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Dec. 13, 2022 - Sean Hannity Show
32:39
Faith Still Moves Mountains - December 12th, Hour 3
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All right, news roundup, information overload hour.
Toll-free on numbers 800-941 Sean, if you want to be a part of the program, well, still, as people are risking their lives around the globe, not one word of solidarity from your president, Joey.
You know, where is the Mr. Gorbachev Tear Down This Wall moment?
It's never going to happen.
You know, how connected this is to the Biden family syndicate?
How many people I know that get $5 million, no interest forgivable loans the way the Bidens did from China, or $100,000 shopping spree from a Chinese national, or a $1.5 billion deal with the Bank of China 10 days after you flew with Daddy, the vice president, over to Asia, over to China, and you get $1.5 billion deal with the Bank of China.
I think you'd be better off if you're China dealing with Deutsche Bank or Goldman Sachs or any one of the big financial firms in New York or around the country or wherever, anywhere around the world for that matter.
It's kind of sad.
But you have this never-ending ignoring of what's going on in China.
Here's Corrine Jean-Pierre saying the White House has nothing to preview regarding China.
Has the White House communicated to Beijing any possible consequences of its crackdown on protesters?
And also is the White House considering saying something or using existing U.S. government tools to help Chinese citizens get around to internet blocks.
So I don't have anything to preview for you at this time on anything connected to the social media, your first, your second question.
I don't have any calls to preview for you at this time.
Look, we've been very clear that people have a right to peacefully protest without fear.
Oh, okay.
Say nothing, do nothing, ignore it.
See no evil, hear no evil, say no evil.
Okay, Tim Cook.
Now, I didn't know this until my staff did a lot of research on this, that they produce a lot of their products in places like China.
Correct me if I'm wrong, Linda.
I believe we did a segment that Apple also was doing some or having some of their production in Iran of all places, where, by the way, there are ongoing protests all over the country there too, and not a word from Joe Biden.
Just to gently push back on that, not production, but they actually opened a store in Tehran and there was widespread response to that because they felt that it was not in keeping with their standards because of the amount of people that are hurt because of their personal lifestyles and what have you.
And Tim Cook has obviously been very outspoken on that.
And Tim Cook has been asked repeatedly about the China connections with Apple and he gives no response.
Mr. Cook, do you support the Chinese people's right to protest?
Do you have any reaction to the factory workers that were beaten and detained for protesting COVID lockdowns?
Do you regret restricting airdrop access that protesters used to evade surveillance from the Chinese government?
Do you think it's problematic to do business with the Communist Chinese Party when they suppress human rights?
I mean, the silence is deafening.
Is the bottom line really all that important?
Anyway, joining us now is Dr. Weifeng Zong.
He's a senior research fellow at George Mason University, and he's going to help us unpack what's really happening behind the communist curtain in China.
Now, we are getting limited information, although they're trying to censor it as much as possible, but they're not capable of doing all of it, are they?
Thanks for having me, Sean.
I think, yeah, this is a very interesting phenomenon we are seeing in the recent days because despite the strong control on the internet, we are actually getting some, I mean, some information coming out, especially protesters.
Now they are sharing footage of their protesting on Twitter, which is software that's banned in China.
So I think there's some limited amount of information.
The big picture, however, is that the Communist Party under Xi Jinping has increasingly put all the state media under very tight control.
There are some media outlets that used to be a little bit more open-minded, a little bit more liberal in terms of what they say, liberal-minded content, but now they're increasingly towing the party line, unfortunately.
Is the same thing happening as it relates to Hong Kong?
Hong Kong, absolutely.
So Hong Kong used to have pro-democracy outlets, media outlets.
They no longer exist.
And obviously, the Apple Daily is the most prominent example that's being cracked down.
Hong Kong used to have about a third of legislators who were pro-democracy.
Now there's none.
So I think the trend in Hong Kong is pretty much the same as what's happening in mainland China.
Hong Kong used to be relatively freer.
I used to live in Hong Kong in the late 2000s, but it's increasingly getting more and more tightly controlled by the Communist Party after the handover from the British government.
So you can't, I've always said you can't win revolutions with slingshots, but you see every major city inside of China now with mass protesting going on.
Do you believe there's any hope or any opportunity of even liberalization in some ways and less oppression of the Chinese people by President Qi and his regime?
Or do you see more of a crackdown as like the conclusion of this?
I think it depends on how the event is going to unfold in the next few months because early signs seem to suggest that Xi Jinping is backing down from zero COVID because of the people protesting and some even chanted down with Xi Jinping.
So that's sort of a first since he came to power 10 years ago.
But I think it also sends a signal, concerning signal to Xi Jinping himself, being that protests could actually get people what they wanted.
And that might actually encourage more protests later on.
And that would be a reason for more that we should expect more crackdowns from the Communist Party.
So I think the dynamics between the dynamics between protesting and cracking down would be fascinating and also very important to monitor in the next few months.
What is it about China that the U.S. doesn't understand?
They've been building up a massive military presence.
They have been threatening the United States directly.
I talked about a story how China is demanding the U.S. dismantle their nuclear arsenal.
While we know that in China, they've been growing the number of nuclear warheads they have.
What is your reaction to those hostilities and also the threat of, quote, reunification with Taiwan, which we know would be taking over Taiwan?
That's very important you brought up, an important issue you brought up, Sean, because I think Taiwan will be in the forefront of U.S.-China tensions, at least, if not conflict, in the next few years.
Because one thing that American public seem to not understand very well about China is where the legitimacy of the Communist Party comes from.
Because if you think about democracy, people vote, right?
So that's where elected leaders have the legitimacy.
But in a Communist Party like China, in a communist country like China, the party still needs some legitimacy to govern.
And for a long time, that has been about performance.
So growing the economy or even just containing some public health crises.
And neither is working very well in China at this moment, which suggests that overtaking Taiwan might be the next step for President Xi.
And I think it's disappointing to see the United States not signaling a more stronger position with regard to Taiwan in terms of whether we would defend Taiwan should China invade the island because ambiguity, which is the long-held policy for decades, I don't think it's working anymore in terms of whether our policy toward Taiwan will be stronger.
So we had on Governor Chris Dinome from South Dakota, and she's put a ban of first thing employees on downloading TikTok because they believe it is a spying mechanism of the communist Chinese government.
Do you believe that's true?
It's absolutely true.
There's a lot of evidence actually in the open source domain where China is known for leaving a lot of data on the internet unguarded.
And there's some analysis about these kind of available data showing how China is surveilling or collecting information about foreigners around the world, including in the U.S.
So I think it sounds kind of ironic that when former President Trump was trying to crack down on TikTok, people framed that as a conspiracy.
But I think it's true.
People now are coming around to recognize that TikTok is a security problem.
Some people just did not want to realize that or recognize that when to what level do you believe China is spying on Americans?
I think so there are some data that show that some smart devices in the United States, they are collecting information, smart coffee machines, for example, where you just say a word to the machine and then it makes a dark rose coffee for you in the morning.
And sometimes machines like that record conversations at your own home and send that back to China.
And some of the companies or state-affiliated agencies would have those data so that they will analyze the foreign population or the trends overseas.
So there are some examples like that.
And that's why I think it's a good idea for the U.S. government to ban a lot of companies on the entity list with the Commerce Department.
I think that's the right move because the Chinese technique of collecting information is also something overlooked because this is not something we do here in America.
We tend to think that the Chinese don't do that either.
But actually they do.
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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 sass.
You're our kind of people.
Catch new episodes of Normally every Tuesday and Thursday.
On the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you listen.
All right, we continue with Dr. Wei Fang Zong.
He is a senior fellow at George Mason University.
Let me ask you this last question.
Why do you think the communist Chinese are buying up through other entities all of this land around America?
Farmland, ranch land.
Often it's near our military bases.
Now they're looking to get, work with a Canadian company to get minerals from the United States.
I know former Secretary of State Pompeo said that's a really dumb, bad idea.
Why do you think we're, number one, why do you think they're doing it?
And why do you think we're stupid enough to allow it?
Well, the second question is easier, Sean, because we have a free market, right?
So anyone acting on their own.
Why do we have a free market for an enemy state, a hostile regime that has, you know, shown their hostility?
They have no problem with intellectual property theft from the U.S.
They have no problem with unfair trade practices with the U.S.
We know how they oppress the minority Uyghur population in China.
So why would we allow them to buy land here?
Can I go buy land in China?
I doubt it.
Well, it's going to be very hard for you personally, perhaps not.
But I think you pointed out, Sean, a very important issue here.
So Chinese agents, sometimes they are private entities.
It used to be, at least earlier on under the economic reform, that state-owned enterprises are very different from private companies in China.
Private companies in China did not used to have to listen to the Communist Party all the time.
I think this is totally different under Xi Jinping.
But it used to be private companies are freer.
So if you think of Huawei, nobody has any evidence that shows Huawei is owned or directly controlled by the Chinese government.
But everybody knows that it's actually working for the Chinese government.
So the line between state and the private sector is increasingly blurred.
And that's a trend very different from even what it used to be 10 years ago.
Don't you think we ought to demand that land back and say, no, you're not allowed to buy American farmland, American ranch land.
You're not allowed to buy any land in the U.S. Wouldn't that be a good law for the United States to adopt?
But it would be hard because if we say any investments originating from China will be banned, that's effectively cutting off a lot of investment from China, right?
And so where do you join the USA?
So it's more important that we have their money and ignore their human rights abuses and their unfair trade practices and their intellectual property theft.
It's more important that we get their money so we'll turn a blind eye to it.
No, that's not what I meant, Sean.
But I think the key here is the cost and the benefit.
Engaging with China now is increasingly costly, as you rightly pointed out.
There's a forced labor issue and other human rights abuses.
But also, I think we actually don't have the habit or the institution to actually conduct a good cost and benefit analysis in terms of engaging with China.
I think full decoupling with China is too costly.
The romantic engagement with China we used to have is also too costly.
But we need to find somewhere in between.
And it's a very tough challenge for policymakers to actually find out what degree of engagement with China is the optimal one for America.
Oh, that doesn't sound optimal to me that they get to buy land in this country and we don't get reciprocity in their country.
It doesn't sound fair to me that there's no consequences for intellectual property theft.
I have a very good friend of mine that was a victim of this, and it has cost him millions and millions of dollars.
He happens to be an incredible inventor, and he came up with a way to spray the inside of engine blocks at a very high temperature that could withstand the combustion engine, and it's used by all the major manufacturers of automobiles.
And meanwhile, China just came in, copied the technology, stole it, and they don't give him a penny for it.
It's unbelievable.
Anyway, I appreciate you being with us.
Thanks for the update.
Wei Fongzong, thank you so much.
Thank you, Sean, for having me.
800-941-Sean, our number.
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So my friend and colleague, Harris Faulkner, has a number one New York Times bestselling.
You know, you often think about prayer as, here's my wish list.
Can you please give me everything that I want from my life?
Because I think that I know better than, say, the person that created me or knew me before I was born.
And it just kind of just made me laugh in a lot of different ways.
You know, here we are with the holiday season upon us.
And it's a time, I think, for most people.
I know when I take my long vacation, which I start at the end of this week, it's my time to really try and reset myself, recenter myself, and put in perspective the things that you do have, not the things that you always wish that you had, and a certain gratefulness for all the gifts that we all have in life.
Anyway, Harris Faulkner joins us now.
Of course, she has her own show on the Fox News channel as well as Outnumbered.
How are you?
I'm doing well, and you put that so beautifully.
I love that.
I wrote down, I said, Sean recenters this time of the year.
I think a lot of people are into Sean New Year's resolutions and trying to figure out what they're going to change at the beginning of the year.
But they very seldom include what we know truly can change everything, and that's our relationship with the Lord.
And the fact that you recognize that you need time away from the daily responsibilities and expectations for you as a broadcaster, as a dad, as everything.
And you need to take time to recalibrate because you know really what works.
That's something that a lot of people don't think about.
But if we do lean in to our faith this time of the year, and it becomes more than going to church so that we can be part of the festivities and all that, we do give ourselves a chance to tap into this river of powerful prayer all around us and to participate in that ourselves and to really have the ability to see clearly that we can move mountains in our own lives.
I mean, the reason that I titled the book, Faith Don't Moves Mountains, is because it's an alert.
It's an alarm.
It's a Fox News alert to me that tough times call for warriors.
And sometimes we can't wait for them to appear.
And we, as you so beautifully put, Sean, we have to recenter, recalibrate, and become the warriors.
And in this instance, this is our season to be spiritual warriors.
People don't want people of faith to speak up.
They want us to be quiet.
They want us to sit down.
They want us to doubt the miracles.
I call that the devil.
And I don't answer that call with anything other than proof of miracles.
And that is the book that I've written.
It's 19 stories about people praying in the darkest hours, lowest moments, and watching what God can do in their lives, recentering us, reminding us, helping us to renew a spirit that can do some of the same things in our lives.
So when I get to this time of year and I try to drive myself down and get away from the day-to-day hectic life that I live, you know, usually at some point, there are two things that kick in personally.
One is a sense of embarrassment that I don't take enough time to be around the ones I love.
I don't take enough time to reflect on my own life.
And that dovetails into the other one, which is gratefulness, because when I look at my life, I realize that I have so much to be grateful for.
And I think there's a tendency throughout our lives to complain about the things we don't have and not appreciate the things that you do have.
Well, you are absolutely right about that.
And we're all guilty of doing what you say.
And that is leaning out with the urgency of prayer because there's no current storm.
We have to have the discipline and the urgency in our lives to pray with gratitude before the storm.
We pray during the storm because we're doing what you described that my mother always accused six-year-old Lil Harris of doing.
Stop treating God like he's Santa Claus.
Stop asking for stuff.
You know, I see you over there with the list.
I see we grew up with the same parent.
Yeah.
I got the same lecture.
Yeah.
Here's my list.
And then if you don't get everything, you won't, but you're upset about the one thing you didn't get.
Exactly.
Exactly.
And, you know, these days, I guess Santa has to navigate, you know, links that we send him.
And I guess we're sending the Lord links too.
If you could just click on this, it'll take you to Amazon to what I really want.
And we've gotten so malfunctional in the way that we pray that we just stop praying.
And what I say is jump right back into that malfunction and keep going and then push through.
Because what we don't want to do is stop connecting to God.
Because you know what?
The storm's coming.
I don't care who you are.
I mean, Sean, you are a friend.
You're someone that I admire mightily in the industry, but I do know you're human.
And you have your challenges too.
Of course, we all have.
Everybody does.
We have children who've gotten sick.
We've had children who maybe needed us to direct them or we've gotten sick ourselves who's lost parents.
Whatever our situation, whatever our season is in life, we're human.
We're not called to be perfect.
So what happens is all those moments in between, well, I don't really need to pray right now.
I'm so busy.
I'll go to church and I'll pray when they call us to pray, but I won't set aside a special time with the Lord to express my gratitude and to praise him.
And then the storm hits and you're on your knees on your faith, begging the Lord to hear your prayer.
And then after the storm, we get that part too, because we say thank you.
And oh, Lord, you've blessed us.
And then there is what I call the silent season between the storms.
And we have to be building up the power in our lives such that we can thwart the little storms that come our way every day.
Do we even realize the small miracles God is working in our lives such that when the gossip comes and the cruelty comes from others, because you know, people can be cruel with the things that they do, cutting us off in traffic, with all of that.
Every time somebody cuts me off in traffic and it ends up fine, a quick prayer.
Lord, thank you so much.
Thank you, Lord, that I didn't run into somebody that wanted to get out of their car and yell at me because I was like, you're a way better person than I am.
Having grown up in New York, other words come flying out of my mouth a lot faster, but just don't get out of the car.
When you think about, I had this experience over the years with all the military people that I met, for example.
and people that had their legs blown off and their arms blown off and their lives transformed in ways that they never imagined.
And they all did it to sacrifice for other people.
They put themselves in harm's way for other people.
And without exception, Harris, I walk away embarrassed, thinking that I even have problems in life, which gives you understanding.
Now, you said something else, you know, taking a little bit of time every day to stop, pray, reflect, appreciate all that we do have.
And I think that, you know, the more that I do that in my life, the happier I am in my life.
Well, and it's okay to say, God, I have a job interview today.
Lord, I need for you to put the right words in my mouth and to be present.
I got to go on this guy Hannity show.
I don't really want to do it, but I'm doing it.
Oh, no, nobody ever says that.
You know what someone does?
Like today, I prayed before we went on the air, and your team kept checking in.
He's coming, he's coming.
And I'm thinking, no, you don't understand.
This is my time to make sure that when we reach Sean's audience with this message of hope, it sticks.
Because that's what this is all about.
If we're going to make a change for people who desperately need it right now, we're fighting like people are addicted to fighting.
We need to be addicted to something that takes us innovatively closer to where we need to be.
Like we're the blessed nation that everybody wants to break into.
That's such a good point.
We need to act like it.
So I'm going to tell your listeners that when they pick up faith still moves mountains, whether for themselves this Christmas season or is the greatest gift we give each other is faith.
There is a glossy insert of original prayers that can get you started no matter what season you are in life.
It's just a few of them.
And then I put in the scriptural inspiration for each prayer.
There's one on lamenting.
I lost my father Christmas Day 2020.
And I really had a tough time understanding why God would put me in that position.
My divine assignment, Sean, is not to prophesize.
I'm a storyteller.
I'm a witness.
And so that's what I've done in this book.
When Danny met Doug is one of those stories that reminded me of what you said when our military men and women come home and they've been injured mightily.
She was a young woman who couldn't walk.
Doctors had given up on her ability to ever get out of a wheelchair and have a normal life.
She had a lot of health difficulties.
And when Danny met Doug is one of my favorite chapters in the book, it shows that miracles unfold in God's timing, not ours.
And the whole chapter is something that she inspired me by.
Danny Lorian, she's from Michigan.
She and her husband, she leaned in on Ephesians 2, 8 through 9.
For it is by grace you have been saved through faith.
And this is not from yourselves.
It is a gift of God, not by work, so that no one may boast.
She was like that.
They put her in her 20s, Sean, in nursing home hospitality to care and said, look, you know, you're going to be here for a while, probably longer than a lot of the people around you, but we just can't imagine a more supportive environment for somebody who doesn't have a good ending.
Well, you flash forward, not too much time.
She was deep in prayer all the time.
She believed in the Lord.
The Lord brought her, the man of her dreams, named Doug.
He was a medical tech at one of the nursing homes where she had lived.
They met, dated, got married, started going to a church, and through prayer at that church, this is recently in the last couple of years.
It's a story that I had covered.
She stood up one day in church and walked.
Pretty amazing.
Yeah, but it's his timing, though.
Other things had to be in place.
It wasn't going to be enough for the Lord just to plop her into a situation where she still has some medical issues.
She needed somebody around her who would understand that, who would embrace all of her for what she is and what she is not capable of, and then go forth in a faith-based way.
And she walked, and now they're walking through life together.
There are so many miracles around us all the time.
And we need to tell each other our faith testimony so that when the lamenting comes, when you lose a parent or two in a four-year span like I did, you can work with the Lord and say, look, my heart is heavy.
I need for you to work with me to make this right.
Use me.
And I have been.
I have been that tool.
And I certainly, you know me, I'm not perfect.
And so this book is part of this.
You're right up there.
I'm definitely on the lower side of the spectrum in this case.
But, you know, you mentioned, for example, the aftermath of the devastating earthquake in Haiti.
I don't think we've ever discussed this, but I actually went to Haiti not long after that.
And I was with Samaritan's purse.
And we actually did a flyover of the entire country.
And I've never seen such devastation ever.
And that would be an example.
Or if the aftermath after the shooting in Aurora, Colorado, and believers testifying to how God inspired hope, even when everything seems lost in a moment like this.
You know, I love when atheists call this program.
And I don't argue with them on a scriptural basis.
I'll ask them, so let me be clear here.
So you think that we had a big bang and all of these molecules collided.
And I will ask them, where did all that energy come from?
Because you're arguing as an atheist in particular that something can come from nothing, which doesn't make sense to me.
Well, you know, if you've ever had a very sick child, and there's a woman in the book, the chapter is called It Takes a Mom.
Her child had spina bifida, age three.
It was an excruciating experience and a deadly one.
If you've ever had a child who is ill, and I have, and doctors say to you, you know, we're not quite so sure what it's going to take to get that child to be better.
This mom was told in what I write about, you'd have to come up with something on your own.
So she prayed to the good Lord, and she, as she said, just a regular old mom, came up with a medical device that helps children and people all over the world.
And sometimes what happens with people and why they believe in the spontaneity, but they don't know what causes the spontaneity and they can't imagine anything being great enough is exposure.
And I pray for them that they can see that it is beyond them because moments will come in their lives too where they won't need a miracle.
I don't know what people without faith do.
I just know that they judge us.
The book is phenomenal.
It's called Faith Still Moves Mountains, Miraculous Stories of the Healing Power of Prayer.
My friend, my colleague, Harris Faulkner, it's on amazon.com, Hannity.com, bookstores everywhere.
Great job, Harris.
Congratulations on being number one on the New York Times list.
What?
I didn't know it was on Hannity.com.
I'm putting it up right now.
It's on Hannity.
I'm going to put that link all over my socials, Sean.
You are the biggest part I know.
You know how much I admire you.
You are a friend.
I love you.
Thank you so very much.
Oh, the feeling's mutual.
You've been a dear friend, and we're so happy for all your success.
And it's great to have such wonderful colleagues to work with every day.
Thank you, Harris.
Thank you, Sean.
Take care.
All right.
13 days Christmas.
Pretty solid message and a great gift for Christmas.
All right, that's going to wrap things up for today.
Hannity Tonight, Nine Eastern, Fox News Channel, Democrats ready to declare war on any Biden investigation.
Jonathan Turley wrote a great column about it.
He'll join us along with Congressman Jim Jordan.
He will be leading up the House Judiciary Committee investigation into the FBI and the DOJ.
Newt Gingrich, Dr. Ben Carson, wait to see what they said about him when they took away his name from a school.
Wow.
Anyway, Ari Fleischer, Clay Travis, Jim Felia, all coming up Nine Eastern tonight on Hannity.
See you then back here tomorrow.
Thank you for making this show possible.
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