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Sept. 14, 2023 - Sean Hannity Show
32:55
Mark Penn - September 13th, Hour 3
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That's why today I am directing our House committee to open a formal impeachment inquiry into President Joe Biden.
I'm not voting.
I'm not voting to fund the government because Republicans and Democrats have spent too much.
Like, I think holding hostage an impeachment inquiry is wrong.
He may have a gay plan.
He just hasn't shared it with me.
But I tell you what, I don't know about you, but I'm going to go to bed.
Freedom is back in style.
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All right, news roundup and information overload hour.
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So I said this.
Think back.
We should pull the tape, Linda, right?
What did I say about the Maureen Dowd column being she excoriated, and she never excoriates Democrats.
Excoriated Joe Biden for not recognizing his four-year-old, innocent little granddaughter in Arkansas.
And I said, that's the canary in the coal mine.
Then I noticed all of a sudden, one particular weekend, maybe three, four weeks ago, Politico, the New York Times, and the Washington Post actually had real stories involving what we're calling the Joe Biden bribery and money laundering scandal allegations.
And they all move this story in their own way.
And then we noticed last week, what do we talk about?
More canaries in the coal mine.
And that was, you know, in one week, you get criticisms from very prominent voices within Democratic Party ranks, Van Jones and David Axelrod and James Carville, culminating in today the Washington Post column, opinion column, by David Ignatius.
Probably, oh, one of the biggest Biden supporters in all the mainstream left-wing media.
Now you got a domino effect happening.
And I said, once we get to this point, and once you hear the first Democratic elected official say something similar, I said, at that point, you'll know it's over.
At some point, somehow, some way, Joe Biden is going to be pushed out and making an announcement that he will not be running for re-election.
That is my prediction.
Mark Penn, managing partner with the Stagwell Group, private equity firm specializing in marketing services companies, but he's really well known for being Bill Clinton and the Clintons pollsters for years.
Sir, how are you?
Welcome back.
Good, thank you.
Why are so many Democrats afraid to talk to me?
You've been on my show a ton.
Have I ever been mean to you?
No, I'm always happy to talk to you.
I know, but did anyone ever ask you, like, why do you go on that idiot Hannity's program?
Did anyone ever ask you that?
Sometimes.
Sometimes, like every time, right?
And you just answer, like, well, I get to talk to a different audience than the people that think the way I do, right?
And you've got one of the biggest audiences on TV.
Thank you.
And radio.
We're on 7 almost 30 stations now.
All right.
So you're well known to be a really, really good pollster.
You really helped Bill Clinton out during his impeachment period.
You've been there for the Clinton family all these years.
You've always been a voice of moderation for the Democratic Party.
I would argue that the Democratic Party does not in any way represent the Bill Clinton that you polled for as president, but we could deal with that another day.
So I think it started with Maureen Dowd.
It continued with Van Jones, David Axelrod, James Carville, and now David Ignatius.
Do you agree with me that it looks like dominoes are falling in a way that it's going to be Democrats that are going to be pushing Joe Biden out and not wanting him to run for re-election?
Well, first, I think as of the litany, you left out the CNN poll.
The CNN poll?
One other thing I left out, Joe Scarborough said every single Democrat that he and Mika Brzezinski talked to say Biden's too old to run.
Now, look, I wrote many months ago that I thought neither Trump nor Biden should run.
They both decided to run, and I don't think either one of them is getting out.
You don't think Donald Trump will be the nominee?
We'll get to that in a minute.
You know, I thought months ago that when Joe Biden got to this month, September, he would have to make a decision based on, you know, has the economy improved?
Has he built his numbers during the summer and so forth?
By the way, Bidenomics, what happened today?
Inflation went up.
What happened yesterday?
Poverty rate increases for the first time since 2010.
Not good numbers.
So I think you're right about the pylon is across the board.
I've always been a little puzzled now as to why the Republicans are piling on, given the numbers of the story.
But I don't see any movement here.
No Democrat is coming forward to challenge.
He's consolidated the Democratic vote within the primary.
I have a poll coming out in two days.
I'll be curious to see, and I ask all of these questions in, out, what do you think, et cetera, whether or not people have moved after Labor Day, because I think families get together.
But I think you're right.
There's a big pile on.
It's across the board.
But the Democratic Party, however, it's still consolidated around him.
And I just don't see it cracking as I thought it might a few months ago.
So there's a Wall Street Journal opinion piece out today by Robert F. Kennedy Jr., and I had him on TV just so happens last night.
And he talks about how the Democratic Party is rigging the primaries to help Joe Biden and New Hampshire and Iowa, you know, pushed aside.
He wants the first contest to be in the state that saved him the last time, and that being South Carolina, which I don't think, I actually agree with Kennedy that they're making it impossible for him to be a contender.
Now the question is, if they want him off the ticket, mark my words, if they start sounding like me on the bribery, money laundering scandal allegations, you'll know for a fact that he's out.
That's not happening among Democratic pundits or the Democratic media yet.
Well, remember, the party is generally controlled by the president in office.
Generally, the president in office makes the party appointments.
So it's, you know, surprise when you have an incumbent president, the party is going to be, and I think that's going to be true in the Democrat and Republican side.
The party is going to be tilted in favor of the administration and not letting the primary season, you know, break with the president because, as you know, it's almost unprecedented for sitting presidents not to get renominated, no matter what condition they're in.
So let me go to Vietnam this week.
And you know me well enough.
I think I've been way ahead of the curve about what I believe is Joe Biden's very weak, frail physical state and his cognitive decline.
I believe it has gotten dramatically worse, culminating in his own staff having to cut his mic in Vietnam after, and it's a rather long tape, but I really want you to hear it because it's so bad.
And for me, as an American, it's humiliating.
I want you to listen and comment on it.
Good evening, Vietnam.
My brother loves having famous lines from movies that he always quotes.
And one of them is there's a movie about John Wayne.
He's an Indian scout.
The Indian looks at John Wayne and points to the union stone and says, he's a lion, dog-faced pony soldier.
Well, there's a lot of lion dog-faced pony soldiers out there about global warming.
But I tell you what, I don't know about you, but I'm going to go to bed.
It wasn't confrontational at all.
Thank you, everybody.
This ends the count press office.
Thanks, everyone.
Thank you.
Thank you.
The political coverage of the that look on some of the political players and some of the rhetorical question.
No, anyways.
Mark Penn, you're not going to like me to ask this question.
No Democrat likes this question.
Are you really going to say that he's cognitively strong enough to be president?
Well, look, I'm going to say it was a 12-hour time zone slip.
I don't know if you've taken these one-day international time flip.
I've been to Vietnam.
I've been to Singapore.
I did my TV show at 9 a.m.
I urge you to go look at it.
And I promise you, I brought the same energy at 9 a.m. as I bring locally at 9 p.m.
Do you think this man is cognitively strong enough to be president?
Look, I think you're going to see a campaign here.
And during the campaign, look, he's going to have to get out and campaign.
I like you, Mark, but you're dodging my question.
I love you, but you're really dodging my question.
Because, look, it's obviously not a president's finest hour in a tape like that in a time zone.
Okay, the last part of that was not from Vietnam.
The very last part that I played with the music, that was in Vietnam.
No time lapse there.
I hadn't heard the last clip, but yes.
Well, let me play it again, and then you tell me.
Listen: the political coverage.
Look, some of the political players and some of the rhetorical question.
We've had many moments like that, Mark.
Is he cognitively strong enough to be our president?
Look, I can just tell you that right now, most people in the country are questioning that, and he's going to have to answer that question.
You're not alone.
We know what the polls are showing.
My poll included, shows that most people think that he may be too old right now.
You saw the CNN poll, and he's going to have to confront that.
President Reagan successfully confronted that when he was questioned, and he is obviously going to have to confront that in the campaign and answer it satisfactorily to the voters in a way if he's going to run this campaign.
And he's going to have to do that because the numbers are pretty clear.
But it's interesting.
Those people who believe that are still voting for him.
Well, slow down.
That's not what the CNN poll showed.
67% the week before poll.
Democrats don't want him to run.
Well, but he's still getting a 40 in that poll, I believe, about a 46%.
They had 39 in the other poll.
That's for a sitting president, not a high mark.
So you're not seeing it quite seep over to the vote.
No, that's right.
His job rating is 39.
A lot of people are questioning his age.
My poll shows that as well.
But they haven't shown them defect from voting from him yet because he's still about even with Donald Trump.
My polls actually show Trump a couple of points ahead, but they haven't seen them put into action that finding.
So the public was, you know, the public is a smart public.
They will resolve these questions.
These are real questions.
And I think you're going to see that resolve itself in the next month or two, one way or the other.
Quick break on the other side more with Democratic pollster Mark Penn as we continue.
The newsmakers, you won't hear anywhere else.
This is the Sean Hannity Show.
Mark Penn is with us.
Why do you believe Donald Trump leading as having as large a lead as he does?
Why do you think he's not going to be the candidate?
I think that his support hovers very close to 50%.
I believe it's very interesting.
I thought the Wall Street Journal poll of Republican primary voters showed that it's primarily a suburban party.
I thought it was interesting that Nikki Haley was beating Trump by six or seven points.
And I think the history.
She wasn't beating him directly.
They had hypothetical matchups with every Republican primary candidate.
Yes, she was beating Biden by six points.
And, you know, so it said to me there's still a lot of room here if the Republican opposition to Trump consolidated to give Trump a real horse rig.
But if he has 50% of the vote, let me ask you this.
You and I, look, we're not novices at this.
It's not our first rodeo.
I've never seen anything like this.
It defies all conventional political gravity.
And that is when a candidate gets arrested, arraigned four separate times, and the poll numbers go up.
Do you think there has been a level of overreach here, which I believe has been way past that, that there is going to be, who would ever think Donald Trump a sympathetic figure, right?
That it's going to result in people seeing this for being purely political and that there'll be a backlash to it.
Look, a lot of voters do see it as purely political, and I've seen the Department of Justice image Sink considerably to below 50%.
As low as I saw it, below, I saw it in the 30s.
Yes, some might vote's below 50, but look, Donald Trump has consolidated the very conservative vote.
He's got, I think, 68% of the very conservative vote of the Republican Party.
In the past, he actually didn't have the very conservative vote.
And so, yes, is there a base that he has?
Has it been inflamed?
Is that a majority?
No.
I think the big issue is the economy.
Who would be the best Democrat to replace Biden?
My last question.
I think we don't know who the best Democrat.
I think there are three or four governors.
I think, you know, you interviewed Governor Newsom, and he made a pretty good performance, I thought, on your show.
Right?
I thought he did great, but I knew he would do well.
But I also gave him room to talk because I promised him I would do that.
You did.
And then look, Kamala Harris would be the vice president, as you see, Joe Biden, Walter Mondale.
She's just a wordsmith.
I mean, her word salads are almost as bad as Biden's.
Win or lose, Democrats typically give vice presidents a chance.
That's how Joe Biden is.
No, you're right.
Historically, you're dead on accurate.
We always appreciate you coming on, Mark Penn.
I give credit to any Democrat that comes on this show because they take a lot of Adam shit for coming on the show.
And it's just ridiculous.
Anyway, Mark, good to talk to you, man.
Thank you.
Thanks for having me.
800-941-Sean on number.
You want to be a part of the program.
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.
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, joining us now, former governor of the great state of South Carolina and former UN ambassador, now a Republican presidential candidate, Nikki Haley, is back with us.
I'm grateful to have you, especially from your capacity as UN ambassador.
I don't know if I'm the only person upset about this.
I think everybody should be upset about this.
But, you know, we have the Biden administration now paying what they're claiming to be a $6 billion cash ransom for Americans held hostage in Iran.
To me, that will only encourage further hostage taking.
Now, in June and July, the administration unfroze more than $10 billion of Iranian assets held in Iraq, allowing Baghdad to move their payments there.
There's other articles saying that the total amount of this deal may ultimately add up to as much as $50 billion, regardless.
You know, we're looking at a country, governor, that can produce 10 nuclear bombs in four months, according to the Washington Free Beacon this week.
And now we're giving them the money to accelerate, not only being the number one state sponsor of terror, but accelerate their nuclear program.
It's horrific, Sean.
I mean, you look at the fact that they just put a bounty on every American's head.
So think about, you know, my husband's deployed overseas.
Every military man and woman is now in more jeopardy.
You've got all these foreign service officers that we have working in American embassies on the ground.
They are now in jeopardy because every enemy we have from North Korea, Iran, China to Russia, just saw how much money they can get for taking American hostages.
And I'll be the first one.
I worked with the Namazis, some of the ones that are coming home, and we want our Americans to come home.
But when you do it this way, you have to remember you're dealing with a regime that says death to America every day.
And we saw this in the Obama administration.
He gave all this money.
You can't change a culture by throwing money at it.
All you're doing is spreading terrorism.
We saw with Obama, they basically paid the Houthis to do more trouble in Yemen, Hezbollah, and Lebanon.
So they were fighting a proxy war against the Saudis with that.
Absolutely.
Iraq, Syria.
They just went and made the world less safe, but they went and put a bounty on every American's head.
And it just, you can't buy friends.
You can't pay off enemies.
And Biden has not learned that rule at all.
All right.
Let me talk a little bit about where we are in terms of this presidential primary.
The reviews you got on the debate were pretty phenomenal.
Probably, I guess, the most controversial thing to come out of the debate was you saying something that I've been saying that I know makes a lot of people mad because I am in my heart.
I am pro-life.
I believe in the sanctity of life.
I believe life begins at conception.
We have an advertiser on this program, Pre-Born, and they offer free 4D ultrasounds to any expecting mom.
And through the science of ultrasound, when they introduce expecting moms to the miracle that's growing inside them and they can hear heartbeats and count fingers and toes and see facial features, it changes their hearts.
I've always said abortion to me is going to end up being a heart issue.
Now that it's back in the states as a result of the decision and every state will decide what their laws will be, you know, you made a point that I have been making.
In spite of my personal beliefs, I don't believe this is where the country is.
I think the country's more in the first trimester, maybe the DOPS 15-week area, certainly not late-term abortion, certainly not abortion up to the moment of birth, and certainly not Governor Northam's post-birth, you know, infanticide and murder, which was insanity.
But you actually said that Republicans better understand the reality of this because there is an electorate out there, especially in swing states.
I don't think it would matter in South Carolina, but it'll certainly matter in Pennsylvania.
We saw Doug Mastriano get destroyed.
He didn't even make exceptions for rape, incest, or the mother's life.
He lost by more to a non-incumbent Democratic gubernatorial candidate than any other candidate since the 1940s and dragged the whole ticket down with him.
You know, Oz was able to get double-digit ticket splitting and he couldn't make up or compensate the 16 points that Mastriano lost by.
Well, you know, I'll tell you, I spoke my truth at the debate, and that is that I am unapologetically pro-life, not because the Republican Party tells me to be, but because my husband was adopted and I had trouble having both of my children.
So I am surrounded by blessings.
But you have to tell the American people the truth.
You have to stop demonizing this issue because it's personal for every woman and every man.
And I believe that, you know, a right happened when we took on elected justices and they stopped making the decision and we gave it into the hands of the people.
And so we have seen states become more pro-life, and I welcome that.
We've seen some states go more towards the abortion side.
I wish that wasn't the case, but the people have decided.
But when we're talking about should there be a federal law, let's be honest with the American people on what it takes.
It takes a majority of the House.
It takes 60, 6-0 Senate votes, and it takes the signature of a president.
We haven't had 60 Republican senators in over 100 years.
We might have 45 pro-life senators.
So no Republican president can ban abortions any more than a Democrat president can ban any of these state laws.
So what can we agree on?
We can all agree that we don't want late-term abortions.
We can all agree that we want adoptions and good quality adoptions.
We can all agree that doctors and nurses who don't believe in abortion shouldn't have to perform them.
We can all agree that contraception should be accessible.
And we should all agree that no state law can say a woman who got an abortion should get the death penalty or go to jail.
Let's start there.
Let's humanize the situation.
I had a roommate who was raped in college.
I wouldn't wish what she went through wondering if she was pregnant on anyone.
Every person has a story.
Let's be respectful of their story.
At the end of the day, what do all Americans want and what should we want?
How do we save as many babies as possible and support as many moms as possible?
So let's do that by coming together with plans instead of demonizing each other on it.
I'm not going to be a part of it.
I don't think the fellas have handled it well, but I think it's important that we start talking about it.
By the way, I like that line.
I don't think the fellas have handled it well.
That's pretty funny, actually.
But I tend to agree with your sentiment on it.
And look, Republicans have got to look for a Republican to win the White House.
Governor, I'm not telling you anything you don't know.
It used to be Florida and Ohio.
I'm not really worried about those states anymore.
But you know what?
We do have to concern ourselves now with Georgia.
I'm very worried about Georgia.
You have to fight North Carolina, as you know, and you have to fight for Pennsylvania.
That's never an easy win for a Republican.
The same with states like Michigan and Wisconsin and Arizona, Nevada.
I mean, it is hard.
You have to run the table as a Republican to become president.
I mean, Sean, we were in a room yesterday with over 100, 125 women in Georgia, Republicans, Independents, and a few Democrats.
We want every person in the room, every single person, because they want to hear the hard truths.
They want to know exactly what's going on.
They want transparency.
They want to know that we're going to be honest with them.
You know, let's be honest that we didn't get into this $32 trillion hole with just Biden.
Our Republicans did that to us, too.
Let's be honest.
We have to have transparency in the classroom.
We don't want to turn custody of our kids over to the teachers unions and school bureaucrats.
Let's make sure that we bring law and order back to our country and require prosecutors to prosecute according to the law.
Let's acknowledge the lawlessness on the border and say that it cannot stand and start securing this border by instead of catch and release, going to catch into port, putting more Border Patrol on the ground and letting them do their job.
And let's acknowledge that we've got national security threats all around us.
And America can't be so arrogant to think we don't need friends.
We need friends and we've got to start pulling alliances so that we can do this.
And that's what we're telling people.
And it's resonating all over the country.
And, you know, I think the debate certainly woke things up, but we've seen nothing but momentum ever since.
And I think it's because Americans are tired of working for government.
They want government to be working for them.
And we're determined to make that happen.
Let me ask you this, because a lot of people say, well, Donald Trump should debate.
If I was running a race and Donald Trump was in the race, look, the guy tends to take a lot of the oxygen out of the room.
I don't think you'd dispute that.
I would almost think it's an opportunity for people to get their message out a lot more if he doesn't show up at the debate.
But, you know, that's my feeling.
What's yours?
You know, I go based on what people have said.
I mean, people want to see him on the debate.
You know, debates are great because they show you your options.
They allow you to see how people respond, what their answers are, all of that.
But I think that, you know, people aren't going to elect someone who's absent.
They want to see you fight for them.
They want to see what you're going to do.
And I think that he needs to get on that debate stage.
I welcome him on it.
I think that it's good for our country for them to see him as one of those options and see what's going to happen.
And I think you don't want to be, you know, so confident that you think just because you're polling well now that you're going to continue polling well by not showing up.
So, you know, look, I think he needs to be on the stage.
I would love to have him on the stage.
I don't think he's going to do the September one, but I hope that he'll consider doing the October one.
All right, Nikki Haley, former South Carolina governor and presidential candidate for the Republicans and former U.N. Ambassador.
We always love having you.
Governor, great to talk to you again.
Thank you.
Go to nikkihaley.com.
Let's get our country back.
800-941-Sean, our number.
You want to be a part of the program?
Logan is in the free state of Florida.
Logan, how are you?
Hey, how are you doing, sir?
I'm good.
What's happening?
Well, I took a little bit of issue with something you said yesterday about the government shutdown.
And it's not that you were wrong.
It's that it was slightly misleading.
And I'd like to clarify, if you don't mind.
Go right ahead.
When there's a furlough, which is what we called it, I was active duty for 17 years.
When there's a furlough, you are correct in saying we still show up to work, but there are a lot of benefits that are taken away from troops, from even federal penitentiary workers.
A friend of mine got out.
He was a Marine Reserve.
He worked in a federal penitentiary.
Furlough happened when we were still in, and he lost his truck.
So to say that government still works, our service members still show up.
How long was that shutdown?
To lose your truck, usually shutdowns don't last that long.
And once you tell any lending institution that you're on furlough, every single time in my career that I can recall, everyone's been given back pay.
So it's not something that's not going to be resolved.
It's just a matter of they fear monger it like it's the worst thing in the world, but it ends up all these people end up getting free vacations.
Well, so, and again, when I was active duty, we didn't.
I got advanced my paycheck from my bank, but it was essentially an interest-free payday loan.
And that happened a couple times when I was on active duty.
So while I do agree the elected officials need to be held to task and they need to do their jobs that we sent them to go and do, I don't necessarily know if forcing that function by utilizing Sometimes you got to put pressure, you know, to get to make real change.
And I think that's what I was trying to infer here.
I'm not afraid of it.
But white pay starts to get looked at, dive pay, jump pay, EOD pay, all those special incentives and benefits, they start to get looked at if you start to have a furlough.
There's, you know, make as an E3 making 36 grand a year, you know, those checks do matter.
So thank you for your time, sir.
I do appreciate it.
Well, thank you for your service.
Thanks for what you're doing.
Okay.
Hey, no problem, sir.
All right, 800-941-Sean, our number, if you want to be a part of the program.
All right, that's going to wrap things up for today.
Hannity Tonight live audience show, 9 Eastern on Fox.
Breaking News, John Solomon.
Congressman Jim Jordan will weigh in.
By the way, when do we get to hear from the Biden family members like Hunter?
Also, Speaker Kevin McCarthy on the impeachment inquiry, how they're going to get budget deals done.
Ron DeSantis in studio, Tulsi Gabbard in studio.
David Wells, former New York Yankee.
Yeah, he's not woke at all.
He'll join us as well.
Set your DBR tonight, Nine Eastern.
See you tonight.
Back here tomorrow.
Thank you for making this show possible.
You want smart political talk without the meltdowns?
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I'm Carol Markowitz and I'm Mary Catherine Hamm.
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