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Aug. 31, 2022 - Sean Hannity Show
31:22
Remembering Gorbachev - August 31st, Hour 2
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This is an iHeart podcast.
1-800-941-Sean, that's 1-800-941-7326.
Your boy Joe Pagson for Sean Hannity today on radio.
He's going to be back tonight on television.
Make sure you make plans to go and check Sean out tonight.
I always appreciate his support.
It's an honor to key this microphone.
Thank you to him and to Linda and Jason and Katie, everybody involved trusting me with the program.
Again, catch Sean tonight at his usual time on Fox News channel, 1-800-941-Sean, 1-800-941-7326.
This hour, it's going to be Paul Manafort at the bottom.
I interviewed Paul Manafort a couple of weeks ago, the former campaign manager for Donald Trump and also, you know, a former lobbyist over in Ukraine.
And we barely had time to even touch the surface of Ukraine because he's got such an interesting backstory about being the target of the DOJ and the far left in this country.
I mean, think about it.
What they went after him for was what we know Hunter Biden was doing in Ukraine, China, Kazakhstan, Russia, and probably other places we don't know about.
And Hunter Biden's riding around on Air Force One going on vacation with dad.
So Manafort's got an incredible story, and he's got a book out that we're going to talk a lot about as well.
But we get in-depth about Ukraine because between you and me, don't tell anybody.
I know I'm supposed to be like literally in love with Zelensky.
I'm not.
And I want to know why billions and billions of dollars, every day there's another announcement about billions of dollars going to Ukraine.
And is it really a tug of war that Russia wants Ukraine to be more like them?
Western Europe wants Ukraine to be more like them.
Is it about minerals?
Is it about, because historically, Ukraine wasn't Russian?
Yes, it was.
Kyiv used to be the capital, right?
Right.
But historically, back centuries before that, everybody wanted a piece of Ukraine.
So I ask Manafort directly why.
Why do we care?
Why do we give a, you know what, about Ukraine so much?
And why is it that we're sending five times what we could have spent to finish the wall on the southern border over to a guy that we have no idea what he's doing with the money?
Why is that?
And also, interestingly, we go here.
Why is it that Russia couldn't do a blitzkrieg and just overrun Ukraine?
Now, I know that it sounds a little bit geeky, history-wise.
I get it.
But at the same time, don't you want to know why your grandchildren and great-grandchildren will be paying back a debt that we're accruing to help out Ukraine when we don't even know if it's helping?
So we're going to have that conversation with Paul Manafort coming up.
Linda, you're not as old as I am.
You're young and spry.
Do you remember the Reagan Gorbachev talks in Iceland?
I mean, I don't remember them, but I've seen the videos of them, sure.
Yeah, I mean, I'm going to read you a story, just a bit of it.
And yes, I'm going to go.
I'm going to use CNN because this tells you how non-journalistic the people at CNN are.
The headline from CNN with Mikhail Gorbachev dying yesterday is Mikhail Gorbachev, former Soviet president who took down the Iron Curtain, dies.
Now, I might be on crack, and I haven't had a drug test in a while, but Mikhail Gorbachev didn't take down the Iron Curtain.
We crumbled the Iron Curtain and the Berlin Wall because of the strength and the nationalism, the belief in America that we got from one Ronald Reagan.
Suzanne Cullenane and Laura Smith Spark, because it took two people to write this thing over at CNN write this.
Mikhail Gorbachev, the last leader of the former Soviet Union from 1985 until 1991, has died at the age of 91.
Gorbachev died after a long illness.
Russian state news agencies reported.
Mikhail Sergey Sergeovich, I'm not sure, Gorbachev died this evening after a severe and prolonged illness.
The Central Clinical Hospital said, according to RIA Novosti, Tuesday, some would say yesterday.
The man credited with introducing key political and economic reforms to the USSR and helping to end the Cold War had been in failing health for some time.
I don't need the crack test.
Maybe we should drug test these so-called journalists.
Mikhail Gorbachev didn't want to end the Iron Curtain.
He wanted to be the next Khrushchev.
He wanted to be the next Brezhnev.
He was the predecessor to Putin.
He didn't want to take down the Iron Curtain.
He had to because of our strength.
Because Ronald Reagan said, you know what's interesting?
And Linda, you've seen the videos.
You probably have seen them walk in and walk out Reykjavik in Iceland where they're laughing and Reagan's like patting him on the back.
You know what that reminded me of?
What?
When Trump went to North Korea, because you had little Rocket Man who was a foot shorter than Trump looking at him like it was daddy and he wanted daddy's approval and Trump was basically patting him on the head.
This is what strength of Lee.
Do you see the comparison?
Does that make sense or am I out of my mind here?
No, I mean, listen, when you look at what is happening right now, it is undeniable that people are laughing at Joe Biden.
You know, when you look at how he is looking for guidance at every turn, I mean, even if it's the Easter bunny.
And I wish I was kidding, but I'm not.
And what Reagan was able to do with Gorbachev, what Trump was able to do with all of the world leaders, I mean, I think one of the most memorable parts of Trump in the G7 and standing there, you know, among all of these, you know, super, super liberal leaders from all over the world, he is so pronounced.
He makes his way to the front of the crowd.
He's not waiting for anybody.
He pushed them out of the way, jokingly.
100%.
Jokingly.
Right.
And it's just, it really is such a stark contrast to what we have now with Joe Biden, who at the end of the day, I mean, I don't think that a lot of people actually do.
I think you make a really good point.
We have a lot of farmers and ranchers that listen to the show.
And one of the things that we've been talking about for the past two years is the increase in costs on fertilizer.
And I don't think a lot of people understand that potash is a huge part of what we get in our fertilizer, that the majority of our fertilizer comes from China, and that Russia is very interested in the potash, which is located in Ukraine, and that Belarus is providing the path to get it out of Ukraine.
So some people can say it's money laundering.
Some people can say that it's the Bidens doing their money washing.
That's fine.
But I think there's another part of it that has a lot more to do with international trade and costs of agriculture, naturalization of the fertilizer coming from China and who's getting what out of who, right?
So Ukraine's like the middleman inside of Russia and Belarus and nobody's talking about it.
And the casualties that we're seeing on the ground, that's a very real thing.
So to say that you don't like Zelensky and you don't like Putin, you know, they're not mutually exclusive.
You can do that and still care for the people and the children that are suffering because they certainly don't care.
It's such a good point.
It's a great point, in fact.
Again, I'm older, so I remember this very, very specifically.
I was 10 when Jimmy Carter won his election in 76.
I lived through four years of Carter.
Probably is why I do what I do for a living now, because I had to have a voice and ask why this is happening, what I thought was the greatest land on earth.
Ronald Reagan won, not because he was an actor, not because he was tall and good looking, although those didn't hurt.
He won because he said, yeah, I love America.
I'm not afraid to say it.
And he actually said, I want to make America great.
By the way, Bill Clinton said, make America great again.
I guess it wasn't racist then.
But Ronald Reagan said, I want to make America great.
And he said things like, the last thing you want to hear when you're in trouble is I'm from the government.
I'm here to help.
When you're that guy and you believe in limited government, low regulations, lower taxes, he slashed taxes, brought jobs back, and you can actually make people proud of the country again.
That's what Trump did.
Now, Trump isn't Reagan.
They're very, very different people.
Reagan was a much better diplomatic politician in that he knew how to smile, shake a hand, tell a joke, while he also said, right, but we've got Star Wars or we'll knock your missile out of the air.
You still want to mess around?
So, I mean, he was that guy, whereas Trump would say, I'll kill Rocketman.
You know, don't even try it.
So they're very different styles.
But without a doubt, the one thing that you take away is the sense of nationalism and the stance of prominence and standing when it comes to what America's role is supposed to be, first here at home and then globally, that we really are the beacon.
Interestingly, Gorbachev did not want the Iron Curtain to go away.
He might have not wanted the Cold War.
I don't think anybody really wanted the fact that we could blow each other off the map anytime we wanted.
I think that I think anybody who's got a brain who enjoyed life didn't want that.
But he wasn't somebody who wanted to break up the Soviet Union.
That got broken up because we starved them economically and we militarily scared them and they were afraid of Reagan.
And then, of course, George Herbert Walker Bush was in office when the Berlin Wall came down, but that happened because Reagan said, tear down this wall.
He was unafraid.
You would never have Joe Biden say that.
Joe Biden, in a speech in the last two years, said, China isn't bad.
China's our friend.
China's good.
Hey, they're good people, man.
So, I mean, it's such a stark contrast.
But when you see somebody in what is supposed to be the journalistic media reporting that Gorbachev is the reason why the Iron Curtain came down, and there's no mention of Ronald Reagan in the first four paragraphs that I can see.
I mean, they mention him, I think, five or six paragraphs in, as if he was just at the meeting by chance.
And he wasn't.
He literally brought the world more freedom, more economic choices.
And countries that hadn't been their own country for generations were able to have their own cultures again, their own histories again, their own ethnicities again, their own languages again, for God's sakes.
And to somehow say Gorbachev is the reason, Gorbachev didn't want any of that.
He had to do it or else it was the literal end economically to the Soviet Union, and it was going to be the literal end to any stance on the planet that Russia had.
So it's so horribly misreported, and I hate that.
Lyd, I know you and Sean talk about this all the time, that the media is not the media.
He says journalism is dead.
I think it is for the most part, although I can name probably four or five that are still very good.
But I mean, that's when you see that from CNN and you hear all this crap about how they're coming back and they're getting rid of all the dead weight and they're going to put real journalists back.
How do you write that story?
I don't think they do.
I honestly think that we're really far gone here.
And I also think that people have already, I'm no longer interested in talking to people on the other side because I don't really think they're interested in what the other side has to say.
You know, one of the things, like I've always enjoyed confrontation and debate and just having a conversation back and forth.
And I love when somebody says, you know, what do you think about this?
Well, change my mind.
Why do you think that?
What's your, where are you getting your information from, right?
Not a lot anymore.
Not a lot anymore.
And so people are really, there's a lot of, there's a lack of information.
There's an abundance of misinformation.
And then there's a lot of disinformation.
And then there's people who just don't care.
I mean, I have a friend, you know, and he was a co-opener and he was saying the day, he goes, I don't care.
I don't watch it.
I don't want to know anything about it.
He goes, I literally don't.
I can't.
He's like, I want to build my cabinets and go home.
I'm like, okay.
Because you can't.
Well, people are.
They've been beaten numb.
They don't know what to think anymore.
And you're right.
Having a discussion.
You and I probably don't agree on everything.
And I love having discussions with you.
I think that's very, very interesting because the fact is, if you only live in your bubble, you think the bubble is life.
And it's not.
I mean, listen, I will tell you, Jason on our team and I, he and I have had many, many philosophical conversations over the many years we've worked together.
And we don't agree on a whole lot when it comes to politics.
But one thing I'll say to him, and he'll say to me, I'll be like, well, why do you think that?
Well, where is that coming from?
What's your point of view?
And I think that that's important to say that.
What are the facts that support that?
What's your perspective on that?
And that's just inside our own studio.
You know, I don't think that people, I mean, there are literally people who cannot have holiday dinners anymore with the family because they cannot discuss politics at the dinner table.
Not that you want to discuss politics at the dinner table, but I really have an issue with people who are like, well, if you don't like Bill Clinton, then you can't sit at my dinner table.
If you don't like Donald Trump, you can't sit at my dinner table.
I'm like, really?
It makes no sense, but that's how polarized it is.
I mean, you have an American flag out, and now it means that you're a right-wing lunatic.
Isn't that crazy?
And that's really, I mean, there's a percentage of the population, a pretty hefty percentage, that believe that.
What bothers me the most is that, sadly, some people that didn't live through the peace talks in Iceland will read that story and think Gorbachev was a peacemaker.
And it blows my mind.
I'm going to take a phone call or two if I can when we get back.
800-941-Sean, 1-800-941-7326.
It's Joe Paggs in for Sean Hannity.
Stay right here.
Glad to have you.
Paggs in for Hannity.
1-800-941-Sean, 1-800-941-Sean.
He will be back on TV tonight.
So don't miss Hannity tonight on Fox News channel.
Let's go to the website, to the website, to the phone lines while I have a minute here.
And try to get your thoughts on remembering the Gorbachev-Reagan connection and acting like Gorbachev somehow was the peacemaker.
Just makes me crazy.
What's going on, Wade?
Welcome from Oklahoma.
Hi.
Hey, how are you doing, Joe?
Living the dream, man.
Talk to me.
I'm not necessarily going Gorbachev-Reagan, but when Gorbachev and H.W. Bush met in Malta, we were the carrier on station.
Oh, nice.
We were the carrier group on station.
And he came on board and he gave us a speech.
And the attitude from different parts of our cruises, it was palpable.
Everybody was calm.
Everybody was cool.
When we were up in northern Norway and the Russians were coming around there, you know, nervous, when we'd go into the Persian Gulf area, temperaments were different, attitudes and nerves and everything else.
But Bush made it comfortable, made it feel better.
And he even, and this was after the Berlin Wall came down.
Yeah.
And he even presented our captain a chunk of that wall and thanked us for our service.
Were you allowed to celebrate?
I know that there's a certain protocol when you're in the military, when you're on an aircraft carrier, but were you allowed to celebrate?
We were there.
I was standing about 25 feet from President Bush when he gave his speech.
Wow.
Nice.
And they brought in sailors from all the other ships in our carrier group.
It was great.
It was an amazing moment for human rights, for freedom, for liberty.
The people in Germany finally, in East Germany, most people who are around now, probably listening, don't remember East Germany.
They suddenly had a taste of free air for the first time ever.
People that would be killed trying to get over the wall.
I mean, it had to be an amazing.
Wade, thank you for your service, brother.
Had to be an amazing time in America and to be standing that close to him.
I don't recall whether there was a celebration by those who were that close.
I'm guessing probably not, but I understand how he said it was a palpable change of attitude and a palpable change in what we knew the world was going to look like, at least for the near future, which was a big improvement.
All right, Paul Manafort, when we come back, we're going to break down Ukraine.
Why do we care so much about Ukraine?
1-800-941-Sean, 1-800-941-7326.
Joe Pagg's in for Sean.
Great to have you along for the ride.
Thanks a lot for stopping by.
Really glad to have this guy back.
We had him on recently, but I wanted to have him back and also to bring him on the Sean Hannity show, too.
It's Paul Manafort.
Paul, how are you?
Good to see you again.
Good to be with you.
Yes, it is.
You know, it's interesting that we had this big long conversation, and I realized at the end of it, and I just watched the end of it again right before we started doing this, and we just barely touched the surface of Ukraine.
And you spent a lot of time there.
You know exactly what the Biden connections are.
And I want to get, if we can, full-throated into exactly what it is that we're seeing happening in that country that none of us really cared about before very recently.
By the way, get Paul's book.
It's called Political Prisoner.
Persecuted, Prosecuted, But Not Silenced.
And I hope that everybody will go and get this because finally we get to hear your side of things because you were made out to be the bad guy.
So if you don't mind, let's get right into Ukraine.
Why do we care?
Is it because once the Soviet Union or the former Soviet Union wants it to be more Russian and we want it to be more Western?
Or is there a lot more going on there?
Well, there's a lot of geopolitical importance to the country.
You know, Putin believes that Ukraine is a part of Russia, not as a country, but as a part of Greater Russia.
Kiev, as you may know, was the first capital of Russia.
And so he thinks that the greatest injustice done in the last 40 years to the Soviet Union was when Khrushchev gave Ukraine its independence.
Khrushchev was Ukrainian and never thought that Ukraine would ever be a free country.
So it was him looking good to his fellow countrymen without really doing anything to hurt the Soviet Union.
Obviously, that ended up changing when the Soviet Union fell.
And Putin always felt that Ukraine needs to be brought back into the fold.
So there's 44 million people.
It's the breadbasket of Europe.
It's the second biggest country as part of Europe.
And so it does have real importance.
The problem with Ukraine is the corruption.
And it permeates everything there.
We've been trying to change it.
I tried to change it a little bit.
It was not really possible.
So I spent most of my time in Ukraine.
And I was there for about 10 years and elected a couple of parliament, the party ministers, and ultimately the president in 2010.
I spent my time trying to bring Ukraine into Europe.
That's what I was focused on.
And we had to change the economy, economic laws, the legal structure, the regulatory structure, work and the demands and requirements of the EU and the EC.
But we did it.
And the reason Ukraine is becoming part of Europe in an extended way is because of the work that I did there.
So that when they tried to make me the link to Russia, to Putin, I never thought it could have any legs because I was very publicly involved in the biggest thing Putin was opposing in politics in the region, which was getting Ukraine to be part of Europe.
But in the world of Alice in Wonderland, the media just kept repeating their lies.
The Democrats keep making up things about my involvement while I was in solitary confinement with a gang order on me.
And the story was created out of whole cloth.
Well, I want to go down that rabbit hole a little bit if we can, because I've got a little bit of knowledge, which is dangerous for somebody about Ukraine and the history of Ukraine.
I'm not really sure I understand why Russia thinks they have a stake to claim there.
It's Paul Manafort.
Go and get this book right now.
It's called Political Prisoner, Persecuted, Prosecuted, but Not Silenced.
You get to hear his side of all the crap you've heard since 2016 about this man.
He gets it now to give his response and retort.
And I urge you to go and get this book.
So I've looked at the history of Ukraine, and everybody's always wanted it.
I don't care what the empire was.
They all wanted control of that place.
Is it because of the port?
Is it because that's how you got goods to and fro?
People will say Russia doesn't want Ukraine to be part of NATO.
And Joe Biden was dumb enough to say that we're going to look at Ukraine becoming part of NATO.
So Russia gets to just invade their neighbor.
So why is it specifically that Russia thinks they get to stake their claim?
I understand it used to be the capital of the country, but before that, everybody else thought they owned it.
Why is it so important to Russia?
Because it gives them access to the Black Sea, which is very important geopolitically and economically.
Plus, Putin believes that this recreating greater Russia is part of his mandate from God, I guess.
So he's got this vision.
And if we're going to be the free leader of the free world, we can't just let him enslave 44 million people.
And so Trump had it right.
He was giving weapons and he was putting Putin on notice that Ukraine needed to be independent, but he wasn't talking about NATO.
I mean, that was sort of the dividing line.
But NATO doesn't even want Ukraine, right?
Because of the corruption there.
That was never even a discussion.
Why did Biden say that?
Do you know?
How does he say there's zero inflation in July?
That's true.
Yeah, that's true.
I mean, that's the Democrats' problem having to deal with things that come out of his mouth.
But the ugly secret, actually, is even the Europeans are not hot on Ukraine being a part of Europe.
They feel like they have to before it, so they talk to talk.
But Merkel, for example, she dragged her feet because she was basically part of the Putin orbit.
You know, Nord Stream 2, which is the pipeline from Russia to Europe via Germany, that was a Putin payoff to Merkel to be slow in recognizing Ukraine as part of Europe.
And by the way, that pipeline was going to gut Ukraine because it was the sole way in which gas flowed to Europe.
But, you know, that plus the deals that Putin invested in through Deutsche Bank into Germany, they were not anxious to have Ukraine part of them, but they didn't know how to not be responsive to the intention of the Ukrainians to want to be part of Europe.
And Obama basically let the Europeans take the lead.
Right.
Well, under Obama, of course, Crimea was taken back by Putin.
And then Trump comes in.
Putin doesn't do anything.
In fact, he stops the Nord Stream 2 from being built.
He forces the EU to buy resources from us in liquefied natural gas.
And then four days after Biden takes office, they start construction of Nord Stream again.
So, I mean, were they afraid of Trump?
Was he a wild card?
Why did they stop all of their aggression?
And we could add Iran to that and other bad actors around the world, North Korea, that stopped their aggression under Trump too.
Why the difference?
Why did they know they could get away with it under Obama and they knew that they can get away with it now under Biden?
Well, one of the points I add to what you just said is Trump also was giving them weapons that Biden wouldn't give them.
I mean, that Obama wouldn't give them.
And then Biden stopped doing when he became president.
So the team that Biden put into his administration was basically the Obama team in different chairs: Sullivan and Blinken and Newland and Rice.
And Putin understood that these people were weak and that they wouldn't defend America's interest.
And he understood that what he got under Obama was an opportunity to even expand under Biden.
And you're right, Crimea, there was no consequence to him.
Nothing.
He was rolling into Crimea and usurping it.
And then he caused, put turmoil into eastern Ukraine and forced the settling up of temporary autonomous war zones.
And so when Trump became president, Trump put him on notice.
I mean, you know, Trump's whole style of foreign policy, which, you know, was to deal with the people personally, let them understand where he stands.
And of course, the West went crazy about that.
The global Davos types went crazy about that.
Digits attacked him.
But his meetings with Putin, his meetings with Kim Jong-un, they were important meetings to put those countries on note, those leaders on notice.
And coincidentally, nothing happened under Trump's term in either of those hotspots.
Well, if I remember right, that was much like what Reagan did with Gorbachev.
And when you saw those meetings in Iceland, you knew that Reagan was walking in, whether he had the leverage or not, whether he had the upper hand or not, he was going to portray that he did.
And he walked in and he got Gorbachev walking out smiling and almost laughing because Reagan said, We'll just knock your missiles out of the sky.
We don't care.
We've got defenses that you can never touch.
You better not even play the game.
And then saying publicly, tear down the wall.
I mean, that was going from strength, but it was strength face-to-face, eye to eye, behind closed doors, which is what Trump was willing to do as well.
Biden doesn't leave the basement much.
So he's not going to do that.
And I think that he wants to make us look weaker anyway.
It's not really about him being incompetent.
I think he wants us to be weakened to the point that we have to rely on some global authority.
Do you agree with that?
He's trying to make us as weak as possible so that we have to become the globalists that he sees us as being?
But he does not see America's role in the world to lead.
He sees America's role to have a seat at the table and not even a prominent seat, but Lincoln has got the same attitude.
Sullivan's got the same attitude.
And this is his foreign policy team.
And Putin understands this.
I mean, he's a KGB-trained guy.
He understands all of this.
And so when he saw the Obama people moving into the Biden administration, and then he saw that Biden removed the sanctions on Nord Stream 2, and then he sees the debacle in Afghanistan, Putin starts to say, okay, I'm just going to move in.
And so he starts announcing in August that he's going to move into Ukraine, starts moving troops, and he's telling everybody what he's going to do.
And nobody wants to believe it.
But it was apparent.
And he was just waiting for winter because that's when the Russians always start their invasions.
And the good news is that Trump had put enough weapons into Ukraine that the Ukrainians were able to defend themselves in the beginning, anyhow, against what was supposed to be a blitzkrieg invasion by the Russians.
And Putin didn't understand.
I don't think anybody in the West understood something that I did understand.
I've probably done over 100 polls in Ukraine from 2005 to 2014.
I understand the country very well.
And I understood something about Eastern Ukraine.
Ukraine's two countries.
Western Ukraine is more European.
Eastern Ukraine is Russian Orthodox Ukrainians.
And in all of my polls, the Eastern Ukrainian, Ukrainians living in the East, who were of Russian ethnic heritage, wanted to protect their religion, which was an important part, which is Russian Orthodox versus Ukrainian Orthodox.
They wanted to protect their language.
They wanted to protect their culture.
But they also wanted to protect their freedom.
And they understood the difference between freedom in the Ukraine and freedom in Russia.
And there was never a poll of mine.
And I always ask this question of probing, would you like to go back?
Have Ukraine become a part of Europe or part of Prussia.
There's never a poll of mine where more than 5% of the Russian Ukrainians ever said they wanted to go to Russia.
Wow.
See, it's been portrayed to us, Paul, as you know, by the left media that they all want to be part of Russia.
And that's why they're sort of the revolutionary force that wants to make Ukraine part of Russia again, because the ethnic Russians want that.
You're saying they don't.
They don't.
The people don't.
People don't.
And here's the other misnomer.
The businessmen, the oligarchs of Ukraine, they wanted to go to Europe too.
Wow.
And the reason they wanted to go to Europe was very clear if you understood the game.
They were the backwater junior businessmen to Russian oligarchs.
They got no respect.
They were big dogs.
These are billionaire people who were important with dealing with steel, dealing with aluminum, dealing with ore, dealing with agriculture.
And there was a network that they could work with the Europeans on where they'd be respected as businessmen, be able to make money that was legitimate and keep it and be sort of recognized in the West.
So between the Russian, I mean, the Ukrainian oligarchs and the Ukrainian and Russian ethnic people in the East, there was no mandate for Putin, none.
And so when he invaded the fact that Ukraine had the weapons they needed, they were able to do guerrilla-type warfare and push back the blitz cream.
And by the way, they had the weapons they needed because Trump sent them the same weapons that he was illegally impeached over, allegedly not sending because he wanted dirt on Biden.
That whole thing was such BS.
I'm glad that you said a few times they had the weapons and they had it from Trump, whereas Biden and Obama didn't want to send them.
It's Paul Manafort.
Get his book.
It's called Political Prisoner, Persecuted, Prosecuted, but Not Silenced.
I just got an incredible education on Ukraine and we could probably talk about it for three hours.
Unfortunately, I've got about a minute, minute and a half.
And I want to ask you a couple of questions.
Number one, who do you fear the most when it comes to our American way of life?
Is it Russia or is it China?
Who's our worst enemy right now, even if we're not saying it out loud?
Well, I mean, I'm of a different school.
I think Russia is the biggest enemy.
I mean, China, you read Kissinger's book on China and you understand how China's always been sort of protective of their own interests in their region.
And it's their civilization that they're trying to protect.
And there's a case to be made that China under Xi Jinping is looking to get Greater China, which includes Taiwan, into its orbit and including the South China Sea.
But they haven't looked at going into other countries.
Russia has gone into Georgia.
They've gone into Ukraine.
They show tendencies of trying to take over countries, whereas China, it's a different game.
So I think there's a China scare right now, and we should be legitimately watched.
But I think the eminent current danger to freedom is what's going on with Russia.
Now, you could say inside China, there's not freedom.
That's a different issue, different discussion, and what our role in that needs to be.
What I learned from this conversation, Paul, is that we have to do it again very soon.
We just have to keep on having these conversations because there's so much knowledge that you have that the American people unfairly were kept from it.
You were a bad guy.
You got to go to prison.
You got to go to solitary confinement.
He's bad, bad, bad.
He's a foreign agent.
I'm glad that you're out here speaking the truth.
I'm glad that you're giving this knowledge to us because we really need it.
Political prisoners, the name of the book, persecuted, prosecuted, but not silenced.
Get it on Amazon.
Get it anywhere you get fine books.
And Paul, do me a favor.
I promise you'll come back again soon.
Absolutely.
As many times you offer, Joe.
All right, brother.
I appreciate you.
We're back after this at the Sean Hannity Show.
Appreciate you hanging out.
It's the Sean Hannity Show, 1-800-941-Sean, 1-800-941-7326.
Go to Sean Hannity on Twitter.
Go to Hannity.com.
It's Joe Paggs in for Sean.
Glad to have you here.
Another big hour next hour, Tony Gonzalez from Texas, U.S. Representative about the border and more.
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