Donald Trump’s fictional "Trump Doctrine" delivers a knockout blow to Iran, eliminating Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei, 40 deputies, and Quds Force commander in a high-tech strike surpassing Iraq 2003’s airpower. Polls show 54% approval (80% GOP), while Democrats oppose it amid claims of $400M ransom payments under Obama. Iran’s missile/drone attacks plummet by 86% and 73%, yet the CIA’s Kurdish uprising gambit is dismissed as futile—real change must come from within. Trump’s JCPOA withdrawal allegedly averted nuclear weapons in two weeks, while critics are mocked for ignoring 46 American deaths on October 7, 2023. The segment pivots to Venezuela’s oil surge, AI energy demands, and Trump’s political dominance, framing his decisive action as the only path to long-term security. [Automatically generated summary]
If you want to be a part of the program, well, now the leader of the Quds forces has been taken out.
I think three spectacular moments have occurred here in this conflict, this battle in Iran.
One is the opening 30 seconds that took out the supreme leader, Ali Khamani, and 40 of his top deputies.
Then you have their Security Council meeting some 80 some odd members to pick the next Supreme Leader, and they're wiped out.
Now the leader of the Quds forces, one of the most brutal forces on the face of the earth, that guy's been wiped out.
And yeah, they're also saying that, believe it or not, now that if there's the new leader picked, that person's going to.
And the Israelis now have threatened to eliminate any new successor selected to replace Ali Khamani.
And, you know, if they continue this ideology, which, of course, naturally that they would.
I'm not sure when they realize that they've been beaten, but the overwhelming use of force has been at a level I don't think anybody has ever seen in the history of warfare in terms of the success.
I've often talked about the next generation of warfare is not going to be fought on the battlefield, but in air-conditioned offices.
We're now beginning to see that play out in real time as evidenced by drones and evidenced by long-range missiles and et cetera.
Now we still have conventional forces.
We have our ships.
We have our military, but there's no boots on the ground.
They've left open the possibility with great hesitation.
That is not part of Donald Trump's plan in keeping with the Trump doctrine.
But any leader appointed by the Iranian terror regime to continue to lead a plan to destroy the U.S. and Israel and the free world will be an unequivocal target for elimination.
This coming from the Israeli defense minister, Israel Katz.
I will tell you, and Linda, I think you're in the same camp as I am.
I am sick and tired of dumb people.
I really can't take a lot of stupidity.
And when it comes to utter stupidity, you know, I know that I stand on the shoulders of my parents and my grandparents, my grandparents, all four of them coming from Ireland.
I've told the story many times.
And they came here with no money.
And they never had money in their lives.
They didn't have the best lives, you know, by definition, but they were glad to be in America.
And their goal was to build a better life for their family and future generations.
And they sacrificed a lot for them.
And both my parents grew up in those poor homes.
And my mom and the South Bronx, my dad in Bed Sty in Brooklyn.
And their goal was to make their lives better for their children.
And I try to think of life in those terms as well for my own kids and future grandkids, hopefully not too soon.
You ever tell your kids, I don't want to be a grandparent?
I tell my kids that all the time.
Is that a bad thing to say?
And probably a horrible thing to say.
Just means you run away a little while.
Yeah, like, you know, I don't know, when I'm on my deathbed, is that okay?
There's one more person I have to worry about because I worry about everybody in my family and I want to make sure everybody's taken care of.
I can't help it.
But anyway, and this is now one of those moments where you either have basic, simple common sense, you have eyes that can see, ears that can hear, and the wisdom and understanding to know that a nuclear-armed Iran is an existential threat to the entire world, really, but more specifically, yes, Israel, but more specifically, the U.S.
I mean, the only reason Israel is their first target, really their first target is the U.S., is because of the closer proximity geographically to Israel that Iran has versus the U.S.
And I hear these idiotic comments.
Donald Trump is fighting the war because of the Bibi Netanyahu.
Linda, how long have we known Donald Trump?
How long on this program have we known Donald Trump long before he ever got involved in politics?
Long before.
Oh, yeah.
You've been having dinners and meetings and interviews with him before he was ever in politics.
Long before.
Okay.
And even when he was running for office or thinking about running for office, I had a lot of long conversations with him.
And I flat out told him, if you're not going to govern as a conservative, I am not going to vote for you and I'm not going to support you.
And he wanted to convince me what he really believed.
And he was very persuasive.
And I realized, A, he could win.
B, he thought out of the box.
C, he was, you know, he had courage and bravery that most politicians could only dream of, and that he would be the right person at the right time.
I was not wrong.
And I'm not wrong on how I view most leaders.
We talk very openly about who we like and who we don't like.
Sometimes I keep it a little quiet, but at the right time, I will mention these things.
The U.S. has torpedoed an enemy warship.
I don't know if you saw this, Linda.
Pete Hegseth announcing last night that a torpedo from a U.S. submarine sank an Iranian warship in the Indian Ocean, one of the few instances of a submarine sinking a ship since World War II.
But anyway, this American submarine sunk an Iranian warship that thought it was safe in international waters.
Instead, it was sunk by a torpedo.
You know, I mean, we're hitting him left, right, and sideways.
The U.S. is now using twice the airpower in Iran as was used in shock and awe in the attack on Iraq.
And, you know, what the president's looking at here and what he's been discussing is four to five weeks, maybe, of American involvement in this.
And that's it.
And, you know, at that point, it's going to be up to the Iranian people.
We are not going to be really out there nationbuilding.
And the president was even asked about that.
And I'll get to that in a second.
But the U.S.-Israeli bombing campaign against Iran is twice the air power of shock and awe.
We now own the airspace over Iran.
I know there's been a lot of fake news media polls out there, but they've never polled Donald Trump correctly.
And they tend to poll, you know, rhino-Republicans and usually outnumber Democrats by a much higher percentage.
When Matt Towery speaks at Insider Advantage, and he's nailed Donald Trump in pretty much every poll he's ever had, what he is showing is that initial support publicly for the president's decision to launch this military strike on Iran is, you know, he's a whopping 17 points on the high side, 54 to 37.
Support from Republican voters, nearly 80% in this survey.
Independent voters, you know, approving by a five-point margin.
Democratic approval was only 32%.
The chairman of the Joint Chiefs, General Dan Raisincane, said Wednesday morning that there has been a significant decline in Iranian missile and drone launches since the start of Operation Epic Fury.
He said Iran's theater ballistic missile shots fired are down a whopping 86% from the first day of fighting with a 23% decrease in the last 24 hours.
Their one-way attack drone shots are down 73%.
And he says the U.S. has struck more than 2,000 targets during this campaign, and over 20 Iranian naval vessels have been destroyed, largely neutralizing Iran's main naval presence in the theater.
The CIA, and I've been asking this question now for a number of days.
Now we have our answer, is working to arm Kurdish forces with the aim of fomenting a popular uprising in Iran.
What have I been saying, Linda?
Cannot win revolutions with slingshots.
And for the remaining holdovers that might remain loyal to their dead supreme leader and all the other wacko supreme leaders that were there, those people, you know, the only way you're going to defeat them and the people on the ground, because this is not going to be America that does this.
This is going to take the people of Iran.
They will become the masters of their own destiny.
But there's no denying the New York Post headline hit it perfectly, defanging the snake and Trump laying out the goal.
And this is another thing.
Why are we here?
I'm hearing these stupid commentators.
Do you listen to these stupid commentators?
In the course of my prepping for the show every day, I read everything, and they're out there saying, but most Americans have no idea why we're even there.
I mean, could Donald Trump be any more clear?
Could Marco Rubio be any more clear that Iran can have nuclear weapons?
That is the foremost goal, and that they're not going to be able to build out their ballistic missile system to foment more terror in the region as they've gotten away with since the revolution in 1979.
You may not like the decision, but at least understand what they're telling you that they're doing.
It's not that complicated.
Or these idiots that actually think that Donald Trump can be told what to do.
I mean, when I asked Beebe the question the other night, he laughed.
He's like, yeah, all right.
Yeah, good luck trying to tell Donald Trump what to do.
It's not going to work.
The president actually said he has no favorite for who's next in the line of succession.
And he said it probably would be better if it's somebody from within.
You know, some people have brought up Reza Pavlavi and Pavlavi on this program even said it doesn't have to be me.
The leading possible potential candidate to replace Ali Khamenei is the son of Khamani was selected to replace him as supreme leader, according to a report.
This guy's 56 years old, tapped to assume the control of the country by Iran's Assembly of Experts, a powerful body of clerics.
Iranian International said Tuesday, the report was widely picked up by Israeli media.
Let me tell you what that means.
This guy now has a target on his back immediately, that second.
But what's really spectacular about all this in the lead up to this conflict was watching the Iranians and their saber rattling, and we brought a lot of attention to it.
I mean, they had graphics built of Iranians sinking American ships and making proclamations about Donald Trump being in a coffin within months.
Well, the ones that ended up in a coffin, if there was anything left to put in it.
John Kennedy was hilarious last night.
Did you hear what he said on the TV show last night?
I didn't.
What did he say last night?
He said, you know, you talk about being in hell.
Yeah, he said, you know, pieces in hell.
He's resting in pieces.
All right, let's listen to the president.
He's speaking now.
And if we didn't terminate the worst deal, one of the worst deals ever made, the Obama nuclear deal, I call it the Obama nuclear deal, where he gave everything to Iran, including a nuclear weapon.
It was a road to a nuclear weapon.
Bad things would have happened four years ago because they would have had a weapon four years ago if I didn't terminate that deal.
So we're in a very strong position now.
And their leadership is just rapidly going.
Everybody that seems to want to be a leader, they end up dead.
And it's an amazing thing that's taking place before your eyes because for 47 years we were pushed around and we shouldn't have been.
And I think I can say, and you see it as well as I do, you see the tremendous progress that's being made.
Their missiles are being wiped out rapidly.
Their launches are being wiped out.
They're attacking their neighbors.
They're attacking their, in some cases, allies or not so long ago, allies.
And, you know, it's really a nation that was out of control, and they would have used it on us if we let them, if we waited any longer.
A big factor was Salome, the killing of Salome in my first term.
And maybe the biggest factor was the rebuilding of the military in my first time.
And then the B-2s hit the...
All right, for stations along the Sean Hannity Show radio network, we will stay with our coverage of President Trump, who is speaking about Operation Epic Fury.
And we will be taking this at least to the bottom of the hour.
We'll keep you updated.
And I use the word obliterate because it really was.
It was a complete obliteration of their nuclear potential.
And that set them back very, very seriously.
If we didn't hit within two weeks, they would have had a nuclear weapon.
If we didn't do the B-2 attack a number of months ago, they would have a nuclear weapon.
And when crazy people have nuclear weapons, bad things happen.
So we're in very good shape now.
I want to let you know that, and we will continue forward.
But it's a great display of military strength.
And I'm very proud to have, with some of the people in the room, both senators and congressmen, we rebuilt and women.
We rebuilt our military during the first term.
And we're using it a little bit more than I thought we would have to.
Venezuela worked out really great.
We have a wonderful relationship with the president and the various representatives.
And we're taking out hundreds of millions of barrels of oil.
And that goes to our benefit and to Venezuela's benefit.
And they'll be doing better than they've ever done before.
Venezuela's Future00:04:31
And we will get a big piece of that.
And we'll also make life wonderful for the people of Venezuela who have been very, very badly hit.
So that's a lot said in a short period of time, but you can witness it for yourself.
And now we'll get on to something that I'm very proud of because it was sort of my idea.
Sort of my idea.
Like, very much.
Build your own power plant.
And everybody thought I was kidding.
They said, really?
You can do that?
How would you do that?
I said, we'll get you fast permits, and you'll build your own plants.
But we're going to discuss it in great detail with the biggest people in the industry and some of our great leaders and senators.
And congratulations on the Medal of Honor for your 100-year soldier.
You know, 100 years old, 101 to be exact.
And Darrell's been fighting that he get the Congressional Medal of Honor for many years, Darryl, right?
Mr. President, I give you all the credit for overcoming the lawyers in the Department of the Navy in a way that I thought was amazing.
Yeah.
Nobody can have done that.
All right, that's the president now.
He's transitioning into a discussion how the massive amounts of energy needed for AI, they're going to allow these companies to build their own power plants so it doesn't impact the cost of energy on the American people.
All right, we'll take a quick break.
We'll come back on the other side, and we will continue our coverage of this and much more.
800-941 Sean is on number.
All things simple, man.
Bill O'Reilly will join us.
Also, Steve Daines of Montana straight ahead as we continue.
You know, Linda, the internet is a great thing, isn't it?
Really is a great thing.
It can be.
It can be.
It can be a good thing.
You think parts of it are not?
I think parts of everything.
You don't look at that part.
I know.
Neither do I. As a matter of fact, I rarely go on social media.
Social media is toxic.
I mean, Sean Hannity sucks.
Sean Hannity is a big head.
Well, I mean, you don't have a big head.
You just have a lot of hair.
It's a little different.
And people are just jealous because most of them are bold.
But putting that together on the other side.
Some of this Adam Schiff is pretty funny.
It really is funny.
Some of these people are very creative.
Sean, you have had nighttime television shows make entire scenes and songs and epic productions with Broadway Kiss.
I mean, there are some things that are, you know, undeniable.
And I laugh when it's funny.
And then you got the, you know, what people don't know, it's not a real world.
I mean, first of all, We are bombarded by bots, a lot of foreign country influencers that create these bot accounts, and they're really sophisticated at what they do.
And AI, tons of AI, and AI, all of that.
Although, AI, some of the AI videos are pretty damn funny.
I'm not going to lie.
Some of them are, but like, some of them are scary.
Somebody the other night showed a ballistic missile going horizontal.
I was like, all right, guys, let's take a deep breath.
That's not the way missiles go.
And like everybody was saying, they have AI videos of my wedding, which hasn't taken place.
I heard it.
And me crying.
Could you imagine me crying?
Twins, huh?
Don't cry.
Triplets.
Triplets.
You're having fun.
No, I didn't see triplets.
They have one of triplets.
I mean, listen, there's everything out there, you know?
Okay, my kids are older.
I'm done.
I'm finished.
Not happening.
I'm not going back to that.
Just let me know when I have to throw the baby shower.
That's all.
And I'll post up the down.
Or, or, you know, having cake, you know, wedding cake shoved in my face.
And then my friends write me and they're like, wow, you know, you didn't have to invite me, but you could have at least told me.
And I'm like, it's not true.
Just chill out.
I mean, like close friends that know better, they should know better.
You know, they've been reading everything horrible about me for all these years.
And, you know, for many years, even my close friend, oh, they write me, how are you doing?
Are you okay?
I'm like, about what?
I'm like, what are you talking about?
And they'd say, well, you didn't see it.
And I'm like, see what?
And they'd tell me something horrible that somebody said.
I'm like, no, I didn't see it.
I don't care.
I didn't see it.
I don't care.
And nobody believes I don't care.
If I cared, I don't think you could do this job and really care that much what insignificant people think.
I don't, that's my own personal opinion.
I know some people are very thin-skinned.
I'm not one of them.
Sentences Unseen00:11:40
That ship has sailed a long time ago.
And you know this to be true because you have brought things to my attention.
You're more pissed off than I get about when people attack me.
That's my resting place.
Your resting place is being constantly pissed off.
And then it's where I'm going to be.
I mean, somebody's attacking me, not you.
And then you're my friend.
I get more angry when people talk about my friends than when they talk about me.
I know.
It's like, and I'm like, just relax.
It doesn't matter.
Who cares?
I don't care what you're saying.
Relax when I'm dead.
It's too funny.
And I just, I'm not going to live my life.
You know, I care about my audience.
I care about doing good shows.
And I care about having fun and, you know, winning.
I want this country to win.
Anyway, let me play this report.
Somebody put it up on Instagram.
Big Jake, you know, in 2016, reporting on Obama.
You know, remember, he sent $1.7 trillion.
I'm sorry, $1.7 billion in cash and other currency in these cargo planes.
And one was timed specifically, in this case, $400 of that, $400 million of that, to the $1.7 billion.
It was perfectly timed out for the release of hostages.
Sounds to me like he paid ransom, but listen.
But let's turn to our world lead today.
Continued outrage and controversy over that $400 million cash transfer to Iran by the Obama administration on the same day four American prisoners were released by the White House denies that the money was a ransom payment.
Footage aired on Iranian television, however, purports to show the money arriving in Tehran, and that is raising renewed questions about whether this was a quid pro quo.
CNN Chief National Security Correspondent Jim Schudo has been digging into the mystery.
Jim, you're learning new details about how the cash was delivered.
A senior State Department official tells me that it was not a U.S. plane that delivered that cash, but these officials, the president himself, acknowledged that cash was sent.
And we are now seeing what Iranian state television says, what all that money in cash looked like.
A pallet loaded with what Iranian state television claims is cash sent by the U.S., the narrator says, to pay back Iran's money after 35 years.
This video, which CNN cannot authenticate, aired in Iran just days after the release of four American prisoners.
At the Pentagon Thursday, President Obama dismissed any connection between the cash payment, which he acknowledged, and the prisoners' release, saying that negotiations were entirely separate.
Do you believe that, Linda?
I'm sorry, reading about fake jakes.
Yeah, fake Jake is not fake job.
All right.
One of the other funny things I saw when somebody sent it to me, Sensei sent it to me, and this is Hillary Clinton.
She sounds just like Donald Trump on Iran.
Listen.
When this debate is over, we need to come together to ensure that this president and the next president have the tools, resources, and support to send a clear message to Iran.
Cheat, and you will pay.
And when you threaten the region and Israel, you threaten America.
We will keep confronting you on human rights and terrorism.
And make no mistakes, we will never allow you to acquire a nuclear weapon, not just during the term of this agreement.
Never.
Wow.
Does that sound like somebody we know?
What happened to that Democratic Party?
That party's dead.
You know, now that's the party of, you know, here we have known terrorists in the country, over 200 countries people came from during Biden's term, over 12 million, we don't know how many, known terrorists among them.
And Democrats now at this time defunding the Department of Homeland Security, the party of amnesty, open borders.
Oh, no, don't believe your own eyes and what you see.
And, you know, millions of people crossing the border.
It's not true.
The border's secured.
The border's closed.
You know, sanctuary cities and states, defund, dismantled, no bail laws.
I mean, insanity.
You know, the vote for the highest tax increase in history.
That's the modern Democratic Party.
It's insane.
Since the launch of Operation Epic Fury, more than 9,000 Americans have returned home.
The State Department is working feverishly to get them all home.
You know, I will tell you this, and this is the wisdom of Donald Trump for these idiots.
You know, this is not in America's, this is in Israel's interest.
You know, frankly, if you get to the bottom of where that's coming from, I suspect deep anti-Semitism.
But the president did this, you know, because he refused to kick the can down the road and prevent our children and grandchildren from dealing with this.
And he said Iran's succession bench wiped out as Israel struck their strike, hit the leadership deliberations right in the middle of picking, you know, the Ayatollah, the Supreme Leader's successor.
They're all wiped out while they're voting.
I mean, the world is safer, whether you want to admit it or not.
And the fact that there are people that even claim to be conservatives are saying this, I don't think they're conservatives.
You look at the people that are most critical of this, they never have been real Trump supporters.
They're all phony.
As I said, Matt Towery, 17% on the plus side for Donald Trump to do it.
The president has congressional support on this.
I don't think that this war powers maneuver, in spite of all that the Democrats have done seven years in Libya with Obama, really, and now all of a sudden they care about the War Powers Act, that's not going to fly.
And, you know, everybody with an ounce of common sense knows that this was the right thing to do, the right time to do it before they acquired nuclear weapons.
They were hell-bent on it.
They were given every opportunity to avoid it.
The IDF has confirmed eliminating the commander of Iran's Quds forces.
That is huge.
But you go back all the way to 1979 to 1999, U.S. Embassy, 444 days, Americans held hostage, 241 Marines killed in Beirut, Americans kidnapped and murdered abroad.
We had, you know, from 2000 to 2009, militias targeting U.S. forces during the Iraq War.
The Revolutionary Guard-linked militants killing five soldiers back in that timeframe.
Iran-backed militias killing hundreds of U.S. troops.
And moving forward, 603 U.S. troops killed by Iran-backed militias, Quds forces, direct attacks at U.S. forces.
Irania waging a shadow war against American soldiers.
And now the Iranian missile attacks injuring 109 troops in Iraq.
Iran and its proxies launch 180 attacks on U.S. forces.
46 Americans murdered on October 7, 2023, the Iranian regime.
But he's only doing this because of Israel.
They're not people that know Donald Trump.
They're not.
They just lie.
I love that we sunk that ship the first time since World War II with a torpedo.
I think that was amazing.
Israel hammering Iranian internal security command centers.
You've got to know that there is intelligence that the U.S. and Israel have been building up sources and resources on the ground and people that are fed up within the government that are obviously working with us because they don't want to live this way anymore.
That's a big part, an untold part of this story and an important one to boot.
It involves strategic operational deception.
Iran's drone swarm attacks unleash exponential costs and they just don't have the ability, as General Kane, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs, said, they don't have the ability.
We don't even know who's making choices.
They're just indiscriminately firing at targets that they don't even know what they're firing at.
Just every country in the region now is pissed off of them.
Oh, by the way, Macron, did you see this?
He's finally ordered France's aircraft carrier to the Mediterranean.
Oh, that was very nice of them.
I wonder why they have no-go zones in France.
I wonder why they have 85 Sharia courts in Great Britain.
And by the way, the U.S. may cut off trade with Spain over the Iranian dispute.
I love that Trump slammed Kirstarmer as not Winston Churchill because he refused to back it.
But now all of a sudden he's changing his tune also.
You know, actually, it was the Gulf states that realized the existential threat because they live under that threat every day.
Democrats rage over Trump's Iran strikes as exiles cheer the Ayatollah's fall.
Explain that to me.
You know, anyone, any Democrats slamming the, you know, saying that this was no threat to America, if you hear that, they're stupid people.
They're just stupid.
And gas prices, by the way, are coming down.
And the U.S. stocks rebounded today after the fifth day of this conflict began.
SP up 0.8%.
Dow Jones up over 300 points last time.
I checked, up 0.6%.
NASDAQ up 1.3%.
The price of oil coming down again.
It'll probably be a temporary increase.
We'll tell you more about Gavin Newsom's stupid statements later.
Senate Democrats refusing to budge on DHS funding, which may actually complicate our ability to find people in this country.
We did have this primary last night.
My friend Jasmine Crockett lost Linda.
Very upset about it.
Very, very upset.
No, I heard you crying all the way through the airwaves.
I was like, this poor man.
I was not crying.
Donald Trump, by the way, said that he is going to choose between either Paxton or Cornyn, one of them, and ask the other one to drop out so they don't have a messy, expensive primary.
Jasmine, by the way, was complaining, talking about election integrity.
Maybe she'll support the SAVE Act, blaming Republicans for her Democratic primary.
How could she do that?
I was out there supporting her.
I endorsed her.
I couldn't do any better than that.
I endorsed her to be the Democratic nominee in Texas.
I wanted her to win.
Although this guy, Tellarico, is a real, real loser.
I'm telling you, once people get to drink him, he's dangerous because he acts like he's a minister, but he has very, very radical and extreme views.