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Dec. 9, 2022 - Sean Hannity Show
31:44
Rewarding Chaos - December 8th, Hour 1

Sean talks about the Biden Administration's decision to bail out the pension plans across the country.  There's $36 Billion in federal money ready to go to companies who have completely missed properly funding their pension plans... See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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Well, not a good day for Corinne Jean Pierre.
Uh, who was just sparring with uh our own Peter Ducey at the Fox News Channel, didn't go particularly well, and uh she just stormed out of the room.
It's pretty funny.
That Paul returns back home safely to his family.
Just one other topic.
Uh, you've said a few times that you really can't talk about communications between the Biden campaign and Twitter.
Who is telling you that that's off limits?
I I've already had that conversation with you, uh with your colleague, I believe, yesterday.
Uh I've I've already addressed this multiple times this week, so I don't have anything more to add.
Uh again, I've I we've we've we've litigated this uh all week.
Don't have anything to add.
So not I'm going to the back.
I'm going to the back.
I'm going to the back.
Go ahead.
I I'm getting out of here.
I can't take it anymore.
I'm out.
I'm out.
That's it.
I'm done.
I'm finished.
Uh why is that?
Um, anyway, so I want to start with this this issue about um this prisoner exchange.
And if those of you may recall, I've on on a number of occasions said that the U.S. needs to go to bat for Brittany Griner, um, the WMBA player and and get her out of prison.
She was sentenced to nine years in prison in Russia, you know, over a minor marijuana uh law that she broke, which is so far excessive and insane.
That happened today, but that's that's not the issue that is getting my attention the most here.
And I'm very happy she I want to be very clear.
We we've act we wanted this day to come, we wanted her free.
There's no doubt about it, but was the price too high, and now we have an MBC news report that I'll explain to you that the Biden administration may have lied to us today in terms of whether or not they had a choice between a Marine by the name of Paul Whalen that has been in prison in Russia since 2018 and what they had to give up just to get Britney Breiner uh uh griner to be free.
Now, Russia is getting back as part of this deal.
It was a one-for-one exchange.
Now, Russia's getting back one of the world's most notorious arms dealer while they're at war.
Um, and would any anyone be surprised by the way if we see a story one day about, you know, is the is selling U.S. weaponry given to Ukraine or U.S. weaponry confiscated by the Taliban?
Who knows?
So anyway, um the US to get Britney Greiner free.
I'm happy she's free.
I mean that, and I know all about her history, I know her position on the national anthem.
I'll get to that too.
It doesn't matter.
She's an American, she was being used uh politically by Putin.
This was an excessive sentence.
It was ruining her life.
You know, as an athlete, she only has a small window in terms of career opportunity to make money.
But to get her free, this prisoner exchange was with this this arms dealer by the name of Victor Boot.
His nickname is the Merchant of Death.
Now, he's a Russian arms dealer.
He's been serving a 25-year prison sentence in the U.S. on charges of conspiring to kill Americans, acquire and export anti-aircraft missiles, provide material support to a terrorist organization, convicted in 2011, and Boot has maintained his innocence, but Every prisoner pretty much maintains their innocent innocence.
Some some occasionally we convict innocent people, but not in this case.
He became the world's most notorious arms dealer by fueling civil wars around the world.
Boot originally made his name in the 1980s, arming young civil war fighters in Africa, was arrested in a 2008 sting operation in Thailand, led by U.S. drug enforcement agents that were posing as revolutionary armed forces for Columbia.
This was years in the making.
It was an incredible successful operation called Operation Relentless, and was eventually handed over to the U.S. in 2010, convicted in 2011, after a protracted court proceeding.
And anyway, they think he's 55 years old, etc.
He had been held in a U.S. penitentiary uh penitentiar penitentiary.
How do you say the word in uh uh Marion, Illinois in a special unit nicknamed Little Guantanamo because it's so restrictive, Boot was in the inspiration for Nicolas Cage's character in a 2005 movie called Lord Lord of War, which I've never seen.
Um here's where things we we need some answers.
Again, I'm very happy that Brittany Griner is free.
I said it many times that I wanted her to be freed.
I wanted our government to engage.
I understand sometimes in negotiations you give more than you you probably should.
In this particular case, it sounds like the price was too high.
And especially considering what we now know, and that is about Paul Whalen.
He's a 51-year-old resident of Michigan, was arrested was arrested, and he's been in a Russian prison since 2018.
And the question is, why didn't they go after him?
Now, the family of U.S. Marine Paul Whalen, he again, he's been detained now since 2018 on this espionage conviction.
The U.S. believes to be false, has come out in supported the deal to bring Whalen's Russian detainee, uh Brittany Greer home, but in a statement given to CBS and other outlets, uh Paul Whalen's brother, a guy by the name of David Whalen, spoke out in support of the swap.
Um, there's no greater success than for a wrongful detainee to be freed and for them to go home.
The Biden administration made the right decision to bring Miss Griner home and to make the deal possible rather than waiting for one that wasn't going to happen, and Weyland noted that President Joe Biden's administration gave the family a heads up that the Griner deal was being made.
The early warning meant that our family has been able to mentally mentally prepare for what is a public disappointment for us and what is a catastrophe for Paul.
Now, obviously they're being very, very gracious.
Now here's where things go sideways for Joe Biden.
Now, MBC News just put out a report contradicting Joe Biden's claim that Russia offered to free only Britney Griner in exchange for this Russian arms dealer, and that the releasing of the Marine and Iraq war veteran Paul Whalen was never on the table.
And commenting this morning on the fact that Whalen will remain imprisoned in Russia while Griner goes free, Biden said this was not a choice.
Biden said sadly, for illegitimate reasons, Russia has treated Paul's case differently than Britney's, and while we have not yet succeeded in securing Paul's release, we have not given up.
Now here's where MBC News, they're saying it's not true what Biden said.
From MBC News, I read verbatim.
A senior U.S. official told MBC News that the U.S. government had sought to have both Griner and Whalen released as part of the swap with the Kremlin.
But the official said Russia has treated Whalen differently because he's an accused spy, and that the Kremlin gave the Biden White House the choice of either Griner or Whalen or none.
Which then begs the question, why did Biden pick Britney Griner, who's been in prison for just about ten months.
Paul Whalen has been a serving time in the gulag since December of 2018.
And I think a lot of by the way, and if if the choice was there, you know, it's a far more serious charge that that Paul Whalen is facing than what Britney Griner was facing, meaning down the road it would be easier to get Griner, I think, uh in a prisoner exchange here.
But anyway, people are going to wonder why a Marine that served his country in Iraq.
Did Biden pass over Whalen for Griner?
And if he did, why is he lying to us about it?
You know, and you know, then people have brought up the fact that in 2020 in the Arizona Republic, uh, Brittany Griner said that she didn't think the national anthem should ever be played before WMBA games and that she would not be on the floor if it was social media, then you know, mock the sentence that she had received nine years in prison because they didn't like her political position.
That to me shouldn't have any impact.
She's an American that's being held unjustly in Russia, an enemy country, and you want her home.
So, you know, we can be happy for Britney Greiner and her family, and it's something that we stated before that we wished would happen.
But was the price too high?
And why didn't Biden insist if we're gonna give you this this lunatic, you know, this merchant of death, as he's called, if we're gonna give you the merchant to death, we should at least get back our Marine and Britney Griner.
Why didn't he drive a better bargain?
Because this is not the best.
This is not apples for apples here.
You're talking about a minor marijuana infraction versus you know, a guy that is a world-renowned arms dealer that was convicted of trying to kill Americans, among other things, conspiring to kill Americans.
So, you know, the question is, you know, what happens to Paul Whalen now.
And uh anyway, by the way, and Mark Fogel is a teacher, and uh there also are the lives of, you know, Biden I uh is it because Brittany Griner was famous, she was a basketball player.
I mean, should she have gotten nine years in prison for a minor weed out?
No, she shouldn't.
But Paul Whalen needs to be set free too.
And Biden demonstrated to Putin that Russia's hostage diplomacy works.
Because this is about as good a deal as as Putin could ever hope for.
There's no there's no equality in this deal.
And does that mean it's gonna result in more Americans being grabbed by Russian security services if they're on Russian soil?
Now, by the way, I'd recommend no American go to a hostile regime like Russia.
I mean, you know, all these people that do deals with hostile nations, I I want no part of it.
I'm never doing a deal with China in my life.
I'm never doing a deal with Russia in my life.
I'm never doing a deal with most of these Middle Eastern countries of my life or Venezuela or Iran or any of these countries.
And I know a lot of people do them.
You read about it all the time.
I want no part of it.
Now, the Daily Mail had an interesting side note in all of this that the Saudi Crown Prince, the uh his the other merchant of death, if you will, according to Joe Biden, the pariah nation of Saudi Arabia, the murderer of Jamal Khashoggi, according to Biden, MBS led the talks to help Biden free Britney Griner in this prisoner swap.
I don't know if that's true.
Um, but they're claiming that in fact that that's true.
And uh I what role they may or may not have played is is beyond any information that I have about this, but this prisoner swap is getting a lot of play by a lot of different people.
And I think if I'm Paul Whalen and his brother and his family, and you were told one thing by the president, and MBC News is reporting the exact opposite, then you have to ask the question, well, wait a minute, why did you lie to us?
And if you had the choice, why wouldn't you take the person that was there a lot longer that had far more severe charges?
Because it should be on paper at least, easier to get out somebody with a minor weed conviction than somebody that they're they're viewing as a potential spy.
So I don't know, you know, let's see what happens.
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I'm Mary Catherine Hamm.
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We've been in political media for a long time.
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Catch new Episodes of Normally every Tuesday and Thursday on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen.
Hey there, I'm Mary Catherine Hamm.
And I'm Carol Markowitz.
We've been in political media for a long time.
Long enough to know that it's gotten, well, a little insane.
That's why we started normally a podcast for people who are over the hysteria and just want clarity.
We talk about the issues that actually matter to the country without panic, without yelling, and with a healthy dose of humor.
We don't take ourselves too seriously, but we do take the truth seriously.
So if you're into common sense, sanity, and some occasional SAS.
You're our kind of people.
Catch new episodes of Normally every Tuesday and Thursday on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen.
Sean, I'm not nobody saying this is a good deal.
This is the dumbest deal ever.
However, you know, and what Biden should have done is demanded that he get both uh John Well, uh Paul Whalen, whatever his name is, uh, out along with Britney Griner.
That would have been the deal.
At that point, if you're gonna release the merchant of death, that would be the deal if you're gonna do that.
Uh, amazing Democrats, remember back in the day, arms for hostages and and how they felt about it.
Um I'm of the mindset that I want, I don't want our fellow Americans, in this case, now we're talking about Paul Whalen.
I don't want any American held by a hostile regime.
And if you can make a deal that is, you know that is going to get them free, I'm willing to go far.
This is the worst deal imaginable.
Because I would bet if they would have held out, they probably could have gotten the two of them freed.
Just guessing.
I doubt Donald Trump would have gone for this deal.
He would have demanded more.
Uh God only knows what what Putin would demand for freeing Paul Whalen.
I mean, who knows?
It's uh it's got to be so disappointing for him and his family, but the question the family's gonna want to have answered and deserves to have answered, is were they given a choice to Joe Biden lie to them?
Because that's what MBC is claiming.
Not Sean Hannity.
Um I'm going by the MBC report.
Uh you gotta give Republicans some credit when they do something good.
Uh and the House of Representatives now passed their defense funding bill, 858 billion, and in it, they got rid of the vaccine mandate for the military, and it was also approved by the Senate and signed by President Joe Biden.
Uh, that was one of Kevin McCarthy's promises that he would get done.
Uh, I know the battle over leadership continues.
Um, we should be hearing more about that in probably any day now.
That's what I'm being told.
My sources are telling me.
Um, House Republicans also released a plan to restore border security, including finishing the wall and bringing back the stay in Mexico policy that was extraordinarily successful.
If you listen to Mayorcus or you listen to Joe Biden, oh, the border wall is secure, the border's secure.
No, it's not secure.
We're gonna have five million people in two years entering this country illegally because of Joe Biden not enforcing the law and aiding in a betting law breaking.
All right, 25 to the top of the hour.
Um, Republicans, and we have some interest, we need some answers from Biden, not only on the this merchant of death exchange, but um Republicans now are going to have to investigate why did Joe Biden give China a 200 million dollar grant, a Chinese battery company, despite our own intelligence community's repeated warnings that China poses the greatest threat to our national security.
So Joe Biden awards a Chinese battery company 200 million dollars, your dollars.
It's not a loan, it's not an investment, it's a grant.
A grant means there's no strings attached to it.
Washington Free Beacon says top Republicans on the Senate Energy Committee launched an inquiry on Wednesday into why the Biden administration granted a China-based battery company under scrutiny from U.S. financial regulators, and the announcement came in the wake of the free beacon report about the Biden administration's attempt to spin the grant as a boon for America-made clean energy.
Senator Barrasso, the ranking member of the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee, said the Department of Energy's grant uh in this particular case undermines the U.S.'s position in its race against China for technological supremacy.
Why are we funding the Wuhan Virology lab?
Why are we funding a Chinese battery company, giving them grants, giving them our money?
Why are we doing this?
What part of China being an enemy hostile regime does Biden not understand?
This is this is just insanity.
And it even gets worse.
Now we see Biden is going to reward his friends at the Teamsters Union and offer $36 billion of your dollars to bail out the Teamsters Pension Fund.
Why don't we look into what they did with the money that was in the fund and how they lost the money that was in the fund?
Anyway, he announced yesterday that or earlier today spending $36 billion taxpayer dollars to bail out the Teamsters Union's pension plan, which is projected now to run out of money by 2025, the money being doled out to Central State's pension fund, the largest ever federal bailout of any pension plan.
Now you you want to you wonder why unions support Democrats and donate all their money and force rank and file members to you know give over money to Democratic candidates?
This is it.
A $36 billion you know gift to the unions.
I care about people's retirements plan, but if money was given by the rank and file and put away for their retirement, well, how did they squander it?
We're not even gonna ask that question.
Because that's a question that should be answered.
It's unbelievable.
Um, I want you to pay attention.
This may not sound like a big deal to you, but this is a very big deal.
If the threshold is now going, remember, one of the promises Republicans have made is they're gonna defund the 87,000 IRS agents that they want to hire.
And anyway, so but if they in fact working, that's that's more than doubling the number of IRS agents we have in the country.
In other words, uh now is it gonna impact my life?
Probably not, because you're it's probably gonna impact many of your lives.
You're just gonna end up with a Hannity treatment, which is oh, it's Hannity, pull his file, let's audit them every single year, and meanwhile, I have two accounting firms and a law firm go over my taxes because I'm not making a mistake on my taxes.
I'm paying every penny and then some.
I mean, I can't tell you how many conversations I have.
Well, this is really a legitimate deduction.
They may question it, but it's a legitimate deduction.
I'm like, pay it.
Just why do I want to why do I want to deal with these people?
It's not worth it at some point.
Anyway, the current threshold for reporting payments are going from $20,000 to $600.
Now, if you think about that in terms of, you know, Venmo or any of these means that people transfer money.
Do you use Venmo, Linda?
I don't ever use this.
Oh my god, yeah, I love Venmo.
Okay, Venmo, what's the other one?
PayPal is another one.
If you use any of them.
Okay, so now you're gonna have to send a 1099 for every person that you send 600 or more dollars to.
And probably if you don't, then you're gonna have to answer why you didn't.
Like, for example, um, did you get your Christmas bonus yet?
I don't even know.
I would have to check that.
You'd have to check that.
All right.
So I give Christmas bonuses every year, but then also you get a follow-up from my accountant that says uh you have to fill out a 1099, right?
Um, I mean, I've been here a long time.
They have my 1099.
Okay, but every year you get a 1099.
Jason, you you confirm you get a 1099 every year, right?
Yes, I I think maybe it was sent just in case uh any information changed.
It didn't, but I filled it out anyway.
I gotcha.
But I mean, so you know, we have to you have to literally dot every I across every T. Now, that's for 20,000.
Now they're gonna make you do it for 600 bucks.
So for all this talk that they're going after the rich people, the Rich people have the accountants.
The rich people have the lawyers.
The rich people know the laws inside and out.
Now, I'm not I'm trust me, I don't know any of this stuff.
But I'm just telling you, this is insanity.
They're just gonna harass us to death over six hundred dollar financial exchanges.
What if you sell uh a few items in your closet, somebody buys it for six hundred bucks?
Well, you better send them a 1099, or you get a 1099, whatever it happens to be, or you buy something for 600 bucks, yeah.
You better fill out that 1099.
Now get this.
The Biden administration also announced a new proposal that's gonna prevent new or newly renovated federal buildings from being powered by fossil fuels by 2030.
What are they gonna power them with?
Oh, electricity.
Okay, where does electricity come from?
The grid.
What is the grid made of?
That's right, fossil fuels.
That's great.
Have you heard of these ESG accounts?
These it could violate antitrust laws.
You know, now you can put pensions in this uh in these funds that are green, as you call them.
And uh anyway, which I think is a far more riskier investment.
Economists predict already saying this year has been a watershed moment in real estate and not a good one.
The housing market, closely watched industry metric that gauges the outlook of our home sales declined to 33 in November on a hundred-point scale.
That is the lowest level in a decade, save for you know, one of the months during the pandemic.
Anything under 50 means real trouble for the housing industry.
A month earlier, interest rates, get this.
We started the year with interest rates for a 30-year fixed rate mortgage at three at 3%.
We're now over 7%, and we're gonna get another rate hike.
I don't know if it's this week or next week, whenever we get, I guess next week at this point, we'll probably get another rate hike, either a half basis point or three-quarter basis point increase.
That's gonna bring in a 30-year fixed rate mortgage to 8%.
You know, buy a $500,000 house, now you're gonna pay $2,000 more dollars than you would have paid in January of this year.
That's how bad these interest rate hikes are and how they're impacting you, the American consumer.
Who's gonna buy a house now and pay $2,000 more per month and and who's gonna sell a house when you got a 2.7% 30-year fixed rate loan?
Nobody's gonna do it.
It's unbelievable.
Uh, Elon Musk is about to drop his second, you know bit of information, if you will, as it relates to the suppression of the Hunter Biden story.
I don't know what they've got left.
One of the questions that they were asking here, and Elon Musk even said it himself, and Miranda Devine had a good column about this, reporting that, you know, after FBI Russia Gate Hoaxer, former general counsel for the FBI, James Baker, uh, who was working as Twitter's general counsel, he's fired because of Elon Musk this week.
Anyway, he's worried that they may have deep sick some of Twitter's most important files related to the suppression of the Hunter Biden laptop bombshell.
Uh Miranda writes having parachuted into Twitter conveniently five months before the 2020 election as the deputy general counsel and vice president, former top FBI lawyer James Baker played an instrumental role in the censorship of the post Hunter Biden laptop story in October of 2020,
and Baker was involved in the potential suppression of material that Musk ordered released from Twitter's files last Friday to reveal who was involved in killing the New York Post story and preventing the derogatory material about a candidate, Joe Biden, from being disseminated widely, because all of it was true.
The most important data was hidden and may have been deleted, Musk says.
And he's worried about it.
In this interview that he had, he actually talked to Baker before he fired him.
This was a pretty interesting unreported part of the story here, but Musk uh questioned Baker before the firing about the events surrounding the laptop suppression scandal, and he said the lawyer's explanation was unconvincing, his words.
And uh I bet it was unconvincing on a in a in a lot of different ways.
I mean, you think about the FBI's involvement in this, you think about Jane, how did James Baker involved in the Russia collusion hoax Himself.
You know, how did he get this top position at a time heading into the election?
Now think about this.
The FBI had Hunter's laptop.
They had this in December of 2019.
They had 11 months before the 2020 election.
They had all the opportunity, if they wanted it, to look into whether the laptop was authentic.
It turns out it was authentic.
Then the question is why the FBI got involved in the first place, and why the FBI was having meetings, weekly meetings with all these big tech companies, why the FBI was warning all these big tech companies to be on the look lookout for hacked material or leaked operations from foreign actors.
You know, Twitter's former head of site integrity, Yoel Roth, just last week in this case with Eric Schmidt that we've been telling you about.
That's why we keep having Eric Schmidt on the program.
He's the one that testified they absolutely were warning about a hack and leak operation on a weekly basis, and they absolutely mentioned that it might be about Hunter Biden.
Now the FBI had the laptop.
They knew Rudy Giuliani had the laptop.
They knew the likelihood was pretty high that that laptop story was going to leak before the 2020 election.
So in the lead up to the leak, they decided to get ahead of it by getting big tech companies to believe that it's going to be some type of misinformation or propaganda from some, you know, some outside entity or force or enemy or hostile regime.
Anyway, so the FBI asked Facebook, asked Twitter, asked all these big tech companies to be on high alert for a dump of Russian propaganda, likely hacked, et cetera, et cetera.
Mark Zuckerberg even told uh Joe Rogan at the time about the FBI warning them to be on high alert for a dump of Russia propaganda.
And so if you have Twitter admitting that they were talking about propaganda involving Hunter, well, they knew that the Hunter Biden laptop story was likely to come out.
So now it fits perfectly.
Now we understand.
And the FBI agent who organized these weekly meetings with the big tech companies, this guy Elvis Kahn, I think is how you pronounce his name.
Anyway, his postgraduate thesis claimed that Russia interfered with the 2016 election to help former President Donald Trump.
Okay, he should have gotten an F on his thesis because he's wrong.
Anyway, he's the one that organized the weekly meetings with big tech companies.
And conveniently, when questioned by the solicitor general in Missouri under oath, he couldn't remember ever bringing up the name Hunter Biden.
But on the other hand, also questioned under oath Twitter's former head of site integrity, Yo Roth said, yeah, they brought up uh Hunter Biden's name a lot.
Unbelievable.
Why'd the FBI get involved in this?
Why did they not?
Because they wanted to put their finger on the scale of the campaign.
It's exactly what they did in 2016.
It didn't work out the way they wanted it.
They they knew the story would be explosive.
So they basically instead of debunking, they pre-bunked the Hunter Biden laptop story.
Preparing all of these big social media companies, this is likely going to be hacked material.
This is likely going to be Russian disinformation.
You're not going to want to publish this.
And sure enough, these companies didn't publish it.
And at Twitter, their general counsel was involved in the Russia collusion hoax to begin with.
The organizer, uh, apparently this guy Khan is friendly with not only Baker, but with the likes of Struck and Page, according to one report that I heard, or one source that I talked to.
So, you know, Elon Musk very bravely is saying, hey, yeah, Twitter was involved as as acting as the arm of the Democratic Party.
They were, you know, and the media mob was completely complicit in lying to the American people by not giving them accurate information.
And he said by shutting down dissenting voices, that is by its very definition election interference.
And yet it all happened.
Can't believe it.
By the way, one other thing that I learned, I went through, you know, all these how yesterday Republicans need to embrace the tactics of ballots uh as it involves campaigns and and we went through, for example, all the different laws in terms of uh what it means to do ballot harvesting let me just point out something that every republican needs to know in nevada adam laxall was outspent by 45 million in wisconsin ron john was outspent by
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