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Sept. 19, 2024 - Sean Hannity Show
30:25
Governor Ron DeSantis - September 18th, Hour 3
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In light of the assassination attempt, I started making phone calls to people that I thought may have played Trump International in West Palm Beach, Florida.
I never have played the course before.
I kind of gave up playing golf, as I've been saying, a number of years ago because I just don't have time.
I'm working way too many hours, and I'm a complete loser, as everybody on my staff will attest to, because I'm sending out articles at any hour of the day.
And one of the people that I did speak to was Florida Governor Ron DeSantis.
I knew he had played this course, and I wanted to get his take on it.
I got Eric Trump's take on it, Lindsey Graham's take on it, Steve Witkoff's take on it.
And they all described this area around holes four, five, and six.
And, you know, this was known to be a very vulnerable area of the golf course because of its close proximity to both the fairway and the holes.
And literally, you're just, you know, 100, 200, 300, 400 yards away, depending on the location, from where a golfer may actually be playing on the course.
And it was a known area where paparazzi and photographers and people with video cameras would be taking videos of Donald Trump with him or his guests playing golf.
And they were known to hide in the bushes there and get those videos, and then they sell them.
And yet it was not swept by the Secret Service at all.
And now we're learning that this would-be assassin had been in that location from sometime around 1.30 the night before.
And I know from Steve Woodcoff, he didn't hear from President Trump.
He had been out in Salt Lake City giving, I guess, holding a rally out there.
He didn't hear from him until about 2.30 in the morning when he arrived back in Palm Beach that he even wanted to play golf that next day.
So the guy, I guess, was just betting on the fact that it might be a day that Donald Trump might be playing golf or, you know, or, God forbid, there's somebody that would be tipping off somebody that was lying in wait to attempt an assassination on President Trump.
This being the second in two months, and it's pretty unbelievable.
I was very happy to hear that Governor DeSantis says he doesn't trust the federal government that is doing investigation after investigation after investigation on Donald Trump to be the same people that should be involved in this investigation in this case.
And Florida is going to do its own assassination probe.
And he wants the shooter to face more serious charges, including life in prison.
Now, there's a report, Homeland Security refused to probe of this suspect.
But anyway, Governor Ron DeSantis, my governor here in the free state of Florida, is with us now.
Governor, thank you so much for being with us and thanks for taking the time when I reached out to you the other night.
I really do appreciate it.
You shed a lot of light on this for me.
Oh, yeah, no, we're happy to do it.
I just have to say at the outset, though, Sean, yeah, you say you're not involved in golf.
You're now a Floridian.
And so as a Floridian, you either need to start playing golf, you need to fish, you need to boat.
You got to do something of that.
Because I think that would probably be about 95% of the males in the state of Florida do at least one of those three things.
Listen, I want to do all three things.
And I've been to the range to prepare myself post-election that I've made a commitment that I'm going to try to get my golf game back.
wasn't too bad when I used to play.
I definitely like to fish, but for short periods of time.
And I see people fishing every day and I see the fish that they're catching.
It's pretty amazing.
I will say this.
It was the best decision of my life to move to the state.
And I've been threatened it for a long time and I'm very grateful to you and everybody else that has been so warm inviting me here.
Yeah, no, no, for sure.
But listen, on this, so you pointed out about the golf course.
You kind of have the fifth green, six T, sixth hole, seventh T right there.
When I used to play with him when he was president, that was just something that you just think about because you see that the dogs are in front of you.
There's two or three holes shut down and behind and in front of the group.
There's a massive flotilla of golf carts.
And when you get to that point of the property, it's still a busy street just right beyond the hedges.
And so I think back to Butler, Pennsylvania, to have somebody have a roof top, which would be a perfect vantage point for someone that wanted to attempt an assassination, to leave that to where nobody was policing it.
And this guy gets up there and gets off shots.
And that was a massive failure of Secret Service.
I mean, the fact that Donald Trump survived was a miracle.
But then to think about this golf course, that is the spot.
I mean, there's a lot of different potential threats out there, but that was the soft underbelly.
And this guy apparently had been burrowed in there from the middle of the night all the way until the former president was rounding those holes.
And so, yes, I mean, that should not have happened.
That was an obvious place where somebody that wanted to do Donald Trump harm would want to go.
Now, the state of Florida, we have multiple violations of Florida law that are at issue here.
This took place.
The suspect has committed offenses, we believe, in multiple jurisdictions in Florida, which is important because if he only committed offenses in Palm Beach County, that would go to the local Palm Beach state attorney who said he didn't want to do the case.
He wanted to just let the feds have it.
Well, because there's multiple circuits, we have Broward County potential violations with the tag, Palm Beach, obviously, with the attempted assassination, and then Martin County when he was fleeing.
And we may have some other things about his time in Florida.
That gives us the jurisdiction at the state level to assign it to the Attorney General with our Office of Statewide Prosecutor who does these multi-jurisdictional things.
And I just think it's important for the state of Florida that we follow through and prosecute all available offenses and that we get the unvarnished truth about what happened.
There's nothing when you're talking about Secret Service and the federal agencies, the state of Florida is not involved in any of that.
Now, when we're asked to provide support, we always do.
We want to be helpful.
But this was a federal responsibility to keep him safe.
So if there were failures by the Secret Service or DHS, that's not something we're going to have any incentive to cover up.
We want the people to know.
We want there to be accountability.
I don't think the federal government's the right agencies to be doing it.
One, they've had a history of doing these investigations and not giving the truth.
It's almost like a black hole once it goes and then we don't hear anything.
Then you also have this very odd set of circumstances where these same federal agencies that we're supposed to trust to conduct this investigation are the same agencies that are trying to put Donald Trump in prison for the rest of his life.
But if you look at the January 6th case in D.C. and the documents case in South Florida, federal cases, which they're trying to appeal to get reinstated as we speak, they're basically saying that Donald Trump is an enemy of the state the way they're doing the charges.
So they're very serious as to what these people are trying to do.
I just don't, to me, that's a conflict.
If you're doing that, on the other hand, say you're going to try to figure out what happened.
So we're going forward with our investigation.
I hope to see charges generated and I hope to see the truth revealed.
I'm not sure how much cooperation we may get from the federal government.
Hopefully we do because I think there are a lot of rank and file people in those agencies that do want the truth.
Unfortunately, I think that we're likely not going to get the full story if Florida defers.
We were first told that the reason that they didn't have anybody on the roof in Butler PA was because it was a sloped roof.
It turned out it wasn't sloped at all.
And they had agents on other buildings with a much steeper slope.
And now we find out in this Holy report that came out on Monday that the real reason they wore it on the roof was, quote, it was too hot.
And when I did roofing back in the day, trust me, and I fell off nearly three stories.
I fell off a roof.
I can tell you there was no heat rule that said it's too hot to do roofing today.
Let me play for you, the head of the Secret Service, because the Secret Service lied about that part at that time.
But this is now Ronald Rowe.
He's the acting Secret Service director.
And he says the plan for Trump worked on Sunday.
If this is success, tell me what failure is.
Listen.
Yesterday was an off-the-record movement, off-the-record.
And the president wasn't even really supposed to go there.
It was not on his official schedule.
And so we put together a security plan, and that security plan worked.
Okay.
The security plan worked.
Would you say that this plan in any way worked if somebody can get within 300-plus yards of the president with a AK-47 and a scope?
Of course not.
I mean, I think the individual agent responded appropriately, and the former president has said that he's very thankful for what happened there and thanked the Secret Service for kind of that on-the-spot response that prevented this guy from getting any shots off.
But the fact that he was there and came very close to being able to get shots off, clearly that's a failure because this was the number one soft underbelly of the perimeter of that golf course.
As you pointed out, paparazzi have burrowed themselves into those bushes and taken pictures of Donald Trump when he was president in particular.
And so that would have been something that you would have known.
So they say it was an off-the-record movement.
But the minute that he's on his way to that golf club of any place that you look, that would be the place that you would want to sweep holes five, six, and seven right there along South Congress Avenue.
But here's the thing.
Our federal agencies, for whatever reason over the years, and I think it's because they're never held accountable, Congress doesn't use the power of the purse.
I think there's a lot of reasons why, but they've definitely developed the culture of always passing the buck and never accepting responsibility for anything.
And I think there's a lot of good people on the rank and file, and Donald Trump has praised people that have been in his detail.
And I think that's true.
But I think the overall culture of these agencies is really messed up.
And unfortunately, I don't have confidence we're going to get 100% of the truth from them.
I do have confidence in the, well, first of all, I'm very fond of all the sheriff's departments down in Florida, law enforcement in Florida compared, and the Palm Beach Police Department and all the West Palm Beach Police Department and everybody in the local area where this all took place.
I think did a phenomenal job, but it was not their job to sweep that area.
By the way, you may get a kick out of this story about the debate the other night.
And anyway, I see Gavin Newsom, your old buddy, has a big gaggle, and he's surrounded by all the people in the state-run media mob.
So I see his people and I walk in behind him.
I'm totally trolling him, by the way.
And I just like, you know, say, can you just tap on his shoulder?
I just want to wave.
And I put a smile on my face and I wave.
And this is what these keyboard warriors in their underwear said.
And he's really best friends with Gavin Newsome.
And the funny thing is, and you know this to be true, he was not exactly happy with you or me after that debate.
No, in fact, we were going to do another segment, and his campaign called it off.
They did not want to do additional segments after we did the first 90 minutes or so.
But I think it was just because he was exposed to the truth about his record.
He's not exposed to that in California.
It's a one-party state.
You have basically state-run media.
You have super majority Dem.
There's just not potent opposition.
So he's kind of able to get away from it.
When we were in Georgia doing the debate on your show, he had to answer for the homelessness.
He had to answer for this.
He had to answer for why his own in-laws fled the state of California.
And that was a lot more difficult for him.
And it wasn't anything that he was comfortable doing.
Yeah, and the funny thing is that people saying, meanwhile, I have a smile on my face.
He did not want to see me in any way.
And I figured, you know, I might just mess with him a little bit.
And because he's been kind of dodging and ducking and not wanting to ever come back on the show.
And I think I was fair.
And it's not my fault that the statistics on crime and on the economy and on basic issues that impact people's lives, the price of energy, are so much better in the free state of Florida.
Let me ask you one last question.
President Trump said that he would allow the salt deduction to come back if he's president.
Would that impact, for example, Florida property taxes, if in fact that did come back?
Well, we typically do better with no salt because it gives us a comparative advantage versus the high-tax states.
And so I think when he signed his tax bill in 2017 to effectively eliminate the salt deduction, the argument was, why are we bailing out spendthrift, tax and spend politicians in New York and California?
They raise taxes, but then the deductions mean the taxpayers don't get hit with the full effect of their bad policies.
And so not having that was more of a level playing field and Florida had a competitive advantage.
And so that was what it was there.
I would imagine that you would definitely see a lot of the Sunbelt, low-tax Sunbelt states in particular, their representatives would probably not want to do away with, or they probably would not want to reinstate SALT.
Governor Ron DeSantis, Florida, thank you, Governor.
Great to have you.
We appreciate your time.
800-941-Shawn is on number if you want to be a part of the program.
All right, quick break.
Right back.
We'll continue.
Let's go to my interview.
This was the first interview of President Trump post-the second assassination attempt.
And this took place yesterday.
Let me play it for you.
Joining us now on the phone to react to the most recent assassination attempt on his life in two months.
Former President Donald Trump.
Mr. President, thank you for being with us tonight.
This is the second assassination attempt in two months.
I would imagine the average person could be pretty shaken up by that.
Tell us what happened.
How are you doing?
And I have a few other follow-up questions as it relates to this.
Well, I'm doing fine.
It was Sunday.
And just very briefly, because I think most people have heard it, I want to start talking about the borders and the economy and inflation and all of the things we want to talk about.
But it was on a golf course at Trump International in West Palm.
And we heard shots ring out around the fifth hole or so.
We heard shots ring out, and they were pretty obviously shots, but the Secret Service said they were definitely shots.
And it turned out to be the Secret Service agent who had caught somebody a couple of holes in advance and caught him by the fence, which protects the property.
He was on the other side of the fence.
He saw a gun barrel hanging outside of the fence, which is pretty amazing.
That's a great job.
Did really a great job.
Frankly, I think the Secret Service did a great job.
And they got me out of there quickly.
And they then went after him, and they were lucky enough to have somebody that took the license plate, which was genius.
And they nabbed him on the highway.
But it was another day.
It was very interesting.
We want to get to business.
We want to get to the business of running the country.
Our country has never done this badly, Sean.
We're like a laughingstock all over the world, and we have to get back to running the border properly.
What's happening in Ohio, Colorado, and every other state is just crazy.
It's like a takeover of our country by people that are coming in.
And they're coming in with guns, or they're getting guns after they get in.
They have the most powerful weapons you can have.
Let me ask you this, sir, if you don't mind.
And Steve Witcoff, your golf partner, he happens to be a mutual friend of ours.
And I'd gone to lunch with him that morning.
He described in great specificity the incredible reaction time, heroism of these Secret Service agents that were surrounding you that day and how quickly they got on top of you, got you out of the situation.
A flawless operation in terms of those agents.
And they deserve so much credit for what they do that they would risk their lives.
No greater love had some man to lay down their life for another, and they're willing to do that for you.
And that part of the story, I mean, the fact that you have, that this country has such incredible people is a great story.
But here's what troubles me.
In Butler, PA, we had a sniper who was able to get on a roof within 130 yards and come within a millimeter of taking your life.
In this situation, it is a well-known area that is treed, as you pointed out, with a fence on it.
And this guy, according to reports, might have been there for 12 hours or his phone pinged in the area for 12 hours ahead of time, 1.30 in the morning.
And so obviously there was some type of coordinated planned attack or anticipation you'd be playing golf or something happened.
But the problem is, is he got within 300 yards of you with an AK-47 with a scope.
Now, what I don't understand, and Eric, your son doesn't understand, and Laura doesn't understand, and many of your family members don't understand, is when you have a treat area that is known for paparazzi taking videos and pictures of you when you're playing golf, because that's the only area on the golf course they would ever have the ability to do that.
Why wasn't that area swept?
Why weren't there agents on the outside making sure nobody would go in the bushes?
Why weren't the bushes checked?
To me, that is a colossal failure.
And that concerns not just me, but every one of your supporters and every one of your family members, sir.
Well, I understand that.
And in this particular case, you had a very sharp agent, as good as you can find, and did a fantastic job.
But somebody could have missed the barrel of that rifle.
Somebody of lesser talents or somebody that was distracted could have missed or could have been shot.
I mean, frankly, could have also been shot.
But in this case, it was something that worked out very well.
As to whether or not they should know this two days in advance, you know, I can't say.
I just said, let's go play a quick round because it's all business for me.
It's my only little bit of a form of exercise.
So I like it.
It's something that is good.
But it's also, Sean, very important that you be able to go and do what you want in safety.
I just find the Secret Service.
Now, Butler's a very different story.
You know, somebody should have been on that building.
And that's a different story, but they also showed great, they were very brave because when those bullets were flying, they were, they would die.
They were trying to protect me.
They were literally.
But don't you think a treed area leading into a fence 300-plus yards away from you, that area, as a matter of standard operating procedure would need to be swept.
And we would need to have eyes on it to make sure that nobody, be a paparazzi or in this case, a would-be assassin, has access to being close to you with an AK-47 with a scope.
Your sons can tell you, because they're both excellent marksmen, Don Jr.
and Eric, that that is the equivalent of a one-foot putt, if you want to use a golf analogy.
And so we have two incidents in two months where people with rifles and scopes get within 130 and 300 plus yards of you, which would be an easy shot for even a marginal shooter.
And that to me, and we heard the head of the Secret Service praising his organization and saying this is a great success.
The fact that they didn't cover that area to me is a great failure.
And I understand your reluctance to be critical, but I'm very critical of it.
And I just feel like there's got to be an evaluation here immediately.
Has your campaign ever been denied resources that you requested from the Secret Service?
Well, that's the big thing.
We have long requested more people, more men and women, but more people.
And because, you know, we have rallies, 50,000, 60,000.
In New Jersey, we had 107,000 people show up.
There's never been anything like it.
And we have long requested more people.
That's true.
That's the weakness.
If there's a weakness, I really think that's the weakness.
You still need the power of the people.
We have to, you know, you could say the manpower and the woman power to get in there.
And look, we don't have, or we haven't had.
Now, I understand they're going to be doing this, but you could have somebody who's a president who doesn't have a lot of people watching, and it's a lot easier.
And, you know, it's a lot easier situation than it is for me.
We have tremendous rallies and crowds, and that's a good thing, but you need more protection.
And we've long requested more people.
I will say in Butler, we wanted more people.
I heard them say it.
You know, we need more people here for security.
And we never seem to get that.
And I think we are getting it now.
Somebody told me that they will be providing more people now.
Well, I would think now that maybe we could learn the lessons from it.
And when I heard the head of the Secret Service saying that this almost was a perfect operation, I'm not buying that.
And then praising Alejandro Mayorkas, who has been partly responsible, along with Kamala Harris and Joe Biden, allowing in unvetted 11 million plus illegal immigrants from 180 countries, including countries with terror ties, allowing people with terror ties, known terror ties in the country.
We've seen the crimes they've committed, murder, rape, and violent crimes against our citizens.
To me, it is unconscionable because all of that is preventable and it should be, you know, now that voting is starting in Pennsylvania, people need to know and understand all of this.
But I think we have a major security failure going around, and you seem to be the number one target for assassination in this country.
And as your son said last night, how many lives do you have left?
You know, CAT has nine lives.
How many lives does Donald Trump have left?
And it's scary for people that care about you.
Well, I never thought of it that way.
It's an interesting way of thinking about it.
I will say this: what you said on the border is right.
You know, we had the safest border in the history of our country when I left office.
We had the safest border.
In fact, the famous chart that I was turning right, fortunately, to look at showed the lowest, that was made up by the Border Patrol.
And it was the best number in terms of drugs, in terms of people, meaning the fewest people.
We had it down to an absolute science, and then it became a rocket ship right after that.
And it was a shame.
But we had a great border situation.
It was only going to get better, but we had it down to a real size.
We had to remain in Mexico.
We had all sorts of things.
People couldn't come into our country until they got past.
They'd have to go through really rigorous tests.
And it was a great thing.
And now it's truly one of the great problems, one of the big problems.
No country has been invaded like we've been invaded.
If you look at what's going on in Ohio and Colorado and so many states, and a lot of states that don't want to talk about it yet because they're embarrassed by it.
But they're being invaded by people from jails and by gang members.
And we have people coming in from mental institutions.
And we have terrorists coming in at a level that we've never seen before.
It's crazy.
It makes no sense whatsoever why they aren't closing the border.
They can do it with a phone call.
You close the border.
Mr. President.
It has to close.
I agree completely.
I've talked about it at length.
And let's not give free housing, health care, education, sex change surgery, and amnesty to those illegal immigrants, which Kamala Harris has stated she wants in her own words.
I know for those of us that know you and have known you for many years, we're prayerful.
We're glad you're safe.
If the Harris Biden administration has not given you and your campaign the resources they need to, they didn't give RFK Jr.
the resources he needed, this needs to stop, and they need a complete reevaluation in the next 48 hours, so this can never happen again.
We are glad you're safe, Mr. President, and thank you for being with us.
Thank you very much.
Thank you, Sean.
Right.
That was President Trump speaking out to me yesterday in an interview we had post this assassination attempt.
I had spoken to him that day after this all occurred.
I mean, I honestly just was sick to my stomach when I'm hearing this story.
I just like, I cannot believe this happened again.
I can't believe it.
Now that I know much more about it, it makes me even more angry.
And then when I hear the head of the Secret Service tell us that, you know, this was a success.
This was anything but a success.
I can't even believe anybody would even make that case as the acting director, Ronald Rose, said, you know, the security plan for Trump worked.
If somebody gets within, you know, 300-plus yards of Donald Trump with an AK-47 that has a scope on it, it's not a success.
That's a failure.
Now, the security, the Secret Service around the president were phenomenal.
But the fact that they didn't do a search of the wooded area, it's just unconscionable to me.
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We'll hit the phones when we come back as we continue.
A word from the 46th president of the United States.
And by the way, you know, I sit on the stand and it get hot.
I got a lot of Harry Lace that turned that turn blonde in the sun.
Sean Hannity is on right now.
That's going to wrap things up today.
Loaded up tonight.
Best election coverage on your television dial.
We have Governor Ron DeSantis.
He'll join us.
Senator Ted Cruz, Steve Moore on the economy, the Fed.
Also, Laura Trump will be with us.
And Morgan Ortegas.
They were down at the border yesterday.
Speaker Mike Johnson will join us.
And we'll have the latest news on the election, the economy, the immigration disaster, the news that you'll never get from the media mobs.
Set you DVR, 90 Eastern tonight.
Hannity on Fox News.
See you then back here tomorrow.
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