On this episode, Sean Hannity dives deep into the looming "Schumer shutdown" and the federal government's fight against narco-terrorists, while challenging the runaway spending in Washington. Senator Rand Paul joins to discuss his principled stand for balanced budgets and his "penny plan," contrasting his approach with both Democrat and Republican proposals that add trillions to the national debt. Sean frames the debate as a critical choice between fiscal sanity and government bloat, emphasizing Paul's unique voice for restraint and constitutional governance. Their candid exchange on foreign policy, especially executive war powers, highlights real divides within the GOP and why strong dissenting voices in D.C. still matter for America's future.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
All right, news roundup, information overload hour.
Here's our toll-free number.
It's 800-941.
Sean, if you want to be a part of the program, a lot to talk about the Schumer shutdown, the president taking on these narco-terrorists.
What should the role of the federal government be in all of this?
We have an update on the issue and the battle and the conflict out of Russia with Ukraine.
The president canceling this upcoming meeting with Putin because he won't agree to a ceasefire, which I think is the right message to send.
We still have a lot.
You know, Hamas is not abiding by the agreement, which, as the president said, he's going to give the green light for Israel to go in there and pretty much annihilate Gaza and Hamas if they won't do it themselves.
This is sort of their last chance.
We welcome back to the program Senator Rampaul of Kentucky.
The president's pretty pissed off at you now.
I wouldn't go that far.
We've had some spats in the past.
I'd go that far.
He's pretty pissed off.
I've known the president for over a decade.
I've played golf with him dozens of times.
We still have our moments.
But I think at the same time, people in America, particularly Republicans, still want there to be a voice for balanced budgets, less spending, fiscal responsibility.
And right now I'm it.
And so I think we'll continue to have that debate.
But I still support the president on quite a bit of the agenda, lower taxes.
I love what he's done with the border.
So there's a lot of agreement as well.
So I find myself in an enviable position.
I'm going to have to defend something that I don't fully support.
And in principle, I agree with you on.
And, you know, I don't like government shutdowns in the sense that, all right, we know what happens with them.
I'm not as afraid of them.
I'm consistent.
When Democrats shut the government down, Republicans shut the government down.
I'm like, it's not the end of the world.
Everyone's going to get a free vacation, come back, and get back pay.
That's how it always ends one way or the other.
And that's how this one is going to end.
It's just now a matter of time.
I think they had to get through their no-kings weekend.
Democrats were not going to piss off their base in the lead up to these protests this weekend.
So you will not vote to reopen the government with a continuing resolution.
Now, the problem, it gets more nuanced and complicated, as you know.
Republicans don't have 60 votes.
The Democrats, with the exception of maybe John Fetterman and one or two others, there are not enough votes.
The Democrats are holding the country hostage by demanding $1.5 trillion in new spending.
That includes billions for hundreds of billions for monies for illegal immigrants' health care.
That includes continuing the Obamacare subsidies that Joe Biden put in place during COVID, which was supposed to be temporary.
That includes funding NPR and PBS and DEI initiatives around the globe.
That's insane.
That's never going to happen.
And I think it's only a matter of time until they cave.
Then they go to a continuing resolution, which is where negotiation begins.
But Republicans don't have the votes to do what you want.
Your caucus doesn't have them.
And I'm just looking at it from a realistic standpoint.
And I know you're taking a principle stand.
I admire principled stands.
I just, we're never going to get to where you want unless we take first steps, in my view.
Well, the debate is over what the spending levels should be.
So the Republican continuing resolution would add about $2 trillion in debt over the next year.
The Democrat plan would add over $3 trillion.
So I'm opposed to the Democrat plan, but I'm also opposed to the Republican plan because they both add $2 trillion to $3 trillion in debt.
Now, there is another alternative.
I put it forward.
It's a penny plan, and it would balance the budget over five years.
Each year, the deficit would be less.
Now, if I'm gone and if everybody marches lockstep and everybody just does what they're told, then there'll be no penny plan.
There'll be no voice for the penny plan.
There'll be no voice for balanced budgets.
I don't have the votes now, but if you ask the people across the country, the people listening to this program, are they with me that we should be balancing the budget and lessening the debt?
Or should I vote for the Biden spending levels from last year?
See, the Republican CR is a continuation of the Biden spending levels from December of last year.
The irony is every Democrat up here actually voted for these spending levels last December.
A lot of conservatives voted against them.
Now the roles have switched for the exact same spending numbers.
You've got Republicans voting for the Biden spending levels and Democrats voting against them.
And I'm the only voice up here talking about that the debt, instead of being $2 trillion, should be less.
And people say, well, I want to be clear.
And you've been on this program, and we've discussed the penny plan many, many times over the years.
I've been a longtime advocate of the penny plan since Connie Mack introduced it many years ago in the House.
Maybe we're up to the two-cent plan or the nickel plan.
I don't know.
But to me, there are two things that are going on simultaneously that give me hope.
One is the president has commitments of $17 trillion in new manufacturing monies for semiconductors, automobiles, and pharmaceuticals.
Also, a new deal he made on rare earths with Australia, $8.5 trillion, I think, is going to be critical for national defense.
The president also has opened up energy dominance, and I think that's going to lead to an enormous impact on the economy over time.
When Reagan dropped the tax rates from 70 to 28 percent, we doubled revenues to the government and it led to 21 million new jobs, longest period of peacetime economic growth.
The problem back then is the problem we face today.
Congress spent a $1.25 for every new dollar he brought in.
He doubled revenues.
So I'm with you on the penny plan.
I just, you know, at this time, with the Senate configured as it is, I don't see any Democrats supporting it.
Yeah, they don't.
And what's going to happen, though, is in the end, the big government, Democrats, and Republicans will join hands.
This is what always happens.
The government will open up.
It won't stay closed forever.
It's going to open in the next week or two, and the Democrats will join the Republicans.
But there still has to be a voice.
Historically, there's been a voice, more than one person.
Right now, it's me.
Historically, there have been other conservatives that did not vote to raise the debt ceiling, that did not vote for Republican plans to raise the debt.
Now they're all moving in lockstep, and I'm ostracized.
You know, I'm the one that's catching the flack.
But if I'm not here, there is no voice left.
If I'm not.
Have you had this conversation directly with the president?
I have, and sometimes it goes well, and sometimes not so well.
It depends on his mood.
But I think he fundamentally has agreements, and he's just been told by, you know, the people influencing him the most now are actually the establishment Republicans, not the conservative Republicans.
He's influenced by the leadership, and he's influenced by, let's just get rid of these things.
We can't do this.
We don't have the votes, so we're going to do that.
And some of that is the expediency of the day.
But I don't think we have fundamental disagreements.
That's why I downplay how much he may or may not be angry with me because, like I say, I've known him for a decade, and there are many things I like about him.
I'm still the voice that liked the president who didn't like the Iraq war, the president who didn't like Obama's Libyan war.
And so I continue to be that voice.
But if I'm quiet or if I have just become a rubber stamp, there's nobody from the less interventionist wing on foreign policy.
He's only hearing the interveners.
He's only hearing the bombers.
And so there has to be people who stand up for things.
It doesn't mean we always have to agree.
I mean, look, you and I have had a lot of great conversations.
We don't always agree, but you're always respectful to me, and I like coming on.
And the thing is, is we don't have to agree on everything.
Well, let me, there's only two ways to fix the deficit.
Reduce spending, okay, which is like, you know, an exorcism for D.C., and increase revenues.
I'm pretty confident that the president's tax cuts, his energy policies, the $17 trillion in new investments in the country, which is unprecedented.
We've never had that, is going to increase revenues to the government.
So that side of the equation is done.
Reducing spending is always going to be the hard part.
And these guys think they get their power by increasing spending.
Let me ask you on the foreign policy front, were you against taking out Iran's nuclear sites?
I think that when we have an action of war against another country, it should be voted on by Congress first.
Any kind of offensive action, I think the founders intended that Congress would vote on these.
It's what the Constitution mandates.
So I'm not for having unchecked executive power.
Now, whether that was a good thing or a bad thing is another discussion.
whether or not I would have voted for it.
I think that there were reasons to think that it would succeed, and it did.
But as far as whether or not— But the president does have 60 days to act without going to Congress if he's going to engage in military action, enumerated powers in the Constitution as commander-in-chief.
You don't disagree with that.
Well, the Constitution says that to declare war, an offensive action that is planned has to be voted on by Congress first.
Well, if you go back historically, no president has ever been abiding by any of these resolutions.
And I think as commander-in-chief, do you not agree that the Iranians with nuclear weapons is an existential threat to the entire world?
Because it was obvious to me, and a window of opportunity opened up.
And I believe it's fully constitutional the president had the authority to do so.
Talking about the War Powers Act, to be specific.
The debate with the founders was pretty explicit from Hamilton all the way over to Jefferson.
They disagreed on a lot of things.
They disagreed on the extent of the central government, but they all agreed that the president shouldn't declare war or have offensive actions without the approval of Congress.
You know, there have been times we have voted to go to war, and we've been much more united as a country.
World War II was one.
It was a defensive war, fought against people who attacked us.
After 9-11, we were attacked as well.
We voted in Congress.
The vote in Congress, I think, was 434 to 1 on the House side, and I think 99 to 0 on the Senate side.
I think we can, people think, oh, it's impractical to vote in Congress.
It actually brings us together.
It also means that all the representatives bear responsibility.
If we don't all vote for it and we go to war on a declaration by the president, then what happens is I think people can nitpick and backstab and do this and that, and we become less united as a country.
If we all vote for it, then it's the responsibility of everybody who voted for it.
Well, to me, this was the problem with the lead up to the Iraq conflict, in my view, is we were telegraphing, telegraphing, telegraphing, and it allowed, I believe at the time, you know, everybody to prepare and then put our troops in greater harm's way.
Look, I like the Trump doctrine.
I believe he's right with no forever wars.
I think the military actions that he's taken, whether his defeat of the caliphate was critical for world security and for American security, taking out Solemani, the world's worst terrorist, was the right thing to do.
The same with Baghdadi.
I thought at the time it was appropriate to drop the mother of all bombs on Afghanistan.
And I think, again, in the case of taking out the Iranian nuclear sites, we had a window of opportunity.
And a president as commander-in-chief, I believe, has the authority.
Past presidents seem to have agreed with me.
No president has agreed with your interpretation of what our framers' founders said.
And it's been in dispute since, you know, for decades and decades now, that if you have a window of opportunity to make the world a safer place in the long run, and he did it without creating a forever war, I kind of like the Trump doctrine.
And I would think that part of it you like too.
I think most presidents up through Roosevelt, up through World War II, did agree that we didn't go to war without a vote.
Even George Bush, really, there wasn't called a war.
Why are you defining it as a war?
Every military action is not necessarily a war.
I would say that a planned offensive action is if your ships are attacked at sea, so let's say your ships are off the coast of Yemen and they're being bombed by the Houthis.
To respond to those is not an act of war because it's a defensive action.
It's acting in self-defense, the same as the Barbary Pirates was an act of self-defense.
When you're being attacked, by all means, you always have the ability to respond without a vote of Congress.
Well, we know Iran killed Americans in Iraq and Afghanistan and elsewhere, and they've been fomenting terror throughout the region and targeting Americans.
Well, then the vote should be pretty easy.
You bring it to Congress, and I think Congress probably would have approved of it.
But I think these debates need to happen because there's still some unknowns.
Well, right now it looks like it was a really good, well-planned, executed, and the result was good.
There is still a question.
All of the uranium still exists.
The uranium didn't disappear.
There is a question, will they continue on?
And we don't know because they would do this in secret.
Will they continue on with development of the bomb because of the attacks?
Or will they be chastened?
I think there is some evidence that they are chastened.
I think there is a great deal of evidence that at this point the bombing had good effect, that they're ancillary.
Don't you worry that we're putting troops at risk because we surrender the element of surprise?
Well, I don't think anybody was surprised by this either.
They talked for it for two bloody weeks before he bombed them.
It was explicitly discussed in the media for weeks and weeks that it was coming.
And the resolution isn't to bomb you at any certain date and time or place.
The resolution is that we are in a state of war.
The reason it makes a difference, too, is because then you don't have to have any process.
You kill the enemy.
It's the same problem we have with Venezuela now.
Without any kind of declaration of war, we are killing people accused of running drugs, but we don't have any evidence of who they are or that there actually are smuggling drugs.
All we have is an accusation.
And you can do that in a war, but you can't let the president declare a war.
Have to go through Congress so there is a much more uniform or much more universal approval of the war.
Well, no modern day president has followed those rules, as you know.
And I think that it is, I think, the enumerated powers, president and commander-in-chief.
He's got to be able to take military strikes when opportunity presents itself to keep the nation safe.
I think he did the right thing in the case of Iran.
I love the fact that 12 days later, there was even peace with Israel in Iran.
And the world's a safer place as a result of it.
People that are smuggling drugs into our country, I'm sorry, they are attacking Americans and trying to kill Americans.
I don't care if you guys have a vote on it or not.
Frankly, I'd love to put the Democrats on record being against it.
Anyway, always fun.
We appreciate your time.
Senator Ram Paul, thank you, sir.
Thank you.
All right, to our busy phones, as we say hi to Jeffrey in Washington State.
Jeffrey, hi, how are you?
And we're glad you called.
I'm well, Sean.
Just want to say personal thanks to you and your team for the great work you do keeping us, the electorate, informed of what we need to be informed about to keep our country great.
Well, it's our pleasure to be here every day.
You make it possible for us to continue doing this job.
We appreciate you.
And it's our goal every day to give you news information in a little bit of an entertaining way.
Our job is kind of easy.
We're the opposite of the mainstream media.
They don't talk about what we talk about.
They just skew everything and they're just locked up in Trump derangement syndrome 24-7.
But thank you is my main point.
Yeah, for sure.
As I've been following the issue regarding the blue state resistance to the federal government's help and the National Guard, recently the exposure of the bounties and the threats from the cartels,
gangs, and TIFA has caused me to ask the question: is there any impact from these organizations on, say, the governor of Illinois or the mayor such that that's causing them to look away or to push back because they're getting pressure from themselves personally or for a particular threat to their power in their state?
And I just haven't heard anything.
Wondered if your group had heard anything to that effect.
Look, I know of no such connections.
Nothing in this day and age in all the years I've been doing this would shock me or surprise me.
I don't know why, you know, how you can be the governor of a state, have 4,000 people dead, have five times the homicide murder rate than New York City, and you're more mad at Donald Trump for trying to for offering you help to secure safety and law and restore law and order in your state is beyond any understanding, comprehension I have.
It defies all logic.
It defies all common sense to me.
But that's the stats.
That is Chicago.
That is New York City.
New York City now is on the precipice of electing a guy that wants to hire social workers and replace police with social workers.
You're on the precipice of the, you know, here you have the largest tax city in the nation, and he's going to raise taxes further.
He's offering everything for free, free buses, you know, more rent-free apartments.
He lives in a rent-stabilized apartment, which is unbelievable to me considering he's a man of means.
He has plenty of money to pay for a free market apartment.
And I'm telling you what the net predictable net result is going to be.
They're going to leave.
And people that can afford to leave will leave.
And people that can't afford to leave will be stuck.
And all these promises, I wrote a whole chapter in Live Free or Die.
Always ends the same way.
Unfulfilled promises, more poverty, not less, and a loss of freedom in the name of false government security.
And if you don't believe me, ask yourself, you know, how are things working out in your town or city with government-run schools, with defund dismantled, no bail laws?
How are things working out where Democrats are in charge?
Not very well.
So, you know, we'll watch.
We'll learn.
It's going to be a case study over time that this is all a failure.
But, you know, New York City is New York City.
There's a reason I don't live in the state of New York anymore.
I mean, when I say I'm out of New York, I am totally disconnected from New York.
I am done.
I am out.
That's it.
You know, I'll occasionally go see my sister.
I'll occasionally, you know, do an event for Fox.
Short of that, I don't go there.
Well, hey, we appreciate all you're doing.
We can sure use your input out here in Washington State, that's for sure.
Washington, you might want to consider, you know, Idaho next door.
You might want to consider Vegas or Nevada or Arizona or, you know, there's a lot of great states you could move to.
Maybe Montana, Wyoming.
I don't know.
I guess Liz Cheney's still in Wyoming, but the politics are much better there.
Anyway, appreciate it, Jeffrey.
800-941-Sean, number, if you want to call in, Margaret, New York, New York.
What's up, Margaret?
How you doing?
I'm doing well, Sean.
Thank you for taking my call, and thanks to your team as well for all the efforts that you put out for us, we the people.
So you highlight things a lot about you talk about the Chicago crime.
And people who say that Trump doesn't have any business being in Chicago have clearly not actually experienced any of the crime in Chicago because it's bad.
Oh, it's horrible.
Five times the murder rate in New York City.
That tells you everything you need to know, doesn't it?
It does.
And, you know, my son who lives just west of Bucktown, I don't know if you know the area of Bucktown or Chicago, but he just lives west of Bucktown.
And he's already been in two gang shootouts just because he was on the street walking to his car and one time had to dive under a car to escape the bullets.
And then more recently, my son and his wife were walking in broad daylight and they were held up at gunpoint and robbed in broad daylight.
That's life in the big city.
I mean, I told you they have the lowest population now in Chicago than they've had in decades.
And it's declining.
What's happening?
People are leaving with their feet.
And I'll tell you what else is going to happen.
Here's my prediction, too.
When the Trump $17 trillion in manufacturing gets online and energy-dominant policies and jobs created get online, when the tax cuts kick in and you see the economy churn like it did under Reagan, 70% to 28%, 21 million new jobs are created.
What I'm urging people to do is consider removing any self-imposed obstacle to success in your life.
And what I mean by that is there's going to be coming online, and we're on track now to create high-paying career jobs that probably won't be in your town or your city.
Now, you can put a self-imposed limitation on your life, or, you know, you could look at these opportunities for new auto manufacturing plants are going to be built.
Find out where they're built.
Put in an application if you want one.
Same with pharmaceuticals.
New manufacturing scheduled to be online.
Put in an application.
The same thing with semiconductor chips.
I mean, every one of these industries that are going to be building out the next year are going to be career, high-paying jobs for working Americans.
And the same in the oil industry.
And we did this, you know, years ago.
We were able to match companies with people and they'd move to North Dakota or they'd move to Texas or Oklahoma.
And people that were making $30,000, $40,000 a year, you know, started making $100,000, $150,000 a year, and it transformed their life.
So I'm urging people, pay attention, be ahead of the curve, and there's opportunity coming, and it's coming quickly.
And I urge the people in this audience to be smarter than everybody else, because you already are smarter than everybody else.
But if I found myself in a position, I wasn't happy with what I was doing with my life, and I wanted, let's say, I wanted a better career, wanted to make more money, wanted maybe a nicer house in a safer neighborhood, I want to get an F-150, whatever.
You know, that opportunity will exist if you just simply think ahead.
Does that make sense?
It does.
And my son and his wife, you know, are definitely going to be leaving Chicago, especially after the last violent incident against them.
But talking about moving, the other thing that's moving, Sean, in Chicago is the crime, because the crime, when we talked to the police after they came to, after this happened, they said that the crime was actually leaving the South Side and some of the West areas and moving into these other areas that never had high crime.
And he said that this was really a direct result of that safety act that they put in place.
And these police officers said that they're really emboldened now to move to these other areas and they can go after them, but they can't convict them.
And it was interesting because this police officer said, you know, I'm a minority.
He was a minority.
And he said, I don't care what color their skin is.
They belong in jail.
They don't belong on the streets.
You know, they don't have, they shouldn't be out there committing crimes and taking away the freedom of the regular guys that are on the street, whereas these criminals are given the freedom to go and commit all these crimes on the streets.
So he was very.
Listen, I'm just saying to people, if I was stagnant and I had a limitation, well, I'm only going to do radio where I live.
I never would have been successful in my life.
And I've lived in six different states.
And it was the best experience, ultimately, in my life, too.
And I'm just telling people, opportunity's coming.
There are nicer places to live.
There are nicer people to be around than the people in big cities.
And I predict that, you know, this migration out of New York and California and Illinois.
And if New Jersey doesn't vote for Jack Chittarelli, I would argue New Jersey is probably right there on the list as well.
And this is New Jersey.
This is your last shot.
You're in the game here.
According to polls, you got a shot.
And I would urge you to, you know, every single one of you in New Jersey that hears this show, go out and vote.
And you have a chance to maybe salvage New Jersey.
And it's maybe your last chance.
But look, Margaret, I appreciate the call.
God bless you.
800-941, Sean, if you want to be a part of the program.
Tommy, Michigan, next on the Sean Hannity show.
Hey, Tommy, how are you?
Sean, how you doing?
Thank you.
What's going on?
Hey, today, I got a question.
You know, all these judges that oversee, like when they try to put Trump in jail for, you know, 100 years and all these other Republicans, you know, why is it, Sean, that it always seems like there's a far-left liberal Trump-hating judge that oversees the case and they don't get a fair trial, especially with the jury pool, like, say, in New York.
And then now when Trump's going after some of these people, you know, like, you know, Comey and Bolton, and it's like, I'm thinking they're going to get a Trump-hating liberal judge that's going to be on their side.
Aren't there any conservative right-wing judges in the system?
Is it like just lucky?
Not a lot of them.
I mean, there are some.
You know, they tend to be in red states and red jurisdictions.
And, you know, like, for example, the problem we have, especially with Comey and the House Judiciary referring former CIA Director Brennan to the DOJ for lying to Congress.
And we went through that earlier.
Jim Jordan will be on TV to talk about it tonight, is the statute of limitations on many of the things we're discussing has long since expired.
This is the remaining low-hanging fruit.
It is not the crux of what I believe they were involved in.
That's my own personal opinion.
You know, having covered these stories now for years and years and years, it's frustrating to me, but it is what it is.
And yeah, we have a two-tier justice system.
You have judicial activism on the left, and then you have constitutionalists, which is what you prefer on the court.
Yeah, you have that Juan March on.
It's like, oh, you know what?
He hated Trump.
And it's like, you know what?
And they said, oh, it was a pool of judges.
There weren't all liberal Democrats.
It just happened to, he flipped up and he was going to be the one.
And it's like, I don't believe that for a second.
You know, if you do, I got oceanfront property in Iowa for sale.
You know, it's like some of these, I just don't get it, Sean.
And it just.
Well, I mean, because you have a sense of honesty, fairness, and a belief that, you know, a co-equal branch of government should be objective and not subject to a bias and prejudice and an agenda.
What liberals cannot get done at the ballot box, or they can't get done legislatively, they race to these activist justices and jurists in the hopes that they will implement this policy.
I mean, it's insane.
Yep, I know.
I mean, the story that I mentioned earlier, the appeals court rules that Trump can send troops to Oregon, the fact that Donald Trump had to deal with the 150th suit that has been brought against him, they're trying to drown him in legal issues even to this day because they're just mad they lost the election.
Anyway, my friend, I do appreciate you.
Appreciate your call.
All right, that's going to wrap things up for today.
Hannity tonight, set you DBR, 9 Eastern on the Fox News channel.
We have Donald Trump Jr.
We have Ted Cruz, Mark Levin, the great one, Jim Jordan announcing that they have put forward a referral to the DOJ on John Brennan.
We'll have all those details.
Brett Baer, Joe Concha, Set E D Br, Hannity tonight, 9 Eastern on Fox.
