is going to win over the other side.
Either this country is going to change course or it's going to double down on stupid, which is the climate alarmist cult and the no-bail laws and open borders, et cetera, et cetera.
So, you know, it's a matter of I would rather successfully persuade people, motivate people to get out there and take November seriously.
Look, Newt Gingrich put a really good perspective on all of this in his newsletter, Newt 360.
And he calls it the silly season.
And he talks about the propaganda media, the media mob, you know, all trying to convince themselves that there is a dramatic turn of events that have altered and shifted the conditions on the ground this election season.
It's way too early to tell.
However, I do want in everybody's mind, I've got to balance it.
I'm never pollyannish about elections.
I don't tell you something that I don't know is going to happen.
I always use the admonition, always believe you're six points behind.
Use a football analogy.
You got two minutes left.
You have no timeouts.
You're on your own 20.
You got to march down the field 80 yards, cross the plane, and kick the extra point to win.
If we fight every race with that mindset, that mentality that we're down and we got to work harder, I think you win a lot more races with that mindset.
Grant is in Louisiana.
Grant, how are you?
Glad you called.
Happy Monday to you.
Hey, happy Monday.
Thanks for taking my call.
I had a question about the GOP as a big tent party and if we should be a little bit slower and more thoughtful before labeling people rhinos.
I'm speaking specifically to Dan Crenshaw, Nancy Mason, Tim Scott recently, not Liz Cheney or Adam Kissinger.
I'm trying to understand what your point is.
So you want a Republican Party that is less conservative.
You want a Republican Party that's sort of a watered-down version of the Democratic Party?
Because my definition of a rhino is somebody that is a watered-down version of a Democrat.
They just want it more incrementally, maybe a little slower.
My definition of a conservative is somebody that believes in liberty, freedom, capitalism, our Constitution, lower taxes, less government bureaucracy, law and order, school choice, secure borders, energy independence.
And you want me to keep going?
Sure.
No, I agree with you completely.
What I'm saying is Dan Crenshaw supports the war in Ukraine, and all of a sudden he's being called IPatch McCain.
I think that's a little bit dangerous for the party when we have reliable conservatives who are very conservative, who then become labeled rhinos.
Look, I've noticed that there's been a little back and forth between Crenshaw and others.
You're always going to have a little bit of intramural fighting.
I don't even think it's unhealthy, to be honest.
You don't agree.
Are you married?
Do you have a girlfriend or somebody significant in your life?
Yeah, I have a girlfriend.
Okay.
Do you agree on everything?
No.
Exactly.
You still like each other?
Yes.
Reagan famously said, if you're 80% in agreement with somebody, you're not my enemy.
You got to find these areas that we all agree.
Do you agree we should have secure borders?
Yes, right?
100%.
Do you agree in energy independence?
100%.
Do you agree that we should have law and order in America and we should enforce the laws of the land and refund the police?
100%.
Do you agree that moral values are better taught at home and schools need to teach reading, writing, math, science, history, and computers?
Yes.
Okay.
So we agree on most things.
Why are we talking about things that don't matter?
For sure.
I'm just, I get worried about these narrow single issues that get people labeled things that they probably shouldn't be labeled.
Listen, single-issue people always box themselves in into ideas that eventually it's like, okay, we got your point.
What else do you believe in?
Look, I'm not a conservative just because I like the word conservative.
It's the principles, it's the values, and it's the track record of success that makes me a conservative.
It worked for Reagan.
It worked for Trump.
It worked for Newt.
And if we apply those same policies, principles again, it'll work for us again.
That's all I want, a free, prosperous America with limited government, greater freedom, and more prosperity.
I want America to be the most dominant energy country on the face of the earth.
I want America to be the most, have the single biggest kick-ass military on the face of the earth so nobody would ever dare mess with us.
I want America to be a country of law and order.
Just simple, basic things.
It's not hard to be a conservative.
And there are a lot of Republicans that I think are weak and they compromise their principles and they think, all right, we'll split the baby.
You know, instead of agreeing on your $5 trillion spending program, we'll do $2.5 trillion.
Well, at that point, you've already abandoned your conservative principles.
So if you're called a rhino, it's probably appropriate.
Make sense?
Yes.
I don't mind helping Zelensky.
I don't mind helping Zelensky and Ukraine fight a war against Putin that they're going to win.
The problem is, once Joe Biden denied the MiGs that Poland offered, I knew right then and there that it was a futile effort and it was going to become a quagmire.
And here we are six months later, and they're at a standstill.
And the reason is, is Western Europe, I blame them more than us, and the United States did not give Zelensky the weaponry to demolish Vladimir Putin.
If you're going to fight a war, fight to win it.
Don't fight it half-assed.
That's why we were in Afghanistan 20 years.
We ought to learn from our past mistakes.
All right, let's head back to our busy phones.
Renee is in North Carolina, beautiful North Carolina.
How are you, Renee?
Glad you called.
I'm fine.
Thanks for all that you've done through the years, John.
Thank you for letting me do it.
Yes.
There's several things that I wanted to bring up that's really on my heart here.
And that is, I think we all need to be focused on the bigger picture and have clarity about that.
Because right now, the only thing stopping the Democrats is the Republicans.
I mean, I know there's problems with them, but that's all we have to work with.
And our ship is on the verge of sinking.
So our vision, I believe, should right now be on focusing on saving America.
We won't have anything to work with if we don't.
And just a couple other things I wanted to say.
This is probably, I'm not predicting anything, this is probably going to get worse before November because these people, Democrats, are fighting with a vengeance.
They're going to want to keep this power.
They've been shining the spotlight on everyone else so we don't see their vices and accusing others of their vices.
I mean, I pretty much see this country as a country that was founded by God through our founders.
And this party that's there now, that's in the majority, pretty much to me, I see an anti-God, anti-constitution, and devoid of wisdom party in the true sense of the words.
So back to that.
I believe our focus should be on keeping this ship from sinking.
It's not about politics anymore.
Bottom line, I think.
Well, you can call it, it really is a political, it's a political fight.
I mean, it's not a physical fight.
It's a political ideological fight.
And it's a fight for the heart and soul of America.
And I think at its foundation, if you really want to be blunt, it's about liberty and it's about freedom.
Yeah, I think it's a war against God and against everything we hold dear.
That's what I think is going on.
There certainly is, if you look throughout history, you know, in any authoritarian regime, there is this attempt to make the state the God, right?
It's it's we we are our country's predicated on just the opposite principle, that rights are natural rights.
They're given from God, that were endowed by our creator.
And the only way, if you believe that fundamentally, and I believe Americans do overwhelmingly, then you believe that every person born was given gifts from God and that in a free society, they're free to pursue the gifts, the talents that God gave them.
And while pursuing the gifts and talents God gave them, they're not only enriching themselves, providing goods and services to others, but they're advancing society as well.
I mean, if you look at America's contribution to advancing the entire world technologically, I mean, our gifts are, they're just too exhaustive to even begin thinking about.
And it's only because of the cause of freedom.
Whenever you see statism or socialism, I call, in my book, Live Free or Die, I talked about socialism's history of failure.
Whatever name it is given, whatever manifestation it takes on, it's still the same.
The state promises to take away all of your fear.
They will provide everything for you.
It'll be collectivism.
We put everything in a big pot.
We distribute it, quote, equally.
So it is, quote, fair.
And it always ends up the same way.
And that is, every promise is unfulfilled.
You end up with more poverty.
And then you have to decipher how much of your freedom you gave up in the name of false security.
That is authoritarianism.
That is socialism, Marxism, communism, whatever ism you want to call it.
What has made America great are its people and the belief that our rights do come from God, not from government and not from elected officials.
So you're correct.
And I think fundamentally that's what this next election is really all about, although I don't think most people will think that deeply about it as they go into the voting booth.
But when you're on the verge of going over Niagara Falls, there's just one other thing I'd like to mention.
You're familiar, I know, with Dietrich Bonhoeffer.
Yep.
Yes, okay.
He fought the Nazis every way he could before his life was taken.
But I recall reading sometime back, I went to seminary, this was some time back, that he said that most of the time, I'm not saying this is an exact replica of what's happening in our country, but the people on your call will get the drift.
Most of the time, we are not voting between good and bad.
We are voting between bad and worse.
So whatever the people are listening to your radio call, however they view this, that's what I'm talking about, keeping the bigger perspective.
There are going to be elections, and I'm going to have to run, but there will be choices sometimes.
You're talking about the lesser of two evils.
That is always a factor sometimes.
And did I love John McCain?
Was he my top presidential choice?
Absolutely not.
Same with Mitt Romney, although I liked him better than McCain at the time.
Little did I know they both go nuts when they lost.
But at the end of the day, Barack Obama was not the right guy to be president.
And we were the ones that vetted him the hardest when nobody else dared do it.
Anyway, I appreciate the call.
God bless you and check in with us often.
Renee, we appreciate you being with us.
800-941-Sean, if you want to be a part of the program, Ari Fleischer is coming up at the top of the hour.
▲
Export Selection