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July 9, 2025 - Sean Hannity Show
31:51
Fight for America's Heartland - July 8th, Hour 2
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This is an iHeart podcast.
Hey, it's Mark Simone here for Sean Hannity.
Normally, I'm on our big flagship station in New York City, 710WOR.
You can hear me on iHeart or get the podcast.
Well, Selena Zito, a great journalist.
We've had her on before.
She's the national political reporter for the Washington Examiner.
And we've had her on before to talk about this book that she's got.
Well, it just came out today.
It's out today.
It is the most riveting book.
You got to get the book.
She was standing with President Trump when he was shot, the assassination attempt.
She was standing right there.
It is the most incredible book about what happened that day.
It's called Butler.
Get the book, Butler, The Untold Story of the Near Assassination of Donald Trump and the Fight for America's Heartland.
Order the book now.
And she's with us right now.
Selena Zito, how you doing?
Hey, Mark.
Thank you so much for having me on.
I'm doing great.
And I hate to put you through this again.
I know you've had to tell this so many times, but just explain to the audience.
You were standing right there when it happened.
Yeah, I was.
I was about four feet away.
And, you know, when you're a journalist, when you start your day and you have a plan, you pretty much know the plan's going to fall apart, right?
Something's going to go wrong.
Never in my wildest imagination did I think what was going to happen that day happened.
I was supposed to interview the president five minutes before.
Then that changed to five minutes after.
And then that changed to you're going to fly to Bedminster and interview him on the plane.
And then just before he went on stage, he asked to see me.
And I didn't know that.
I thought it was changed back to him interviewing before the rally.
But he just wanted to say hello.
So that is how I ended up in that buffer.
That is not where I was supposed to be that day.
But I ended up in the buffer because it couldn't get me back to the riser in enough time and then get back to go in the motorcade.
I'm with my daughter.
She's a photo journalist.
You can see her photo is the cover of the book.
And it's a powerful image.
And you'll understand why in a minute.
Because they put me in the buffer and they said, okay, work your way over to the other side and then we'll grab you, mean the Secret Service, to go on the motorcade.
So if people followed me that day on Twitter, they can see the images I was taking, the video, all the way leading up.
He comes out and he does two things within minutes of standing out there that he never ever does.
And that is he puts a chart down.
And I remember saying to my daughter, my goodness, what is he, Ross Perot?
What's he doing with his chart?
And then he turns his head.
Now, if you have ever either gone to a Trump rally or watched one, he never turns his head away from the audience.
A very transactional emotional relationship between him and them.
He may turn his body to face a different direction, but he never turned his head away.
The chart goes down.
He turns his head away, and I hear four shots just go right over my head.
I'm a gun owner.
I knew exactly what it was the minute that it happened.
And at this point, I'm about four or five feet away.
I watch him grab his ear.
I see the blood streak across his face.
And I see him take himself down.
Now, when you're in a situation like that, they often say time slows down.
And that was certainly true for me in that moment because I'm watching him take himself down and I'm calculating, okay, he must be at least a little bit okay because he wasn't taken off of his feet, right?
And then I see a sea of blue surround him as the next four shots go off.
Now, I don't get down.
I don't know what happened in my head.
I remember being very worried about him.
I remember being very worried that anybody in the place had been shot.
But I wasn't thinking about myself.
I was thinking, you know, okay, you have a purpose, Selena.
You are a reporter.
You better get your act together and cover this and remember this because this is history.
And that's where my brain went.
It wasn't until a couple seconds later that the campaign press aide, Michelle Picard, actually takes me down because he was worried about me and covers my body to protect me until we get the all-clear.
So that's how I ended up being in that place in that moment.
Now, he has the podium where he speaks, and in front was a bunting, a big bunting, but behind that was armor plating.
That's why you get down behind that.
And I just assume the Secret Service, when he was down there, got on top of him and covered him up.
Is that the case?
That's his case.
They completely surrounded him.
There was a complete protective screen, a protective stance around him.
From my angle, I can see his face because I just happened.
I mean, you know, he and I talked about the hand of God a lot the next day.
And so, you know, I wonder, well, is this my purpose?
Is this what I'm supposed to do?
Am I supposed to be able to chronicle this?
And the answer ended up being yes.
And I can see his face.
I can see him arguing with the Secret Service to put his shoes on.
He wants his shoes on.
And my recorder's going.
I always have my recorder on at a rally, even though there's always a transcript afterwards.
I always think it's important to get the inflection and the emotion and nuance when covering someone, because that's different than just flatly saying it.
And the crowd starts chanting USA.
And I can see him say along with them.
He's not shouting it, but I see him mouthing USA.
And then he gets up, and they want to take him off the stage.
And he turns, and that's when there's that iconic moment when he says, fight by fight.
We all saw him do that.
Did he actually say it out loud?
Fight by fight?
Yeah.
Yeah, yeah.
Yeah.
Now, I don't, I think the mic was off at that moment.
I don't know if the larger group of people can hear him say it.
I can hear him say it.
But then again, I'm very, very close to him.
Yeah.
And he calls me the next morning.
Yeah, this is the most amazing part.
What's the first thing he said when he called you?
He said, good morning, Selena.
This is President Donald Trump.
Like, I don't know who it is, right?
And he says, I want to make sure you're okay and your daughter's okay.
Wow.
And I'm really sorry we didn't get to do that interview.
And then I did something that's going to make my parents squirm when they read it.
And I swore like a truck driver.
And I said, are you bleeping me kidding me, sir?
You were just shot.
I'm okay.
Are you okay?
The president will go on to call me seven more times that day.
Now, this is just the beginning of this book.
You've got to get the book.
It's called Butler.
It's the whole story.
Selena Zito, his book is out.
The book is out today right now.
You can order it.
You'll get it right away.
The book's called Butler by Selena Zito.
Order it and get it.
Hey, when you look at the Reagan shooting, they had him in the car and speeding away within two seconds.
Why was President Trump there for minutes and minutes and minutes before they got him out of there?
First, they wanted to make sure the shooter was down.
Yeah.
Okay, and they all had their bodies on top of him.
If there were shots fired, they were taking it.
And so, and then they had to get him to get his shoes on because he wanted his shoes on.
In his defense, though, he didn't know where he was going to go or what he'd be walking on.
And also, those shoes are $2,400 a pair.
It's more, you know.
They're very nice shoes.
Yeah.
And I think, you know, this is one of many conversations that I have with him.
He talked about God and talked about purpose several times with me.
But I asked him in that moment, that next day, why did you say fight, fight, fight?
And this goes back to why he wanted his shoes on.
He said, you know, Selena, in that moment, I wasn't Donald Trump.
I was a president of the United States.
And it is my duty and obligation to show strength and resilience and resolve and be a symbol of our exceptionalism.
Because as a president, you have to show strength because you have people there that would panic if I didn't.
You have people watching it that could possibly panic.
It is my obligation to show that.
And I suspect that had a lot to do with not walking off in his stocking feet over gravel.
Yeah.
Wow.
Hey, we came to know everything about Lee Harvey Oswald and every detail of John Hinckley.
Why do we not hear anything?
Why don't we learn?
We've learned nothing about the shooter.
Yeah, you know, this is part of what I, when the book obviously talks about Butler, but it also talks about the big impact that I saw in Pennsylvania.
And no one can argue that Pennsylvania is not the most important state in the country in terms of understanding what's happening and understanding how things change and move.
But what is fascinating to me, now I did my best.
There are things in there you will learn about him.
But the problem with this young man is he didn't leave a digital imprint.
He did not, he wasn't, unlike most young people, he was not prolific on social media whatsoever.
And he was a loner.
He was an isolationist.
He didn't have any close friends.
There was no wife that could talk about him.
There were no friends that could talk about him.
Trust me, I looked under every rock to find that answer.
And you look at his, you know, I go and look at the log at the Sportsman Club where he was.
Well, you know, he went there on days like Thanksgiving and Christmas and Valentine's Day on Sundays, days that you would traditionally spend with family and friends and loved ones.
So this was a person that was very much collapsing inwardly.
And you hear the 911 call, the 911 call from his dad in the book.
And his dad knew something very bad had happened.
And I take people through the community of where he was from.
It's a really riveting moment in the book.
Do we think there was any connection between the shooter and any thing, Iran, any connection, somebody behind it?
To date, there has been no evidence of that.
That doesn't mean it doesn't exist.
But finding that evidence, and I know the FBI is on that right now, that evidence has not been uncovered.
No evidence has been uncovered.
If it has been uncovered, we don't know that yet.
You think it clinched the election for him, that way he handled himself, the fight, fight, fight, the fist for a lot of independents who weren't sure that they were so impressed and awed by his strength and toughness that that may have gotten their votes.
Oh, yeah.
And you will see that journey in this book all throughout all 67 counties of Pennsylvania.
And I kept, and also you see the complete failure of the Harris campaign.
You know, I'm writing this book as I'm covering the election.
And you see and read and hear things that you had no idea was happening by the way that my profession covered it.
And the last chapter in the book is about the reckoning with my profession and what is happening with it, how it failed so miserably, not just in the coverage of near assassination of a president, but how they've swept it under the rug.
I was literally laying on the ground, and there's alerts coming up on my phone saying shrapnel hit him from the teleprompter, that it was glass.
Wow.
And I'm thinking, my God, I'm here.
I'm right here.
In that rush to be first, in that rush to be the story the way you want it to be, rather than what the facts present themselves, infuriated me in that moment, but also in the nuance of that entire election cycle.
It just absolutely blew my mind.
The two different worlds I straddled from what I reported to what I would go on social media or go on legacy news and see or read.
Wow.
Well, it's a riveting book.
You've got to get the book.
Go order it.
It just came out.
If you order it right now, you'll get it right away.
The book is called Butler.
As in Butler, Pennsylvania, the book's called Butler, The Untold Story of the Near Assassination of Donald Trump, The Fight for America's Heartland.
Butler by Selena Zito.
Go order the book.
And Selena Zito, thanks for being with us.
We'll do it again soon.
Thank you so much.
What a great interview.
Thank you.
All right.
Take care.
Wow.
What a book.
Anyway, we'll take some calls in a minute.
1-800-941-Sean is the number.
Mark Simone here for Sean Hannity.
The Monkeys?
Oh, my.
Well, it's Mark Simone here for Sean Hannity.
Linda, did you pick that music?
You don't even remember the monkeys.
I love the monkeys.
You do?
Okay.
Then I saw her face.
Now I'm a believer.
All right.
No, that's about it.
The music was actually pretty good.
You know, it was a big monkeys fan, Paul McCartney.
Paul McCartney, you know, the Beatles are, I don't want to make anybody mad.
I'm not the biggest Beatles fan.
So, you know, but Paul McCartney is an interesting.
The monkeys do it for you, not the Beatles.
They do.
The Monkeys do do it for me.
So for you, it was waiting up to see the monkeys on the Ed Sullivan show, not the Beatles.
Listen, the Ed Sullivan Show is a time.
It was a time in our country when there was real talent and people actually played instruments and used their voice as opposed to now where everything's AI and computers.
Yeah, the Ed Sullivan show was fascinating.
It was the most talented people in the world, except the host.
It was just a big stiff who stood there.
It was so funny, though.
I kind of liked him.
I thought it was fun.
Well, we'll get to Mom Donny, the crazy communist running for mayor.
We'll get to him after the break.
This is what's right with America.
You're listening to the Sean Hannity Show.
Hey, it's Mark Simone here for Sean Hannity.
Normally, I'm on our big flagship station here in New York, W-O-R-710, or you can hear me on iHeart.
The podcast is there.
Or any place you get podcasts, but iHeart's the best place.
Linda, you have a podcast on iHeart?
I do.
It's called The Rogue Recap, where I say things a little bit more, you know, rogue.
Like what?
What do you mean?
You know, not, I wouldn't say it's a family-friendly show sometimes.
As opposed to the delicate version of you we get here.
You mean it's you get worse than this?
A lot worse, unfortunately, because the news dictates what I discuss.
Oh, and I happen to get upset about it.
I'm not so good at hiding my feelings.
I'm a little too direct, I think.
Yeah, that's okay.
It's called The Rogue.
The Rogue Recap with Linda.
The Rogue Recap with Linda on iHeart.
Or the Mark Simone podcast, or, of course, the Sean Hannity.
Well, you're already incredible.
I mean, your show is the number one morning show in New York.
It's amazing.
Not the world, just New York.
I mean, I don't know if it's the world.
I live here.
What can I tell you?
All right.
You know how Sean always picks on New York and what the hell are you still doing there and all that?
I don't know why he keeps saying we have a communist running for mayor.
He won the Democratic primary.
I don't mean a left-wing, slanted left-wing.
I don't mean an awoke.
I mean a socialist, communist, lunatic running for mayor.
The problem is in New York, so many registered Democrats that usually, if you have the Democratic nomination, that means you win.
I know you could say, well, yeah, but Rudy Giuliani won a couple of times.
Bloomberg won as a Republican.
But that's 30 years ago, 20 years ago.
There were far more Republicans registered back then.
Number of Republicans way down.
So it's tough to defeat a Democrat.
Such an incredible advantage in terms of registered voters.
But this is different.
This is a lunatic communist.
And you Democrats, I don't know if you have thought about this, but you've nominated a guy who's 12 years old.
He just became a citizen like four weeks ago.
He just became a citizen recently.
He's never had a job.
He's never worked.
He has no resume.
If you came to a company for a job, they'd say, I see here you've never worked anywhere.
I see here you've never had any occupation of any kind.
I mean, he's only 33.
He became a citizen a couple of years ago, just very recently.
Now think about this.
His father is a big professor at Columbia.
His mother is a very big international filmmaker, very wealthy family.
The father, big Columbia professor.
So he applies to Columbia University and he lies on the application.
He checks off African American, which of course is a lie.
Now he's going to argue, well, I was born in Uganda, which is in Africa, but he's not.
First of all, he's not even Ugandan.
He's Indian.
He's not Ugandan.
And you can't, I mean, for that matter, Elon Musk could check off African American from South Africa.
But it's obviously a lie.
And then he checked off Asian.
You could argue, well, he's Indian, that's Asian.
But obviously, obviously he was trying to deceive Columbia.
And he said, well, there was no specific box for what I guarantee you on the application.
You know, they always have those boxes.
And then you can check other.
I guarantee you there was another box he didn't check.
So he lies about being African-American, very offensive, the whole thing.
And think about this.
His father's a big professor at Columbia, and he still didn't get in.
So there's more to this story.
Your father's on the faculty and whatever.
You still don't get in.
So expect more to come out about this guy.
One by one, things will start coming out about him.
The only reason he got the nomination, the opposition was Andrew Cuomo, the former governor.
But if you've seen him lately, he's a tired, old, broken down guy.
He's like the old fighter who can't get his hands up, can't defend himself.
And in the debate, this momdami, or as Al Sharpman calls him, mam dammy, this mam dammy, in the debate, wiped the floor with Cuomo, just beat him to a pulp.
Cuomo couldn't defend himself.
It was amazing.
And that's how he got the nomination.
And by the way, Cuomo, who ran a terrible campaign with the worst people running it, and it was just a disaster.
He didn't appear anywhere.
He didn't go anywhere.
He didn't do interviews.
He didn't do anything.
Also, he forgot to do any opposition research on the guy.
So this stuff is coming out slowly now, but it should have come out in the primary.
There's all sorts of stuff here.
He went to visit a mosque not long ago where the Imam called for the total annihilation of Israel.
I mean, stuff like that.
I mean, all his old tweets, there's one where there's a beautiful statue of Columbus here in Columbus Circle, Christopher Columbus, and he's giving the finger to the statue.
And the other thing, and this is where Cuomo's stunk, he couldn't get any of this across.
This guy is running by proposing all these, you know, socialist communists.
We'll have free buses.
We'll have free this.
First of all, the mayor has no authority to make the buses free.
The buses are part of what they call the MTA.
That's the state transportation.
It's the governor.
She controls all of that.
He has no authority to make the buses free.
Then he said, I'll tax the rich.
I'll tax the white neighborhoods.
He actually said that.
I'll tax the one person.
As mayor, you have no authority to tax anybody.
He can't impose taxes.
And then he talked about government-run supermarkets.
By the way, when he started that, he lost a lot of immigrants, especially from Russia or Cuba, because they grew up seeing what government-run supermarkets look like.
It's empty shelves.
And when they, you know, cereal in America is three aisles of every kind of cereal in the world.
Government supermarket, it's just plain white boxes that say cereal on them.
Literally, that's what you'll see in a Cuban supermarket.
And first of all, they've tried this.
You know, every really left-wing, crazy university, like in California, Vermont, they do what they call it a cooperative.
Like it's a school store where you can buy groceries and things.
It's the worst.
It never works.
Nobody's ever been able to make it work.
Now, he's not going to be mayor because a couple of things could happen.
Linda doesn't agree with this.
But Eric Adams will become the big opponent.
He's the current mayor.
Now you have, this is how bad Andrew Cuomo is.
He's still hanging in there.
He's going to have to go and he will go.
But he said, Eric Adams is unelectable.
Adams points out, wait a minute, I'm the sitting mayor.
I was elected.
How could you say he can't get elected mayor?
He is mayor.
He got elected mayor.
And then here's what will happen.
Donald Trump is really fired up about this momdami.
He is going to wipe this guy out.
He is going to stop him.
He hasn't figured out how, but you know what he does when he starts branding somebody, low energy Jeb, sleepy Joe.
He'll start the branding and then he'll start.
I know he's without revealing too much, I know he's meeting with a lot of people in New York and talking on the phone, figuring out how to stop this guy.
Leave it to Trump.
He'll figure out how to stop this guy.
He was asked about Mom Dami.
This is a man who's not very capable, in my opinion, other than he's got a good line of bull and he's convinced them to go with him.
Now, as you know, Cuomo, who does have capability, is running, but he got knocked out.
And now they're running as you have Eric Adams, the current mayor.
You have Cuomo, and you have Curtis Liwa.
And Curtis runs every four years.
He seems to be a fixture on the running scale.
But, you know, I'm not getting involved.
But I can tell you this.
I used to say we will not ever be a socialist country, right?
Well, I'll say it again.
We're not going to have if a communist gets elected to run New York, it can never be the same, but we have tremendous power at the White House to run places when we have to.
Yeah, no, he said, I'm not getting involved.
I can tell you for a fact, he's already involved.
He's talking to people.
Meetings are going to be taking place.
He'll figure out how to stop this guy.
Now, if you think about it, he wants to turn a socialist.
This guy, his family fled Uganda to come here and make a fortune.
And so now this guy wants to turn us into Uganda, a messed up socialist sort of a place.
So the whole thing is insane.
Trump has even, he said it somewhere today, that if this guy wins and goes crazy, that he thinks the federal government can take control of New York, take federal control of New York.
Now, I don't know if you can really do that.
You'd have to be in court a million times.
But I'm just telling you, he will figure out how to stop this guy.
Now, here's the way they can stop him.
And Adams has already talked about this.
That imbalance, so many registered Democrats, not as many Republicans.
They'd have to go out and register 1 million people, Republicans who haven't been voting.
They'll have to go out and register him.
It can be done.
Adams, I don't think, can pull that off, but Trump can.
And the billionaires will all put in the money for that effort, that campaign.
Linda's looking at me like she's agreeing.
I do agree with you.
I'm just curious, to your point, why we're not talking about his mother, who made a gajillion dollars working in Hollywood, his father, who is an elitist professor.
And then in addition, he's been asked several times about whether or not he supports the global intifada, how he feels about Sharia Law.
He is unable to answer either one of those questions directly with disdain and saying, I do not.
Well, I was trying to list his bad points.
It's only a three-hour show.
I can't list them all.
How much time does one person have?
I've forgotten it.
He really is a very, there's two problems here.
My mother always told me this, and I agree with her.
We are doomed to repeat history if we are not students of it.
And I would say 98% of these lunatics that are following him could not tell you what a socialist is, could not tell you what communist is, have no idea what Marxism means, do not know their history about Russia, about Cuba, about other Eastern European nations like Georgia, like the Czech Republic, what they've gone through.
They just don't know, and nor do they care.
No, they don't care because you can point out to them.
Now, two things have caused this.
One, you're right.
It's all young people.
That's how he won the primary.
A couple hundred thousand young people who never voted, never normally vote, came out and put them over the top.
And also, this is 15 years, 20 years of the universities being crazy left-wing communist indoctrination camps where they were taught all this crap.
Well, I'll tell you what, they got another thing coming to them if they think for one second we're going to return to the anti-Semitic status that we had during World War II.
Because people like me, I'm telling you right now, Shixes, we're standing up.
We're not taking it.
No, we're not taking it.
I guarantee you, Donald Trump will figure out how to stop this guy.
And I think the other thing we have to maybe think about, constitutional amendment, raise the voting age to 30.
You're 20.
Your little life, pay a little taxes.
You're 26.
Get a mortgage.
You're insane.
Yeah, the biggest problem they have is if their Snapchat's working and if their vape is full.
I mean, it's ridiculous.
Yeah, so they voted for that.
Anyway, we'll take some calls in a minute.
800-941-Sean is the number.
Mark Simone here.
Follow me on Instagram, by the way.
It's Mark Simone, NYC at Instagram.
Don't forget to go to Hannity.com, watch Hannity tonight on the Fox News channel, 9 p.m. in a moment while the mainstream media is asleep at the wheel bringing you the news no one else can Sean Hannity.
Hey, it's Mark Simone here for Sean Hannity.
We'll take some calls.
800-941-Sean is the number.
Let's go to Tom in California.
Tom, welcome to the Sean Hannity Show.
Yes, sir.
I got a way we can get them term limits, and I guarantee the Democrats will vote for them.
Yeah, we got to get rid of these congressmen, these senators that served 20, 30 years.
How do we get rid of them?
Well, the ones that are in there right now, this is why he said, well, the ones that are in there right now, just let them grandfather themselves in, and then they'll be making a rule that everybody else has to follow that they don't.
So they'll have to vote for it.
They love it.
But then you got 50 senators grandfathered in.
How do you get rid of them?
Well, if we don't do it, then they're just going to stay there.
They'll just keep doing the same thing over and over again.
But if we do do it, then eventually they'll have to go.
Well, okay.
Yeah, but you're right.
That's about the only way they'll agree to vote for it.
You got to get the Congress to vote for the term limits, but you're right.
And then we've got to wait for each one of them to die, I guess.
Because some of them are not going to be a long wait.
Or they can be primaried out, or they can lose.
And then they won't be.
No, that's true.
That's true.
Yeah.
Okay.
Good idea, Tom.
That might actually work.
We're trying for one more call.
Let's go to Tom in Florida.
Tom in Tallahassee, how you doing?
Hey, well, when it comes to this Epstein conspiracy, remember one thing.
The mouth can say anything, but the wallet speaks loud and true.
And Jeffrey Epstein was a major contributor to one party and one party only, the Democratic Party.
Hundreds of thousands of dollars going all the way back to the 1990s.
Donald Trump has no financial reason.
Certainly Pam Bunny has no financial reason to cover up for him.
Trump's accused of taking one flight to his, what is it, casino up in Atlantic.
But Bill Clinton, Rich.
Yeah, Trump took one flight on the Epstein plane, but he had his wife and his daughter with him at the time.
And it was just a ride to Florida, which was absolutely nothing.
But you're right.
That's a very good point.
Although there's a lot of donors, you know, the Epstein list, it's not a list, but the guys were all Upper East Side, Palm Beach, many of them donors.
I remember there was a party going on.
I was at when Epstein was arrested on the runway, and all of a sudden the news spread through the room.
There were about 12 guys who went flying out of that room, ran home, I think to wipe out their computer or erase stuff or whatever.
Anyway, we'll get to Mom Dami and more in the next hour.
Mark Simone here for Sean Hannity.
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