Sean Hannity and Newt Gingrich argue that Iran's "death to America" rhetoric demands preemptive military force, comparing the regime to Nazi Germany and urging President Trump to replace the dictatorship rather than negotiate. They propose arming dissidents, blockading the Strait of Hormuz, and using air power to secure oil flows, accepting potential gas price hikes as a necessary security trade-off. The discussion shifts to Representative Eric Swalwell's sexual misconduct allegations and caller reactions condemning Democratic inaction, ultimately framing the conflict as an existential battle where force against evil is justified despite political fallout. [Automatically generated summary]
Transcriber: CohereLabs/cohere-transcribe-03-2026, sat-12l-sm, and large-v3-turbo
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Obligation to Open Hormuz00:14:40
This is an iHeart podcast.
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Our two Sean Hannity show, toll free this Monday.
It's 800 941 Sean.
If you want to be a part of the program, one of the things I love about the long term friendship that I've had with Newt Gingrich is in his heart of hearts, he's not a politician, he's a historian, he's a professor, and he just brings a perspective to every.
Everything that's going on that nobody else usually thinks of, which makes him special and unique in his own way.
And he actually wrote this about what's going on as it relates to Iran.
And I think it's worth reading it to you and then having him expand on it and explain it in more detail.
He said, I posed the opposite argument.
And he's talking about the commentators, the experts that have explanations as to why President Trump should end the war in Iran as rapidly as possible.
Although we all want to.
Quick end to it.
Nobody wants forever wars.
This will not be a forever war.
This is going to come to a conclusion.
And he says, What if a nation which has been chanting death to America for 47 years actually means it?
What if that nation, assisted by its allies, Communist China, Vladimir Putin's Russia, was able to rebuild their missile and nuclear programs with remarkable speed?
If the Iranian dictatorship survives after all the threatening talk and weeks of bombing, It is going to consider itself the winner.
Indeed, it already is doing so with the recent two week ceasefire.
Leading Iranian figures are now describing how President Trump and Israel should pay reparations to the Iranians for their destroyed missile and nuclear programs and accept that they would be in control of the Strait of Hormuz.
He writes The U.S. faced another emerging threat in 1940, Adolf Hitler and Nazi Germany, which occupied.
Occupied much of Europe.
The Nazis were focused on trying to starve Great Britain through submarine warfare and cutting off supplies, including food.
There was real opposition to the U.S. getting too involved in a European war.
President Franklin D. Roosevelt, FDR, was faced with the challenge of convincing Americans that the Nazi threat was real so people would understand why we are responding aggressively.
And since the Nazis had been careful to focus on the European opponents, not on America, Roosevelt needed an explanation.
That would make sense.
And in his September 11th, 1941 fireside chat, he said, When you see a rattlesnake poised to strike, you don't wait until he is struck before you crush him.
And it kind of sums up where I have been in this.
And this goes to the impetus for the president after Steve Witkoff, the Mideast envoy, met with the Iranians before Epic Fury.
And they're bragging about their inalienable right to build out.
Nuclear weapons and hold the world hostage, and bragging about their 460 kilograms of 60% enriched uranium, basically saying we're right on the verge of being a nuclear power, which is why the president, I believe, acted and acted rightly.
Some people still disagree.
I don't really have a strong appetite to debate stupid people because, and I don't like, I normally don't like Nazi analogies.
However, this is about as applicable an instance in which I can think of one.
And that is, if you had the chance to take out Hitler earlier before he, you know, committed mass death, why wouldn't you do it?
Because that's what we're looking at here, as far as I'm concerned.
Anyway, former Speaker of the House, best selling author, Newt Gingrich is with us, sir.
How are you?
I'm doing great.
And as you know, you and I are in total agreement on this.
And I worry sometimes about the administration because I think every once in a while they start looking for an easy solution rather than a necessary solution.
And I think any solution which does not replace the current dictatorship is simply pushing the problem down the road.
I wrote a recent piece about losing Chicago.
And my point was, you know, if we allow the Iranians to build missiles and we allow the Iranians to build nuclear weapons, given that they clearly have not backed off one inch on their death to America belief, someday down the road we'll lose one or more American cities.
And then all of our friends in the liberal media will suddenly say, who is to blame?
And they'll all be very worried and they'll be looking for scapegoats.
The time to get this done is now.
And I think Franklin's administration ought to relax, quit negotiating.
The president ought to again and again go to the country and say, you know, I'm not willing to risk Seattle.
He could actually do a tour of cities he doesn't want to lose and have rallies in favor of, you know, Kansas City surviving.
Americans' appetite for conflict or especially protracted conflicts is very, very low.
In light of what happened with Iraq and Afghanistan, and I would argue understandably so.
But however, the next generation of weaponry is here.
We've been able to do a tremendous amount of damage to the Iranian regime.
And we're now at the fourth and fifth tier layer of leadership there in a very short period of time, a very small window, historically speaking.
How do you define victory then?
Boone West, who's a great retired Marine, a great track record in places like Vietnam and Iraq, wrote a piece six, eight weeks ago saying we ought to ship a million rifles to the dissidents so that maybe the Iranian Revolutionary Guard would be at risk.
We should be aggressively, actively arming and training the Iranian people to liberate themselves.
We should provide air power.
to support them.
We should provide intelligence to support them.
And we should just make very clear, I mean, the morning we say unequivocally, what George H.W. Bush said about Saddam and Kuwait, this will not stand.
And the morning we say, this regime is gone.
We don't have to put a single American soldier on the ground.
We can train volunteers from the Iranian diaspora, and we can train people inside Iran.
We can arm them with Weapons appropriate to light infantry and to fighting in cities.
And instead of having Iranian Revolutionary Guard snipers killing women, which is what they were doing when the women were rebelling about two years ago, they literally had snipers up on the top of buildings shooting down and targeting specific women and hitting them in the head with sniper bolts.
And if all of a sudden, in fact, it's Iranians who want to be free, we have to sooner or later accept transition will be chaotic.
It will not be obvious.
It will not be easy.
But we cannot allow this government.
We have two rules here.
You can't allow the current dictatorship to stay in power because it really does believe in death to America.
And you do not want to commit American ground forces.
This is a country twice the size of Texas.
And we do not want it.
It's got 90 million people.
We don't want to be in the middle of it.
We just want to replace the government.
Okay, so now a lot of people are going to say, is this mission creep?
Or, like, for example, I mean, we have immediate problems.
They do have the 60% enriched uranium.
My understanding is there are a number of options on the table.
One would be to retrieve it physically, that would mean troops on the ground, or you can entomb it and keep eyes on it and prevent them from ever having access to it, which would be probably a solid plan B.
The other issue, more immediate issue, is the Strait of Hormuz.
The president now announced this naval blockade that's going on there.
That would probably be a stranglehold in terms of the Iranians to have any ability to bring in any money.
That's certainly not going to be helpful towards their ability to main control of the regime, although they've shown a willingness to gun down innocent civilians.
So, what are the top goals that we have to achieve?
I agree with you on arming the Iranian people.
My understanding is that's been a heavier lift than people anticipated.
So, in the short term, What do we do in the short term and the long term?
And now we'd be negligent if we didn't look at this a little bit through the prism of we have a very important midterm election coming up.
And I think if peace and prosperity generally drive elections and you have oil trading at about $100 a barrel at any given time, that raises the price of a gallon of gasoline at the pump.
I don't think that helps the economy in any way.
So there are people that are going to take political considerations into this.
In fact, That in as well.
What do you say to them?
I would say, one, that we have an obligation to be able to get things out of the Strait of Hormuz.
And if we apply enough power and enough force, we can do that.
Some of them were involved.
You know, we're going to have some losses.
But the fact is, when the Iranians hit an American ship, warship, under Ronald Reagan, one week later, we took out half the Iranian Navy in 24 hours.
And that sort of sent a signal.
So you have to put enough pressure to be able to fight your way through there, to open it up, to get the oil flowing again.
And that means that you have to bomb and use missiles again and again against the Iranian coastline.
You just have to do it.
Churchill once said, in war, you have to do what is necessary.
Saying you did your best isn't good enough.
Did you do what was necessary?
And I think, one, we have to open up the straight period.
Two, I think we have to be quite clear.
This dictatorship is gone.
And nobody should be confused about that.
And we should apply whatever level of power that takes.
And three, I think one of them, so you've got to get the oil flowing enough to get the price back down to a reasonable number.
Then you have to say, you have to wage a campaign that's very straightforward in September and October.
Everybody willing to lose Chicago or Boston or New York, you should vote Democrat.
Everybody who believes saving an American city is worth doing what's necessary, you should vote Republican.
And we should basically just lay it straight out.
Go ahead.
What about the timeline?
You don't have a timeline, do you?
My timeline is as soon as possible.
I mean, I look, I think it is, I don't understand how they could have started this campaign without the Navy moving all the minesweepers and all the things we needed in order to fight our way out of the Gulf from day one.
But they didn't.
So now they've got to.
They've got to destroy all the small fast boats.
They've got to create, we have the potential, we do it occasionally, to create 24 hour surveillance over an area.
And anything that moves in that zone, we kill.
And we tell them up front, if you're in this zone, you're dead.
So don't be confused.
If that means you're one guy with one missile, we're killing you.
If it means you're a small boat, we're killing you.
Nothing Iranian will survive in this zone.
Now, take a week or two of that, and you'll be able to have shipping come out, and the price of oil will start to collapse.
All right, quick break more with former Speaker of the House, Newt Gingrich, on the other side.
Then your calls are coming up, 800-941.
Sean, if you want to be a part of the program as we continue.
All right, we continue now with former Speaker of the House, New Kingrich.
800 941.
Sean is on number.
We'll get to your calls coming up straight ahead.
What is your take on the lack of support of our NATO so called allies and how does this play out over time?
I would imagine NATO, as it's currently configured, will no longer exist.
Look, Lyndon Johnson used to say, if you want me in on the landing, I want to be in on the takeoff.
We didn't consult them.
We didn't walk it through with them.
We didn't say this.
Suddenly we're in the middle of this fight.
They have no idea what our plan is because we have no idea what our plan is.
And again, I think they have very limited resources, but they're not the key.
Over half the military budgets in the world are the United States.
We have the most power.
We have the most capacity.
We have the greatest ability to wage this fight.
Let's just win it.
And then we can figure out a way to get our allies to decide to be a little more mature.
But if we're going to defend Chicago, San Francisco, and Atlanta based on how much the French are willing to do, we're in a world of hurt.
Well, they're not willing to do it, but I think our contribution to NATO should be significantly, if not completely, reduced.
And I think they're unreliable allies.
We weren't asking for much here.
Just a little logistical support for the Strait of Hormuz, where they get their oil and we don't get any of our oil.
And I think there should be a price to pay.
Unreliable NATO Allies00:14:07
This is the number one state sponsor of terror.
Their ballistic missiles can hit Paris and London, they can't hit the continental United States.
Right.
I think, for example, the Spanish have decided we can't use airfields we help build.
Fine.
I would find a way, for example, to suspend trade with Spain.
Agreed.
There have to be direct, immediate consequences, not just words.
All right, former Speaker of the House, Newt Gingrich.
What is our aim?
Victory.
You sound like Winston Churchill.
Anyway, we appreciate you being with us, sir.
When news breaks, you get the inside story that no one else has.
And the behind-the-scenes chatter that the mainstream media doesn't even know about.
This is the Sean Hannity Show.
All right, Eric Swalwell, Mr. Fang Fang is in a whole heap of trouble.
Political journalist, author Steve Tavares said in a social media post on Saturday that allegations surrounding Mr. Fang Fang and his behavior towards women were widely known among local officials.
Shortly after he entered Congress in 2013.
And he said, Shortly after being elected to Congress in 2013, his behavior towards women was well known by all levels of our local government and the Alameda County Democratic Party.
I tried repeatedly to get the stories out.
I can't force women to speak out when they choose not to.
I didn't push.
I also knew that Swalwell was known to threaten litigation.
Anyway, he now has dropped his gubernatorial bid because, as all of these sexual misconduct, Allegations are swirling, and he's facing an expulsion effort in the House of Representatives.
His staffers apparently are horrified by the rape allegations, calling for Americans to stand with his accusers.
The Manhattan DA is now launching a sexual assault probe against Swalwell.
More women have come forward to accuse him of sexual misconduct.
I mean, this is going downhill very fast for Mr. Fang Fang.
And my understanding is at some point there may be a declassification of the records involving him.
I mean, this guy wanted to quote the Epstein files, but there might be a release of the information as it relates to him and Fang Fang, his former girlfriend.
Anyway, here is Mr. Fang Fang, well, a former staffer of his, alleging how she was sexually assaulted in 2024 after a night of being out drinking.
Listen.
I decided to ask him to meet me for a drink.
And I did this because I was so far removed from what had happened in 2019.
I felt safe because I was established.
I had a partner.
I felt more secure that I could have a strictly professional relationship with this person.
After that bar closed, we went to another.
I went to the bathroom, and I don't remember anything after that.
You don't remember anything?
I remember the next day.
Can see flashes of that evening of him on top of me, me pushing him off, him grabbing me.
It was a lot more aggressive.
It was aggressive.
Did you say no?
Yes, I said no.
I said, in my flash that I can recall, I was pushing him off of me, saying no.
And what did he do?
He didn't stop.
He didn't stop.
And you woke up the next morning.
I woke up the next morning naked, alone, in his hotel room.
I, for a moment, didn't even know I was in his hotel room.
That's how intoxicated I was.
And I called my mom, the only person I could think that could help me.
Then this former staffer alleges more.
Again, a listener disclaimer for the graphic content.
I kept figuring out ways to blame myself.
I shouldn't have reached out to him at all.
I should have left.
I should have done this.
Well, Eric shouldn't have raped me.
It was in 2019.
I was, again, driving him to an event.
This was my job.
And you were 21 years old.
I was 21 years old.
We see some sort of parking lot, and he says to pull over.
He pulls out his penis and instructs me to give him oral sex.
And I started to, again, I felt incredibly uncomfortable.
And I stopped and I said to him, This feels really uncomfortable, and anyone could see us right now.
And he said to me, You're right.
It's probably not good for a congressman to be caught with his pants down.
And then it goes on.
And the former staffer says that she and Swalwell exchanged lewd photos as part of this relationship.
Again, graphic content.
Did he ask you to send him lewd photos?
Yes.
And did he ever send lewd photos?
Yes.
He would send short Snapchat videos of him rubbing his penis through his pants while on the airplane.
Oh, good grief.
Now, here's Walwell from over the weekend.
A lot has been said about me today through anonymous allegations.
I thought it was important that you see and hear from me directly.
These allegations of sexual assault are flat false.
They are absolutely false.
They did not happen.
They have never happened.
And I will fight them with everything that I have.
They also come on the eve of an election where I have been the frontrunner candidate for governor in California.
I do not suggest to you in any way That I'm perfect or that I'm a saint.
I've certainly made mistakes in judgment in my past.
But those mistakes are between me and my wife.
And to her, I apologize deeply for putting her in this position.
I also apologize to you if in any way you have doubted your support for me.
But I think you know who I am.
I don't think anybody knows who he is.
I don't think he survives this.
Big time AJ Houston, Texas.
What's going on, baby?
I'm Sean Hannity.
What's going on, baby?
It's been too long.
How are you, my friend?
Oh, man.
They're working me to death, working me to death.
And I'm trying to get by listening to them idiots out there on the radio and you battling back and forth with them.
And then this guy here, Sean, let me ask you something real quick.
Oh, happy belated Easter to everybody on the staff and everybody.
Linda, all of them.
Hey, real quick.
Let me.
If she sent pictures and he got pictures, he got pictures, why is he coming on selling everything that's false?
Because, Sean, don't stuff stay.
I mean, if she got pictures, she can prove it, right?
From what she's saying.
Pictures go a long way, yeah, making your case.
There's no doubt about it.
So he sent up that line saying, oh, I ain't got none of this.
Everything is false.
If everything is false, Well, let her bring the pictures out and let everything.
But I think it's already been came out, though, right, Sean?
If I'm not mistaken, have there been.
I don't know if I want to see those pictures.
I think I can go through life without ever having to see those pictures.
I think I can live without those videos.
I know, but I thank God if he stepped down, we might have a Republican in the California.
I'm going to make a prediction.
He's going to get thrown out of Congress.
He'll never be governor.
And I think that his odds of probably being found guilty.
Are very, very high if these charges are brought against them.
There's my prediction.
We'll see what happens.
And you know, Democrats seem like nothing ever happened to them.
If it's a Republican, oh my God, he'd have been under the jail by now.
But since he's a Democrat, they're going to sweep it.
Look at nuisance.
He hasn't given them people their permits for their houses yet.
The media ain't.
They haven't.
I ain't going to say ain't.
I said haven't.
Did.
A word media outlet on it.
There's a tape of Newsom back when he was mayor of San Francisco of him having to apologize for having an affair with one of his best friends and campaign.
I guess he was the head of his campaign and having some relationship with the wife.
I mean, it was not good.
I know.
And then I love what Trump said to Maria this weekend.
Oh, they mad.
Oh, you said this and you're going to wipe out this and that.
Some say, I don't hear y'all getting mad when they said death to America.
And then what about all these kids that are getting killed by the illegals?
What about them children?
That's what anytime Democrats come and say they want to vouch for them, say, what about the kids that is dead right now that the parents are grieving for that nobody's talking about?
You know, I've never seen it this bad, Big Daddy.
You know, me and you, we've been in it a long time.
I've never seen the Democrats this un American.
I'm going to put it that way.
And treason is it.
I'm going to go further than Bill O'Reilly did.
This is treason with the Democrat Party doing to us.
And they're back in session.
Lord knows.
Let's see what they're going to do.
Is they going to pass anything?
Oh, probably not.
The joke.
They don't care.
And by the way, you know, let's be very clear here.
What this, you know, What's being accused here is not groping, it's not fondling, it's not unwanted kissing, all of which could qualify as sexual assault.
If what he did here, this woman's accusing him of the R word.
Let's be blunt.
And so we'll see what happens.
We'll see if the Democrats try to tone this down.
It seems like Democrats are running pretty quickly away from them, even now as we speak, but we'll wait and see what happens.
All right, my friend.
Good to catch up with you, big time AJ Houston, Texas.
We love you, ma'am.
All right, quick break, right back to our busy phones.
Here's our toll free number.
It's 800 941 Sean if you want to be a part of the program as we continue.
Up is next.
You do not want to miss it.
And stay tuned for the final hour free-for-all on the Sean Hannity Show.
All right, let's get back to our busy phones.
It's toll free.
It's 800 941 Sean if you want to be a part of the program.
All right, Rob, Connecticut, or Bob in Connecticut.
Bob, how are you?
Glad you called.
Sean, it's Corrupticut.
It's not Connecticut.
Oh, it's Corrupticut, but you choose to live in Corrupticut, so enjoy your time there.
Well, I'm too old to move.
I actually almost.
What do you mean you're too old to move?
You're not too old to move.
Where did you ever get that ism from?
Well, I said, okay, at 70 years old, do I want to go and start over?
I thought about it.
Going to Virginia, I saw a really nice place.
But anyway, that Stalwell guy, he's just being a typical Democrat, but that's not why I called you.
I've been agnostics most of my life, but I think now I'm becoming a Linditarian.
Oh, good grief.
Here we go again.
We're going to start off with this this week.
I thought we got this out of our system last week.
Hey, Linda is right.
If you forgive and forget, they will just do it again.
I didn't say forgive and forget.
I didn't say that.
That's not what the Lord's Prayer says.
It says, Forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those that trespass against us.
That's what it says.
Well, we don't trespass, those other people do.
And I think we should turn our plows into swords.
And then.
I mean, this kind of gets to the issue of the Pope and him weighing in against President Trump.
All right, so violence is wrong at all times?
Was it.
The Catholic Church was not exactly on the right side of history in World War II, was it?
No.
Catholic Church, you know, are we forgetting David did slay Goliath and that Pharaoh's army drowned in the Red Sea and Joshua and Jericho and the walls falling?
And, you know, are we forgetting King David's victories and God trains his hands for war?
Are we forgetting all that part of the Bible, too?
Because that seems fairly relevant.
Is there evil in our time?
Here's the question.
And should evil be eradicated before innocence is murdered?
That would be my question for the Pope if the Pope ever wants to come on the show.
I have a few questions for the Pope.
Well, Linda's right.
I got a thing on.
She's not right.
It is biblically wrong what she says.
It's not, but it's okay.
It's Monday.
It's Monday.
I'm not rewriting the Bible.
It's my interpretation.
Eradicating Evil Before Innocence00:01:49
What you said last week.
All right.
Forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those that trespass against us.
Forgive them, Father, for they know not what they do.
What does forgive me?
Jesus, should we forgive people?
What does forgive mean?
They do know what they are doing.
But anyway, the Strait of Hermoos.
I got an idea on that.
Thank goodness.
Yeah.
Okay.
I think they ought to put sharpshooters on each ship with Barrett 50s.
First shot to the water line, and the angle, it'll just blow the bottom of the boat out.
Second shot will take out the motor.
Send a nuke and hit them with a nuke.
We're not going to hit them with a nuke.
We're just not.
However, this is a very winnable, very achievable goal.
May take a little longer than they planned.
And I think that the world is better and safer without a nuclear armed Iran.
And yeah, I mean, ideally the free flow of oil at market prices.
But as I pointed out earlier, we are down very little supply and the market just continues to overreact in spite of the fact that production elsewhere around the world has gone up significantly, more than making up the difference of Iranian oil.
And the people that will suffer the most will be the Chinese, and I could care less.
But anyway, I appreciate the call.
You and Linda, good luck at the pearly gates as you try to explain your own interpretation of the Bible to Jesus and how you decided to just ignore his very specific instruction.
Good luck to you both.
I hope that works out for you at the pearly gates.
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