Hour two, Sean Hannity Show, 800-941-SHAWN, our number if you want to be a part of the program.
I've been saying that this country overwhelmingly voted for dramatic change in Washington.
And for all those conservatives out there, and that would even include establishment conservatives, they've given lip service to the idea of cutting waste, fraud, abuse, etc.
That road.
Vivek Ramaswamy, who along with Elon Musk is going to be heading up the Department of Government Efficiency.
Welcome back to the program, sir.
And, you know, conservatives have given lip service to this idea of ending waste, fraud, abuse, and cutting the bloated bureaucracy in Washington.
I have hope, really, for the first time in my adult life that this is serious.
You mean it.
It's real and it's going to happen.
Yeah, Sean, that's exactly right.
Because politicians, frankly, even Republicans, have paid lip service to this objective for a long time.
Very little has ever happened.
And that's why we're doing things differently.
First of all, we've got a president who is himself an outsider, who is elected with a decisive mandate with both houses of Congress under Republican control and a six to three majority on the Supreme Court of Conservative Justices.
The last time those stars have aligned is basically never in modern American history.
So it's a rare moment.
And we're also doing things differently where Elon and I, we're not politicians.
We are outsiders.
We're entrepreneurs.
We're not joining the government.
We're outside volunteers because we've got to preserve that creativity and latitude that when you join the government.
I mean, you're going to be doing this for free?
I'm just asking.
Yes.
Yes.
Elon and I are not in this for the money.
We're in this for saving the country and power.
You've been pretty successful.
I got to tip my hat to you.
So you are a successful business guy.
Yeah, look, I've built multi-billion dollar businesses.
I'm a self-made billionaire before the age of 40, and I've got two kids who I'm worried are going to grow up in a country where they can't live that American dream unless we actually pass it on.
And the federal bureaucracy is, I think, the number one obstacle, Sean, standing in the way.
It is the growth of this nanny state in the United States of America and the administrative bureaucracy required to administer it.
It's anti-American.
It's also anti-constitutional because right now, the people we elect to run the government, they're not even the ones who are actually running the government.
It's the unelected bureaucrats who are making most policies.
And that is a betrayal of democracy and what our republic is supposed to be about.
And so this project is as much about efficiency and saving dollars, which is, of course, important.
It's as much about that as it is restoring self-governance in America.
And yes, I am confident we're going to do both those things.
And one of the things that's also different, Sean, is most government programs, I think Reagan said it, is the closest thing to eternal life is a new government program.
Most government programs never die.
They never go away.
With Doge, we're doing it differently.
We have set an expiration date for Doge of July 4th, 2026.
How do we pick that?
Well, first of all, we wanted to get this done in a year and a half.
And second of all, is that's actually the 250th birthday of the United States of America, the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence.
And I can think of no better gift to our nation than a smaller government of a size that would make our founding fathers proud.
And so that's what we're working at breakneck speed to achieve.
We're already getting started underway.
And I think that the way I look at it, Sean, is it's now or never.
If we don't get it done this time, it's not going to happen in America.
But it is going to happen this time because of the mandate that we've been given by the people of this country.
Elon and I are excited.
We've got getting our hands dirty all the way.
It's easy to talk about this.
The harder part is going to be executing it, but we're up for the challenge.
And we know we're going to face resistance.
We're okay with that.
We're ready for it.
It's not just about ending waste, fraud, and abuse.
It's also what we're talking about is America returning to its founding principles, and that would be limited government, greater freedom.
And you've gone into some detail, as has Elon, and that you expect certain agencies to just outright be deleted and returning other departments to the states where they would be better able to handle it.
For example, in education, I think that should be done on the local level.
But we're talking about the FEC, the SEC.
What departments outright are you talking about that you expect can be deleted?
Look, I think that we're going to get into the specific details on January 20th and onward.
We're not going to play our cards too specifically beforehand because we know the resistance we're going to run into.
We also want to give ourselves the time and latitude, as we're doing right now, to dig into those details.
But what people can expect is a mass downsizing, not an incremental downsizing, a mass downsizing of the fourth branch of government, the administrative state, the people who work in three-letter agencies.
Even agencies that aren't deleted are going to see mass headcount reductions.
They're going to see mass reductions in the number of regulations that they're enforcing or allowed to enforce, because after all, the Supreme Court has told the administrative state that many of those regulations are unconstitutional.
So this is about realigning our constitutional republic with our founding principles, actually following the U.S. Constitution with three branches of government, not four.
And are there going to be some agencies that are outright eliminated as part of that?
Yes.
One that President Trump has talked about openly is the U.S. Department of Education.
You mentioned it as well.
But that is an example of the kind of agency that need not actually exist for our future republic to thrive.
And that's the approach that we're taking, Sean, is it's not an incremental approach.
I think if you take an incremental approach, there's going to be set up for failure.
That's been tried before.
But if you take an actual quantum leap approach, and I do think that that's why we're approaching this as entrepreneurs and not politicians, if you take that quantum leap approach, I think success is actually going to be achievable.
I'm not saying it's going to be easy, but I'm saying we're up for the challenge.
And I believe that we are going to do something that hasn't been done in modern American history because that's what saving our country requires.
I think it will include or must include the elimination of baseline budgeting, which, for those people that may not know, that would mean the built-in increases in every department and spending and every all throughout government every year without any reductions at all.
Years ago, there was something called the penny plan that would, if you cut one penny out of every dollar and didn't increase spending every year for seven years, you would have balanced the budget.
That was put forward by then Congressman Connie Mack.
Two promises the president has made, and one is to modernize our military and get rid of woke and increase recruitment.
It scares me that China and Russia have hypersonic technology and we do not.
I think we're going to have to spend a lot of money there preserving and helping two departments, two promises to the American people.
Social Security and Medicare has to be high on the list.
Both of them are headed towards insolvency.
We can't allow that to happen.
That was a promise made, and it must be a promise kept to the American people.
I would imagine you could reform them, but I do think that you're going to have to look for other sources of income as well.
I think the greatest opportunity financially that this country has is the incredible energy resources that have gone untapped.
And if we start providing all the energy needs of Western Europe alone, this would make America become the most energy-dominant country on the face of the earth and make us an energy wealthy nation.
And I think that could pay down the debt.
And I think it could do a lot of other things, lower taxes, and everybody could benefit from it.
You're absolutely right about that, Sean.
And actually, what stands in the way of doing that comes back to the regulatory state.
Permitting is far more difficult than it needs to be.
Opening up a new refinery, far more difficult than it needs to be.
When's the last time we opened one 40 years ago?
It's unbelievable, Sean.
It's unacceptable in the United States of America for us to squander the natural resources that God has given this country for us to not be able to use them.
But you think about every domain.
You think about healthcare.
Think about inefficiency international defense.
Think about the ineffectiveness of how we're harnessing our own energy.
It comes back down to the bureaucratic state.
And so in many ways, this project, our Department of Government Efficiency, Doge, this is, I think, the epicenter.
It's the nerve center for saving the country.
And so the stakes are high, and we're up for the challenge.
And I'm grateful to President Trump for really being pretty creative and out of the box.
This is not something that presidents usually do.
You know, most presidents may, at most, may set up some type of commission that's cutting ribbons and issuing final reports.
This isn't cutting ribbons.
This is about cutting cost in a serious way.
This is about cutting bureaucracy in a serious way.
We're going to be doing it on a real-time basis and delivering those recommendations.
And so I think that this is going to be a historic opportunity.
It's up to us to seize it.
We're going to have to do a good job of explaining this to the American people along the way, too, Sean.
Because, you know, are there going to be some bumps in the road if you're looking at making cuts that deep?
Of course.
And I think most people understand that.
Most people are taxpayers who know that their tax dollars are not being spent properly.
And the fact that there's a bureaucracy that's standing in the way of this country is a major problem.
Most people get that.
But I think we're going to have to really do a good job of being able to explain that over the next year and a half as we make some pretty serious changes.
Well, let me ask this.
Are you prepared?
Because the bureaucracy will go to great lengths to protect the bureaucracy and stop you from instituting what are needed and fundamental changes to how we approach governing.
I mean, you're talking about a top-to-bottom remake of what we have come to know as this massive bureaucracy.
I'm fully supportive of it.
And you rightly point out conservatives have given lip service to it, but when given the opportunity, they've never taken advantage of it.
This is the opportunity of a lifetime.
This may be the only opportunity our country ever has.
I agree with you, which is why we don't really care about the resistance from the bureaucrats.
We're going to get a lot of resistance from entrenched interests and bureaucrats in Washington, D.C.
That doesn't matter to us because the American people are on our side.
Voters are on our side.
And I think history is on our side.
Our country has thrived without the existence of this massive bureaucracy.
That's what our founders envisioned.
And I think we owe it to this country, and we owe it to our history, and we owe it to posterity to restore the government that would make George Washington and our founding fathers proud.
One with three branches of government, not four.
One without some bureaucracy standing in the way.
One where if congressmen or senators don't do a good job making the laws, you can actually vote them out instead of these unelected bureaucrats who remain permanently hired.
That's what this country demands of us.
And so, yeah, are we up for the challenge?
Is there going to be some resistance?
Yes, but we're ready for it.
The people are with us.
History's with us.
Our constitution is with us.
And that's what we're going to need.
And we're confident that that's what we're going to be able to use to see this through.
We've become very friendly.
I've gotten to know you very well.
I've come to admire you.
You're extraordinarily intelligent.
And I don't know Elon Musk on a personal level.
I watch what he does in fascination.
I mean, the fact that our government needs to rely on him to rescue these astronauts that are lost in space is insane to me.
SpaceX, what he's been able to accomplish there is pretty amazing.
Tesla is pretty amazing.
It seems that he's an engineering genius.
What's your relationship like with him?
Can you give us any insight into the type of person that he is?
Sure.
You know, Elon and I, we've become good friends over the last year and a half.
He's someone I've admired from afar, but I've really gotten to know him over the last year and a half during my own presidential campaign and afterwards.
He is somebody who, and I don't say this lightly, Sean, he is somebody who is really on a different plane.
And I've, you know, met some of the smartest people in the world.
Well, people have said that about me.
They said that I'm lost in space myself, but go ahead.
I'm joking.
Well, you know, in your own way, also, Sean, right?
You're a genius in being able to communicate ideas that people need to hear.
I think Elon is a genius of an engineering variety who is able to think outside of the constraints that normal people just accept as the status quo.
He has a unique vision of being able to step outside the status quo and ask what is possible if you start with a blank slate.
And so, you know, there aren't that many people as entrepreneurs who I sort of look up to and believe that I can, you know, really learn meaningful things from.
Elon is on that list, is at the top of that list by far.
And I think working with him has already been a pleasure.
I think he's somebody who cares about substance over politics or substance over process.
I love that about him.
I've actually already learned a tremendous amount from him, even in the short time we've known each other and have even the shorter time that we've gotten to work together.
But I think that we, you know, we have a similar vision.
We have a similar orientation.
We're entrepreneurs at our heart.
We like to create things.
We both dislike politics, but we've chosen to be in the sport because our country requires it.
And we both have kids who we care about growing up in a country where they can actually live the American dream that Elon and I have.
And take his story.
He came to this country as an immigrant with nothing and built himself up to be the most successful capitalist literally in world history.
And for me, that's really resonant.
My parents came to this country with no money 40 years ago.
I've gone on to found multi-billion dollar companies and became the youngest person ever to run for U.S. president as a Republican.
And so that's what's possible in this country.
That's America.
That's the America we know and love.
And we share a passion for reviving it.
And, you know, I think we're going to make for, I think, a great team.
And we're already enjoying working together, but the hard work is still ahead of us, and we're ready for the challenge.
There's going to be a lot of change under President Trump, but I think what you and Elon are doing are the most exciting to me because as a conservative, all these years, I've preached about limited government, greater freedom, ending waste, fraud, and abuse.
And as I said earlier, this is the first time in my life that I think it will be accomplished.
Vivek, we'll be with you every step of the way, offering any support we can.
My best to you.
My best to Elon.
And, you know, getting America back to its true purpose, its constitutional order.
We appreciate you being with us, sir.
Thank you, my man.
Take care.
800-941, Sean, our number if you want to be a part of the program.
All right, 25 now till the top of the hour.
800-941, Sean, our number if you want to be a part of the program.
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All right, let's get to our busy telephone, shall we?
Let's say hi to Mike.
He's in Colorado.
Mike, how are you?
Glad you called.
Thanks for being with us.
Thanks for having me, Sean.
I appreciate everything you do.
It's an honor to be honest with you.
I would like you to consider challenging your posture on these women who are refusing to get intimate with their partners or shave their heads.
I think we should all be encouraging them to do so.
And by doing so, we effectively remove people like this who can infect their children from the gene pool.
I thank you three times.
So you want these people removed from the gene pool.
You want them assisted.
You don't want them to procreate.
Is that what you're saying?
That's exactly right.
That's exactly right.
It's up to them.
Do I think this is a temporary reaction of most of them?
I don't know, their way of somehow rebelling or wanting to be heard.
You know, I don't know when we went from the land of the free and the home of the brave to the land of the snowflake because it's so snowflake-ish to me and so woke to me and so stupid to me on every front.
But in part, I don't blame part of them for it.
Let me tell you why.
They've been indoctrinated into lies.
They have been told that we conservatives are garbage.
They have been told we're irredeemable, deplorables.
They've been told we're bitter, angry Americans that cling to God, guns, our Bibles, and religion.
They have been told falsehoods.
Seniors in this country were told by Kamala herself that Donald Trump will take away their Social Security, their Medicare.
They have been told that women, there would be a national abortion ban if Donald Trump is elected president again.
They were told that he would limit access to birth control.
They were told that IVF treatment would go out the window, all of which is completely false, that he would support Project 2025.
Again, completely false.
He has no idea what Project 2025 is.
He had no part of Project 2025.
I have no idea what's in Project 2025.
And, you know, with all the hoopla about it, I don't even want to know.
So in a sense, you know, forgive them for they know not what they do because they've been lied to.
And when a president, vice president of this country lies to you on that level and tells you that if you elect this guy, X, Y, and Z is going to happen when it's not true.
It does rile people up.
Just like they said he was Stalin, Hitler, and Mussolini.
Anyway, Mike, I hear what you're saying.
But if people don't want to have sex, if they want to shave their heads, if they want to hoard up on abortion pills, have at it.
If they want to divorce their husbands, it's sad.
I wouldn't recommend it over politics, but I guess the marriage is not that strong to begin with.
All right, let's go to Tom of New York.
Tom, how are you?
Glad you called.
Hi, Sean.
So I want to make a couple of quick points.
First of all, I own two Henrys, 38 and a 4570 rifle.
Great firearm, great manufacturer.
That's the first one.
By the way, aren't they the best?
I mean, it's HenryUSA.com.
They're an advertiser on this show, and they have the highest quality old-school craftsmanship and combined with modern technology.
And I'm telling you, it's such a great company.
And Anthony, the owner, is such a great guy.
Yeah, I chose the 4570 because it goes with my Sharps 1850 cat saddle ring and my 38 subnose.
So that's it.
So the reason for I'm going to call is Mr. Musk and Swabi have a great plan.
I listened to their plan.
I examine their plan.
And that's what I want to hear.
And I think a lot of the American public and the conservatives, Republicans, and the Democrats who voted for Mr. Trump need to hear these plans.
I don't really care what the Democrats want to do.
I don't care what they have to say.
I don't care if they're crying on TV.
I don't care about shaveheads.
A lot of us, this is my opinion, do not want to hear about this stuff.
They're washed up.
They're done.
The Americans want to hear the plan, what we're going to do, not just the basic boilerplate.
We're going to drill.
We're going to do this.
We want a plan.
We're always thriving for information.
And once we hear the plan coming from our elected, duly elected officials, Mr. Trump, and I met Mr. Trump a couple of times, especially in the Nation's Parade in 1995 on his helicopter at Floyd Bennett Field.
Great, great gentleman to talk to when he was running the Grand Marshal of that ceremony.
But we need the plan.
We want the plan.
We want to hear what the plan in detail is going to be.
And the last thing is, as a New Yorker, you fled to Florida.
God bless you.
There's been an uptick in criminal activity with knives, but yet our governor and the TISH will not call the legislature back into session to have knife control, knife permits, knife this, knife that, because it's not a gun.
And that's a huge problem with a lot of us trying to blame an inanimate object versus the individuals committing the crime.
And thank you very much.
Listen, I appreciate all you're saying.
And this is the problem with New York.
And if you're a criminal in New York and you get arrested, they let you out of jail because they have this idiotic no-bail laws.
And then we watched Judge Morshon earlier today and the DA, Alvin Bragg, who is a, he's not appointed.
It's a political office.
And the left wing in New York loves the fact that he hates Donald Trump and he's going to ride that into reelection.
It's pretty insane.
Anyway, 800-941-Sean, our number, if you want to be a part of the program, back to our busy phones as we say hi to Fred in Illinois.
Fred, how are you?
Glad you called.
Hi, Sean.
I just want to take this opportunity quickly to say that America needs to extend sincere thanks to you for what you do day in and day out, dragging us across the finish line, because I'll tell you, there was a lot of times that I didn't think we were going to make it.
So thank you for that.
Well, thank you.
Listen, I thank everybody in this audience for doing their part because that's the only way it was going to happen.
I'm one voice, one vote.
I tried to get the information out there that everybody needed.
And thankfully, a lot of people understood what was at stake in this election.
Well, keep punching, Sean, because we need you.
But currently, we're caught up in this euphoria with the victory that we had.
And it's, you know, we need to do this.
But I think what America has to realize is the left never lets up.
And they're working in the background here.
And my question to you is, since you have your finger on the political pulse, Do you really think and believe that the Republicans have the political will and the courage to not only get their cabinet candidates approved, but to carry out Trump's agenda?
I agree with the last caller.
We want to see the plan, but the plan, I'm an old football and wrestling coach, and the plan doesn't do any good unless you execute it.
Well, I mean, you just heard Vivek Ramaswamy, both he and Elon Musk are staying outside of the government.
Do I think they will do a good job?
Yes.
In the back of my mind, do I worry that Republicans might react the way that people in the Reagan era reacted to the Grace Commission?
Yeah, I worry about that a little bit.
I think that the first order of business is going to be getting Donald Trump's appointments through.
There's been all this talk that he may go to recess appointments.
You know, well, if we're going to whine and this is outrageous and Donald Trump is bypassing the Senate and advising consent, et cetera, et cetera.
Well, it's not the first time there have been recess appointments.
Obama made over 30 of them.
Bush 43 made over 170 of them.
Bush 41 used a recess appointment for a Secretary of State.
So that's a lot of recess appointing that went on.
And anyway, presidents and George Washington have made recess appointments.
Washington appointed South Carolina Judge John Rutledge as the Chief Justice of the U.S. during a congressional recess in 1795, if you want me to go into some of the detail I went into before.
But President Reagan made 240 recess appointments.
That's an average of 30 a year.
President George H.W. Bush, 77 recess appointments.
That's a lot of recess appointments.
So we'll see what happens.
I would rather the Republicans and the Senate have a backbone and understand the mandate that Donald Trump was given here.
But Donald Trump also, you know, he helped a lot of these candidates get in as well.
I'm not sure Dave McCormick would have made it had Donald Trump not been on the top of the ticket, for example, in Pennsylvania, and I think he's going to do a great job.
I think it certainly helped Bernie Moreno, and I think it helped a lot of other people, a lot of congressional seats.
It was an 80%.
It was viewed, I think the betting markets even had about an 80% chance that Democrats would take back the House.
That didn't happen.
So this is a historic opportunity.
The president won the popular vote.
That had not happened since 2004.
And I think that this is a mandate election.
I think it's the death of legacy media, as we've been discussing.
So, you know, it's going to be up to us, too.
You know, we can't just vote and go away and not pay attention.
I mean, we're going to have to put pressure on elected officials, congressmen and senators, to do their job too.
And their job is the Trump agenda right now.
Anyway, I do appreciate the call, my friend.
Thank you.
800-941-Sean, if you want to be a part of the program, let's get back to our busy phones.
800-941-Sean, our number, if you'd like to join us.
Let us say hi to Melissa, North Carolina.
Melissa, how are you?
Glad you called.
I'm doing great, Sean.
How are you?
I'm good.
What's going on?
Well, I have a question.
So my question is, if these women are like boycotting sex for four years, whatever, I mean, why are they stockpiling the abortion pill?
That's a really good question.
I don't really know.
Maybe they don't pay attention to news either because the Supreme Court ruled on the widespread availability of the abortion pill.
And they basically codified that into law.
So that is almost a first trimester pill.
It says up to 10 weeks, but so basically the first trimester, women will have access and availability to the abortion bill, which now represents about 65% of abortions in America.
Right.
But if they're not having sex, I don't think they need it, honestly.
So maybe you need to do a public service announcement to remind people how pregnancy happens.
I don't know.
If they're not having sex and they're abstaining from sex, I'm totally pro-choice in what people do in their private life.
If that's the way they want to live their life, that's fine with me.
I'm not so sure it's going to go over well with boyfriends and husbands.
My mama, you say some people don't have the good sense God gave a billy guard.
But if this is how they want to live their life, but you make a great point.
If you're not having sex, you don't really need to stockpile abortion pills.
That's what I'm thinking.
Yeah, I think you're right.
Anyway, appreciate the call.
Thank you, Melissa.
You make my day.
Let's say hi.
We'll stay on the topic with Jeff in Oklahoma.
Jeff, how are you?
Glad you called.
I'm great, sir.
How are you?
Good.
What's going on?
Oh, man.
First off, as a homeschool dad in Oklahoma, I want to say that on election night, you called a lot of nerves that we had when you said you had never been more confident in anything in your life.
I believe when you were talking about Georgia and North Carolina.
So thank you for calming those nerves at the time.
Well, you know, it's so funny.
More people have commented to me about the comments I made about 9:39 on Fox when I was on with the panel.
And I spoke twice, and once I went over the numbers and why I thought it was mathematically impossible going into Election Day that I said that Kamala had a math problem.
Joe Biden went into Pennsylvania on Election Day in 2020 with a 1.1 million vote lead.
He won by less than 100,000, way less than 100,000.
Kamala only went in with a 400,000 vote lead.
That was a deficit of 700,000 votes.
I spent the day talking to people in heavily Democratic areas in Pennsylvania.
That would be Philly.
That would be Allegheny County, for example.
And I knew that the turnout was nowhere near what would have been historic and necessary for her to catch up.
So I have great contacts in Georgia.
Georgia was baked.
It was done.
Donald Trump was going to win Georgia.
He was going to win North Carolina.
I had good sources there.
I knew that he would win Arizona by that point and likely Nevada, which he ended up winning.
I also knew that she had the same numbers problem and deficit problem in Wisconsin based on early voting because she was 40, 45% down from where Joe Biden was in 2020.
And it's amazing when I said that and I said, look, I may be getting over my skis.
If I turn out to be wrong, you can print Hannity was wrong t-shirts, but here's how the night's going to unfold.
And I turned out being right because I worked the phones all day, and that's what I do for a living.
And I'm supposed to be right.
If I didn't believe that, I wouldn't have said it.
And even close friends of mine said they knew it was over the minute I said what I said, or else I would not have said it.
And they're right.
I'm glad it gave you some peace that night, though.
So I hope you know that it came from a place of a lot of research and a lot of calling.