Trump Town Hall with Hannity 12/5/23 Transcript

Welcome to Hannity. And tonight we are in beautiful Davenport, Iowa with a massive crowd. Welcome all of you. Thank you for being here. Wow. In a little more than one month, the very first Republican caucus will be held right here in this state as it should be. And by the way, in just a moment, the candidate leading the Republican field by far, Donald J. Trump, will join us for the full hour tonight.

(00:39)
Let’s be clear. In 2024, the stakes could not be any higher. After three years under Joe Biden, our country is imploding on every level. Our economy is wrecked by inflation. Our southern border is an utter disaster. The American people are not safe. Take a look.

What I would say that is unique about the environment that we’re in right now in my career is that while there may have been times over the years where individual threats could have been higher here or there than where they might be right now, I’ve never seen a time where all the threats or so many of the threats are all elevated all at exactly the same time. That’s what makes this environment that we’re in now so fraught.

Are you concerned that international terrorism threats to the homeland are rising as the border continues to be broken?

I am concerned that we are in an elevated threat environment, a heightened threat environment from foreign terrorist organizations, for a whole host of reasons. And obviously their ability to exploit any port of entry, including our southwest border, is a source of concern.

Now, that was the FBI director, Christopher Wray today on Capitol Hill. Make no mistake, our wide open Joe Biden border is now a massive national security nightmare. It is a clear and present danger, and it is only getting worse every day under President Biden. In the past two years, well over what? 6,000 illegal immigrants from Afghanistan have crossed our southern border, along with 3000 Egyptians, more than 600 Iranians. Iran, the number one state sponsor of terror. More than 500 Syrians, 12,000 Russians, and a whopping 26,000 people from China. This is a dire national security crisis, but that is only one part of the problem.

(02:37)
For years, America’s bloated bureaucracy, it has now become politicized. That includes the FBI, the DOJ, which have wasted precious time and resources with political motivated witch hunts. What they’re looking into, traditional Catholics or angry parents that go to school board meetings or pro-life advocates that are nonviolent, Trump supporters, Donald Trump himself, instead of investigating real threats like terrorism, human trafficking, drug trafficking, gang violence, the FBI, their hyper-partisan Washington field office has obsessively, compulsively been targeting one person, one man, one family. And that’s Donald Trump, the Trump organization and the Trump family. So now the 45th president is vowing to fight back and obliterate the deep state. Let’s take a look.

If you put me back in the White House, their reign is over, their reign will be over, and they know it. And America will be a free nation once again. We’re not a free nation right now. We don’t have free press. We don’t have free anything. In 2016 I declared, “I am your voice.” Today, I add, “I am your warrior. I am your justice.” And for those who have been wronged and betrayed, I am your retribution. I am your retribution. Not going to let this happen.

That’s become a controversy among the left. Wrong, as he said earlier, but we’ll play that for him and get a response tonight. Now, that’s an important promise. America’s weaponized, politicized bureaucracy. It’s got to be dismantled. The far-left hacks and the media mob. Of course, they disagree. And once again, they’re predicting doom and gloom if Donald Trump is elected. Here’s the Washington Post yesterday, “The fear of a looming Trump dictatorship.” And this is today’s headline from Salon.com. “Americans are sleepwalking into a Trump dictatorship.” That’s now their favorite word over at fake news, all cable news channels, they’re featuring the same brand of fear-mongering. Obviously it’s clear they don’t want to talk about Joe Biden and his failed record. Take a look.

Dictatorship. Is that what we would have if we re-elect Donald Trump?

I think it’s a very, very real threat and concern.

I think the phrase sleepwalking into a dictatorship should wake people up.

Correct me if I’m wrong. It’s not going to be the kind of dictatorship with concentration camps and martial law overnight, is it? That’s not what we’re going to get. We’re going to get Trump borrowing from the Orbán playbook in Hungary, from the Modi playbook in India. And what does that look like, Jason? What would that look like here in America?

Fears of a dictatorship. The alarming prediction for a second Trump term.

Liz Cheney is right what she said that we are sleepwalking into a Donald Trump dictatorship if people don’t wake up and remember what Donald Trump was to the four years, what he tried to do to our democracy.

Here’s the thing, we already know what would happen under a Trump presidency. Why? Because he’s already been president. Lower taxes, stronger growth, a secure border, peace in the Middle East, new trade deals, energy independence, and a push to reform our bloated bureaucracy. There was no dictatorship. We did not lose our constitutional rights. We did not go to war. The people who hate Donald Trump, they simply have been and continue to lie to you. Now, it’s Joe Biden who has been using the justice system, his DOJ, to inflict retribution against his political rivals. And it’s Joe Biden, who called Donald Trump’s supporters, a quote, “Threat to America.” The very guy that says MAGA Republican. Oh, making America great is somehow bad. And it’s Joe Biden, who is leading this country into the brink of yet another possible war.

(06:42)
And that’s why Donald Trump is now beating Joe Biden in almost every major poll. Take a look at your screen. Latest Messenger Harris survey has Trump against Joe Biden up by six points. So now the big question, can Donald Trump seal the deal and get the country back on track? Joining us now for the full hour, the 45th President of the United States. Davenport, welcome former president, Donald Trump.

Thank you, man. Hello, Sean.

Thank you very much.

Thank you.

Great to see you. Have a seat.

Thank you.

Before we get into issues, and we have a lot to get into, let’s talk about these polls.

We love you, Trump.

I love you too.

By the way, I’ve lost all control of this debate as well. Here we go. Let me ask you, when you look at this, you look at the polls, you see the enthusiasm. You’ve done rallies and crowds. How are you feeling about the race?

I feel great. I feel it has to be. If it’s not, we’re going to be in big trouble. We’re not going to have a country anymore. We have no choice. And we have had enthusiasm. Look, we did phenomenally in 2016. We did much better in 2020. And I will tell you the enthusiasm… Some bad things happened, but the enthusiasm that they have now is bigger than either of those two races. And we’re actually less than a year out, but close to a year. I’ve never seen anything like it. We have crowds that are incredible in Iowa. We were here last week, we had overflow crowds, and other candidates have like seven people standing on a farm and they’re talking, and it’s a very nice thing to watch, especially for me. I enjoy watching that. But we have a tremendous enthusiasm because they want to see…

(09:08)
I see Biden talking about, oh, MAGA, MAGA. MAGA means Make America Great Again. That’s what it means. And that’s what people want. They want to see our country be great again. Right now, we’re not a great country. We’re a country in decline. We are a declining country. We’re laughed at all over the world. People that respected us three years ago, and they respected us, you wouldn’t have Ukraine and Russia. You wouldn’t have had the attack on Israel. You wouldn’t have had that withdrawal. You would’ve withdrawn. But we would’ve withdrawn from Afghanistan with tremendous strength and power. And that’s the way I had it set up. In Afghanistan, we didn’t lose a soldier. Many soldiers were being killed by snipers and others during the Obama administration. And Biden was there. I guess he wasn’t doing so much other than collecting some cash probably. But many, many soldiers were killed. And I spoke to the head of the Taliban, I said, “Don’t do it. Don’t do it.” Do you know, for 18 months we didn’t lose one soldier in Afghanistan. Nobody knows that.

(10:16)
Until that fateful day where they killed our soldiers, they killed our… Think of it. They killed our soldiers. They left Americans behind, and you covered better than anybody. And they also left $85 billion of the best military equipment. Because I rebuilt the military. They left 85 billion, not million, billion dollars worth of military equipment behind in the most embarrassing moment in the history of our country. And the people of this country just don’t want to take this anymore. So we gave them 85 billion. They killed our people. And they have people there, they have Americans there that we didn’t even get out. It was like a surrender. And after that, Russia said, well, these people are incompetent. They’re overrated. And they went in, they attacked Ukraine. That would’ve never happened a million years. I used to speak to Putin about it. It was the apple of his eye, Ukraine the apple of his eye.

(11:10)
And I said, “Don’t do it. Don’t do it.” I won’t tell you exactly, but it was tough. In fact, he said, “You wouldn’t do that?” I said, “Yes, I will.” “No, you won’t do it.” And he didn’t believe me, but he believed me 10%. That’s all he had to believe me. And he never did anything. I mean, he never did anything. And by the way, President Xi with Taiwan, I had the same conversation. Different cities and different countries. I had the same exact conversation. And he would’ve absolutely… I mean, he’s looking at Taiwan very strongly. It would’ve never happened. And again, for four years it didn’t happen. And it was never going to happen. And now it’s very possibly going to happen, which would be a shame. So it’s one of those things… Thank you. I’d like to be back.

Let me ask you this.

…here earlier today, Joe Biden, I’m sure he mumbled the words as usual, he said this: If Trump wasn’t running, I’m not sure I’d be running, he said, at a campaign event today. How do you react to that?

I think somebody gave him a talking point they thought that would sound good. I just found out that Democrats are funding Nikki Haley’s campaign. I hear that Democrats are contributing to Ron DeSantis, or Ron DeSanctimonious, to Ron DeSantis’ campaign, and then you hear the talking points. That’s the only thing they’re good at: Cheating on elections and great talking points.

(12:42)
They say we want to run against Trump. They want to run. We did really well in 2016 and we did so much better in 2020. The person they don’t want to run against is us. It’s us. It’s not me. It’s us because it’s a movement, the likes of which this country, Sean, has never seen before.

At the beginning-

We have never seen the likes of what we’ve all done together. This is not me, it’s everybody here and millions and millions. I think it’s not 75 million people. I think it’s 150 million people. It might be more than that. Who doesn’t want to see strong borders and a strong military and low taxes and low-interest rates and go out and buy a house?

I play it on purpose because I see what the media is doing now. I put a montage together. They want to call you a dictator. You use the words “I am your retribution.” And now, before that, you said you’ve been wronged and you used other words as well, but I want to be very, very clear on this. To be clear, do you in any way have any plans, whatsoever, if re-elected president, to abuse power, to break the law, to use the government to go after people?

You mean like they’re using right now? In the history of our country, what’s happened to us, again, has never happened before. Over nonsense, over nothing. Made up charges. I often say: Al Capone, he was one of the greatest of all time, if you like criminals. He was a mob boss, the likes of which… Scarface, they call him and he got indicted once. I got indicted four times. I wonder what my father and mother would say looking down.

We had a lot of private conversations in the lead up to your announcement and the day that you came down that escalator and, in that lead up, we had some passionate discussions back and forth. You were telling me that Iraq should give us oil to pay for the war and American blood should not be shed overseas in these long protracted wars. We talked a lot about that. And you have been under fire from that day forward. Russia, Russia, you talk about it all the time. Now, you face as many as four criminal trials during an election year. Now, I’ve said this publicly, and I’ll say it here in Iowa, I’m not sure that Donald Trump can get a fair trial in New York, Washington, DC, I don’t think you can get a fair trial in Fulton County, Georgia. Now, where I think you would do better in terms of real justice would be on appeal. The trials will take place during-

Let’s do it in Iowa.

There you go.

He’s innocent.

But that has got to weigh heavy on you and what is your reaction to that, considering all the charges all stem from a couple of years ago?

Yeah. They could have done this three years ago and it would’ve been long over, but they didn’t want to bring them because they had no case, and then they saw how well we’re doing in the polls. The two questions I get more than any other is number one, will they do it again, sir? Will they do it again? Will you stop them and we’re going to stop them.

(16:01)
Number two is how do you take it? How do you get up in the morning and how do you take it? And that part is easy for me to say. I love what I do because we are going to make our country greater than ever before and it’s so important, it’s so important. We are going to do things. We’re going to close the border. Day one, the border gets closed and day one and a half we drill. We drill, baby, drill. Drill, drill, drill.

(16:33)
And probably on day two, we’ll get rid of this ridiculous electric car mandate. We have to go and buy a car. We’re going to buy a car and it doesn’t go far. There’s a little problem. It’s very expensive and it doesn’t go far. They want to keep you away from going too long a distance from your home, but the whole thing is crazy. They want to make now electric army tanks and they want to make electric trucks, but the electric trucks don’t go very far.

(17:04)
On a diesel-fuel truck, the big ones, great ones, you go 2000 miles. On an electric truck, you have nothing left because the battery is so large, believe it or not, it takes up most of the space, so that’s a little problem, but it only goes 300 miles and, yet, it doesn’t matter to them. A child would understand. Therefore, you can’t do it. You talk about a supply chain problem, therefore, you can’t do it. The country is sick and you say this, do they know what they’re doing? Are they smart or do they know what they’re doing? How could they do it?

(17:36)
I see John Kerry all over the place talking about we have to get rid of our coal plants, and yet China is building one coal plant a week, massive coal plants, and they’re doing it just automatically. And John Kerry wants us to stop doing anything. We can’t. We have a country, we have to fire up our factories. Wind is not going to fire up our factories and it’s the most expensive energy. Even solar. I like solar from a concept standpoint, but it’s massively expensive and we can’t allow China to build a factory a week and we do nothing. They build a coal plant and they’re obvious about it. And then Biden goes to see them about global warming. The only global warming we should be thinking about and worrying about, because it could happen tomorrow, is nuclear global warming. Not global warming.

We almost have to go to a break. I want to go back to this one issue, though, because the media has been focused on this and attacking you. Under no circumstances, you are promising America tonight, you would never abuse power as retribution against anybody.

Except for day one.

Except for?

He’s going crazy. Except for day one.

Meaning?

I want to close the border and I want to drill.

That’s not retribution.

I’m going to be… He keeps… We love this guy. He says you’re not going to be a dictator, are you? I said, no, no, no. Other than day one. We’re closing the border and we’re drilling, drilling, drilling. After that, I’m not a dictator. Okay?

That sounds to me like you’re going back to the policies when you were president.

That’s exactly…

Take a break, we’re just getting started. We’re in beautiful Davenport, Iowa. Donald Trump with us for the hour as Hannity continues. Thank you for being with us. And welcome back to Hannity. We are broadcasting live tonight. Beautiful Davenport, Iowa. Thank you all for coming. We continue now with former President Donald Trump, as we now head into the Iowa Caucus season, and a two part question on Joe Biden. One is about his cognitive decline and the second is about the Biden family syndicate, as I call it. Let’s first play an RNC ad about Joe Biden. Take a look.

But the nature… Not… When the political coverage… That… Look… Some of the political players and some of the… Let me ask a rhetorical question. No, I won’t. Anyway.

Now, I could play tape from almost every day. I think another horrible moment for him was that gaggle on Air Force One after he left Israel. My question is what do you think about his cognitive state? And, number two, the issue of Hunter Biden, Joe Biden lying to the country as a candidate and president, “I never had a discussion with Hunter or my brother or anybody for that matter on foreign business deals.” We know, according to Devin Archer, he was on phone calls. We know he was meeting with oligarchs, like the former First Lady of Moscow at Cafe Milano. Doesn’t seem to get the attention in the media that anything involving you gets. What is your reaction to both?

They’ve been after all of my numbers and facts and figures and they found out that it was incredible. Somebody said, you must be the most honest guy in the world because, after all these years, and they saw everything, my tax returns, they saw everything, went up to the ceiling and they saw it. He is number one, from your standpoint, cognitively, you like to use that word cognitively. He’s not good. But it’s not for me to say. I will say this: I just saw a commercial by these lowlifes, where they took me imitating him at a speech where we were all having a lot of fun. It’s not really fun because we shouldn’t be joking about it. I actually told Sean, and Sean, you shouldn’t joke about it, it’s serious, we’re dealing with nuclear, we’re dealing with-

By the way, that is a true story. You actually called me and said, it’s not funny because I was joking about it.

That’s not funny at all.

I thought about it and I said, you’re right. And I said, how come you never listen to my advice?

But it’s true. It’s actually true, unfortunately. I imitated him not finding his way off a stage. It’s not really that hard. You’re looking around and I walk into a wall, I say, let me see you. And I do that a lot. I just sort of… At some of our rallies and then I’ll say, “our real president is Barack Hussein Obama.” They’ll say he doesn’t know who the president is. He thinks it’s Barack Hussein. No, I’m being sarcastic. They imitate it, but they’re disgraceful.

(23:04)
I’ll tell you what, we are dealing, and you are dealing, I got to know them all, the leaders of the world, I got to know them all, and they’re at the top of their game. Some are bad people, some are decent people. They all have one thing in common. They want what’s good for their country. Whether it’s President Xi of China or Kim Jong-un of North Korea, I saved… If Hillary had got in, you would’ve been in a nuclear war. That would’ve been a nuclear war. Any one of them. They’re all… Including Macron of France. You can go to any of them. Putin. They’re at the top of their game.

(23:37)
We have somebody that was never at the top of his game. 25 years ago, he wasn’t one of the light bulbs, he wasn’t one of the bright ones. And I tell this story: Ted Kennedy, believe it or not, was a friend of mine because of Palm Beach. They lived in Palm Beach at what’s called the Kennedy compound. And I did him a big favor one time and somehow he liked me, I liked him, even though we were opposite in many ways,

Politically, certainly. And I said to him, “Who’s the smartest guy in the Senate?” And he gave me a name, I don’t want to tell you because I really don’t like the guy at all. He’s still around. I said, “Who’s the dumbest?” He said, “Probably Joe.” I said, “Who’s Joe?” “Joe Biden.” It’s the first time. I said, “Oh.” And that was it.

(24:20)
And now I see, when he’s not in primetime for himself… I mean, years later he failed on being president when he was normal. Something is going wrong and we can’t afford it because we have a problem today. Nuclear weapons is the single biggest problem the world has. And we have people. It used to be 10 years ago, even five years ago, even three years ago, nobody would’ve thought about nuclear. You couldn’t mention the word. Now, it’s being mentioned at every meeting. Every time you talk, it’s being mentioned. The level of power of the nuclear weapons is incredible.

(24:56)
Take Hiroshima or take Nagasaki, and you look, and that was many, many decades ago, and multiply that times 500, that’s what a big bomb would be today. Whether it’s Israel or really major countries, nuclear weapons are the biggest problem we have.

(25:15)
And we have a man that can’t put two sentences together. We have a man that doesn’t know he’s alive and he’s backed up by the media. The biggest problem we have, the media. The media is fake. I came up with a term a long time ago and they won’t talk about it.

Let me ask you this-

If I did some of the things that he did, they’d reinstitute the death penalty. They don’t want to talk about it. When he gets paid three and a half million dollars from the mayor of Moscow’s wife, when I brought it up at a debate, and Chris Wallace was moderating… How’s he doing, by the way? Not too good. Chris Wallace, whatever happened to Chris Wallace? And I said, “Why is he getting three and a half million dollars? I want to ask him that question.” And Chris Wallace interceded, because Joe didn’t know he was alive. And so, Chris Wallace interceded and he said, “You shouldn’t be asking that.” And now it’s a big subject, and I talked about it literally three years ago.

(26:10)
But why does all this money come in from China? We took in hundreds of billions of dollars in taxes and tariffs from China. We gave the farmers, by the way, $28 billion. That’s why I say I’m going to win Iowa. I had my people. My people say, “Please, sir, don’t keep saying you’re going to win Iowa. You sound really horrible. Crass.” Somebody said crass. I said, “But it’s true. We’re going to win Iowa.” I gave the farmers $28 billion and I got it from China. Who else could do that? Who else would be able to do it, number one? Who else would think about it? I think about it because the farmers were hurt very badly by China for many years.

(26:50)
And I asked our Secretary of Agriculture, Sonny Perdue, I said, “Sonny, how much damage has been done over the past seven years, eight years?” He came back, $ 28 billion. I said, “I’m getting it from China,” and I got it. And I told the farmers, “Go out and buy more land and go out and buy bigger tractors.” You remember that? And I said, “I’m going to win Iowa because nobody else is going to be able to do that.”

Let me ask you, when prominent democratic voices like Maureen Dowd and David Axelrod and Van Jones and others are so critical of Joe Biden… And of course, he is struggling cognitively. I can’t think of in the last couple of months any appearance that he has had where he wasn’t either mumbling or bumbling or stumbling or having no clue where to go, where to exit. Now, my question is, do you think in 11 months he will be their candidate?

I personally don’t think he makes it. Having said that, I’m saving it for this big town hall. I personally don’t think he makes it. I think he’s in bad shape physically. Do you remember when he said, “I’d like to take him behind the barn?” If he took me behind the barn and I went like this, I believe he’d fall over. I believe he’d fall over, but who knows? Who knows? Who knows? But it was okay.

(28:12)
And by the way, it was okay for him to say that, he said, “I’d like to take him behind the…” He could say that and everyone thought it was so cute. If I ever said it, they’d say, “He’s a dictator. He is a horrible human being.” It’s a whole double standard we have. And not only in the law, but just about everything else, as you know very well.

(28:29)
I personally don’t think he makes it physically. I watched him at the beach, he wasn’t able to lift a beach chair, which is meant for children to lift. You can lift them like that. And mentally, I would say he’s possibly equally as bad and maybe worse, but I don’t know. I will say this, he’s got vicious people surrounding him around that beautiful Oval Office. There are people in that Oval Office that are evil people, bad people, smart people, young, vicious. They’re communists and they’re bad. They’re-

Who do you think would replace them then?

Well, I saw one person on, who I actually had a very good relationship with, but I’m sure that it would end very quickly. I saw him in your debate the other night, and he’s slick, but he’s got no facts. He’s got no facts. I thought he did well, considering-

You’re talking about Gavin Newsom?

Yeah. Considering that he didn’t have the facts, I thought he did well. He said, “We have the lowest taxes in the country. We have the cleanest streets in the country.” Whiff. And I’m saying, “Wait a minute, is he talking about the same place?” So, he’d certainly be one.

(29:32)
I guess, they say that Kamala would be the one, the odds to be, because they say if they didn’t give it to her, the African American vote, the Black vote would not go to them. And we just had a poll where I’m at 22 and 25% with the Black vote. If we have that, we can pull the election over.

We got to take a break.

Thank you.

All right, we’ll take a break. We’ll come back. A lot more to cover with former President Trump. As we continue, we are in beautiful Davenport, Iowa. Thank you for being with us. Welcome back to Hannity. We are in Davenport, Iowa, with a massive, fun crowd, a rowdy crowd, and with GOP front-runner, President Donald Trump.

(30:41)
Let me just throw out a list of some of the significant issues that we’re facing as a country, and you’ve touched on a number of them. You mentioned borders, day one. You mentioned energy, day one. Look at where our economy is. Last year, 2 trillion in debt, 34 trillion overall. We, this year, Mr. President, will pay, before we spend a dime, $1 trillion on debt service alone, before Medicare, Social Security, national defense. That is unsustainable.

Yeah. So, before COVID hit us, our gift from China, that was our gift, what happened to us with COVID, commonly known as the China virus, they don’t like that, but it was a China virus, we were doing energy, taking our liquid gold out of the ground at a rate that’s never been seen before, and it was going up. We were going to be using that liquid gold to sell to Europe instead of the pipeline from Russia, which I exposed and I stopped. I stopped that line. Then they say I was nice to Russia. There was nobody that was nice. I was not nice to Russia. I stopped that pipeline. We would’ve been selling oil and gas to Europe, to Asia, all over the world. We would’ve been paying off debt. That debt would be way down right now because we have more…

(31:58)
What people don’t know, we have more liquid gold than any other country in the world by far. And we started off in fourth place. We were number four. It was Saudi Arabia, it was Russia, it was two countries fighting for number three, and it was us at number four or five. By the time I left, we were number one by 25%. We would’ve been number one by 100, and we would’ve done twice what they were going to do, combined. We would’ve been paying off debt and we would have been reducing taxes.

That’s what I want to ask.

We gave you the biggest tax cut in the history of our country, bigger than the Reagan tax cut. We would’ve been reducing taxes still further. And that’s why, Sean, that’s why we had the most jobs of any president ever, because we got rid of regulations, tremendous. No president got rid of more regulations, or close, and we gave you the big tax cuts. So, everybody had incentive and everybody was happy and everybody was working.

(32:51)
I remember groups came to see me that wouldn’t normally like me, and they said, “We’ve never seen anything like it.” We were actually starting to get along, then we got hit with the China virus. Some people think purposely, I don’t. I think it was incompetence, but some people think purposely, because we were doing so much better than any other country ever, and we got hit. But I will tell you, we would be paying that debt off right now at levels like never seen before. And it would’ve been a beautiful thing.

You brought us to energy independence for the first time in 75 years. Before you ran, I remember we had many discussions about energy independence, energy independence. And you’re saying that in a second term, you will push America to be the most energy dominant country on Earth and that you could pay down that $34 trillion in debt and we won’t have a trillion dollar interest payment every year.

That’s right. We will get it way down. Look, so it’s Biden inflation. That’s what it is. What he did with energy is unbelievable because energy went up so much; gasoline, $5, $6 a gallon. That’s what caused inflation. Now, it’s all over the place, but you have 29% total inflation. Now when it holds up, because the economy is starting to slow down very substantially, so when it holds up, he’s saying, “Well, we don’t have too much inflation.” But he doesn’t talk about all of the inflation that you’ve had to suffer over the last three years. No, we will have numbers like you’ve never seen.

(34:24)
We have a thing in Alaska called ANWR. Ronald Reagan tried to get it approved, everybody… Bush, maybe a little bit, he didn’t work as hard. But we have ANWR in Alaska, the biggest anywhere in the world, including probably Saudi Arabia. I got it approved. I was so proud of it. They ended it in the first week. They ended it. They told me, “We’ll get it back.” But we have more than anybody, we have more wealth than anybody, but we don’t use it.

(34:52)
And then, guys like DeSantis and guys like many of the Democrats, but guys like DeSantis, and to a lesser extent, Nikki Haley, they want to play around with your Social Security. You don’t have to touch Social Security. We have money laying in the ground far greater than anything we can do by hurting senior citizens with their Social Security.

(35:14)
Ron DeSantis wanted to bring up on Social Security… Now, of course, he says, “Well, I wouldn’t.” But one thing I learned about politicians, I’ve known them, I’ve dealt with them on the other side for a long time, their first thought is always the thought that they go to. He wanted to raise the minimum age, the age on Social Security to 70. That’s a big increase. But he also wanted to raise it to 75. If that happened, people would be devastated.

(35:38)
We have such incredible wealth under our feet, that that takes care of everything. If you go to Saudi Arabia, and they bought many Boeings, many planes, and I said to them, “Do you use financing for that?” They didn’t even know what the word meant. They have so much money. They have a fund, $21 trillion, it’s all for oil. And we

… we have more oil and gas than they do. Our country can be rich again. John Kerry has to be stopped. He’s destroying our country. This guy… I mean, think of it, he goes all over the world in a private jet, by the way, he goes all over the world talking to these people about getting rid of coal plants. They all laugh at them. They treat him with respect. He’s gone. They say, “What an idiot. What a jerk.” And then they go ahead and they build their coal plants.

(36:27)
He goes to China about, let’s say the atmosphere. He talks about global warming, he talks about… They don’t call it global warming so much, now they call it climate change because it wasn’t working. Global warming wasn’t working when it was cooling. So now they call it climate change, that takes care of everything.

(36:45)
I am an environmentalist, but we’re going to destroy our country with this Green New Deal stuff that doesn’t work.

(36:52)
Just to finish, we have so much wealth and power under our feet. No other country has it. China doesn’t have it. Why are we going to electric? They do have what you need to do the batteries, but they don’t have what you need to do the gasoline. And it’s what people want to drive. Right now, and there’s a little story about it, but you’re going to see it a lot, I guarantee you. They have so many electric vehicles, nobody wants to buy them. They’re expensive. Although you’ll probably get the pretty cheap now, nobody wants to buy them.

By the way, 3,000 dealers around the country wrote Biden and said, “Please stop making us sell something they don’t want.” Ford lost four-

People don’t want them.

… and a half billion dollars. Let me ask you this-

You know the government is subsidizing that?

A lot, they’re paying a lot.

So this thing, every time you make a car, we give you thousands and thousands and thousands of dollars. And the people don’t want them. And I’m not knocking electric cars. We should sell electric, but we should also sell a combustion engine gasoline cars. We can sell hybrids. The hybrids are fine. We should be able to buy everything. Some people might like an electric car. We should be able to buy an electric car.

(38:02)
But to say that we’re not going to do… And this is our strength because we have this stuff under the ground and we have people going around really destroying our country. They’re destroying our country at the border. They will allow, in my opinion, because you don’t hear the real numbers, 15 million people into our country by the time Biden gets out, which hopefully will be very soon.

(38:24)
If they get another term, this country is finished. By the time he gets out, and the people are coming from prisons all over the world, they’re coming from mental institutions all over the world and they’re terrorists. And this country is going to be suffering a very big price.

We need you.

It’s amazing that it hasn’t happened. And interestingly, I had very strong borders, the strongest ever. We had the strongest border in history. All they had to do is leave Brandon Judd and leave Tom Holman and leave all these guys. We had the strongest borders-

Let me put this up on the screen.

Yeah, we had the strongest borders in history-

Let me put this on the screen.

Go ahead.

Iran is the number one state sponsor of terror.

Right.

Okay. Well, foreign nationals founded our southern border because of Joe Biden’s Open Borders, from Iran 659, from Syria 538, from Afghanistan 6,386, Egypt 3,153. 12,605 from Russia, 26,113 from China. Now, could you explain to me, what do you think the odds are that among that group of people from our top geopolitical foes, in most cases, that terror cells have entered the country because of the 8 million people Joe Biden has allowed into this country unvetted? What are the odds?

The odds are 100%. Look, why do we have 26,000 people?

How scary is that?

Think of it. No, it’s a hundred percent. And by the way, we had nothing during my… Remember I had the travel ban. I said, “I don’t want people coming from countries that want to blow us up.” And we put a travel ban. And some people thought I was discriminating.

(40:05)
But if you think about it, I went four years with no problem. We didn’t have any problem. We didn’t have buildings being knocked down. We didn’t have World Trade Centers. We didn’t have any of that. No, we had a very strong travel ban. And if you came from a country that was a country I can tell you right now, I can name every one of them, we just didn’t want you. I’m sorry. And we actually had it passed by the Supreme Court and that was a big day. But we didn’t have a problem.

Got to take a break. We’ll come back more with that from Davenport, Iowa with former President Donald Trump straight ahead, as we continue.

(40:58)
Welcome back to Hannity Broadcasting from Davenport, Iowa. Thank you so much for being here. We continue with former President Donald Trump. The Iowa Caucus is coming up soon. Let me give you the last word tonight. The people of Iowa, the first caucus, not that far away. Your final message to the people?

Well, first of all, I love this state. We had two big victories here. Big, big victories. We won by a lot. We won by a lot.

(41:25)
And from the enthusiasm and the polls we’re going to win by a lot more than we won even the last two times. But we won by a lot. I kept you first in the nation. You know that I was the one, nobody else. I kept you first.

(41:40)
There was a big move, Sean, to move Iowa into the middle or to the back of the pack because they don’t know if it represents this country. I said, “Iowa represents this country more than any place. And it also represents tradition.”

(41:54)
When you think of Iowa, you think of farms and you think of politics and we’re going to keep it that way. But I want to thank the people in this room because they really get it. I don’t have to go through the liquid gold with them. They know all about it. And they also know they have their own liquid gold, it’s called corn. And that corn is just as good.

(42:14)
But I love you very much. You’ve been so incredible to me. I’m going to be around for the next… it’s five weeks now and we’ll be coming here a little bit. And then the last couple of weeks we’ll be blitzing because we don’t want to take… We’re up I guess by 30 or 40 points, but we’re not taking any chances. We don’t want to take any chance.

(42:32)
And the really nice thing, you know when you have a good time and when you love people and they love you, this hour went so fast. Thank you all very much. Thank you.

President Donald Trump. Unfortunately, that’s all the time we have left this evening. Thank you for being with us.