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July 5, 2023 - Sean Hannity Show
20:12
Best of Hannity - Sean's Funeral Arrangements - July 4th, Hour 3
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This is an iHeart podcast.
I'm always looking for good shows, series, movies to watch.
And I happened upon, I'm sure somebody recommended it to me, and I finally did a deep dive and I really got into it.
Angel Studios.
I believe it's angel.com is what the website is.
I'll find out in a second for sure.
And they did a whole series called The Chosen, and it was about his life, Jesus' life on earth.
And they did three seasons of it.
I just, I can't wait for the next season.
And it was, to me, I could not stop watching it.
And it was one of those binge series.
And especially if you're a person of faith and you believe in Jesus.
And by the way, regardless of what faith you're from, you get a lot if you want to know about the story of Jesus.
They did something that I thought was impossible to do.
And that is they were able to show the human side of the Son of Man on earth, obviously leading up to his resurrection.
Now, we all remember the Passion of the Christ.
I can't watch that movie to this day without crying.
And they now came out with a new movie.
It stars, interestingly enough, somebody I happen to like a lot.
He played Jesus in the Passion of the Christ, Jim Covezel, and it's called The Sound of Freedom.
And this is a little bit different.
This is based on a true story of a freedom fighter that embarks on a dangerous mission to literally rescue dozens of children from human trafficking and sex trafficking and slavery.
It is beyond emotionally riveting start to finish.
It will be in theaters the weekend of July 4th.
But I want to tell you about a unique program that they've instituted that you can get your tickets now and guarantee that you can see it and even pay for people that maybe can't afford to see it.
That's coming up in a second, but here's the trailer.
It is the fastest growing international crime network that the world has ever seen.
It has already passed the illegal arms trade, and soon it's going to pass the drug trade.
Because you can sell a bag of cocaine one time to a child five to ten times a day.
God's children are not for sale.
How long have you been doing this?
12 years now?
How many pedophiles you come?
288.
How many kids you found?
For Homeland Security, you know, we can't go off rescuing Honduran kids in Colombia.
Which means she'll disappear for good.
Imagine walking into her room right now, sitting in empty bed.
You quit your job, and you go and rescue those kids.
Joining us now is Tim Ballard.
This story was about him and his life.
He's the guy that actually was involved in rescuing children from human trafficking.
And Jim Coviesel, who plays Tim in the movie, is with us.
Great to have you both.
You know, Tim, before I get to your personal story, I want to go to Jim.
At the end of this movie, you did a passionate description.
And up on the screen at the end of the movie, how human trafficking is $150 a year business.
These are the facts you put up in the last frame of the movie.
You said the United States of America, our country, is one of the top destinations for human trafficking and among the largest consumers of child sex.
And then you put up that there are more humans trapped in slavery today than at any other time in history, including when slavery was legal.
And millions of these slaves are children.
Now, I mean, that took me aback.
Now, I've known over the years interviewing guys that have worked in various law enforcement that have told me how real this is and how dangerous this is and how widespread this is.
But those statistics startled me.
Well, okay.
Two things here.
One, I want to tell you how incredible this film is.
But you need not look far if you want to go to Ms. Rojas' testimony, April 26th, in front of this one giving her sworn testimony when she whistleblowed that 850,000 children went missing.
And the next day in the media, there was nothing in the news.
Now, the public is well aware that a lot of this stuff comes out, and then the next day it's gone.
And when you go into this film, when you watch this film, let me just say this, ladies and gentlemen.
This is not a woke movie like the Maverick movie last year, Top Gun, great adventure.
This also has a great adventure thrill ride when you watch what my hero Tim Ballard, who I got to play, and thankfully, he came to me and asked me to play this part.
But I'm going to explain something.
Like The Passion of the Christ, the movie you just mentioned earlier, people don't leave the theater.
They're stunned.
Slack job.
The mouths are wide open, just looking at each other because they just went on this massive thrill ride.
But something that hits you so hard to your core.
And I think that it would be the right time now that the public would, on the 4th of July, they give these children their independence to go and sit and watch this tremendous film.
It's one of the best films I've done since The Passion of the Christ.
Well, I can tell you I agree with you.
It's called The Sound of Freedom.
It's going to be in theaters nationwide.
It was shot on location in Columbia, and it's based on the very true story and the true bravery and the incredible heroism of this other guest we have, Tim Ballard.
Well, first of all, you're a hero to me already, and I don't know you, but this will resonate with Americans, and I think Americans need to understand how widespread this is.
You know, how real is the movie to what exactly you did?
Yeah, thanks, son.
It's an honor to be on your show and appreciate the opportunity.
So the film really is very accurate.
Every kid is real.
Every bad guy is real.
And the story is based on a truth that is coming.
There's a documentary that's coming out that's going to actually show you, in some ways, the underreported in the film what actually happened in terms of the number of rescues on that particular operation.
So it was our first operation, and I'm just grateful that we have amazing partners in the media and the Angel Studios to get this word out because we think it can help rescue a lot more kids.
You know, the amazing thing is, is they're asking people, they want to get 2 million people in week one in the theaters, and they have a unique way to do it.
Now, you can go to their website right now and buy it for the 4th of July weekend.
It's release weekend, and that's at angel.com, or they have another website, soundoffreedommovie.com.
And if you're there and you want to buy tickets for you and your family, you might want to pay for one or two other people to go because they want anybody that wants to see this film to have the ability to say it.
They call paying it forward.
So in this particular case, what amazed me is when you went in to rescue.
First of all, the human evil that exists in the world today, Tim, it's hard for good people, I think, to really wrap themselves around the fact that evil exists.
And you have this one woman appealing to a father.
Oh, let me bring your two kids.
I think they can be stars.
Let me bring them to the audition.
It's going to take place tomorrow.
The woman knows full well that she's going to kidnap those children, sell them into slavery, most often the case, sex slavery.
And you were able to save both a brother and a sister in this instance.
And my understanding is you saved other children as well.
I mean, tell people a little bit about that story.
Yeah, so I had been sent down by the U.S. government.
I was a special agent with the U.S. government at this time with Homeland Security, and I was sent down to do a training, consult on this case.
And I kind of overcommitted and went further than I was supposed to, and ultimately had to make a choice, either come home and not do the case or quit my job.
By the way, and quit your job 10 months before you invested in your pension.
Yeah, I walked by anything.
And I'll be honest, I was more cowardice than the film shows.
I had six kids at the time, and it was my wife that says, you are not coming home.
You are going to stay there.
And she said, I will not let you jeopardize my salvation by not doing this.
So really, you know, Mary Stebino plays my wife, and her role is actually a lot more powerful in real life in influencing this operation.
And so, I mean, in her knowing that I may never come home, it was that kind of an operation.
I lost my badge.
I lost my top cover, you know, the protection of the U.S. government.
And we went in and we infiltrated this organization.
Like you mentioned, run by a woman.
I just testified in her trial, actually, just a few months ago.
That's still ongoing.
They're all going to be convicted.
And she had her cohorts, and they were recruiting children.
She's like you said, they were recruiting children by pretending that they were going to make them famous, famous models, famous actors.
This woman was famous.
She was Miss Cartagena in 2012.
She shows up in music videos all through Columbia.
So she was very convincing, and she was able to round up quite a few children.
In the end, it was 54 in total on that particular operation.
And we were able to get them all in the same place, all the travelers in the same place.
And, you know, Jim can tell you, he depicted something that was really real.
And I was on the set crying.
I was crying as I watched them, you know, that raid and rescue operation on the island because it was so, so incredibly real.
And it was just, it was like a mile from the actual location where it had happened.
And by the way, just so people know, this is right in the middle of Cartel Central.
There was no help ever coming.
You either got in and out on your own or you weren't getting out.
You'd be dead.
Sean, he's not even hardly telling you anything.
They were doing operations while we were doing the shooting.
They were doing operations.
So I had a first-hand account of what that is like.
In fact, at one point, Tim was training me to, you know, taking me in and showing me, okay, when I'm asking questions, what are you looking for here?
Because it's really important for the audience to understand this is actually an adventure, but you learn.
You learn how it works.
You get to see how they hunt.
And in this particular case, Tim had me coming in there back and forth.
I was going back to Salt Lake back and forth, and I was going to do a mission with them.
They ended up doing a mission, but it was while we were filming, and he said, you can't do it.
It's too dangerous.
We were shooting right in the cartel territory.
I'm going from set, just walking from, you know, I forgot something down at the set.
My security came running after me, surrounded me, and said, Do you have any idea where you're at?
They would take your head off.
Don't ever do that again, okay?
You know, but I'm thinking, learning, remembering my lines and trying to change things and where I'm going to pull my gun out and everything.
But this is all going on, and he's trying to arrest Ms. Cartagena while this is all going on when we're down there.
And I'll just tell you, Sean, we had 1,500 people in a theater in Vegas, and not one of them got up and left.
And at one particular part, they were talking back and forth.
So I asked them at the end of the movie, why were you doing that?
Why were you talking like that?
And they kept saying, Epstein Island, Epstein Island.
Well, I want to say that Epstein Island isn't the only sex silent out there for kids.
I mean, that's such a powerful point.
I mean, when you look at these actual numbers and the fact that this was your real life, Tim, and I guess still remains your real life, every time you're involved in one of these operations, you know you may not be coming home.
That's right.
Yeah, these operations are pretty dangerous.
We infiltrate pretty deep.
And, you know, maybe the thing I'm most proud of is the fact that when I see that movie, our teams, I have 140-plus employees now after that operation.
We're all through the world.
Our foundation is called Operation Underground Railroad.
And I also run the Nazarene Fund, which was founded by Glenn Beck, which does similar work for persecuted Christians.
But we're doing these operations that you see in that film every week, every month.
So it's great to be part of a solution, but we've got to wake everybody up.
You know, the United States, as you mentioned earlier, Sean, we're in the top destination.
We're number two or three.
I spent 10 years of my career on the border, on the southern border.
And you've been more vocal than anyone, and thank God you have been because we are facilitating human trafficking, as you know.
You know, 85,000 unaccompanied minors under this current administration have disappeared into the belly of the United States.
We are the number one demand in the world for child sex.
So it doesn't take an economist to really conclude what's happening here and why it's happening.
It makes me sick to my stomach to think that, you know, when we don't enforce those laws on the border, children get raped and they get raped by the thousands in our own country.
So thank you for being vocal on that and Ted Cruz and those who have really come out with the truth here.
But we are our own country.
We are complicit in one of the worst human trafficking schemes that the world's ever seen.
Well, I'm going to tell you what they're planning.
This movie is going to be released.
You have to see it.
And you can buy tickets early.
You can go to angel.com.
They're looking for 2 million people the weekend of the 4th of July.
This will have an impact that will last forever.
I promise you.
And angel.com slash Hannity.
And you can even buy tickets maybe for people that can't afford them.
If you want to go but can't afford it, somebody will pay it for you.
We'll take care of it.
And if you want to see, just go to soundoffreedommovie.com as well.
This will shock your conscience and soul because you're witnessing real evil in real time, people without hearts, souls, or conscience.
And guys, all I can say is really well done.
We're going to talk more about it before its debut.
Jim Cavizo, we haven't talked in a long time.
Good to hear your voice, my friend.
Great job in this movie.
Tim Ballard, what an incredible, inspiring life you've led.
And just remember this name, Sound of Freedom, weekend, 4th of July, soundoffreedommovie.com, or just go to angel.com and you'll be able to get your tickets there as well.
Guys, we'll have you back before the 4th and your launch.
This movie blew me away.
Absolutely blew me away.
And the work at Angel Studios is phenomenal as well.
Thank you both.
Thank you, Sean.
Thank you, Sean.
All right, Linda wants to be in charge of all my funeral requests and arrangements, but she's not willing to enforce any of the rules that I've laid down.
I have a rule, and I expect you to be the enforcer of it.
No crying at my funeral.
Absolutely.
And I want it to be a celebration of an undeserved life.
Absolutely.
I'm going to hire John Rich.
He's going to come and play.
You know what I mean?
He can say, like, you know, we're coming to your city, and it can be like, you know, you're going home to God.
Like, yeah, baby Jesus, I'm coming to your city.
Get it?
I love that.
Yeah, it's working.
Can sing Amazing Grace.
Absolutely.
He does great gospel.
By the way, he made fun of you really, really bad at Albo 611.
I died laughing.
He sent me the video.
Anybody who hasn't seen it, it's online.
It's John Rich drinking the O'Shanity with Pinkies Up.
It's pretty funny.
It was very funny, actually.
But yes, I'm happy to enforce it, and I will make sure that no one cries.
And if they cries, I will give them something to cry about.
What do you want to make sure?
What are you going to do to my daughter if she's going to hug her and console her and say so?
You're really going to give her something to cry about?
Well, no, she doesn't count like a regular person.
She's your daughter.
What about my sister?
She's allowed to cry.
Any immediate family is allowed to cry.
No, that's not what my will says.
You know, he's not forced to cry.
Like, Humpty Dumpty can't come and cry.
Humpty Dumpty.
Humpty Dumpty is not invited.
First of all, when you're a celebrity, people show up.
What do you think?
There's no way.
Yes.
Oh, my gosh.
Are you serious?
Yes.
Think about like Princess Di.
I mean, they surrounded the castle.
You know what I mean?
Like, they meant it, man.
They wanted to see her.
People who never knew her, you know?
Well, one of my rules is I don't want anyone seeing my dead corpse.
Oh, no.
See, that's the other thing I'm going to do for you.
I'm going to get the best picture that you ever had, like one you really like.
Like, you know how we take like 89 pictures of you and you don't like any of them and then you pick one from like 10 years ago because it's the only one you liked?
Right.
Yeah.
I'm going to put that one on top of your caskets.
We don't open the casket.
It's just this nice.
Put a picture on my casket.
How about I live in the minds and hearts of people and then whatever they remember that.
People are very forgetful.
We need to remind them.
We need a nice picture.
We're going to put it up.
It's going to be good.
All I remember is all my dead relatives laying in that stupid box with the makeup on.
It's bad.
The only good thing is, is that people, my family, especially and my friends, they used to see me in makeup.
So it's not.
This is true.
You actually look pretty normal.
You know, my dad was a funeral embalmer.
And he used to bring the dead bodies home on lunch break.
And I have to say, it's made me very calm.
He brought the dead bodies home on lunch break.
And you would, what, would he bring them in to sit in a chair like we can have?
I was a joke, and my dad picked up an extra swing shift at a funeral parlor in Philly.
And the one time he came home with the, you know, the, what do they call those cars?
The hearses.
And he parks it.
And I go, what's that?
And he goes, it's where the people that have gone home, we put them in the back there.
I'm like, are you driving them?
He goes, no, no, no, I don't know.
He goes, no, we got to take them.
We got to embalm them.
I said, what's that?
He goes, we put formaldehyde and other chemicals in their body so that they look good.
I'm like, who cares what the going underground?
I mean, this was like a foreign concept.
So there was this nun that they, I guess, exhumed her body, and she died four years ago, and she was in a perfectly preserved state.
And one day they're looking into.
Our callers are obsessed with this story.
Katie got like, you talked about this for like a second last week.
Right.
Forget about it.
All right.
So what's interesting, and then, you know, people are making fun of the fact that people think this is miraculous.
What I didn't know is how fast the body starts its decomposition process.
I mean, it is, you know, they have to embalm just to keep the body alive for the week, you know, while you're going through the wake and the funeral and sit and shiver, whatever you happen to be doing.
I mean, some people, you know, buried the day or the next day, which I think is a lot smarter.
I don't want to sit there and stare at a dead body.
How awful is that?
I have to be honest, it is very difficult, but there's a lot of conversation that goes on about who gets to do what and who's hosting and who's coming and where's the lunch and all the non-it's a bunch of nonsense.
Well, I put the details in and I'm paying for my own funeral and I just want it to be a celebration of an undeserved life.
I think that is.
I assure you that if you make me the concigliary of your death, I will make sure to facilitate all the things you want.
So you say all of this and I don't believe you.
Why?
I think anybody that starts crying, what are you going to walk over and say, stop it?
Excuse me, there's a crying room.
It's to the right.
Please.
There's nothing in my will about a crying room.
Listen, you said that I couldn't see people crying.
So if I can't see you, you go in, you close the blinds.
I say no crying at my funeral, period.
And I want that strictly important.
There's one person that controls free will, and that's the baby Jesus.
And I can't do it.
I'm sorry.
But I can't put them in a closed room with blinds.
And tell them to shut up and stop complaining.
I'm here to facilitate.
Eat the food, drink the beer, whatever, whatever.
Drink the tea.
The old Shanity with the pinky.
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