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Sept. 6, 2025 - Sean Hannity Show
50:15
Department of War - September 5th, Hour 2

Sean carries President Trump's announcement that he's bringing back the Department of War!  A bold leader who inspires a nation to action!See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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All right, thank you, Scott Shannon.
Hour two, Sean Hannity Show, 800-941-Sean, our number.
If you want to be a part of this program, we're awaiting a announcement from the president.
We expect he will rename the Department of Defense to the Department of War, as we have been telling you.
Also, this just basically crossing the wire.
At the bottom of this half hour, this could get very, very interesting.
It has been announced that Eric Adams will make an important campaign announcement.
What?
Mayor Adams will make an important announcement regarding the future of his campaign.
Let me interpret for you.
Sounds to me like he's getting out.
That's what it sounds like to me.
Now, there's been a lot about this.
I mentioned earlier in the program that if you look at the front cover of the New York Post today, it's very clear that Donald Trump certainly has weighed in on the issue.
It actually is, it's kind of a riff off an old New York Post cover that said, Ford to New York City, dropped dead.
New York City wanted to be financially bailed out.
Trump to city, drop out, tells GOP donor, he's talking about businessman John Castamatidis.
He owns a huge grocery chain all throughout New York City.
He's a billionaire.
Anyway, apparently Trump told Castamatidis and the Post got word from him that Trump called him and told him to help winnow the field to one candidate that can be Marxist Kami Mamdani.
And I think he thinks that one person would be Andrew Cuomo.
Andrew Cuomo seems to have gotten a ceiling in the polls.
There have been polls that have been broken out if the Eric Adams were to get out.
Eric Adams has been in single digits.
I mean, the three candidates that have been getting, you know, in order, it's been Momdani, Cuomo, and Curtis Sleewa has been coming up, you know, pretty dramatically.
Sleewa quoted in today's New York Post as saying he won't leave.
And he said the same to Charlie Gasperino, who confirmed that in his column in the New York Post as well today.
But anyway, we'll find out what Adams' announcement is.
My guess is he's getting out.
Andrew Cuomo clearly is not.
He was, according to the New York Post, huddling earlier this morning with the Reverend Al Sharpton.
And anyway, Cuomo requested the Regency Hotel breakfast sit-down, asked Sharpton to have an open mind if the race gets winnowed down to a one-on-one matchup between the ex-governor and socialist Democratic mayoral nominee.
I'll be the first to tell you it would be in New York City's much better interest to have Sleewa first, Andrew Cuomo second, not Mondami.
But, you know, we'll see what happens.
Anyway, I'm very impressed with Momdani, but I've known Andrew for 40 years.
Sounds like Reverend Al might be open to endorsing the former governor, but we'll see what happens.
Anyway, we do have another story that I think is a bombshell report.
New memos that have been discovered by justthenews.com.
Our friend John Solomon, founder, editor-in-chief, and chief investigative reporter.
And the headline is, Biden AIDS believed that he should sign pardons by hand.
He outsourced the approval to vice president at the time, Kamala Harris.
Now, this is on the heels of John Solomon's breaking news report.
Well, first, the New York Times had reported that he only set up criteria and standards for pardons and commutations, not actually signing off specifically on each one, which questions the validity of all of this.
And then in a previous report, John Solomon pointing out that there's more evidence that he knew absolutely nothing about, and he joins us now.
Sir, how are you?
I'm doing well.
If you were in New York City, I'm guessing you'd vote for Kami Mamdani.
I'm just guessing.
You know, ever since I became a reporter, I've never voted because I've made the decision that vote is an ultimate expression of opinion.
So I won't vote until I hang up my spurs as a journalist.
But I know a lot of people in New York are worried about what this outcome of this race will be.
And I think we have to trust the good people of New York.
They'll make the right decision after they have all the facts.
I don't trust the people in New York City to make the right decision.
I lived in New York.
For whatever reason, every single poll shows that Momdani has legs and that he's doing better.
Now, there's a difference between voting in a general election and a primary.
I'm sure that big business in New York is going to probably dump billions of dollars in the hopes of supporting if they can make this a one-on-one race or a three-person race.
They're hoping that they can get anybody but Mamdani.
But I don't know.
He's getting money from all over the country.
Every radical, extreme socialist in America is all on board for Kami Mamdani.
Yeah, listen, I think what you see here is that this liberal urban base that the far left part of the Democratic Party now is owned by their anti-capitalist.
They're anti-American.
They're anti-Semitic often.
And they are anti-capitalism.
There's just not any doubt about it.
Now, it's a small segment of America.
It's centralized in these big blue cities favored by liberals.
And this is going to be this shining moment where America is going to look and say what New York did.
Let's suppose they do elect Mondani.
What New York did, do we really want that to be the face of capitalism of the greatest city in America?
And I think it's going to be a big debate.
And one of the things Democrats have to be worried about, and by the way, they are worried about people I'm talking with on the Democratic Party side, that Momdani becomes a boomerang that really hurts the Democratic Party in the 2026 elections because he'll be doing things that Democrats in moderate districts that will decide control of Congress aren't going to be happy about.
Listen, it's in America's best interest and in New York's best interest, especially New York City's best interest, not to have this guy elected.
There's no doubt about it.
But if you're asking me politically, who benefits the most?
Republicans, because he will be the face of the radicalized Democratic Party.
I don't know if you noticed the AOC, and I know we're a little off topic here.
We'll get to your report in a second.
But AOC taking on Schumer and Hakeem Jeffries, calling them out for not supporting Momdani.
I think that may be the first salvo in an attempt to unseat Chucky Schumer.
If there is a primary between AOC and Chuck, I'd take AOC in that bet every day.
Yeah, no, listen, I think that's right.
Listen, whether you agree with the mindset of these new young liberal candidates like an AOC or a Mondani or others that are coming up, squad, they are dynamic characters.
They're smart.
They're magnetic.
They have lots of energy and charisma.
And what has to be done is you have to look, if you're a Republican or you're someone who cares about the country, you have to look beyond that charisma.
You have to get voters to look and say, don't be distracted by their stardom.
Look at what they're talking about doing.
And I think that that's going to be a really big challenge for Republicans in 26 and 28, because this young base of the party has a lot of dynamic characters who, on the face of it, are lovable when you first hear them talking like, oh, that's an impressive person.
But then when you start to study what it is they want to do to America, that is the point where most Americans go, well, wait a second.
All right, do over.
And I think that that's going to be a great opportunity for the Republican Party to get beyond the personality of some of these players and drill down to some of the anti-American, anti-capitalist concepts that these Democrats are now espousing.
Let's get to your bombshell report.
Biden AIDS believed he should sign pardons by hand.
He outsourced the approval to the VP on the heels of your previous report that two days before he left office, the second in charge of the DOJ warned him that he had to individually sign off on everything.
And we believe that didn't happen, which means that all these pardons and commutations may not be valid.
Yeah, that's, I believe, what is going to be the substance of a Trump White House Counsel Office report that is likely to be transmitted to the Justice Department soon, saying that based on the review of documents that are at the National Archives, there are real questions about the legality of some of the or the enforcement of some of the commutations and clemency that Joe Biden issued at the end of his presidency.
Now, what we do know for sure, no matter where the Justice Department comes down on this in the future, at the beginning of Joe Biden's president, his staff secretary wrote a memo saying it is our belief that legally President Biden must affix his own personal handwritten signature on things that are clemency letters, basically pardon letters.
That set the standard.
There wasn't any doubt in the Biden White House what the standard should be.
Four years later, as Joe Biden is mumbling and bubbling his way through the end of his presidency, not having cabinet meetings anymore, really disengaged in many ways, you see a very different practice in the Biden White House.
And these are Biden-AIDS' own memos preserved at the National Archives.
They say, hey, Joe Biden told Kamala Harris, you make the decisions for me.
Now, if that turns out to be true, if those memos are an accurate representation of what happened, Vice President Kamala Harris does not have the commutation power under the Constitution, nor is the commutation power transferable.
Joe Biden can't give it to someone else.
Only he can do it.
So under the standards set for him, he needed to personally sign it.
A lot of them are signed with an auto pen.
And under the standards of the Constitution, he couldn't outsource it to someone.
There look to be some very serious issues.
And I think these new documents, I wouldn't be surprised if you see James Comer in Congress very soon subpoena Kamala Harris and demand to know, did Joe Biden outsource pardon decisions to you?
This could become a really big deal this fall.
I think it's going to be a massive deal.
Great reporting, as always.
JusttheNews.com, founder, editor-in-chief, chief investigative reporter.
We'll have more on this tonight.
John will be joining us on Hannity 9 Eastern on the Fox News channel.
John, thank you.
For stations along the Sean Hannity Show Radio Network, we are likely going to go right through the next break and continue coverage.
The president now in the Oval Office, about to announce that the Department of Defense is being renamed to the Department of War.
Let's go to the Oval Office.
More about it than I can.
Well, it's difficult for Americans to buy a home, particularly after the last four years, sir.
But with the President's signature today, we're going to make it easy for people to buy a home without getting hassled.
For years, their private personal information has been bought and sold in the open market, resulting in them getting innumerable phone calls and text messages.
But with your signature today, we're going to put an end to that so that when Americans try to realize the American dream of owning a home, they're able to do so without being harassed.
Good job.
Good.
It's a great honor, John.
Okay.
There it is.
And that's going to help a lot of the homeowners of our great country.
John, want to hold that?
Sure.
Thank you, John, very much.
Thank you very much.
Thank you very much.
Okay, Will, you go ahead.
I'd like to leave you with this gift from a constituent back in Tennessee.
Oh, I could use that at night.
It's an American flag.
That's very nice.
I like it.
Thank you, Mr. President.
Thank you very much.
That's very nice.
Next, we have a number of executive orders for your attention, sir.
From 1789 until 1947, our nation won some of its greatest military victories under the direction of a Secretary of War operating within a Department of War.
Today, with this executive order, you will authorize the current Secretary of Defense and the current Department of Defense to once again embrace this great lineage and once again be named the Secretary of War and the Department of War.
So this is something we thought long and hard about.
We've been talking about it for months, Pete and I.
And Dan, Dan came into the fall, by the way, a great general.
He headed up the, I wouldn't call it an attack.
I'd almost call that one, maybe even more than an attack, what he did with Iran.
You saw the success of that operation.
It was perfect.
In fact, we have, this was said to me by the great company that makes that particular B-2 bomber, and it was flawless.
It was actually flawless.
They flew for 37 hours back and forth, and there wasn't a bolt that was out of condition.
There wasn't an engine failure.
There was no problem.
It was a perfect attack, and it knocked out any possible nuclear capability for Iran, which nobody wanted to see, and we weren't going to put up with.
So great job, Dan.
And we've been talking about this Department of War.
So we won the First World War.
We won the Second World War.
We won everything before that and in between.
And then we decided to go woke and we changed the name to Department of Defense.
So we're going Department of War.
And I'd like to ask our Secretary of War to say a few words.
Pete Heck said, I think it's a much more appropriate name, especially in light of where the world is right now.
We have the strongest military in the world.
We have the greatest equipment in the world.
We have the greatest manufacturers of equipment by far.
There's nobody to even compete.
And you see that with this and so many other things.
The Patriots are the best.
Every element of the military, we make the best by far.
So, Pete, I'd like to ask you and maybe Dan Raising to say a few words, please.
Mr. President, thank you.
After winning a war for independence in 1789, George Washington established the War Department, and Henry Knox was his first Secretary of War.
And this country won every major war after that, to include World War I and World War II.
Total victory, Mr. President, as you said.
Then 150 years after that, we changed the name after World War II from the Department of War to Department of Defense in 1947.
And as you pointed out, Mr. President, we haven't won a major war since.
And that's not to disparage our warfighters, whether it's the Korean War or the Vietnam War or our generation of Iraq and Afghanistan.
To recognize that this name change is not just about renaming, it's about restoring.
Words matter.
It's restoring, as you've guided us to, Mr. President, restoring the warrior ethos, restoring victory and clarity as an end state, restoring intentionality to the use of force.
So, at your direction, Mr. President, the War Department is going to fight decisively, not endless conflicts.
It's going to fight to win, not to lose.
We're going to go on offense, not just on defense.
Maximum lethality, not tepid legality.
Violent effect, not politically correct.
We're going to raise up warriors, not just defenders.
So, this War Department, Mr. President, just like America is back.
Thank you for your leadership and your clarity.
We're going to set the tone for this country.
America first, peace through strength, brought to you by the War Department.
We're back.
Thank you very much.
Very well stated.
And really, it has to do with winning.
We should have won every war.
We could have won every war, but we really chose to be very politically correct or wokey.
And we just fight forever.
And then we, you know, win, we wouldn't lose, really.
We just fight to sort of tie.
We never wanted to win.
Wars that every one of them we would have won easily with just a couple of little changes or a couple of little edicts.
You know, I was told that ISIS would take five years to win.
And Dan Kaine, when I told him how long it would take, he said, I think about four weeks.
I said, what do you mean four weeks?
I was told five years by the people in Washington.
You know who they were?
Five years.
I said, you can't do it in four weeks.
I actually flew to Iraq to meet with him, and I met him at a big air base.
And remember that famous day, right?
It turned out to be a famous day for our country because you're now the head of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, which is the biggest deal.
And he is because he did things that everybody said couldn't do.
So they said it was going to be five years, and he knocked him out in about four weeks total, 100%.
We took over, and ISIS was gone.
And pretty amazing.
But we never fought to win, and now we, if we have to fight at all, you know, we solved seven wars.
We have the one that I thought was going to be probably one of the easier ones, and that's with President Putin and Ukraine.
And that turned out to be one that's a little bit more difficult.
But the seven are done.
They were supposed to be much more difficult to solve.
I solved every one of them.
And we're going to get the other one done too.
But it turned out to be a little bit more difficult than I thought.
And it'll get done or they'll be held to pay.
But because they're losing six to seven, it used to be five.
I used to tell you five.
Now it's almost seven.
I guess seven thousand people last week.
7,813 people, young soldiers, died, Russian and Ukrainian, not American soldiers.
But it's a shame.
It's just, you know, they're human lives, and I want to see it stop.
But General Kaine's done a fantastic job.
And again, defeated ISIS, which they said would take a long time, and it didn't take a long time at all, and did other things that people said really couldn't happen.
We have the greatest equipment in the world.
We have the greatest soldiers in the world.
Dan, say a few words, please.
Yes, sir.
Thank you, Mr. President.
It's a true honor for me today to represent the incredible men and women of America's joint force.
Today and every day, the 2.8 million service men and women stand ready to fulfill our sacred duty to protect America at home and abroad.
As the President said, America's military is the single most powerful fighting force in the world.
The mission you and the Secretary have given us is clear and unambiguous: to deliver peace through overwhelming strength.
And I remind everyone that the U.S. military can reach any adversary at the time and place of our choosing.
Service to this nation is an incredible gift, and we're grateful and honored every day to do so.
Thank you, Mr. President.
Thank you.
It's an honor to sign this.
And we will do that right now.
All right, the president announcing the Department of Defense now going back to its original name up until, what, 1947, I believe they said.
The Department of War and everything in between.
We're going to continue with the President.
He's now taking questions.
We are also awaiting a press conference and a campaign announcement from New York City Mayor Eric Adams.
I have to imagine he's thinking about getting out of the race.
We'll cover that as well for stations along the Sean Hannity Show Radio Network.
We will continue our coverage through the bottom-of-the-hour break.
Some of you along our station network may be taking breaks.
We will continue our coverage.
That's a big one.
It's a big one, Mr. President.
Do you have any questions on this subject?
We're going to be discussing the G-20 in a couple of minutes, but yes, please.
And a question for you and the newly minted Secretary of War.
What message does this send to our enemies, to our allies, to the American people?
And again, what gave you the idea for this rebrand at this moment?
I think it sends a message of victory.
I think it sends really a message of strength.
We're very strong.
We're much stronger than anyone would really understand.
And again, you know, having the great equipment, we have just so much better.
You look at all of the just any of it, submarines, as an example.
We're 20 years ahead of anyone else.
Nobody even compares.
And I let a lot of this happen in my first term.
You know, we totally rebuilt our military.
Then, of course, you had that catastrophe in Afghanistan where they gave up a lot of the equipment, but a relatively small amount, but a lot.
It was a lot in Afghanistan.
I think it was the most, General, I'd say it was the most embarrassing day in the history of our country, the way that happened.
The way they went to the wrong airport, they should have gone to Bagram, not the local little airport with no security, with tight quarters, etc.
You know what happened.
I think it was the most embarrassing moment in the history of our country, frankly.
That was under the Biden administration.
That was terrible.
And we were going to be leaving, but we were leaving with strength and dignity.
We were going to keep Bagram because Bagram's one hour away from where China makes its nuclear weapons.
We're going to have that all to ourselves, a big, beautiful place built many years ago for money that today would be the equivalent of many, many billions of dollars.
You couldn't build it.
The longest runways, the most powerful runways in terms of load capacity.
And we just walked away from it.
So stupid.
And they were fools.
The people were fools.
No, we have the strongest military, and I think that indicates we have the strongest military.
And you know, we had it, and we won World War I, we won World War II, we won everything before, and as I said, we won everything in between.
And we were very strong, but we never fought to win.
We just didn't fight to win.
We didn't lose anything, but we didn't fight to win.
We could have won every one of those wars quickly, but they went a route that I think was probably politically correct, but not correct for our nation.
So I think the Department of War sends a signal.
Yeah, please.
Mr. You alluded to this a little while ago, but you said that this rename is a good reflection of where the world is at right now.
How do you square naming it to the Department of War when you've been pursuing peace in so many different parts of the world?
Well, I think I've gotten peace because of the fact that we're strong.
If we weren't strong, those seven deals I told you about, the seven wars, a majority of them wouldn't have happened.
They happened for two reasons, trade and our strength.
Those are the two reasons.
And probably strength may be more important than trade.
So if we, I was very proud of all those wars.
Those were wars that could not be settled, and I settled all of them.
And we'll get the other one settled also.
That'll get settled.
But without the strength, we wouldn't have settled any of them.
Yeah, please.
Mr. President, is it your expectation that Congress will codify this name change in the law?
I don't know, but we're going to find out, but I'm not sure they have to.
We're signing an executive order today, but we're going to find out.
I'm going to see.
If they do, we're going with it, and we're going with it very strongly.
There's a question as to whether or not they have to, but we'll put it before Congress.
Do you know how much this rebrand will actually cost?
And are there any concerns about the Pentagon's mission of actually cutting back on some data?
Not a lot.
We know how to rebrand without having to go crazy.
We don't have to recarve a mountain or anything.
We're going to be doing it not in the most expensive.
We're going to start changing the stationery as it comes due and lots of things like that.
We're not going to be doing things like have been done in the past when they change the name of forts that shouldn't have been changed.
Those names of the forts should not have been changed, at least for the most part.
And as you know, many of them have been changed back already.
At the request of the communities, every one of those communities said we want our name back, like Fort Bragg, as an example.
The people in that community wanted that name back.
They refused to call it anything else but Fort Bragg.
So we're not going to be spending very much money on that.
When you spoke with the Europeans in Zelensky earlier this week, did you preview this for them and did you say what security guarantees they might be involved with?
This is nothing to do with anybody but the United States of America, the people of America.
This is who I talked to about changing a name.
This is a very important change because it's an attitude and we know how to win.
We've been winning and we're going to win like you've never seen.
When these factories start to open up that are being built all over the country, you're going to see things happen in this country that nobody expects.
We have over $17 trillion in investment coming into the country.
We never did anything even remotely close to that.
No other country has either, by the way.
So you're going to see things that are pretty amazing.
But it's really about winning.
And what about the security guarantees aspect of that with Ukraine, sir?
Well, we'll work that out.
We'll help them.
Look, we want to save a lot of lives, so we'll do something with that.
I think people expect that we'll help them.
Europe will be first in by far.
And they want to be first in.
They want to see it end.
Europe wants to see it end.
And it'll end.
It'll end all of a sudden.
It's going to come together.
You watch.
Yeah, did you want something ready?
Right here.
Yeah, behind you, please.
Yes.
Yes, sir.
You have to be shy about taking bold, decisive, offensive action to protect American values.
Strikes in Iran, the strikes this past Tuesday had the positively ID trend day Iraq.
Marco terrorists, is that going to be a critical function of the Department of War movement?
It depends on the individual instance.
We don't want drugs coming in from Venezuela or anybody else or any place else.
We'll be tough on that.
We don't want human trafficking.
We don't want to see people coming in where they open their prisons from all over the world and they dump their prisoners into our country, which is what they did in the Biden administration, where they took insane asylums and places that held people that were seriously mentally ill, mentally incompetent, mentally dangerous, and they dumped those people into our country and we're trying to get them out now.
What they've done, what the Democrats and Biden have done to this country, will go down in infamy.
What they have done to our country, and especially that, you know, they created the worst inflation we've ever had.
That's nothing compared to what they did with the people in our country right now.
And we're getting them out.
And it's not easy when you have the liberal judges destroying our country.
But we've won them all.
We've won it all.
Ultimately, won it all.
Hard process.
It should be easy.
And we know who it is.
We know exactly who we're looking for.
We had 11,000 murderers dropped into our country.
We've gotten a lot of them out.
Or in some cases, they're so dangerous we were afraid to get them out because they'd come back in.
But for the last 120 days, zero people came in.
Can you imagine?
This is me speaking, but these are figures developed by, they say a pretty liberal group of people.
They admit that zero people came into our country.
Think of that.
A year ago, it was millions of people were coming in.
Millions.
They were coming in.
You could look at them and you could say, big trouble.
And that's what we have in our country.
But we're getting them out.
And despite that, we're doing really well.
Yeah.
Please.
Well, the recruitment is the most exciting thing.
So when I was campaigning for the office, numbers were coming out that the recruitment numbers, Jenny, you can speak to it better than anybody, the recruitment into the military, all branches of the military, and police and firemen and everything else.
Anything having to do with like a public service, the numbers were horrible, record-setting bad.
And now they're record-setting good.
We're setting every record every month for recruitment.
We're packed in the Army, Navy, Air Force, Marines, Coast Guard.
My beautiful air, I love Space Command.
I love Space.
I see Space Command, but Space Force has been, we've got a waiting list of people wanting to go in.
A year ago, especially a year and a half ago, you know, when I took the lead in the polls, which was very early, it really helped with the recruiting.
And when I won from November 5th on, it's been amazing.
And over the last four or five months, it's been, we're just packed.
It was very hard to get police officers.
Now, the departments are loaded up.
Everyone wants to be a policeman or a woman.
So it's been a great thing.
Jennifer, do you want to talk about that?
Sure, as you said, serving our nation is an incredible gift that we give, and the reward on that gift pays back exponentially year over year.
And I think the young people of America are seeing the importance of service.
And whether it's in any of our armed services or in local police, fire and rescue, service is an important thing that I personally encourage.
And I know everyone else in government service sees that same reward.
And, Peter, recruitment.
I was down at Fort Benning, the newly properly renamed Fort Benning yesterday, watching Army basic training.
And they're so full they can't barely handle the throughput.
It is truly historic across all the services, as you said.
It's been a surge into the, I was going to say the Defense Department, but I will say the War Department.
And you might almost call it a vibe shift, an attitude shift, a feeling that the country is back, that service is back.
And there were military families last year, Mr. President, that said, I don't know if I can recommend, I mean, I wrote a book on this.
I don't know if I can recommend service to my son or daughter, given what's been done to our military.
You heard it over and over and over again.
And I hear from those same military families right now, sir, and they're saying, I recommend to my kids that they go into this department, this Pentagon, under this commander-in-chief, who they know you'll have their back and they want to serve.
So it is historic, and it's the biggest reflection of how motivated Americans are by your leadership, sir.
You know, really, it's nothing more than spirit, love for the country.
I guess the sprit de corps, as they say, you have more of that than we've had, maybe ever, frankly.
But to see it turn over a period of less than a year, I would say.
But to see it turn, nobody wanted to go into the military.
Now everybody wants to go into the military.
Jennifer, you want to?
Yeah, there's some new reporting on North Korea and this Navy SEAL incident in 2019.
Can you say if the administration has engaged with North Korea on that incident since it happened recently?
And then can you share some reflections?
I don't know anything about it.
No.
I'd have to.
I could look, but I know nothing about it.
Can you confirm that it happened?
I don't know anything about it.
I'm hearing it now for the first time.
Okay, great.
And then on the Hyundai incident in Georgia with the arrests of some workers, construction workers at the plant.
Have you heard any feedback from Hyundai?
I just heard about that a little while before the news conference, and I would say that they were illegal aliens, and ICE was just doing its job.
But I know nothing about the instance.
It happened a little while ago.
There has been some pushback on that, though, from South Korea already.
And of course, you know, they pledged to invest $150 billion in the U.S. and they were just here last week.
Are you concerned about that?
Well, and they have the right to sell cars and things in our country.
It's not like a one-sided deal.
Are you concerned at all about your immigration agenda potentially clashing with these economic goals?
Well, we want to get along with other countries, and we want to have a great stable workforce.
And we had, as I understand it, a lot of illegal aliens.
Some not the best of people, but we had a lot of illegal aliens working there.
So, you know, look, they're doing their job.
That's what they have to do.
These are people that came through with Biden.
They came through illegally.
They came into our country.
So we have to do our job.
The now Department of War has been involved in the crime cleanup in D.C., you've tasked Congress with proposing and passing a crime bill.
What are some things that you would really like to see codified in that crime bill?
Well, I think one of the things is the cashless bail that's killing it.
When that came out, originally, when that came out the first time, that's when you saw the real big crime start to happen.
Cashless bail.
What a disaster that is.
You murder somebody, you don't have to put up bail, and you go out in the street and you murder somebody else.
That's what's happened.
It happens so often.
And that's one of the things.
And other things you're reading about, you know, it's a standard, but just a certain toughness.
I have to say, one of the elements of fascination for people over the last period of time has been what's happened to D.C.
So we've gone from one of the most dangerous cities in our country to a, what they call a safe city.
It's a totally safe city.
In fact, I set up dinner in Washington, D.C. next week.
I wouldn't have done that, to be honest.
I would have had an obligation not to do it before I came into office or even at the very beginning when things were so corrupt and so dangerous out on the streets.
So Washington, D.C. has had virtually no crime.
We even have a mayor that's admitting to it, and she's a liberal Democrat, in all fairness.
She's a person that hasn't gotten exactly along with Republicans over the years.
And she said she's never seen anything like it.
So Washington, D.C. is a totally safe city.
We have virtually no crime.
It's gone from the most unsafe city in the United States, almost, just about, to one of the safest cities, maybe the safest city in the United States.
That's a tremendous compliment to our military, what we did.
The National Guard's done a fantastic job.
Yeah, please.
Mr. Breslau, can I ask about Florida?
Florida House Speaker Daniel Perez was at the White House yesterday as part of the leadership summit.
Yes.
We understand you met with him separately.
Mr. President, what did you talk about?
And also, did you explore him running for Florida from UNL?
I didn't.
We didn't talk about that, but he's done a fantastic job.
He's respected all over the country, really.
He's a leader.
And he's done just a fantastic job.
We didn't discuss anything having to do with his future.
I'm sure he'd be very good at that.
My second question, Alavader Alcatraz, sticking with Florida.
A major ruling appeals court blocked a federal judge's order to close it, and it can remain open for now.
Your reactions.
I think they've done a fantastic job in building it, the governor and everybody else that's been involved.
It's an incredible facility.
It's housing people for usually a very short period of time before they get brought back to their countries.
As you know, we focus on criminals before we focus on anybody else.
And we're taking thousands and thousands of criminals out every month out of our country, some of them murderers.
And I think Florida's done a great job by building it.
And whether it's alligator Alcatraz or anything else you want to call it, I was there.
I visited with the governor, with other people.
I guess Nikki was there.
Tom Holman's been there a lot.
A lot of people have been there.
It's an amazing facility for what it is.
It's not a hotel.
It's not supposed to be a hotel, but they've done a great job with it.
I'm very happy with the judge's decision.
You also mentioned Venezuela.
I'm going to ask one more follow-up question on that.
On the U.S. strike of the Oatto Venezuelan drug cartel, the Maduro regime is pushing back today.
In fact, they say the U.S. sees regime change through military threat, your reaction to those words, and also, would you like to see regime change in Venezuela?
Well, we're not talking about that, but we are talking about the fact that you had an election which was a very strange election, to put it mildly.
I'm being very nice when I say that.
I can only say that billions of dollars of drugs are pouring into our country from Venezuela.
The prisons of Venezuela have been opened up to our country.
They've taken their prisoners, the worst prisoners, murderers, Trendiaragua, the worst prisoners that you can ever imagine, are now happily living in the United States of America.
Now, many of them we've gotten out.
It's not easy to get them out because of the liberal system that we're working with in many cases, not in all cases, but millions and millions of dollars and billions of dollars of drugs are pouring out of Venezuela and other countries.
Look, China, what they're doing with fentanyl is a terrible thing.
It comes through Canada and it comes through Mexico, but a lot of it's coming through Venezuela.
Venezuela has been a very bad actor, and we understand that.
And when you look at that boat, you look at the, you see the bags of whatever it is that those bags were, you know what those bags represent?
Hundreds of thousands of dead people in the United States.
That's what they represent.
Yeah, please.
Mr. President, your reaction to the jobs report this morning?
Well, I'm going to talk about that in a minute.
We have our great people here, so I'll talk that in a minute.
Let's talk about this.
We'll give a couple of the, because these two people want to get to work on the Department of War, so let's keep them first.
Mr. President, the DOJ is reportedly considering a ban on transgender people owning guns after the Minneapolis shooting.
Do you think we should be able to do that?
Are we talking in the military?
Okay, I thought you were talking about in the military.
I've already done it.
I'll refer to that then differently because it's not a military question.
I'll be able to pass on that very nicely unless you'd like to talk about it.
He doesn't want any part of that question.
Yes, please.
Mr. President, who do you blame for losing India to China?
And you posted on yesterday in the morning you didn't put that out.
I don't think we have.
You know, I've been very disappointed that India would be buying so much oil, as you know, from Russia.
And I let them know that.
We put a very big tariff on India, 50% tariff, very high tariff.
I get along very well with Modi, as you know.
He's great.
He was here a couple of months ago.
In fact, we went to the Rose Garden and the grass was so soaking wet.
It was such a terrible place to have a news conference.
I said, well, let's use a beautiful white stone emblematic of the White House.
And it's been very well received.
But we had a news conference on the grass.
It was my last news conference I had on the grass because everybody sunk in.
You probably sunk in.
Every reporter out there, they ruined their shoes.
We made that change.
It's been a really well-received change.
Yeah, please go.
I'm going to wheel it.
You've said.
Manifestations along the Sean Hannity Show Radio Network will continue with the President and his impromptu press conference at the Oval Office after renaming the Department of Defense now officially as the Department of War, going back to its original name up until 1947.
We are also awaiting a campaign announcement from Gracie Manchin in New York City from the current mayor of New York City, Eric Adams.
I would anticipate that he is likely getting out of the race, probably to assist maybe Andrew Cuomo in a quest to isolate Bomdani and consolidate the vote, the anti-Mondami vote.
We'll see what happens.
That's straight ahead, but we'll continue our coverage along the Sean Hannity Show radio network through the top of the hour.
President of Puerto Rico, you said they were festivals in the New Caribbean.
You're concerned about drugs being illegally set into the air.
How do you describe this buildup, this situation?
Well, I just think it's strong.
We're strong on drugs.
We don't want drugs killing our people.
I believe we lost 300,000.
You know, they always say 95,000, 100,000.
I believe they've been saying that for 20 years.
I believe we lost 300,000 people last year.
I know families that lost their son.
Those families will never be the same.
I know a family lost a daughter, a beautiful daughter.
In fact, it was like she took something that she thought was like a minor deal, and it turned out to be riddled out with fentanyl the size of the head of a pin, and you're dead.
And no, we're stopping the drugs.
We're going to save a lot of people.
Look, whether it's 100,000, but it's not.
It's 300,000, 350,000 people died last year from drugs.
And we're not going to let that happen to this country.
Think of that.
Think if you're in a war and you lose 300,000.
We'll lose 600,000 in the pretty much between Gettysburg and all of that, the Civil War.
We lost, what, 600,000?
So we're losing half of that every year to drugs.
We're not going to do it.
We're not going to allow it to happen.
You think of the wars.
If we lost 600,000 people in a war, but we lose that every two years, more than that.
So it's 300,000 to 350,000 people.
And when I see boats coming in, like loaded up the other day with all sorts of drugs, probably fentanyl mostly, but all sorts of drugs, we're going to take them out.
And if people want to have fun going on the high seas or the low seas, they're going to be in trouble.
I will tell you, boat traffic is substantially down in the area that happened.
And they called it the runway.
It's a runway to the runway to the United States.
And boat traffic is very substantially down on the runway.
You can imagine why.
I think anybody that saw that is going to say, I'll take a pass.
I don't even know about fishermen.
They may say, I'm not getting on the boat.
I'm not going to take a chance.
What happens if Venezuela flies jets over U.S. naval vessels again?
Well, I would say they're going to be in trouble.
We'll let them know about that.
We heard that happen, but it wasn't really over, not like they described.
But I would say, General, if they do that, you have a choice of doing anything you want.
If they fly in a dangerous position, I would say that you or your captains can make the decision as to what they want to do.
All right?
Sure.
How close do you have to get?
We have one husband.
You said they didn't go over.
Say it.
How close did they get?
You said the planes didn't go.
Well, I don't want to talk about that.
But if they do put us in a dangerous position, they'll be shut down.
Thank you very much, everybody.
So we're going to now cover the G20, and I'm going to let these people go back to the Department of War and figure out how to maintain peace.
Okay?
Thanks, Mr. Speaker.
Thank you very much.
Thank you very much.
Congratulations, General.
Thank you, sir.
Great job.
Sir, just before G20, we do have one more EO for you today.
And I should also say that the Department of War EO that you signed was actually your 200th EO since you came back into office on January 20th.
That's more than Joe Biden did in his entire term in office, more than Obama did in either of his two terms in office.
So it's a momentous accomplishment and congratulations.
That's good, but Biden never signed one.
No, you've done everyone up in here.
They've been signed by the autobiography, right, didn't he?
So we really beat him by much more than you think.
This, the 201st executive order, sir, this relates to hostages and wrongfully detained Americans.
This provides a new legal mechanism to declare foreign countries to be countries that engage in those sorts of practices and gives your administration powerful tools to get American hostages out.
This has been a focus of your administration this time around.
Adam Bowler's here, and he's done incredible work already.
This will give him even more.
I think it's great.
And Adam's amazing.
So, Adam, do you want to describe how many hostages we've gotten out together, you and I, and you and a couple of other people that we know, and me and a couple of other people that you don't know, but we've gotten a lot of hostages.
Do you want to describe it?
Mr. President, you brought back 72 hostages since her term.
If we compare that to President Biden, he has gotten 20 taken.
So he is negative.
20 taken.
20 taken.
They don't take our people so often.
So, Mr. President, when we spoke, you said that that was a primary focus, and I'll tell you the job is easy because of you.
And we paid nothing, too.
We pay nothing?
They pay $6 billion.
They always paid $6 billion for five people.
$6 billion.
It was just a number I kept hearing.
Not only that, $6 billion plus we'd get like one person, and they'd get six.
They got one, the Prince of Doom, they call him.
He was the number one arms merchant anywhere in the world ever.
And they got him out.
And on top of that, we paid money.
So, no, we don't do that.
You know, once you pay money, and then a lot of people start disappearing.
They start grabbing reporters, too.
They think the reporter is going to get a lot of money.
And to me, they would.
You'll be well taken care of.
I better stress that because otherwise we have headlines.
He said this, so he said that.
No, I'm not smiling about it.
But they would.
They'd be grabbing reporters.
They'd be grabbing everybody.
And especially when you pay the kind of money that Biden and Obama, they used to pay money that was crazy.
We don't pay, and if you don't pay, they find it to be not a lucrative business anymore.
That's fantastic.
Would you like to say something?
Sir, it's really Speeha Special Envoy Bola.
It's Rick Grinnell, it's Steve Witcoff who brought Americans home.
But with this EO you are signing today, you are drawing a line in the sand that U.S. citizens will not be used as bargaining chips.
And it provides your Secretary of State, Marco Rubio, the same tool set to punish states who take our citizens wrongfully the same way that we can punish those who sponsor terrorists.
This is a very significant EO you are signing today, sir.
Thank you, Sebastian.
Very good.
You're doing a great job, too.
And this is your director for hostage affairs at the NSC.
So Julie was seminal as well to all of this.
I heard you're doing unbelievable.
Would you like to say something?
Absolutely.
It's an outstanding EO, absolutely unprecedented action against those foreign adversaries who would take our people.
They now know they are on notice and it's not acceptable.
And if you take our people now, you will pay.
You know, Adam gave up a job where he was making tremendous amounts of money.
Big, big stuff.
Top of the line, Wall Street.
And he wanted to do this.
He wanted to do hostages.
I offered him other jobs, too, very big jobs.
He said, I was shocked, actually.
He didn't want them.
He wanted to do hostage negotiation.
And pretty amazing.
Thank you very much.
Appreciate it.
Appreciate it.
Thank you all.
Do you have any questions for them on this very important subject?
I think it shows a lot of your leadership as far as fighting for Americans and fighting for humans.
And to think that Joe Biden went to negative territory.
Oh, he went way negative.
Way negative.
And you're actually making progress on this.
I think this does send a message to the world that we don't negotiate.
We're going to stay strong in that type of what they call business.
One little anecdote that may be of interest.
We were told by numerous families who had missing loved ones during the Biden administration that this building, Biden's National Security Council, told those families not to talk about their missing loved ones, to be quiet, not to create any pressure on Biden and on Drake Sullivan, the key propagator of the Russia hoax.
This administration has met with those families on a weekly basis.
People like Adam, yourself, sir, your envoys are doing everything to get every single American home.
Not to tell them not to talk about their loved ones, but bring them home.
Well, you know, I can tell you one story that was amazing a few weeks ago.
Very little written about it, but there should have been.
But it was a very nice gesture.
The head of Belarus, who's a very respected man, strong, strong person, strong leader.
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