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Sept. 17, 2024 - Sean Hannity Show
29:49
Protecting Trump - September 16th, Hour 3
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This is an iHeart Podcast.
Stay right here for our final news roundup and information overload.
All right, news roundup and information overload hour.
Here's our toll-free telephone number.
It's 800-941 Sean.
If you want to be a part of the program, we are only 50 short days till an inflection point in this country.
That would be Election Day, early voting starting now in Pennsylvania, the Commonwealth, and will be rolling out around the country.
I can't think of a more important moment, choice election for the future of our country.
I can't think of a more radicalized candidate that has been unvetted, ignored by a complicit, corrupt media.
And then, of course, other forces like big tech, et cetera, et cetera.
Kamala still never answering pertinent questions about her radical position on no restrictions at all on abortion and mandatory gun buybacks and no border walls and decriminalizing illegal immigration, offering free housing and health care and education and even a legal driver's license.
Minnesota free college that you pay for, then a path to citizenship.
And on top of that, taxpayer-funded sex change operations for not only illegals, but for convicts as well.
Her position on federal drug possession for personal use.
That would mean hard drugs like crack, heroin, cocaine, fentanyl.
Her $93 trillion Green New Deal, which she sponsored, co-sponsored with Bernie Sanders, eliminate the filibuster to get it passed.
That would be the end of capitalism as we know it.
Her government health care for all, elimination of private health insurance.
You know, don't say the word radical Islamic terrorism or illegal alien.
And then, of course, raise every tax imaginable.
Never mind her support for the insurrection and rioting, 600 riots in the summer of 2020.
It is insane.
And that's just a partial list.
Anyway, we've been talking a lot about the second now assassination attempt against President Trump.
This is taking place at Trump International Golf Course in West Palm Beach in Florida.
And the person that was playing golf with him happens to be a personal friend of mine.
I even had breakfast with him and another friend of ours, another guy that was with us.
I don't think he's way more private.
He didn't play in the golf game.
But Steve Witkoff was there, watched the entire thing go down.
He is a real estate investor, developer, incredibly successful, extremely and extraordinarily nice and generous human being.
He's the founder, chairman, CEO of the Witcoff Group, was with President with the president playing golf when this assassination attempt occurred.
I talked to him many times immediately in the aftermath.
I did, by the way, call you Steve Wynne once on TV.
I got to apologize for that.
It was a rushed moment on television.
I apologize to you for that.
That's okay, Sean.
All right, so we have breakfast together, and you were kind of like saying, well, why don't you just come play?
Now, meanwhile, the president is close to scratch in terms of a golfer.
You're, I think, close to scratch as well.
And I'm like, I'm not playing with you guys.
You're much better than I am.
And you probably wouldn't want to play with somebody that doesn't get to play very often.
But I will take you up on that offer in the future for sure.
But walk us through.
You meet with the president.
You go out to play some golf.
Tell us every walk us through every detail.
Well, you know, you and I had had that breakfast at City Diner.
It was pretty fabulous.
I think it would have been great if you had been out on the course with us, not to witness this shooting, but more because you're just a great guy.
Who wouldn't want to spend time on the golf course with Sean Hannity?
And I think the president would feel exactly as I do about that.
The feeling is mutual, by the way.
You're one of the nicest guys I've ever met, one of the most generous, and so is our other friend.
But, you know, when you call me, I was in a state of shock, Steve.
I'm like, not again.
Please tell me, God, not again.
Yeah.
You know, Sean, you know, the president was an amazing athlete.
He played football.
He was a great tennis player.
But at this stage of his life, a lot of people play golf.
They switch from these other sports that they've done and they play golf.
And he uses it as a decompression tool.
I think about all the tension he has in his life, particularly with what he's had to endure for the last several years being vilified.
I mean, to me, his act of public service in becoming the president of the United States ought to be commended.
And yet, in this crazy time, he's vilified.
He's conspired against.
He's wrongly accused, in my opinion, in every one of these cases.
And so for him to get out on a golf course is a time for him to decompress.
And I love playing with him.
We just have a wonderful time together.
And so there it is, this beautiful golf course.
It's hot.
It's humid, but we're enjoying ourselves.
And nothing bad is supposed to happen.
And out of the blue, I hear the first shot.
The Secret Service was nothing short of incredible.
You would think that they had practiced an evacuation like this 500 times before.
And I say to the entire team, Sean, who was right there that day, and to the agent in charge, that that team was very, very well prepared.
And that's how it began.
And then in quick succession, there were three other shots.
But they had him out of there quick.
And all I could hear and see, first of all, he was looking back at us.
And I mean that.
I stood up the entire time.
Maybe a drop reckless on my part.
Maybe I should have got behind the golf cart.
But for some reason, I stood up and was looking at the corner of the golf course where clearly the shooter was because there were agents on top of him almost immediately.
And then, of course, we found out that it was an agent running in front of us who was in charge of scanning the perimeter of the course in the hole that was in front of any hole we might be playing.
It was him who identified him.
And that's where the shots came from.
And so that was the beginning of it.
So when the first shot goes off, my understanding, what you told me yesterday, you heard pop, pop, pop, and then another pop, pop.
You've heard four shots.
At the time, you knew immediately it was a gunshot?
Yes.
And when that happened, immediately you see the Secret Service around him jump into action.
And I assume, and based on what you told me, they jumped on him, covered him.
In other words, they put their life on the line in case he is being shot at.
They're going to take the bullet for him, right?
There's no mistaking that.
They 100% surrounded him.
They had him on the ground so he was out of the line of fire.
They were on him.
They put him in an independent cart that was faster than the others.
And they had their lives on the line at every moment.
And by the way, the two snipers who were three and a half, four yards away from me.
You mean the Secret Service snipers?
The Secret Service snipers with tripods out were immediately down on the ground, but fully exposed because they were there to contain gunfire if they had to.
And they were down on the ground right there.
I was no more than four yards away from them.
And I just stood up.
I must tell you, I've had this discussion with people.
I'm like, maybe a drop reckless, but I never really thought about getting down on the ground.
I just was mesmerized this operation.
I know you said that to me, and I don't think anyone would ever be prepared for such a moment, especially because you're not a public figure or a controversial figure that leads your life needing security every day.
So this is not the world that you live in.
Thank God.
I don't think you'd want to live in that every day.
I don't like that the president has to live in it every day.
And so they very quickly get him out.
They have this other golf cart to get him off that is a lot faster and safer than the usual golf cart.
What happens?
Now, did you know the direction where the shots came from immediately?
Did you have a pretty good idea?
Oh, it was very clear.
Yeah.
The Secret Service snipers had their barrels pointed towards the corner of the golf course by Congress Avenue.
There was a cart out there, so an advanced Secret Service.
agent or detail had already gotten out there.
And there was also a person I saw on the other side of the tree line who was now, as I understand it, another Secret Service agent whose job it was to scan the outside perimeter.
He had evidently just passed the area and just missed finding the guy.
It was the guy on the agent on the inside of the tree line, Sean, who's in charge of following forward from us, who identified the barrel sticking out of the fence.
And he's the one who engaged the assassin.
What happened next?
I understand that the golf course was cleared, but obviously you were the first to be cleared because you were closest to the road, which we now know is about 300 yards away from the hole that you were playing.
My understanding is there's a par three followed by a drivable par four.
Is that correct?
Yes, yes.
The president was evacuated, but I watched him.
He was looking back at us.
I was there with the two other members of our group, civilians, and it was clear that he was looking at us.
He was wanting to make sure that we were okay.
I could see him gesturing, but he was gone.
And, you know, that's their job.
Their job is to protect the president first.
And they did their job impeccably.
Quick break, right back more with Steve Witkoff, real estate developer, investor.
And he was playing golf with President Trump during this assassination attempt yesterday.
This is his first interview, his first televised interview tonight on Hannity on the Fox News channel.
Look, the FBI calls it house stealing.
I've been telling you about this for over a year.
He's a friend of mine, and I had just had breakfast with him before he played golf yesterday with President Trump before the assassination attempt.
Steve Witkoff, developer, real estate investor, founder, chairman, CEO, Witkoff Group, as we continue.
Now, you saw all of this activity going on, and you had these Secret Service snipers with their tripods up, and you're right.
They're out there in an open field, which makes them an open target, and yet they moved, and again, they put their lives on the line for the president, which is all commendable.
So you finally make it back to the White House, and you had said to me, he was specifically asking, where are you and where are the other people you were with?
And then you were like right behind him, and I said, I'm right here.
That happened?
Correct.
It did.
Sean, I must tell you, you know him very well.
You know him as well as I do.
He was selfless.
It's almost as if he, and it's not almost as if, it is if.
It is as if he was more concerned about me.
And he's demonstrated this countless times, by the way, but he was concerned more about me and his two other friends who were out there and other people, including, there were staffers out there, by the way, who are not armed and trained to be involved in this sort of situation.
And he was concerned about all of those people who were in his entourage.
I think more concerned about them than he was about his own life, candidly.
Wow.
And at that point, you told me another story that he walked around and he thanked everybody that was there, all the Secret Service guys.
Describe what happened.
Well, you know, he's an inspiration because, you know, this is the second time in two months.
It's sort of like enough already.
We lived through the 60s when they assassinated Jack and Bobby Kennedy.
Who would ever think in this country, in this day and age, that we would have something like this again?
But two times, two attempts with shots going off of if this Secret Service agent didn't interdict, it is clear to me that he had an NAK-47 with probably a banana cliff in it.
He could have hosed down everybody on the green.
So, you know, I can't say it enough.
Great job by the Secret Service, and great job in protecting the president.
And he deserves to be protected first.
When he gets elected, he's going to have the most important job.
But when we got back to the clubhouse, the first thing I heard was, where is everybody?
He was inquiring because we came back after the Secret Service evacuated.
Their mission statement is to get him out of the field of fire instantaneously.
And they did that job impeccably.
Then when you get back and he realizes everybody's safe, what happened?
He went around to every single one of the guys and said, thank you for your service.
Thank you for doing, thank you for protecting my friends.
Thank you for protecting me.
He's a man of the people.
He is, it's inspiring to watch his interaction with people who were paid probably not enough to save to protect his life and to save his life in circumstances like this.
And he is so genuine and authentic in his praise to these people.
And he does it all the time.
It's who he is.
I wrote his wife, his wife, Elanya texted me, and I wrote her that her husband inspires me.
And he does.
He inspires me.
Really is amazing.
And then when everything's settled, and I was on the phone with both of you, and I did report this on Fox when I was on yesterday.
Again, I apologize once for calling Steve Wynn, who's also a friend of mine, too.
Pretty good guy to be called.
I'm good.
Yeah, well, you're pretty great in your own way.
And at that point in time, when everything was settled and he had thanked everybody, knew everybody was safe, knew that the incident was under control.
Then I'm on the phone with both of you.
And then he's like Donald Trump after Butler, he got up and he said, fight, fight, fight.
And then he said, Steve, will you please tell Sean I was even up until the fifth hole and then I was putting for Bertie and I really wanted to finish that putt.
I mean, to me, most people probably be crawled up in a ball by that time.
Well, you would think that after two attempts on his life in a two-month, you know, inside of a two-month span, that he would have some element of PTSD.
And I just think that any normal person would, and he just wills it away.
It really is amazing.
He wills it away.
And I'm convinced why, by the way, I'm convinced that he believes he has to set an example to the rest of the people in this country, that he is a real leader and that he is not going to be cowed and he is not going to bow to this type of intimidation or even an attempt on his life.
Or that the land of the free and the home of the brave are not just words, but things that we should live by.
Steve, stay right there.
Steve Witkoff was playing golf with President Trump yesterday during the assassination attempt.
More of the story on the other side.
He'll also join us on TV tonight, 9 Eastern, on the Fox News channel.
We got 50 days till Election Day, and early voting starts tomorrow in Pennsylvania and then rolls out around the country.
It is now time to, it's game time.
I hope everybody's paying attention.
Steve Woofkoff is with us.
He is a developer, real estate investor, chairman, CEO of the Witkoff Group.
He's also a personal friend of mine.
I had breakfast with him yesterday prior to him then going to play golf with President Trump.
And he was there for the entire assassination attempt.
And it has to be a harrowing experience.
And let me now ask the hard part, Steve, because there are things that are very troubling to me and to many others.
And having spoken with Eric and Laura Trump, I know this is very troubling to them as well.
And that is that we had Butler, Pennsylvania come down.
I have a report right here in front of me, and it was put out by Josh Hawley from earlier today.
And it is a whistleblower report, failures of the U.S. Secret Service in connection with the attempted assassination of former President Donald J. Trump.
It is what Richard Blumenthal described it would be, the Democrat from Connecticut last week.
And that is shocking.
It is alarming.
The failures are on a spectacular level.
I do know that we learned that an eagle-eyed Secret Service agent spotted the barrel of the gun in the bushes not far from where you guys were playing that fifth hole and where the former president was with you.
You were within just a couple of yards of the president.
That means bullets would have been whizzing by your head, and you might not even be alive today.
And the thought of losing two friends is just too much for me to bear, to be very honest.
And what's troubling to me and to Eric and to Laura and to many Americans is how is it possible that the Secret Service, and again, the people around you you describe as heroic, and I agree completely with you.
They're amazing.
But there's something wrong in how they are protecting the president if people, in this case, somebody with an AK-47 with a scope on it can be within 300 yards of the former president and top Republican presidential candidate, the nominee for president in an election 50 days away.
How does that happen?
There's a problem here.
Well, you know, I'd say a few things.
The first is that, and it's redundant, but it's relevant, is that this team on the ground did an exemplary job, Sean.
They were incredible.
Everything you've described is they were perfect.
They were amazing.
They were perfect.
And this gentleman, this Secret Service agent who was in charge of going forward, he identified them, but apparently the Secret Service agent on the outside perimeter had just missed him.
He was scanning like he should, and he had just missed the guy.
The guy basically planted himself there shortly after he left.
And so they missed him in that coverage, but they caught him in the inside coverage.
And that's the reason why nobody was tragically injured or killed, God forbid.
So they did an exemplary job.
Now, I heard, and this is just what I heard on the news, I heard from the Palm Beach sheriff that the president is not given a presidential detail, which of course makes no sense to me.
It makes sense to me that his detail ought to be augmented or amplified or made smaller depending on what the threat level is.
And given what the threat level is based on Butler, and given what some of the security alerts I've heard about coming from the Iranians are, I would think that he would have at least a presidential detail worth of manpower.
And yet he didn't that day.
So it's hard to imagine that with someone like President Trump that he wouldn't get the full complement of people necessary to guard him correctly.
That's one.
Two, Eric is a marksman.
He's a hunter.
He's a marksman.
He knows about these things pretty well because he practices it.
He's competed and so forth.
And he's got a good point in that maybe some of the security protocols, i.e.
broadening out the boundaries within which you guard him, that has to happen because it's the rifle that's the most dangerous.
And there are people out there today that can take shots from a mile out.
And that's a, you know, that's a that's a pretty complicated procedure to guard a mile out in a 360-degree corridor.
So, you know, from where the president is at any one time.
Can I just, as an observation, say that they ought to have their own sniper capability with scopes up at a high perch looking out around an entire perimeter, that full mile, because I did speak to Eric yesterday, and he was hitting targets over a mile away.
That, to me, would have to be the perimeter at least for a president or somebody that has had as many threats as President Trump.
I would argue he's probably the top political target in the country today.
Obviously, he is because he's now experienced this twice.
I agree with you.
And you know, Sean, I've been out with the president at the rallies.
I was with him just recently on 9-11.
I was with him at the rally the night before.
When you go to the airport, they've got sharpshooters now, sniper teams, in elevated places, and they're looking, and there's multiple teams out there.
It's very clear.
And they've got their guns trained in all the different directions based on where the president could be at any particular moment from the moment that he leaves his car, gets on the plane, gets off.
So I saw that.
You see that happen at the airports.
This is not, I'm not good enough to understand where the different points are at that golf club.
First of all, I go there with the president, never thinking that this could ever happen.
The president never thinks that this could ever happen.
He says things to me about this club repeatedly.
What do you think about this?
I call it our sanctuary.
I played 500 rounds of golf with him there.
It's a peaceful place.
No wonder why I'm never going to play with you because you're going to crush me.
I haven't played 500 rounds in my life.
But let me ask a serious question.
If there's ever been a picture of Donald Trump playing golf, the odds are it was a photographer hiding in these very bushes where this assassin was.
And otherwise, you can't get a good picture of President Trump playing golf.
And this is what photographers do.
They get paid big money if they can get a picture that is rare, and that would be a rare picture.
With that said, on Congress Avenue, knowing that it is such a short distance, why wouldn't there be agents on Congress Avenue making sure nobody walks into the area by the bushes?
Why wasn't that surveilled prior to the president making the turn and going up, playing the par three and the par four that you were playing?
To me, this is a failure.
And I want to back up.
I am so supportive of the Secret Service, like you, over the years.
I've met so many of these guys, and I've come to love them.
And anybody that's willing to give their life to save another's life, no greater love hath a man to do that, right?
And I admire them so much, and we see them in action.
We've seen them now in action twice with President Trump, and you're describing everything I know about them.
But that does not negate the intelligence failure, the obvious failure in this case or in the case that we've discovered in Butler.
And I'm very concerned that somebody with an AK-47 and a scope is 300 yards away from the president because if you are a marginally decent shooter, you really can't miss from that distance.
Yeah, look, I share your concern, too.
And I would imagine that if you talk to the detail that was there yesterday, the Secret Service detail, they would say the same thing.
Look, I've witnessed how they react.
They're all pros.
Every one of them would give their life.
Every one of them would feel a sense of immense sorrow.
I think every one of them felt a sense of immense sorrow from what happened at Butler and how close he came to that.
So it's not about their attitude.
These guys, they do their job well.
They're pros, and most of them really, really care about Donald Trump.
I know that to be a fact.
Are we delineating between the people that you are describing perfectly as heroic yesterday?
Are we delineating between them and the people that are responsible to make sure that nobody can get within 300 yards with a AK-47 and a scope?
Because I'm making a very clear distinction here.
And I know it's a tough conversation to have, but to me, it's a very obvious failure.
And, you know, now that I know the details and the layout of that golf course and having looked at it and spoken to you and spoken to Ron DeSantis and others that have played it and played it regularly and spoken to the president, I mean, this is the most dangerous point on that golf course.
And with the trees involved and the fence involved, the idea, if it wasn't, look how close this got.
There was one report today that said an eagle-eyed Secret Service agent spotted the barrel of the gun in the bushes a few hundred yards from where the president was playing.
This guy was teed up and ready to go.
And I think the president came a lot closer to being assassinated yesterday than we know now.
That tells me he had his sight.
He had his GoPro.
He had his backpacks.
He had been waiting there.
And he was ready to take the shot.
And had this one agent not seen the barrel of that gun, this would be a very different show today.
I agree with you.
I don't disagree with how you're describing it.
But thank God that one heroic agent did see that barrel of the gun.
And thank God when those shots went off, I was able to see.
Look, I consider it as crazy as this may sound to you, Sean, I consider it my honor and blessing to have witnessed everything I saw yesterday.
It was almost as if, you know, I buried a son, and I say my son puts me in these places.
It was almost as if he put me there.
He put me on that green so I could witness what my dear friend went through a month and a half ago and what it must be like for him.
So I saw these valiant agents and how they responded.
I saw the president almost fearless, less concerned about his own self than the welfare of his friends.
And I agree with you that, you know, something's got to be done to address some of these issues that you've raised.
But I don't know if it's a question of manpower and, you know, the Secret Service having, you know, typical bureaucratic aspects to it and the president not getting enough staff, or if there was a lap somewhere.
I know this.
What I witnessed yesterday was heroism.
There's no doubt in my mind.
I never got under that golf cart.
just watched and turned around watching, mesmerized by what I saw.
You and I need to have a personal conversation about you just standing up for the whole incident and not going for cover.
I've got to have a conversation with you about personal safety and security for yourself.
And I say that lovingly as your friend.
Well, you know what I call it, Sean?
It's the Donald Trump influence.
It says all stand a little bit taller, be a little more fearless, stand up for what we believe in a little bit more.
I think he inspires all of us to do that.
He inspired us that day when he stood up and raised his fist.
That's why I kind of, once he knew everybody was safe, and I was on the phone with both of you, and he said, Steve, I was playing really well, right?
And you go, yes, you were, sir.
And he goes, and I had a birdie putt.
And you're like, yes.
He goes, I wish I could have got the birdie putt in.
But it was only after he knew everybody was safe, which again, that's a resiliency that we all can learn something from, just like fight, fight, fight.
Listen, you're a dear friend.
I'm very grateful you're safe, that the president's safe.
We definitely need changes.
We cannot have assassins or would-be assassins that close to any highly elected official, let alone a former president and top presidential candidate.
We can't have it.
Steve Witkoff, we'll see on TV tonight.
We really do appreciate all the extra time you gave us.
Thank you, my friend.
Thank you.
Thank you for having me.
All right, that's going to wrap things up for today.
Loaded up tonight, 9 Eastern on the Fox News channel.
Steve Witkoff playing golf with the president yesterday will tell his first-hand account of this now second assassination attempt of President Trump.
We'll get reaction from Eric Trump.
He is beside himself that this has happened, rightly so.
We have new polls coming out.
We'll check in with our pollsters, Matt Towery, Robert Cahaley.
9 Eastern tonight.
Hannity on Fox.
See you then back here tomorrow.
Thank you for making this show possible.
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