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March 12, 2025 - Sean Hannity Show
32:30
Tariff Threats Are Working - March 11th, Hour 1

Sean recounts the many ways in which the threats of tariffs are bringing common sense spending to attention and reinforcing an American-first economy.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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If you want to be a part of the program, we start today with some huge, big, massive breaking news.
I think it's great news.
And I hope it is uh the beginning of maybe the end of the war in Europe between Ukraine and Vladimir Putin and Russia.
Um we now have Ukraine saying that they will accept a 30-day ceasefire beginning immediately with Russia.
The U.S., Ukraine said Kiev would accept a 30-day ceasefire uh after talks in Saudi Arabia earlier today.
Washington pledging immediately to lift a freeze on intelligence sharing and military aid to Ukraine.
Ukraine expressed well, let me play Marco Rubio and Mike Walls.
Today we made an offer that the Ukrainians have accepted, which is to enter into a ceasefire and into immediate uh negotiations to end this conflict in a way that's enduring and sustainable and accounts for their interest, their security, their ability to prosper as a nation.
I I want to personally thank we both want to thank the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, his majesty for hosting us for making this possible.
They've been instrumental in this process, and we're very grateful to them for hosting us here today.
And hopefully we'll take this offer and out of the Russians.
And we hope that they'll say yes, that they'll say yes to peace.
The ball is now in their court.
And um, but again, the the president's objective here is number one, above everything else, he wants the war to end.
And I think today Ukraine has taken a concrete step in that regard.
We hope the Russians will reciprocate.
Just think about it.
Uh we've gone from if the war is going to end to now how the war is going to end.
And this was uh this was an important first step, and that was under President Trump's leadership.
He has literally moved the entire global conversation to where we had a very senior Ukrainian delegation with us today.
We've had engagements uh with our Russian counterparts, and now it's how the war is going to end, and that's under President Trump's leadership.
How the war is going to end, and I you know, I thought liberals, all we are saying is give peace uh chance.
Whatever happened to those liberals.
Weren't they weren't they the big John Lennon sit-in Vietnam opposers, and and here you have a president trying to negotiate a peace.
Now, let us go back.
It was what, 10, 11 days ago, whatever it was.
President Zelensky at the White House.
It didn't go very well.
And then I I kept saying at the time he'll be back.
And Donald Trump is negotiating that there was a three-phase process to this.
One would be the rare earth mineral deal, two would be the ceasefire.
It looks like we got one side on board.
Hopefully, Russia Putin will get on board as well.
And that could be extended by mutual agreement of the parties.
This was after an eight-hour negotiation that went on earlier today in Saudi Arabia.
And uh, which by the way would be subject to the concurrent implementation of the Russian Federation.
And eight hours of negotiation, and this is where we are.
And the statement said the U.S. will immediately lift the pause on intelligence sharing and resume security assistance to Ukraine.
Both were frozen in the wake of this explosive meeting Between uh President Zelensky and President Trump.
But if you go back, let's let's remind you about the media and the Democrats' freak out and meltdown.
They come in the air hours after an Oval Office ambush of an American ally that will reverberate all around the world and stay in America's image for years to come.
It revealed instead of Donald Trump and a JD Vance, clearly on an errand for Vladimir Putin.
They are popping the champagne in Moscow.
They've got their best vodka out, and they're doing shots as we speak.
That's exactly the same thought that went through my head.
The propaganda is what's coming out of JD Vance's mouth.
And it's Russian propaganda.
Caitlin, I I want to start with look at her face.
I mean, Christian.
Hold that thought for once.
Okay, actually, Christian, please.
Take it away.
Never in the history of mud diplomacy, war, peace, whatever.
Have I ever, ever, ever seen anything like Donald Trump has said everything nice about Russia?
I can't think of a single time he said something bad about Vladimir Putin.
And it's very rare.
We were so shocked yesterday when he said that, oh, did I really say Zelensky was a dictator?
This is the moment we're in, and this should be an embarrassment to all Americans.
If the United States is a coward who is Vladimir Putin's puppet.
What we just witnessed between Donald Trump, J.D. Vance, and President Zelensky inside the White House was an ambush.
It was a planned ambush designed to embarrass President Zelensky in order to benefit Vladimir Putin.
That was an embarrassment.
That was an abomination.
What you watched was American power being destroyed in the world.
As everybody watches President Trump become a lapdog for a brutal dictator in Moscow.
How many lives if Donald Trump can pull this off will be saved?
The country of Ukraine can be saved before it is completely destroyed.
Lives can be saved.
The destruction can come to an end.
This would be a good thing for the entire world.
One that I hope is achievable under President Trump.
This is the embodiment of the art of the deal negotiation.
And I said at the time, I mean, and it's very there's an analogy with what's happening now and and how people are reacting to Donald Trump saying, but because we're living under the Biden Harris economy, and being this is a disaster for the economy.
This is a disaster, a desperate disaster.
The sky is falling, the sky is falling, the sky is falling.
No, it's not falling.
It's not.
But what did I say at the time?
Let's go back.
I think we have a tape of that.
At some point, reality's gonna kick in.
It clearly didn't kick in by the time he went on Brett Bear's show on Friday night.
We have Brett Bear on Friday night.
It didn't kick in any point over the weekend.
Although I do have sources.
I have very good sources, better sources than the state-run legacy media mob, which is dead.
Zelensky has been reaching out repeatedly to President Trump directly and his team directly asking to come back and make this right.
So hence my knowledgeable prediction, uh, putting two and two together, A squared, B squared equals C squared.
I believe that Zelensky will be back.
And he's going to be back.
He's back.
He was back within hours.
He wanted to come back.
He didn't want to leave the White House that day.
I've got more details since that day.
And you know, we see now, you know, there's been some fluctuations as it relates to the stock market, for example, and a little bit of uh well, first of all, the stock market is always skittish.
I've always said for years and years that the stock market is not my biggest indicator of the state of the economy.
And I think it's very important for people to clearly understand where we are with the economy and where we are with this budget process.
And the first and foremost, I I really believe most people do not understand that we are living and under the inflationary policies and current budget for fiscal year 24.
We are living under the Biden Harris economy, the radical Democrats' economy economy, the inflationary economy.
This is the economy of Joe Biden and Kamala Harris.
This is the economy that Donald Trump inherited that every American is still living under.
He's not but it it it takes more than a day to get his economic policies in place.
Usually the fiscal year begins October 1st.
So the fiscal year will end September 30th.
But with that said, what the president has started to do is eliminate now Doge is officially over a hundred and five billion dollars in identified waste, fraud, abuse, and corruption.
So we are eliminating what will be hundreds of billions of dollars of Biden Harris waste, fraud, abuse, corruption money that never should have been wasted, but was wasted.
Hopefully, Republicans will need help of Democrats in the Senate.
They will pass a continuing resolution to fund the government, or Democrats will shut the government down.
That will be on them.
That will be their choice.
That will be their decision, especially if the House is able to get it passed with the slim majority of Republicans that we have, and Tom Massey just being a resistant Republican to pretty much everything, which frankly, if he wants to be an independent, he should just be an independent because it's it's just not fair to everyone else in the Republican Party that he not every Republican's getting what they want.
And no, generally speaking, you know, I don't like continuing resolutions.
We don't have a choice here.
And then once that happens, likely without any Democratic help, at least in the House, in spite of past proclamations that this is the worst, the most dangerous thing.
As a matter of fact, Speaker Johnson put this montage, it's like he's doing his own version of Hannity out today, and we'll show it to you tonight on TV, showing Democrats repeatedly talking about the dangers, and I don't think it's so dangerous to be honest to have a government shutdown.
You have non-essential services.
People will get usually end up getting a laid off for a short period of time, and they get a free vacation because they usually get back pay.
That's what usually happens.
But the military keeps it keeps protecting our country around the world.
It is inconvenient for some people.
But then at the end of it all, you know, essential services will continue.
Social security checks, Medicaid, all of this will be handled.
But this is the Democrats in past years saying, Now they're the ones that are going to be responsible for a shutdown, and this is what they have said over the years about shutdowns.
We believe in governance.
We want to keep governments open.
A shutdown is very serious.
There are real consequences when the government shuts down.
It harms our national security.
It harms our economy, and it harms service members, veterans, retirees, and vulnerable communities.
We all know a shutdown is unnecessary and completely avoidable.
The tragedy here is all the civilian employees.
It is the American people who are going to suffer.
Border Patrol agents will not be paid.
TSA agents will not be paid.
Small businesses will be hurt.
Not only is it irresponsible and purposely misleading, it is dangerous precedent to be threatening a shutdown.
I'm worried about our air controllers.
Those in the military, we have over almost 40,000 in the military as well as personnel who work in the military, and uh they won't have checks.
Uh, I mean, this is this is real.
They're real people's lives at stake.
It is not normal to hold 800,000 workers' paychecks hostage.
It is not normal to shut down the government when we don't get what we want.
Our troops deserve better.
Our children deserve better.
And the American people deserve better.
These chaos agents they don't have a plan B. They just want to see everything burn.
Shutdown is really an extremist uh policy designed to appeal to an extremist base and hold the whole country hostile.
So this shutdown, you know who's gonna feel the pay?
You know who it hurts?
You.
And guess who will be responsible if we have a shutdown?
The very people you just heard from.
So we will watch and wait and see this week.
My guess is that they will pass the continuing resolution in the end because this will backfire on them, and they already have a 20% approval rating.
Uh, that they want to go into the single digits?
Because that's where they're headed next.
In spite of that, I think Donald Trump will get the CR, and then the reconciliation process will begin in the House and the Senate to jumpstart the economy with the Trump tax plan, which would be permanent tax cuts, no tax on tips, no tax on overtime, no tax on Social Security.
He will also unleash what is a massive increase in energy production to make America the most energy rich nation on earth and create high paying jobs for the American people.
He will also continue to incentivize more and more businesses, manufacturing facilities, industry to move and invest in America to work in the most business friendly country on the planet.
That's why you see Apple investing five hundred billion dollars in Texas.
That's why Nissan and Honda decided not to build their plants in Mexico.
Now they're building them in America.
That's why you see this hundred billion dollar investment by this Taiwanese chip uh company.
The days of the disastrous Biden Harris economy are numbered.
We still live under it now, and we will it will be replaced with pro economic growth policies and the skittishness that you might see on Wall Street is because of tariff fear and and of course a government shutdown fear and and the unknown.
But if you look in the past, if past indications or any indicator, you see SP inflation adjusted returns during the Trump presidency was 54%.
Under Biden, 15%, in case you're interested.
NASDAQ returns under Trump were whopping 116%, only 7.3% in the end under Biden.
So, you know, with all this talk and all the indications about this let us let us policies get under get in in place first.
And that's what the president has been doing while trying to negotiate peace on two continents at the same time.
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That President Zelensky, in spite of a corrupt state-run legacy media mob that doesn't know they're dead yet, and Democrats freaking out over the fact that the meeting at the in the Oval Office broke down in large part because of President Zelensky.
That was supposed to be ceremonial.
The idea that this was a setup was just a crock.
It was supposed to be a rah-rah, yay yay, shake hands, sign the rare earth mineral deal, then move on to phase two, which is where we got to today, and that is Ukraine.
At least they did agree to a 30-day ceasefire that can be extended after eight hours of negotiation.
Mike Walls, Marco Rubio leading the delegation in Saudi Arabia on behalf of President Trump today.
Now the President has responded to the Ukrainian acceptance of the ceasefire.
Very importantly, and I said it, Ukraine.
Uh ceasefire.
Ukraine.
Ceasefire.
Just agreed to a little while ago.
Now we have to go to Russia and hope President hopefully President Putin will agree to that also.
And we can get this show on the road.
We can get we can get this horrible war where two, three thousand soldiers a week, every week, two, three, four thousand sometimes.
I get the reports.
And they're not American soldiers.
They're Ukrainian and they're Russian.
But people are being killed outside of that.
People are being killed in the cities as things explode throughout the cities.
And we want to get that war over with.
So I think I think it's a very big crazy.
I think it's a big difference between the last visit you saw at the Oval Office and the soap.
That's a total ceasefire.
Ukraine has agreed to it.
And hopefully Russia will agree to it.
We're going to meet with him later on today and tomorrow.
And hopefully we'll be able to wipe out a deal.
But I think the ceasefire is very important.
If we can get Russia to do it, that'll be great.
If we can't, we just keep going on and people are going to get killed.
Lots of people.
I mean, at least it's hope.
And everybody was predicting after the White House Oval Office meeting fell apart.
Well, that's the oh, this is a this is going to be felt the reverberations for years and years to come.
No, they just don't like Donald Trump.
Um, how great would it be if we did get peace in Europe?
It's not going to be a perfect peace.
Let me let me just manage your expectations a little bit here.
It's it's going to be a negotiated peace settlement.
And whether you like whatever side, it just isn't good for anybody for this thing to continue.
And I think what's going to happen is there will be security assurances.
I think the rare earth mineral deal guarantees that on the American side, because we're going to be heavily invested in partners with Ukraine.
That also will give them money to rebuild their country, which has been devastated, and hopefully we'll bring back a large part of their population that have exited the country and sought refuge in other countries in Europe.
And the same with Russia.
I mean, now they're feeling the impact of this in ways large and small, and it's just not good for anybody.
And you know how ironic the guy that you know gets called every name in the book is being attacked.
Um Charlie Gasparino, and we're seeing the same thing unfold.
You see nothing but panic out of, you know, the prognosticators, the pundits, the the legacy state-run media mob, fake news everywhere.
Oh, look at the stock market.
The stock market, the stock market.
Um, by the way, there's protests after the feds arrest a Palestinian activist.
Uh I I I mean, it's it really is unbelievable to me as I watch these these kids on these college campuses.
What part of murder and torture and kidnapping and beheading that they not understand.
Well, who are they sympathizing with here?
Who was the victim that lost the equivalent of 40,000 Americans in a single day?
That would be the Israelis.
But anyway, back to Charlie Gasparino writing uh in the New York Post today, Wall Street is puking big time, and the cell buttons are working overtime whenever the word tariff passes through Donald Trump's lips.
If you listen to the fat cat community long enough, you'd think that Trump has been in office four years rather than four weeks, and that a small trade surcharge on a car from Mexico is leading into economic Armageddon.
He said, I'm no fan of terrorists for lots of reasons, including I hate paying too much for stuff, but I've also taken enough economic classes and studied markets long enough to know that they're not the end of the world as we know it.
I know that the Trump economic plan is much more than a the tariff plan, and it's about tax cuts, deleveraging the federal government's involvement in the private sector, allowing the private sector to thrive.
And that is the track record that is Donald Trump.
We now live, as I said earlier, in the under the Biden Harris economy.
This is their economy, this is their budget, and now it's going to take the first step will be a continuing resolution to continue to fund the government.
Democrats say it's it's a disaster if you don't fund the government.
I don't agree with that, but that's these are them in their own words over the years.
And what they're not factoring in is Donald Trump's economic plan to jumpstart the economy.
Permanent tax cuts, no tax on tips, no tax on overtime, no tax on Social Security, A massive increase, increase in energy production, helping to make America the most energy dominant rich country on the face of the earth, creating high paying career jobs for the American people.
We also see the benefits of his tariff policies because now companies that were planning to build in Mexico, like Nissan and Honda are now going to build their plans in America.
Apple's investing $500 billion in America in Texas.
That's going to create tens of thousands of jobs.
The Taiwanese chip company is going to be spending 100 billion dollars.
I guess Wall Street just hasn't noticed these things.
But the days of the Biden Harris inflationary economy, you know, that has been full of waste, fraud, abuse, and corruption is now coming to an end.
And the America First growth economic agenda will now take its place.
And that's good for the American people.
You know, and, you know, as it relates to, and we'll get into more of Elon Musk, and we'll update you on the contest that we're putting together and our lawyers are putting together now as we even speak.
But, you know, all of this is about if we don't stop this reckless waste, fraud, abuse, and corruption, we are stealing from our children and grandchildren.
We are stealing from hardworking Americans that on average make $66,000 a year.
There's no other way to put it.
This is the right policy for our country, for our future, for our children and grandchildren's future.
Average Americans understand this.
As Lincoln once admonished, with popular sentiment, there's nothing that can fail.
He's right.
And if you look at the numbers, the American people strongly support eliminating waste, fraud, abuse, and corruption.
And then the Democrats, you know, in a lot of these programs, Americans support draining the swamp.
They don't want their money spent on the radical Green New Deal, DEI programs, wokeism, transgenderism, and LGBTQ plus policies abroad.
America wants Washington cleaned up.
They want an end to wasteful spending.
And Democrats are desperate.
So they're out there doing what they always do.
Hakeem Jeffries lying, saying, we've got him on the run in the economy, and saying that the House GOP budget is going to cut Medicaid and Social Security.
Nothing is further from the truth.
As a matter of fact, the GOP budget has a minimum increase in Medicaid of $168 billion that could go significantly higher.
Because under the Republican plan, Medicaid spending will go up every year.
They played this game when Newt was speaker and Bill Clinton was the president.
You know, if you reduce the rate of increase, they said it was a cut.
And Newt's plan was to increase spending 7% a year every year for seven years.
That is not by any definition a cut.
That is reigning in baseline budgeting, you know, radical increases in spending that you cannot afford.
The House Republican budget increases spending on Medicare from $695 billion to $863 billion over a decade.
That is $168 billion increase in spending.
And it's likely that it'll probably go higher based on need.
That is just a fact.
And then at that point, you know, you you've got to look where the American people are.
Because American sentiment is with Donald Trump.
You know, and it is if if you look at it, that's why many polls have him ahead.
This is what this is why these companies are investing here.
They see the handwriting is on the wall.
What you have, what Wall Street doesn't understand and what they don't want to understand.
They don't want to understand is that the president is in a perpetual state of negotiation.
When the president says tariffs, he wants changes.
He wants our friends to the North, and I consider the Canadians our friends.
He wants them to do a better job securing our border, pay their fair share for NATO and their own national defense.
And he wants more cooperation on the border, especially as it relates to last year alone.
We had a set we had the we had more illegals coming from the northern border from over a hundred countries than we've had in the past 17 years combined.
They need to do, they need to be good neighbors too.
And they need To stop putting tariffs on our products.
We're actually going to debate the Ontario premier that has threatened to uh cut off uh power to Michigan and New York and some other places tonight.
But I want to have a conversation with the guy.
I believe in free and fair trade, but it's got to be reciprocal.
That's why the president says reciprocal, you know, reciprocal, you know, trade agreements, reciprocal tariffs.
If they're going to put a tariff on us, we'll be forced to put one on them.
I'd rather not do that, but that's what it's going to take.
And if you look at right track, wrong track, most Americans see America that on the economy and every other issue, in spite of Wall Street hysteria that President Trump is outperforming Biden on key issues.
Look at what he's been able to accomplish, a 15-year low in terms of illegal immigrants coming into this country.
When he gets his economic plan in place, I would expect the same results we got in his first term.
I believe that inflation can be brought under control.
I believe we can accomplish peace in Europe and peace in the Middle East.
It's not a heavy lift in each case.
But if you look at Doge, for example, 77% of Americans think that we are in a full need of an examination of every government expenditure.
And it's not just the Harvard Harris poll, it's pretty much every poll.
Rasmussen, RMG.
It's also the CBS poll.
It's also Trafalgar.
It's also insider advantage.
You know, CBS, for example, not exactly, you know, Trump's approval rating was 53%.
80% support deporting criminal illegal.
76% support a full scale effort to eliminate waste fraud and abuse.
76% support closing the border.
70% support keeping men out of women's sports and declaring that there are only two genders.
65% support ending race-based hiring in the government.
DEI, 63% support a freeze and a re-evaluation of foreign aid.
61% support reciprocal tariffs.
60% support direct negotiations with Russia to end the war in Ukraine.
60% support cutting government spending and ending the ban on new off uh offshore drilling, which is a big part of his economic plan.
And it's it's not that they don't know or they don't want to know what Donald Trump has planned.
And in the end, you've got to, at some point, you need an adult that is gonna think long term.
It's like just the news.com.
He had a they had a poll out today.
55% of registered voters support the latest CR because they understand we got to fund the government.
Democrats who have screamed bloody murder about possible government shutdowns in years gone by, you know, now are pushing ahead with it.
And it is all of this is predictable.
All this hysteria.
That's why I'm I'm not phased at all by any of this.
Now, as soon as Wall Street started a tumble yesterday, the media's pro-recession cheerleading, you know, squad, the same people that freaked out when Zelensky left the Oval Office.
You know, oh, well, here's a headline they don't want to talk about.
Job openings rise as the labor market shows strength and stability.
U.S. job openings rose in January, underscoring a resilient labor market that continues to defy pessimistic forecasts about the impact of Donald Trump's, you know, expected economic policies.
Job openings climbed to 7.74 million up from January.
Wait till we unleash energy production in this country.
It's going to be higher.
This was by way higher than expectations of Wall Street and the experts.
The increase in openings driven by primarily by gains in real estate construction, retail, manufacturing, and the financial sectors, suggesting continued strength in very key areas of the economy.
Job openings and manufacturing, a politically and economically sensitive sector climbed by 30,000.
There are jobs in America.
Wall Street is suffering withdrawal pains, as Gasparino said as President Trump moves to wean the economy off of trillions of dollars of government deficit spending.
This is this is this is hard work, but it's worth doing because if we don't get a hold of it now, we'll never get a hold of it.
Just like if we don't stop this war in Europe and the war in the Middle East, it's we're never going to get a hold of it.
And if you allow the mullahs in Iran to get a nuclear weapon, as my mother used to say, we will rue the day.
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.
Join us every Tuesday and Thursday, normally, on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
I'm Ben Ferguson, and I'm Ted Cruz.
Three times a week, we do our podcast, Verdict with Ted Cruz.
Nationwide, we have millions of listeners.
Every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday, we break down the news and bring you behind the scenes inside the White House, inside the Senate, inside the United States Supreme Court.
And we cover the stories that you're not getting anywhere else.
We arm you with the facts to be able to know and advocate for the truth with your friends and family.
So down a verdict with Ted Cruz now, wherever you get your podcasts.
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