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Published January 08, 2015
This is a rush transcript from "Hannity," January 31, 2012. This copy may not be in its final form and may be updated.
SEAN HANNITY, HOST: Retired Army lieutenant colonel, Florida Congressman Allen West has come under sharp criticism for comments he made over the weekend about President Obama and his Democratic allies. Watch this.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP/JAN. 28)
REP. ALLEN WEST, R-FLA.: Take your message of equality of achievement, take your message of economic dependency, take your message of enslaving the entrepreneur will and spirit of the American people, somewhere else. You can take it to Europe, you can take it to the bottom of sea, you can take it to the North Pole, but get the hell out of the United States of America.
(APPLAUSE)
(END VIDEO CLIP)
HANNITY: And here to explain and talk about the primary, Florida Congressman Allen West. Sir, welcome back to the program. Good to see you.
WEST: Great to see you, Sean. Thanks for having me.
HANNITY: Just some clarification. You said take your message and get the hell out of here. Were you talking about them getting out of here or the message getting out of here?
WEST: Just the message. It's the message, Sean, absolutely. And I think what you see are the liberals understanding that someone called them out. When you look what is happening in this country with the debt, the deficit, the CBO coming out and saying once again we're going to have a trillion dollar plus deficit in 2012, the fourth straight year, and unemployment may be going back up to 8.9 or maybe nine percent by the end of the year, these are serious situations that are going.
And last week at the State of the Union address you heard the president say nothing about the debt, nothing about deficit or Dodd-Frank or health care or the failed stimulus package. So we've got to start calling these people out for who they are. We are now 1,007 days without a budget in the United States of America.
HANNITY: Congressman, what is amazing to me, I remember the Bush years. Wasn't that long ago. We followed a lot of comments by top Democrats, Al Gore saying George Bush betrayed his country. I remember candidate Obama calling Bush unpatriotic and the war is lost and the surge is failed and all this. And here you make these comments, and you would think the world never heard a controversial statement from any Democrat ever. What do you make of the double standard?
WEST: It's a double standard. It's also a duplicitous hypocrisy that is truly laughable. Sean, it is amazing to me that I think liberals and Democrats expect conservatives to just be punching bags. That day is over. We're going to stand up and let our voices be heard. We're going to fight for this constitutional republic which we see being threatened.
HANNITY: Where do you stand with your seat and some people -- I know you said earlier you are going to run for a different district? Tell us the story behind that?
WEST: For whatever reason, the Florida legislature was controlled by the super majorities. The Republicans in the House and Senate took the district that I firmly represent, 22 in south Florida, from a D plus one to a D plus five almost a D plus six district, which means you are given a five to six percent registration advantage to Democrats. They drew in more Democrats into the district I represent. So now you are talking about a 57 percent Democrat district.
So the district that was newly drawn just north of us which encompasses about 20 percent of the current district I represent, we made the decision to move to that district. It's a good R plus one district and a very fair district. I can't understand for the life of me the legislature of the state of Florida would have done what they did.
HANNITY: Do you think this was it done for some political payback?
WEST: I have no idea. I think you would have to ask the people up there in the House and the Senate why they drew the map as such. Because there were constituents that drew maps for them that met all the legal guidelines of amendment six and the Voting Rights Act that would have kept it the competitive district where it is at now, a D plus one.
HANNITY: What do you make the results of the Florida tonight? What do you make of what was happening on the ground? A lot of negativity. I read my Twitter account @SeanHannity, and it seems like this particular moment in time, this is a process, Newt supporters hate Romney and Romney supporters hate Newt. It's gotten pretty personal.
WEST: It did. I think there was a bit too much negativity.
I'll give you a great example of an issue that no one brought up during this Florida primary, the fact that we're going to have a Chinese made oil rig put in place about 60 miles off the coast of Florida. We had a hearing about that yesterday, a transportation and infrastructure field hearing. No one is going to talk about that, the economic if we were to have a Deep Water Horizon event right there 60 miles off of our coast.
So they need to focus on drawing a contrast between themselves and President Obama, his failures and especially in Florida we would have higher unemployment, higher than the national average. We need to get back to drawing that contrast to allow the people to make decisions who they think will be best to go into the arena of ideals against President Obama.
HANNITY: Allen West, Colonel, I know you have a lot of supporters out there, they're e-mailing me and writing me. And I don't think you'll have that much trouble in your new district. We'll be watching that race very closely. As always, thanks for being with us.
WEST: It's a pleasure, Sean. Take care.
HANNITY: Appreciate it.
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