Stay right here for our final news roundup and information overload.
All right, news roundup and information overload hour.
Toll-free, our number is 800-941 Sean.
If you want to be a part of the program, let me take you back to 2010.
And you would think that we have made some progress in the last 14 years, but we haven't, and I'll explain why in a moment.
But remember Nancy Pelosi famously or infamously said this.
It's going to be very, very exciting.
But we have to pass the bill so that you can uh find out what is in it.
You have to pass the bill so you know what is in it.
Now we have been in continuing resolution or CR resolution hell now because Congress did not meet the deadline of passing their appropriations bills.
There are twelve of them.
They're supposed to be passed before the fiscal year begins.
That would have started in October of 2023, and they've been, you know, now passing the buck down the line and and short-term uh CRs and this CR and slowly passing appropriations bills.
Uh but now we have a situation where Congress would like to pass a massive omnibus bill.
Usually you get these while I'm on Christmas vacation.
Because that's that that that is the most convenient time when people are paying the least amount of attention to what's going on in Washington.
Thankfully that didn't happen this year.
Republicans in the House have tried, they've not had a lot of support uh to try and insist that the omnibus bill get passed.
This was one of the reasons that Kevin McCarthy was no longer speaker today.
But here we find ourselves up against a Friday deadline in what will be well over a thousand-page omnibus bill.
And as as far as I know, as of this hour, the bill has not been produced.
In other words, giving people time to read it, and yet they want to schedule votes for this bill in the House and the Senate.
My last understanding was on Friday.
Anyway, Senator Mike Lee of Utah is trying to get this stopped.
I don't know if he's going to be able to.
Uh Senator, welcome back to the program.
Thank you, Sean.
Good to be with you as always.
All right.
So can you explain to me that I did a fairly accurately describe the scenario, the situation in Washington?
Yes, you stated it well.
And it's what what's so sad here, Sean, is that the American people are shut out of the process completely.
They're gonna have to pay for all this stuff.
This bill is gonna spend well in excess of a trillion dollars.
It's almost certainly going to be uh well in excess of a thousand pages.
It'll include hundreds of earmarks.
And it's Wednesday afternoon on the East Coast.
They expect us to pass this thing by Friday, before Friday at midnight, when the government will run out of funding.
And they still refuse to show us the legislative text.
So what what would any normal legislative body do in this circumstance?
Well, uh they shouldn't have waited this long, but i it if if it's taken longer than they expected to propose the bill, fine, but you still have to give members the opportunity to read it to get input from their constituents to debate it and amend it before passing it.
Uh and and not up against the rush of a uh contrived government shutdown threat.
It's an artificial deadline that they have created, and considering all of this should have been done by October 1st of 2023.
I don't think the extra time that you are requesting uh is that big an ask.
You're really talking about three weeks or so.
Right, exactly.
All I'm trying to do is extend this out to April 12th.
So I went to the Senate floor today, and I I proposed legislation that would move the spending deadline back to April 12th, keeping the government funded as is uh between now and April 12th.
Simply to give the American people the chance to weigh in on it with their senators and representatives and give us a chance to prepare amendments and debate them.
And it's a very reasonable request.
And yet the Democrats objected.
Senator Patty Murray from the state of Washington came to the floor and objected to that.
Her reasoning, Sean, was absolutely stunning.
She showed up and effectively said, uh, look, this is a done deal.
This is uh already gotten bipartisan agreement.
It's a dumb deal.
Well, that's strange because nobody's seen it.
If this bill exists at all, they're not showing it to us.
And that's a real problem.
When stuff like this gets drafted in secret, the American people suffer.
And this is why we are 34 and a half trillion dollars in debt.
Well, now let me ask you, you have fellow Republican senators.
There are many of them.
I'm sure you have spoken to many of them.
Are they supporting you in this effort, or the do they want to just, you know, wash their hands of all of this and walk away?
A number of them are.
I would say that most of them are supportive of the concept that we ought to have input into this, and we ought not just become a rubber stamp for what I refer to as the firm, meaning the the law firm of Schumer, McConnell, Johnson, and Jeffries.
Uh we should be more than a rubber stamp.
That's what we were elected to do to make law rather than just salute and rubber stamp whatever the firm tells us to do.
I think most Senate Republicans agree with me on that point.
We will see how many of them are willing to stand with it, and how many of them are willing to withhold what's called closure, which is uh bringing debate to a close.
That takes 60 votes, which necessarily requires some uh Republican cooperation.
We'll see how many are willing to withhold closure unless or until Sir Semmans were given adequate opportunities to debate this thing.
Well, okay, so I know you're gonna have conservatives, I would assume that people like Ted Cruz and and Rand Paul and uh I would believe Senator Rubio and and probably Senator Scott.
I I I've got to imagine that there's gonna be a group of you.
Will there be a group of of your fellow senators that are Republican that will want to go along with this omnibus bill?
Uh some of them I fear will.
Look at what happened with the last omnibus, Sean.
There were seventeen or eighteen who decided to support cloture on the bill, notwithstanding the rushed nature of the thing, notwithstanding the hundreds of earmarks in there that goes contrary to Senate Republican policy, uh, notwithstanding the fact that we have been shut out of any meaningful opportunity for debate and amendment of the bill.
That was unfortunate, and uh they shouldn't have done that.
I will continue to implore my colleagues not to do it again.
But if passed as prologue, we could be heading for that again.
The problem here is that the American people are tired of this, whether they're Democratic or Republican voters, they deeply care about the fact that we're 34 and a half trillion dollars in debt, and very few members of of either chamber uh uh uh who who vote for this nonsense uh have been held to account like they're going to be in the near future when this all comes crumbling down.
Well, if people, by the way, if they would like to get involved and contact their elected official, there's a way to do that.
You there is the switchboard in in Washington, DC, and it's very simple.
It's 202, 224, 3121.
And as we've given this number out in the past many times, I just urge people to be polite and respectful.
Uh however, you can be asking if you're senators or or if you're congressmen or woman, uh if they plan to go along with this.
Uh and I would say Republicans do have a math problem, Senator, and and part of the math problem in the House is they have a very tiny, slim majority, and there are Republicans that I'm sure will join with Democrats to pass this bill in the House without reading it in all likelihood.
And I've got to imagine that there are going to be Republican senators that will join with the Democratic small majority that they have under Chuck Schumer, and they will try and pass this bill in the Senate.
Uh, do you disagree with my assessment?
I'd I'd like to think that reason and fiscal responsibility would win the day, but I don't have a lot of hope that's the case.
Right.
Uh again, pass this prologue what happened last time to the extended signals what's going to happen happen this time uh was really unfortunate and and doesn't bode well for our chances here.
Nonetheless, we have yet to see the bill, which tells me something, Sean.
What it tells me is that these guys who are the architects of this bill, this small handful of people working with the firm uh to produce it, are pretty self-conscious about something.
I I wonder if they if they're really fearing the public backlash, and that's why they're trying to whittle down to nothing uh our opportunity to debate it.
And So I call on all of my Republican colleagues in the Senate and our counterparts in the House.
Don't do this.
We don't have to do it this way.
If Republicans in either chamber, especially both, but either chamber, just say no to this way of doing things, it won't happen anymore.
By the way, they can they can stay for us.
They want to follow me on X uh at face Mike Lee.
Baith Mike Lee uh will keep you informed of what's happening.
But we really have to stop this from occurring.
We are losing our sovereignty, we're losing our safety as a country.
There's nothing that we expect in this bill.
We anticipate a complete surrender on border security.
This is our last shot, our last opportunity this year to have meaningful leverage over the Biden administration to force them to secure the border.
If we blow it here, this doesn't, as I expect, uh contain border security language that would force the Biden administration to shore up our border.
We will have erred really severely.
Well, I mean, I've been telling Republicans that they really need to focus on two very specific and important issues.
One involves our national security and the biggest, I think, national security threat in our lifetime, which is our borders, and the second being the budget, because we are on a traject trajectory that I would argue will bring the country to the brink of bankruptcy.
Uh that's why I think it would be important to call your congressman and or congresswoman or and your senators at 202, 224 3121, and let them know how you feel.
Uh my question is, is this already baked in?
In other words, are there enough Republicans in the House and the Senate that we know of that have agreed to this regardless of of nobody having read it?
Look, it's impossible to agree to something that you can't agree to because it doesn't exist.
I would imagine that there are enough who are planning to vote for it that it would go through if they all uh in fact voted that way.
But the cake isn't baked until you cast the vote, and you shouldn't decide how you're gonna vote on this or on anything else until you've seen it and you know what's in it.
So I I would ask uh everyone to encourage their senators and their congressmen to uh uh uh not commit to supporting anything anything until they've seen the bill and commit to make sure that members have the opportunity to read it, discuss it with their constituents, uh debate amendments on it before finally voting on the bill.
Uh we owe the people nothing less than that.
Well, I tend to agree with you, and and I hope people will follow your lead on it.
Again, you know, I'll give out the number.
I ask people be respectful, call your congressman or congresswoman, call your senators, 202-224-3121.
Uh, Senator Mike Lee, we appreciate your time, and we'll see what happens in the next 48 hours.
Thank you so much, Sean.
All right, 800-941 Sean, if you want to be a part of the program.
Uh, and I gotta tell you, it's just it's it's just the way, sadly, Republicans just cave constantly.
All right, let's just look at the uh telephones here.
Let's say hi to James.
He's in South Carolina today.
James, how are you?
Hi, Sean.
Uh good, good.
Uh, I have a comment on the uh the fine from the judge in New York.
I I just have no idea how he arrived at such a high fine.
Uh to me, it sounds uh just like cruel and unusual punish punishment because it doesn't align with any of their claims.
You know, it seems speculational.
And if I if I carry that to an example that most people could relate to, is when when you get your property taxes from the town uh and you have an assessed value, you can usually go to the town assessor and you can make an argument.
You can say, hey, my house isn't worth that much, it needs a new roof, or it needs work, it needs remodeling and so on, and you can argue, and I know people who did that and they got their their taxes reduced.
But at the same time, that owner can turn to their real estate agent and or a potential buyer and say how wonderful their place is and and it's in pristine condition, it's worth so much more to try to sell it at a higher price.
So if we follow Judge Ergaron's Engurant's uh logic, then every everyday Americans should completely lose their home and pay hefty fines for doing something like this.
How does that make any sense?
It doesn't make any sense, and this is excessive, and I I I do think that uh a lot of smart attorneys are are rightly saying, arguing on eighth amendment grounds, uh, that this just so obviously crosses a line that it can't stand.
Uh but with all that said, I mean, you have Democrats all over New York salivating at the idea of uh confiscating Donald Trump properties, and you have to ask, well, why would that happen?
The person that is most guilty of a false evaluation, a false valuation would be the judge in the case, who still to this day is arguing Mar-a-Lago's only worth 18 million dollars.
That that is a joke.
Um, it's closer to a billion dollars.
And you could talk to any realtor in Palm Beach, Florida, and they will tell you that is the same.
Never mind the fact that nobody, there's no aggrieved party here.
Never mind the fact that there were disclaimers in every contract, meaning that the the Trump organization was telling lenders and insurers don't go by our valuations, use your own valuations, which they had a fiduciary responsibility to do.
Uh, but to do this, it now just transcends a line because it it is lawfair, it is an abuse of power, it is the weaponization of justice in America at the highest level.
And if they can do it to Trump, they'll do it to others.
It's the way it works.
Anyway, appreciate the call.
Quick break, right back.
We'll continue.
More of your calls straight ahead.
Solid as a rock, honest, truthful.
This is the Sean Hannity Show.
All right, 25 now to the top of the hour.
Toll-free, our number is 800-941 Sean.
If you want to join us, we'll get to your calls in a minute.
Look, you know you're being taxed to the brink.
You can see it every day, and we're all under the thumb of a very aggressive IRS and controlled with a digital dollar.
Look, there are thousands and thousands, frankly, hundreds of thousands of uh hardworking, patriotic Americans in their own way, they opt out of the system, and they're doing it by diversifying their savings with precious metals like gold and silver.
Now, since I've been an adult, and when I finally was able in my later twenties to start saving money, well, I always took a portion of my savings and put it in gold and silver.
I still do it today.
My go-to company is Gold Co.
Uh, and they're a seven-time Inc.
5,000 winner.
They have placed a whopping over two and a half billion dollars in gold and silver.
Now, if you need information, if you need background, whatever you want, you want to be an informed investor, they will help you every step of the way, offer all the information that will be valuable to you, and you can make the best decision for yourself.
Right now they're offering up to ten thousand dollars in bonus silver, but only while supplies last.
You have nothing to lose here.
Give our friends at Gold Co a call.
It's eight five five eight one five gold.
Learn how to get started today.
Tell them I sent you, and you can qualify for the up to ten thousand dollars in bonus silver.
That is on a first come first served basis.
Don't wait.
Call Gold Co day.
I've never regretted my decision to invest in gold and silver, I'll tell you that.
And I continue to do so today.
I'm a customer of Gold Co.
855-815 gold.
That's 85515 G O L D. Um let me play for you again.
Let's let's go back in time a little bit because you know it's been a couple of days on the campaign trail.
Joe's not holding up very well.
And the blunders, the gaffs in the great state of Nevada, yeah, it's not going well for Joe.
Let me play that for you.
You're gonna be able to get uh not that anybody wants to get to Los Angeles, but people from Los Angeles want to get to Nevada.
So folks, look, uh I'm gone on too long.
I apologize.
I apologize.
I also met another mother named Latree.
Where's Latree?
Latrice, excuse me.
You're doing a great job.
And by the way, you know uh well, quite it, I guess.
Let's fly to Toronto or to Berlin or to London or Rome or any major city in America.
Union labor and contracts raise everybody's income.
Everybody's income.
I said, What's the matter?
She said only uh elected officials husband or wife understand this.
She said, Did you read today's paper?
I said, they don't have today's paper.
Delaware, up in Nevada, up in uh uh where with Lane where I was lane here from Vermont.
And she said, Well, let me read it.
Top of the fold headline.
Biden, poorest man in Congress.
Is that true?
I don't know if that was true, but it turned out it was true.
All right, let's get to our busy phones.
Uh let us say hi to all right, we'll go to a liberal first.
Liberal Bob or Rob in Ohio, Liberal Rob, how are you?
Glad you called.
Sean, thanks for taking my call.
Um, I just had a quick question for you.
I know um Donald Trump always talks about, you know, that he didn't need money for special interest or lobbyists, he's a multimillionaire or billionaire, self-proclaimed.
If he's got all this money and he's worth so much, why can he not post the bond?
And why aren't banks and anyone like yourself or you know, maybe some of his celebrity friends that have some money loaning him the money?
Well, uh, first of all, you're asking a very fair and good question, and I give you credit for that.
Let me quote Mark Cuban.
You know, Mark Cuban does not like Donald Trump, right?
You know, he's a billionaire himself.
Yep.
Okay, yeah.
Okay.
I thought he gave a very interesting answer responding to, you know, leftist Congress uh person, uh Ted Lou of California, uh, who used the hashtag Trump is broke.
No, he's not broke.
Uh but anyway, Mark Cuban actually said, you know, and and the argument was well, Trump claims he's a billionaire, but you know, he can't pay a 464 million dollar judgment.
That means he's lying.
How do I know?
Math.
That's what Lou said.
Now, uh I've I've had debates with Mark Cuban.
I get along with him, even though we don't agree on uh much politically.
He's a billionaire, he's a month entrepreneur and former Shark Tank host.
And he came to Trump's defense with a very lengthy response, and it might be valuable to you because they're both billionaires here.
And what he said is that when you're arguing about the net worth, it's completely different than whatever cash on hand any individual or corporation might have.
And he says to Ted Lewis, Ted, you know I'm no supporter of Donald Trump.
That's for damn sure.
He says, uh, but how anyone can vote for someone was and he goes on to trash Trump.
Then he says, uh he says, but you're wrong on this topic.
And he noted that in a zero interest rate environment, it would have been dumb for Trump to keep cash in a bank or a money market account.
Also dumb was, you know, keeping interest rates low for for as long as they were.
He said something as well.
And what he's saying is a thousand percent correct.
I don't know if you do any investing on your own, but this would, you know, up to the point when interest rates were low, it'd be crazy if you you were keeping money in the bank.
You would in some cases you were getting no interest at all.
You know, now at least you can get a treasury for a year for you know what, a five percent interest on your money.
Now, there's also another issue, and that is the absolute astronomical figure.
Now you gotta have the facts in the case.
Uh let's make sure we're on the same page.
You do know this was a civil case, correct?
Correct.
All right, you do know that this was about valuations when Donald Trump was applying for loans for expensive properties, hundreds of millions of dollars, and for insurance policies on these properties, hundreds of millions of dollars for insurance.
You understand that, right?
Right.
We we're all in no, no, no, stay with me.
Don't go, don't go rogue here.
Okay, follow me.
Now, you do know that valuations are subjective, and that there was a Deutsche Bank partner of Donald Trump that lent them money.
There was no complaint.
Nobody complained about the business dealings with Donald Trump.
They all got paid back.
They all got the interest they agreed to.
Uh, you are aware of that fact, correct?
Yes, but Deutsche Bank did have issues with the so long, not in this case.
And you do know that Donald Trump had a disclaimer in every one of his his applications and contracts.
You are aware of that, that stated very affirmatively not to go by their valuations.
You're aware of that, right?
Yep, everybody do their own due diligence.
And you do know that it would be the fiduciary responsibility of any lending institution or insurance company, you're right, to do their own due diligence and never to count on a lender or an insured individual for what they think their valuations are, because as the Deutsche Bank executive said, those things are subjective, correct?
Correct.
So Deutsche Bank.
Right.
Now can I finish?
Now you also are aware that one of the valuations was made by the judge in this case, and that's Judge Engorand.
You are aware of that, right?
Yep, and it was unfair.
It was unfair.
Oh, interesting.
So that the very thing that Donald Trump was being accused of, the judge in this case was guilty of.
You agree with that?
Uh a hundred percent.
Okay, so he's valuing a place like Mar-a-Lago.
Now, do you watch my TV show?
I do a little bit.
All right.
Have you ever seen me put properties?
There's one two-acre parcel of ocean farm property in Palm Beach that is was, I don't know if it's for sale anymore, but was for sale for two hundred million dollars.
Did you see that?
Yep.
Yep, I did.
And another one for a hundred and fifty million that had a road between the ocean and the house and the property.
You know that too, right?
And it was an empty this is dirt we're talking about.
No property built, no home built on the property, right?
Correct.
Correct.
All right.
So now if you extrapolate out that money and and Goron's eighteen million dollar phony valuation, uh, and you've got twenty-two acres at Mar-a-Lago, you've got the intercoastal side, and you've got the beach club.
You've got a first uh uh property in pristine condition uh that has over fifty some odd rooms and it has other properties adjacent and on the property that people can live in and and forty some odd bathrooms and two clubs associated with it, and it is officially a historic property in Palm Beach uh Florida, you are aware of that too, right?
Yep, nothing none of that is uh being discredited.
Okay, so then you tell me, how is that fair in your liberal mind?
How is it fair that a judge can use the worst valuation off by simple math by nearly a billion dollars and then adjudicate a four hundred and sixty-four million dollar judgment against Donald Trump?
Does that sound like justice to you?
No, it doesn't, and if you give me a moment, I'll explain.
I agree with you.
I think he was treated very unfairly, and I think the valuations were wrong.
But the question I had was how come he can't pay the the bonds, and why isn't someone loaning him money?
Can you answer those two questions?
I I I don't know people that have that kind of money, but I you know, I don't know if people uh are maybe in the process of helping him.
That that would be a separate issue.
However, you agree that all of this is unfair.
If all of this is unfair, why would the judge demand the payment before he even gets a chance to appeal?
Doesn't that sound like mob justice as Jonathan Turley called it?
No, because then everyone would appeal everything.
If you don't really put up No, no, no, no, you're not answering.
You admit that this was a very unfair case.
I've got you to acknowledge that.
And that the judge is more guilty than the person accused of a phony evaluation.
Would you agree with that statement?
Yes, but this whole conversation, you're turning it around on me.
I'm just asking you a question.
No, but I'm saying so you're expecting somebody, a judge that wouldn't even allow an appeal, even though you are saying there are egregious problems with this case.
Even though that this should not happen in America, you would agree that shouldn't happen if there's a a conservative judge and they did this to Mark Cuban or any, you know, uh wealthy uh liberal, you wouldn't think it's fair either, and you wouldn't want that, you would want the the person to have an opportunity to appeal, wouldn't you?
Yeah, Sean, life's not fair.
My question is does he have life life's not fair?
Four hundred and sixty-four billion doll a million dollars, a half a billion dollars, and you think he should just have the cash laying around.
Now, to his attorneys filed With the court that they have gone to every bond company that that does this kind of work, and none of them will ever issue a bond with that kind of money, because it's not the business that they're in.
They're not used to it ever seeing a judgment like that.
So is it now?
Donald Trump is then put in the position either to fire sale his properties, or you know, every case should have a right to be appealed, and then I would turn to the Eighth Amendment of our Constitution and file a petition in federal court.
Excessive bail shall not be required, nor excessive fines imposed, nor cruel and unusual punishments inflicted.
Do you think that that is likely what happened here?
Listen, I have already no, no, no, no.
I asked you.
I've agreed with you.
I've agreed with you that this is so if you agree that the Eighth Amendment to our Constitution is applicable, then why don't you just stand for justice and stop asking silly questions about why can't a billionaire liquidate his properties and sell them?
Because that's what you're asking him to do.
You're asking in 30 days.
Now, there's no good investor that's gonna buy a property in 30 days at the cost that we're talking cost point we're talking about anyway.
They're gonna do their due diligence, which they should do.
So that would be physically impossible, also.
I know.
But any reasonable judge would give him the time to appeal, and while he's appealing, uh, figure out a way a plan B if this judgment stayed, which I don't think it will stay.
Okay, the the facts are, and we agreed that this is very much a a bad precedent to go on.
But I only question I'm asking you is he said he had four hundred and fifty million dollars cash last year.
Where is that money that he said he had?
I don't recall him ever saying that.
However, I've I defer to a billionaire, of which I am not, like somebody like Mark Cuban, who I think was being very fair, and he hates Trump.
As it as a billionaire, but you're not I assume you're not a billionaire.
There aren't very many of them.
Are you a billionaire?
No, not even close.
I'm a thousand.
Well, I and by the way, you can thank Joe Biden for paying more for everything.
Say thank you, Joe.
He's your president.
Uh so I'm j I'm just saying to you, you're asking something that is maybe sounds easy for you to pull off, but I am just telling you the reality is I agree with Mark Cuban.
That is a near impossibility for somebody that is as an even you know low level of of investing intelligence.
You wouldn't have anywhere near that amount of cash laying around.
You just wouldn't.
And it's impossible to liquidate in 30 days.
There's your answer.
Um, I'm not a self-proclaimed billionaire, though, who said who has you know no reason for special interest and he's rich.
So that's where I'm just telling you, if there is no way to liquidate his money in that short a period of time.
It is impossible.
And they're asking the impossible, and they're adding more uh and this is more injustice that is thrown and heaped upon Donald Trump because people hate Donald Trump.
And that's the sad part of it.
And you've acknowledged all of it.
And what you should the question you really ought to be asking is what the hell is going on in this country that our Department of Justice has been so weaponized that this can happen to any American.
I will tell you, any conservative ever does this to a liberal, I will stand with you and defend them against the injustice.
Okay.
All right, God bless.
All right, appreciate the call, and uh I appreciate you actually being honest and answering the questions honestly, because not all liberals would.
Well, good for you.
That's a credit to you.
Right, Linda?
I think he deserves props for that.
Honestly, I thought he was great.
Yeah, great caller.
Asking a great question.
All right, that's gonna wrap things up for today.
All right, a lot of news breaking all over the place.
We've got Vivek, Ramaswamy, Newt Gingrich tonight, Alabama Senator, Katie Britt, Christy Noam, Brian Brenberg, Ari Fleischer.
I mean, you can't have a better lineup.
More news than I can absolutely handle in any one hour, but we'll get it done with your help.
Set your DVR tonight, Hannity, nine Eastern on Fox.
See you then back here tomorrow.
Thank you for making this show possible.
Hey, Sean Hannity here.
You know, there's so much happening in our country from border issues to local crime, it seems to be everywhere.
Our friends at Burner offer a less lethal option so you can protect yourself and be ready for any threat you may have to face.
That's burner.
BYRNA.
Now burner fires, powerful deterrence like tear gas and kinetic ammo, no background checks required, and they can ship it right to your door.
Bob Brayton was at home when an intruder physically forced his way inside, but luckily Bob had just received his burner four days prior to the incident, and he used it to backpedal the man outside off his property.
Now the burner saved two lives that day.
Government agencies, police departments across the country, they are now relying more than ever on burner as their go-to less lethal option.
You can join a half a million other people that rely on burner for protection.
Go to their website, check out their videos, B Y RNA.com slash Hannity.