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Oct. 24, 2025 - Sean Hannity Show
29:40
Learning from Teddy - October 23rd, Hour 2
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This is an iHeart Podcast.
Hour to Sean Hannity Show, 800-941 Sean is a number.
You want to be a part of the program?
Welcome to the program.
Welcome back to the program.
Our friend Brett Baer.
He's the host of special report on the Fox News channel.
And by the way, he's written an amazing new book.
It's called To Rescue the American Spirit, Teddy Roosevelt, The Birth of a Superpower.
I think there is a lot of relevancy and a lot of similarities to what we are seeing unfold in terms of the re-emergence of American strength on the world stage now under President Trump.
But Brett Baer, always a pleasure to have you back, sir.
How are you?
Hey, Sean.
It is a crazy time.
Thanks for having me back.
I think I'm more often a guest with you, though.
I mean, like when you're hosting election nights, I get to go on and give my commentary.
And I think the last election, I think everybody on that panel, there might have been 12 people on that panel were looking at me like, okay, he's really over his skis.
And I even said, well, if I'm wrong, you can print Hannity's wrong t-shirts.
And I laid out what was going to happen the rest of election night about 9:30 in the evening.
And I said, at this point, for Kamala Harris to win the race, she's going to lose North Carolina, Georgia, which you called shortly thereafter.
And she had no chance in Arizona, and she would likely lose Nevada, which meant she would have to win Pennsylvania, Michigan, and Wisconsin.
And then I explained why she had a math problem because her numbers were way down from where Joe Biden had been four years earlier.
I think everybody on that panel, I don't know about you.
I don't know what you were thinking.
You kind of were stoic was looking at me like he's nuts.
He's got the roadmap.
Bill Hammer and I were like trying to keep up.
But it turned out everything that you said early on, 9:30, I think it might have been before 9:30, turned out to be right, you know, only within within an hour, hour and a half.
You know, it was an amazing night hitting a historic night.
And this is what we live for in this business, isn't it?
I mean, those nights that are big news nights, you love it.
I love it.
You know, traveling with the president of the United States, interviewing presidents and vice presidents and secretaries of states and foreign leaders.
You know, to me, it's an honor to be able to do all of it.
And we both have had successful careers.
And it's a lot of fun.
And I'm honored that people give us that opportunity every night.
100%.
And those elections are like our Super Bowl.
And those big moments when you're traveling with the president or interviewing a president is there's nothing like that.
You know, Teddy Roosevelt gives this speech in Paris that eventually becomes known as the man in the arena.
And you could say, in this job, you're in the arena because you're covering stuff that is historic and moving the needle and affects a lot of people.
So, you know, in Teddy Roosevelt's words, it's not the critic who counts, not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles or where the doer of deeds could have done better.
The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena.
And he goes on, and it's one of his most famous speeches.
I want to get to your book in a second.
I would argue in the last presidential cycle, you had the most consequential interview of anybody.
And that's when Kamala Harris agreed to sit down with you.
And if I'm mistaken, tell me.
She was supposed to be there.
And correct me if I'm wrong.
Your show's on at 6 Eastern.
And she was supposed to show up at 5.15.
Am I wrong about that?
Yeah, so what happened was she wanted to do a pre-tape.
And her event was going to end at 4.30.
And I said, we will be ready at 4.30.
But we have to be done by 5.15 because we have to cue the tape up.
And we were planning on doing a half an hour.
And we had to run it at the top of six.
So at the last possibility, we have to start taping at 5.15.
And she finished her event at 4.20.
She went to a holding room right outside where our interview was set up.
And we didn't hear from her.
And so it was 4.30 and 4.40, 4.45, 4.50, 5 o'clock, 5.05.
Now my producers are pacing.
People are pulling their hair out.
5.10.
Again, the cutoff is 5.15.
The vice president walked out of that door at 5.14.30 and walked to the seat and sat down.
And I said, Madam Vice President, it was an interesting event outside.
Thank you for being here.
And she looked at me and said, you ready?
And that's the two words she said when we started the interview.
So what's fascinating about it is she had done very few real interviews.
I would argue up to that point, maybe none.
And I thought it was a consequential moment.
And that's a tough position, I think, for you to be in because I'm on the opinion side of Fox News.
You're on the news side of Fox News.
And there is a delineation, and people sometimes don't understand that.
But I think I have a lot more flexibility, which I prefer.
I think your job is a little bit harder in that respect.
But there were so many unanswered questions that had been hanging out there, and you had a very small window to get them in.
And it made that interview that much harder.
And I give you a lot of credit in that interview because you did press her.
And when she tried to filibuster, you know, you understood the time was short and you really needed to get some questions in here.
Yeah.
And, you know, it is a balance.
And, you know, you can follow up again and again.
And, you know, my rule is three times.
And the audience knows she's not answering the question.
But there were a couple of times where she stopped and said, Brett, you know what I'm talking about.
And I said, Madam Vice President, not really.
And she.
You know, I don't think anyone still ever got an answer to the question, do you still support taxpayer-funded sex change operations for illegals and for convicts?
I don't think anyone ever got that question in.
Which arguably was the most effective commercial that ran during football games in the NFL leading up to.
That was huge.
Yeah.
Well, it's coming to fight, I think, and she wanted that fight.
And believe it or not, when we wrapped up and there was a hard rap by their people, you know, saying it's got to finish, which is why we, I was going to say at the end, if you win, how can you bring the country together?
I could never get there because they were rapping me so hard.
But at the end, her people said, that's what we wanted.
We wanted her to be tough.
We wanted her to push back.
I just didn't think that that was the best look in the interview itself.
And I think, what did they cut it down to 18 minutes instead of a half hour?
You weren't able to go the time that it had been promised and allocated for you, if I recall.
So I've been reading your book, and I'm fascinated by Teddy Roosevelt.
And I'm fascinated like you are by history.
And it's kind of amazing.
I was amazed at the parallels of Teddy Roosevelt's time and the birth of a superpower.
And I felt America, in terms of its stature in the world, decline dramatically.
Again, this is my opinion during Biden, especially the disastrous pullout in Afghanistan.
And I think that President Trump has reasserted American leadership and dominance and strength as a superpower since he's gotten back into office in a way that I don't think anybody anticipated or imagined.
You know, the Iranian nuclear strike would be an example, you know, working so hard to get peace in the Middle East and the release of the hostages.
I saw China today had bought into not exactly a boycott, but they're pulling back on the purchasing of Russian oil because of the tariff issue that's now associated with it, which is Trump exerting, you know, economic strength of the U.S. But I saw a lot of parallels between Teddy Roosevelt and President Trump and what he's doing now.
Do you see those parallels?
And how would you describe them?
Yeah, I see the direct parallels.
I mean, it's not one-to-one across the board on ideology on everything, but it is, first of all, force of personality and a figure that's larger than life, but one who wants to reach forward and be active in the world.
You know, for all of the people who say President Trump and his administration and America first was going to be isolationist, it's exactly opposite of that.
It is America thinking about America, what's good for America, but also being forceful in the world.
And you look at how some of these leaders are reacting to President Trump.
You know, the Gulf states, how that first trip, you know, they all put out the red carpet in a way that they had never done before.
And now we're integral in making the ceasefire work and hopefully hold between Israel and Hamas.
So, you know, Roosevelt, this book kind of is centered on his legacy to position the United States as this world power.
And his most significant one of them was brokering this peace deal between Russia and Japan.
And he arranges for the two sides to hold a peace conference in Portsmouth, New Hampshire.
And he really works behind the scenes, as President Trump did in a lot of these different peace negotiations that he's done.
He works behind the scenes to kind of reach an agreement.
And Roosevelt, the result of that is a Nobel Prize.
He later, when Japan gets a little ornery and things are strained, he comes up with the idea to show American force and ships of the American fleet all painted white from battleship gray.
And he creates the great white fleet, and he sails the fleet around the world in a peaceful demonstration of kind of American might and the reminder of its power and promise.
And I just think that that has similarities about our strength around the world and what the president, President Trump, is trying to do.
Let me ask you, I think I'd be negligent because, I mean, there's so much history in this book, which is pretty amazing.
And I urge people to get a copy of it.
And it's called To Rescue the American Spirit, Teddy Roosevelt, the Birth of a Superpower.
It's on Amazon.com, Hannity.com, bookstores around the country.
I often criticize the media.
I think the media, generally speaking, I've made the argument that I believe legacy media is dead.
I think it died in this election.
I think Donald Trump has forever tattooed the words fake and news into the forehead of CNN, MSDNC, and the three major networks.
I think people are more skeptical than ever before.
Do you have an assessment of where they've gone wrong?
I thought it was interesting, Barry Weiss asking the 60 Minutes team, why does the country think you're all biased?
That's an interesting question because most people I know believe they're very biased.
Yeah.
And clearly the Paramount purchase is interested in finding more balance and an effort to get back to some semblance of coverage that's fair.
Listen, we've talked about this, Sean, you and I. And, you know, I'm not where you are as far as giving up.
I think that there are still some good reporters out there and some good folks, but I do think that President Trump in the first term and the second term broke the minds of some reporters that were normal, straight down the middle guys and women.
And the emotion that came with their pushback became Trump derangement syndrome.
And it showed in almost every story that they did.
And so then we got years of Russia, Russia, Russia.
And to your credit, you really pushed back with substance and were one of the leading people on pushing back on all the narratives.
Eventually, it all came, much like your election night predictions came to be.
And the coverage of that was not to be seen around the country.
So I think people got fed up and looked at a lot of this and said, I'm sick of it.
Now, I will say that 6-7 special report, we're trying to do all sides and we're trying to give it that people have a sense of what's happening in the U.S. and around the world with some analysis at the end.
It's a different animal, you know, than an opinion show, but I think it's one of the only places that is kind of trying to do it.
I'll be honest, I think it's it.
I don't see it anywhere else.
I just don't, which is a credit to you and Fox, in my view.
Anyway, the book is great.
A lot of kudos to you.
I urge everybody to get a copy of it to Rescue the American Spirit, Teddy Roosevelt, and the birth of a superpower.
We have a link on Hannity.com, or you can go to Amazon.com or bookstores now all across the country.
My friend, colleague, Brett Baer, host the special report, 6 p.m. Eastern on the Fox News channel.
Sir, thank you.
Always a pleasure, and we appreciate coming on with us.
Thank you for having me, Sean.
We'll see you.
800-941-Sean, our number.
You want to be a part of the program?
Listen, we all need a better night's sleep.
It's just a fact.
Anyway, 800-941, Sean, if you want to be a part of the program, Linda, you're not a sports person.
I don't know if I can bring this up.
I am a sports person.
I just, you know, I'm not as much as possible.
What's crossing the plane?
What's crossing the plane?
That is when you take your football and it goes past the pylons into the goal line and you get a touchdown.
It's only taken you nearly a decade to get it mostly right.
Listen, all right?
I'm standing by my field goal equaling one, two, or three.
We had a coach come in.
A field goal does not equal one, two, or three.
A field goal is three points.
Depends on the situation.
No, there's no situation in NFL football or college football where a field goal is to be able to get a lot of fieldball.
I'm not doing anything with NFL and their bad bunny BS.
They can stick it up there, you know where.
I'm not sure if you're not.
You know, they're talking about having an alternative.
They're not talking about it.
They're having it.
No, it's real.
It's going to happen.
John Rich and a bunch of other people are getting together.
I hope John Andrasa gets in on it too.
It'd be fantastic.
Yeah, he'd be great.
I agree with you.
It'd be very cool.
Anything's better than this demonic, you only can speak Spanish in halftime.
It's crap.
I don't know anything about this guy.
Nothing.
Well, that's why you need to learn to speak Spanish on.
Then he can communicate with you.
He's an idiot.
Mi estudio español on escuela tresaños, mi hable poquito español.
Well, you did pretty good there.
I'm glad you can speak a little bit after studying in school for three years.
But at the end of the day, we don't need to all speak English.
I can do that.
I can count.
And then that idiot, Roger Goodell, saying, oh, I'm not removing Bad Bunny.
Shut up.
It's such utter nonsense.
They don't care.
And apparently the guy woke up stuff in either end zone, but you can't wear a cancer or an American flag on your helmet.
You can't wear anything positive on your body, but you can put like, you know, whatever their unity signs are.
They have five slogans and they have to be in the end zone of every single team in the NFL.
It's utter nonsense.
So let me tell you what's happening with sports betting and betting in general.
So I have a friend of mine, and this guy's brilliant and he's great at what he does.
He's an addiction specialist, and he helps people all kinds of addiction: alcoholism, drug addiction, sex addiction.
You know, it runs the gambit.
And we had a conversation about gambling addiction.
And now the sports betting world and betting online has now made it possible that basically anybody that wants to bet can bet 24-7.
And it's become a real problem.
And he said the dopamine hit that bettors get is so powerful, you can't overcome it.
And he's describing the most heart-wrenching scenarios of case.
He doesn't tell me who, obviously.
He said, Sean, there are people committing suicide because they're in debt up to their eyeballs and they don't see any other way out.
He said that, you know, you have successful people, financially successful, that blow up their lives and they spend every dollar and they lose their family home and their cars are being repossessed.
And they literally are in debt now up to their eyeballs.
And they're like, there's nothing he can do for them except tell them, you know, try and get them to, you know, stop.
And he said, that in and of itself is hard to do.
He said, it's easier to treat.
This is what he said to me that really stood out to me.
It's easier to treat alcoholism and drug addiction than people that are addicted to gambling.
Can you imagine that?
That's how pervasive it is.
Listen, it's very scary, but there is such a thing as free will.
And if people want to go and get it.
It's all about free will.
At the end of the day, you're going to have to make a decision.
You don't want any more pain in your life, and you're just going to have to give up the dopamine hit that you get, you know, and the charge you get when you're betting and looking for an outcome and you're waiting for that field goal to be kicked for three points, not two, not one, but three, at the end of the game, and everything's writing on it.
And if you hit it, you're in happy land.
If you lose it, maybe you lost $100,000.
I mean, people are spending that kind of crazy money.
Now, these companies are not stupid either because they will have a profile on every one of their customers and they build out these algorithms and they can literally fine-tune exactly the type of thing you're going to be most interested in betting on.
And they will write you and they will incentivize you to bet if you haven't bet in a while.
And it's like, wow.
Anyway, Cash Patel detailed massive sports rigging, a sports rigging operation with ties to the mafia that led to the arrest of an NBA player and a coach, the Portland Trailblazer coach Chauncey Phillips is his name, and Miami Heat Guard, what's his name?
Terry Rozier, arrested and charged in connection to this illegal gambling schemes.
In the case of this Miami Heat Guard, his case related to suspicious betting activity during a game.
I mean, you can bet on whether or not a pitch is going to be a ball or a strike.
We had the case of this one pitcher that so much money was waged on two specific pitches that he threw in the dirt in one case and that they literally can fine-tune whether or not that bet was way out of line with normal and whether or not there's some type of collusion.
Anyway, one FBI agent saying the FBI supervisor agent, you know, marveling at the apparent resurgence of the American mafia.
Fox News covered this today.
Interestingly, ESPN blew off this massive FBI presser on NBA gambling indictments.
All other major cable news networks aired it because you can't watch a sporting event today without reading about the odds and watching ads for sports betting apps.
I might like hit around and say to Klay Travis, all right, I'll bet you 500 bucks that this team is going to win this.
By the way, every bet I've ever had with Klay Travis, I've won.
Every one.
I've never asked to collect, but he like he can't believe it because he's way more into that world than I am.
I mean, I look at the stuff David Porternoy does.
I'm like, my gosh, he'll bet like a million dollars on some stuff.
I mean, but he's also got them as advertisers.
I'm sure he gets a lot of consideration there.
But put it off on the side, this has the potential of ruining potential sports, but it's even bigger than that.
It has the potential to ruin lives.
That part scares me because people aren't, they're not going to be able to stop.
You're not at all interested in the sports topic, are you?
No, it's interesting.
I mean, I don't know who any of the people are or what you're talking about, but, you know, sure, I'm learning.
All right, explain to this audience how a field goal can be for either one, two, or three points.
Explain that.
I can't right now.
We're talking about basketball.
That's the sport that I'm focused on.
Now we're switching.
You can only do one sport.
I keep up.
You know, I can't keep up.
So, no, explain how you can, because you can't get one or two points from a field goal.
We're doing basketball.
It's round.
It's orange.
It has a lot of black stripes.
Katie and Jason argue about it.
How many points do you get for free throw?
And everyone in that room.
I don't even know what a free throw is.
That's my hands of God.
You don't know what a free throw is.
Not even a clue.
Not even a clue.
I don't know.
I know.
How many points?
Let's say if you do a layup, how many points do you get?
No idea.
Don't help her.
I don't even know what a layup is.
I don't know.
I'm not kidding.
It's not.
You know what I liked?
I watched the Kobe Bryant documentary about his life.
That's interesting to me.
That I like.
That was the most preventable helicopter.
And the fact that his little girl was with him broke my heart.
It's heartbreaking.
Well, seeing his life and how his police helicopter was grounded.
It was amazing.
And he had a helicopter that is made for two pilots, not one, but he was flying just one.
They requested, even though every police helicopter was grounded, they requested what's called a vision flight, meaning where they can see and they wouldn't go above that altitude.
And sure enough, they ran into all the cloud cover, which grounded all the other helicopters, and they didn't see it coming.
It's so sad.
It was.
John in my free state of Florida, what's up, John?
How are you?
Thanks for taking my call.
You know, I'm a New Jersey transplant from Saddle River living in Naples, and I have to tell you a couple things.
Number one, when we look at Mickey Cheryl, we understand that she could fly a plane and that she hates Trump.
What else is she going to do for New Jersey?
I'd like to know why she doesn't know how she made $7 million.
I'd like to know why she gives conflicting answers on why she was not allowed to walk with her graduating class and why she's not in the yearbook of her graduating class at the Naval Academy because she keeps saying something different every single time.
I want to know why she won't take a pledge not to raise taxes on New Jersey when it's one of the highest tax states in the country.
That's true.
I mean, if you think about it, you know, Democrats never met a tax that they didn't like.
And let's face it, you know, at the end of the day, she voted against the salt deduction that they've been talking about for 45 years now.
And she voted against banning boys from playing women's sports.
So at the end of the day, these are facts.
They're not my facts.
They're the facts.
Well, New Jersey, this may be their last opportunity.
This may be it.
Because the damage will be so great.
I don't know if you're ever going to be able to come back.
You'll be New York 2.0.
You're right there now.
But at least New Jersey, the polls show this is a winnable race for Jack Chitterelli.
Now, I made a mistake in the last election cycle.
The polls never showed it was going to be close.
If it did, I would have paid more attention.
And then Jack Chittorelli only lost by three points.
And if I had known that, I would have paid attention.
I'm not making the same mistake twice.
Now that Matt Towery and Robert Cahaley polled New Jersey and showed it's a one-point race, that means if you are a voter in New Jersey, you can stop the madness and reverse course now.
This may be your last shot.
Now, I'm going to go above and beyond for the state of New Jersey.
I'm going to have an announcement next week about what I'm going to do.
How do you like that?
That's great.
And I'm going to go one step further.
I think we're going to see New Jersey flip red, and New York is going to flip red at the governor.
It's about time.
And let the adults to.
Well, if New Jersey doesn't flip, I would say the odds go down exponentially in New York.
New Jersey has to go first.
This is New Jersey's opportunity.
Understand, if you're in New Jersey and you're hearing my voice, go out and vote because this is going to be, this race is going to be won by 20,000 votes, Max.
That's how close this race is going to be.
Okay?
You got a shot.
This is your shot.
I'm not saying it can.
I'm saying it can happen, but it's going to take all of you taking it seriously and look at it as your last opportunity to save that pathetic state because it's pretty pathetic under Phil Murphy.
All right, my friend, appreciate it.
Quick break, right back to our phones.
800-941-Sean, our number, if you want to be a part of the program.
Final hour roundup is next.
You do not want to miss it.
And stay tuned for the final hour free for all on the Sean Hannity Show.
All right, back to our busy phones.
Maureen next on the Sean Hannity show.
What's up, Maureen?
How are you?
Hey, Sean.
Great to talk to you.
What's going on?
Great to talk to you.
I want to know why they're not pushing for Cuomo to drop out.
It's a clear choice between a communist and law and order, Curtis Sleewa.
That's what we need to do.
You know, you're asking a great question.
I mean, you know, all of a sudden, with, you know, early voting starting this weekend, now everyone hit the panic button this week.
I mean, you should have hit the panic button after Zoron, you know, Kami Marx's Mondani won the primary.
That's when it was time to hit the panic button.
And when I guess Cuomo was on with Sid in the morning and, you know, said, and Sid asked, well, why don't you approach Curtis and make a plan and kind of team up together?
I never thought of that.
Oh, okay.
Well, that's your fault.
That's on you.
Because, you know, you're the master politician.
But, you know, look, I think they got in a lot of blows last night against Momdani.
It was interesting to watch him sweat, but I don't think they had a knockout blow.
That's going to be a race changer.
I didn't see it.
I think this race is Mamdani's to lose by far.
I hope I'm wrong, but I'm realistic and I'm not going to be Pollyannish and lie to my audience.
I refuse.
I just hope.
Beautiful down here, but I love New York.
I don't want to see it go down the toilet.
And I was a cop for 21 years up there.
My daughter's a cop there now.
And I'm just praying for Curtis to get in.
Well, I hope for the safety and security of my friends that remain in New York that that's the case.
Although I got to tell you, with very few exceptions, everybody I know is leaving New York when they can.
People come visit me all winter long.
Oh, man, I love it down here.
I got to get out of there.
That's what I hear from everybody, without exception.
I'm like, yeah, it took me a long time to get out.
Anyway, I appreciate the call, Maureen.
Thank you.
Look, we're barreling towards the longest government shutdown in history.
You know what?
For a lot of families now, it's a lot of financial anxiety.
Democrats won't even pay our military for crying out loud.
They don't want to give up their leverage, as we heard from Catherine Clark, a representative yesterday.
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