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Feb. 19, 2025 - Sean Hannity Show
45:40
7 Things You Can't Say About China - February 18th, Hour 2
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And our two Sean Hannity show, toll-free.
Our number is 800-941.
Sean, if you want to be a part of the program, the president is expected to speak.
We're not going to probably take the whole thing like we did last week.
Otherwise, I'll just hand over the whole show.
And we have so much news that we have to get to and important stuff that is also out there that we need to report to you.
But boy, what a refreshing change in five weeks.
I think we ought to add up the time that Donald Trump has spent with the media and doing interviews and gaggles versus how much time Joe Biden did in four years.
I'm sure he's catching up very quickly.
And then Joe Biden took a whopping nearly 600 days vacation, 550 days vacation, whatever it was, is crazy.
But in light of all of these revelations, Doge already saving taxpayers close to $100 billion.
In my interview with President Trump and Elon tonight, we go into how high they think this number will be or Elon does.
Now they're saving taxpayers a fortune.
A Treasury Department discovery was made by Doge, $4.7 trillion missing a critical tracking code, which they say makes tracing the transaction almost impossible.
How is that possible?
$4.7 trillion in payments that they left blank, making traceability almost impossible.
If you go to Doge on X, I mean, this is so incredible.
I mean, the amount of money, it's going to be hundreds of billions, if not higher.
And this is, you know, see this through the prism of the average American that makes $66,000 a year and nearly $40 trillion in debt and the $235 billion identified by the GAO last week that Biden misspent in a year, or the, you know, $764 billion in COVID relief that the Biden administration erroneously paid out.
What do they expect people to give that money back?
You know, $4 billion in COVID stimulus payments sent to dead people?
They discovered that too.
I forgot to mention that part.
$4.7 trillion just missing the critical code.
We have no idea how they spend the money.
I mean, it's just so, so outrageous.
It's beyond anything I've ever seen.
You know, the millions of instances where Social Security fraud is in the database.
You know, you've got literally, and this is mind-numbing too, that they have discovered that there are more people on Social Security's eligibility list than there are actual Americans.
And in other words, millions more eligible recipients than living Americans.
This is insane.
And then you get deeper into it and you find 20 million Americans listed on the Social Security eligibility list over 100, 20 million, 3.9 million in the range of 130 years old to 139 years old.
3.5 million aged 140 to 149 years old.
Over 1.3 million whose ages range from 150 years old to 159 years old.
There's even an alive citizen aged over 360 years old.
I'd like to meet this person.
Now, we don't know if they're getting paid yet.
We don't know if their relatives are getting paid and just getting checks and cashing them.
I don't know.
I bet we're going to find those issues.
You know, we found in 2023 $68 billion in aid to 176 countries, most of it doing with the Green New Deal, et cetera, the radicalized Green New Deal and DEI and wokeness and transgenderism and LGBTQ plus.
And then people are saying, well, he's unelected.
Well, there's not a single ⁇ nobody that works for the president for the most part is elected.
A vice president's elected.
His cabinet is, okay, you have advising consent, but it's pretty much been a walk for every single Trump nominee and will continue to be.
But it raises issues about the president's authority under Article 2 of our Constitution.
Here to weigh in on that is Greg Jarrett, because they keep screaming, this is unconstitutional.
This is a constitutional crisis.
Is it a constitutional crisis, Greg Garrett?
No, of course not.
That's absurd.
It's the usual overwrought hysteria.
Everything's a crisis, particularly a constitutional crisis.
No, it isn't.
There have been 75 lawsuits filed against Trump in the four weeks that he's been in office.
That's got to set a record.
What happens is that Democrats reflexively are against anything that Donald Trump does.
And so they go running and crying to the nearest federal court judge.
Oh, he wants to stop my fraud and abuse, my waste.
That's not right.
And, you know, they're on the wrong side of this because a majority of Americans approve of what Trump is doing.
70% in a CBS poll agree that the president is doing exactly what he promised he was going to do, which is something that politicians never do.
They make all kinds of promises with no intent of fulfilling them because it sounds good and they want to get elected.
Well, Trump's different.
And, you know, he's doing what he said he was going to do.
And the amount of waste and fraud that Doge and Elon Musk have uncovered is truly shocking to the American sensibility.
They have found so far, and I think this is a low number, that 20% of government spending is wasted.
I think it's more like 30, maybe 40%.
Billions, tens of billions in misplaced funds, eye-popping sums that are lavished on foreign entities.
USAID, totally out of control, thankfully now shut down, giving away boatloads of taxpayer money like free candy, Sesame Street in Iraq, DEI in Serbia.
The list goes on and on.
Billions in waste at the EPA.
Lee Zeldin, thankfully, is going to call back a lot of that money.
The Pentagon, I hope Pete Hexet is going to do what he says he's going to do, cut the waste, the fraud there.
So, you know, we've got a long way to go here, but naturally Democrats rush to the nearest federal courts to try to stop it.
And, you know, they're arguing against themselves in the eyes of the American public.
You know, isn't it amazing that this is now the hill that they want to die on, what will ultimately be hundreds and hundreds of billions of dollars waste, fraud, abuse, and corruption.
And I don't want to be redundant to this audience.
This is not fair because I've spent a lot of time, an inordinate amount of time, informing them how the money has been spent.
I've been scrolling it on television every night, and it all seems to be rooted in this left-wing radicalism whose foundation is the Green New Deal, DEI, wokeism, transgenderism, LGBTQ plus abroad.
This is not money that is spent on hiring more police officers, firefighters to make our towns more safe and secure.
It's not money that is being spent to get rid of gang members, cartel members, murderers, rapists, and known terrorists in the country.
This is not money that is being spent to improve American schools.
This is not money that is being spent to make America the most energy-dominant country in the world.
I got to take a quick break here, though, Greg.
Donald Trump has taken to the podium, and he just introduced somebody.
Oh, he's signing executive orders.
Let's listen in.
The administration's broader commitment to governmental transparency.
What this presidential memorandum would do is require as waste, fraud, and abuse is uncovered, as programs are canceled, and ultimately as taxpayer dollars are saved, this presidential memorandum would require departments and agencies to make all of the details of that freely available to the public.
Lastly, we have another executive order that President Trump signed relating to independent agencies.
This executive order would establish important oversight functions in the Office of Management and Budget and its subsidiary office, OIRA, supervising independent agencies and many of their actions, and also reestablishes the long-standing norm that only the President or the Attorney General can speak for the United States when stating an opinion as to what the law is.
Thank you very much, Will.
That was the primary purpose of this conference, to explain that they're all very important in their own way.
Fertilization, I've been saying that we're going to do what we have to do.
And I think the women and families, husbands are very appreciative of it.
But that was it.
I do want to say while I'm up here, I've been contacted by some of the biggest companies in the world.
And because of what we're doing economically and through tariffs and taxes and incentives, they want to come back into the United States.
And we'll be announcing various very large companies, the biggest, actually.
And they'll be coming back, having to do with chips and having to do also with cars and lots of other things.
We're going to be announcing some very, very big, very big, momentous, I think momentous decisions are being made by companies all around the world, the biggest, and they want to come back into the U.S. Car plants are being canceled in other locations now because they want to build them here.
And you read about a couple, not that I want to mention names or anything, but you read about a couple of big ones in Mexico just got canceled because they're going to be building them in the United States.
And that's very simply because of what we're doing with respect to taxes, tariffs, and incentives.
And I think it's a very important thing.
And you'll be seeing this over the next, probably over the next two years, to be honest, but you're going to see a lot of it over the next couple of weeks.
A lot of big ones are going to be announcing.
And so while we're here, I guess we can take a couple of quick questions.
Go ahead, please.
Please.
Mr. President, have you decided specifically what the auto tariff rate should be?
Yeah, I probably will tell you that on April 2nd, but it'll be in the neighborhood of 25%.
What about semiconductors and pharmaceuticals?
It'll be 25% and higher, and it'll go very substantially higher over the course of a year.
But we want to give them time to come in because, as you know, when they come into the United States and they have their plant or factory here, there is no tariff.
So we want to give them a little bit of a chance.
Yes, thank you.
All right, President Trump, at the White House, we're going to continue our coverage for stations along the Sean Hannity Show Network, announcing executive orders protecting families' right to IVF, a campaign promise that he made in spite of accusations by the Democrats to the contrary.
And secondarily, and maybe as important, depending what people's priorities are at the moment, I'm sure having a baby for a family is their top priority, but making sure that there is full, complete transparency on the spending of money in every government agency.
We're going to continue our coverage straight through this break for stations along the Sean Hannity Show Network.
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Thank you.
Following up on that, the EU, sorry, Andrea Shalal, the EU representative is going to be here in Washington next week.
I'm sorry, tomorrow.
He's going to be meeting with Hassett and Greer and Letnick.
What can the EU do to sort of avoid the reciprocal tariffs that you've talked about?
And, you know, you've talked a lot about the VAT.
Do you expect them to reduce that?
Well, they did already, as I understand it, reduce their car tariff all the way down to what we have.
And a lot of that will take place, and I think some won't do it and some will do it.
But the EU had a 10% tax on cars, and now they have a 2.5% tax, which is the exact same as us.
So already we've saved a tremendous amount.
That would be great.
If everybody would do that, then we'd all be on the same playing field.
Because essentially what we're doing with the tariffs is, you know, they charge us, we charge them, same amount.
And it's called reciprocal, actually.
And whatever they charge us, we're charging them.
And so the EU is, you know, I appreciate that they did this, but, you know, the EU has been very unfair to us.
We have a deficit of $350 billion.
They don't take our cars.
They don't take our farm products.
They don't take almost anything.
They take very little.
And we're going to have to straighten that out.
And we will, I have no doubt about it.
Pierre, go ahead, please.
Thank you, Mr. President.
Can you tell us a little bit more about the Russia talks, your impression of how they went today, and if you're perhaps more confident or less confident of the deal after what happened today?
Well, much more confident.
They were very good.
Russia wants to do something.
They want to stop the savage barbarianism.
I mean, what's going on over there?
Soldiers are being killed by the thousands on a weekly basis.
It's ridiculous.
And they're not American soldiers.
They're Russian soldiers, and they're Ukrainian soldiers largely, although a lot of Koreans have been killed, as you know.
Quite a bit of them have been killed.
They came over to fight, and a large portion have been wiped out.
But we want to end it.
It's a senseless war.
It should have never happened, would have never happened if I was president.
And it's a shame to see it.
And I see pictures that you don't see, but I see pictures of fields that look just horrible.
It looks like Gettysburg.
If you see the old pictures of Gettysburg, it's soldiers lying all over the field, body parts all over the field.
They're all dead.
And this is going on on a daily basis.
It's a horrible thing.
Both Russia and Ukraine, they're losing thousands and thousands of soldiers.
And a lot of people have been killed, too.
I think that's one of the things that you'll see historically, and you'll see later on as it goes along.
I think people are going to be surprised at how many people, not only soldiers, have been killed in Ukraine.
A lot more people than you think.
Yeah, please.
President Trump, as part of a peace deal with Putin, would you be willing to consider removing all American troops from Europe?
Well, nobody's asked me to do that, so I don't think we'd have to do that.
I wouldn't want to do that.
But that question's never really come up.
Yeah.
Please.
Sir, do you support stationing European peacekeeping troops in Ukraine as part of this peace deal?
If they want to do that, that's great.
I'm all for it.
If they want to do that, I think that'd be fine.
I mean, I know France has mentioned it.
Others have mentioned it.
UK has mentioned it.
But yeah, well, if we have a peace deal, I think having troops over there from the standpoint of Europe, we won't have to put any over there because we're very far away.
But having troops over there would be fine.
I would not object to it at all.
We're talking about this now, peace.
We have either a ceasefire or a peace itself.
And we're looking to do both.
Would start off with the ceasefire.
And if they want to do that, I know France was willing to do that, and I thought that was a beautiful gesture.
Yeah, please.
Do you have any message for Ukrainians who, after three years of fighting, might feel betrayed or disappointed at not having a seat at these initial talks in Saudi Arabia?
Well, I think I'm really disappointed in what's happened.
I've been watching this for three years.
It's a war that would have never happened if I was president.
And I've been watching these people being killed at levels that you've rarely seen, not even close, since the Second World War.
And I'm very disappointed.
I hear that they're upset about not having a seat.
Well, they've had a seat for three years and a long time before that.
This could have been settled very easily.
Just a half-baked negotiator could have settled this years ago without, I think, without the loss of much land, very little land, without the loss of any lives, and without the loss of cities that are just laying on their side.
You have those magnificent golden domes that are shattered, will never be replaced.
You can't replace them.
Thousand-year-old domes that are so beautiful, you can't replace that.
The whole civilization has changed because of what.
So when they're worried about not being seated, you mean somebody that should have gone in and made a deal a long time ago, you could have made a deal.
This is one that could have made a deal.
There was no talk of this during the Trump administration.
Putin would have never, ever done it.
And by the way, we wouldn't have had October 7th.
You know that.
We wouldn't have had October 7th either in Israel.
And we wouldn't have had that mess that's going on over there.
It's like we have great fire people here.
We're putting out fires.
All over the world, we're putting out fires.
So that wouldn't have happened.
And you know what else wouldn't have happened?
Inflation because it was caused really by the cost of energy going through the roof because of their bad energy policies and also their spending, their terrible spending, wasteful spending on the Green New scam.
It's a scam.
It's a whole big scam.
Yeah, please.
Yes, sir.
I want to ask you a little closer to home.
What would it take for you to reconsider the restrictions on the Associated Press?
And secondly, some of your advisors are concerned with the Associated Press's style guide using language and giving guidance to not use words like illegal immigrant or to use phrases like gender-affirming care.
And they're concerned about that being an encroaching amount of liberalism in the way in which the press writes about things.
Do you share those concerns?
Well, I do think that some of the phrases that they want to use are ridiculous.
And I think, frankly, they've become obsolete, especially in the last three weeks, because many things have happened in the last three weeks.
And I didn't know about that, but I would say that if they want to use certain phrases like that, and I guess some are okay, but many aren't.
But the Associated Press just refuses to go with what the law is and what is taking place.
It's called the Gulf of America now.
It's not called the Gulf of Mexico any longer.
I have the right to do it just like we have the right to do Mount McKinley, and nobody's even challenging that.
But only the Association, essentially, it's primarily the Associated Press.
And I don't know what they're doing, but I just say that we're going to keep them out until such time as they agree that it's the Gulf of America.
We're very proud of this country, and we want it to be the Gulf of America.
Now, the Associated Press, as you know, has been very, very wrong on the election, on Trump, and the treatment of Trump and other things having to do with Trump and Republicans and conservatives.
And they're doing us no favors, and I guess I'm not doing them any favors.
That's the way life works.
But, you know, thank you for the question.
Who are you with?
All right, for stations along the Sean Hannity Show Network, we continue our coverage for this next break.
But just giving you a heads up back to the Oval Office.
No, it's in Palm Beach.
It's at Mar-a-Lago.
Thank you.
Yes.
We're hearing that Russia wants to force Ukraine to hold new elections in order to sign any kind of a peace deal.
Is that something that the U.S. would ever support?
Well, we have a situation where we haven't had elections in Ukraine, where we have martial law, essentially martial law in Ukraine, where the leader in Ukraine, I mean, I hate to say it, but he's down at 4% approval rating, and where a country has been blown to smithereens.
You got most of the cities are laying on their sides.
The buildings are collapsed.
It looks like a massive demolition site.
The whole, I mean, so many of the cities, I mean, they haven't done it in Kiev because I guess they don't want to shoot too many rockets in there.
They've done it 20%, but they haven't done it 100%.
If they wanted to do it 100%, it would probably happen very quickly.
But you have cities that are absolutely decimated.
And yeah, I would say that, you know, when they want a seat at the table, you could say the people have to, wouldn't the people of Ukraine have to say, like, you know, it's been a long time since we've had an election.
That's not a Russia thing.
That's something coming from me and coming from many other countries also.
You know, Ukraine is being just wiped out.
Look at what's happening to the cities.
There are cities.
There's not even a building standing.
It's a massive, you talk about Gaza.
I mean, it's literally, these cities look like Gaza.
Actually, many have, percentage-wise, more buildings knocked down than in Gaza.
So, you know, people are tired of it.
People want to see something happen.
And you know, the other thing that it's been bothering me for a long time because I solved the problem with NATO.
They paid hundreds of billions of dollars into the funds of NATO when I said you got to pay because the United States was paying for European countries and then they take advantage of us on trade.
But I've seen it.
Look, they have to pay.
They have to find out where is the money going to.
We have, I believe, President Zelensky said last week that he doesn't know where half of the money is that we gave him.
Well, we gave them, I believe, $350 billion.
But let's say it's something less than that, but it's a lot.
And we have to equalize with Europe because Europe has given a very much smaller percentage than that.
I think Europe has given $100 billion, and we've given, let's say, $300 plus.
And it's more important for them than it is for us.
We have an ocean in between.
And they don't.
But where is all the money that's been given?
Where is it going?
And nobody, I've never seen an accounting of it.
We give hundreds of billions of dollars.
I don't see any accounting.
So I want to see peace.
Look, you know why I want?
Because I don't want all these people killed anymore.
I'm looking at people that are being killed.
And they're Russian and Ukrainian people, but they're people.
It doesn't matter where they're from on the whole planet.
And I think I have the power to end this war.
And I think it's going very well.
But today I heard, oh, well, we weren't invited.
Well, you've been there for three years.
You should have ended it three years.
You should have never started it.
You could have made a deal.
I could have made a deal for Ukraine that would have given them almost all of the land, everything, almost all of the land, and no people would have been killed, and no city would have been demolished, and not one dome would have been knocked down.
But they chose not to do it that way.
And President Biden, in all fairness, he doesn't have a clue.
He was so bad for this.
It was so bad.
So pathetic.
It's so sad.
But with all of that being said, look, it is what it is.
When I left, there was no chance that this could have happened, but it happened because we had incompetent leadership at many different levels.
But when you see what's taking place in Ukraine with millions of people killed, including the soldiers, millions of people killed, a big percentage of their cities knocked down to the ground.
I don't know how anybody even lives there.
You know, when they say they took a poll and Zelensky's at 4%, who's living there?
You know, I mean, people are, it's hard to believe that people live there.
Their cities are being knocked down.
And this is something that would have never happened.
And by the way, for four years, it didn't happen.
It was never going to happen.
Go ahead.
Follow-up question.
How would you counter the perception, because Russia is pushing for this, obviously, they don't really hold true elections, that that would be a capitulation of some sort.
How would you guard against potentially Russia installing a puppet government?
And then finally, how would that new election have an impact on getting Zelensky to sign the rare earth minerals deal?
Look, you have leadership, and I like him personally.
He's fine.
But I don't care about personally.
I care about getting the job done.
You have leadership now that's allowed a war to go on that should have never even happened, even without the United States.
Look, we had a president who was grossly incompetent.
He had no idea what he was doing.
He said some very stupid things, like going in for portions and all of the things.
He made a lot of bad statements, but he's grossly incompetent.
And I think everyone knew that.
This is something that should have never happened, would have never happened.
And I used to discuss it with Putin.
President Putin and I would talk about Ukraine.
It was the apple of his eye, I will tell you that.
But there was never a chance of him going in.
And I told him, you better not go in.
Don't go in.
Don't go in.
And he understood that.
He understood it fully.
But I'm only interested.
I want to see if I can save maybe millions of lives.
This could even end up in a World War III.
I mean, to be honest with you, you've been hearing now Europe is saying, well, I think we're going to go in and we're going to go all of a sudden you're going to end up in World War III over something that should have never happened.
And, you know, it's a very sad situation.
Yeah, please.
In a court filing, the White House said that all right, that is President Trump taking a few questions from the press at Mar-Lago.
We're going to step away.
We have several questions.
All right, that is President Trump taking some questions after he signed a couple of executive orders.
One, forcing government agencies to basically line by line, offer line-by-line transparency on spending.
Also, following through on a campaign promise for families that codifies their ability to get IVF treatment.
That's something that was demagogued during the campaign repeatedly by the left.
That was never true.
And interview after interview, I said, and on the issue of IVF, he's like looking at me like, do I have to answer it again?
I'm like, well, kind of, because people are lying about it, yes.
Anyway, and he spent a lot of time talking about the Ukraine situation, reiterating his point that this would not have happened had he been president.
He did reference Joe Biden, who we all know was checked out.
And, you know, if you remember Biden's early comments when Putin and Russia were building up their army on the border, and he said, it was asked about, well, what would the consequences be?
Well, it depends if it's a minor incursion or whatever.
He did talk about his support if Europe wants to put troops there.
He has no intention of pulling American troops out of Europe.
That's not been part of the discussion.
He did touch on the Middle East and wanting to end wars in both Europe and the Middle East and saving lives and rebuilding these countries, which is another point he reiterated.
He touched on inflation and a lot of it being caused by high energy prices because of the policies of the Biden-Harris or Harris Biden administration, depending on how you look at it.
And, you know, and he was asked about how this would impact the rare earth mineral deal.
And he kind of showed a little bit of exasperation.
There are high-level discussions going on in Saudi Arabia with Russia today, but we've already had high-level discussions.
If you recall, when President Trump had his conversation with Vladimir Putin, he immediately then called President Zelensky.
And he talked at length about President Zelensky, likes him personally, but it's not about personality.
It's about whether or not they're going to come to a negotiated settlement, which I believe that they will.
I'm going to get back to Greg Jarrett here in a minute.
I just want to remind everybody, speaking of the Middle East, I mean, it's been since October 7, 2023, a year of just pain and suffering in Israel, and that pain and suffering is ongoing.
And there is such a dramatic, dire need for humanitarian aid.
I can't even explain it in words.
Thankfully, there are groups that we have partnered with, like the International Fellowship of Christians and Jews, and they've been on the ground from day one.
They continue to support our allies and friends in the Holy Land with the lingering horrors of war, people that are in desperate need of all these bare necessities and whatever gift you can provide to the critically needed communities that have been, you know, people that have literally been tens of thousands of people that can't go back to their homes in the North and in the South.
But these donations are going to deliver needed services to those in need.
That's evacuees and refugees and first responders and volunteers and soldiers that are wounded and even elderly Holocaust survivors and their families, people that have lost everything as they battle their seven-front war against radical Islamic terrorists.
And anyway, whatever you can do, please help the IFCJ in their mission.
The need is beyond comprehension.
Anyway, it's supportifcj.org.
That's their website, supportifcj.org.
They have a toll-free number.
It's 888-488-IFCJ 888-488-IFCJ.
We continue now.
My friend and colleague, Fox News, legal analyst, but also best-selling author Greg Jarrett is with us.
Let's get your initial take on the president's press conference.
Well, I was happy to see him reiterate with an executive order that there must be full transparency on the waste, fraud, and abuse discovered by Doge.
And I think, you know, Donald Trump, when he finishes his presidency, his legacy will be a myriad of things.
But one of the main things, I think, will be his commitment to reducing the size and scope of the federal government.
There are simply too many federal employees, 2.4 million.
That doesn't even count the Postal Service employees, active duty military.
It doesn't count them.
Nobody knows exactly.
This is ludicrous, I know.
Nobody knows how many federal agencies actually exist.
I checked the Federal Register.
It lists over 400, but that's not a complete list.
Our bureaucracy is the definition of bloated.
It should be in Webster's dictionary.
And it's about time that a president had the courage to put the government on an Ozempic diet.
There are inept bureaucrats doing too little.
By the way, I wish there was an Ozempic we could give the bureaucrats in Washington.
I know I have friends of mine that have lost a lot of weight with Ozempic, or what do you call WeGovi or something.
I don't know these drugs.
R.O.
We govia.
Yeah.
6% of the federal workers, according to a recent congressional report, which I read, report to work in person on a full-time basis.
6%.
It's insane.
It is insane.
And look, so it's excessive.
It's inefficient.
No business could operate that way.
And a huge amount of our federal spending and debt is caused by the workforce and the compensation, nearly $300 billion in pay for civilian employees, and that excludes the pensions.
So, you know, for example, last Friday, DHS cut 400 workers.
Do you know what that savings is?
$50 million.
So you've got to trim these swollen agencies.
That'll save billions.
And legally, even though Trump has been sued for doing it, he has immense authority to slash the workforce.
You know, those on probation.
So that's a specious argument that the left is making.
Yeah, yeah.
Most of them are at-will employees.
They can be fired for no reason at all.
There are a few civil service protections, but that doesn't apply to large-scale restructuring, which the president is doing.
So despite the predictable lawsuits, Trump is on solid legal footing, especially where he's offering these generous buyouts.
That's a great way to get rid of people.
They're voluntary, and about 75,000 want to take it.
Think of the amount of savings.
When you get rid of 75,000 people, you don't really need.
So I think this is going to be a huge part of his legacy.
Yeah.
You mentioned something that caught my attention, and I actually played it last night on TV, and we played it yesterday, or some of it yesterday, not all of it yesterday.
If you go back even to the Reagan years and the Grace Commission, which was the best and smartest and brightest business minds in the country, and I forget what is the W. Grace, I forget his full name.
Anyway, the best minds in business, and they were tasked with the job of finding ways to eliminate waste, fraud, and abuse and run government more efficiently and run it more like a business.
That's what their task was.
And they came up with a series of very powerful recommendations, and none of them would have adopted.
I mean, it was such a shame.
But this has now gone on for decades and decades and decades.
The Republican Party for decades.
We're going to eliminate waste, fraud, and abuse and limit the size and scope and influence of government in our lives.
And we'll have less government, greater freedom.
And even Democrats, Al Gore, Bill Clinton, Barack Obama, we just went back in time.
And listen to this, Greg, and tell me if this does not sound exactly like what Trump is doing versus F. Trump, F. E. Lon, people are going to die.
You know, all the hysteria, the singing.
We will win.
We will win.
Chug Schumer's.
You know, listen to the old Democratic Party that is not represented.
They have no connection to the modern-day Democratic Party.
Listen.
This report tells us how to cut waste, cut red tape, streamline the bureaucracy, change procurement rules, change the personnel rules, and create a government that works better and costs less.
By paying for these plans, first with cuts in government waste and efficiency, second, with cuts, not gimmicks, in government spending.
We'll prove that we can spend the money we have in an appropriate way and stop wasting so much of it.
But over the next several months, we will be looking at every other agency and program, asking the direct question, do we really need this agency?
Do we really need this program?
20 years into a period in our history where most American wage earners are working longer work weeks for stagnant wages.
It is outrageous for the government to have rules and regulations which take those people's money from them and spend it on things that cannot be justified.
One of the commitments that I made the American people was that we would do a better job here in Washington in rooting out wasteful spending.
We don't need to wait for Congress in order to do something about wasteful spending that's out there.
Cutting waste, making government more efficient is something that leaders in both parties have worked on.
We haven't seen as much action out of Congress as we'd like, and that's why we launched on our own initiative the campaign to cut waste.
They all said it.
Even, what do they call it?
The Obama brothers or the Obama guys, they have this podcast.
They say, why didn't we do that?
And at least they were being honest.
Well, first of all, the modern, extreme, radical Democratic Party, they want to spend these hundreds of billions of dollars abroad on their radicalized Green New Deal, which is another version for their socialism.
They want to spend it on woke ideology and DEI and transgenderism and LGBTQ plus.
And they have not been honest and transparent with the American people because they label it under these innocuous, obscure titles, and it took Elon Musk to do it.
And they all have said this now, going back, you know, even you can take it back to the 1960s if you really want to be blunt.
But, you know, to the credit of Bill Clinton, he did accomplish some of this, a little bit of this, because Newt Gingrich, two years into the Clinton presidency, became Speaker.
And they were forced to work together.
They balanced five consecutive budgets, Greg.
They all said it.
Trump is doing it, and the left is losing their mind.
What does that say about the modern extreme radicalized Democratic Party?
Because the only moderate I see out there, at least in word, is John Fetterman.
Well, I'm tempted to call them dishonest and corrupt because what they really do is they create slush funds and then they hand out the money with a lot of zeros to their favorite pet projects and groups, liberal groups, climate groups, NGOs that are pursuing.
Well, now, but we did balance the budget.
The last time we balanced it was when Newt Gingrich was Speaker.
He did it.
He made it happen.
And Clinton went along with it.
Our current national debt is $36 trillion.
And, you know, all presidents bear responsibility for that since it was accumulated.
Trump is different.
You know, he's a businessman.
He's not a career politician.
So when he says he's going to do something, by God, he does it.
Because that's just his nature.
He remembers what he promises and he attempts to fulfill that promise.
And, you know, these lawsuits will not stop him.
Presidents have broad authority, Article 2 of the Constitution, to govern and control agencies and departments in the executive branch.
That is to say, how much money is spent, hiring and firing, auditing for fraud, waste, and abuse.
Trump is exercising a core responsibility.
He is serving the public's interest, which is his solemn duty.
The legal question, which the courts will have to resolve, is can he delegate that power to Doge, to Elon Musk?
Democrats say, oh, no, you can't do that because Musk wasn't Senate confirmed under the Appointments Clause.
Utter nonsense.
There is a large body of law that says the president can absolutely, on his own, without Senate confirmation, confer administrative powers to others.
So you may see a few early setbacks by lower court judges who are hostile to Trump.
And he knew this would happen.
He knew that liberals would run to their favorable judges and cry that he's stopping our fraud.
Ultimately, the Supreme Court will weigh in, and that, I think, is where Trump will prevail.
He will be able to do exactly what he promised to do.
And by the way, one other area, I mean, this goes back to Thomas Jefferson, by the way, what you're describing.
Because Thomas Jefferson, you know, embraced a principle that is basically the equivalent of line item veto as president.
And even the New York Times on another legal issue said, yeah, birthright citizenship's not been decided.
And the last case for that was 1898.
And it never talked about illegal immigrants.
It talked about permanent legal residence.
So I think, and the New York Times acknowledged, he might have a point here.
I think he can win that case.
Read my column of about three or four weeks ago.
They stole it from you.
Should have known.
I mean, I said Trump has a very valid argument on birthright citizenship, and I went through the history of the law and proved the point.
And now, all of a sudden, the New York Times is like, yeah, he has a valid point.
Yeah, well, if they would read Greg Jarrett a little bit more and maybe read justthenews.com and our buddy John Solomon a little more, they might actually break some news for once.
I said in an interview yesterday, and I'm almost out of time, legacy media is dead, but they don't know it yet.
Am I right?
Oh, you're completely right.
100%, 1,000%.
And it's why people increasingly are turning away from them.
I mean, just look at their ratings.
There are other sources of news that are far more reliable.
And you just named a few.
I like to think I'm part of that.
You certainly are.
And I, you know, people, this is a monster.
You're a big part of it.
I mentioned you in that same interview.
By name.
Thank you very much.
I appreciate the attribution.
How we got the Russia hoax right.
We got Pfizer right.
And I actually wrote down a list and I read from it in the middle of an interview because I knew it would come up because it was about media.
And I'm like, let me tell you all the things you got wrong and I got right and my ensemble cast and Russia and FISA and all these other issues.
And you played an integral part in all of that.
Wow, thank you.
Well, anyway, we appreciate you sticking around longer than we anticipated.
We weren't sure how long that was going to go.
Greg Jarrett, Fox News legal analyst, best-selling author.
Thank you, my friend.
My thanks to you.
I'm looking forward to the interview tonight.
I hope you like it.
Part one, my interview with Donald Trump, President Trump, and Elon Musk together talking about a lot of these issues.
Yes, we ask the question about conflicts of interest.
Yes, we ask about what is this going to do to Social Security and Medicare.
Okay, we get that in.
And then we talk about other departments.
But, you know, I hope you enjoy.
I enjoy doing it.
I'll put it that way.
You want smart political talk without the meltdowns?
We got you.
I'm Carol Markowitz, and I'm Mary Catherine Hamm.
We've been around the block in media, and we're doing things differently.
Normally is about real conversations.
Thoughtful, try to be funny, grounded, and no panic.
We'll keep you informed and entertained without ruining your day.
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