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Feb. 19, 2025 - Sean Hannity Show
31:11
Why the Department of Education? - February 18th, Hour 3
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All right, news roundup and information overload hour.
Here's our toll free telephone number.
It's 800 941 Sean.
If you want to be a part of the program, don't forget our interview with uh President Trump, Elon Musk, uh, is for the full hour tonight on Hannity.
Uh we actually went longer.
We're gonna run part two tomorrow night.
Now, like all things, uh President Trump, things are moving, you know, at warp speed.
And we've never seen anything like it, and the progress is tremendous.
It's not just Doge, and it's not just you know, moving forward with executive actions and orders.
It is, you know, the president has a very ambitious agenda to get the economy back on track, be help America become energy dominant, uh, getting rid of those people that didn't respect our laws, borders, and sovereignty.
But then he's doing a ton of work abroad, which is phenomenal.
Uh we see, you know, we saw King Abdullah last week open to the idea that President Trump will go into Gaza.
I mean, the media focused on all the wrong parts of it.
He's willing to demilitarize it, clean out all of the rubble, considering it's basically rubble, and all and and take away any weaponry and work with Arab allies and and get this place cleaned up and develop it into uh what could be one of the most beautiful places in the Middle East with waterfront property.
And I think that's what's most interested, you know, some of these these Middle Eastern stuff countries like Saudi Arabia and and Qatar and Jordan and and elsewhere, they don't want never-ending war in the Middle East.
And they've all wanted to diversify their portfolios.
They know America is gonna really become energy dominant under Trump.
So there has been a lot of money invested in diversification.
So that's moving forward.
And and hopefully Iran will be dealt with.
And that means the Iranians, you have to cut off their finances.
At some point, their refineries need to go, and the nuclear sites need to go.
We the world cannot risk a nuclear armed Iran.
All right, that's on the one hand.
On the over in Europe, and I don't care that they did they didn't like getting chastised by J.D. Vance.
I thought his speech was dead on accurate.
NATO countries now must begin the process of paying their fair share.
Uh it was interesting uh to watch the you know, even the the the head of NATO make the comment that uh yeah, we need to step up and start paying more money.
Uh the NATO Secretary General saying saying in the European countries have much more to do to increase defense spending, they do.
And they and Trump wants NATO members to increase defense spending to five percent of GDP, which is what they should do.
And uh they shouldn't have speech limitations the way they do in Europe, and they shouldn't have tariffs on America the way they do in Europe and the way they do in Canada and the way they do in India and the way they do in Brazil.
So we're making progress on all these fronts, again, at the speed of light.
Um, probably the most the biggest challenge is our number one geopolitical foe, and that of course would be China.
And China got outraged after the Trump State Department deleted a key phrase on Taiwan relations.
And anyway, Taiwan had pr previously been stated we do not support uh Taiwan independence.
That phrase was removed on Thursday and continues to be absent, which is really annoyed.
The communist Chinese.
Communist Chinese uh they they think they want to have a trade war with Donald Trump, but their economy is in a bit of a tailspit.
Number one, they need U.S. imports for their economy desperately.
And I imagine there's gonna be a deal down the road to be made there too.
And I would imagine most of these countries with Donald Trump's new policy of tariff reciprocity that that's gonna be a big deal.
Anyway, one of the people in the forefront of all our national security issues, and he's is a friend of the program, and he's uh one of one of the top conservative leaders in the U.S. Senate, uh Tom Cotton is with us from Arkansas.
He has a new book out today, Seven Things You Can't Say About China.
Uh we want to talk to him about that and and you know, peace in Europe and peace in the Middle East.
Uh Senator, how are you?
Congratulations.
Thank you for being with us.
We we have it on an Amazon.com, Hannity.com.
It's now in bookstores around the country.
Hey, thank you, Sean.
Thanks for having me on to talk about seven things you can't say about China.
And you're right.
China is the worst threat that our nation faces.
Maybe the worst we've ever faced, because it's the only nation that has an economy nearly as large as ours, it's so deeply integrated as ours because of the failures of leaders of both parties really going back to the 1990s to aid and event China's rise.
That's underwritten, it's rapid military buildup that's given it vast amounts of influence inside of America, in our businesses and Wall Street, on college campuses, in our governments.
And what I do in Seven Things You Can't Say about China is really ring the alarm bell.
Most Americans have a justly low opinion of communist China, but they often don't hear the full case about it and about China's crimes and its aggression against the United States, in part because of our our elites too often are compromised by China.
Well, we we know generally that they are that they they don't they have unfair trade practices.
We know generally about their intellectual property theft.
We know generally about their massive military buildup, especially in the last decade.
Uh we know about their hostile maneuverings during the Biden years is even against uh American fighter jets and international airspace and against our Navy and international waterways.
We know their territorial ambitions as it relates to Taiwan, uh, and we know that they have been the most resistant country from even talking or doing a deal with Donald Trump, although I think that's going to change.
Um, but what are the other things that people really need to know about our top geopolitical foe because they they're the most mysterious of all of them.
We know that the Chinese hacked the Trump administration, Donald Trump himself, uh J.D. Vance, the entire campaign, uh, which annoys me that we're hackable.
I don't think we should be hackable by the Chinese, and I hope we're doing the same thing back to them, but uh they certainly are are are not playing fair in the inner on the international stage.
Yeah, Sean, the the title of the book, Seven Things You Can't Say About China highlights the influence that's pervasive in America because we've helped China become so rich, because we're so interdependent with China.
In many cases, we're just dependent on China.
That has given them great influence in our society.
If you recall five years ago, I think it was five years ago this week, I first said, you know, I I think this coronavirus from Wuhan came from that lab, not from the food market, because they are researching coronaviruses there, and there's no bats in the area, and the lady running the lab is called the fat lady, and they have bad safety practices.
Now, I expected Chinese communist officials to jump down my throat on that, but you also had Americans at elite institutions who are willing to man the ramparts on behalf of China, like the Washington Post, like the CNN, uh like the New York Times, to say that oh I was peddling fringe debunked conspiracy theories.
When really all I was doing was using the basic common sense that most Americans have and assessing the facts in front of our eyes.
Or consider Hollywood, Sean.
I mean, when was the last time you saw a movie with the Chinese villain?
You have it, because Hollywood movie studios are dependent on access to the very large, lucrative Chinese movie market.
And consider our news networks too, Sean.
Fox News is the only network that is not owned by or affiliated with one of those movie studios.
Is it a surprise that Fox is the network that gives us the most unbiased, unvarnished, fair and uh clear-eyed treatment of communist China?
No, I don't think it is.
Everywhere you turn in American society, you can see this kind of Chinese communist influence in a way you did not see with Soviet Russia.
Sure, they had influence operations and they had spies, but because they didn't have the same degree of economic linkage, You didn't see so many people who were always rushing to man the ramparts on behalf of Russia the way they do on behalf of China today.
You know, and and what is the answer?
I mean, I imagine like Ukraine and Russia.
I mean, there's uh there was some criticism of of Secretary of State Rubio for meeting with Russians to kickstart peace talks, but there have been private conversations going on the entire time Donald Trump got into office and he's only in week five uh with President Zelensky when he talked to Putin, then he talked to Zelensky.
And I guess the plan is is that at some point, once uh I guess a potential deal is in in the works that they're all gonna meet together.
Um, how does it play out for China before I go back to Europe?
Well, I I think part of the answer, Sean, is recognizing that we had a problem and too few people did until President Trump was elected first and in 2017.
You know, he had been sounding the alarm about China for some time, and there's no question he's the toughest president on communist China since the end of the Cold War.
And and maybe since now when the Chinese communists took power in nineteen forty-nine, I mean the main competitor would be Eisenhower, and Eisenhower threatened to nuke them twice to give you a sense of how tough the competition would be.
But we need to sound the alarm.
We need to highlight what China is doing inside our country, what they're doing to our kids, to our businesses, to our schools, to our universities, in our government.
We need to the greatest extent we can delink our economy from China's economy.
Now we're not gonna be able to do that entirely at this late hour, but on critical things, like the rare earth minerals that are central to a modern electronic digital economy, or basic pharmaceuticals like antibiotics and the cetaminophane and ibuprofen.
We can no longer depend on China for such things because they have said that they will hold it over our head in a moment of crisis, and they've done it to other nations.
Well, I mean, that that to me is critical, and they have and they've gotten away with it from other individuals.
I mean, uh and they've treated other countries.
I mean, I can't imagine China now.
They don't like what Donald Trump has done uh in in terms of removing this provision uh uh about Taiwan on on their website.
However, uh knowing Donald Trump as well as I do, everything with him is a negotiation.
He's just begun negotiations with China, hasn't he?
Yeah, and it's just like what he did at the end of his first administration when he declared officially that China's committing a genocide against religious and ethnic minorities in Northwest China, and Chinese communists went berserk over that.
But that's exactly what Ronald Reagan did in demanding that the Soviet Union stop oppressing its own people.
It's just another pressure point on the government in Beijing.
So when you sit down, the list of issues that you want to raise is much longer than the list of issues they want to raise.com, Amazon.com.
Yeah, China's an evil empire preparing for war, waging an economic world war, infiltrating uh our society and infiltrating our government and coming for our kids, and they could win.
That's scary.
More with Tom Cotton on the other side.
Hey there.
I'm Mary Catherine Hammond.
And I'm Carol Markowitz.
We've been in political media for a long time.
Long enough to know that it's gotten, well, a little insane.
That's why we started normally a podcast for people who are over the hysteria and just want clarity.
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Catch new episodes of Normally every Tuesday and Thursday on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to the continue now with Senator Tom Cotton.
By the way, he has a new book out, Seven Things You Cannot Say About China.
So let me ask you this.
Let's move on.
We have we have China, I think our number one top geopolitical foe.
And I I I've got to believe that Donald Trump has begun negotiating with China.
I do know from sources he's already spoken to President Xi.
so there is a dialogue that has begun um then we've got you know uh obvious if the president has said publicly that both Zelensky and Putin want war in Europe to stop and when I had President Zelensky on TV a couple of weeks ago I said to him you know that the president wants a negotiated settlement that will mean you won't be a member of NATO and you'll probably give up some land and there's there's gonna be some involvement in the U.S. at some point as well.
I think that's where we end up do you agree?
Yeah I I don't think there's a lot of mystery about what might and might not happen in these negotiations uh between Ukraine and Russia.
I think we're left with a terrible mess by Joe Biden.
You know he he tempted Putin to invade in the first place.
He pussyfooted around for three years and it's clear now in retrospect his strategy all along was to lose just after the election.
So that's what we all inherited and that's we have to deal with and I think right now the best solution and that sounds to me like this is what President Trump, President Zelensky are aiming at is to have a durable and lasting truce that in the fighting and in the killing especially for Ukraine which is much smaller than Russia.
Um yeah I'm sorry I thought you finished do you think that in the Middle East that the president's idea of cleaning out Gaza, demilitarizing it and rebuilding it do you think neighboring countries will buy into that well I I hope they will I mean because obviously Israel is responsible for rebuilding Gaza Israel was invaded brutally in an unprovoked atrocious fashion and I don't think we should spend American taxpayer dollars on it either.
It's the countries in the region who have an interest in having a stable peaceful Gaza.
So I I hope that they'll buy into some version of that vision that President Trump can support the Prime Minister Netanyahu can support and our Arab partners can support as well.
Yeah I agree.
Well uh Senator we think the world do you congratulations uh Senator Tom Cotton Arkansas he does have a new book out it's in bookstores around the country Amazon.com Hannity.com seven things you can't say about China uh China will be the most difficult for our nation that we have to deal with for a lot of different reasons and and certainly they have the most in terms of military might that should concern every American which is why we need the next generation of weaponry and
not only catch up on hypersonic technology but in other areas where we might be deficient and surpass any technology that they have and I I like the president's idea for an iron dome that will cover the country.
Senator Cotton, thank you, sir.
Appreciate it.
Thank you Sean So I hope people I I will tell you I've done a lot of interviews in my like our life I often get asked what was your favorite interview.
This was this is at the top one of my favorite interviews of all time and with President Trump and Elon Musk and I hope I hope you find it valuable and and worthwhile and here's a little clip of what you will see tonight and and I'll tell you it was really just a conversation and yes I asked the conflict of interest questions and yes I asked about Social Security and Medicare and the Department of Education all the questions people want.
But we're running a full hour tonight we'll have part two tomorrow it's not for a full hour but um you know what I've learned about Elon Musk fascinates me.
You know from the time that he he founded PayPal and Ziploc whatever that was I don't even remember what that one was SpaceX, he was the chief engineer and he funded it and the first private company to ever get into orbit and he's launched all these satellites and Starlink now covers a hundred countries.
You know and then I look at his his other ventures into Tesla for example you know he even jokes in the in interview liberals used to like him and they don't anymore.
I mean they have they have called him every name in the book because he's exposed the most fraudulent wasteful disgusting misuse of public funds the the greatest amount of corruption that we've ever seen in our lifetime.
I mean it makes what citizens against government waste which was a great organization back in the day what they used to find pale in comparison and it's just it's it's now on steroids and human growth hormone, you know, because he's now they're now discovering what will end up being hundreds and hundreds of billions of wasted hard earned tax dollars and you wonder why we have thirty seven trillion in debt and under this current budget,
which is the Biden Harris budget until fiscal the new fiscal year starts October one, unless they can do reconciliation, which would help, that you know, we're gonna live under.
And it just is so outrageous.
And when you factor in, we're stealing from our kids and grandkids and stealing from you and stealing from the average hard working American, the real the people that make this country great, on average make sixty-six thousand dollars a year.
Okay, by the time you pay your rent, your mortgage, your car payment, your insurance, your grocery bill, especially with Biden Harris inflation, uh high gas prices.
People are tapped out.
I've lived tapped out.
It sucks.
It's not fun.
And not just for one summer.
I do for the early years of my adult life, I was tapped out, even though I was working.
And I was trying to pay my way through c college, and it cost a lot of money.
I went to expensive schools, I paid every penny myself.
I wouldn't let my parents help me.
I did take out one student loan.
I paid back $58 and five cents every year, every month for 10 years.
And I paid it off.
And but I was tapped out.
I mean, living paycheck to paycheck, and it's not fun.
Now Americans not only live in paycheck to paycheck, 56% of Americans cannot afford a $1,000 expense that it's unexpected.
I mean, I've been there.
It sucks.
It's it's awful.
And there's a lot of anxiety, fear, tension that builds up in family households.
You know, what is the number one, you know, what are the number of top issues couples fight about?
Number one's money.
They find it usually there's a spender and there's a saver.
Not good.
You need to kind of be on the same page unless you have a lot of money that doesn't matter.
And anyway, so we're, you know, for for exposing this and working for free on top of everything else, and also thinking about and and building a company called Neuralink, which is working on ways to use artificial intelligence in the human brain, not to put chips in people's heads, good for you conspiracy people.
That's not what it's designed for or being designed for, but to help the blind see again.
And I was shocked at how optimistic Elon is of that possibility.
And the idea that people with spinal cord injuries can get up and walk again one day with this tech.
I love it.
And yet he and and I I won't give you away the answer, but Donald Trump, I went through this whole list of what Elon does, and Donald Trump's observation about what he is doing now versus all of these incredible things, is was was a fascinating answer.
I mean, I I've done a lot of interviews, I've been blessed to do a lot of interviews.
You give me this microphone every day, you give me that camera every night.
Thank you.
But um, I tried to get to the bottom of it, especially in light of the never-ending assault against this man who's donating his time and genius to his country, the guy that helped out the people after Hurricane Helene that had were cut off from communicating with the rest of the world, the guy that helped out the people in California after the wildfires, the guy that's gonna rescue astronauts in space, that guy.
It's it's infuriating to me.
Anyway, here's a small clip.
It'll air tonight, nine Eastern on Hannity on Fox of Elon Musk with Donald Trump.
I mean, I used to be adored by the left, you know.
Not anymore.
I mean, less uh I I I really didn't.
Well, I mean, it's this whole sort of like you know, tr I it was the quote like Trump derangement syndrome.
Um I don't you know, you don't realize how real this is until like it's you can't reason with people.
So like I was at a friend's uh birthday party and alley, just a birthday dinner, and everybody was like a nice quiet dinner, and everything was everyone was behaving normally.
And I happened to mention this is before the election, like a month or two before, after they mentioned the president's name.
And it was like they got shot with a dart in the in the jugula that contained like a methamphetamine and rabies, okay.
Guys, like you can't have like a normal conversation.
And it's like it's it's it's like that they become completely irrational.
I mean, I don't I can't send say it any better.
Linda, I'm curious what you think of that.
I mean, I think he's a very interesting guy, and I think anybody, in my opinion, anybody who is willing to put their entire life on hold, which he's kind of not.
I mean, he's still working his ass off.
But they're doing everything they can at their own expense to help put you know uh honest policies in and be transparent and sit down and just kind of go against the grain.
Like I feel like a lot of these people in Hollywood and big tech and and sort of you know, Silicon Valley, which he's sort of was in that world for a long time.
Donald Trump, too.
And when you step away and you start to peel back, you know what's actually happening and tell the truth.
I mean, wow, how how amazing and how brave of both of them to kind of step out and say, yeah, it might be fun for a little while to be in the cool kids' club, but I'm gonna do the honest thing.
And that's what they're doing.
I'm impressed.
I'm excited to see what they say to you.
I want to talk about derangement syndrome.
Uh both Wolfie Goldberg and some guy, Tom Costello.
Um, where was this?
It had to be on MSDNC.
I'm just guessing.
Am I right about that?
Had to be.
It was actually NBC.
So it's a Canadian dude.
Oh, same thing.
Okay.
So they're blaming Trump.
Now, there was an FAA report that came out that was very clear uh as it relates to the lack of safety and security.
It was in September of 2020 uh three that they're over two thousand air traffic controllers short, and their staffing standards were DEI related.
I mean, the DEI policies, you know, included hiring people with psychological deficiencies and mental health issues, and and and people that suffered from epilepsy.
And by the way, I have compassion for all these people.
But you can't be an air traffic controller.
You just can't.
And now, so this plane goes down in Toronto, Canada.
Can't did I say that right, Linda?
Toronto, Canada.
By the way, I I gotta give a shout out to the fans in Boston for booing uh the Canadian national anthem after they did that to the U.S. I loved it.
Um they're blaming Trump.
Well, this is because he's cutting down the federal workforce, ignoring what we knew was a problem caused by Joe Biden and Kamala Harris.
I mean, it this is exactly what what did Elon call it?
You know, a combination of Trump derangement syndrome, you know, rabies meets methamphetamine.
And rabies.
Meth and rabies.
That's a great combination just because he supports Donald Trump.
Now, I've experienced this myself.
Add that to the many reasons I'm not in New York anymore.
And you know of incidents, many of which I have not talked about publicly.
It's ridiculous.
All right, let's get to our busy phones.
Um let's say hi to let's see, Scott in Utah.
What's up, Scott?
How are you?
Great, Charlotte.
Thanks for taking my call.
Thank you for calling.
Glad you checked in.
Yes, sir.
Um I'd like to um touch on the Elon Musk situation, but everybody's been a kid on the left about he's getting all this personal information.
And you give it out on a regular basis.
Um I just did an auto insurance quote.
They got my social security number, my address, my phone, my email.
So it's standard operating procedure.
I mean, you gotta be careful in this day and age of identity theft, which is where lifelog comes in.
But you know, I I mean, I give it out on all the time, my social security number.
I'm sure people could find it.
I mean, I do there's more information about me.
Thank God a lot of it's fake and they get a lot of things wrong.
And I never correct when the media gets something wrong about me.
I just let it go.
Because I can't sue them, but I just let it, but you know what?
Your personal information's everywhere.
So there's gonna be um a few letters added to Doge, you know, investigations.
I think there's gonna be some charges put up, you know.
And I think people are gonna, you know, pay the pay the pipe and then go to jail.
Well said.
I'm telling you right now.
And you know what?
What they're left is really angry about is they they abused our money uh uh uh uh with corruption at the highest level, and they've been exposed.
Um that that was what I walked away with with the interview with President Trump and Elon Musk.
Uh anyway, Scott, appreciate you, man.
God bless you.
Uh Larry, Michigan next, Sean Hannity Show.
What's up, Larry?
How are you?
It says you're a retired economics teacher.
Yes, and I I feel like in this time where we're saving all these millions and billions of dollars.
The thing I found when I taught high school kids economics, and then when I deal with the public as well, the point is these numbers are so large, they aren't humanized.
There's no way to relate to them.
So when I told my student, you know, a billion dollars is like a person who earns $50,000, their salary being being taken for you know, 10,000 years.
I said, that's how much money that is.
And or if you want to buy a new truck, it's about $50,000.
Well, that's when they save a billion dollars, that's like saving 20,000 new trucks.
It helps people grasp the magnitude of what's going on right now so that we can win the war in the public square, because um, we're gonna need to do that.
And that's I just want to humanize these numbers and relate it to something that the average American can understand $50,000.
The average, you know, so that's that's all I was trying to say.
No, I'm glad I'm glad you said it because you know what, millions, billions, trillions, it just goes over people's heads.
Right.
And I and maybe, you know, understand we're now gonna be close to 40 trillion in debt based on this year's budget put together by Biden and Harris.
And and the idea that we're spending all of this money on radical environmentalism in other nations and DEI and other nations, and wokeism and transgenderism and LGBTQ plus initiatives in other countries,
and we're not paying down that debt, securing our borders, deporting illegals, shoring up safety and security in our towns and our cities, fixing our educational system, you know, laying the foundation for America to be the wealthiest energy company on earth and building the next generation of weaponry is unconscionable.
It is a disgusting abuse of our money, and we're getting to the bottom of it, and they just hate the people that are exposing it.
And I don't care.
Anyway, I hope you'll like Elon Musk tonight.
I think you will.
I have uh I walked away like I don't, I just I I really like the guy.
I really thought, you know, everything.
I wish I had a brain like his.
I don't.
I'm not that smart, but he's smart.
Um brilliant, actually.
Beyond beyond any understanding.
That's gonna wrap things uh up for today.
Uh want to remind you, I mean, it was one of the more memorable interviews I think I've ever done.
President Trump and Elon Musk, the people that are being viciously attacked by the radical left in this country by Democrats, the state-run legacy media mob.
And, you know, it's inexplicable to me, considering they're saving all of us a fortune and the discovering waste, fraud, abuse, and corruption at 11 nobody ever imagined, and stealing from the people that make this country great, who on average only make $66,000 a year, and we're stealing from our kids and grandkids.
Anyway, that's nine Eastern on Fox.
Uh, President Trump Elon Musk.
We'll see you tonight, back here tomorrow.
Thank you for making the show possible.
You want smart political talk without the meltdowns?
We got you.
Now I'm Carol Markovich.
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.
Join us every Tuesday and Thursday normally on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcast.
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