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Feb. 25, 2025 - Sean Hannity Show
31:42
Future of the FBI - February 24th, Hour 2
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All right, hour to Sean Hannity Show.
Thank you, Scott Shannon.
800-941, Sean.
If you want to be a part of this extravaganza, it is fascinating to watch the world and the country respond to Donald Trump.
I mean, it's now becoming just an amazing time to be an American, an amazing time in history.
I got to tell you right now.
And we get to all be a part of it.
And we get to all watch this.
And that's what I love.
And it's all historic.
And maybe everybody doesn't agree with everything that the president is doing, but I can tell you right now, it is just a remarkable time to be an American.
It really is.
And this is the one chance I have that I think we have to restore constitutional order.
You know, it's an amazing time to watch what's happening in the media.
You know, I saw Joy Reid is out and Alex Wagner's out.
And they're kind of reshuffling the deck of the Titanic at MSDNC.
Lester Holt was a bit of a surprise.
And I don't put Lester in the same category as some of these other people.
The times he's interviewed me on the Today show.
He's only been gracious and kind.
The times I've met him, he's been gracious and kind.
Maybe in his case, he's really just moving on to the Dateline franchise, which is a great show and has done very well.
And he's taken a bigger role.
And that's more where his passion is, magazines, you know, versus the grind of a daily news show.
But when you put it all together, Nora O'Donnell's gone.
Jim Fake News Acosta is gone.
And Chucky Todd is gone.
And Andrea Mitchell's gone.
And Joy Reed is gone.
And Alex Wagner is gone.
Do you think this is all by accident?
Or do you think that this media landscape has changed?
When I said on this program after election day, I think I said it the next day, this is the death of the legacy state-run media mob.
And they threw every lie, every conspiracy theory.
You know, they peddled every controversy of Donald Trump, but they never bothered to go to the truth about Donald Trump.
They're now lying about Doge.
They're trying to get people worked up.
They're not being effective at it.
The Democrats are doing the same thing.
Ultimately, where they settle in is they hate Donald Trump every second minute hour of every 24-hour day.
And how's that working out for these networks?
They're making changes thinking that the change is the problem.
That's not where the problem lies.
They've lost trust with people and they've lost trust and they've earned that lost trust.
And more and more people are sophisticated and they have decision-making capability and they are walking with their feet.
And that's why their audiences are leaving them.
You know, I put on James Carville the other night on TV and I actually expected more from him.
It was kind of a disappointing segment to me.
And as much as when he worked for Bill Clinton, and we played this a lot last week, I won't replay it here.
Bill Clinton, Al Gore, They talked a lot about eliminating waste, fraud, abuse, and corruption.
James Carville just dismissed it.
Well, USAID, you're running a scroll.
Blah, blah, blah, blah.
You know, that's just a mere.
We're talking about tens of billions of dollars.
This is hard-earned taxpayer money.
This is your children and grandchildren's future.
And now this has become the new modern left in America, whether it's the members of Congress or members of the news media or the punditry class.
It's all the same thing.
And yet he just kind of abandoned the era of big government.
It's the economy stupid.
Whatever happened to that?
We don't have a choice but to cut.
Because if we don't do it now, it is so out of control now.
If we don't do it at this point in history, it's never going to get done.
And that means that is bad for the world.
That's what Elon Musk was communicating to me in that interview why people need to be involved and why he is putting aside all of these incredible things that he does in his life to do this.
Or Carville says, he's the worst, got the worst poll numbers any president in history.
That, too, is just provably false.
We have a new Harris-Harvard poll out today.
And, you know, for example, on the issue of what Doge is doing, 70% believe government spending is ripe with waste and fraud.
And 69% support cutting spending by over a trillion dollars.
83% voted, you know, voters expressed a preference for cutting government spending instead of raising taxes.
77% supported a thorough investigation of government spending.
These are not insignificant issues here.
You know, what else did we find in this poll?
And again, James Carville said just the opposite.
And he's like, worst poll numbers any president in history.
I'm like, and then I'm in a little bit of a dilemma myself.
And here's the dilemma: the dilemma is: okay, you know, you have on many occasions, you have said to me in terms of people giving me feedback on the show that you don't like it if I interrupt people.
So I'm letting him say it, and then I'd respectfully counter it, and then I'd respectfully counter it, and then I'd respectfully counter it.
And, you know, it doesn't matter what the facts are.
I can give you a whole list of polls, and we'll show you on TV tonight.
You know, RMG had President Trump at a 57% approval rating since the inauguration.
Rasmussen, 56%.
Insider Advantage, 56%.
And let's see.
Then when Insider Advantage and Trafalgar teamed up, they did another one, 54%.
Quantum Insights was 53%.
The CBS poll that he said falsely was below zero.
And then he said, fact-check me.
So I'm fact-checking him.
And we'll do it in more detail tonight because it happened on TV.
It was 53%.
But on every issue, the American people approve of him.
And in this Harvard-Harris poll, 52%.
His poll numbers are phenomenal.
And then Carville's saying, worst deficit any president in history.
No, if you even add up the one big year, which was 2020, the biggest COVID year, okay, Donald Trump's deficits were 2017, 655, 779, 2018, 983.
And then COVID year 3.13.
Understandable.
Joe Biden's first year, 2.77, very similar.
But still, Biden's cumulative deficit was $2.5 trillion higher than Donald Trump's cumulative deficit.
I mean, that's a significant amount of taxpayer dollars.
And if you include this economic year, it's even higher because it's projected to be $2.5 trillion.
And this is the Biden-Harris budget and economy.
And Republicans are going to hopefully get that fixed through reconciliation, hopefully sooner rather than later.
Here's the other most telling part of this poll, the Harris Harvard poll, is more independents and more women and more Hispanic Americans and more Asian Americans and more suburbanites approve than disapprove Donald Trump.
He's changing the electorate dramatically.
And we saw this break in the election as well.
And if you're asking me why I think, you know, a majority of people support Doge and their plans to cut the federal spending by a trillion dollars and every other highlight, I can keep going.
And this, but the media doesn't get it.
They just, they continue to just go back and revert to form.
And good luck with that.
And I don't wish anybody to get fired.
I don't wish ill to anybody in this business.
It's a hard business.
I'm telling you from personal experience.
This is what I do.
But I have survived longer than anyone else, the longest-running primetime show in the history of cable news.
And I think part of the reason is I built trust with you, this audience.
And I built trust by meticulously getting issues like the Russia hoax right while they peddle conspiracy theories in every other place you get news, three broadcast channels, two cable channels, New York Times, Washington Post.
They didn't get it right.
We did.
We got Pfizer right.
They didn't.
We got the valuation of Mar-a-Lago right.
They didn't.
We pointed out the dual system of justice.
They didn't.
When it comes to rating Mar-a-Lago, but not going after Hillary Clinton and Joe Biden.
And they all had top secret classified information everywhere.
And it just gets, you know, in one sense, I guess I should be grateful because it leaves an opening for us to get it right when they get it wrong.
I've told the story many times.
Richard Jewell taught me a lot.
I didn't rush to judgment because the Atlanta Journal Constitution stated that he fit the profile of the lone bomber because he lived with his mother.
What a stupid analysis to begin with.
And I knew it instinctively at the time.
I said, that doesn't mean anything.
This is meaningless to me.
But that was their argument.
And the media went crazy with it.
And then he ended up getting rich, but it ruined his life.
It's pretty unbelievable.
Or what they did to this kid, Nicholas Sandman.
They never seem to learn their lesson.
It's one of the reasons why we got Duke LaCrosse, UVA, Ferguson, Missouri, George Zimmerman, Trayvon Martin.
What else?
Did I say Duke LaCrosse?
All of them.
We got them right.
They got them wrong.
They rushed to judgment.
We don't.
Now you can see, you know, watching President Macron and Donald Trump and look what's happening around the world.
Italy has taken a pretty hard turn to the right.
President Macron's very accommodating to President Trump and hopeful that, yeah, he wants an end to this war in Europe, too.
The newly elected German chancellor vows real independence from an indifferent U.S. we're not an indifferent U.S. what Donald Trump is saying is he wants free and fair trade and reciprocal tariffs will be put in place if the European Union and India and Canada keep putting tariffs on us.
And what is Germany going to do?
Continue to make deals like they made with Vladimir Putin, and that's going to be their new trusted ally for the source of the lifeblood of their economy, energy, in light of his track record.
Good luck following that policy.
In the end, they'll all come around, is my prediction.
In the end, they don't understand to this day, which is kind of amazing to me, how Donald Trump operates.
And it's a never-ending negotiation.
By the way, our friend Dan Bongino is the next deputy director of the FBI to serve with Director Kash Patel.
That'll be a powerful combination.
And Cash also tapped to run the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms, which is, I think, another good idea as well.
And following these key wins, I mean, the president now is poised for cabinet completion and, frankly, in record time because they never closed down the Senate.
Got to give credit where it's due, and that would be the new Senate Majority Leader, John Thune.
I want to get to the internals of their economic bill before I can comment intelligently on it.
I only see headlines.
It was so great on Friday.
The Trump administration, when President Trump had the governor of Maine there who's fighting for men's rights to play in women's sports, he said, well, you're not going to get any money from the federal government.
And by the way, the U.S. Department of Education announced they will be investigating their adherence to federal Title IX laws on, and they announced it on Friday.
This is Governor Janet Mills saying, I'll see you in court.
Okay, go good luck with that policy.
Because I don't think that's going to work.
And that's not where the American people are.
You know, all this talk, Donald Trump fired a top U.S. general and Navy chief.
Well, there was an article out.
Where was that article I saw today about Barack Obama?
I think he fired 126 generals and top military personnel because they didn't.
Well, John Law put it out.
And I think it was in Investors Business Daily, which is a massive amount of money.
Oh, here it is.
I found 197.
John Law put it out.
What the president calls my military is being cleansed of any, this is Obama, of any officers suspected of disloyalty or disagreement with the administration on matters of policy or force structure, leaving the compliant and fearful.
Anyway, we recognize President Obama's commander-in-chief and that throughout history, presidents from Lincoln to Truman have seen fit to remove military commanders they view as inadequate or insubordinate.
All right.
So 197 officers in five years during Obama's presidency, they were moved.
You could argue a purge took place.
Only the media supported him.
Hey there, I'm Mary Catherine Hamm.
And I'm Carol Markowitz.
We've been in political media for a long time.
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See, Jamie Dimon said, yeah.
I mean, he's stating the obvious.
U.S. government is inefficient.
He says Elon Musk's Doge efforts need to be done.
Now, anybody in the financial world that doesn't see the necessity of this doesn't understand the U.S. economy.
I'll give you one quick example.
The liberal media is working overtime.
Democrats are working overtime, pretending that the tens of thousands of government workers laid off.
Many of them chose to take the payout and leave because the narrative all weekend was the same.
GOP lawmakers confronted by constituents angry because of Trump must cuts.
Well, this poll today says 70% of them love it.
70-plus percent when you get into those specifics.
Harvard Harris, not exactly right wing.
New York Times was saying it's CBS, USA Today, MSDNC, Washington Post, CNN, Huffington Post, Newsweek, all saying the same thing.
We're pissed.
Angry constituents confront Doge backing GOP rep at a chaotic town hall.
It's all nonsense.
Democratic media and Democrats doing this.
Here's the problem: it's not just government that's been forced to lay off people, but there were 350,000 private sector job openings in the Commonwealth of Virginia alone.
Plenty of jobs available out there for people if they're interested.
Washington Post, they're laying off a ton of people too.
And you know what?
We can't rob from our kids and grandkids anymore.
Jamie Dimon says yes.
Government's inefficient, stating the obvious.
And Doge is needed to do what they're doing.
Anybody with a brain has to understand this.
And it goes way beyond U.S. AID.
You know, we just found, for example, the Environmental Protection Agency teamed up with Doge and put the Kabasha more than $67 million in grant money once earmarked to push Joe Biden's environmental justice mandate.
I mean, this is insane.
And we know that the EPA and Elon Musk, you know, flagged 21 grants totaling $77.1 million previously awarded dollars to 20 lefty nonprofits and universities.
And the Trump administration will withhold $67.4 million in payments yet to be made.
You know, one of the biggest losers, the Vermont-based Institute of Sustainable Communities, which is yet to receive $12.4 million.
Good, we'll take it back.
Imagine.
I mean, this is just madness, is what it is.
And, you know, the president clarified this today that when Elon Musk sent out a, and there seemed to be a little bit of confusion, and maybe there needs to be a little more communication, but sent out a letter saying, justify your job for the last week.
What did you do the last week?
Part of this was a test.
Do these people even exist?
Do they ever check their email accounts?
Are they even on the job?
I mean, this is how deep this runs.
But if you listen to the media, the whole talking point all weekend, it's unbelievable.
GOP lawmakers confronted by constituents, they're angry.
They all have the same headline because they're all, what do I say?
State-run legacy media mob.
Why do I say mob?
I say it for a reason because they have a mob mentality.
They say the same things.
They echo the same talking points.
There's no originality, no original thought in them at all whatsoever.
Anyway, list five accomplishments from a worksheet seems like a simple task.
I could do that if I was asked by my employers.
Well, not really partners and employers.
Tomorrow, I'm working for Fox.
I'm a partner in radio.
Musk says federal workers must justify their jobs by email.
Failure to respond, taken as a resignation.
What about the people?
I mean, if they've been in coordination, the people that don't respond, maybe they don't exist.
You think that's so impossible?
And the Trump administration will slash 1,600 U.S. AID positions before midnight.
Now, I know that might be disrupting to some people's lives, but I'll tell you what also is disrupting.
Stealing your children's future and your grandchildren's future and putting this country on a path to unsustainable economic debt that will never be able to overcome.
And we'll all pay the price.
They shouldn't have been hired in the first place.
The money shouldn't have been spent this way in the first place.
And, you know, now we're finding waste, fraud, abuse all over the place.
Lee Zeldon, Biden's $20 billion grant to climate groups involves self-dealing.
I mean, in other words, a lot of self-dealing and suggest the Department of Justice could explore whether there was any criminality in play.
Border Patrol is taking control of a former USAID headquarters.
That's great news.
And by the way, the work continues.
We now have the lowest level.
We'll have Christy Noam on tonight.
Caroline Levitt is also on tonight.
And Vivek Ramaswamy's on.
We have a great show tonight.
And we're going to go over all of the success that nobody ever talks about.
We're now beginning our scroll.
We'll begin it tonight on Hannity.
Promises made, promises kept.
And that's what we're going to call it.
And all the things Donald Trump has done in just over a month in office.
It is, to me, it's exactly what this country has needed for a long time.
And everybody in the media that doesn't get it, you know, like there are polls that show that Donald Trump, yeah, do I really care what CNN and Gallup have to say?
Not really.
They're not the pollsters that I depended on.
You know, James Carville said, well, the pollsters that, you know, he wrote in the New York Times: three reasons I'm certain Kamal Harris is going to win.
Okay, not so certain.
But I don't think it's an accident that these media organizations and the Democratic Party now at a low of 20, what, 2%, the Congress, the lowest they've ever been, ever.
And why do you think that is?
Everything that they've done to Donald Trump has backfired.
And I saw that MSDNC had a settled $30 million defamation case.
Why is there hardly any coverage of that?
You know, why haven't they gone back and played all the times that they lied about COVID?
Did anybody in the media, the AP is all worked up because they're out of the White House briefing room because they refused to change the Gulf of Mexico to the Gulf of America, which is really the Gulf of America when you think about it.
And so they don't have a right to be anywhere.
Did they break any of the Russia hoax stories?
No, they did not.
Did they peddle some of those lies?
Yes, they did.
Same with all these news organizations.
Did they break the Pfizer Warren story?
No, they did not.
Did they ever focus on it?
Nope.
The dual justice system?
Why Hillary Clinton, 30,000 subpoenaed emails deleted with bleach fit?
The busting up of devices with hammers, the removal of SIM cards?
No.
And all the top secret classified information.
Why didn't her home get rated?
You know, why didn't they talk about the novel legal theory on a legal MDA that became a 34-count, basically a federal indictment, which never should have happened considering the statute of limitations had long since passed and there was nothing wrong with it?
They didn't care.
The valuation of Mar-a-Lago, they didn't care.
All they have bought into are and are an extension of this whole get Trump philosophy.
And it's now backfired on them.
What did Jon Stewart said?
You know, fascist, fascist, fascist, fascist, fascist.
You know, when maybe it would really mean something that has no teeth to it.
And that's what they are.
And I don't think anybody really is going to care that a lot of these media people have been canceled.
There's a couple of people that, to their credit, are telling some truth.
Jon Stewart is one of them.
And you know what?
He deserves credit for trying to be fair occasionally.
I know he hates me, but I don't care.
Same with Bill Maher.
He tells a former Obama speechwriter: Dems want to lose elections if they don't budge on the trans issue.
But I'd also argue on the immigration issue.
And I'd also argue on the Doge issue.
You know, the American people are too sophisticated now and they have too many options.
You know, I don't think it is an accident that Apple is announced this morning they plan to invest $500 billion rather and hire 20,000 Americans over the next four years.
Why does it matter?
Because they're listening to what Donald Trump is saying.
And they're saying that loud and clear, they need to do business in America.
And they're going to put their money where their mouth is.
I don't think it's an accident that New York City Mayor Eric Adams closed Manhattan's main intake center for Biden illegals as Trump's secure the border is easing the city's migrant crisis.
Anyway, Christy Noam, we're now at a 15-year low after this weekend in terms of illegal immigrant crossings into this country.
That's how serious Donald Trump is at protecting our borders.
And Biden and Harris let in known cartel members, gang members, murderers, rapists, and known terrorists.
You want to be the party that supports the rights of illegals over the safety of Americans and the right of men to play in women's sports and the right to spend money on the Green New Deal abroad, not even in this country to benefit this country with the record debt and deficits we have.
This is madness.
And that's now the that's what the party they've evolved into.
And I don't think it's going to work out very well for them.
You know, America's national debt is a national security risk.
Senator Mark Wayne Mullen of Oklahoma said it is a national security risk.
The House budget resolution, they have a current law baseline, which means the cost of Trump's tax cuts at around $4.5 trillion over 10 years.
Tax cuts bring in more money.
You know, this is a misnomer by the media, too.
It always has been.
If the Canadians, if they really want to have this fight with America, because they put tariffs on agriculture and poultry, and they won't let American seeds be imported into their country.
And if India wants to do the same thing and the European Union wants to do the same thing, then you'll have reciprocal tariffs.
Bill, that spooks the market.
That scares the market, people tell me.
And I'm like, or it's going to force them to rethink their partnership and relationship with the United States.
And if they have any sense of fair play, then they're going to want to do ball with America.
There's 42 million-plus Canadians.
And how many Americans do we have now?
Wenda?
360-some-odd million Americans.
I don't know.
Just do the math.
I don't think it's hard to figure out.
Wisconsin's woke governor says mothers should be called inseminated persons.
Can you believe this is the modern Democratic Party?
Democrat Tony Evers facing a backlash for introducing a budget recommendation that changes the word mother to inseminated person and paternity to parentage in parts of the law.
I mean, you can't make any of this stuff up.
California's free health care program for illegals is breaking the bank and wrecking the hospital system.
Get this.
California's Department of Finance, their budget manager, has told the state assembly that the state is spending $9.5 trillion in total funds to cover illegal immigrants, medi-Cal in the current year.
$9.5 billion.
It's crazy.
It's insane.
By the way, our buddy Stephen A. Smith is leading Kamala Harris and Michelle Obama in betting odds for the 2028 Democratic nomination.
I just hope this doesn't go to his head.
Linda, that'd be funny.
Won't be good.
He doesn't want to be in that arena.
I would tell him in every way imaginable, stay out of that.
Don't go.
I mean, honestly, after her response today, where she was talking about smelling the burning and, you know, with regard to the Palisades fires, I think anybody is better than Kamala Harris.
I would vote for Steven.
You would vote for Stephen A.
Sure.
I mean, he's a disruptor.
He's not.
He wouldn't.
I don't think he'd do it the way we'd want.
He has to convince me of that.
But I did.
But I had conversations with.
I had many conversations with Donald Trump, private conversations before he ever announced he was running.
And there were nights, we had big knockdown, drag out debates.
And, you know, and then on some things he convinced me.
On some things, I think I convinced him.
I said, I'm not going to be able to do that.
I thought he was pretty supportive.
He's not a conservative.
He was at CPAC and he said, you know, I was here in 2015 and I won the stroll poll.
And I have to be honest with you guys, when I was here and I won that poll, I didn't know what it was.
But I thought, hey, I won it.
So maybe I'll run for president.
That's what I love about him.
He's just honest.
He's real.
You know, all of this, look, what people don't know, and this, I got into this with Zelensky when I interviewed him.
I said, if you want, you do know the president wants a negotiated deal.
And let me tell you how this is going to end up.
And I said, you're not going to be able to join NATO.
And then we talked about, you know, probably there'll be some land as a concession to get this over and before your country is totally decimated.
And I'll remind you, then I asked him specifically if he would, with all the rare earth minerals that Ukraine has, pay back the United States.
Now, the best part of what Donald Trump's offering Zelensky in Ukraine, and he felt one of the reasons he was mad at Zelensky next week, and it looks like he's going to be coming to the White House soon.
And I'm sure they'll put the differences aside.
But there will be no country left by the time this is all said and done.
So the idea is to end war in Europe.
But the rare earth mineral part of this equation means that the United States will have a vested interest in the security of Ukraine.
That would be good for Ukraine.
And they also, as partners, and we're going to help them extract these rare earth minerals because we have the wherewithal to do it, means that they'll have money now to rebuild their country and they won't destroy it.
Do I think Putin is a murdering thug dictator?
I do.
I think that Joe Biden had an opportunity to stop it and he didn't.
No, I do.
I think he blew it.
Oh, it might be a minor incursion.
It depends.
Oh, stupid.
Anyway, 800-941 showing us a number if you want to be a part of the program.
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, it's 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.
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