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Aug. 14, 2025 - Sean Hannity Show
31:02
Trump vs. Putin - August 13th, Hour 2
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This is an iHeart Podcast.
I'm going in to speak to Vladimir Putin.
And I'm going to be telling him, you got to end this war.
You got to end it.
I like Conway.
She's a friend of mine, but she was her core consultants.
You know, we're heavily influenced by very wealthy people.
Listen, you may say to yourself, well, those aren't the rules.
There are no refs in this game.
Fourth the rules.
We are going to win whatever it takes.
Freedom is back in style.
Welcome to Revolution.
The new Sean Hannity show.
Behind-the-scenes information on breaking news and more bold, inspired solutions for America.
All right, Leonard Skinner, it's Simple Man.
That can only mean one thing on this radio program, and that is all things self-proclaimed simple man.
That is all things Bill O'Reilly, all things O'Reilly at billo'reilly.com.
Mr. O'Reilly, sir, I'm headed to Alaska.
I've been to 49 out of the 50 states.
The state that I've been most obsessed with is the state of Alaska.
And after the trip that I will be, we'll be broadcasting from Alaska tomorrow and on Friday, and we'll have the first interview with President Trump post the Putin Summit.
But I'm obsessed with shows like Light Below Zero, Deadliest Catch.
Do you like those shows?
I love those shows.
I don't have a lot of time to watch those shows, Hannity.
I'm too busy thinking.
You're too busy.
Okay, you really have never seen the show Deadliest Catch.
It's amazing.
I've been to Alaska three times.
Watch out for bears.
That's number one.
They just pop up.
And here's the now.
When you get there, fall will be underway.
So you'll get some foliage.
And if you have time, I know you're going to be very busy, but it's worth a quick trip out to Denali, to Mount McKinley, just to take a look.
But anyway, Alaska is a fabulous state.
Bill, I'm broadcasting.
I'm doing radio and TV.
And you think I'm going to have time to go on a sightseeing tour?
But let's move on to the bigger issue here.
I want to get to, in a second, how you will define success, because I don't think there is any issue of success or failure for President Trump.
And I'll explain that too in a second.
But I love the fact that unlike most politicians where they wring their hands and they have their political advisors and they're calculating the upside and the downside before they dare do anything big, President Trump just dives right in and he's not thinking about the consequences of the outcome.
You and I both know we know this man really well.
And if this summit isn't going well, he said he'd know in two minutes if he thinks he can get a deal and also warned that Russia will face very severe consequences if Putin continues the Ukrainian war after this summit.
But here's a guy, and he's only been back in the second term, India, Pakistan, Israel, Iran, Rwanda, the Congo, Serbia, Kosovo, Thailand, Cambodia, Armenia, Azerbaijan, Egypt, Ethiopia, Ethiopia.
And he put himself in the middle of all of those peace deals.
And you got to give the guy credit for trying and putting himself out there.
Most politicians won't do that.
Okay, a number of things.
I think there...
Well, you agree with that, right?
I mean, what other politician won't wring their hands, ask their advisors?
He just dives in.
He doesn't care.
What I wrote today in the message of the day on billo riley.com is he's the hardest working president in modern times.
And there's no doubt about that.
But I know a couple of things about this Alaska chat.
So, number one, you can't threaten Putin.
And Trump knows that.
You can't go in and say, look, Vlad, if you don't stop murdering women and children, we're going to break your economy.
You can't put it that way.
All right.
What you have to do is, number one, say, do you think we can reach some common ground here?
And let Putin then spell out before Trump spells out.
Putin goes first.
What he believes is possible.
Okay.
This is what I will do or I could do.
And remember, Putin lives in a bubble.
He's not in a country or a sphere that has any freedom at all.
He has no dissent.
He has no press that's going to backbite him.
He has none of that.
He just lives isolated and he does what he wants.
But at this point, he knows that he has embarrassed President Trump.
Putin has embarrassed Trump because Trump gave him so much benefit of the doubt when he came into office in January.
Now, that is the key to Putin's reality check.
The most important thing for Donald Trump in his life is his presidential legacy.
And that means he wants to accomplish things to help the country.
If he goes to a meeting and Putin embarrasses him, boy, oh boy, it's going to be bad for Putin.
I'll tell you what, it's going to really be bad.
And I know that for a fact.
But you can't say that to the man.
These are very delicate negotiations.
And I expect that Putin and Trump will go into a room alone.
I think you know this, but when Trump is with Putin, Putin speaks English.
Putin doesn't speak English in public, but he does speak English to Trump.
And I think there will be that room encounter.
And he's going to go, look, we got to stop this.
And you have to cooperate in this.
We're not going to try to embarrass you.
That's important for Putin, but you're not going to embarrass us.
And so it's up to you.
You're the only guy who can stop it.
And that's true.
Putin is the only man who can stop this slaughter.
So I don't think there's any risk for Trump going into this.
And let me tell you why.
Going into the summit, the president has done three very critical things that I think brought Putin to the table finally.
He tried the nice route, and it's not his fault that Putin has no problem, no conscience, and no soul, and he's willing to kill innocent men, women, and children.
This is Joe Biden's war.
President Trump's trying to clean up his mess.
So let's lay that foundation.
Well, what the president very cleverly has done, he put a 50% tariff on India if they import any Russian oil.
Now, for the whole economy of Russia, it is based on energy.
He also made a trade deal with the European Union, and the way that Putin has been able to fund his war machine is, again, selling energy to Western Europe.
And as part of that deal, Western Europe now is going to spend about a trillion dollars buying our energy, not Putin's energy.
That got his attention.
Also, President Trump said, okay, you're not stopping.
You won't stop.
Now he's giving Ukraine an opportunity to buy our weapons.
Unlike Joe Biden, he's not giving Ukraine our weapons.
He doesn't believe in no for he believes in no forever wars.
Those three things, to me, got Putin's attention because now the funding of his war machine is in jeopardy.
And I think in terms of the question is going to be whether or not Putin, his territorial demands are so excessive that there's no opportunity to be a deal, or if he's unwilling to give Ukraine the ability to defend itself in the future from a possible third invasion by Vladimir.
That's my take.
Well, I disagree with you that there isn't a downside for Trump.
There is.
If he comes back and Putin, because you can't control what Putin's going to say, and goes back to Moscow and starts to diminish Trump, which I don't think is going to happen, but it's possible, and starts to strut around going, hey, he's not going to tell me what to do.
That'll hurt Trump.
So Trump's got to have plan B in his pocket very specifically.
Now, you left out a very important equation here, and that's China.
China, I believe, is talking back channels to President Trump.
I know that to be true.
And that's why there is an extension.
The tariffs that were supposed to kick in today did not kick in.
All right.
He gave China 90 more days, and there'll be a deal with China before that time.
But China can wreck Vladimir Putin, can destroy him.
And I think, but I can't say for sure, that Trump has already negotiated a Putin factor with Beijing.
He's going to drop that at some point privately to Vlad because China's future.
Is that how you refer to Vladimir, your buddy Vlad?
You call him Vlad?
Are you on a first-name basis with him?
Well, he should fear me.
I hope you read the chapter in Confronting Evil that comes out September 9th because the whole world's going to know what this guy is all about.
He's been KGB evil his entire life.
Yeah, but people don't know the extent of it.
And they don't know why.
And they don't know how he thinks.
I do.
But I know that Vlad is a chess player.
And he's got to know that Beijing and Trump are talking.
And they're talking about him.
That is the most important thing.
And that will not be made public.
You can ask Trump about it, but I don't think he's going to give you very much on it.
There's a lot of things that go on behind the scenes that nobody ever knows about in a situation like this, Bill.
There's no doubt about it.
And you say there's a huge downside.
The only huge downside will be the chatter of the punditry class and the legacy media mob that want him to fail.
You know, I just mentioned a lot of success that he's had just in the second term alone.
He played a big role in India and Pakistan reaching a peace.
He played a big role in Israel and Iran stopping their conflict in 12 days.
He played a big role in Rwanda and the Congo, Serbia, Kosovo, Thailand, Cambodia, Armenia, Azerbaijan.
Now, if you want to talk about the ability to embarrass people, Donald Trump can stand up in two minutes after that summit starts and say, you know, basically F you Lad, your buddy, and walk out of that room and say, you can't do a deal with him.
He wants to be Hitler.
And if he wants to be Hitler, we're going to arm the Ukrainians and we're going to arm Western Europe.
And if it's game on, I don't care what he does anymore.
So he has power also.
They both have power going into this.
It's in everyone's best interest.
I don't think either one are going to, you know, saber rattle to that level.
They're both nuclear powers.
They don't want to go there.
That gives Vladimir strength.
The dumbest thing Ukraine ever did was under Bill Clinton give up their nuclear weapons, in my view.
None of this would have happened.
So regardless, I don't see the downside the way you do, except for the chatter among the punditry class and the legacy media.
However, whatever happens on Friday, it either goes great or it's not so great or it's going to be laying the foundation for the future because eventually I think we get there.
Okay.
I mean, I'm not going to dispute eventually because that's likely to happen.
But the downside for Trump is that he's going to have to articulate for Europe and for Ukraine and for China exactly what happened in this meeting.
Yes, you're right.
So how would you define success?
Because the president even said, and he had a meeting today with Western Europe leaders, NATO leaders, and Ukraine.
How would you, because I know how this deal is going to go down.
Ukraine is going to have to cede land, especially like the Donbass region.
It was 70, 80% Russian national anyway.
Land will be swapped.
And what Ukraine needs and wants the most is going to be security guarantees.
The best way to achieve that is for the U.S. to continue to sell them weapons and the Western Europeans to do as well and to also reinforce their armies inside of Ukraine to prevent a future attack.
That's how I would define a deal.
Okay.
So the definition of success is there's a ceasefire for 30 days.
And then at the end of that period of time, there's another meeting, and Ukraine is in that meeting along with representatives from the EU and Vlad, bad, evil Vlad.
He's back.
But the 30 days.
I don't think the two can be in a room together.
I don't.
All right.
Well, whatever they can work out, one's in one room, the other's in the other room.
That's fine with me.
But ceasefire for 30 days gives President Trump a big win.
Saves thousands of lives as well.
Okay?
I think that's doable.
But you have to understand that, and this is really, now I'm going to go off the topic a little bit, but did you see me take apart John Bolton the other night?
Did you see that?
I did not see it, but I'm glad you did because John Bolton's an idiot.
Okay, you need to watch that.
Okay, I took him apart and then I said, you got to beef with me.
You come right on and you face me.
Of course, he can't.
Did he attack?
He attacked you?
No, he attacked Trump.
He's undermining.
He's got Trump derangement syndrome.
He's lost it.
He's not.
There is an important story here.
It's not just him.
It's corporations like Comcast that are undermining the security of the United States.
It's not opinion anymore.
It's not left-wing, right-wing anymore.
Comcast, one of the most powerful companies in this country, is undermining American and world security.
That's what they're doing.
And it's clear that they're doing it because they hate Trump.
How are they doing it?
But we only have 15 seconds.
We'll make it quick.
MSNBC is a now propaganda.
Anything Trump does is bad.
Everything and anything is bad.
You're just figuring this out.
We've known this forever.
No, but it's at the highest level now.
You're talking.
Oh, yeah, they've absolutely lost it.
Listen, I do pray for peace for the sake of the world.
I don't want to see more pictures of dead children.
I've seen them.
I hope we get there.
All things simple, man.
Bill O'Reilly of BillO'Reilly.com.
Thank you, my friend.
800-941, Sean is a number.
You want to be a part of the program.
All right, let's get to our busy phones.
Taz Cogo Radio San Diego next, Sean Hannity Show.
Hi.
Yeah, hi, John.
God bless you for what you do for the country.
Yeah, you're awesome.
All perspective in the world, Sean.
Thank you.
I'm honored to do it.
I'm glad you called.
Love our friends in San Diego also.
Just sorry you have to pay all the taxes you're paying.
Indeed, indeed.
So I just wanted to touch on, you know, the Putin summit on Friday.
I'm just hoping that somebody is aware that, you know, and they're making that differentiation between Putin the president and Putin the judoka.
I mean, he's the third highest ranked judo exponent in the world.
And as a result, their ideology, the way they think, you know, the psyche is totally different.
And I'm just hoping there's somebody on our side that's looking at that because, yeah, yeah, it's going to be a bad outcome unless they fully understand how a judoka manipulates their opponent's massive momentum against them.
Like, they do not.
I think there's no doubt Donald Trump knows exactly who he's dealing with.
He will get a full if he has, I'm sure he's already had it.
He has a full rundown of an assessment of who Vladimir Putin is.
You know, look, I'll say what he won't say because he's trying to achieve something here.
And if he were to follow in the Biden path and call him every name in the book, then he's not going to get the guy to sit down and at least discuss the possibility of a ceasefire/slash eventual peace.
There's not going to be any perfect solution.
I blame Biden for all of it.
I blame Obama for all of it.
But with that said, it doesn't mean that he shouldn't try.
But what is it in particular?
Now, I do an eclectic blend of mixed martial arts.
I am not, by any stretch of the imagination, a mixed martial artist.
I don't consider myself one.
I have skill.
I have a lot of skill.
I've been training for 15 years, but it's a blend of Krab Maga, Kempo, Japanese jujitsu, situational street fighting, boxing, sticks, blades, firearms, et cetera.
And I do a lot of core building and I do lift.
I don't lift heavy, heavy weights.
I did for a while.
I don't do that anymore.
But a lot of push-ups, sit-ups, a lot of, you know, try to stay in shape the best I can.
Hey, Sean, you know, those days are long gone for me, but I do keep my head of ground in the judoka community and at a very high level.
And let's just put it this way.
It was absolutely no surprise.
It was actually predicted, you know, days before the Trump and Putin meeting, and this is on both of them, that there would be an almost immediate escalation, and they absolutely nailed it.
Now, this is the third one.
What's interesting and what's kind of I'm puzzled at is why Putin agreed to meet on American soil.
But I know the backstory.
I think it was given to me off the record.
There were other sites that were mentioned, and then Alaska came up out of the blue.
He agreed to it.
Here we go.
We're off to Anchorage.
And it's better than a couple of the other locations that were mentioned.
I'll put it that way.
But what is it about Judo and the level of skill that he has that you think Trump needs to be dialed into?
Explain it.
Well, it's the, again, it's the whole ideology of massive momentum.
So it's such a calculated.
I think Bill O'Brien touched on this when he mentioned the game of chess because the game of chess and high-level judo is, there's a lot of similarities.
But I believe that everything is already in play.
Putin fully understands the outcome.
Now, why he's making those escalation decisions globally is beyond me.
But I can tell you why he's saber-rattling in the lead up to it, saying, I can keep this going as long as I want.
There's a reason that Trump this week put a 50% tariff on India if they import Russian oil.
There's a reason that Trump made as part of the European trade deal a trillion dollars in energy that they're going to be buying for us.
There's a reason that President Trump has said we're going to sell all the weapons that Ukraine wants.
All of this is posturing on both sides leading up to this.
Yes, and that's obviously where my concern is because we saw two escalations conventionally.
I don't think Putin's got much more than that in the conventional realm.
But the judoka community, and they were right on the last two times, they're very fearful that this might be the third escalation to the unthinkable.
So yeah, I'm just hoping that whoever's there on Friday fully understands the mind of the judoka, how they think.
Very few people win against them.
So then never underestimate Trump.
He's certainly a unique man that's done everything.
When you really think about it, Trump has the least to lose in this whole summit.
Europe has a lot to lose.
Ukraine has a lot to lose.
Trump, as far as he's concerned, the only thing he's risking here is political capital.
But he's doing it because it defines who he is.
But he really does it.
The only thing that's going to happen, worst case scenario, all right, let's say Putin tries to embarrass him on the world stage.
Trump will come back twice as hard, 10 times as hard, and embarrass him.
And Trump will load up Ukraine with more weapons than they've ever had in their life, and they're going to pay for them.
He doesn't want that.
I don't want that.
If Putin has any sense, I mean, their economy is in shambles.
And they've won a certain amount of territory, most of which they really said they wanted in the beginning.
He probably will end up with a territorial swap on a lot of that.
And hopefully the Ukrainians will get what they need, which is assurances and an ability to defend themselves to prevent a third invasion.
I mean, so, but Europe has the most to lose here.
Ukraine has the most to lose here.
You know, why isn't Macron?
Why isn't, why aren't any of these Western European countries, why aren't they risking their political capital?
Europe hasn't stepped up to help Ukraine anywhere near the level that they should.
And it's Trump that now has caused them to contribute more than double what they were contributing to NATO for their own national security.
And it's Trump that's building out the next generation of weaponry.
I think that there's it's a moment in time where you hope that common sense prevails and maybe Putin has paid a big enough price.
Maybe Putin sees that the funding of his war machine will come to a screeching halt.
This is where Donald Trump has a card.
That's why I'm not worried about the media or Democrats in the short term saying Donald Trump failed because they don't want him to succeed.
And I think in the long term, it works out.
But I can't guarantee the short term.
Going to be fascinating.
Honestly, I can't wait until Friday.
Can't wait to talk to the president.
I'll sit down with him immediately after the summit ends.
And I'm looking forward to having that conversation.
We'll air it on Fox.
Anyway, I hope it all works out.
But you do raise good points.
There is a martial artist mindset that does lead to mental toughness and mental strength.
And, you know, for example, you have to have a certain mindset to do what I've been doing for 15 years, which is sit there on pain day and get the living crap beat out of you and allow my sensei to punch me as hard as he can in the stomach until I drop or to put out your arms and let him pound onto my arms to calcify my arms with the thinking that you can't win a fight if you can't take a punch.
Doesn't mean somebody can't knock you out in one punch.
They can.
You got to be careful.
That I have some skill.
Anyway, but you respect your opponent.
That's a big part of it.
800-941-Sean Busyphones.
Janet is in the great state of Georgia.
Janet, how are you?
Glad you called.
Hi, Sean.
Thank you for taking my call.
Yes, I was stationed up in Alaska, and you will absolutely love it.
It's a different world up there.
Go see some of it if you can.
Go on the Kenai Peninsula.
Go fishing at the Russian River.
Go to Homer and get King Crab.
I mean, it's an awesome state.
It really is.
I mean, between you and O'Reilly, I think you guys think I'm going to have all this spare time to just, you know, go out and see the sights in Alaska.
I wish I would.
I imagine it's going to be different.
Like a lot of American cities that I've been to, I mean, they're very similar.
I mean, most cities have a McDonald's.
Most cities have a Burger King.
Most cities have a Wendy's.
Most cities have a Kentucky Fried Chicken.
Most cities have a strip mall.
Most, you know, there's a lot of similarities in a lot of places you go.
There are some differences.
For example, Waffle House and Cracker Barrel in the South on the West Coast of the U.S., although it's coming to Nashville and Franklin County in Tennessee.
You have In-N-Out Burger.
You have, you know, my favorite Crown burger in Utah.
There's certain things about certain cities that stand out, but I got to imagine, am I wrong in thinking Anchorage is going to be very different?
Anchorage is different.
You know, it has all the normal stuff like the lower 48, but it's a whole different breed of people and town.
It's really cool.
Go out and talk to the people and see everything.
The sky's going to be different.
Everything's going to be different for you.
It's a whole different ballgame.
Well, I'm excited about going.
I'm obsessed with Alaska, and it's the only state I haven't been to.
I've been to all the other 49 states, and I've been obsessed with it.
You ever watch the show Life Below Zero?
Do you ever watch Deadliest Catch?
Yes.
Yeah, I've watched those.
But on the Kenai Peninsula, there's the Russian River, and it has the salmon fishing, and fishermen will be on one side and bears on the other side.
It is so cool to fish on the Russian River.
You know, it's a whole different ballgame.
I mean, there's Homer.
You can go on the Spitz and get a king crab.
And just, I mean, it's really cool.
You need to take a vacation up there and see Portage Glacier.
You know what?
I think it's a great idea.
I'd love to take my family and my kids.
And I think it would be just a different life.
This is probably the time of year to go, too.
It's going to be about 63 degrees.
I checked the weather yesterday.
Right.
Yeah, it's going to be chillier than Florida, that's for sure.
Well, that part is my blood is definitely thin.
My tolerance for cold air is not what it used to be.
Yeah, you're going to be a little cold.
Just watch out for the mosquitoes and the bugs and stuff because right now in August, they're usually very prevalent up there.
And, you know, if you see a moose coming, get out of its way because they'll want to.
I appreciate the advice.
If I see a moose coming, I'm getting out of the way.
Sarah Palin, when she wrote her book, and I think I did the first interview with her, and she tells this story about how she went moose hunting with her dad before school.
And her dad, I think, made her, if I remember the story correctly, don't hold me to this, that I think that her dad made her take a bite of the eyeball or something crazy or take out the eyeball of the moose.
I'm not sure.
I don't know.
But yeah.
Are you going to get to see President Trump or anybody while you're up there?
As soon as the summit is over and they finish, I guess he'll probably do a press conference.
Then he's going to sit down with me and we're going to do the first interview with him.
Oh, awesome.
Tell him hi and tell him America's behind him and we're behind you too.
I appreciate it.
You know what?
He knows it and I will tell him.
And I give him so much credit, as I've been saying all day, because most politicians are not going to be willing to take the risks that he's taking.
And he is, I mean, O'Reilly's not wrong in the sense that, yeah, I mean, the media would be unmerciful if something good doesn't come out of it.
But that's not the definition of success for me.
And I don't think it would be the definition of success for him.
But most politicians, they'd wring their hands, they'd have their advisors, they'd talk about all the possible downsides and then probably err on the side of caution and never even attempt or try.
And with all the success he's had with peace deals up to this point, I think that it's definitely a risk worth taking.
It's sad to see dead children.
There's not going to be a perfect agreement in this, but if the hostilities come to an end and an agreement is eventually made, I think that's progress.
Certainly, there's no leader on the world stage besides him that could even attempt this.
So I like that he's doing it.
Yeah, I agree with you.
All right, Janet.
Love our friends in Georgia.
I lived there for four wonderful years.
Thank you.
All right, quick break.
We'll come right back.
When we come back, we'll check in with Congressman Byron Donalds.
We'll also get your calls in as well.
Here's our toll-free number.
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