This is a rush transcript from "Hannity," July 6, 2009. This copy may not be in its final form and may be updated.
SEAN HANNITY, HOST: And the biggest news of the holiday weekend came from Wasilla, Alaska, where Governor Sarah Palin will be stepping down from office. Now television pundits and columnists, they went into a lather predicting that the governor's political death is all but imminent.
But tonight, some conservatives are saying, hold on, wait just a minute. And one of them is none other than New York Times best-selling author, Ann Coulter, who's back with us.
Coulter, how are you? Welcome back.
ANN COULTER, AUTHOR & COLUMNIST: Thank you. Good to be here, Sean.
HANNITY: I think we can officially say there's Palin derangement syndrome. What was your reaction to the governor's...
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COULTER: I loved her speech. But it's been more fun watching the chattering heads on TV, people who really hate her guts are deeply disappointed in her decision.
HANNITY: Why do you think...
COULTER: They're like...
HANNITY: Go ahead.
COULTER: They're talking about her like an ex-girlfriend. They're totally over her but they just can't stop talking about her. "No, I'm over her. She's history, I feel more sorry for her than I do for me," but they can't stop talking about her.
HANNITY: Why do you — why do you think that is?
COULTER: Because she is magnificent. I mean who is the last politician they said was a hick, wasn't going any place, was stupid? I think that's Ronald Reagan. She has this amazing ability to connect with people. And you know, as Nixon said, they're not going to have Palin to kick around anymore.
I mean that's — I don't understand, well, I do understand. I think it's insane that people are describing her speech as either bizarre or rambling. I guess you could say that about anything. They also called her ugly. It's just one of those things they say.
It was extremely illuminating. I mean she spent $500,000 defending herself from these ridiculous, frivolous ethics charges. And by the way, another one was filed today. How about we have some right-wingers investigating who is behind filing all these ethics charges?
This one for — today I think it was for travel. In the past it's been for using a Yahoo! account for her e-mails. Another time it was for holding a fish off and allegedly promoting the fishery. She personally has spent $500,000. The state of Alaska has spent millions of dollars.
And by the way the lieutenant governor is a totally great guy so she's leaving Alaska in good hands. She won't be — the business of Alaska won't be eaten up by all these idiotic ethics charges and now she can go off and write her book and give speeches and be what she's supposed to be, which is like a huge star.
HANNITY: Well, all right. And she's not going to be able to accomplish anything on the national scene unless she's in the lower 48. I find these predictions.
COULTER: Right.
HANNITY: ... laughable and meaningless. Barack Obama stayed on the public payroll when he was running around the country for 18 months running for president. And you know what? He wasn't accomplishing a whole lot for the people of the state of Illinois or — did anyone...
COULTER: Right.
HANNITY: ... criticize Sebelius when she resigned to take a position? Or did anyone criticize Napolitano or did any one criticize Rambo dead fish? Any of them? I mean it seems like.
COULTER: Right. Did anybody...
HANNITY: Go ahead.
COULTER: Did anybody criticize Arlen Specter or Jim Jeffords for letting down the citizens of their states by switching parties, withdrawing? No, it's a totally different standard for Sarah Palin.
It is, you know, no surprise that the feminist movement came out of the left because liberal men are rabid sexists, though I must say I think a lot of the hatred, probably a majority of the hatred for Palin is coming from liberal women in New York who have overheard their boyfriends saying well, you got to admit, she is good-looking.
HANNITY: All right. Let me go to — now Obama was saying that the stimulus was going to kick in next month. We lost another half million jobs, which is sad for the economy and sad for the people that are not working. Biden goes on a program this weekend, says you know what? We really blew it on the economy.
Now they already were telling us, it's the worst economy since the Great Depression. So what part of this didn't they understand considering now they're claiming oh, we didn't know it was this bad? So it doesn't.
COULTER: Right.
HANNITY: How can you sync up with their rhetoric?
(LAUGHTER)
COULTER: Right. But it doesn't matter. That's not why people voted for him and I'll tell you the one silver lining in this — I mean it's terrible that the economy is a disaster, it's terrible that they are not fixing or changing any of the fundamentals. It's not going to be fixed and people with the basic understanding of economics knew that, know that, can see it now.
The one silver lining, there's a big article in The New York Times this weekend about how college kids who plan to spend the summers in Paris or working for publishing houses in New York have had to go back to, you know, Podunk to work in the local McDonald's.
So I hope they're enjoying the hip economy of the hip president they voted for because he's so hip.
HANNITY: All right. But here — Lauren Summers has said we'd feel the positive impact of the stimulus almost immediately. Peter Orszag said that we'd see it within weeks to month. Obama promised that unemployment wouldn't go above 8 percent.
COULTER: Right.
HANNITY: And now they expect we'll be at 10 percent by the end of the summer. You couple that with a lot of other broken promises.
COULTER: Right. And not only that.
HANNITY: Yes.
COULTER: Not only that, part of their hysteria, we must pass this now, pass it now, pass it now, was that if we don't pass the stimulus bill unemployment could get up to 9 percent. Well, it's gotten to 9 percent and beyond that.
HANNITY: Well, 9.5 percent.
COULTER: So, so much for the hysteria to get this.
HANNITY: Well, all right. So here's my question. So Obama says under my plan no family making $250,000 a year or less will see any form of tax increase, not your income tax, your payroll tax, your capital gains taxes.
COULTER: Right.
HANNITY: Not any taxes. So taxes now are going to go up. They're acknowledging it's going to go up. Unemployment which wasn't supposed to go above 8 percent is going to hit double-digits. Now they're saying — they were telling us the worst economy since the Great Depression. Now they're saying it's not our fault, it's worse than we thought.
What's worse than the Great Depression?
COULTER: Right.
HANNITY: So.
(LAUGHTER)
COULTER: Right. Well, the Great Depression and your taxes are going up. Yes, it took six months to break the no taxes on people earning more than $250,000 a year. No, the economic plan of the Obama administration is that if you work hard you will be punished, if you don't work you will be rewarded.
Every way you turn, non-work or non-useful work, non-remunerative work is going to be rewarded. I mean every little story. Even in the student aid thing, student aid will not have to be paid back as fast if the job you get after getting your student aid and going to school doesn't lead to a well-paying job.
HANNITY: Yes.
COULTER: So the less money you make the more the Obama administration will give you. The less hard you work — it is just — we reward failure and punish success.
HANNITY: All right. Let me ask you.
COULTER: That is the policy of the Obama administration so good luck with that.
HANNITY: All right. Well, let me ask you one national security question. And by the way, it's not about the Obama-backed coup in Honduras. That's for another night. The question I have is, here we just deployed our missile defense system to Hawaii...
COULTER: If only it were Obama-backed.
HANNITY: No, no, but here's my — we.
COULTER: That's the good one.
HANNITY: All right. We deployed missile defense to protect Hawaii over the Fourth of July weekend.
COULTER: Right.
HANNITY: We're cutting back on missile defense and now Obama is about to negotiate with Russia and apparently give away future building of our missile defense system while North Korea is launching missiles almost daily. Now.
COULTER: That's right. That's right.
HANNITY: Is that unilateral disarmament? Because it seems a lot like unilateral disarmament to me.
COULTER: Yes. Not only that but we don't know exactly what will happen but we know that Obama has gone abroad so he will do something bad for America's interests. That's besides oil prices going up, the one thing Russia cares about is making sure Poland, our ally, does not have a strategic defense system and so yes, the odds are on Obama giving it up.
HANNITY: All right. Coulter, good to see you. Thank you for being with us. Welcome back.
COULTER: Good to see you. Thank you.
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