Our two Sean Hannity Show toll free. It is eight hundred and ninety four one Shawn, if you want to be a part of the program. Obviously, this is the most important midterm election year that I think we'll see in our lifetime. Either President Trump and Republicans win or all progress stops and investigations and impeachments take over. I mean, that's going to be your choice. And I hope all of you will make a commitment in your mind and heart and soul that you're going to vote in November.
It's not a lot to ask, you know what. I want this country to continue to progress. But anyway, I had a chance yesterday to travel to DC and sit with President Trump. I sat with him for a long time, both on air and off air, and we talked about a lot of things. There's a lot happening in the world, from Venezuela and Cuba and Iran and Russia. You know, we basically skipped around the globe. We talked about the economy. Here is that interview.
There's really not much in the news, so there's not a real lot to talk about. But start with Veniceituela narco terrorist indicted guy that we're losing two Unite Americans a day to drugs. Yeah, walk us through this decision in Venezuela.
Well, it wasn't a hard decision.
Democrats wanted them and Republicans wanted them, and nobody had what it takes to get him or didn't want to get him.
I don't know.
Something happened, but he killed a lot of people. He sent a lot of bad people into our country, who emptied his prisons into the United States. He emptied his mental institutions and insane as adams.
Into the United States and did a lot of very bad things. But he was a big drug pushy.
You see that because all the boats that we shot down, they came out of Venezuela a lot of drugs. There's a lot of boats and a lot of drugs. Are very few boats operating right.
Now, so there's no boats. You can't find any boats.
I don't think anyone would go fishing on there.
Not a lot of people want to go fishing anymore. But we've knocked out ninety seven percent of the drugs coming in by water, and we are going to start now hitting the land. With regard to the cartels, the cartels are running Mexico. It's very, very sad to watch and see what's happened to that country. But the cartels are running, and they're killing two hundred and fifty three hundred thousand people in our country every single year. The drugs.
It's horrible. It's devastated. Families lose a child or a parent. I mean, parents are dying too with drugs. So we've done a really good job. We're knocking it down. The numbers are really getting to be They're always going to be too high if you have one person, but they're going down.
Just like the border.
The border was a total mess for years. I did it the first time very quickly, and this time I did it even better because this was a bigger mess.
This was a border like no other, probably in the history of the world.
There's never been a border like that when anybody could just walk into your country.
Borders ostensibly really closed.
Now close, you can't come in, and nobody comes, nobody even tries. And the people in Texas, Arizona, all these places that are won by such big numbers, they are so happy with the border. They had homes that they weren't even able to live in their home.
Every day.
People were knocking on their door every hour, and it's just a great honor to.
Be involved with it.
The Ice and Border Patrol and all of the people have been so good. Tom Home and Christine Home. The people have done such an incredible job. You have no idea.
You've made a number of profound announcements and then a new announcement today.
Announcement number one was.
Thirty to fifty million barrels of oil that they will be handing over to you, and you will sell it on.
The market from the market prices.
That money will be used for the people of Venezuela and the people of America. Then they made an announcement yesterday that they will buy all of their goods.
From this country. Today we learn that.
The holdovers since Maduro's gone, have agreed to free all all of the political prisoners.
Right.
It indicates they want peace with Donald Trump.
To me, how do you interpret it? We asked them to do that, and they've been great. They really have been. I mean, everything we've wanted they've given us. We went in, we took Maduro out. Amazingly that nobody.
Was killed, We didn't lose a soldier.
We had some people wounded, but we didn't lose a soldier. A couple of very brave helicopter pilots were wounded pretty badly, but they're good. They're in good shape, and it was an amazing attack. The other side was lost a lot of people, unfortunately.
But you know, this house was in the middle of.
A fort with thousands of people and soldiers and everything else. So we went right into the middle of a fort. Who would think he could do that and not lose anybody, But they had it planned so beautifully. General Raisin Kane and Pete Haikseth were fantastic. Marcu has been doing a great job. Vice President. The whole group is it's just a fantastic It's a fantastic group.
Let's talk a little bit about you make these decisions. I don't care if it's this case Operation Midnight Hammer.
In the one case, you're here in the.
White House in the situation room, you're watching this unfold in real time. In this case, you have operationally the same thing, a situation room.
Direct in Palm Beach at Marrow Lago. You make that ultimate call.
You are the commander in chief, right you're watching it unfold in real time.
What is that like, well, I've done it now quite a bit. We took out Salamani, which was a big deal. I mean a very big deal. At least it was very bad. People killed a lot of people. Everybody you see just about ninety five percent of the people you see walking around without legs, without arms. That was the roadside bomb. That was his baby. He loved it. We took him out. We took out Al mag Daddy, he's
the founder of ices. We did Midnight Hammer, which was a literate the Iran nuclear threat, and it was a total obliteration that, as they found out, there be two bombers and the best pilots anywhere in the world. They did it at night with no moon, totally dark, and every bomb went right down an air shaft into deep into a granite mountain.
It is amazing.
And we did this and there's similar in a way. I don't know this this seems to have gotten the imagination, maybe even more than the other ones, but I think they're very equal in many ways. But I don't know, you know, maybe taking out the nuclear threat from Iran it's very important. But in terms of captivating attention, this seems to be something that is beyond anything that anybody's seen.
The operational details, well, the bravery involved.
You know. I mean to have people coming going into an army force with you know, thousands of soldiers, land a helicopter right in the middle of it, break down a steel door because you know it's a fortified house, break down a steel door, run through the hallway shooting, and come out ten minutes later with a guy who wasn't quite able to get into a safe house.
You know there's a safe.
I heard they got to him within three minutes.
Three minutes.
It was so fast. I mean, nobody said us in it and didn't like it.
But the safe house wasn't safe because they had blow torches that go through steel like it's butter. They didn't have to use them, but we, uh, we have.
These are great people.
These are really brave people, even coming down those ropes. You know, they're coming down ropes off the helicopter and they run them. I was thinking to myself, I wonder if I could do that, I can have to give it a try sometimes, but they do it like it's like it's a stairway, like it's a beautiful stairway and they're on the ground instantly and they're ready for action. Is it brave people. We have the greatest soldiers in the world. We have the greatest equipment in the world.
Nobody can match us, you know, a lot, and I rebuilt the entire military during my first tim good thing. Biden gave some of it away, a lot of it, but not a lot roative to what I bought. But he gave a big chunk to Afghanistan, which was just insane. That was one of the most embarrassing moments in the history of our country.
This was the opposite.
This was a total you know, if you think about Jimmy Carter with the hostages, or you think about the Afghanistan disaster that we had not so long ago with Biden, where it was just mass confusion and the death of thirteen great soldiers who I got to know. I got
to know the families very well, great people. But also and nobody talks about I'm forty eight people so badly injured and hundreds of people dead, hundreds of people you know when those mobs were off, because I count the other side, but there were hundreds of people killed, all because of an incompetent group of politics in generals and people that shouldn't be there.
Let's talk a little bit, maybe an underreported story, but we know for a fact that both the Russians in the Chinese provided missile and ballistic missile systems.
They did it to both.
They helped Iran and they helped Venezuela.
But you were able to dismantle that.
You talk a lot about American military superiority, and then that goes into the issue that you raised this week of raising the budget for twenty twenty seven from one trillion.
To one and a half trillion dollars.
We need it, you know, when you look at the thread out there, we have the best equipment in the world. We make the best equipment in the world. We may just you know, there's nothing even close, but we need it because there are some real threats out there.
Yeah, well, I think we certainly do.
Let me ask you about this, and I think this is important. With every military operation comes risk, and you have to obviously weigh that risk. And I think Americans would want to know what goes into your thinking because there's a whole new military doctrine. I call it the Trump doctrine. I think it's widely misunderstood.
No forever wars.
However, that doesn't mean you don't use the mite and power of the US military. You mentioned Bagdaddy SOLEMANI I'll add the mother of all bombs in Afghanistan, the ISIS Caliphate and then taking out a Rand's nuclear weaponsites and now our hemisphere.
Are you calling it the Don Road doctrine?
Well, they call it the donro I didn't go with that, but they're calling it this the Monroe Doctor and now they go with the Don Road, which is basically safety for this part of the world. And yeah, I mean it's pretty simple. We don't want drugs boring into our country. We don't admit people coming into our country like happened for four years under Biden, who's a disgrace, worst president the history of our country.
Horrible.
We had some other Bedroins, let me tell you, Obama was a terrible president. The divisiveness and the hatred it was cause and many of the people allowed into the country. But what Biden did was a step beyond anything that anybody's ever done. We had millions of people pouring through the border.
Now we have nobody coming in unless they come in legally.
Let's talk about you said for the interim, you will be in charge, Okay, obviously the remaining leadership underneath Maduro. They've made I mentioned earlier, three major concessions, thirty to fifty million barrels of oil. They're going to buy and purchase all their goods from America. Now they're releasing political prisoners. Okay, what is your ultimate goal for the governance of Venezuela.
Prisoners that nobody thought they would ever see again now being released. Yeah, and in many cases good people is what I understand. But prisoners nobody ever thought they'd be released. So we're going to be working with them and leadership of the country, and so far we've been working very well. You know, we picked up the Russian freighter that trudged out there.
I want to ask you about that.
Well, they had some Russian ships guarding it and they decided not to mess around with us, and we took that one. That's unloading the oil. But we're getting we're taking billions and billions of dollars worth of oil, and it'll be hundreds of billions of dollars, it'll be trillions of dollars. But we're going to be there till we straighten out the country. We'll see how the country's doing, but we'll be running the oil. We're meeting tomorrow with all of the big oil executives. We're going to be
right here in the White House. We're going to meet with the biggest oil people in the world. They're all coming here. At the top fourteen companies are coming here.
They're going to go in. They're going to.
Rebuild the whole oil infrastructure. They're going to spend at least one hundred billion dollars. And it's an unbelievable oil that they have, and an unbelievable quality of oil and amount of oil.
When they nationalized the oil industry in Venezuela, going back to the nineteen twenties, American companies had invested billions. We built it, all of it, and then it was taken from stolen.
It was stolen from us, and it was.
Taken away years ago, over a period.
Of time, but it was taken.
Away in the early two thousands, even beyond that, but the early two thousands, and I.
Just took it back.
I can't imagine them being able to They have the largest oil reserves in the world. I can't imagine without American investment ingenuity, engineering, and our assistance that they would ever be able to tap into the vast resources that they have, again the largest in the entire world, So that will be a big part of it. What does that mean in terms of America's new partnership with Venezuela.
Well, it means lower oil prices all over the world, which is great for everybody.
It means lower oil.
Prices for America, which I have it down. Don't forget.
I inherited a mess. I inherited.
They talk about affordability. There was no affordability under Biden. He had the worst inflation in history, the highest and worst inflation in history. Prices were through the roof, and I'm fixing it. I inherited a mess. I say it all the time. I inherited because people don't understand. I inherited a mess. Open borders, millions of people in this country that shouldn't be.
With moving them out.
We're moving them out pretty rapidly, to murderers and drug dealers and just some of the worst people in the world.
All right, quick break right back. More of my exclusive sit down with President Trump on the other side than we have our polsters. Matt Tower, Robert Kahley and one year after the Pacific Palisades devastating fire, how come nobody's got permits to build their homes. Well, have a full report coming up. All right, we continue more of my interview with President Trump at the White House yesterday.
Let me go back to.
This issue of the political future for the people of Venezuela. Now, it's interesting you mentioned all of the criminals and the people let out of prisons that were sent to our borders in our country. That's trende arrago, that's cartel members.
Some of the worst criminals in the world were let into our country. No one terroritize Biden's open border policy.
Anybody could come.
In and that We'll get into the issue of Minneapolis going on right now. But back to this one issue. Do you foresee a Venezuela.
That will have free and fair elections?
And I would have little doubt that the opposition would probably win handle it if they were free and if they were fair.
Yeah, I do see that.
I think that's happening. But before we do that, it's going to take a while to do it. We have to rebuild the country. They couldn't have an election, they wouldn't even know how to have an election right now.
The country has become.
Third World and they wouldn't know how to have an election right now. We're going to rebuild the oil and the oil infrastructure. We'll be in charge of it. It's going to do great and make a lot of money, and we're going to take it from there. But we're going to rebuild the country and we'll ultimately you're going to have elections.
When you talk about increasing defense spending, and I go back to the campaign, and I go back to your first term. Foreign policy usually doesn't get a lot of discussion, and in many ways you have dedicated a lot of time, energy, and resources very important for our country. Well, how is that in America's first interest, because that's what you stand for.
Well, like the Middle East was blowing up when I got in. It was everybody was fighting everybody, which in fairness has been going on for about three thousand years the Middle East. So we now have peace of the Middle East. Nobody thought that was possible. But you have some great countries Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Ue and many other countries that have.
Been around a long time.
They're very wealthy, they were in many ways put out of business that weren't able to do business. You know, tremendous wealth for the world. The oil supply was hurt. Everything was hurt. I mean, you had things happening in the Middle East that were bad, not only in Gaza, with the death and the destruction going on for years, and it's been cleaned up. It's amazing it's been cleaned up. Now there'll be some remnants right now. We're gonna have to see what happens with Hamas. We're gonna have to
see what happens with Hesbola and Lebanon. But we have fifty nine countries that signed on and they want to go in and help. If we should have to do something with Hamas, which is a possibility, I think they're going to do what they said they were going to do. They were going to disarm that they've been armed for a long time.
They've been a little slow to disarm. Yeah, they've been Louise support Israel. Will you put them on a time?
I would, but.
First we'll see whether or not they're going to be disarming.
Look, I'm all for it if they If they don't, they made the promise that they were. If they don't, they've they've made an agreement that they're going to disarm, so we're going to have to assume that they're going to but you know, it's not their nature to disarm. It's not exactly their nature. Hasbel husband a very bad and Lebanon. But overall, I mean, we have an amazing situation compared to what it was, and we really do
have peace in the Middle East. And I will say so the Arabia quitar Ue and other countries have been amazing. They've been, you know, so helpful in getting it done. But the biggest thing was the attack on Iran. If you if you had a strong Iran and respected Iran, a powerful Iran like I guess it was at one point. So you know, a year ago, year and a half ago, you wouldn't have been able to make peace because the other countries wouldn't have been able to have that dark
cloud hanging over them. And they by by knocking out their nuclear potential, they would have had a nuclear weapon within two months by knocking that.
That's why I had to go in.
Every president wanted to go in, and none of them did.
I mean, you didn't want to send cargo planes of cash and of the currency.
Oh terrible. I mean, I've never seen hundreds of hundreds of millions of dollars were sent in cash on Boeing seven fifty sevens, beautiful Boeing seven. They opened the cashers piled up to the ceiling. I never even knew a president could do that. How do you do that?
What do you do?
Call the banks? You know, they emptied out every bank in Virginia and Maryland to get that cash, and they sent it over there and gave it to him.
No, we took the.
Opposite approach, exactly the opposite approach.
Are you following the protesting that is taking place all over the.
Country of Iran?
Yeah, I'm following.
And have you have you read that the Iatola Ali Komani is now has a plan B to go to Russia.
At some place he's looking to go.
I believe.
I think the country is on the verge of collapsing.
Well, it could be.
I mean, what they've done is they start in the past, they've started shooting the hell out of people, and all of a sudden, people without any weapons whatsoever, is standing there in your machine guns gunning them down, or they take them to prisons and then hang them and kill them. So they played rough and I said, if they do that, we're going to hit them very hard. Well, we're gonna hit them out. We're ready to do it. If they
do that, we're going to hit them all. And so far, for the most part, there's been some of it, but for the most part they haven't. There have been people killed, some of them. The crowds are so big that some of them have had really like we're stumped on literally it was. It was terrible. The crowds are just they're massive. The enthusiasm to overturn that regime is incredible. But there's been people killed, but it's more from death by it's
literally stomping. It's people running in a certain direction.
So we'll see what happens. We'll see what happens over They know.
Though, that it's a stampede, is I guess the best word they have, Like a stampede.
You talk about stampede for cattle, but the people.
Are stampeding and you're losing a lot of people with the stampedge. There's so many there's so many people protesting. Nobody's ever seen anything like what's happening right now. But I have put a random noticed that if they start shooting at them. These people are totally unarmed people, and they love their country. They want something to happen. Look at their country. They've gone, They've gone back one hundred
and fifty years. But I've told them that if they do anything bad to these people, we're going to hit them very hard.
So if there is mass murder by the raigning Ayatolos and those leadership, you're pledging to the people of Iran that you will come to their aid.
I did, very loud and very clear, that's what.
We're going to do.
I have this hat.
I guess you were playing golf with Lindsay Gram.
I did that for Lindsay Graham.
Make all says make a Ran great again?
And what he means by that.
Because I said, this is a little trick, he had, what do you want me to sign this head?
I don't know he can I sell this. It's probably worth a lot of money.
Kept my signature, but he asked me to sign that.
I said, you know, there's a lot.
Of definitions for that, and what he's talking about is the people that are protesting. I guess it's the only word you can use. It's really the biggest protest I've ever seen. The people that are protesting if they take over the country.
He wants to see if Iran can be great again.
You know, years ago a friend of mine was a developer from New York and I was a young developer and he went to Iran and he built buildings in Iran and he made a lot of money and he did very well. And it was like condos and rentals, and he loved Iran. He thought it was great, and he did a lot of work. I did a tremendous amount of work. He loved the people, he thought they were so incredible. And then it all stopped. When this stuff.
Started happened nineteen seventy nine.
Yeah, like magic, four.
Hundred and forty four days Americans held hostage.
Yeah, it was not a good time for Jimmy Carter. Wasn't a good time for America. His politics, Oh.
Didn't work out very well for anybody if in fact, well.
You know, I think about that though.
I could interrupt, because you know, when we were going into the middle of Venezuela, was helicopters landing in an army fort. We have thousands of soldiers and you have people with guns all over the place.
I thought so much.
About that Jimmy Carter catastrophe. We had so many hostages taken American hostages. We had the helicopters crashing, and you had the sandstorms. If you had sam storage, you should come back. But they tried to blast through the sandstorm. Nature always wins, remember the helicopter. Nature always wins. And helicopters don't have that kind of an engine. You know, there's a lot of moving parts. They don't like sand blowing into their gears. But anyway, they decided to go forward.
I should have come back. But I was thinking about that because here we are going into actually a much more dangerous situation if you think about it.
And Venezuela, we're in a fort, a military army fort, and the.
House was built there for protection, and we're going in with helicopters, with jets, with helicopters, I mean, the jets preceded the helicopters.
And did it unbelievable.
These are unbelievably talented pilots and people, and very brave people. So I was thinking a lot about the Jimmy Guno thing. I don't know what he would have done or how he would have done if that didn't happen. But there are those that say that destroyed his chances of winning election, and you know, lost that election pretty big. He might have lost it anyway, perhaps, but there was no question after that mess, and I was saying, well, I hope
that doesn't happen with me. But we have Raisin Kine and all of these great people, and they did an unbelievable Jeff, you.
Know, you started in your first term the Abraham Accords, and I would argue beyond Israel, it's other countries in the region, Egypt, Jordan, the Saudiast and pretty much every country that they probably were breathing a sigh of relief as well as the Israelis because they didn't want to read in hegemony in the region and a nuclear om Iran.
Well, you had to step that. You had no jewison. It should have been done long before I got there. It should have been done earlier. They just you look back and Obama should have done it.
They all should have done it. Clinton should have done it. Obama went the other way. I mean Obama decided to go with Iran.
I mean he was I don't know how Jewish people can vote for Biden and Obama, they were absolutely on the side.
Of her, and they were again, Donnie, Well, we're going to find that favorite mayor.
Well, I have a very nice relationship, but I thought it would take it at least maybe a month or two months before he went after me. He hit me on attack on Venezuela, which is pretty unusual because not too many people have hit us. That was a perfect attack. Think of what we've done. I mean, we've taken over a whole country. We're going to make the country strong and good, and we're going to ultimately be able to vote and put somebody in that they like the oil
that we've taken. We've taken four billion dollars worth of oil and one day and that'll increase. We're going to have it rebuilt. All the big oil companies are coming in. They're going to make a lot of money, and Venezuela is going to get some of that money and we're going to get some of that money. And we brought stability to the region. We brought stability and much lower oil prices.
You know, we have.
Gasoline now down to in many cases one dollar and ninety nine cents gal. And with Biden, it was four and a half dollars five dollars.
We have it way we have. We brought it way down. We've done a great job.
When the word affordability prices are way down, they're going to go lower prices. You know, everything follows oil. Oil is so big, everything follows oil. If oil prices are down, everything's done. I mean, you can look at everything, because it's just it affects everything. It affects the truck that delivers donuts, It affects the stove that makes the donut.
It affects everything.
Two more issues on foreign policy national security than I do. Want to get to a deep dive into the economy.
I want to ask you, ecloy is unbelievable, but that I know.
But it's unbelievable you survive without Venezuela and oil. I don't see how it can canhusivea Cuba.
No, Cuba totally realizes on Venezuela for money and for oil, and they give Venezuela protection. That was always the deal. They're very tough, they good soldiers. They got wiped out, as you know, three days ago, wiped out. I don't want to even say how many, but they got wiped out, but Cuba gives protection to Venezuela, and Venezuela gives Cuba money through oil.
And I work that way for a long time you talked about it doesn't work that way anymore.
So.
I don't know what Cuba was going to do. I think Cuba was going to fail.
It's got I don't think there are any alternatives to Cuba.
Quick break well have more on the other side. Here's our toll free number. It's eight hundred and nine to four one sean. If you want to be a part of the program, we'll get a snapshot of where the polling is in this in the beginning of this all important midterm election year, with Matt Towery and Robert Cahali coming up straight ahead.