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Feb. 20, 2025 - Sean Hannity Show
34:18
Musk Mania - February 19th, Hour 2
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Leonard Skinner's simple man, and that can only mean one thing on this radio program, and that means all things self-proclaimed simple man.
That means all things Bill O'Reilly, all things O'Reilly at BillO'Reilly.com.
Mr. O'Reilly, sir, how are you?
I have a very important question for you.
I'm fine.
Thank you for asking, and I'm ready to go with your question.
Okay.
So all of our careers, we've had to deal, and I'll use your terminology, words of the day, smear merchants.
Those people, I mean, Times v.
Sullivan makes it almost impossible to hold the media accountable when they lie about us, right?
That's pretty well known because you have to show malice, which is nearly impossible because that's what's inside somebody's mind when they tell lies about us, right?
Yep.
And that's happened to you a lot.
It's happened to me.
It's kind of the territory where public figures, it goes with the territory, right?
Goes with the territory, but you and I have a megaphone to fight back.
The people I really feel sorry for are those smeared who do not have that opportunity.
And their careers and their lives and their families can be ruined in a heartbeat.
And it happens way more often than people know.
And it's horrible to witness it, which is why I've had a practice ever since Richard Jewell.
I don't want to repeat myself, where I don't rush to judgment, which is why I got the Russia hoax right, Pfizer right, the impeachments right, Joe Biden and the family syndicate right, Duke La Crosse right, Ferguson, Missouri right, George Zimmerman right, Freddie Gray in Baltimore, UVA.
Those are a lot of big, big issues the media got wrong, Bill, and we got it right.
And I'll never get credit for it, and I'm not looking for credit because I do it for my audience.
I don't do it for anybody else.
So this is where I'm going with this question.
Is I look at Elon Musk as if you've ever watched the series on the history channel, The Men That Built America, I view him as a modern-day version of this.
And that's about Henry Ford and Carnegie Mellons, all these people built railroads and build infrastructure, and they also became wealthy doing it.
Here's a guy that creates Tesla into what it is today when he got involved.
Early becomes the CEO.
Here's a guy that is the first company to ever to send astronauts into space into orbit.
Here's a guy that created a real free speech platform by buying Twitter.
Here's a guy that helped the people in North Carolina that had no communications with the outside world and gave them for free Starlink and has put Starlink in over 100 countries so that they can communicate worldwide.
He did the same thing for the people of California.
Here's a guy that's about to go rescue astronauts that have been abandoned in space for nearly 300 days.
They were only supposed to be there eight.
And why there was no urgency to get this done sooner is unbelievable to me.
Then he has Neuralink.
And I know this is a long setup, but I'm going to give you a lot of time to respond.
And Nor Link is working with AI and implants in people's brains, not chips for people that have conspiracy theorist mindsets, but to help the blind see again.
And he's incredibly confident they will get there and help people with spinal cord injuries walk again.
Now he's volunteering for free to cut out waste, fraud, abuse in our government, something that even Al Gore, Bill Clinton, Ronald Reagan, every past president, Barack Obama, they all spoke about it, and now it's getting done.
And we see it.
It's going to end up being hundreds of billions of dollars abroad for this radical left agenda.
And they hate him.
And they compare him to a Nazi.
And people are going to die because of what Doge is doing.
I don't like it, Bill, because it's a lie.
And to me, I think he's helping to save money for the hardworking folks that make $66,000 a year on average and save money for our grandchildren that are already inheriting $37 trillion in debt.
Your floor.
Okay.
So I watched your interview last night with Trump and Musk.
And I think a couple of things have to be said about Elon Musk that he himself may not even be aware of.
So what you just laid out is true.
The guy's a genius, and he's used his innate abilities to improve the planet.
And if you add up what he's done is far more good than harm.
But when he crossed over into the public arena and attached himself to Donald Trump, he did not anticipate the hatred that that was going to engender.
Would you agree with that?
Musk didn't anticipate that.
He joked about it.
I mean, he was actually pretty funny about it.
When you fight a war, and that's what this is, this is a political war between the corporate media and Donald Trump.
It is a war.
When you fight a war, you have to know what your enemy is going to do.
So if you're going to invade Ukraine, as Putin did, then Putin's got to know what the pushback is going to be.
All right, if he wants to be successful.
Now, Putin has not been successful in Ukraine.
That's an interesting point.
Well, he's been successful in destroying a country and for no reason.
And I agree with Trump that this should have been avoided.
But it should have been avoided.
And if Trump were president, it would have been.
I firmly believe that.
I believe that 100%.
But Musk didn't anticipate what he was going to face.
See, if he had anticipated it, if he had called me before he made the alliance, I would have said, when you get in there and you are the mouthpiece, the spokesperson for Doge, you have only got to do facts-based stuff.
You cannot do speculation.
You cannot be coulda, woulda, shoulda.
You can't do any of that.
You got to lay it out.
This is what we found, and the president will deal with it from here, or Congress will deal with it from here.
You have to be precise to disarm your enemies.
And that's what didn't happen as much as it should have.
The intent of the Trump administration and by extension, Elon Musk is a positive for most people.
You saw Stephen Miller dress down CNN yesterday saying the same thing.
Why aren't you applauding this?
Why is CNN not waving a banner that this kind of stuff is good for America and for the people who live in it?
Instead, you try to tear down every single thing they're doing.
That was a brilliant question posed by Miller.
And the anchor, Keilar, couldn't answer it.
He kept going, calm down, calm down.
Hey, lady, answer the question: why are you not applauding rooting out corruption with tax dollars?
Why isn't that something that CNN is spotlighting every day?
There is no answer.
You know, I had no idea going into this interview how much time I would have.
I had no idea it would go longer.
I mean, we're going to hear more of it tonight.
And at one point, he said, and he said this before: we're going to make mistakes, but we'll fix them very quickly.
And which, by the way, is just kind of being human.
Everyone's going to make mistakes in life, right?
No.
And you make mistakes when you're at that level, Hannity.
You can't.
Well, you know what?
I mean, that's impossible.
Listen.
You're now setting a standard.
You know, we are human beings.
And I don't see the big mistake he made.
You're almost saying that the mistake is on the PR front or that the idea that they've acted, where have they acted that has been wrong?
You can't make any mistakes at that level.
So you have to build in an infrastructure and a discipline where you only present stuff you can prove because every mistake that you make will be taken out of context and used to try to convince the American people that you're a Nazi or a fascist or whatever they're trying to do.
Sure.
Is my standard impossible?
It is.
But that's the mindset you have to go in with.
So when Musk said...
But look at what we did confirm.
And I couldn't go over with them without ruining the interview if I read every single item that they discovered, which is now in the hundreds of billions of dollar range, now over $100 billion, and it's going to go much higher.
I think he's right in his estimate.
It may reach a trillion.
And I couldn't read it all to them because, number one, they'd want to get up and walk away.
Number two, I think it bores the audience.
But it is a way of communicating on television that I think is effective based on the direction of the interview.
And so, in other words, we've already confirmed most of what they found to be true, or else we wouldn't report it.
Okay, but it's you doing that.
He has to do it.
Well, that's been made public.
That's how that's how we got the information.
Then we do our due diligence, you know, being in the media business and me wanting to get things right.
Disagree here.
This is hearts and minds.
Okay.
It is a war.
You're fighting a war against the corporate media that no matter what the Trump administration does, no matter what Elon Musk does, the corporate media is going to see those two individuals as evil.
Let's get back to you and me.
No matter how good we are, no matter how honest we are, no matter how right we are about certain stories that you just laid out at the beginning of this interview, we will never get credit for that because in the eyes of the progressive left, Hannity and O'Reilly are evil.
Okay?
That's what Musk has to understand.
All right, quick break, right back more with all things simple man Bill O'Reilly, allthings O'Reilly, BillO'Reilly.com as we continue.
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We've seen the Pelosi party's chaos and corruption all day, every day.
This is the Sean Hannity Show.
Now, Bill O'Reilly is with us.
AllthingsO'Reilly at BillO'Reilly.com.
I just want to understand you better.
And you're right.
In the minds of people on the left, they hate us.
Number one, we've had success that they have not had.
I'm not a zero-sum game guy.
I don't believe my success is going to be predicated on somebody else's failure.
I don't champion people failing in our business.
I really don't.
Some people earn it, and that's on them.
But on the other hand of that, you know, it's fine that they're there.
I don't respond to most of it because I don't think my audience cares, number one.
And number two, I don't want to waste precious airtime.
Now, the stuff that has been confirmed was confirmed by Doge.
He's putting it all over X. He's talking about it.
I don't know what else you want the guy to do, and he's still being smeared, slandered, and besmirched regularly.
Right.
He's never going to be able to get it all out, but he made some mistakes.
Condom Sagaza, tourism in Tanzania and Egypt, all of those things.
Those have to be cut out.
Look, here's the overarch that nobody has mentioned.
And I hope you mentioned this on your program tonight.
You don't have to give me credit.
I wrote a message of the day on Tuesday that said...
You're basically telling 20 million people to steal your stuff and not give you credit.
I give attribution, Bill, but go ahead.
I'm not doing it for O'Reilly as the greatest guy.
I'm doing it because it's important the American people hear it.
The message said that FDR and JFK did exactly the same thing as Trump is doing with Musk.
Exactly.
Harry Hopkins was brought in in 1933.
You are correct, but not to this extent.
And Dwight Eisenhower, you're correct.
100% correct.
Hopkins lived in the White House for three years.
He ran the show, unelected, not confirmed by anybody.
Okay?
And JFK brought the Boston boys down.
All right.
And they ran the show.
They did all kinds of stuff in every department, every single department these guys were in.
But this was a different era.
This is when you're going to have a president that's having affairs and everybody knows about it or a president that can't walk and everybody knows about it and they don't report it.
You look, you bring up great points, thoughtful points.
I think it doesn't matter how much they get right.
The media is going to harp on the one thing or two things or ten things that they get wrong and ignore the overarching theme.
And with all the waste fraud and abuse in the past, it's never been this bad.
Next week, by the way, pretty soon, we're going to be able to talk about, I don't know if you saw this, the congresswoman in charge of the JFK file says he thinks there's two shooters.
And I want to talk to you about that if we get to that, okay?
Not seeing the documents.
Listen, well, I'll tell you what.
You want to stay a few more minutes?
Sure.
I'll keep you, Mr. I only do this for you because you're a very compelling guest.
I'm giving you a compliment.
And anyway, we'll finish this on the other side.
All right, we decided to hold over our friend Bill O'Reilly and all thingsO'Reilly at BillO'Reilly.com.
And okay, so preliminarily, and I'm not going to keep you too long.
We have this congresswoman that's involved in the releasing of the RFK, JFK, MLK files, among other things, the Epstein names, etc.
Those files are coming out.
I believe information on whether there's UFOs or not, that'll be coming out.
I find it, I want to see it.
I don't know why they've hidden all of this for all these decades.
I imagine there's a reason, and there is suspicion that has been expressed by one of the people on the committee that, in fact, they think there was two shooters.
We don't know yet.
And you did a whole book on killing Kennedy.
You don't think there is?
No.
I got all the primary documents from the FBI's investigation on the scene.
And there was no hard evidence, including ballistics, that showed there were two guns involved.
See, it's not about gunmen.
It's about guns.
What gun?
And Lee Harvey Oswald brought a Manalik Carcano rifle through the mail.
It was delivered to him.
And those are the bullets that were found in the limousine.
So that's what the FBI reported.
And I believe that is true.
If there were a second gunman, there would have been other bullets, all right, in the Connolly, the governor of Texas, who was wounded, and JFK was killed.
And they would have been either in the bodies or in the car.
They were not there.
So the congresswoman who referred to two gunmen has not seen the documents that are going to be released.
And the bureaucrats who classify stuff, they're not interested in the American people.
They're interested in saying, we don't want to show anybody anything.
And certainly Lyndon Johnson, who's a big villain, and if you read Confronting the Presidents, you'll see how bad a guy and a president this man was.
He didn't want anything out, nothing, because there was a CIA link to Oswald, as I write about.
A man named George DeMorn Shield was his minder in Dallas.
And I broke that story when I was working in Dallas, way, way back, my second job.
But anyway, I'm very curious to see what the government has.
I will know instantly if it is true or not.
But here's what the, listen, I don't know, and I don't, I don't, in any way, do I want to spread a conspiracy theory?
There has been a lot of controversy.
Let's put it over that way.
Put it over, you know, let's explain it that way, about the Warren Commission, the single bullet theory, the magic bullet theory, as some people describe it, and explaining how that one bullet struck Kennedy in the back of his head.
And if you look at the autopsy photos, you can see his brain was brain matter was laying out there and exiting out of his throat, and then, you know, then striking the Texas governor, John Connolly, who was in, I believe, in the front seat of the car, and you know, and where he struck him.
I don't know the answer, Bill.
I'm not going to sit here and act like I do.
I'm just interested in finding out why they hid this for so long.
Right.
They didn't hide any of that.
That's all public knowledge.
But you have to remember this conspiracy stuff surrounding the Kennedy assassination in particular made people a lot of money, millions of dollars.
There's a whole industry about it.
The compelling thing to me, there's one other, is that how James Earl Ray got to London.
There's a director, and this guy had no money, no assets.
He shoots King in Memphis.
He gets away, goes to Canada, then he goes to England.
How did that happen?
Now, there, there is something the government should explain because that's a fact.
So, anyway, I'm like you.
I want to know the truth.
I've spent a lot of time researching this stuff.
I can debunk stuff very quickly.
People should read Killing Kennedy.
It's still in play, as 20 million of my books are, Handy.
No.
Well, listen, I'm interested in finding out just out of curiosity, from a curiosity standpoint.
I think, you know, keeping this under wraps since 1963 when they put the Warren Commission together is obscene.
I talked to Robert F. Kennedy Jr.
at length.
He does not believe, and he went to see Sir Hans Sir Han.
He does not believe Sir Hans Sirhan was the killer of his own father.
And I'm only, Bill, I don't know.
Messenger.
I'm the messenger.
But he believes it passionately.
And he studied the video.
That's his belief system.
He's very convincing when he lays out his case.
I don't know, so I can't tell my audience something that I have no knowledge of.
People believe what they want to believe.
That's what he wants to believe.
When you have seven people backstage of that speech in Los Angeles, all saw it.
I'm sorry.
That's enough evidence.
It would be in a court of law.
There's no doubt about it.
All right.
All things simple, man, Bill O'Reilly.
Bill, thanks for staying over with us.
We appreciate it.
It will be interesting when these things are released.
I like the transparency aspect of it also.
Thanks for being with us.
800-941-Sean, if you want to be a part of the program, Lori's in Connecticut.
Hey, Lori, how are you?
Long time know here.
Yes, it has been a long time.
So I used to call a lot, and since you went off famous, I haven't been able to.
But the reason I was calling, Sean, is I was getting so annoyed at these people complaining about Musk not being elected.
My feeling is he actually was elected because Trump ran on the fact that Musk was going to head up this group.
Therefore, people voted for Trump, in essence, then voting for Musk.
So I don't understand why they're bitching, complaining about it.
No, you're right.
They're bitching about something that they look.
They just want to hate him for two reasons.
One is he has exposed a ton of waste fraud and abuse.
Two, he's associated with Donald Trump.
And he even said in the interview last night, and by the way, I didn't, I had no idea how long it would go.
And I kind of lost control of the interview pretty quickly anyway.
And I wanted to let them talk.
And I tried my best to let them talk and then still get in important questions that I thought were very, that people needed to have answers to.
And I got every question I wanted.
And in the end, what was fascinating is that he knows he talked about Trump derangement syndrome.
And we played this on this show yesterday where he actually said, yeah, it's like they got hit in the jugular with a combination shot of metha and amphetamine and adrenaline.
I forgot what else he said.
Rabies.
That's it.
Rabies.
I'm like, okay, that's a pretty damn good funny line.
And he's right because that's what it is.
You know, Jon Stewart last night, to his credit, and Jon Stewart doesn't like me.
And I'm not particularly fond of him, although he can be funny, but at least he's like a little bit like Bill Maher in the sense that I don't really love them, but they do have flashes of honesty.
And he's like, just, you know, you're a fascist, you're a fascist, you're a fascist.
And he says, if you cry fascism at every administration overreach, even the ones that are constitutionally okay, you're going to find yourself out of fascism bullets when the time really comes.
And the media, what they've done over the last 10 years is cry wolf to the point where they numbed everybody.
And, you know, and the country litigated this idea of democracy on the ballot and democracy, he said, got his ass kicked by something called the majority vote.
It was a good line on his part.
Well, and the thing, too, is when everything that they accuse our side of doing is what they actually do.
I remember my grandmother one time said to me, remember when you point your finger at someone, there's three fingers pointing back at you.
That's a good point.
That's a great.
Your mother was a brilliant lady.
And so are you.
I miss you, Lori.
Listen, make sure you check in with us often, okay?
Don't wait so long.
Okay, honey, I will do my best.
Okay, God bless you.
You're the best.
All right, quick break right to our phones when we come back.
800-941-Sean, our number if you want to be a part of the program.
Roundup and information overload.
For busy phones.
800-941-Sean, my interview with Elon Musk at the top of the hour.
And part two tonight, we went long anyway with the President Trump and Elon Musk, nine Eastern, Hannity on Fox.
George in Florida.
Hey, George, how are you?
Hey, Sean, how are you doing, my friend?
Hey, I listened to you last night with Trump and Elon, and I was saying you did a great job.
Congratulations.
I think he might have knocked one off your bucket list for that last night.
I was so impressed.
I can't even tell you.
It was fun to do, and I'm grateful for all of you for watching.
Thank you.
Yeah, and I talked to you a couple years ago about Elon acquiring Twitter and how impactful that was a long game.
And I remember you telling me that he's an interesting person that thinks on a lot of different levels.
And if he's really committed to the free speech ideas, you're going to have to wait and see.
And you just said you hope he's true to his word and what he's saying.
But you also said there was like a great opportunity here, and you're fascinated.
And then you see a modern-day innovator.
And then you said he's this off-the-chart smarts.
And you were going to ask him, just want to talk to him.
No, no politics.
And just talk about his innovation.
So I guess my question is, did Elon Musk exceed most of your expectations last night?
Far exceeded them.
I mean, and I'm going to be very blunt.
To talk to one of the probably the greatest modern innovator in our time and probably the smartest guy on the planet, not just the richest guy on the planet, and a risk taker on top of it, and somebody with a generous heart and spirit, and excited by life in an animated way is incredible.
I mean, I wish my brain worked like him.
I mean, just the idea that you think about going to Mars, that you're going to rescue astronauts, that you selflessly give back by donating your time and energy to your country and give back to the people of North Carolina and other people of name, rescuing these astronauts that have been lost in space.
I find it really inspiring.
I think that's how every person in their own way needs to live their life, and that is you want to give back.
I hate that he's hated, but I don't care that he's hated.
I mean, it's it's if you I mean, I care for him because I don't think he expects it.
Um, but having lived in this world as I have, I'm, I'm just hated, you know, I've walked into restaurants, especially in New York, and it's like daggers I get.
You can read a room, and it's like, oh, my very presence disgusts people.
One of the main reasons I left New York, I just understood that I wasn't liked.
And I just like, I have my friends, but you know, when you have to be careful where you go every second of every day, it's not fun.
A few years ago, when you thought about being a part of a parlor, 2% of the company, and you said, yeah, I'll own 2% of the company and get 99% of the blame when someone posts something crazy.
And I was like, wow, that's exactly what Elon's thinking about right now.
He gives everybody a platform, just like you, just like Joe Rogan.
You talk about these people.
That's where they come after.
The far left and stuff, they don't really care about you being confrontational.
But if you give a platform and there's an alternate, a full-fledged alternate media to them, they cannot survive, Sean, because then it's just going to be really interesting next couple years.
And if I can predict, and if I can predict that if this, I mean, this is not over.
Rush Lindbaugh told me that media is a battleground.
It's a battle every day.
When you get up in the morning, when Elon gets up in the morning, you get up in the morning.
It's a battle because the media no longer controls the narrative.
They no longer do that.
And my prediction in two years, that there's going to be a historical marker out at that CNN building in Atlanta.
And it's going to say on June 27th, 2024, this is the day that legacy media received its fatal blow.
It's when 80% of the people of this country who do not follow conservative radio or Fox News or other kinds of stuff saw that their media was lying to them.
And then that historical media.
It's the day legacy, this election day is the day that legacy media died.
It's funny.
I did a podcast with a media website that'll, I think, drop on Monday, and I go into great detail.
I said they're dead and they don't know it yet.
And this is why they're dead.
And I explained it in great specificity and detail.
A lot of what you're saying, and you're 100% right.
And you know what?
I have to earn trust every day.
And the way we do it is, you know, we try to be careful and accurate and get everything right.
And I get criticized for it.
Sometimes you're a little slow on some things.
People are like, well, didn't you see this on X?
I'm like, yeah, I haven't confirmed it yet.
I have to confirm things independently before I can, you know, run with it.
And it takes time a lot of times.
Ask my staff.
They get frustrated.
I get frustrated.
But, you know, in the end, we've, you know, our track record's pretty good.
We're not perfect, but we try to be perfect.
Anyway, my friend, I got a roll.
I do appreciate you being out there.
Thanks for staying with us so long.
And please check in again.
800-941-Shawn is a number.
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I'm Carol Markowitz, and I'm Mary Catherine Hamm.
We've been around the block in media, and we're doing things differently.
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