Sean Hannity takes on the dangerous consequences of political rhetoric after controversial comments suggest ICE agents could be targeted under “stand your ground” laws. Sean is joined by Arizona Senate President Warren Petersen, who explains why those claims are legally false and why law enforcement leaders across the state are sounding the alarm. The discussion highlights how misinformation from elected officials puts officers and civilians at risk while eroding trust in public safety. Sean also addresses responsible gun ownership, situational awareness, and why de-escalation matters in a volatile climate. This hour underscores how words from leaders can carry real-world consequences.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
All right, news roundup and information overload hour.
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If you want to be a part of the program, it's 800-941, Sean, if you want to join us.
There is a lot going on as it relates to Iran.
If I had to guess, there's going to be soon some action by President Trump.
And we have now seen a ratcheting up of the tensions.
We've had the USS Abraham Lincoln had to send up fighter jets to take out an aggressive drone.
And American forces now shot that down as the naval buildup is continuing.
And I would imagine you're going to see probably a series of attacks against those people responsible for cracking down and murdering innocent people who were actually peacefully protesting from all that I could see.
And it's, you know, this, look, this is a Nazi theocracy regime.
This is a regime where people do not have rights.
This is a regime that literally kills people for no reason.
And, you know, women are treated like third-class citizens.
God forbid, if you're gay or lesbian, they're going to put you up on a roof and throw you off the roof.
And they have been the number one state sponsor of terror for a long time, which is why Donald Trump took out their nuclear sites.
This is why he took out Solemani.
This is why also Donald Trump beat back the ISIS Caliphate.
But they have been fomenting terror around the world for a long, long time.
And they can chant and they've been chanting in the last week, death to America again.
You have their leaders now talking about, well, in a month or two from now, we will be talking about the death of Donald J. Trump.
They're threatening our president directly.
If you go back after the Ayatollah Khomeini came back from, he was in isolation in France.
I can't believe France put him up, by the way.
That's a different story for a different day.
But after the Shah was overthrown, in comes this religious theocracy.
And anyway, America lived through, and I remember it well, 444 days Americans were held hostage inside of Iran.
One of them is going to join us in a minute.
Kevin Her Menning is a Marine, held captive 444 days upon his release.
He continued in the military, completed 13 years in the Marine Corps, earning multiple honors, including the Prisoner of War Medal, the Defense Motorious Service Medal, the U.S. State Department's Award for Valor.
And, you know, he knows a thing or two about this Nazi fascist theocracy regime that is terrorizing and now murdering the people in that country.
The Persian people, rightly, I think it's the natural state of man to want liberty and to want freedom.
Our founders, our framers, discuss that that is the natural order of things, endowed by our creator, that rights come from God.
They don't come from man.
Anyway, Kevin, welcome to the program.
Glad you're with us.
Well, thank you, Sean.
And, you know, you and I have been around long enough to know that when it comes to Iran, the most dangerous mistake we've made is pretending that it's a new problem or a misunderstood regime.
Wouldn't you agree with that?
Yeah, of course I'd agree with it.
And, you know, I want people to fully understand when you were being held hostage during that time, 444 days is an awfully long time.
I want to know how you were treated.
And I want to know mentally, psychologically, did you always know that your country was behind you supporting you and that would do everything possible to ensure your release?
Well, to be honest, no, we didn't know that the United States was even concerning itself with us, obviously our families, but we didn't know until after the failed rescue mission, Operation Eagle Claw, that there was something proactively being planned by our U.S. government, our military.
And it really, that was way in April of 1980.
But, you know, when we were first captured, I was a young Marine security guard, 20 years old at the time.
But Marine security guards have a dual responsibility.
One is to be, of course, adhering to our military responsibilities through the Department of Defense, but also because we have a dual manager, if you will, or leadership of the Department of State, which is about diplomacy.
And so really, Marine Security Guards are supposed to try to do their best at diminishing chaos, diminishing conflict.
And the ambassador way back on November 4th, 1979, Chargé de Per Bruce Langen, he's the one who ultimately made the call to lay down our weapons and to surrender the embassy.
But honestly, it's because he and everybody involved was expecting the Iranian government to do its job under a millennia, several millennia of international law.
And that was to come to the aid of the diplomats and the staff at the embassy to clear the compound.
And, you know, we would go about our daily life.
But indeed, the Ayatollah and his followers, they saw this as an opportunity to consolidate their power.
And we became the great Satan and the representative of the great Satan.
And so we were captured.
I would say to you one thing that might be relevant is that our CIA station chief, his position was finally declassified about 13 months ago.
He was held captive.
He was held in solitary confinement for 425 days.
And I don't know how Tom Ahern managed that to endure and come out a whole man.
But after 43 days, I know at least for me in solitary following a failed escape attempt, that was enough.
I was ready to get out of solitary for sure.
And I pretty much was begging the guards to put me with another roommate.
And we didn't know.
That was right around the time, right before, when I came out of solitary confinement, was right before the failed rescue mission.
And I guess I would be remiss if you didn't give me 10 seconds to say that people have referred to the hostages as heroes for what we've endured.
But indeed, the only real heroes were those eight men who selflessly laid down their lives for people they didn't even know, just so we might have been freed earlier.
Let me talk about how you were treated when you were being held in captivity.
How were you treated?
Well, early on, a lot of blindfolds, a lot of, you know, there was a lot of solitary confinement early on.
My colleagues, there were several who were beaten severely during their interrogations that went on.
But, you know, just being denied the basic...
Why do you think they were beaten and you were not being beaten?
Well, I mean, I had my own share of that very early on.
And then during my, following my failed escape attempt.
But some of these guys, senior military officers, Colonel Schaefer, Colonel Scott, they were senior military officers in the Air Force and the Army, military attaches there.
They knew the Shaw's leaders.
So the Ayatollah and his followers, those who captured us, they wanted to try to extract information from these guys.
But the information that people working at an embassy largely have, Sean, and you know some of this because you've interviewed many people in national security and diplomatic positions, that their information was really about how can the United States collaboratively work with foreign governments, either adversaries or allies.
And for at least 26 years when the Shah was in power, we certainly saw a very tight relationship between the U.S. and Iran.
And we have to go all the way back to those days because the Soviet Union, the former Soviet Union, shared about a 1,200-mile border with the northern border of Iran.
And so Iran was a very important player in the geopolitical front.
And so when I think about these guys who endured that type of treatment and behavior, and not all of them spent much time, if any time, in solitary confinement, but just the beatings because of the interrogations, they played Russian roulette with us early on.
They were trying to force the Marines to open up safes that we didn't have combinations to.
And just being isolated, Sean, just not knowing what the next day was going to bring.
They would play a lot of mind games with correspondence, letters to our families and from our families.
The letters that I received from my folks had every single thing torn out of it that had anything to do with the negotiations that might have been going on.
What was our government doing to try to secure our release?
And as a result, you know, we were really very much kept in the dark.
Quick break right back.
We'll have more with Kevin Hermenning.
He is a former Marine.
He was held captive in Iran for 444 days.
More on the other side.
We'll talk a little Super Bowl food with Linda and much more.
We continue, Kevin.
Her Menning is with us, held hostage in Iran for 444 days.
You know, it's got to be so hard.
What was the lowest point for you?
Well, I think the lowest point for pretty much maybe two-thirds of the hostages was in February of 1980, about three months after we were captured.
They decided to really play a severe mind game on us.
They dragged us out of our cells that we were in at the time, lined us up against the wall, stripped us down to just our shorts.
And then while one of their guards, a couple of their guards went running up and down the hall, up and down the hallway behind us, started shouting out execution commands at the top of their lungs and then chambering their weapons as though we were about to be executed.
And I remember a good friend of mine, another fellow from Wisconsin, actually, Dave Rader, Colonel Dave Rader, an Air Force fellow.
He had enough, and he basically started cursing at the Iranians and shouted to them to just get it over with if that's what they really wanted to do.
But for all of us, I would say that was— How did they react to him fighting back like that?
They were, I would say, astonished.
They didn't think that it was a lot.
There was a lot of mind game being played, mind games being played by both sides throughout the situation.
But at that particular time, they were just so taken aback that that type of resistance was happening.
I mean, we were handcuffed behind our backs and there wasn't a lot we could have done physically other than just speaking up.
I mean, imagine if they're trying to intimidate you and scare you and you say, go ahead, pull the trigger.
I'm going to see Jesus.
Go ahead.
I want to go see Jesus today.
Pull the trigger.
Pull it.
Do it now.
Yeah.
And what's interesting.
In other words, you don't give them the reaction that they want.
No, they didn't.
They want to create fear.
They want to intimidate.
And I'm not saying the average person naturally would respond that way, but bring about submission.
No question.
Well, and you can choose not to.
Obviously, as a Marine, I would imagine you were probably more equipped than others in the embassy at the time to handle the stress of that.
And I'm sure that a lot of people that were held hostage for that length of time were never the same again.
You sound like you've recovered really nicely and that you put this chapter in your life in its proper perspective and moved on.
But I'm sure a lot of the people that you stayed in touch with did not.
Yes, and I would say the following on that topic.
I think youth has a lot to do with the resilience that people are able to bring about.
I think that being just 20 years old, and then when we finally were released and we got back to our communities and our families, what my experience was the Marine Corps, they put me on the road working out of the recruiting office in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, but not as a recruiter, rather in public affairs.
And I traveled the state with the Marine Corps.
They had somebody accompany me, and I spoke at high schools and rotary clubs and Kiwanis and church groups.
And as a result of that, it really became a catharsis for me.
And I don't think that was a plan for the Marines, but it worked for me because it helped me understand that I would rather be defined for what I've done in my life rather than for what happened to me for 444 days.
I had a roommate, Sean, who became a very good friend of mine.
We were roommates for about six months.
Bill Keel was a giant of a man standing six feet nine inches tall, weighing about 350 pounds, and he lost half of his body weight, actually literally a little more than half of his body weight in captivity.
But Bill Keel was an educator who had only been in Iran for 24 hours, and he arrived there as part of an international education agency to gather records from the former Tehran American High School, which had been shut down by the Ayatollah.
And then the Americans who were having their kids go there left the country anyway.
But he would always say to me, Kevin, you know, you're a young man.
You were the age of my kids.
And when we get out of here, and Sean, he never said if we get out, and that's what educators do.
They encourage people.
So he said, when we get out of here, go back, get involved in your community, complete your education, and make a life of relevance.
And I've never forgotten that because some of my colleagues, they had much worse experiences than I had.
What'd they feed you every day?
We had a lot of chicken legs, a lot of rice, a lot of grass and goat gut soup, which supposedly is a delta.
Inspiration Through Cooking00:08:59
Goat what soup?
Grass and goat guts soup.
I never developed a taste for that.
I'm sure you didn't.
Honestly, you know, you're an inspiration.
You know, I admire your resiliency and you're sharing your story with us.
And thank God you're okay.
And to all the other hostages, we pray for them even to this day.
Nobody should have to live through that captivity.
Terrible to lose your freedom.
Kevin, we appreciate you, man.
God bless you.
And stay in touch with us, okay?
Thank you for having me on.
You bet.
800-941, Sean, if you want to be a part of the program.
Now, you want Linda's air-fried french fries or do you want Hannity cooking for the Super Bowl?
It's not even close.
We'll get to that in a minute.
800-941-SEAN if you want to be a part of the program.
Well, do you want to talk about the Super Bowl anymore?
I mean, you did not.
How do you not know who's in the Super Bowl when I first asked you?
You did not know.
I'm going to tell you that's not as true.
And then we're going to talk about food because you're not a better cook than me.
Well, I think I am.
I don't really think that even warrants a conversation, but that's okay.
If you want to have it, we can have it.
I'm all in.
Okay, how do you cook your friends?
How do you cook your French fries?
That's how we're rating our abilities to cook is French fries.
How do you cook your French fries?
In an air fryer.
Okay.
And what other food do you cook in an air fryer?
I mean, you can cook anything you want in an air fryer, but I don't cook in the air fryer.
I mean, you can cook fried chicken.
You can cook if you make like your own nuggets from scratch.
So they're healthy.
Everybody listening to my voice right now, do you want Hannity fried chicken?
No, they want to be maja or avocado oil or olive oil.
Or do you want to air-fried crap?
How about no oil?
How about less calories?
Same great taste, less.
Okay, these are healthy oils.
Maha approved.
But you know what's the healthiest of oil?
No oil.
I'm taking the oil out.
No, actually, you're wrong.
No.
Olive oil is extremely heart healthy, as is.
I didn't say it wasn't.
I didn't say it wasn't.
Okay, so if you cook using it, why are you adding it?
And it tastes better.
Because the point is, when you're cooking food, you cook food that tastes good.
The reason it doesn't taste better for you is.
And what is the other crap that you're going to like, for example, if you were watching the Super Bowl this weekend, like every other American, if you were to go to the bottom?
I'd say there's a lot of people who are cutting, Sean.
I talk to people on the other side.
I don't want to talk about that.
I want to talk about what would you make.
What would you make to eat?
We make heroes.
We make dips.
Heroes.
Yeah.
What kind of heroes?
Heroes.
What kind of heroes?
You know, Italian subs, like baked heroes.
I don't know what you guys call them.
All right, an Italian sub.
You go, you get bread at the grocery store, you slap some meat on it, and that's your big deal.
You go to an authentic Italian deli.
You get the subsuper.
Okay, you get salami.
You get the mozzarella.
You get the right bread.
You got to do the right thing.
Right bread.
You got to get the right bread.
Well, that's your big meal.
That is your big meal.
I didn't say that.
What else are you going to make?
You said, what else would you make?
Well, what do you make?
You're going to make artichoke dips, aren't you?
And spinach dip and taco.
Spinach dip.
Steak.
Tacos.
Let me ask you a question.
How do you cook your taco meat?
I cook it in a pan.
Oh, you don't air fry it?
I told you not everything goes in the air fryer.
Just because I own an air fryer, it's not a one-trick pony.
You can use other things, like a pan.
Use hard tacos or soft tacos?
I'm not doing it.
I'm having a brunch on Sunday, and we're not watching the Super Bowl.
Having a brunch on Sunday.
And what are you going to cook?
You know what I'm going to watch on Sunday?
I'm going to.
I don't care about that.
We're talking about food.
Focus.
Learn to focus.
You're like ABD.
All right.
So what else are you going to make for your brunch?
My brunch, I'm doing French toast with brioche bread, pancakes.
Puke.
What?
What?
Puke.
You don't like French toast?
Pancakes?
No.
Why not?
Because I don't need sugar.
Oh, but it makes everything taste better.
You don't like sugar?
No.
I don't.
I try.
I eat and eggs.
Well, you can eat other things, Sean.
You know, you don't.
Okay, I'm making pork ribs.
You want to know what I'm making?
I'm making pork ribs.
I'm going to make sausage and onions, mild Italian sausage from a butcher, which is delicious.
I don't put peppers in because I don't love peppers.
Do you have no hormones, no vaccines in your meat?
Do you make sure of that?
Of course.
Of course.
Right?
Okay.
Grass-fed.
Wonderful.
Organic.
I'm going to have steaks available.
I'm going to make tomahawk ribeyes For people that want carbs, I can make potatoes for them.
I'll make like potatoes or grotto.
So nobody gets anything sweet, though.
Nobody can have a cookie.
Nobody can have a brownie.
No, they can have whatever they want.
I'll order whatever I'm going to make.
But you just don't make it.
Oh, you order it.
You can't make the potatoes.
No, I'm not going to make this.
Then I already whooped your ass because I'm a great baker.
Whoop my ass.
Okay.
I'm going to sit there and I'm going to pound out making a pie that nobody really is going to end up eating anyway because they're going to be so stuff from eating my food.
From eating my other food.
Listen, well, they probably figure they better fill up because your desserts are so good.
No, that's not, that's not why my pork ribs are superb.
My pork ribs are unbelievable.
You can't even match them.
You could never match them.
You can't match your pork ribs.
I like piggies.
Now, I also will create a shrimp option.
Actually, two options, seafood options.
One, I will make seafood Fra Diablo, and two, I will make shrimp scampy.
I'm just telling you, I'm a better chef than you.
You can't deal with that.
You can say it out loud.
I'm dealing together.
Okay, let's go through the phones and say, Tom, who would you rather, where would you rather eat on Super Bowl Sunday, at my house or Linda's, based on what you just heard?
Well, Sean, I'd rather eat at your house.
And next to that, it would be my house because that's filet mignon on Toastpoint.
Thank you.
All right, stay on the line.
Don't go anywhere.
Dennison, Connecticut, based on this discussion, whose house would you rather eat at?
Mine or Linda's?
They all sound good, but yours, I think.
Thank you.
Barb, Minnesota.
Whose house would you rather eat at?
Mine or Linda's?
I guess I'd better eat at Sean's house.
Thank you.
Professor Katz, where would you like to eat?
At my house or Linda's with her air-fried French fries?
Sean, I love you, but your stuff isn't kosher.
I can't eat pork and so, and I'm a chocoholic, so I'd have to go to Linda's.
You don't have to have pork.
I have many options for you.
I have seafood options.
I have steak options.
I have, and Linda didn't mention anything that was kosher except, you know, air-fried french fries.
She said and cake and pies and all that garbage that nobody should be eating.
Oh, see, I'm a chocoholic, so that's kind of a deal breaker.
Well, if you want chocolate, I'll make I'll bring chocolate into the house.
I always accommodate my guests.
My guests get treated like kings and queens, and I serve everybody.
Okay.
What kind of chocolate do you like?
Like a queen.
Absolutely.
What kind of chocolate would you like?
Oh, my gosh.
And I love chocolate chip cookies.
I love chocolate chip ice cream.
I love, you know, Godiva chocolates, any kind of chocolate.
All right, Linda, send Professor Katz, you know, like a bunch of chocolate goodies from me.
So you'd rather have a break.
Should I send her a bottle of olive oil too, Sean?
We don't want to make sure she has all the proper oils in her home.
You have to use, you have to use it sparingly, just the right amount.
Like, for example, to cook my sausage and peppers, first I saute the sausage, right, in a little bit of olive oil and I brown it up a little bit and then you just you have to keep rolling it to get it perfectly browned up.
Then I cut each sausage into individual pieces.
I cut up all the onions.
I saute them in olive oil and butter.
And then I put in a silver palette pasta sauce marinara and it is phenomenal.
And I actually slightly water it down in this case for my food.
That's how meticulous I am with my cooking.
What are you going to drink?
Are you talking to me or Professor Katz?
I'm talking to you.
I probably will drink Bloody Mary's and I probably will have Bellini's because it's brunch time.
Bloody Mary's at 6 p.m.
No, I'm doing brunch, bro.
I'm not doing the Super Bowl.
Period.
End of sentence.
The NFL can kiss my Irish ass.
I'm not about it.
All right, whatever.
You're the only one in America.
All right, Professor Katz, what's on your mind today?
Are you?
Oh great.
Well, i'm actually probably the only person going to see the notebook with my boyfriend because uh, we are back together.
Um, I dated him from the time I was 12 till I was 25.
Then he dumped me for a rich girl.
Lost Man Card00:05:38
So now my husband's been uh, passed away eight years ago.
He's divorced and so we're going to see the notebook, the musical, and he's really bummed because I planned it on super Bull sunday.
But i'm excited to see the notebook dude, I mean, he's losing his man card if he's given in to going to see the notebook.
And i've seen the movie and it's cute and I know, I know, a lot of women love it and they're, like you know, charmed by it.
Uh however, if he's, not watching the Super Bowl and going to the notebook, he must really be in love with you.
I'll put it that way.
Oh, thank you, thank you.
Well listen, you know, since you're taken, you know I I I, you know, i'm glad i'm back with Richard but um, so well, I only wish you health and happiness.
I mean honestly, this life is too short, thank you, thank you um, I just wanted to say um, a quick thing.
When Gene Hamilton was on, by the way when he was talking about things that ICE could sue for.
Um, he missed all the invasion of privacy charts um false light.
It he could sue.
They could sue for false light if you place somebody in a highly offensive false light in the public eye, intrusion into seclusion when you go into their private.
You know doxing papers and and um their addresses and things, or public disclosure of private facts.
Emotional distress, I mean separate from all the federal things that he mentioned.
But um, the thing that always, just absolutely burns Mom and I is a constant false comparison.
It's not even a comparison.
You don't talk about Hitler and the Nazis in the same breath as our ICE agents.
Um 44 000.
You know, I don't know sports either, but 44 000 is the number of concentration camps, six of which were extermination camps.
Mom was in Auschitz, Mom was in Geislingen, Mom was liberated by the U.s army and Dachau.
400 000 of our U.s military were killed fighting against the real Nazis.
They weren't deporting people because they were here illegally.
They were deport.
They were killing people just because they were Jews.
Six million, that's a number.
That's the number of Jews that were killed by the Nazis.
And you know it just goes on and on.
And they did this in 2016, when president Trump ran because he wanted to build the wall.
They're doing it now again, as you so rightly said, because of trying to, you know, get power.
And it's just everybody, all of the Republicans, and everybody's got to stop being afraid that oh, they're going to call me a racist or whatever.
How many people who work for ICE are minorities?
This has nothing to do with that.
And when you have Rocana on um, what about the 14 year old who was sodomized and raped by a Mexican illegal alien?
And that is the proper term.
Stop getting caught up with illegal immigration migrants.
They're not migrants.
They're not.
Listen, Professor, I am telling you, we are doing work that nobody else in the media will do.
We keep scrolling the names of the people that commit the worst crimes.
I've got to run.
Good luck at your musical.
And he lost his man card in my mind.
I'm just saying.
You can go see the notebook any other day of the week.
Appreciate you being with us.
Tom, Florida.
Go ahead, Tom.
And I just want to talk about the people that are up in Minneapolis and around the country that are going crazy about all these deportions.
1.6 million people themselves.
So if 1.6 million deported themselves, it doesn't mean it's all that bad.
I missed that last part.
What's that?
If 1.6 million people deported themselves, it can't be that bad.
Well, no, because you had 12 million under Biden, and we had like 11 million beforehand.
And here's the problem under Biden, Harris, Mayorgas is among them are the worst of the worst.
And, you know, so far, they have captured and deported about 700,000 of the worst criminals.
And we still have murderers, rapists, child molesters, known terrorists in the country.
And it's frustrating to me that, you know, not only do they not get credit and applauded for what they're doing, they get demonized and a rush to judgment every time, and they get called Nazi Gestapo.
I mean, the left has lost the plot, and I'm okay with that because we're heading into an election year.
And if that's their platform, I'm all for it because I don't think it's going to sell with the American people.
That's my best guess.
Tom, my free state of Florida, appreciate you more than you know.
800-941-Shauna's on number if you want to be a part of the program.
All right, that's going to wrap things up for today.
We are loaded up tonight on Hannity 9 Eastern on the Fox News channel as we will have the very latest on Nancy Guthrie, who's missing.
We will have reporters.
We have FBI analyst Jeff Bennett from the FBI, Maureen O'Connell, Nicole Parker, Nancy Grace, the latest on the new information we have.
Also, Ed Smart, the dad of Elizabeth Smart.
Also, Scott Besson has a showdown on Capitol Hill two days in a row.
We've got all the best tape.
We have Congressman James Comer.
Hillary and Bill Clinton will testify on the Epstein files.
And we've got Lindsey Graham.
No more sanctuary cities, no more sanctuary states.