Is US anti-terrorism response going far enough?
Mike Huckabee goes on 'Hannity' to react to latest Democrat reactions to terror
This is a rush transcript from "Hannity," December 23, 2015. This copy may not be in its final form and may be updated.
MARK STEYN, GUEST HOST: And welcome to "Hannity." The feud between 2016 front-runners Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton continues.
I'm Mark Steyn, in for Sean tonight.
In an interview with "The Des Moines Register," Clinton went after Trump yet again! Take a look.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
HILLARY CLINTON, D-PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: I really deplore the tone of his campaign and the inflammatory rhetoric that he is using to divide people and his going after groups of people with hateful incendiary rhetoric. His bigotry, his bluster, his bullying have become his campaign, and he has to keep sort of upping the stakes and going even further.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
STEYN: Clinton also reiterated her widely discredited claim that ISIS is using Trump as a recruiting tool.
Here with reaction are Fox News contributors Joe Trippi and Deroy Murdock, and the author of "The Emmaus Code," attorney David Limbaugh.
Deroy, these feuds have been fun, whether they're Trump against Republicans or Trump against Hillary now, but it takes two to tango. And I thought Hillary's response to Trump was sort of rather dull and generic -- you know, "hateful incendiary rhetoric." Does it make any difference to him at this stage?
DEROY MURDOCK, FOX NEWS CONTRIBUTOR: I don't think it makes any difference right now as far as primary voters. In fact, I think if Hillary attacks Trump, it'll probably push him up even higher among the GOP electorate.
But the important point is that the vote is not just for the nomination but for the presidency. And come next fall, if it's Donald Trump versus Hillary Clinton, she'll have exactly the kind of opponent she wants, which is a white man, male, who's a lot of money, and she can attack him as an insensitive, uncaring, sexist maybe racist billionaire who doesn't care about you.
And the GOP has to give some very serious thought to where this party is going to be if he's our standard bearer and he's going to be taking that sort of incoming from her, and it's going to make it very easy for her to demonize him early on, and I think probably go on to win the presidency with the disastrous consequences that you only can imagine now.
STEYN: But just to pick up on that point, Joe, Deroy is right, but isn't it also the case that whoever is the nominee, even if he was the nicest, sweetest pussycat in the world, is going to be demonized by Hillary's people as a hard-core vampire capitalist, evil white man, sexist, war on women? That applies to Marco Rubio or whoever is the nominee, doesn't it, Joe?
JOE TRIPPI, FOX NEWS CONTRIBUTOR: Well, I mean, I -- there's going to be plenty of that going both ways between both -- whoever the nominees are. Both parties are going to be doing that to the nominee on the other side. So I don't think -- I mean, you're right that whoever opposes her is going to get hit hard, but the other side of that is whoever's the Republican nominee will be hitting Hillary just as hard. So I don't think that matters.
I do think right now, in terms of the primary, though, both of them are being helped by this feud. It's not just Trump that's made a little stronger, necessarily, with GOP voters as he goes into these primaries and caucuses, but obviously, Hillary Clinton -- The Des Moines Register, it's in Iowa, talking to Democratic voters there. That's who she's trying to reach right now, and being in a fight with Trump helps her, as well. So right now, it's a win-win for both of them.
STEYN: David, wouldn't the argument for Trump then be that if you're going to -- the media are going to be all in for Hillary, and there's going to be a barrage against whoever the nominee is, and you got to have a big enough candidate who can kind of bypass them and punch through them. And on the numbers, isn't Trump already doing that, in a sense?
DAVID LIMBAUGH, AUTHOR, "THE EMMAUS CODE": Absolutely. And that's why I disagree with Joe that it's a win-win. I think it's a win-lose. I think it's a win for Trump, if he doesn't go too far and get too cute. But Hillary says she deplores what he's doing. Actually, she relishes it because it gives her an artificial opportunity to go after Trump as a sexist.
But she's out-thinking herself because playing the gender card does not make her look good at a time when national security is foremost on people's minds and she wants to portray him as a bully, like she can't stand it and she can't fight with the big boys and she's worried about being a woman.
This is all going to backfire on her. It will not hurt Trump at all because it's fabricated. And Trump's just messing with her anyway, talking about the bathroom. He's just trying to get her off her game, and she doesn't have much of a game.
(LAUGHTER)
STEYN: You're right, but you do get the feeling that he just injects this stuff to kind of get inside her head, in a way.
Let's take a look at this latest poll. This is the new CNN poll. And look at the numbers in this. We've got Trump at 39 percent. He's basically got twice as much as the next guy, Ted Cruz, and Ted Cruz has basically got twice as much as the next fellows. That's Carson and Rubio. And Christie is at 5 percent, Rand Paul at 4 percent, and not a sign of the so-called front-runner, Jeb Bush.
How many people are still going to be in this race at midnight on New Hampshire primary night, Deroy?
DEROY: Oh, I think it'll probably start whittling down pretty quickly. I mean, these people -- apparently, Ben Carson I just heard this afternoon is having trouble figuring out how to pay his staff. He had a trip to Israel planned and maybe Africa. That's apparently been postponed or canceled. So I think as resources dry up, people are going to start falling out.
But I want to point to a different poll, which is the head-to-head between Hillary Clinton and some of these Republicans. In a recent poll, she beats Donald Trump by 10 points, 40 points Trump, 50 points Hillary Clinton. Marco Rubio is the only Republican running against her currently who beats her. He gets 48, she gets 45.
And I would disagree with something that Joe Trippi said about how he would be demonized by Hillary. I'm sure they'll try to demonize whichever Republican. But you can't attack Marco Rubio as a cold-hearted, insensitive, uncaring billionaire who is plotting to make his friends richer and make poor people poorer.
Here's a guy who apparently had trouble paying off his -- he just paid off his credit card debt fairly recently and is much closer to the average American in terms of income and economic circumstances. It'll be impossible for Democrats to paint Marco Rubio as some kind of an uncaring plutocrat. And I think that's going to be a huge advantage for basically to go into a fall campaign without having to carry the kind of Richie Rich label that always gets thrown at Republicans.
STEYN: Yes, there's a bit of a problem with that, though, in that you already detect in some of these polls, Joe, that Marco Rubio is approaching a kind of a ceiling. I mean, he seems to be having difficulty getting past 10 or 12 percent. How strong a candidate is that?
TRIPPI: Well, I think you're sitting here with Trump and Carson and Cruz and -- I mean, just all the outsiders adding up to 60 percent, and Rubio and the establishment barely getting into the high 20s if you add them all up together.
So you know, I'm not disagreeing that it would be a different attack than the one Deroy thinks Hillary would launch against Trump, but there's no way that these two -- look, the two nominees are going to go after each other. That's what's going to happen this year. I don't think there's any doubt about it.
And Rubio doesn't have -- there's nothing to go after Rubio on? I don't think so. So that's not going to be the problem. The problem is Rubio still needs to get the nomination somehow out of the -- and right now, the person that's moving is Ted Cruz.
I mean, you ask me what we're looking at -- first of all, look, I've been there...
STEYN: Right.
TRIPPI: ... when somebody was at 38 percent nationally. His name was Howard Dean. We were ahead in Iowa right now, in almost the same path that Trump is on, and we didn't come in first there.
Somebody, you know, moved. And the person right now who's moving in Iowa is Ted Cruz. That's the person, if I were the other candidates, that you've got to start watching.
Rubio -- if Cruz could win Iowa, and then you're going to have a fight in New Hampshire. If Christie finishes ahead of Rubio in New Hampshire -- I'm not wins, I'm not say taking second, but if he finishes ahead of Rubio, you got -- Rubio's got some big problems. Deroy's favorite candidate may not get there.
STEYN: Well, since you brought up your guy, Howard Dean -- that was the famous example in 2004. Everyone thought they were going to go for the insurgent, the outsider. Then he did his "I have a scream" speech, and Iowa was kind of it.
And the Republican establishment, David, has bet that it's 2004 and that Howard Dean is going to self-destruct and the party will wind up picking the John Kerry figure, whether that's Marco Rubio or somebody else. You think that's going to happen?
LIMBAUGH: No. I think -- I hope Cruz surges and continues to do well because he's my guy. But the establishment continues to mis-analyze this. This is the old paradigm they're looking at. This isn't going to be a class warfare -- nobody's going to care whether Marco's the son of a bartender or John Kasich is the son of a mailman.
We have existential threats facing us! And they perceive the -- the people perceive that Trump can handle them and that Cruz can handle them. All this stuff about nicety nice and divisiveness -- who cares? We're about to lose our country! And we care about what people are going to do now, what they're capable of doing now, how they got where they are. They are all capable.
STEYN: It's going to be more than a soft focus ad to take care of all that. Thanks a lot, guys. Coming up -- merry Christmas to you all. Coming up...
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Merry Christmas.
STEYN: ... former governor Mike Huckabee is calling out Hillary Clinton and the Democrats for blaming others instead of confronting radical Islam head on. He'll be here next.
And later, Senator Rand Paul is going after his Republican rivals by attacking the records of Senators Ted Cruz and Marco Rubio. Rand Paul will be here with more as "Hannity" continues.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
(NEWSBREAK)
STEYN: Welcome back to "Hannity." A new Quinnipiac University poll says 59 percent of Americans worry that the government's anti-terrorism policies have not gone far enough to protect the homeland. And the Democrats appear to be tone deaf in the fight against radical Islamic terrorism. Instead of identifying the enemy and confronting it, they're blaming others. Watch this.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
PRESIDENT BARACK OBAMA: If you've been watching television for the last month, all you've been seeing, all you've been hearing about is these guys with masks or black flags who are potentially coming to get you.
The media is pursuing ratings. This is a legitimate news story. I think that, you know, it's up to the media to make a determination about how they want to cover things.
CLINTON: What you're hearing from some of the Republicans, most particularly Mr. Trump, about Muslims is not only dangerous, it's shameful.
And if you go on Arabic television, as we have, and you look at what is being blasted out with video of Mr. Trump being translated into Arabic - - no Muslims coming to the United States, other kinds of derogatory, defamatory statements -- it is playing into the hands of the violent jihadists.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
STEYN: Here with reaction to that is 2016 Republican presidential candidate, former governor Mike Huckabee, who put out an interesting tweet the other day to Hillary Clinton saying, "If Muslims have nothing whatsoever to do with terrorism, why would offending them boost ISIS recruitment?"
yes, there seems to be a kind of disconnect here, doesn't there.
MIKE HUCKABEE, R-PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: There really does, Mark. It's interesting. But Hillary also said that they're playing all these comments of Donald Trump. Nobody can find those. I think it ranks right up there with her getting shot at when she was going to Bosnia...
STEYN: Right.
HUCKABEE: ... or right up there with saying it was the video that caused the actions of the terrorists a Benghazi, when, in fact, she knew that wasn't true, either. Hillary's got a long history of saying one thing that just can't be verified because, well, quite frankly, it just isn't true. And here's another one. Nobody's been able to find those tapes in Arabic that she says she's been watching. So why doesn't her campaign release them?
STEYN: Right. If nothing else, you'd think that they could have persuaded Al Arabiya or some other network to actually make an anti-Trump video at this point.
What's going on here? Because we -- after these terrorist atrocities in Paris and San Bernardino, the president says, Oh, it's just the media pursuing ratings. At the same time, we have the president saying it's nothing to do with Islam. We have John Kerry standing up in Paris saying there's no Islam to see here. Hillary Clinton -- it's nothing to do with Islam. David Cameron -- it's nothing to do with Islam. Francois Hollande -- it's nothing to do with Islam. And the public seems to be not buying it, to put it mildly.
HUCKABEE: Well, Mark, why could they buy it? I mean, every time one of these terrorist incidents happen, the terrorists first shout Allah-u Akbar right before they pull the gun or blow somebody up. I mean, it's ludicrous to suggest that there's no connection whatsoever.
Now, that doesn't mean that every Muslim is a terrorist. But look, here's the thing I don't understand. If Presbyterians or Baptists or Methodists were engaged in terrorizing people by blowing up the finish line at the Boston Marathon or going into an office Christmas party and shooting the place up, we wouldn't pretend that all Presbyterians, all Baptists or all Methodists were doing it, but certainly we would say, Look, there were some Presbyterians that now have many, many terrorist acts.
So why can't we say that, that it's applicable to Muslims? I think it's because the Democrats seem to be more interested in protecting the reputation of Islam than they do protecting Americans, and that ought to be troubling to anybody who's going to be a voter and care about national security.
STEYN: Essentially, it's who are you going to believe, me or your own lying eyes argument. As you say, when the guy's standing on the table yelling Allah-u Akbar, opening fire on you, like the Ft. Hood guy did, like the guy in the rock music concert in Paris, there is a pattern here. And we could have an intelligent conversation about the actual causes, but Hillary would rather just say, Oh, this Huckabee guy, he's a racist for even bringing it up. That seems to be their approach to it.
HUCKABEE: Nothing to do with racism whatsoever. I have friends who are Muslim. We all do. Great respect. And the Muslims I know are highly offended, and in fact, they're outraged that people use their Islamic religion as a means of murder and mayhem.
So I just think that what Hillary and Obama and John Kerry all ought to do is recognize that there are people who are Muslim who are jihadists, who believe that their purpose on earth is to kill everybody that doesn't agree with them and isn't interested in establishing a caliphate and pushing us back to the 7th century.
I'm not interested in going back to that uncivilized time, and I don't think a lot of the rest of the world is, either. So let's be honest about it and say we're not going there. We're just not going there.
STEYN: Tashfeen Malik, this terrorist mail-order bride in the San Bernardino case -- she gave a fake address. You can't look up what she said on Facebook because it would be insensitive and breach privacy. Yet at the same time, perfectly law-abiding Americans going home for Christmas -- grandma has to take her shoes off, submit to a pat-down at the airport.
When you're going around Iowa, do you get the sense that the voters have had enough of this?
HUCKABEE: People are so angry, Mark. It's so evident. There's a visceral, visible, vicious anger. And it wasn't helped by the Republicans throwing in the towel last week and giving the Democrats everything they wanted for Christmas, and all the Republicans got was a lump of coal in their stocking.
But I do think that there's a sense of duplicity with our government. Look, Obama says we can't look at the social network and the social media of people like the shooter because it might invade her privacy. Well, I'm sorry. She's not an American citizen. She's not entitled to the constitutional rights of privacy.
Besides that, if I go and apply to be a server at Applebee's, the HR department is going to check my social media to see if there's anything on my Facebook or my Twitter...
STEYN: Right.
HUCKABEE: ... account that causes them to have alarm. Now, I'm telling you something. I think it's ridiculous that you import somebody coming here who has clearly been radicalized and has, as we now know, an intent to murder Americans, but we don't want to invade her privacy, so we don't look at those things in social media, but we take more care somebody serving food at Applebee's than we do someone coming here from Pakistan or Saudi Arabia?
STEYN: Right.
HUCKABEE: Mark, that's nonsense.
STEYN: Yes, that's -- that's right, Senator (sic). The chicken salad comes with more scrutiny than U.S. residency. That's the insanity of the world we live in, Senator -- Governor.
Thanks -- thanks a lot, Mike Huckabee. And a very merry Christmas to you. Good luck on the campaign trail in Iowa.
HUCKABEE: Thank you, Mark. Merry Christmas.
STEYN: And coming up, Senator Rand Paul. I'm getting my senators and governors mixed up. But Rand Paul has been calling out his 2016 Republican rivals and is pushing back against the president's agenda in Washington. He'll join us next to explain.
And later, the legendary Pat Boone, neither governor nor senator, will be here to put us in the Christmas spirit. Stay with us.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
STEYN: Welcome back to "Hannity." 2016 presidential candidate Rand Paul has been busy on the campaign trail and in the United States Senate, where he's been pushing for immigration restrictions in the wake of the Paris and San Bernardino terrorist attacks. And recently, Senator Paul has been slamming his Republican rival and congressional colleague Marco Rubio for missing key votes in the Senate.
Joining me now to explain is the man himself, Republican candidate for president and Kentucky senator Rand Paul. Good to see you, Senator.
Traditionally -- you're on the libertarian end of the Republican Party, and traditionally, libertarians tend to be more relaxed about immigration than perhaps conservatives do. What's the rationale for immigration restriction from your philosophical perspective, as it were?
SEN. RAND PAUL, R-KY., PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: You know, I think there's a mixture of feelings on immigration within libertarian and conservative circles, and I don't find that there's a real consensus.
But I do think that if we're going to defend our country, it starts with our borders. And ever since 9/11, I've been frustrated. The 20 hijackers who came here all came here through the legal immigration system. And I've asked repeatedly, Was anyone ever fired for doing a bad job? Did we ever change the rules? Are we vetting and screening people better than we used to? And I don't think we necessarily are.
In 2013, two Iraqi refugees came to my home town, Bowling Green, Kentucky, and they proceeded to try to buy Stinger missiles even though one of them's fingerprints were already in the database from being on a bomb fragment.
So I don't think we're doing an adequate job, and I've been advocating for much more scrutiny, and this has put me in opposition to Marco Rubio because he has stopped me at every point from trying to get more border security.
STEYN: Yes, back in 9/11, basically, those young Saudi men filled in joke applications, that the form said address in the United States, and they wrote Holiday Inn, America. And in response to that, the government created this huge new bureaucracy specifically designed to prevent that happening again, but you get the sense from Tashfeen Malik's immigration application that, in fact, the same thing is just going on. It just costs more money to let all these people in than it did before.
PAUL: And one of the interesting things is when you go back to 9/11, the 20th hijacker, the one we caught, Moussaoui...
STEYN: Yes.
PAUL: ... he was a French citizen, and he came in here under the visa waiver program. All of the attackers in the Paris tragedy recently, they were also French citizens. So I do think the visa waiver nations are a danger. And what I've been advocating is that -- it's not that I want to stop travel, I just think people should go through global entry.
This is a program that already exists, and what you would do is a background check, the same way we do it for the frequent flyer program. I think that's the very least we can do. But if we continue doing the visa waiver program like we're doing it, we are going to be attacked again, and we're going to be sorry that no one listened to me as I tried to have better security for the country.
STEYN: So you're concerned, basically, about Muslims who happen to hold French passports, British passports, German passports, Australian passports and can basically come and go as they please.
PAUL: Yes, but it's not Muslims. I'm concerned about terrorists. And they happen to be radical Islamic terrorists, yes, but what I'm really concerned is, is that we look and screen those who would come and attack us.
If you're a French businessman or woman, Christian or Muslim, you're known to us and you travel back and forth for business all the time, by all means, let's continue that. But we have to have scrutiny. If you're a 25- year-old guy who just came from Algeria last year and you have a French passport, we're going to have to have some more scrutiny. We can't just let you come on a plane and come visit.
STEYN: So that gets very close to some of the reforms they're trying to make now, where they're saying if you're in the visa waiver countries but you happen to have visited Syria, Sudan, countries like that in the last five years, you don't qualify for visa waiver. Is that good enough for you?
PAUL: Well, here's the problem. We've listed four countries, but Saudi Arabia's not on the list and 16 of the 19 hijackers came from Saudi Arabia. So frankly, I am concerned about people originating out of Saudi Arabia and whether they're friend or foe.
So I would apply it to everyone. I would apply global entry to everyone. I think if you're a known traveler and you're a businessman or woman, apply and get in global entry, and then you can come and visit. If you won't apply, you won't do the background visit -- we're not going to take random visitors. I think that's what we have to do.
And I know that's going to be a hassle for some people, but once it gets started and it's done, we'll at least have some scrutiny. It bugs me to death that legal immigration is how they're attacking us.
STEYN: Right.
PAUL: Most of the attacks over the past 15 years have been legal immigrants to our country. But we're not screening who comes to our country.
STEYN: Right. You've been critical of Marco Rubio. Let's take a look at this campaign ad you've made of the -- his rare appearances and multiple non-appearances in the body you're both a member of. Let's take a look at it.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: You keep missing votes on the Senate floor, 43 percent of the votes. I know you say you're campaigning for president.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Where in the world is Marco Rubio.
SEN. MARCO RUBIO, R-FLA., PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: A lot of these votes won't mean anything. They're not going to pass, and even if they did, the president would veto it.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: The other day you got up on the Senate floor and you said federal workers who don't show up should be fired.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Where in the world is Marco Rubio.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
STEYN: Now, all the senators running for president managed to vote on this hideous budget bill. You, Bernie Sanders, Lindsey Graham, Ted Cruz, but no Marco Rubio. Is there a reason for that as far as you can see?
PAUL: It may have been the most important vote of the year, but certainly the largest spending bill of the year. And, yes, I think if you are being paid by the taxpayer you should show up and vote.
And so I think this is a big issue. And I think for him to say he's only going to show up when he thinks it's a close vote, I don't think that passes muster. And I think really that he ought to just resign or probably give us payback, because he's not really earning his pay at this point.
But, yes, this spending bill was something that was horrendous. It was a $1.1 trillion spending bill. It busts the budget caps. And really it also shows, though, that the complicity on deficit spending, both parties deserve some blame here. That's what I've been saying all along. The right wants military spending, the left wants welfare spending. But in order to get what they want, the right has to give the left welfare spending, and then everybody gets what they want except for the taxpayer who gets stuck with the bill.
STEYN: Yes, the bipartisan conspiracy against the American people. Rand Paul, good to see you. Merry Christmas. And good luck in Iowa on the campaign trail.
Coming up, legendary entertainer Pat Boone is here next to get us in the holiday spirit and to tell us about his new Christmas album.
And later, Sean sat down with actress Kimberly Williams-Paisley. We'll show you the interview, that and more as HANNITY continues.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
(MUSIC)
STEYN: Is it really Christmas in L.A. That's a real ear worm I think as that's known in the business. Once you hear that you'll have it stuck in your head all day.
That was legendary singer and performer Pat Boone getting into the holiday spirit with his new song "Is it Really Christmas in L.A.?" off his album "The True Spirit of Christmas." And joining me now is the man himself, Pat Boone. Great to have you with us, Pat.
You did something incredibly difficult on this album because basically you did an album of entirely new Christmas songs. And it's kind of hard to do that after "White Christmas" and "Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas" and "It's Beginning to Look a Lot like Christmas" have all been written. Was it difficult?
PAT BOONE, SINGER: I didn't write the songs, of course. I think, Mark, I've recorded more Christmas songs than anybody except perhaps Bing Crosby.
STEYN: Right.
BOONE: But a man showed up in my office. He was about 78 years old, Paul Alter. He had created television shows like "What's My Line" and so many other big shows, very creative guy. And he had written -- he loved Christmas. He's like Irving Berlin, Jewish, but loves Christmas. And he had 21 new Christmas songs, very creative, and some of them quite touching. And I said I'll record them. So I recorded 21 new songs of Christmas. This is one of them you're hearing.
And it was fun. "It Doesn't Look Like Christmas in L.A.," but there's also "Little Drummer Boy Next Door," the guy that gets a drum set for Christmas and drives you crazy, or the fruitcake that nobody wants and passes it to every member of the family. And it comes back to the person who made it. It's really creative songs. Plus the true spirit of Christmas is a lovely song written by a friend of mine named Peter Murphy. "The True Spirit of Christmas" is, of course, the one whose birthday it is we're supposed to be celebrating.
So merry Christmas, Mark.
STEYN: Thank you for that, Pat. That's true. "Is It Really Christmas in L.A.," you're actually wearing your swimming trunks for a large part of that video. And is that you or is it done with CGI? Did they get a body double in? Because --
BOONE: No.
STEYN: A lot of us once we start getting up there in years don't want to be doing topless scenes in our music videos. And yet you're in there in the swimming pool and sunbathing and all the rest of it.
BOONE: Yes. Sure, I'm in very, very good shape, always have been. In fact, my Christmas gift to myself is a new right knee. I just got a new right knee so I can get back on the tennis court. No, that's me in the water.
STEYN: Yes.
BOONE: And in the buff. And I'm, as you can see, I've kept myself in pretty good shape.
STEYN: Yes, you have.
What is Christmas like when you're in a show-busy family? Because your daughter ended up marrying into Rosemary Clooney and Jose Ferrer's family. So I think notorious liberal George Clooney is your daughter's mother-in-law's nephew, if we're going to go down into that I'm my own grandpa territory.
BOONE: Yes.
STEYN: What's it like? And of course, Rosemary Clooney was in the film "White Christmas."
BOONE: She was.
STEYN: Do you have a big tradition of musical Christmases in your extended family?
BOONE: Definitely. First it started, of course, with ours, four daughters and Christmas. I have -- I don't know, several thousand feet of film and tape of our Christmas mornings. And we always sang. And we would have a devotional before we went to the stockings and the tree because we wanted the kids even then to remember what Christmas is really about. But the presents were there.
Then when Debby married Gabriel and we married into the Ferrer-Clooney family, we got together many Thanksgivings and Christmases, and we sang and we celebrated royally. And, of course, with Rosie herself, we really felt close to Bing. I knew Bing. But it was really getting down to the -- to what the entertainment industry really considers the corps of Christmas. The c-o-r-p-s.
STEYN: Yes, yes. No, no, I can see that.
(LAUGHTER)
STEYN: There's an interesting song on the album called "Rosebud," which is for most of us the famous line from "Citizen Kane." Tell us what that song's about.
BOONE: It is. I find it very, very intriguing. This guy Paul Alter wrote that song. And you don't know till the end that it has to do with a sled that he's been -- that he remembers from his boyhood. And he makes the point that sometimes we put our hopes and dreams on the wrong things, and the things that meant most to us as a child we should have stayed with. And of course, that was really the point of "Citizen Kane." He had everything in the world but happiness, and what he longed for most was that simple boyhood sled, Rosebud. And that's what this song's about. I've sung it in personal appearances. It gets quite a reaction from the audience.
STEYN: That's quite something to hear that, Pat. Thanks a lot for telling us about the album. Your knee looks great, by the way, in that video. So it was well worth the money. And it looks fabulous. Thanks a lot, Pat Boone.
Coming up, Sean sat down with Kimberly Williams-Paisley to talk about her career and country music and her new movie. We'll show you that interview next as "Hannity" continues.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
STEYN: Welcome back to "Hannity". Sean recently sat down for a one on one interview with actress and wife of country music superstar Brad Paisley. Kimberly Williams-Paisley, who is starring in the brand-new movie "Alvin and the Chipmunks, The Road Chip," which is now in theaters nationwide. Take a look.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
SEAN HANNITY, HOST: And joining us now Kimberly Williams- Paisley. She stars in the brand-new movie, "Alvin and the Chipmunks, The Road Chip." You got to get that, right.
KIMBERLY WILLIAMS-PAISLEY, ACTRESS: Yes, you've got to get it.
HANNITY: It's so nice to meet you. I've never met you. I'm friends with your husband.
WILLIAMS-PAISLEY: I know. He sends his best.
HANNITY: And I'm friends with your father-in-law. You have a great story. He's a country music mega superstar. You're a Hollywood superstar. The story of how you met is amazing. You got to tell that story.
WILLIAMS-PAISLEY: Well, Brad saw "Father of the Bride," the movie I made years and years ago. That's on repeat now on all the cable channels.
HANNITY: Can I just say. You know what I said to Brad. I said every guy in America was in love with you in that movie.
WILLIAMS-PAISLEY: Aw.
HANNITY: And he really was, which is the best part of the story.
WILLIAMS-PAISLEY: He stalked me a little bit more than anyone else, and so he won.
But, yes, so he saw this movie with his girlfriend, and then she broke his heart. And then he wrote these great country songs out of his heartbreak. And then seven years later he swears that it never happened before. He woke up one day and said I should call the girl in that movie.
HANNITY: It just hit him.
WILLIAMS-PAISLEY: That's what he said. I don't know. I believed him. And he asked me if I wanted to be in a music video. And I just said, you know, it would be really fun to be in a music video. So my manager is like, this is amazing. She called me and said I just talked to the cutest guy. You're totally going to date him. And I said, did he say that he wanted to go out? And she said, no, no, no, he asked you to be in a music video, but you're going to date him.
HANNITY: She knew.
WILLIAMS-PAISLEY: She knew.
HANNITY: And so is that when you did, I think it's called "The Fishing Song," right?
WILLIAMS-PAISLEY: Yes.
HANNITY: You're in the video. It's one of the funniest music videos ever.
WILLIAMS-PAISLEY: Yes. I'm going to miss her.
HANNITY: I'm going to miss her. He decides he's going to go fishing rather than be with you, and you get pissed off and throwing the clothes --
WILLIAMS-PAISLEY: Throwing him out of the house.
HANNITY: I think it was hilarious.
WILLIAMS-PAISLEY: Yes. Yes.
HANNITY: So was it love at first sight when you finally met him?
WILLIAMS-PAISLEY: Pretty much. I think it took maybe a couple months of trying to figure out what this is supposed to be. And then he completely won me over. I think it was his humor and his intelligence and his talent.
HANNITY: Yes. That is what I say about Brad every time I think about him, his humor, his intelligence, his good looks. He's got it all, which is annoying because everybody wants to be a country music star, at least I do.
WILLIAMS-PAISLEY: I don't.
HANNITY: You don't?
WILLIAMS-PAISLEY: No. I have no talent for that.
HANNITY: I can't sing, but I'm thinking in my next life.
WILLIAMS-PAISLEY: What is it that you like about it if you can't sing? You want to dance around? HANNITY: I just love it. I can't explain it. I'm in radio TV, and the most powerful form of communication is music. You just look at people when they're watching Brad sing. They cry, they laugh. The whole range of emotions is fascinating to me.
WILLIAMS-PAISLEY: I'm sure people laugh and cry while they're watching you.
HANNITY: Liberals cry, hopefully, if I'm doing my job right.
So everybody knows you from "Father of the Bride." You've been a Hollywood star since you're young, really. You had two kids. You now are involved in "Alvin and the Chipmunks, The Road Chip." Dave, what's-his-name is in the movie.
WILLIAMS-PAISLEY: Jason Lee, yes. He plays Dave Seville.
HANNITY: He plays Dave Seville, so he's in there.
WILLIAMS-PAISLEY: Tony Hale. You know Tony Hale.
HANNITY: Yes, I do.
WILLIAMS-PAISLEY: He is fantastic. He plays kind of the bad guy in the movie. He's great. And then Bella Thorne.
HANNITY: In one movie you play the part of the --
WILLIAMS-PAISLEY: Dave Seville's girlfriend.
HANNITY: Right. And the chipmunks are threatened.
WILLIAMS-PAISLEY: They are because our relationship is getting really serious. They're not sure where they stand. And I have a son who is awful to them. I don't really know that, but, yes, he's a jerk to the chipmunks. So they really want to break up this relationship, so they set off on a road trip to do that. We're in Florida and they're in California.
HANNITY: So you can't give it all away. Does it work out in the end?
WILLIAMS-PAISLEY: It all works out in a way. It's not the way you'd expect, though. There are twists and turns everywhere.
HANNITY: That is what makes movies fun.
You know, it's funny. I became friends with Kevin Sorbo. He makes all these faith-based films. And I know Roma Downey and Mark Burnett. They make really great movies. You know what's fascinating is Hollywood always leans to the lowest common denominator, but the movies now that people really crave are like these family movies, and they're really cool and funny, some are faith based and some aren't. And they do so well at the box office. It's hard for me to understand why Hollywood keeps holding on to what doesn't do as well.
WILLIAMS-PAISLEY: Well, Hollywood made this movie. And I'm hoping that this will do really well. This is a great family film option for the weekend. We had adults in the theater. We screened it last weekend for my kids and like 150 of their friends, and they so much had fun.
HANNITY: They had a good time?
WILLIAMS-PAISLEY: Yes.
HANNITY: And so was it hard being a mom and being married to a country star and being an actress? Is that pretty hard?
WILLIAMS-PAISLEY: It's great. I feel so lucky that I get to do all of those things. I love it. I love every bit of it.
HANNITY: How do you like being on the road, because being in that bus is a little tough.
WILLIAMS-PAISLEY: The bus gets smaller the longer we're on it.
(LAUGHTER)
WILLIAMS-PAISLEY: And the gear we have to bring. Now it's less because they're older. But we pick and choose when we go out. Brad is fine with us not coming out all the time.
HANNITY: It works out in the end.
WILLIAMS-PAISLEY: Yes.
HANNITY: This is called "Alvin and the Chipmunks, The Road Chip." Kimberly, it's an honor to meet you. I love brad and now that I met you, I know why he loves you so much. He brags about you every time.
WILLIAMS-PAISLEY: That's so sweet. Thank you.
HANNITY: Good to see you. Thank you.
WILLIAMS-PAISLEY: You, too.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
STEYN: And there is more "Hannity" right after the break. Stay with us.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
(MUSIC)
STEYN: Welcome back to "Hannity." That is a song off my new album "Feline Groovy, Songs for Swinging Cats." I don't do all the topless scenes that Pat Boone does. But if you only buy one cat album this Christmas, that is the one to buy.
Be sure to tune in to the "West Point Holiday Special" with Gretchen Carlson. That's tomorrow at 7:00 and 9:00 p.m. eastern, and again Christmas Day at 10:00 p.m. That is all the time we have left. Have a great night. Merry Christmas. See you after the holidays.
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