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Feb. 15, 2024 - Sean Hannity Show
31:48
Snow Kills GOP - February 14th, Hour 1

Sean reviews the special election for George Santos' open Congressional seat.  Early voting is being embraced by the left and, well, it's the system we have!  Conservatives need to embrace early voting if they want to win these races!  See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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All right.
Thank you, Scott Shannon, and thanks to all of you for being with us.
Here is our toll-free telephone number.
It's 800-941 Sean.
If you want to be a part of the program, a lot of people don't really know what happened in this special election for what was George Santos' seat, which happened to be my old congressional district when I lived in New York, which I've not been back in that district since before the end of last year.
So I've not been there in a long time, but I know the district.
I know it well.
And we had on the program Maze Pillup.
It's interesting because polls showed that she had been closing, that it was a three or four point race, but that's not what happened yesterday.
It ended up being pretty much a blowout.
And why am I bringing this up?
Why am I starting the program with a local New York congressional race to fill a seat of an idiot that shouldn't have been elected in the first place?
I was pretty much not vetted.
But all that said and done, this is what we can learn from this one runoff election.
Runoff elections, it's hard to put a lot of weight behind them because there's so many odd things that can happen.
Turnout usually is a lot lower in an off-year election or it's not even an election season, and it's just not the time people are used to voting.
So you can factor all of that in, but that does not negate the following.
Now, I will concede up front that it is a Democratic plus eight district.
It's been redrawn.
You know, it's crazy, parts of the middle of Long Island and like Massa Pequa.
I was on the north shore of Long Island at the time, and that would be parts of the North Shore of Long Island up through Glencove into parts of Queens, parts of Great Neck, which is still, I believe, Nassau County.
Anyway, so you can look at this and you can say, okay, what happened here?
Now, the first thing I would say is the Santos issue probably played a part in some people's minds thinking, okay, we tried a Republican.
That didn't work out.
But here's the bigger issue in all of this.
And you had an election eve poll of likely voters, some of whom already had cast their ballots, showed the race was pretty much a dead heat.
It didn't turn out this way.
And this is where Republicans better learn their lesson.
There's a lesson to be learned here.
Yesterday, they had a huge snowstorm in Long Island.
I wouldn't say huge.
I guess most people I spoke to, five, six inches, something in that neighborhood within the district around that much.
Anyway, so you have on election day a massive snowstorm.
That made it difficult for a lot of, especially older people that tend to vote in special elections to show up at the polls.
That became a heavy lift for a lot of people.
Now, what made the difference?
Why did this then become pretty much a blowout?
Now, first thing I'll tell you about Swazi is he is a well-known entity.
He was the Nassau County Republican head for a long time, chairman, and that is the head of the entire county.
But remember, Long Island has been trending very red in recent years because of Albany and Joe Biden, etc.
If it wasn't for New York congressional seats and California congressional seats, Republicans wouldn't have control of the House.
That's how important it is.
There were a lot of districts that Biden won in 2020 that Republicans picked up in 2022.
Anyway, he is a pretty slick politician, well-known politician.
Personally, I've met him, know him.
I don't know him well, but nice guy if you meet him.
I mean, but very well known in the district.
He had previously served three terms in Congress in this very district, albeit it's since been redrawn.
He left his seat to run for governor.
All right.
Previously, Nassau County executive.
He has name recognition through the roof.
There's nobody that really doesn't know him.
And until this election cycle, I frankly had not heard of Mozzie Pillop.
We put her on the show, see if we can give her a chance to win.
A lot of friends of mine cared a lot about the race.
And with the small margin of majority that the Republicans have on the House, they can ill afford to lose that seat.
Now, what I had told the New York delegation when I met some of them at the town hall that I did with the new speaker at the time, Speaker Johnson, I brought this subject up with them unsolicited, and I said, guys, unless somebody's convicted, I don't think you should be in the business of rushing to judgment and especially with the limited margin you have, kicking out a reliable Republican vote.
That would have been Santos.
I don't know.
I don't know anything about Santos, to be honest.
But put that aside also.
So there's a well-known guy, and Santos had won Nassau County by 10.
I think last time I looked at the numbers before I got disgusted and just tuned it out, you know, Mozzie Phillips, I think, was down by something like 19.
I don't know what the final numbers are.
Now, first of all, big mistake.
The Democrats outspent Republicans dramatically.
Now, some people are saying 2-1.
I'm told by other people, closer to 8-1.
They had a huge early get-out-the-vote ground game.
And, you know, it should not have been this big a blowout.
However, this is what I keep saying.
Now, here's the thing.
So the snowstorm shows up on Election Day.
That impacts Republicans that tend to want to vote on Election Day.
There's been a reluctance and a resistance, and I've talked about it exhaustively on this program for conservatives and Republicans to vote by mail and vote early.
In my new home state of Florida, they do it perfectly.
I mean, most people vote by mail.
Most people vote early, and they count those votes before the election, and they're all tabulated.
They have partisan observers watching the vote count, et cetera, et cetera.
All of this has happened, and they've kind of mastered it.
So what is the lesson here?
What made the difference?
Swazi himself attributed his victory to the Democrats' early voting push, which already banked thousands of his votes.
Mozzie Pillop, voters struggled to get to the polls on a snowy day.
And Swazi said Republicans often vote in the morning and Democrats vote in the afternoon.
He said predicting the storm was a good sign for his campaign.
The storm depressed early voting today, no doubt about it.
And, you know, former Republican Senator Alphonse D'Amato said in Nassau County, nearly 70,000 people voted during the nine days of early voting or mailed in absentee ballots.
I'm ineligible to vote in the, was ineligible because I've now registered in Florida and handed a letter in saying I'm no longer take me off the voter rolls in New York.
But anyway, thousands more Democrats than Republicans turned out for early voting.
What have I been saying?
The Republican Party and conservatives and Republicans, you need to get this through your heads.
You better understand this is the system that we have.
It's not the system I want.
It's not the system I like.
It's not the system that I believe has the most integrity that results in confidence in the results, but it is the system we have.
I'd prefer paper ballots, Election Day a national holiday, same day voting for everybody with the exception of the military, elderly, infirmed, etc.
That's it.
But Democrats, they have focused hundreds of millions of dollars on early and mail-in voting, and they are kicking Republicans' ass left and right by taking advantage of the system they want.
Now, you would also need measures which they don't have in New York, like voter ID and signature verification, chain of custody controls, updated voter rolls, and partisan observers watching the vote count all day long.
And after the polls close, watch the voting all day, the vote counting all night.
That's what has to happen.
You know, they need to raise and spend more money in every single race, and they need to match the Democrats dollar for dollar.
They've got to match their early voting and voting by mail efforts to a T. Republican voters, conservative voters, need to rethink the system.
If you've been reluctant, if you've been resistant, I kind of share your hesitancy.
However, it is not smart to wait for Election Day and expect to win and expect that you're going to make up what ultimately is, in a case of a congressional race, thousands, maybe tens of thousands of votes, depending.
Or in the case of a state race or a federal race, you're talking about, you know, this election cycle, we may have a race for president in 264 days where six states and 100,000 or a couple of hundred thousand votes make up the entire difference.
Now, here's another problem: that there's no ballot harvesting efforts.
Republicans need to match the Democrats' efforts and hopefully surpass their ballot harvesting efforts, legal ballot harvesting.
Now, the other thing is, is they've got to recruit better candidates.
I don't know if many of you knew this.
I knew it, but up until this race, we know that Mozzie Pillop was a Democrat.
Linda, did you know that?
Most people didn't know that.
I only knew it because I knew the pollsters.
Okay, so Swazi's Republican opponent was until recently a candidate.
She's got a great life story, but I lived in the district.
I never heard of her until this race.
And I think there were better, well-known, more well-known people that could have run that would have been more formidable in this particular case.
So there's a lesson to be learned here.
I don't know how many more times I have to repeat myself, but this is what can happen if you don't bank your vote.
That's what the RNC has called it.
Now, at least the Republicans are attempting and have attempted, at least Rhonda McDaniel did.
And again, I guess she's not going to be the chairman anymore.
But they better double down on these efforts.
They better invest the money into early voting efforts.
They better invest money into partisan observers watching the voting all day, the vote counting all night.
They better match and hopefully surpass this whole ballot harvesting, legal ballot harvesting effort that the Democrats are involved in.
You know, Democrats, you know, in this particular case, I'll tell you, they've learned a lot.
These negative abortion ads were brutal towards Mazzie Pillop.
And I'll tell you right now, every single Republican, what did I say at the beginning of the year, January 2nd, coming back from my long vacation of the year, I said, let me tell you how this year is going to play out.
They're going to run on Trump, Trump, Trump is evil, evil, evil.
They're going to focus on January 6th.
They're going to focus on democracy and peril.
Meanwhile, they'll try to kick everybody off the ballot.
And they are going to focus on these election items that I'm mentioning to you.
And that, of course, then they will use the old playbook, Republicans are racist, sexist, et cetera, things I've told you over and over again.
You know, so according, and in this case, the number one issue we've seen out of New Hampshire and Iowa is the issue of immigration.
So what was Swazi's position on immigration?
A guy that said he's 100% with Joe Biden on these issues.
Well, that would have been a big liability, but what was his solution to push a false claim that it's the Democratic Party, that they're the ones that actually want to control the border.
Meanwhile, they've told us for three years that the border is secure and the border is closed.
Now they're saying it's not our fault.
Mayorkas is saying before he was impeached yesterday.
We'll get to that.
And, you know, Joe Biden's saying, there's nothing left for me to do.
Well, actually, that's a lie.
He could just, he did rescind all the Trump policies that were working.
And with the stroke of a pen, he can implement them once again.
Senator Chris Murphy was urging Democrats to go on offense on the border and immigration in a memo on Wednesday to party members citing New York Democrat Tom Swazi's victory in this special election.
They're going to go in hard with everything that I told you on January 2nd they were going to run on.
Now, I can keep repeating myself, and Republicans cannot listen and keep losing, but they lose to the detriment of the country because Joe Biden and liberal, you know, radical, Democratic, climate alarmist, religious cultists, their policies of wide open borders is going to end up being the biggest national security debacle in history.
We see the damage, the real damage they have caused to our economy.
We see what they've done to energy in this country.
We see the billions of dollars being wasted, thrown down the tubes by pushing their radical climate agenda and electric vehicles that Americans have shown over and over again that they don't want.
And that's going to be the predictable result.
Or you can get your Adam Schiff together and you can go out there and you can now implement changes.
And that means that people have to change too.
And you've got to adapt to the times we're living in.
Now, if you elect enough Republicans, I do have some good news.
And the good news is simply they can change election laws and they can make paper ballots the law of the land.
They can insist on voter ID, signature verification, the other things that I mentioned.
They can push early voting, voting by mail, and bring integrity to the system.
But they can, you know, we can add, we can do all of these things, but you've got to win the elections first.
And the system we have is the one we're stuck with.
It's not the one you wish you had.
That's the message that I think Republicans need to learn from this.
Democrats will lie about abortion.
They're going to demagogue abortion.
They're going to demagogue the border.
They're actually going to make the case.
It's not Joe Biden's fault, not ours.
It's Republicans' fault.
They didn't support the bill.
No, Republicans said they're not going to support a bill that gives, after we've given $75 billion to Ukraine, that gives them another $60 some odd billion more dollars before they secure the border first.
They're insisting on it.
They have the right position, but they got to sell it better.
And Republicans better get their Adam Schiff together on the issue of abortion and have a clear message.
And whether you're a pro-life and believe in the sanctity of life or not, I'm telling you that politically, the country is not agreeing with you.
We've seen that in election after election.
The country seems to be around 12, first trimester, or the Dobbs decision, 15 weeks.
That's the reality, a truth that maybe some of you don't want to hear, but it's the truth.
All right, I want to deal with something that just I find lying infuriating.
You know, it's like if your kids get in trouble, we've talked about this before.
You know, did you have cookies?
No, I didn't have any chocolate chip cookies at all.
Meanwhile, the chocolate chip cookies all over their face.
Are you more mad that they had the cookie that you told them not to have, or are you mad that they lie about it?
I'm sure Liam has never done anything like that, right, Linda, to you?
Not one time?
Oh, never.
Oh, come on.
I mean, my children are honest.
They know.
They know very clearly that if they lie, it'll be far worse than anything else they could do.
All right, but they had to learn at some point.
They probably learned the hard way, did they not?
I mean, we've definitely had conversations from time to time where I have said to them, listen, this is a moment.
This is a choice.
Don't do this.
Okay, that's a start.
It's a start.
And so, anyway, so we have this big vote in the Senate.
And what was it, 22 Republicans?
It's about Ukrainian aid.
And what they didn't include in this bill, which originally they were going to include, and that was the compromise put together by Senator Langford.
And the compromise, unfortunately, did not meet the goal of actually securing our border.
Now, the Republicans have a bill.
It's H.R. 2.
It's called the Secure Border Act.
They've already passed it.
And all the Senate Republicans needed to do was to say, no, we don't need James Langford to basically put in provisions that would allow at any time Biden and the likes of Majorkas to do whatever the hell they want.
It's at their, quote, discretion.
Never mind the absolute total numbers of people that would be allowed in, even if they reached the maximum of 5,000 illegal immigrants in a day.
And we're well above that now when it continues to be that way.
And it just infuriates me that now they have demagogued this issue into Joe Biden telling Republicans you must reject Trump's dangerous, un-American, pro-Putin stance on Ukraine.
Now, if I were to come on this radio program, let's just say I think Joe Biden's border policies are un-American.
And it's pro-Putin.
It's pro-Chi.
It's pro-the Mullahs in Iran.
It's pro-General al-Sisi, not of Mexico, but of Egypt.
It's pro-Afghanistan and the Taliban because that's where a lot of these illegal immigrants are coming from.
Now, if I said that, I bet a lot of people in the media would be saying, oh, my gosh, Hannity's now accusing Joe Biden of being un-American.
And they'd make a big deal about it.
I don't go around calling people un-American.
I just don't.
They have different points of view.
You know, I think they're nuts, but I'm not impugning their patriotism.
But that's what Joe Biden does here.
And it's predicated on a massive lie.
And the lie is, is that Republicans, they don't want to help out Ukraine because Republicans, they were insisting on American-first policies.
What Joe Biden has done at our southern border has become the single largest national security threat that we are facing since the Cold War.
We have nearly 10 million illegal Joe Biden immigrants that have crossed into this country unvetted.
And they're coming from the countries that I mentioned, Syria, Iran.
You know, Iran, the number one state sponsor of terror, Syria, their puppet regime.
You know, they're coming from Egypt, thousands of them.
You know, the home of the Muslim Brotherhood.
They're coming from Afghanistan, home of al-Qaeda.
They're coming from our number one geopolitical foe.
That would be China.
You know, last count I saw was over 37,000 recently.
I'm like, you got to be kidding me.
You know, tens of thousands from Russia.
Why are Russians showing up at our southern border?
Why are Iranians showing up there?
Why are the communist Chinese showing up there?
Do you think they're all coming here because maybe like people from Mexico or Latin America that want a better life for themselves and their family?
They take this perilous, dangerous journey dealing with the human traffickers and the cartels.
You think they're taking all these risks with their life?
A lot of them, probably the vast overwhelming majority, just want a better life opportunity for themselves and their family, opportunities that we take for granted that don't exist where they live.
Okay.
I'm not believing that about the people from these other countries.
And that then becomes where the national security issue kicks in.
You have the top brass FBI retired.
I mean, you're talking about the top positions in the FBI calling this an invasion of military-age men.
And I have said, and I stand by it, it's not if, it's when this country is going to be attacked internally by these unvetted, illegal immigrants from some of our top geopolitical foes.
That is going to happen.
Hope I'm wrong.
I don't think I'm wrong.
And I think we're going to pay a very dear price for this.
Now, the issue involving the, I think Putin is a thug.
I think he's a dictator.
I think he's a murderer.
And history has proven that out.
I think he has slaughtered innocent men, women, and children, and he's targeted them.
That's who he is.
But am I infuriated by the fact that America has done the bulk of heavy lifting helping Ukraine that's not even a part of NATO when the continent of Europe, that's their continent, and European countries, as per usual, have not paid their fair share?
Yeah, that infuriates me too.
But it infuriates me that Joe Biden is lying and the Democrats are lying.
They lie when they said to us for three years, the border is secure.
The border is closed.
Now they're saying, Joe Biden is saying, well, I've done everything I can do.
I don't know why they won't help me.
Well, you didn't do everything you can do.
You undid every policy that was working with the stroke of a pen, and you can bring back those policies with a stroke of a pen.
Or Mayorkas now, he's changing his tune.
All of a sudden, Alejandro Mayorkas has found religion on the issue of our border, and he's now claiming that we don't bear responsibility for the broken system.
This is the guy that's been telling us the border's closed, the border's secure.
I don't like being lied to.
I don't like the lie that they're telling the American people, Republicans, they're responsible for the border.
No, that's a lie.
And, you know, I saw that Nikki Haley brought it up in an ad as it relates to Trump.
I was disappointed in her for that because it's just not true.
And, you know, look, she's out there on the campaign trail, and I don't see a good outcome in South Carolina, her home state, and I think it becomes very difficult for her.
I'm not saying this with any animus.
I'm just objectively discerning that the polls can't be off by that much.
There was a poll out yesterday that had Trump up in South Carolina by 35 points.
If he wins by 15, that's a massive win.
Or Mitt Romney out there suggesting if your position is being cheered by Vladimir Putin, it's time to reconsider your position.
No, Senator Romney, why don't you lead the charge and get your ass down to the southern border?
And why don't you see the danger that is clear and present that we're being warned about by top FBI officials and even the current FBI director, and that's Christopher Wr, who I'm not the biggest fan of, but he's right on this issue.
I mean, my understanding is Ray has been making the rounds across the country warning local sheriffs and law enforcement and municipalities about the dangers of Joe Biden's open borders.
I wish he would have spoken up sooner, like over three years ago.
I'm not against immigration.
I'm for legal immigration.
All four of my grandparents were immigrants.
They came here with no money in their pocket, next to no money from Ireland.
All four of them.
They came.
They went through Ellis Island.
They came in legally.
I assume that there was some type of vetting back in the day.
Certainly not as perilous a time as this in a post-9-11, post-October 7th world that we live in.
Romney's argument is: well, we can't stand back and let Putin have his way with Europe.
No, the Republicans were saying secure the border first.
And I would add to that: get your budget in balance first.
Then we can talk about issues involving how much money is left.
How much should America's contribution be?
First, I don't think we've done enough for Israel, especially compared to Ukraine.
And Israel, frankly, for the most part, they just want our weapons.
They're even willing to pay for most of them.
They're not looking for the massive billions of dollars.
You know, this whole war now has become an American proxy war against Russia and Putin.
And add to that, Joe Biden has put handcuffs on the Ukrainians by not allowing them to actually fight the war to win the war.
There's no point in ever fighting a war without the intention of winning it.
And by denying Ukraine the 28 MiGs at the very beginning of this conflict that were offered by Poland, Joe Biden put handcuffs on Zelensky and on Ukraine.
And then we have questions about, well, what should Europe's contribution be?
It should be far greater than the United States.
The opposite is true.
And they're not a member of NATO.
I am in favor.
I would like to prevent Putin and any geographical ambitions that he might have beyond Ukraine.
It's a horrible situation.
I don't like to see innocent people get killed.
Nobody wants to see that.
It's terrible.
It's a nightmare in our time, but it is what it is.
But I hate being lied to.
And they're lying about the border.
They've been lying for three years about it.
They're lying about this Ukrainian bill.
They know that the Republicans want the border secure first.
That's called being America first.
I make no apologies that we as a country need to take care of our own issues first.
You know, I watch in New York.
They're giving three four-star hotel rooms to illegal immigrants.
That's nice.
I don't remember them ever doing that to homeless vets that I saw in the streets of New York pretty much every day.
I don't remember them ever doing that.
One of the great things I don't miss about New York, as a matter of fact, there's not a single thing I miss about New York, except maybe a couple of friends, but it's called Jet Blue.
It's called Spirit Airlines.
It's called Delta.
Try one of the airlines.
You can get down to Florida.
It's probably the easiest travel you'll ever book in your life.
On another issue where Joe has lied, that is the issue of his involvement in his foreign business, son's foreign business dealings.
I never once talked to my son, my brother, or anybody for that matter about their foreign business deals.
Well, that's not what Rob Walker testified to, former business associate of Hunter.
And Biden met with the chairman of the Chinese energy firm that Hunter Biden sought to create this joint venture with at a four seasons in Washington in 2017, according to Rob Walker.
And during his closed-door transcript with the Oversight and Judiciary Committees, he told investigators that Joe Biden attended a meeting where Hunter Biden, other business partners, and CEFC chairman were having lunch.
He's meeting with the head of the Communist Chinese Energy Conglomerate, CEFC.
And by the way, he didn't remember the exact date.
He did remember it was in 2017.
And Walker said the lunch took place at the four seasons.
It took place in a private room.
And he said the purpose was discussed, ways we can work together.
And the former vice president, yeah, he stopped in.
And he testified that Biden's appearance likely took place before his firm, meaning Robert Walker's firm, received $3 million from the state energy company.
Then, of course, we have the WhatsApp message.
I'm sitting here with my father, and you didn't fulfill your commitment.
And between everybody he knows and my ability to hold a grudge.
Well, guess what?
You're going to regret your decision.
Sounds like a shakedown to me.
Tony Bobolinski, he actually worked with Hunter to create the joint Sinohawk Holdings Group, the Chinese energy company CEFC.
They met with Joe Biden in 2017.
He testified to that point, too.
Bobolinski said Biden enabled his son to sell access to the United States and our most dangerous adversaries, including China, Russia, Romania, Ukraine, Kazakhstan.
Bobolinski testified that his direct personal experience, it was clear Joe Biden was the brand being sold by the Biden family.
He also testified his family's foreign influence peddling operation went through all of these countries and they all gained access and influence to Joe Biden.
And Joe, quote, Joe Biden was more than a participant in and beneficiary of the family's business.
He was an enabler despite being buffered by a complex scheme to maintain plausible deniability.
The only reason any of these international business deals took place, tens of millions of dollars flowing directly to the Biden family, was because Joe Biden had been the vice president.
And Bob Olinski, you know, detailing the CEFC's arrangement with the Biden family, stressing that it's a surrogate for the Chinese Communist Party, which he knew.
He's the one that also told us that Joe's the big guy.
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Very sad to report that this happened, but there's been a shooting, my understanding is one dead, nine injured.
And this was the Kansas City Chiefs parade that took place today.
It's still an unfolding story, but shots have been fired at the Kansas City Chiefs Parade near Union Station.
You know, young kids are here.
I just cannot stand evil, whatever form it manifests itself.
Our prayers are with our friends in Kansas City.
All right, when we come back, all things simple man Bill O'Reilly.
We'll check in with him.
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