Sean Hannity Show - Hannity 5pm 12-26-22

All Episodes

Previous Next

Dec. 27, 2022 - Sean Hannity Show

36:21

Hannity 5pm 12-26-22

Large

Audio Only |

Scroll

Time	Text
	This is an iHeart Podcast.
	You want smart political talk without the meltdowns?
	We got you.
	And I'm Carol Markowitz.
	And I'm Mary Catherine Hamm.
	We've been around the block in media and we're doing things differently.
	Normally is about real conversations.
	Thoughtful, try to be funny, grounded, and no panic.
	We'll keep you informed and entertained without ruining your day.
	Join us every Tuesday and Thursday normally on the iHeartRadio app Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcast.
	I'm Ben Ferguson.
	And I'm Ted Cruz.
	Three times a week we do our podcast, Verdict with Ted Cruz.
	Nationwide, we have millions of listeners every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday.
	We break down the news and bring you behind the scenes inside the White House, inside the Senate, inside the United States Supreme Court.
	And we cover the stories that you're not getting anywhere else.
	We arm you with the facts to be able to know and advocate for the truth with your friends and family.
	So Dell a verdict with Ted Cruz now, wherever you get your podcasts.
	Stay right here for our final news roundup and information overload.
	All right, news roundup information overload hour.
	Glad you're with us, 800 nine-four one Sean, if you want to be a part of the program.
	So since 1954, there have been five separate occasions where the House of Representatives has changed in terms of the election and change power.
	You will see this in January when Nancy Pelosi gives up the gavel and Republicans now will be in charge of the House.
	That's important for all the reasons we've discussed, the power of the purse, the power to subpoena committee assignments.
	I mean, it's it's a big win for Republicans, a necessary win, and it's a great check and balance on Democrats.
	Now, in all five of these occasions or leading up to this one in January, uh there's never been a moment where the opposition in the Senate would go along with the party in power and pass an omnibus spending bill for the entire next year.
	That's never happened before.
	And right now we have Republicans, obviously led by Mitch McConnell, but other people like Richard Shelby, who's retiring at the end of the year, and and some other people pushing this omnibus spending bill, which is the entire year spending bill before the new Republican Congress takes power in the House of Representatives in January.
	And it makes no sense at all whatsoever.
	They would pass a continuing resolution to fund the government in the interim, and then the incoming, in this case, incoming Republican majority would then have a say in the budget process for next year.
	And for whatever reason, Republican leadership in the Senate has decided that they want to work with Schumer and with Biden and go along with a a year a year's worth of spending, taking away, you know, what is really a powerful tool for the new Republican majority in the House and stop some of the insane spending that we have with what a deficit now and a debt of what 31 trillion dollars.
	It's insane.
	I cannot get a reasonable explanation as to why they're doing it.
	Many Republicans are speaking out against it.
	Senator Mike Lee's been keeping me in the loop.
	He's apoplectic about it, as are many other Republican senators.
	Senator Marsha Blackburn uh from Tennessee is with us to give us her take on all of this.
	Uh Senator, how are you?
	I am doing well, and you're so correct on this, Sean.
	We should give the new House majority, and it will be Speaker Kevin McCarthy.
	Give him the ability to come back at some point next spring and reset the spending numbers and begin to move us to where we can break the slog jam on spending.
	It's so important to note that the Democrats under Joe Biden have continued to push the annual spending north of six trillion dollars because they have deemed all of this extra spending for COVID as mandatory spending.
	And what we need to do is have the ability to just freeze this and then begin to work it down so that we do not make all of this additional spending part of the permanent spending process.
	And we continue to say, let's do a CR, uh let's get ourselves out for the year.
	Let's make certain that we come back and we do a bill that is going to be more responsible and is going to focus on getting our fiscal house in order.
	What is the rationale, the reason, the why, the wherefore that Mitch McConnell and other Republicans are pushing this.
	Why?
	There are some Republicans and you mentioned that Senator Shelby from Alabama, Senator Leahy, who's a Democrat from Vermont, they're retiring and they want to do one last omnibus spending bill.
	But they're between 25 and 45 billion over the president's request.
	And last night we started hearing from Democrats that they had been able to find a way forward.
	But Sean, when you look at spending over the last four years and you look that in 2019 we were at 4.4 trillion in spending, which is too much for me.
	But then you look at where we are in 22, which is 6 point three trillion dollars, and then you're looking north of six trillion dollars again for 23.
	That is the out of control spending that is taking place.
	And honestly I think it's immoral to spend this kind of money, run up this kind of debt, and look at our children and grandchildren and say, okay, it's your problem now.
	You've got to figure out a way to pay for this when you start earning a paycheck.
	I really can't believe it because I know we'd save a lot of money if the new Republican Congress had a say in what this budget was ultimately ultimately going to turn out to be and we're looking at record debt that I I don't even see a path in the long term where we will even be able to pay down that debt, especially with interest rates now going up at a at a very fast clip.
	Well and as I said earlier there are some things that are going to have to be done freezing federal spending, federal hiring, federal employee salaries, freezing all of that and then beginning to work that down.
	Looking for ways that we can use efficiencies in government to deliver salaries.
	Look at some of these components that have become mandatory spending through COVID and saying we have to think long term about what we're doing.
	You know, it was in 2010 that you had Admiral Mullen uh he was asked what kept him up at night and he said the greatest threat to our nation security is our nation's debt.
	We need to remember that and we need to focus on what we're going to do to get this spending under control.
	These omnibus spending bills have got to stop, and we have to find a way to reduce what we spend.
	For years, I had the 1% across the board cut amendment, which cut a penny out of a dollar.
	And if you did that, for every dollar we spent over a period of about five years, you would bring that federal budget back into balance.
	Those are the kind of steps and the type ideas we need to bring forward.
	We need to change some budget process.
	And instead of doing baseline budgeting where you take last year's budget and add to it for this year we should be doing zero base budgeting where you go back to zero and you build out what your needs are you look for ways to save money instead of ways to spend the taxpayers money.
	And people are looking for this inflation is high the cost of living is high price at the pump in the grocery store is high and people don't want to be sending more money to Washington DC for politicians to waste those hard earned dollars.
	You know years ago uh Florida Congressman Connie Mack proposed what he called the penny plan.
	We're probably now up to the nickel plan, that is that if you cut five cents out of every dollar government spends, you'd balance the budget in a short period of time.
	At that point it was seven years, you'd balance the budget.
	Uh nobody had any real interest in in in in any of that.
	Let me ask you this part of this.
	Um we know that the House is willing to go along with the defense appropriations, uh, but they did so by eliminating the vaccine mandate as it relates to the military.
	Is that gonna hold, especially considering Joe Biden told us that the pandemic is over?
	Oh, it's going to hold.
	This is an amendment that I had offered back during the summer when we at Senate Armed Services were working on the Defense Authorization Act.
	And at that point, Sean, every Democrat on the committee voted against it.
	But I told them then, I said, I'm going to ask for a vote on this amendment when we go to the floor.
	Well, in the meantime, you have seen our recruiting numbers and our retention numbers drop.
	For example, our army is fifteen thousand short this way this year.
	They're going to be twenty-one thousand short next year.
	And so I was successful in negotiating this amendment into the House version.
	We're going to keep it in the Senate version.
	That is step number one in dealing with this, getting that mandate rescinded, and I'm so pleased to have been able to work with our troops and um bring this to a successful coll conclusion for them.
	Do you believe the number of what was it, eight hundred and thirty billion or eight hundred and forty billion for the military?
	Do you believe that is sufficient to combat threats from countries that are hostile like China?
	We are going to have to pay close attention to our great power competition.
	We have to be focused on what China is doing with their aggressiveness, what they're doing to Taiwan, what their their aggressiveness in the South China Sea, and with the Pacific Island nations.
	And in Taiwan, and we have to make certain that uh Taiwan is positioned for an asymmetrical battle posture so that they have what they need to defend themselves.
	Do you really believe that if the communist Chinese and and they have been stating it openly that they believe Taiwan is theirs, they call it reunification.
	Do you really believe that Joe Biden would involve himself in any way militarily to prevent that from happening?
	And do you think that even if we supplied them the weaponry to fight back themselves, that they'd have the capacity to go up against this massive military buildup that has been taking place for decades as it relates to China?
	Yes, and uh the Taiwanese are very focused.
	They consider themselves to be independent.
	You know, they have a president and a constitution, they have a military, uh, they consider using the mighty military of of China, the might, the monies that have been spent, the the hundreds of billions of dollars that have been spent, their hypersonic missiles, everything in between.
	And you know what?
	No one thought that Ukraine could take on Russia.
	And we know that the Taiwanese are preparing themselves to defend themselves.
	Would you support any American troops uh in terms of support for the for Taiwan if they're invaded?
	That is a question that Biden has answered repeatedly, and then they've had to walk it back repeatedly.
	And uh the United States has always said that they would be positioned to help defend Taiwan.
	That is why it is so important that we conduct military sales to Taiwan right now, so that they have what they need to defend themselves.
	And before Putin went into uh Ukraine, I sent a letter over to the White House.
	Now's the time for sales to Ukraine, because you could see that Putin was amassing troops and equipment on the border.
	It is imperative that our allies know that they're our allies, and it that our enemies know that they are our enemies.
	All right, Senator Barcia Blackburn, uh the great state of Tennessee.
	Senator, great to have you as always.
	Merry Christmas, and uh look forward to next year.
	Absolutely merry Christmas to you.
	Thanks, Sean.
	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 Podcasts, or wherever you listen.
	I'm Ben Ferguson.
	And I'm Ted Cruz.
	Three times a week, we do our podcast, Verdic with Ted Cruz.
	Nationwide, we have millions of listeners.
	Every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday, we break down the news and bring you behind the scenes inside the White House, inside the Senate, inside the United States Supreme Court.
	And we cover the stories that you're not getting anywhere else.
	We arm you with the facts to be able to know and advocate for the truth with your friends and family.
	So Down, verdict with Ted Cruz now, wherever you get your podcasts.
	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 Podcasts, or wherever you listen.
	I'm Ben Ferguson.
	And I'm Ted Cruz.
	Three times a week, we do our podcast, Verdict with Ted Cruz.
	Nationwide, we have millions of listeners.
	Every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday, we break down the news and bring you behind the scenes inside the White House, inside the Senate, inside the United States Supreme Court.
	And we cover the stories that you're not getting anywhere else.
	We arm you with the facts to be able to know and advocate for the truth with your friends and family.
	So download Verdict with Ted Cruz now, wherever you get your podcasts.
	All right, let's hit our busy phones.
	Let's say hi to Jason.
	He is in the great Commonwealth of Pennsylvania.
	Jason, hi.
	How are you?
	Glad you called.
	Hey, Sean.
	Hey, thanks for having me on.
	It's uh it's a real pleasure to be able to just the privilege to be able to talk to you.
	I wanted to talk about everything happening with Sam Bankman Freed and FTX, because uh, you know, this is really just in my opinion, it's the tip of the iceberg.
	Uh I'm dealing with some things from another company that has run the exact same scam, stealing money from investors, funneling them to their other businesses, promising everything with cryptocurrency is secured, and then you find out that none of it is even happening.
	Look, w when we've discussed crypto, um, I've explained that I have friends that are really deep into it.
	And and right now, anybody that purchased anything crypto is is underwater, at least everybody that I know is underwater.
	And I always knew it was going to be a big risk.
	They had these incredible highs, you know, these really low lows.
	Uh they they talk about when it's when the algorithm hits the halv.
	That's when the money, you know, that's when the value goes up the most.
	I've never understood it.
	All I've been told is it's a math problem.
	It's an algorithm that continues in perpetuity without a final answer, and I never fully grasped it.
	You know, I dabbled in it, but I always said to you know, you, my audience, that unless it's money you're willing to lose, don't invest in crypto.
	Um, I think there are far safer investments, you know, while I do have a little bit in it, I don't have a lot in it, and I didn't bet the milk money on it.
	Um so it doesn't really surprise me.
	The thing that is interesting in this case is I want to see if this guy that they arrested in the Bahamas.
	I want to see, you know, he gave all this money to the Democrats.
	So I want to see Democrats give that money back so the people that lost, you know, all that money can get at least some of it back.
	And and certainly he needs to be held accountable based on everything I read.
	We'll see what happens as that case unfolds.
	Uh hope that answers your question.
	Quick break, right back, more calls straight ahead, eight hundred nine four one Sean, our number as we continue.
	When we come back, more of the best of the Sean Hannity show.
	Stay tuned.
	All right, are you tired of overpaying woke wireless companies?
	How about this?
	You get talk and text and blazing fast data for just thirty bucks a month.
	Yep, on the same exact network, the same cell towers, the same 5G network as the big carriers like Verizon ATT and T Mobile.
	And how's that for saying uh half the price?
	Merry Christmas, happy Hanukkah, happy new year.
	Hallelujah.
	You can save money, especially in these tough economic times.
	Look, that's what Pure Talk is all about.
	It's a US based customer service team you'll be working with.
	There is no better service in the industry, and it's a veteran owned business.
	It's simple to make the switch, just dial pound two fifty on your cell, say the keyword save now.
	If you do it now, you'll save an additional fifty percent off your first month.
	Same exact service, average family saving close to a thousand bucks a year, some families saving much, much more.
	Pound two fifty keywords saved now from our friends at Pure Talk, and it will only take minutes of your time.
	You are listening to the best of the Sean Hannity Show.
	Information download.
	Sean Hannity and the breaking news you might have missed today.
	It's Sean's insider information.
	Hannity is on right now.
	One of our top stories today, Kristen Cinema announcing she is now registering as an independent and leaving the Democratic Socialist Party.
	Listen.
	I've registered as an Arizona independent.
	I know some people might be a little bit surprised by this, but actually I think it makes a lot of sense.
	You know, a growing number of Arizonians and people like me just don't feel like we fit neatly into one party's box or the other.
	And so like many across the state and the nation, I've decided to leave that partisan process and really just focus on the work that I think matters to Arizona and to our country, which is solving problems and getting things done.
	So the uh ever since uh Raphael Warnock, Senator Warnock was re-elected earlier this week, the balance of power right now is fifty-one Democrats or fifty-one votes for the Democratic Party that includes two independents, Angus King of Maine and Bernie Sanders of Vermont, but that's fifty-one forty-nine.
	What you're doing today doesn't change that.
	It's still basically gonna be fifty-one forty-nine.
	Well, I know you have to ask that question, Jake.
	Yeah, but that's kind of a DC thing to worry about.
	What I'm really focused on is just making sure that I'm doing what I think comports with my values and the values of Arizonans.
	So when I c come to work each day, it'll be the same.
	I'm gonna still come to work and hopefully serve on uh the same committees I've been serving on and continue to work well with my colleagues of both political parties.
	And I'm not really spending much time worrying about what the mechanics look like for Washington DC.
	And to be honest, Jake, I don't think anyone in Arizona is caring about that either.
	Um I don't think things will change much for me, and I don't think things will change much for Arizonans.
	All right, joining us this Friday, uh with our news roundup uh hour in News and Review, Joe Concha, of course, Fox News chief media uh analyst and the author of Come On Man and Mark Simone, host of the Top Morning Show on W O R in New York.
	Uh well, Mark, were you surprised by the decision, and more importantly, how did you like the answer that Cinema gave to uh Jake Tapper?
	Um I know you have to ask the question, Jake, but that's a DC thing.
	I'm not gonna answer it.
	I love that answer.
	Yeah.
	Well, she was talking about her values, because if you're worried about your values, you kinda have to leave the Democratic Party.
	Uh it's not a place for values.
	And uh hopefully the Democratic Party's getting uh just a stigma attached to it.
	People think a high crime, high taxes, high inflation, all that they think Democrats, it's better to be independent.
	Uh and she said she won't caucus with Republicans, you know, caucus, uh caucus means when you're in the back room doing all that wheeling and dealing.
	Uh to make it sound better, they call it caucusing, but it's still bad stuff.
	So what do you think happens, Joe Concha?
	Is she gonna is she gonna vote for Chuck Schumer to be the leader in the in the Senate?
	Is she gonna caucus with the Democrats in that way, or maybe really truly be independent and say, nope, I'm not gonna be a part of any of this?
	I think the answer is D there, Sean.
	I I think that we saw with with Kirsten Cinema with Bill Back Better.
	Remember, that was the five trillion dollar bill that was ultimately rejected by the Senate because of cinema and manchin.
	And then she also rejected the federalization of voting rights where you take it away from the state and you play by the democratic rules in every state.
	So on the big issues, she has gone against her own party.
	I just find the media coverage hilarious.
	Because when John McCain would buck his own party and vote against, say, for instance, yeah, of Obamacare, yeah.
	That's a true maverick, putting country over party, then cinema does it.
	It's traitor, how dare you?
	Oh, it's it's only gonna get worse.
	It it's definitely only gonna get worse.
	Now the the question uh I have, I've been watching Joe Manchin.
	When Joe Manchin was standing up to Schumer and Biden and against Bill Backbroke and and then he then he finally gave in on the inflation reduction act, or what I call the tax the poor, the middle class and people on fixed income act.
	When he when he gave in to that, his approval ratings prior to that were in the 70s, the highest they'd ever been in West Virginia.
	And then he's in in the inflation reduction act, and it goes down to the th in high thirties.
	I think he was at 38% I saw in one poll.
	Part of that deal, he was supposed to get a pipeline from West Virginia, I believe it was to the state of Virginia, I forget where.
	That pipeline is not forthcoming.
	They are they have completely reneged on that promise.
	And then just before the November eighth election, Mark Simone, you remember the comments about Cole that Joe Biden made that he was going to eliminate it and that he was going to eliminate all drilling uh offshore and onshore in America, and j and Joe Manchin hit the roof.
	Now he's up for reelection in 2024.
	I'm not sure he can win running as a Democrat and running as a Democrat that has been aligned with with Schumer and with Biden.
	Yeah, yeah.
	I I wanna like Joe Manchin, but uh you want a good infrastructure project, build a backbone for Joe Manchin so he sticks to his idea.
	Yeah, I mean he's got the consistency of John Kerry.
	I just uh you never he he's whatever way the wind blows, uh, he's all for this unless there's a bridge involved, then maybe they could switch over to this.
	I I don't know if Democrats can trust him, I don't know if Republicans can trust him now.
	What do you think, Joe Concha?
	Joe Manchin has been we we we've talked to some people who would like to see him run as an independent for president.
	But I think he's a man without a party, right?
	I mean, Democrats uh don't trust him.
	And and to Mark's point, but Republicans when push comes to shove, don't trust him.
	Uh but uh can I see him becoming an independent?
	Absolutely.
	I mean, cinema now has made this a lot easier for him.
	And again, to your point, when you drop something like thirty-five points in approval, uh, Sean, you you gotta do something different if you want to get re-elected, and I think that would be to either become an independent or outright just become a Republican, and then if you want to see unhinged heads exploding, if Manchin were to do that, uh that that that would be some great popcorn theater, no question.
	Let me ask you both about this news of this prisoner swap, Brittany Griner for this merchant of death uh arms dealer, Victor Boot.
	Um one thing that really caught my attention and has raised my suspicion, Mark Simone is MBC yesterday put out a report uh quoting a U.S. official telling MBC News that the U.S. government had sought both Griner and uh Paul Whalen, who's been in jail in Russia for four years without any evidence of being a spy, but putting that aside, um anyway, Griner was released.
	But they report that the officials said that Russia had treated Whalen differently, uh, and that the Kremlin gave the White House the choice of either Griner or Whalen.
	Now later in the day they Revised that story, uh taking that part of the story out saying they got it wrong.
	After everything that we learned from the Twitter files as it relates to the influence of the Democratic Party with media in the case of Twitter, you know, big tech media, in the case of MBC traditional media, uh why am I suspicious that it was taken out because they didn't like the story?
	Oh, I know I agree.
	I'm sure they had a choice.
	Uh if you leave the choice up to woke Democrats between a marine war hero and a WNBA player, they're gonna go with the player.
	This has got to be the first time in history anybody's paid any attention to a WNBA trade.
	Uh it's the worst basketball I've ever seen, but uh I'm sure they had that choice.
	And if you know, and I know, we all know if it were Donald Trump, he would have figured out a way to get both of them back.
	You're talking about the merchant of death.
	You could definitely get two people for that that guy.
	I I mean it was such an awful deal, and reports are out there that Vladimir Putin himself, you know, he's out there bragging about this, uh, you know, saying he rolled Joe Biden, and in many ways he did roll Joe Biden.
	Former Kremlin aide says, yeah, Putin outplayed Biden on this prisoner swap.
	Completely and totally.
	And Biden remember, as a candidate said that he was the one who was going to stand up to Vladimir Putin.
	Look, uh going back to the NBC report for a moment, Sean.
	We saw this movie just recently, right?
	Paul Pelosi and that report that happened where an NBC reporter actually was asking good questions.
	Hey, why what happened during those 30 minutes when Paul Pelosi was alone with the person that broke into their home?
	Hey, why did Paul Pelosi walk back towards his eventual attacker after police came?
	Why didn't he leave the house?
	And that guy has not been, that reporter has not been on the air since they pulled that report three weeks ago.
	And we don't know why he was suspended, why he has been taken off the air, and Paul Pelosi basically it's seen some people got to MBC saying you can't run this, and they pulled the report off the air.
	Now we're seeing it again.
	We see reporting that it could have been Griner or it could have been an ex-US Marine coming home, and we chose the celebrity, so to speak, over the person who's been there for three years longer and served this country and and would have fought and died for this country.
	So when they pull reports like this, it seems like they're the ones getting worked over the same way Joe Biden was worked over by Vladimir Putin.
	And MBC, not a surprise, serving at the pleasure of the Democratic Party.
	It's not such a far-fetched notion, Sean.
	All right, quick break more with Joe Concha, more with Mark Simone on the other side than your calls 800-941 Sean.
	If you want to be a part of the program.
	All right, we continue our Friday news roundup with Joe Concha and Mark Simone.
	Let me go to the issue of the Twitter files.
	Uh we had the second release last night by journalist Barry uh Weiss, formerly of the New York Times.
	Um, but it shows that there were uh blacklists of accounts that they didn't like and they prevented disfavored tweets from trending, actively limited the the visibility of entire accounts.
	Then we find out that in fact the FBI is up to its eyeballs in all of this.
	They were in the weeks leading up to the 2020 election, they were meeting weekly with all of these big tech companies, and they were warning them all about a hack and leak operation.
	Uh the only problem with this is the FBI agent that organized these weekly meetings, it turns out was a uh big anti-Trumper, his postgraduate thesis claimed that Russia interfered in the 2016 election to help Donald Trump.
	Uh, but then we find out that not only from Twitter's former head of site integrity, a guy by the name of Yo Roth, uh, that in fact, not only were they talking about hack and leak information being disseminated, um, they would they said it might even directly be related to Hunter Biden.
	So before the Hunter Biden story ever broke, all of these big tech companies were warned specifically, hey, there might be there might be information that comes your way about Hunter Biden.
	You better be very, very careful of it because it's likely not true, or it's hacked materials, which probably explains their reluctance and resistance to even allow anyone to post the New York Post story, Mark.
	Well, it's the worst collusion, censorship, awful stuff.
	A few years ago it all started.
	It happened to me, and I started talking to other people.
	It was happening to anybody supporting Trump.
	Anybody want to post anything bad about Democrats, they started uh shadow banning us, then they spread it to other things.
	If you wanted to uh disagree with the vaccine, you could get shadow banned.
	Uh it was just all you know, you could argue it's a private company, but so was the uh telephone, Alexander Graham Bell originally.
	Imagine if he said, if I don't like what you're saying, you can't talk on my phone.
	You can't have that, something's got to be done about it.
	Thank God Musk is exposing this.
	But now Twitter is getting shadow banned.
	You don't see any coverage of all this in the New York Times or on the nightly news and the networks, the Sunday shows.
	This is getting shadow banned by the rest of the media.
	What's your reaction to all this, Joe?
	I mean, this is your area of expertise.
	Well, you look at ABC NBC CBS, their morning and evening newscast.
	And before you say no one watches the evening news anymore.
	Believe it or not, the numbers are still fairly strong.
	When you combine their audiences in the evening news section, for example, more than 20 million people watch uh per night combined.
	And they have not covered any of these document dumps given to Matt Taibi, an actual real independent journalist, and Barry Weiss, an actual real independent journalist, as you said for only the New York Times.
	He's not getting invited to CPAC anytime soon.
	And they're ignoring this completely.
	So that's called the bias of omission, which is the most insidious kind of bias, because that is withholding information that the public should know.
	And they're doing it knowingly, obviously, because let's say we just change two names out here for a second.
	Sean, Mark.
	Let's say we took out Hunter Biden laptop and we made it Eric Trump's laptop.
	What do you think that coverage would look like?
	They'd be starting impeachment hearings for Donald Trump, even though he's 23 months out of office, if if that were the case.
	But as usual, it's silence of the land from the folks that serve at the pleasure of the Democratic Party.
	Well, what does this mean for big tech going forward, uh, Mark?
	Um, and should all the other big tech companies now be required to release their policies and systems and what they're doing behind the scenes.
	Remember, they have Section 230 protections in terms of liability protection, uh, that is not that probably shouldn't be afforded to a lot of these companies.
	Yeah, and it's just about being a publisher.
	It's like I said with the uh phone and Alexander Grumbell, it comes to the point where you got to declare it a utility, and you can't get involved in this kind of censorship.
	I see the same shadow banning still going on on Facebook, and uh, I'm sure everybody else is guilty of it.
	It's gotta stop, and uh I I don't know who's gonna crack down on it.
	I mean, certainly not the Democrats, not this administration.
	And if they were smart, these uh these sites like Facebook would try to get away from the news, get out of politics, and stay away from it.
	Yeah.
	Joe.
	Since we have a Republican Congress coming in on January 3rd, if people talk about how, you know, ah, the midterms were horrible, the midterms, you know, okay, I get that Republicans should have won by three touchdowns in the House and taken the Senate.
	Uh they they lost one seat in the Senate, but they still took the House, and that's important because now you could have investigations around this.
	You can get the heads of Google and Facebook and all the other big tech companies up on Capitol Hill and finally get some answers around this and really do something about the aforementioned Section 230, which provides them liability protection.
	That you take that away, then suddenly these companies uh will struggle mightily.
	But either way, Elon Musk uh probably should have got person of the year because he really, and he won it last year as well.
	He has really unveiled what we already knew.
	Now we have the receipts, and that's very important, Sean.
	You know what?
	I I just find Elon a fascinating figure.
	I I think he's a modern-day pioneer.
	Um, you know, he's one of these people that is transforming media by doing this.
	I think it's taking great courage.
	Uh and what what is one of the thanks that he gets?
	An investigation into the fact that one of his office buildings in San Francisco uh has a bedroom in it in case one of his employees is working overtime and gets tired and wants to take an hour's nap.
	Uh as if they don't have enough problems in San Francisco.
	Uh anyway, appreciate it.
	Uh Mark Simone, thank you.
	Joe Concher, thank you.
	800 941 Sean.
	If you want to be a part of the program, we'll hit the phones when we get back.
	This is the best of the best.
	This is the Sean Hannity Show.
	What smart political talk without the meltdowns?
	We got you.
	I'm Carol Markovich.
	And I'm Mary Catherine Hammond.
	We've been around the block in media, and we're doing things differently.
	Normally is about real conversations.
	Thoughtful, try to be funny, grounded, and no panic.
	We'll keep you informed and entertained without ruining your day.
	Join us every Tuesday and Thursday, normally on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcast.
	I'm Ben Ferguson, and I'm Ted Cruz.
	Three times a week, we do our podcast, Verdict with Ted Cruz.
	Nationwide, we have millions of listeners.
	Every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday, we break down the news and bring you behind the scenes, inside the White House, inside the Senate, inside the United States Supreme Court.
	And we cover the stories that you're not getting anywhere else.
	We arm you with the facts to be able to know and advocate for the truth with your friends and family.
	So Dell, a verdict with Ted Cruz now, wherever you get your podcasts.

▲