This is a rush transcript from "Hannity," April 5, 2010. This copy may not be in its final form and may be updated.
SEAN HANNITY, HOST: The Anointed One is known for his eloquence. But at a town hall event in North Carolina he came up against a simple question he just couldn't quite answer. Let's take a look.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
DORIS, TOWN HALL ATTENDEE: Thank you Mr. President. We're honored to have you here today. I'm Doris Ravis (ph) from Lake Reilly, South Carolina. I work at Cell Guard. We have wonderful CEOs that keep — take care of us and have really helped the company grow.
My question is, though, in the economy times that we have now, is it a wise decision to add more taxes to us with the health care because it — we are overtaxed as it is.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
HANNITY: All right, now the president spent a whooping 17 minutes trying and failing to answer that question. Now we've put together just a few of the highlights.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
PRESIDENT BARACK OBAMA: Well, let's talk about that. You know, because this is an area where there has been just a whole lot of misinformation.
Anybody here who lost their job, and then COBRA ran out, or COBRA wasn't subsidized the way the Recovery Act made sure COBRA paid 65 percent to the cost of COBRA, and if you had somebody at home who was sick or had a child who got sick, you would suddenly say, well, now I see the need.
The final point, is that the cost of health care, setting aside anything we did to reform, and if we just allowed the current trajectory to go on, is out of control. Like Wal-Mart is able to leverage a really good price from its suppliers for everything, because they're such a big purchaser. Well, this pool will be a big purchaser.
If you've got a house and you've got a big hole in your roof, and it is raining and snowing through that roof… if you repair the roof that's going to cost money.
Well, I'm thinking to myself, how is it that the guy who is cleaning up the office, is paying the Medicare tax, and the guy who is making capital gains isn't?
I'm sorry, by the way, these questions sometimes — or these answers are long. But I want to make sure you guys — that I'm really answering your question.
Bt I know that for a lot of people they've got a legitimate concern about gosh, it just seems like government spending is out of control.
Boy, that was a long answer, I'm sorry.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
(LAUGHTER)
HANNITY: All right, better luck next time, Mr. President, but I did like your analogy about the house and the roof and the rain coming through it. That really cleared things up for me and I'm sure everybody else.
And joining me now with analysis on why it took the president of the United States 17 minutes to justify hiking taxes on you, the American people, is the author of the forthcoming new book, "2010: Take America Back," Dick Morris is with us.
You know the problem is there wasn't a teleprompter there.
(LAUGHTER)
DICK MORRIS, FORMER CLINTON ADVISER: There wasn't one big enough.
(LAUGHTER)
HANNITY: Seventeen minutes of rambling. Now I've been known to ramble, but.
MORRIS: By the way, my book you can get signed copies from Amazon.com or Barnesandnoble.com, I signed 26,000 copies.
HANNITY: I'm halfway through it. I'm loving it. And we're going to launch it next week.
MORRIS: Next week.
HANNITY: On the program.
MORRIS: On this show.
HANNITY: OK.
MORRIS: What is interesting is that he spent 17 minutes and he still didn't tell the truth. The truth is that the big tax increase in this bill is the one that's going to force insurance companies to levee on people in the form of higher premiums. And that's going to take effect immediately.
HANNITY: Right.
MORRIS: And in the next few months most of the listeners to this program will receive notices from their insurance companies saying that there are higher premiums, and while Obama claims he's not raising taxes on the middle class.
With his left hand he tells the insurance companies you've got to cover everybody and charge higher rates. And with his right hands he tells the states you've got to triple your Medicaid coverage and you can charge higher tax.
But me, I don't tax anybody.
HANNITY: Yes, that's — great way to do it. You pass the buck. All right, we've talked a lot about this. Now we got the political implications of this. There are three separate independent polls now that have come out about analyzing the demographics of the Tea Party Movement.
Forty percent of members that identify themselves as part of the Tea Party Movement are Democrats and independents.
MORRIS: Yes.
HANNITY: So if I'm a Democrat — why are they out there slandering and — you know, defaming people this way?
MORRIS: The flip side of that is 46 percent of the viewers of this show are Democrats or independents.
HANNITY: That's right.
MORRIS: About 20 percent are Democrats.
HANNITY: Hello all you libs out there.
MORRIS: About another 26 percent are independents.
HANNITY: Yes. Right.
MORRIS: So the idea that there's this partisan divide and that Republicans speak to Republicans and Democrats to Democrats.
HANNITY: Not true.
MORRIS: It's nonsense. You know it's just like that shibboleth we were just talking about. Somehow or another Republicans think people hate higher taxes but don't mind higher utility bills. And Democrats think people hate higher utility bills but love higher taxes.
The fact is that people hate them both. And when Obama causes these to go up, no matter how he does it, he's going to kill himself.
HANNITY: All right, now, your old friends Carville and Greenberg, right, they're saying no, no, '94 is represented by Massachusetts. This is all wishful thinking. But I want your analysis on this. And that the Republican Party peaked too early. You have a reaction to that?
MORRIS: Yes. What they said — which you have to explain a little more because it is incomprehensible — was that the low point of the Democratic Party was in Massachusetts when Scott Brown won. And that now their prospects will improve steadily until the election of 2010, which is absolutely ridiculous.
First of all, the things are going to get worse between now and 2010. Insurance premiums are going to go up. Cap-and-trade is going to be voted on. Amnesty for illegal immigrants will be voted on.
The jobless nature of the recovery will continue to manifest itself. And you're going to see increasing signs that this guy doesn't know what he's doing. The deficit is going to continue to increase.
Secondly, Rasmussen just did a poll where he tested eight issues. The Republican Party won all of the Democratic issues. Republicans are now more trusted on Social Security. More trusted on health care by 52-39. More trusted even on education by 43-40 and on the economy by 11 points.
HANNITY: So it's certainly an opportunity. But I want to go back and I want to complete this two and go back and put them together here. Because, you know, we had this House Democratic guy, Steve Comb, compare the Tea Party Movement to the KKK.
We know what they said back in August, they're un-American. It's funny because liberals attack me for saying at the Reagan Library, oh you're all a bunch of Tim McVeigh wannabes, which had been an accusation made by many liberals against the Tea Party Movement.
MORRIS: You were just quoting them. Yes.
HANNITY: I was mocking the fact that this is how they view mainstream America, if you can even mock such a thing.
MORRIS: Yes.
HANNITY: And obviously the mainstream media is too stupid to get it. My question is, if you — if they continue this assault on the citizens, do they really think they're going to get them to vote for them?
MORRIS: Particularly when they are assaulting people in their 70s who are on Medicare who need — some of them need walkers to get to the meeting, and they're saying that they're the same as the Woodstock flower children. Now many of them may be but they're —say, 50 year older.
HANNITY: Sure.
MORRIS: But the point is that, if there's one fundamental reality that I think the Democratic Party is making manifestly clear to everybody is the central theme of my new book, there is no such thing anymore as a moderate or conservative Democrat.
HANNITY: I've been saying the same thing. There's no such thing.
MORRIS: I used to be one.
HANNITY: Yes.
MORRIS: I'm extinct. I'm a dodo bird. There is no such thing as a conservative Democrats.
HANNITY: Dick, I'm not going to call you dodo bird.
(CROSSTALK)
MORRIS: There are Democrats and there are Republicans, and you're either an Obama, Reid, Pelosi Democrat or you're what I've become, a Republican.
HANNITY: It's like this guy Phil Hare who last Friday said, I don't care — I don't worry about the Constitution. Or Alcee Hastings. You know, what rules? We make the rules up as we go along.
MORRIS: Yes.
HANNITY: The president is now attacking talk radio. He's attacked me a number of times. You know when he was running for office. And this is the same guy that said, you know, if they bring a knife, we bring a gun.
This is the same guy that hung out with Ayers, Bernardine Dohrn and Jeremiah Wright.
MORRIS: Sure.
HANNITY: So I'm just thinking right now, they seem to be marginalizing themselves.
MORRIS: Yes.
HANNITY: That Reid, Pelosi and the president seem to have taken over the far left and now the country has caught on to their game.
MORRIS: That's right.
HANNITY: I don't know how they —
MORRIS: And I think that Obama keeps getting himself deeper and deeper into it. The bill that's coming up next, which we're going to be talking about a lot this month, is financial regulation.
HANNITY: That too, yes.
MORRIS: Where they literally want to give the secretary of the Treasury — and I explained it in this book — the power to take over any company in the financial sector he wants. If in his sole opinion, not reviewable in court, it's too big to fail and on the border — brink of insolvency.
And then when he takes it over, he is allowed by this law that hasn't passed yet — it's coming up for a vote in April — to fire the management, wipe out the stockholders' value. Fire the board of directors. And sell off the company.
Now what CEO in his right mind is going to be active in the Republican Party when he goes that his company could be taken over by the federal government?
HANNITY: You mean the Democratic Party.
MORRIS: I'm sorry the Democrat. No, would be — nobody would be active in the Republican Party.
HANNITY: I got it. Oh yes.
MORRIS: When there's a Democratic president who can take over their company.
HANNITY: Well just like hauling these guys before Congress —
MORRIS: Not review able in court, by the way.
HANNITY: Yes.
MORRIS: They can just take it over, sell it off and it's gone.
HANNITY: All right, Dick Morris, we'll see you with your book next week.
MORRIS: Good.
HANNITY: We're going to do a couple of events together so —
MORRIS: Thank you. What I love about your book and I said in the review I sent out.
HANNITY: Yes. And thank you for that review.
MORRIS: Is that it really frames where we are in terms of where we've been. George Santayana said if you don't read the lessons of history you're doomed to repeat it. America did not read Obama's biography. And they forgot Reagan's history.
And your book updates it to both of those and brings them right up to the point we're at.
HANNITY: Well, looking — I'm looking forward to being on the road with you. And we are going to be back on the road Wednesday with Governor Palin, Michele Bachmann and we're hitting Grand Rapids in New Orleans this week. So — and then you're going to join us out there at some point.
MORRIS: Yes, that's right.
HANNITY: All right, Dick. We'll see you next week with that.
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