It is amazing that young people that have gone through, you know, all the way from nursery school to kindergarten to elementary school, high school, some of the elite universities are the most ignorant of all people.
And we saw this in New York City unfold.
Young people in droves going out to vote for Zoron Kami Marx's Mamdani.
And they don't know what they don't know.
I mean, maybe a part of me should feel sorry for them.
They've been indoctrinated.
These are little indoctrination centers.
But there comes a point in life where you've got to talk to people who have lived real life and have real life experiences.
And there is a guy by the name, and we'll introduce you to him in a minute, Daniel DiMartino.
He's a fellow at the Manhattan Institute.
He's an immigrant from Venezuela.
He came here to escape the destitution, the starvation under the dictatorship that thankfully now has fallen thanks to President Trump.
He lived through hell in Venezuela and one of the many, many Venezuelans that are grateful to President Trump because Venezuela has all of the capabilities, natural resources.
They have more energy, oil reserves than any country on the face of the earth.
That means, yeah, more than Saudi Arabia, which is number two.
So a couple of days ago, he, and he had an op-ed about this, but he confronted Mamdani supporters in New York City.
Now, it's a rather long clip, and I'm going to play it because it is enlightening and educational in every way imaginable.
Then we'll talk to Daniel on the other side of it.
I actually have a friend of mine here who fled Venezuela.
He is a living product of socialism not working out in other places.
Came from Venezuela nine years ago.
It's the only country that was ever destroyed by socialism democracy.
Venezuela.
Y'all got a lot of other problems to do it.
The problems were caused by the socialist policy.
My family went from making $2,000, $3,000 a month 20 years ago to $100 a month in 2016.
That was because the government gave everything you can imagine we're great.
We went from being a normal middle-class family with a car and then no electricity, no water.
Mamdani actually thinks that Maduro was not a dictator.
And 10 years ago, he actually raised for brief elections.
What specific socialist policies like that?
The government took over people's businesses.
Farms, grocery stores, factories.
Do you support the proposal of government grocery stores?
Of course I do.
There was very little supply of chicken, toilet paper.
There was a line for blocks and blocks for a grocery store.
It's all about money, my friend, corruption.
Wait, what do you think the grocery store sells you food?
For charity or for money?
For money.
That's not a bad thing.
What happened in Venezuela isn't going to happen here.
The policy is more focused on helping people out.
Every politician would promise to help the people.
Socialism is the government owns and controls the means of production.
That is the companies, the businesses.
Like Mamdani says, the government will own the grocery store.
Nine million of us escaped for country.
It's the largest refugee crisis in the world.
Wow.
There is a lot of opportunities to use the wealth of New York to help everyone else.
You know, they have tried that in the Soviet Union from where my parents and my grandparents are from.
All they remember grocery stores is empty shelves.
Sorry, Mamdani himself said that he's called to a college prior property.
All of it.
He's going to take everything.
We can establish a community land trust to gradually buy up housing on the private market and convert it to community ownership.
You want to live in a public house?
No, New York City builds less total housing units than Austin, Texas, a city that is one-eighth of the size of New York.
We need a change.
But then the change that we need is one that increases the supply of housing, right?
Not that one that will decrease it, like Mamdani.
And I fear that what happened in Venezuela, Maduro, the president that was originally democratically elected decided to give everything away for free, take people's businesses, you know, for the workers, and then they all went bankrupt and became very important.
Over 62% of young people and 66% of Democrats support socialism nationwide.
The Democratic Socialists of America, yeah, you know, Mamdani's a part of it, right?
Yeah, the DSA went to Venezuela just last year to support the dictator and say that he won the election that he didn't.
I had no idea.
I did not know.
Do you think we should be supporting dictators like that?
Government rent control.
It's going to stop people from renting apartments because they're not going to be able to profit.
There are going to be fewer apartments for rent, and then we're going to have less opportunities to actually live.
That's a good point.
I agree with that.
Okay.
I understand more about socialism now for sure.
Since we have had more free markets and capitalism in the world, billions of people have been lifted from property.
And that every country that has attempted socialism, Venezuela, Cuba, the Soviet Union, North Korea, Eastern Europe, many countries in Africa, all of them became poor.
You've been through it in Venezuela.
Yes.
Why don't you move out of New York?
I already did, actually.
Oh, that's awesome.
Why do you care?
Well, I already moved out of my country too.
Do you think people should just keep moving out as socialists destroy their countries on the system?
I mean, if you don't like the policies that the government's paradigming, yeah.
I think my opinion might have changed a little bit.
I'll be doing more research.
Thank you for sharing.
I heard a great quote about socialism, which is it's really a great system until you run out of spending other people's money.
I mean, does that not really just spell it all out for you?
The level of ignorance that's that, unfortunately, so many Americans have in this ridiculous so-called idealism of radical socialism.
Daniel DiMartino, sir, welcome to the program.
Thanks for being with us.
Thank you so much for having me, Sean, especially for playing this.
Well, it's powerful, and why don't you tell us from your perspective, you know, what you thought of their ignorance and their lack of understanding and lack of education to put it nicely.
Yeah, well, the first thing that came to mind, to be honest, is that the average person is really not educated at all on the topic.
And unfortunately, we are at the mercy of the average person.
But something that was very hopeful to me is that when confronted with the facts, some of those people did change their mind and open their eyes.
Not all of them, you know, probably not most of them, but a significant share.
So we can actually move the needle with these conversations.
One funny conversation that was in that clip was this girl who said, so why don't you just move out of New York?
And I'm like, well, I actually already live in Jersey and she lives in Florida.
So, you know, people will move with their feet, clearly.
Well, look, we're seeing this happening, you know, around the country.
I mean, there was an announcement, you know, two of the richest residents of California, Larry Ellison and one of the co-founders, I think it's Larry Page, I believe his name is, one of the co-founders of Google.
They're about to implement a 5% billionaire wealth tax, which is wealth confiscation in Gavin Newsome's Socialist Utopia of California.
And they're getting out.
They're not giving their money that they worked hard for.
Oh, they're rich, Hannity.
They can afford it.
It's not our money.
It's their money.
They earned it through hard work, their ingenuity.
Maybe they earned it just through good old-fashioned luck.
I don't know.
And I don't care.
It's not my money.
These are not ill-gotten gains.
These are people that tend to be very, very bright, very smart, contribute to society.
Nobody forces people to buy goods and services from anyone else.
You have to want them.
And that is the beauty of capitalism.
And I look up to people that are successful.
I learned from people that are successful.
Anyway, explain your life in Venezuela.
I want people to hear more directly from you about life under growing up under this dictatorship.
Yeah, so, well, what I think is interesting is that I had a similar life to what many American middle-class families have today, which is my family had two cars.
And then, you know, we had our apartment.
It was a three-bedroom apartment, two baths.
My parents owned a gas station.
That's what they did for a living.
It was a great business, making $2,000, $3,000 a month in the early 2000s, which if you adjust for inflation, it's maybe what, $4,000 or $5,000 a month nowadays.
And now, you know, by 2016, when I left, it was $100 a month.
I was already lining up for food, needing to bring my ID number.
The rationing system changed over time.
So sometimes it was the fingerprint scanning machine for the quota.
Sometimes it was based on your ID number, the day of the week that you could go to the supermarket was assigned.
So I got Mondays and Saturdays because my number was one.
Okay, when you went to the supermarket, what was it like in there?
Were the shelves filled to the brim?
Did you have a choice of everything?
You were given a quota in terms of what you can buy?
It was kind of half empty, not totally empty or anything.
And certainly, there was very little brand diversity.
Some shelves, so the grocery store, to make it seem full, they would just fill entire holes with the same product because that's all they could put.
And there were very little brand competition.
One of the saddest things that you could visualize in the grocery store was at a certain point the cereal brands ran out of coloring material.
And so the cereal boxes were not in any color.
They were brown, like the color of the carton.
And so I say that imagine how sad is socialism that they even take the color away from life.
Tell me about your journey out of Venezuela to the United States.
And, you know, you talk about July 31st, 2016.
You boarded a flight that would take you from Caracas to Indianapolis, Indiana.
And you point out many Venezuelans who come to the U.S. do so because of the terrible life-changing events.
There's about 10 million of you, 10 million Venezuelan citizens that have left.
And tell us about that journey.
Well, I knew from a young age that what was happening in Venezuela was headed in a horrific direction.
And a lot of people didn't quite understand that.
A lot of people thought that, you know, this is going to end or the regime is going to leave peacefully and democratically.
And then everything's going to go back to normal.
And then the normal became 10 years, then 15 years, then 20 years.
Now it's 27 years.
It's my entire life.
And so I decided to start learning English from a young age.
I excelled academically so that I could do what I did, which is that I got a scholarship, a full right to study in the States.
And when I went to Indiana initially, Indianapolis specifically, a great place.
I'm very happy I moved to Indiana.
And that was my first experience living in America rather than New York, where I'm at now, or in the New York City area.
And so that was my journey.
The journey of other Venezuelans is very sad because it implies walking thousands of miles to Colombia and Peru.
Many of them get to Chile very far away.
It's the equivalent as if you walk from San Francisco to New York City for some of these people.
Wow, that's an amazing testament of courage.
All right, quick break as we continue from the DC swamp.
President Trump on Hannity tonight, nine Eastern.
We continue with Danielle DiMartino, who escaped the destruction, starvation under the dictatorship in Venezuela that has now fallen thanks to President Trump.
More on the other side, your calls coming up as well.
And an investigative report with John Solomon straight ahead.
All right, we continue with Danielle DiMartino.
He was able to escape the tyranny, the poverty, the misery that was caused by the leaders of Venezuela and their radical, you know, Marxist, leftist, communist, statist, socialist policies that impoverished an entire nation, which should be one of the richest nations on earth.
You know, you go into great specificity and detail.
I'm going to put the article that you wrote about this about how, as a student, for example, you know, when you were nine years old, you didn't understand why you didn't have milk at home.
You didn't have shampoo at home.
You didn't have chicken or bread at home, and how things got progressively worse.
And, you know, as the years, you know, passed on, you try to buy lunch and empanada, for example, you know, you paid a buck, and then the next thing you know, you're paying 20, then 100, then 1,000, then 10,000, and then much higher than that.
And how inflation, you know, skyrocketed, you know, 50 million percent.
It was insane.
In the school cafeteria, the owner that worked it, he used to lend us money to the kids when we didn't bring cash, and then we could repay him a few days later when our parents gave us the cash to repay him.
And, you know, he would trust the people who will repay.
The problem became that inflation was so high and prices changed daily that he had to stop lending kids money because the money would lose its value by the day.
So we couldn't even do that.
And then the problem was you had to pay in cash because the machine to read the credit card didn't work because it was all imported parts.
There were no dollars because the government destroyed all our exports.
And so the consequence was that you had to bring in a ton of cash in your backpack because it wouldn't fit in your pocket.
A ton of cash just to buy lunch.
Unbelievable.
We're going to put this on Hannity.com.
Daniel DiMartino, we thank you for being a truth teller.
I hope Americans that are buying the big lie of Marxism, statism, socialism, redistributionism, I hope they hear your tale because it always ends the same way, the way you used to live.
And we're glad you're here.
We wish you the best and glad you got a college education and your life is moving in the right direction.
We appreciate your time, my friend.
Thank you so much.
And a lot of people will hear a lot more stories like mine of Venezuelans that are very grateful for what President Trump is doing in Venezuela and against socialism.
We appreciate you being with us.
800-941 Sean is our number.
I'll talk to the president about this tonight.
Bold inspired solutions for America.
This is the Sean Hannity Show.
Okay, so we had Reza Pavlavi, the son of the Shah of Iran, who was deposed in 1979 when the Ayatollah Khomeini, who had been in hiding in France, came back to power, the Iranian Revolution.
And when he was on my TV show this week, he pointed out how the Iranian regime is close to collapsing.
There are numerous reports out there that Ali Khamenei, the supreme leader of Iran, has plan B in place to go to Russia.
And Vladimir Putin, I'm sure with him he will be taking tons of cash, other currency, gold, and he will pillage the country just like every other two-bit dictator when they leave the country and flee.
But this is Reza Pavlavi and the son of the former Shah of Iran and what he said to me.
I launched this campaign about six months ago.
We have received tens of thousands of applicants who would like to join.
It's not just limited to the military and paramilitary forces, Sean.
It also includes the civil bureaucracy, people who are working in government ministries.
All of them be part of the solution that will end up being this regime to its knees.
Now, as to Khamenei, Sarah said whether he's ready to bail out, who knows?
But either way, the regime is crumbling and is very close to collapsing.
And reports of a number of cities now that the protesters have completely taken over.
Reports that police have laid down their arms and are standing in solidarity with the protesters.
The crowds get bigger and bigger.
There has been some deaths, at least 37, the last count I saw.
People protesting that have been gunned down in the streets of Iran.
Joining us now is Amir Frakwavar.
Now, he's teaching constitutional law, and he's the author of the bestseller, Comrade Ayatollah, also the National Iranian Congress Senate Chairman.
And he really has an insider's perspective on what's happening on the ground in Iran.
And, you know, once the president of the student organization he founded, he led the movement in Iran before he was captured himself, imprisoned for five years.
And part of that time was spent in one of Iran's most notorious prisons, Evan Prison, is what it's called.
Some of the time in solitary confinement.
Thankfully, now he's in the U.S. He's leading the charge, helping people on the ground in Iran find their voice and hopefully freedom.
And the days of this horrific terrorist regime will come to an end.
We welcome to the program Amir Fakhravar is with us.
Amir, thanks for being here.
I'm sorry about all that you've been through in your life, but admire your steadfast courage and commitment to liberty and freedom.
Thank you, Sean.
Thank you for having me.
And let's say Happy New Year.
And it's a year of celebration for the United States.
Sean, I have been with you eight years ago, January 2nd or 3rd.
And I remember when at that time we started this revolution, which you are saying the fourth phase of that revolution.
Back then, it was the first time the people, the new generation, came to the street in Iran.
For the first time, we didn't hear the chant Allah Akbar.
We didn't hear any chance Islamic chant because the new generation, they decided to get rid of Islam, to get rid of the Quran.
And Iran is going back to its roots, the actual ancient Persian.
And we want to go back there.
At that time, you told me, Sean, and you are a genius, you told me how, because we were fooled by the George Sources organization.
They were telling us the revolution should be peaceful, non-violent movement.
And you told me, I was on your show, and you said, Amir, how do you want to win a revolution without a weapon?
You were right.
I've often said, and I know I'm right, I wish I was wrong, but I've often said you don't win revolutions with slingshots.
It doesn't work that way.
Exactly.
And we experienced that.
We have seen it.
You said in that show eight years ago, you said if we want to do peaceful revolution, the regime will go for the mass murdering the kids in the streets.
And regime did it.
Two years later, we had the mass murdering in the streets in 200 cities in Iran.
And yes, it happened.
It was led by Qasem Soleimani, and thanks to President Trump.
Probably 40 days later, President Trump killed Qasem Soleimani.
And it was a great retaliation for the Iranian people.
And it was the second phase of our revolution back then.
When Master Amini was killed, it was the third phase of the revolution.
And now it's the fourth.
And the beauty of this revolution is we are not going to have another absolute power.
We are not going to have supreme leader.
We don't want to have king.
We don't want to have any of these things.
You had the greatest revolution in the United States 250 years ago when you got rid of the absolute power and you decided to go for the republic, the constitutional republic.
This is the thing right now in Iran.
We want to do that.
This is the 120th anniversary of the first constitutional revolution in Iran.
Maybe your audience don't know about that.
At this 120th anniversary of our constitutional revolution, we want to have exactly the same as American founding fathers.
We want to have a constitution in power.
And yeah, the monarchists have 30% of the support inside the country.
The son of the Shah has 30% of the support, but 70% of the country want the Republic of Iran.
We are fighting for it.
We are fighting, all of us together fighting against the regime.
You mentioned my book, Comrade Aytullah.
In my book, I revealed that Iranian supreme leader have been an agent of KGB, have been under training since 1964 to 1968, before the so-called Islamic Revolution in Iran.
And 1979 was not an Islamic revolution.
It was a Russian coup d'état.
It's the biggest secret.
Nobody has been talking about it.
And right now, when Khamenei, the supreme leader, wants to go to Russia, that shows everybody he was the agent of Russians all these years.
That's such a great point that you're making.
And, you know, we see, you know, one of the natural consequences of the president taking Maduro and bringing him to this country is that the influence of China, Iran, and Vladimir Putin and Russia in our hemisphere has basically been eliminated.
And he did it by, by the way, the defense systems and air defense systems to set up inside of Venezuela.
They were Russian air defense systems.
They were Chinese air defense systems.
Now they're out.
Let me ask you this.
The president has spoken out in solidarity with the people taking to the streets all over Iran.
And he made it clear that he would step in.
The U.S. would step in if it saw that Iran was mistreating or killing protesters.
And he wrote on Truth Social: if Iran shoots and violently kills peaceful protesters, which is their custom, the United States of America will come to their rescue.
We are locked.
We are loaded.
We are ready to go.
How much fear do you believe after Soleimani, after taking out the nuclear sites that Iran had their obvious nuclear ambition?
How real will the so-called leaders, the Ali Khameneis of the world, react to that?
They're afraid.
They have seen what happened during the 12 days war.
And we begged the United States.
We begged Israel.
We means we, the Iranian people, to come and help us.
You know, during the World War II, when France was under occupation of Germany, General Dog went to London and then begged American president at that time, President Roosevelt, to come and help.
And the United States sent a troop to France to free France from the Germans.
And the UK...
We lost a lot of American treasure in Normandy.
We did.
Yes, and then the greatest friendship between United States and France happened after that.
And the world has seen United States as a liberator after that.
And it's a lot of respect came to the United States.
And you know, right now, without even one casualty from American side, from Israeli side, during the 12 days war, that was an amazing job of President Trump to go and destroy the entire regime's Islamic regime's nuclear facilities.
That was an amazing job of Israelis' idea to go and kill 1,200 IRGC, the Islamic Revolutionary Guard force.
They killed 1,200 of them, and not even one single Iranian civilians have been killed.
You know, Sean, Iran, Tehran, the capital of Iran, has 17 million population during the day, 10 million during the night.
How?
How Benjamin Yetan Yahoo and IDF and Mussad could go there and kill 1,200 IRGC members, the killers, could kill them without even one casualty from the people's side.
It's a miracle.
And the people in Iran, they are cunting on President Trump.
They love President Trump.
Maybe it's news for you too.
I wrote an article for Fox News two months ago about this.
When during the 12 days war, Princes of Alevi asked the people to come out.
Nobody came out.
Not even one single person.
But then six hours later, President Trump tweeted and asked the people of Tehran to leave the capital.
Sean, in three hours, 9 million Iranians left the capital.
All of them, they said, we love Trump.
We trust President Trump.
And we are following his order.
And right now they are changing the names in the street in Iran, putting Trump, the sign of Trump on it.
The people in Iran, they love America.
They love President Trump.
They love Israel.
They love Benjamin Netanyahu.
And they know these two countries, United States and Israel, are the only countries during last 47 years when these Russian mullahs came to power in Iran.
Just it was America and Israel who didn't recognize this regime and stayed with the Iranian people.
But still, we needed Trump.
We needed President Trump.
Let me ask you, what are the conditions on the ground?
What are you hearing from the protesters?
They are asking.
They are asking for United States help.
And, you know, when Elon Musk is going to tweet against Khamenei, Elon Musk's tweet became the chant in the streets.
The people over there, they are following your show right now.
They are listening to everything is happening here.
They are following President Trump's.
Well, I can tell you, I know that's a fact.
When I had Reza on my television show, it went viral all throughout the entire Middle East.
I see it, you know, articles out of Turkey throughout the Middle East and going viral on social media inside of Iran.
Yeah, that's it.
And you know what?
Last time, when I was on your show, I had 80,000 people on my Instagram.
Right now, I have 2 million followers on Instagram.
2 million official and 20 million unofficial because the people.
I just want 10%.
That's all.
I don't really want, you know, if we're, no, I'm kidding.
Listen, you are a breath of fresh air.
I don't think people understand the level of oppression that the people of Iran have had to withstand since this revolution in 1979.
And I hope this is the moment.
The difference between now and say when Obama was president was president, we have a president standing with you in solidarity.
And I can tell you, and I know I speak for many Americans, the American people stand with you as well.
We're grateful to people like you.
Your courage throughout the years.
Your voice has been phenomenal.
And I just want to wish you my very best.
And the people of Iran, we're not at war with the people of Iran.
But Amir, Fakravar, we really appreciate it.
We're going to have you back again soon.
We'll have you on TV as well.
Thank you so much for being with us, sir.
Thank you.
Thank you so much, Sean, for having me.
I'm going to speak Saturday at Long Island for Stay Awake America.
And hopefully your audience can join us there.
And we'll see you soon, Sean.
You are amazing.
You are a genius.
I love you, Sean.
I love you back.
And I love the people.
I want the people to live free.
You know, human beings were designed.
They crave the breath of freedom.
800-941-Sean, us a number.
We have a report from John Solomon coming up straight ahead.