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Jan. 29, 2026 - Sean Hannity Show
29:31
Law, Order and the Cost of Reckless Rhetoric
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U.S. Interests in Latin America 00:14:41
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Now, on Capitol Hill today, Secretary of State Marco Rubio is just an absolute rock star and gave incredible testimony today at times explosive only because they can't handle the truth.
And anyway, it went very, very well for the Secretary from my perspective.
I want to play a couple of exchanges.
We'll get some comments and observations from Mike Lee, who's on the committee.
Here is in the setup lead up to the questioning Secretary of State Marco Rubio talking about Venezuela being a base of operations for virtually every competitor, adversary, enemy in the entire world, citing Iran and Russia and China as examples.
Here's what he said.
Let me just say this.
What is our goal going in?
We had in our hemisphere a regime operated by an indicted narco-trafficker that became a base of operation for virtually every competitor, adversary, and enemy in the world.
It was, for Iran, their primary spot of operation in the Western hemisphere was Venezuela.
For Russia, their primary base of operation in the Western hemisphere along Cuba and Nicaragua was Venezuela.
In the case of China, China was receiving oil at a huge $20 a barrel discount.
And they weren't even paying money for it.
It was being used to pay down debt that they were owed.
This is the oil of the people of Venezuela, and it was being given to the Chinese as barter at a 20%, at a $20 discount per barrel in some cases.
And so you had basically three of our primary opponents in the world operating from our hemisphere from that spot.
It was also a place where you had a narco-trafficking regime that openly cooperated with the FARC and the ELN and other drug trafficking organizations using their national territory.
It was an enormous strategic risk for the United States, not halfway around the world, not in another continent, but in the hemisphere in which we all live.
And it was having dramatic impacts on us, but also on Colombia and on the Caribbean basin and all sorts of other places.
It was an untenable situation and it had to be addressed.
And it was addressed.
And now the question becomes what happens moving forward.
As I've described to you in previous settings and in individual conversations, we had three objectives here.
The final, I'll work it backwards because the end state here is we want to reach a phase of transition where we are left with a friendly, stable, prosperous Venezuela.
And the Secretary of State went on about Maduro and you couldn't make a deal with this guy.
He wanted to tap us along and buy three years' time until he could deal with the new administration, which, by the way, we all know is true.
Here's what he said.
We made multiple attempts to get Maduro to leave voluntarily and to avoid all of this because we understood that he was an impediment to progress.
You couldn't make a deal with this guy.
This guy has made multiple deals.
He's broken every one of them.
As a point of example, he made a deal with the Biden administration, and here was the deal that he made.
It was a bad deal.
We knew he wouldn't keep it.
He made the following deal.
Pardon my nephews, his nephews, who are convicted narco-traffickers, convicted already and serving time in jail.
Pardon them.
Pardon and release Alex Saab, who was his moneyman, his bagman, primarily in charge of the portfolio with Iran.
Release these people.
He, in turn, agreed to release some political prisoners, which he did.
Many of them were subsequently exiled or rearrested, and that he would hold free and fair elections, which he did not.
In fact, he basically disqualified Maria Karina Machado and any other candidate.
And Edmundo Gonzalez ends up being the nominee for the opposition party simply because they forgot to ban him and they forgot to put him on the ban list.
And despite that, he loses an election that everyone around the world recognizes in a legitimate election.
So he's made previous deals.
In fact, he's broken so many deals, not even the Vatican has been willing to interact with Maduro in the past because he's broken so many of these deals.
He's just simply not a guy you can make a deal with.
He had no intent of keeping it.
What he wanted to do was tap us along and buy three years of time until he could deal with a new administration that he thought may be more favorable, et cetera.
All right, joining us now, Senator Mike Lee of Utah, who sits on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, part of today's hearing, where the Secretary of State was exchanging barbs with this woke radical left in the Democratic Party.
First of all, I thought that the Secretary of State was spectacular.
You know, the idea, what Senator Coons is arguing there is basically that we should have 535 commanders-in-chief and that under Article II powers in the Constitution, that the president doesn't have the authority to do so.
However, historical precedence contradicts that because we've had this happen over 130 times, and when Democratic presidents do it, you never hear a peep out of the likes of Chris Coons or any other Democratic senator.
Yeah, it's a fair point.
And in addition to that, Sean, one glaring omission in those comments is the fact that this was a law enforcement mission.
This was a mission involving the protection of FBI agents executing a validly issued arrest warrant for a criminal defendant overseas.
So the military personnel were there not to engage in war, rather to protect the law enforcement agents who were there to execute the search warrant.
That is not war and therefore doesn't require a declaration of war.
And I think they're missing that entirely in those comments.
Well, there's one other thing that, you know, first of all, we have precedence.
Manuel Noriega, for example, comes to mind.
But more importantly, if the president has to consult with Congress and the Senate on issues of national importance or law enforcement issues,
or if the nation is under threat and doesn't have this ability to do what the president did here, which was a legal extraction, then there's no way that we would ever be able to accomplish anything with the U.S. military with the high level of secrecy that we need.
Now, the Secretary of State mentioned about this contractor leaking, and my understanding is that there are two specific press outlets that were fully aware that this was going to go down, and they were appealed to directly for national security reasons to stand down in their reporting or they would put military lives in jeopardy and remove the element of surprise.
I think they did the right thing by doing so.
Probably didn't want to take on the wrath of Donald Trump either on the other side of it.
But with that said, we do need operational security, and we do need secrecy for these operations to ever be successful and not risk American lives.
Yeah, operational security certainly is very important.
And in many instances, there are things that presidents are allowed to do, whether they're clandestine operations or whether they are actions taken in order to thwart an actual or imminent attack on the United States, its military personnel or otherwise.
In those circumstances, even if they might otherwise be warlike actions, in those circumstances, presidents don't have to go to Congress for a declaration of war.
In any event, it's abundantly clear in this circumstance, this was not an act of war.
And so he didn't have an obligation to come to us at the outset.
There is, moreover, no ongoing military activity on the ground in Venezuela, making this even more distinct from a war.
Well, let me ask you this, because a lot of Democratic senators said, well, this might just give license to China to take Taiwan.
Tell everybody.
And let me backtrack a little bit.
I think that the thing that's really stood out in the hearing today is remember.
Secretary of State Marco Rubio's family had to escape communist Cuba.
If anything, he has a deep, deep understanding, not just of Cuba, but of the entire region and the tyranny that has oppressed people in the region.
And his knowledge was so evident that I thought he was running circles around these Democrats.
And frankly, the 90% of questions they were asking were just plain dumb.
Yeah.
Look, I thought he did a masterful job.
I've known Marco for a long time, for the better part of 16 years.
He and I both ran for the U.S. Senate at the same time for the first time in 2010 and until about a year ago, served together as colleagues.
He's always been on his A-game, but he was especially so today.
And I thought he handled him well.
And as you point out, I think he was doing circles around them.
They were trying to score cheap political points by making unsubstantiated attacks against him.
And in each instance, he handled it diplomatically, but also forcefully and directly by refuting their spurious claims that they were making against him and against President Trump.
Well, I think so.
Now, the question is, you know, will this now make its way through the courts?
Do you think there's an argument that the left is making that has any validity that the courts would ever take away the authority and powers granted to a president as commander-in-chief?
No.
First of all, they show no indication of wanting to pursue anything in court.
Secondly, one of the reasons why they show no indication of planning that is that they know it would not be successful.
In addition to the fact that on the merits, they would lose if the court ever reached the merits of the question, because this was a law enforcement operation, not a war, and therefore within the president's power as the chief executive officer of the United States to direct this law enforcement activity and to direct the U.S. military to accompany the law enforcement personnel on that mission.
But in addition to that, the courts have rather consistently refused to settle disputes between the ambiguous lines.
On the one hand, Congress's power to declare war.
On the other hand, the president's power under Article 2 of the Constitution as commander-in-chief.
There is some gray area in there because of the overlap.
And the courts have invoked what's known as the non-justiciable political question doctrine in that circumstance, saying that this is one of those things that's got to be worked out between the two political branches of the U.S. government, namely the legislative branch, Congress, and the presidency.
Quick break more with Senator Mike Lee, who is with us.
He sits on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee where Marco Rubio just crushed it today.
And we'll have more of his analysis on that.
We'll get to your calls on the other side.
Maybe we play a little bit more of the testimony and exchanges with the Secretary of State coming up.
800-941-SEAN is our number if you want to join us today.
All right, we continue.
Secretary of State Marco Rubio before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee today.
Mike Lee sits on that committee.
He is with us now from Utah.
What did you think of the exchange between Senator Rubio and Senator Ram Paul?
Because, you know, Ram Paul was saying, would it be an act of war if someone did it to us?
And, you know, nobody dies, few casualties.
They're in and out.
Boom.
Perfect military operation.
Would that be an act of war?
I thought the Secretary of State's answer is, you know, like the case you described, which obviously does not exist at this time, but as you described it, the U.S. always has the right to act in its national interest and protect itself.
So I don't really know about the equivalency here.
Where was Senator Ram Paul going with that?
Because it seems like he's against any and all military operation.
And if I had to use the term for him, I'd call him an isolationist.
Yeah, so I wasn't in there for the exchange between Senator Paul and Secretary Rubio.
I had to run over to a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing on FISA Section 702, which is an important conversation for a different day.
We were talking about some of the real risks of the abuse of FISA Section 702.
But I missed that part.
I can't speak to that exchange.
I'm not sure which direction he was taking, but Eric Inshawn, I would pivot back to the question, was this a war or was this a law enforcement action taken in pursuit of executing a validly issued warrant for the arrest of Nicolas Maduro?
Now, I believe it was the latter and therefore solidly within the president's inherent power as the chief executive officer and its commander-in-chief.
Yeah, I agree.
I do think that the world is going to be a better and safer place.
Do you believe in the end that Cuba can survive without Venezuelan oil and especially with the blockade and Mexico can't sell their oil now to Cuba?
Well, Cuba itself will survive.
The question is whether the communist regime in charge of Cuba currently goes.
That's merely what I was referencing.
Do you think they can survive?
I have affirmative doubts as to whether they can.
And if they can, how long that will last?
I think that's a huge, huge blow to the staying power of the communist regime currently in charge in Cuba.
Time will tell, but I think the clock's ticking there, and I don't think they've got long.
I don't think they've got long.
I think the Iranian regime is teetering on the brink.
I think all of Latin America is taking note of the actions of the president in Venezuela.
And I would expect that China and Russia and Iran's influence will be negligible, if even existing at all, by the time all is said and done.
Iceland vs Greenland 00:03:35
And that's good for our national security, in my humble opinion.
We appreciate your time, Senator Mike Lee.
Thank you, sir.
Thanks so much, Sean.
800-941-Sean is our number.
All right, let's go back.
Marco Rubio, I mean, he was on his A-game today.
I mean, the level of knowledge that he has, and it's not just on Latin America and this part of the world.
I mean, it was every area of the world is spectacular.
And he just dazzled today.
He put on a show, and it was pretty remarkable.
And here's one little short exchange with Senator Tim Kaine.
Well, Donald Trump called Greenland Iceland.
And then his answer is to take a shot at Biden.
It was great.
President repeatedly mistook Iceland for Greenland, right?
We're not mad at Iceland.
They haven't cost us any money.
The president just mistook the two countries for each other, correct?
Yeah, he meant to say Greenland, but I think we're all familiar with presidents that have verbal stumbles.
We've had presidents like that before.
Some made a lot more than this one.
Then he had another exchange.
Linda, I'm sure you were watching this with Tammy Duckworth over Trump's use of the Alien Enemies Act and going to war with narco-terrorists.
Oh, okay.
Let him go unabated and keep selling drugs and killing Americans.
Oh, that's a great solution.
This is a good exchange.
Listen to this.
Will you advise the president to rescind his invocation of the wartime alien enemy?
No, of course not.
I mean, these are people that are threats to the national security of the United States.
But I've described this in hearings in the past, including the president of the United States.
So you're saying that we're at war?
When it comes to narco-trafficking groups and criminal gangs that are targeting the United States for criminalization.
We're in a state of war.
There's no doubt about the fact that we're confronting them in a war like that.
They're waging war against us and they're enemy combatants as a result of it.
And the fact of the matter is that we are confronting these irregular groups.
And that's one of the great challenges of the new century in this hemisphere in particular, is that these non-state actors who possess state-like capabilities in terms of their weaponry pose a grave danger to the United States.
I don't think any American would pose a threat to national security.
All of the other laws when it comes to warfare.
I mean, you're saying that he can invoke this wartime power.
No, I'm saying, you're asking me, I'm here to discuss foreign policy and what's in the realm of the Department of State.
I think your question is better directed to the Department of Justice.
But I would tell you, which is something that can be invoked during wartime.
It's only been invoked during the war of 1812, World War I, and World War II.
It's been invoked three times, and this president is invoking it.
Okay, you're asking me a question about the domestic application of a law that's best directed at the Department of Justice.
No, it is because you're asking me something to opine on something that's in the realm of the Department of Justice in terms of its domestic application.
I can tell you that the United States is most certainly confronting terrorist and criminal organizations operating in our hemisphere that pose a grave danger to the United States.
Anyone who believes that gangs that flood our country with fentanyl or cocaine are not threats to the United States is not living in reality and certainly does not reflect the opinion of most Americans.
And then, Marco, I mean, look, there is this isolationist wing.
I am not part of it within Republican circles, but I consider myself more of a Trump doctrine guy.
And then there are people like Ram Paul.
Here's Marco debating Ram Paul.
So I would ask you, if a foreign country bombed our air defense missiles, captured and removed our president, and blockaded our country, would that be considered an act of war?
Trump Doctrine Guy 00:02:53
Well, I think your question is about the, and I will acknowledge you've been very consistent on all these points the entire career.
So let me, let me, no matter who the, who's in charge, so I will point to two things.
The first is it's hard for us to conceive that an operation that lasted about four and a half hours and was a law enforcement operation to capture someone we don't recognize as a head of state, indicted in the United States, launched with a $50 million banana.
The question would be if it only took four hours to take our president, very short, nobody dies on the other side, nobody dies on our side, it's perfect.
Would it be an act of war?
We just don't believe that this operation comes anywhere close to the constitutional definition of war.
All right, you can't have 535 commanders in chief.
You elect one commander-in-chief at a time.
It was incredible.
Linda, if you look at a politician and their growth trajectory, I mean, it is a vertical line straight up for Secretary of State Rubio.
He's a star.
There's no question.
I mean, this is a good idea.
I don't get impressed often, but I was impressed today.
Let me tell you something.
You know what the fun thing is about Rubio?
You tell me something.
I'm going to tell you.
That's what I'm hearing.
This guy right here, he's the kind of guy that you want with you in a fight.
He's the guy you want in the foxhole.
He's very calm.
He's telling you in the most polite way how dumb you are, how blessed you are that he's even giving you a moment of his time.
It is embarrassing most of the time at these committee hearings, some of the questions that we get from the left and even from some of the rhinos, but it is incredible how gracefully he handles it with facts, with information.
It was just fantastic.
And he's just like, he's ready to go.
And he used to serve on this committee.
So he knows all these guys.
He knows what they're going to do.
I mean, he really is just a man.
I just how many people were either texting me, calling me, reaching out to me.
Oh, there's our next president.
Did you get the same response?
Absolutely.
I mean, before President Trump got in the race in 2015, I was a huge Carson and Marco Rubio fan.
And I was like, oh, Marco.
And I was like, I'll work the phones.
I'll do whatever we need to do.
And always a big fan of him since he's been in Congress.
You know, he's just a stalwart, you know, and he has so much in common with the everyday guy.
He's got a beautiful wife, a great family.
He's a great dad.
He's got a great story.
You know, there's a lot about him to love.
And I think today just was one more reason.
The voter is phenomenal today.
And I don't get impressed very often.
All right, let's get to our busy telephones.
A lot of people standing by.
All right.
John in Florida, John number two.
What's up, John, number two?
You're on the Sean Hannity show.
Hello, Sean.
How you doing?
I'm good.
How you doing?
Where from New York did you come to Florida?
From Brooklyn.
So listen, I can't tell at all.
It was just a lucky guess.
Really lucky on my part.
Sanctuary Cities Controversy 00:07:12
I'm kidding.
What's on your mind?
Okay.
This whole thing, the left is never going to comply with Trump's wishes of getting these migrants, these dangerous guys, out of their states.
These sanctuary cities have to be responsible for all the rhetoric and the bad stuff that they've been saying.
Trump should tell them, you want the problem?
You got it.
No more federal funding for this.
We'll give you the list of people.
You take them out yourself.
If you don't take them out yourself, you've got to deal with a solid majority of people.
Tell the people with a contingency that you want these people to stay.
You've got to tell your powers to be, I want these people to extract these people out of the state.
If they don't do it, then they got to be responsible for their actions.
You can't keep going on this.
Our Asians are getting beat up, cursed at, run over, and it's too much.
You got to back up.
You're going to have to have a workaround.
And the workaround is let them have their own problem.
Only sanctuary cities.
Let them have the problem.
Let them get them out themselves.
The problem is they don't stay in their sanctuary cities.
The problem is they're killing innocent Americans in sanctuary cities.
And, you know, there are other people that don't agree with sanctuary city status.
I'm not willing to concede that, okay, well, if you're illegal, we'll ignore you and you get to, you know, murder and rape and kill and deal drugs and get away with all of it because you're protected by government officials that don't abide by our Constitution, the supremacy clause, and the rule of law.
I'm not willing to accept that.
Do I think that there's room for improvement?
Of course, there's always room for improvement, but nobody has ever, I don't think any other show has actually given you an extensive, exhaustive list of examples, one after another, and scrolled their names and showed their pictures on TV the way I have.
And I'm only doing it because it's a void that needs to be filled.
These people have put their lives on the line and they're saving lives in the process.
And the hope of, you know, Mayor of Small Fry and this idiot, you know, Tim Walz is they want the government to bow a knee and just listen to what they want.
And they want to be able, you know, they don't, when the mayor said he's not going to turn over 1,360 people and the state is threatening not to cooperate with ICE, they are aiding and abetting in law breaking.
Now, we're now headed towards a confrontation of their doing where the government's going to have to decide whether they charge them.
And I'd rather not get to that point.
But they are, their insightful rhetoric has created this mob mentality that is putting the lives of law enforcement in jeopardy.
And frankly, as far as I'm concerned, they are contributing to the chaos and they have blood on their hands.
I think their reckless rhetoric is largely responsible for a lot of what has happened.
And they just doubled down on it.
I think they see political advantage in it.
Anyway, it's sad.
800-941 Sean is our number if you want to be a part of the program.
Back to our busy telephones.
South Carolina, Rita the next Sean Hannity Show.
What's up, Rita?
Hey, Sean.
Thanks for taking the call.
So just to piggyback on that last caller, the First Amendment, I had to go back and look and make sure I understood it properly.
Gives people the right to peacefully assemble.
That's not what we have here.
The First Amendment doesn't give them the right to do what they're doing, going out there causing chaos and obstructing law enforcement.
If I'm missing it, please correct me, but I'm not seeing anybody being held to account.
Get them off the street, arrest them, lock them up.
They are breaking the law.
At the very least, they're obstructing law enforcement.
Why are they not getting locked up?
Just think about this.
And I have been making this point for years.
Lindsey Graham said last night on my TV show from your great state of South Carolina is now putting forth a bill that will once and for all end sanctuary cities and states that you cannot, you know, you cannot institutionalize law breaking and take taxpayer dollars and give it to people that don't belong in the country.
You can't protect illegal immigrants that are in your jails and not turn them over to ICE.
That is what is happening in Minnesota, California, and all these sanctuary cities and states.
They say it's not happening, but they're lying.
And Mayor Small Fried French Fry said the truth out loud.
And you know what?
It's putting honest citizens in jeopardy.
Their lives.
Americans are getting murdered.
You never hear any outrage from any Democrats.
Look, I said at the time, and then I'll let you have the final word.
I said at the time when President Trump had his joint session speech a year ago and he recognized Lake and Riley's family and Jocelyn Nungari's family, and these Democrats sat on their hands.
That to me was the moment that it was very evident they lost any conscience, any heart, any soul that any normal human being would have.
You would stand for the families of the mother of a 12-year-old girl that was brutally murdered and raped.
You would stand for the family, the mother of a nursing student who was out jogging and brutally murdered.
And they didn't because they didn't care.
They don't talk about the murders in Chicago, New York City, Los Angeles, any deep blue city state in this country that happens every week.
We don't know those people's names because they can't weaponize those murders for political purposes.
It's disgusting.
They are despicable people for what they do.
I mean, that was vile what they did.
I couldn't even understand that.
But what I'm talking about, when I'm saying arresting, I'm talking about those people who have their boots on the ground, the ones that are going out there and ultimately getting hurt because they're making law enforcement have to be reactive to their motions.
So they're not peacefully assembling.
They're not out there chanting or whatever.
So, what they're doing is obstructing.
So, why because local law enforcement has been instructed not to help them, or they don't want to help them get them off the streets.
And at the very least, wouldn't it be federal?
So, they get federal law enforcement in there to scoop them up and put them in jail.
They've institutionalized the whole process.
Understand, these are well-funded, well-organized groups that are on their encrypted signal app and they're stalking ICE agents wherever they go for the purpose of disruption and obstruction and creating confrontation.
And they're pouring gasoline on a fire.
Leaders Encouraging Chaos 00:01:08
That's why all of this is preventable, but they're being encouraged by their so-called leaders that aren't leaders at all.
And it's the whole thing I find repulsive.
Appreciate the call.
Thank you, Rita.
God bless you.
800-941-SHAWN, our number in tonight, 9 Eastern on the Fox News Channel.
Please set your DVR so you never, ever, ever miss an episode.
We'll have the latest out of Minneapolis as Mayor Smallfry and Timmy Walls now going back on their word.
Not a shock.
We have reporters on the ground.
We'll look at the legal aspect of getting rid of sanctuary states and cities.
Greg Jarrett, Clay Travis, Ari Fleischer, Isabel Brown, Dave Asman, Senator Rick Scott, and much more.
Set your DVR.
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