Trump on the 'great strength' required to be president
Republican nominee discusses the stamina required to take on the country's challenges on 'Hannity'
This is a rush transcript from "Hannity," August 12, 2016. This copy may not be in its final form and may be updated.
MIKE HUCKABEE, GUEST HOST: And welcome to this special edition of "Hannity": Road to the White House."
Hello, everyone. I'm Mike Huckabee, and I'm in tonight for Sean.
With 87 days to go before the general election, Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump is pounding the campaign trail. Mr. Trump has been very busy talking to voters in several key swing states, and earlier today, he held a couple of big rallies in Pennsylvania. Here's a look at some of the highlights.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
DONALD TRUMP, REPUBLICAN PRESIDENTIAL NOMINEE: I spent less and won in a landslide! Other people spent much, much more, three, four, five times more, and they came in seventh! Who the hell do you want to have as your president, right?
(CHEERS AND APPLAUSE)
TRUMP: You signed a pledge, I hereby guarantee that I will endorse whoever wins. You know, the funny thing, all those pledges -- you know they were signed for -- they were signed so that I would sign it. And I would have honored it, I will say.
You know, the Republicans do have a tougher path, just so you -- not my fault. Not my fault. It's a tougher path. For the presidency, it's just a tougher, winding road.
But if we win Pennsylvania, we win Florida, where we're doing really well, I think we can win Ohio. It'll be over.
Has anybody lied as much as Hillary Clinton? Has anybody?
CROWD: No!
TRUMP: You look at the FBI director, and you see what went on with the e- mails. You see how she got away with that. I think that that will go down in her career as her single greatest achievement, how she got out of that mess.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
HUCKABEE: Well, this week, I got to spend some time campaigning with Donald Trump, and I had a chance to sit down with the Republican nominee to ask him how he plans to win the White House and a whole lot more. Let's take a look.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
HUCKABEE: In the interests of full disclosure, I think I've got to tell people that I've been out campaigning with you for the past couple of days. So it's not like I'm objective. I'm not pretending or even playing the role of a journalist.
TRUMP: Well, that's good. I like that.
HUCKABEE: Your stamina is pretty amazing. You're doing events starting early in the morning. Wednesday night, we didn't finish dinner until well after midnight. And I've watched you through this process. Where do you get that stamina to do this?
TRUMP: Well, I sometimes say when people ask me, do I have a choice, right? I mean, it's, like, it's set up and we have to do it. And it's so important. We have 90 days left, and I want to maximize the time.
And it's so important for the country, whether it's Supreme Court justices or evangelicals -- because you know we were at the big evangelical meeting with the pastors a little while ago. So many things happening on that front, and so many things happening on so many fronts. And I just feel that I have no choice. I have to really go full blast and get this thing done because we will make America great again.
We'll make America greater than ever before. And if Hillary Clinton gets in, it's a disaster. It's going to be four more years of Obama. It's going to be horrible, super-left judges on the Supreme Court. They're going to destroy the country. And so we have to get it done.
HUCKABEE: Look, the reason I bring up this whole issue of stamina is because the president of the United States is a very demanding job.
TRUMP: Right.
HUCKABEE: It's a demanding job physically, emotionally, spiritually, politically. I see people that work for you, they're half your age, and at the end of the day, I mean, they're dragging. You're still going strong.
I mean, what I'm trying to point out is that this is a job that requires somebody who is physically capable of having that kind of pressure. Now, I've seen this.
TRUMP: Right.
HUCKABEE: How important do you think it is for the American people to understand the -- just the physical capacity of their president?
TRUMP: Well, you have to have that, and you have to have great strength.
You're dealing with so many different problems and lots of other things, but in particular, problems. And you know, you have countries like China that have been taking advantage of us for years. You have to deal with that situation. We can't continue to have trade deficits of $500 billion a year. You have ISIS, where they're getting bigger and bigger, even though Obama is trying to convince people that they're not. Now they're in, I understand, 28 countries. It went from 8 to 28 in a short period of time.
You have so many different difficulties that if you don't have the stamina, if you don't have the whatever that is that you have to have, the country's in trouble. Not you, the country's in trouble.
And I've always said that Hillary doesn't have the stamina. I've said that for a long time. But you just need a great deal of strength to -- you know, for us to come out a winner.
Look at what happens. We lose on everything. We lose on trade. We can't beat ISIS militarily. Our vets aren't taken care of. Our borders are weak. "Obama care" is a disaster. It's got to be repealed and replaced with something much better and much less expensive for the people. We have a lot of things to take care of. You need big stamina.
HUCKABEE: You have two opponents. You've got Hillary Clinton, but you've also got the media.
TRUMP: Right. That's a bigger opponent.
HUCKABEE: I mean, they're never the friend of the politician. But in my many years of doing politics, I've never seen anything like the kind of targeted attacks that have come upon you, misconstruing virtually everything you say. A good example this week, you made the comment that Barack Obama is the founder of ISIS. Now, you didn't mean physically that he's the founder of ISIS. You meant it very clearly, his policies.
TRUMP: Everybody knew exactly what I meant. Well, actually, that's been covered, I think, pretty well. I think really -- you know, when he -- look, we should have never been Iraq. I was against going into Iraq. It was a big mistake.
But when he took it over, the way he got out was horrible, horrible, and it really led to the formation, the real formation of ISIS as we know it. And you look at the way that happened, and you look at the weakness, and then you see the way it grows.
They tried to hide how they've grown. And it's weakness. It's just weakness. We have to knock them out. We have no choice. We have to knock them out. We have to knock them out strongly.
But we have a depleted military. He's allowed our military to become totally depleted. I think he's just been a terrible president. He's made so many mistakes. And she'll be worse than him. She will be worse than Barack Obama.
HUCKABEE: Earlier in the week, in Detroit at the economic club, you presented an economic plan that included significant tax cuts for everybody, but especially for businesses.
TRUMP: Right.
HUCKABEE: Small businesses, down to 15 percent.
TRUMP: And middle income people, especially for them, too. But you're right, for businesses. Absolutely.
HUCKABEE: Why is that important?
TRUMP: Because they're going to spur jobs like you haven't seen. You know, we have no growth. Our country right now, Mike -- and you and I were discussing the numbers before -- 1.2 percent. That's basically no growth.
If China ever had 1.2 percent, there would be a revolution. They get down to 7 percent or 8 percent growth, and it's like a big deal. They start devaluing and do all sorts of things to take more jobs out of the United States so that they can go longer.
No, we have 1.2 percent growth. Essentially, that's no growth. We could be heading even lower than that. That means we're a stagnant country. We have millions and millions of people out of the workforce. They can't get jobs, and yet statistically, it looks like 5 percent, but it's not 5 percent. It's probably 21 percent. It's a massive number.
People give up looking for jobs, and the jobs that they have are bad jobs.
And every admits that. Even the other side admits that. They're bad jobs.
They're not good jobs. The good jobs have left to a large extent.
So we have a lot of things to do, and we're going to do them. And we're going to straighten things out. But we really -- we have to get a whole different mindset, and Hillary Clinton literally will be four more years of Obama.
That means high taxes. She wants to -- did you see yesterday, where she wants to double up taxes? You know, and double taxes won't take care of what she's doing. I mean, people's taxes are going to be doubled, if not more than that.
So we have to win this election. We have to put the right judges on the Supreme Court, et cetera, et cetera. There's so many things to do.
HUCKABEE: When you spoke about in Detroit and talked about the economic plans, you were doing that in a city that once was the world's center of manufacturing.
TRUMP: Not anymore.
HUCKABEE: Called the arsenal of democracy. I mean, Michigan basically saved America by being able to build our armaments during World War II.
TRUMP: Right.
HUCKABEE: How do we get manufacturing back to a level where we're making things in America like Michigan once did?
TRUMP: Well, it was a great place, Detroit, many years ago. And now our great car companies are building cars in Germany and other places. And you look at the -- you look at even the unions, the number of people that they have today compared to 10 years ago and 20 years ago. You take a look at hundreds of thousands of people less.
And Mexico is the eighth wonder of the world. A friend of mine who builds plants, he builds big plants, he tells me Mexico, what they're doing in Mexico is amazing. They're taking our businesses.
And our politicians have no idea how to handle it, and it's so simple.
It's so simple. But one of the reasons they don't have any idea -- probably number one they don't have an idea, but number two, they're controlled by special interests and lobbyists and donors, and they don't want to handle it. So a place like Michigan is losing its jobs.
Hillary will do nothing about it. There was a story in the Washington Post two days ago which was shocking because the Washington Post never writes badly about Hillary. But there was a story in The Washington Post which tells you how badly she did as a senator from New York, that she promised upstate New York that she would bring jobs back, and she would do all sorts of things.
And upstate New York is a catastrophe right now, probably as bad as just about anyplace. It's a catastrophe, and the jobs have left -- 50, 60 percent of the manufacturing is gone.
And she promised to take care of that situation and made it worse, except her friends did very well. Consultants and various other people, they made a fortune.
So no, she won't do the job. She's all talk. She's no action. I know her well. Not going to happen.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
HUCKABEE: All right, coming up, part two of my interview with Donald Trump from the campaign trail.
And then later...
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
TRUMP: We're going to build it up, and we're going to make it strong, and we're going to make it powerful. And hopefully, we're not going to use it other than to knock the hell out of ISIS. We have no choice.
(CHEERS AND APPLAUSE)
(END VIDEO CLIP)
HUCKABEE: Donald Trump says he's going to defeat ISIS. Now, this comes as a new congressional report finds that military officials manipulated the data to make ISIS look like less of a threat. Dr. Sebastian Gorka and General Tony Tata will be with us with their reaction.
That and much more as this special edition of "Hannity" continues.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
HUCKABEE: And welcome back to this special edition of "Hannity: Road to the White House." Now, here's part two of my interview from the campaign trail with Republican nominee Donald Trump. Take a look.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
HUCKABEE: One of the things that has been amazing being on the trail with you is watching the rallies. A lot of people see them on TV, so they see the podium. But the cameras never pull back and let people see what 20,000 people screaming are like at a political rally.
And I'm curious, what is your -- what's your understanding -- what is it that Americans are saying when they come and they're acting like -- almost like groupies at a Rolling Stones concert? I mean, I have nothing to compare this to. I've been to a lot of political events. Nothing is going on that I've ever seen quite like at one of those rallies. What is it about them?
TRUMP: Well, right now, right after this, you're going to be introducing me in front of 12,000 or 13,000 people in Orlando, and it's -- and that's not even -- you know, I mean, we have 25,000, we have 30,000, we have
40,000 people.
HUCKABEE: Whatever the seating capacity is, you have that and then you have people sitting outside.
TRUMP: We're restricted by seating capacity, I mean, basically. I mean, it's been an amazing experience.
You mentioned one thing, though. It's very funny because if I had a network, I'd want to show all the crowds because it's going to be better television. They never pull it away from my face. They have it on my face. And I'll go home, and I'll say to my wife, Did you see what I did?
She said, Yes, how big was the crowd? They never show it, unless there's a protester. They show the protester because that's a bad thing. In other words, if you have a protester, they consider it a bad thing.
So if there's a protester -- we don't have too many protesters. You notice? We haven't -- we had a little surge, but -- and the Hillary people don't have the same passion.
(CROSSTALK)
HUCKABEE: The reason you don't have any protesters is because there aren't that many people. 100 people show up.
TRUMP: They really don't. Yes, it's amazing. She doesn't have big crowds. The whole thing is strange to me because she doesn't have big crowds.
But they never show the size of the crowd, and you would think they'd want to because it's better television. It's good for ratings, et cetera, et cetera. But they never want to -- they pull that camera back unless there's a protester.
But we've had tremendous -- there's tremendous -- I'll tell you what. The level of spirit for our country, the level of love for our country -- you see the people. They're in love with this whole -- I'm a messenger. I'm a messenger. I'm merely a messenger. I'm a messenger of ideas that they've wanted for years.
You know, many of these people haven't had a pay increase. And they're making less money now than they made 18 years ago in real wages. And they're working much harder and they have two jobs. "Obama care" is taking care of that. But they have literally two jobs.
So they're getting older, they're working harder and they're making less money. And it's very, very sad. And we have -- look, we have all people.
We have everybody. You know, they like to say that we have people, this, and that they like to -- we have everybody.
But so many people today are working harder than they did 18 years ago, and they're making less money. And it's not supposed to be that way. And they're angry, and they're upset.
But we're going to change it. We're not going to let our jobs go. There are going to be consequences. When countries come in and they take our business, there are going to be consequences. Right now, there are no consequences. And it's so easy to handle. And we're not going to let them make their product and just send it right across our borders and sell it into our country. And we end up with unemployment. We end up with grief.
We end up with no taxes. We end up with so many different difficulties.
So it's so easy to solve. Everybody understands that. The politicians don't do it because their lobbyists and their donors don't want them to do it because they benefit on the other side. But me, I'm putting up my money to run my campaign, and I don't care about the lobbyists and I don't care about the special interests, as you know.
HUCKABEE: Yes, it's been pretty apparent that that's not been the driving force, and I think it's one of the reasons that people have been supportive. You're a disruptive candidate. You're disrupting the institutions that have failed America, and they see that and they believe it.
On a personal level, at the end of the day, when you're absolutely given a 20-hour day, which I've seen you now do...
TRUMP: Right.
HUCKABEE: ... what is it that gives you the satisfaction of believing, I'm glad I'm doing this?
TRUMP: The people are so thrilled. You'll see that in 20 minutes when we go into the -- this massive place where we have all these people. A friend of mine came and said, you know, How do you get up and speak without even looking at notes or without teleprompters, and you have all of these people, thousands, 10,000, 5,000, 25,000, 35,000? And he's a very successful person.
And he came to one of the rallies about two months ago, and he saw these thousands of people. I said, you know, it's easy because there's so much love in the room. And you understand that. You've seen it. There's so much love in the room.
They want to see America be great again. You know, my whole theme is make America great again, and I've added to it. America first. We make deals where we -- we're making deals, it's almost like we're making them for other countries. We have trade deficits that are massive with Mexico and with Japan and with China, with Vietnam, with everybody.
And it's -- it's almost like, are they doing this on purpose? How can anybody be so foolish or so stupid? And we're going to change it around.
But we have make America great again, make America safe again. America first. We have to say safe again, too. When you see what Hillary Clinton wants to have come into the country -- she wants people to come in from the migration. We have no idea who these people are. They have no paperwork.
There's no way of vetting them. You know. You've spoken to the same top law enforcement officials as I have.
And she wants to increase what Obama is letting in, which is thousands.
She wants to increase it by 550 percent. It's not going to happen.
HUCKABEE: Thank you very much. Great to visit with you.
TRUMP: Thank you very much, Mike.
HUCKABEE: Good to see you.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
HUCKABEE: Well, it was a lot of fun being on the trail with Donald Trump.
I enjoyed it and appreciate his time.
Coming up next on this special edition of "Hannity"...
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
TRUMP: We're going to build it up, and we're going to make it strong, and we're going to make it powerful, and hopefully, we're not going to use it other than to knock the hell out of ISIS. We have no choice.
(CHEERS AND APPLAUSE)
(END VIDEO CLIP)
HUCKABEE: Well, Donald Trump promises to get tough on ISIS as a new congressional report shows that military officials altered intelligence reports. That was to make the fight against ISIS look more successful.
Dr. Sebastian Gorka and General Tony Tata is going to -- they'll be both be with us with reaction to that.
And then later...
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Hillary, your response to Donald's...
(CROSSTALK)
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: You make me listen to him for 25 minutes. That was torture! So unfair.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: You loved every minute of it!
(CROSSTALK)
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: We're clearly in the business of torture.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
HUCKABEE: The liberal mainstream media continues an all-out attack on Donald Trump. Larry Elder and Doug Schoen -- they're going to join us.
That and more as "Hannity" continues.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
TRUMP: Here we have a world where ISIS is chopping off the heads of Christians and many others, drowning people in steel cages, burying people in the sand, and we have somebody up there who wants to be our president that says, I don't like Donald Trump's tone.
They had eight states. They had eight countries. They're now in 28 countries! They're expanding!
We're going to win with our military, which I said before is very, very depleted. But we're going to build it up, and we're going to make it strong, and we're going to make it powerful, and hopefully, we're not going to use it other than to knock the hell out of ISIS. We have no choice.
(CHEERS AND APPLAUSE)
(END VIDEO CLIP)
HUCKABEE: Well, that was Donald Trump out on the campaign trail earlier today discussing ISIS. His comments come as a stunning House GOP report finds that U.S. Central Command manipulated and distorted key data about the fight against ISIS in Iraq and Syria in order to minimize the threat that the radical Islamic group poses.
Congressman Mike Pompeo told Fox News yesterday that the goal was, I quote, "tell a story that ISIS was the JV and that we had Al Qaeda on the run."
Joining us with reaction is the author of "Defeating Jihad: The Winnable War," professor of strategy of irregular warfare at the Institute of World Politics, Dr. Sebastian Gorka, and the author of the book, "Three Minutes to Midnight," retired brigadier general Tony Tata.
General, let me start with you. This seems to be an incredible report that shows that intelligence data was cooked for the express purpose of politicizing and making things seem better than they really were.
BRIG. GEN. TONY TATA, U.S. ARMY (RET.): Governor, unfortunately, it's very credible. And it's just the tip of the iceberg. I have very well placed sources inside this thing that tell me that someone from the office of the director of national intelligence, who frequently meets with the president, directed a senior official in Central Command to quit producing products of record, as they're called, that showed negative intelligence that did not fit the narrative of the Obama administration.
And so what you have here is a directive from the administration to cook the books. It's not within Central Command alone. And so you get this clashing that has led to this climate that the report -- and you know, I've read about the entire report. It talks about this toxic climate.
And you have majors and lieutenant colonels and sergeants who just want to do the right thing for their country and aren't worried about their report cads, that clashes now with the directed narrative, and they're told not to produce anything that doesn't fit the junior varsity narrative that the president is putting out. And you have people that are being reprised against that or being retaliated against. To this day, this retaliation is still going on.
HUCKABEE: General, this apparently is a top-down, not a bottom-up type of operation. How far to the top does it go? Does it go to the White House?
At whose feet does this land?
TATA: Well, my sources tell me it goes all the way to the top. And so...
HUCKABEE: You're talking the president?
TATA: I'm talking the commander-in-chief, you know, who wants the junior varsity narrative out there. It's verifiable that the office of DNI told a CENTCOM senior official to do not produce products of record. You got any bad news for me, call me, but don't put it on the record.
And you've got the Arab spring that's happening. You've got the Syrian civil war that's happening. So really, what's happened is the chaotic way we left Iraq notwithstanding, you know, the Clinton/Obama narrative is that the war in Iraq has bred ISIS. That's just not the case.
What this verifies is that President Obama and his administration, to include Secretary Clinton at the time, turned the other way purposefully, told other people, Do not tell me how bad it is. We want a good narrative here because we just want to forget about it. And now that allowed ISIS to take root while we were looking the other way. Talk about fiddling while Rome is burning.
HUCKABEE: All right, Dr. Gorka, this is like a golfer fudging the scorecard. And we know President Obama loves to play golf. But this is a dangerous practice. I mean, does he not endanger people on the battlefield by making up stuff about what our enemy is really like?
SEBASTIAN GORKA, "DEFEATING JIHAD" AUTHOR: Well, I know the commander-in- chief likes to golf, but this act of willfully distorting and playing down the intelligence assessments when America is at war is tantamount to being a treasonous act.
If during World War II, somebody had been ordering our intelligence community to water down the assessments of what the Japanese were doing or what Hitler was doing, if that person were found out, they could have been court-martialed and they could have been executed.
This is political interference in the intelligence cycle. It is absolutely outrageous, and it will endanger American lives. It is clear the administration will brook no information that undermines the narrative that their policies are winning, when, at the same time, ISIS has become the Godzilla of international jihad -- 80,000 jihadis, territory with six million people on their new caliphate, and with attacks happening outside the war zone every 84 hours.
That's the truth. That's the reality. But it doesn't match the White House narrative. Therefore, it must be sunk. It must be censored.
HUCKABEE: Dr. Gorka, I've only got about 30 seconds, but I've got to ask this question. If I were a Democrat trying to defend this, I might say, Look, it's always been the role of the commander-in-chief to put the best foot forward, to try to give the American people confidence. So why is that not an acceptable explanation for what happened? And we've only got a few seconds.
GORKA: Yes, there's always rallying the troops and convincing the nation that this is important and that we can win. But that has nothing to do with the censorship of intelligence. Those are two completely different things, and the latter can cost people lives.
HUCKABEE: That is frightening. And from both you and the general, we get a disturbing report. I'm anxious to see if the mainstream media is going to cover this. Are they going to really put the spotlight on the fact that we have been lied to?
But more importantly than we the American people have been lied to -- we've been lied to a lot, but the lies were being told up and down the chain of command all the way to the people who were out on the battlefield, and soldiers and intelligence officers who every day risk their lives essentially were being told to simply make up a fairy tale, create a narrative because the truth was not good for the politics of this administration! If every American isn't angry by that, I don't know what could make them mad.
Coming up next on this special edition of "Hannity" --
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: This was certainly not the confident winner that Donald Trump usually presents himself as. He was practically pleading for votes.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
HUCKABEE: Well, the liberal mainstream media once again proves it is blatantly biased against Donald Trump. Larry Elder and Doug Schoen are going to weigh in on that next.
And then later --
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
TRUMP: For everybody of religion, this will be maybe the most important election that our country has ever had.
So go out and spread the word.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
HUCKABEE: Donald Trump courting religious voters. Reverend Franklin Graham, Dr. Robert Jeffress, and the president of the American Renewal Project David Lane are here with reaction, that and more as this special
edition of HUCKABEE continues.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
HUCKABEE: Welcome back to this special edition of "Hannity: Road to the White House." We are less than three months away from when the voters are going to head to the polls. But with each passing day some so-called journalists in the mainstream media are getting more and more biased against Donald Trump. Here's just a few examples from this week.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: We're going to begin today with the politics lead, and today's installment of Donald Trump's controversial comments. The big question today, tongue-in-cheek or foot-in-mouth?
The Republican presidential nominee now saying he did not mean literally that President Obama founded ISIS when he repeatedly said that president Obama founded ISIS, literally.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: So if he stayed on message, David, instead of what he calls sarcasm, he could probably make some strong points.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: This was certainly not the confident winner that Donald Trump usually presents himself as. He was practically pleading for votes.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Hillary, your response to Donald's --
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: You make me listen to him for 25 minutes. That was torture. So unfair.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: You loved every minute of it.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: We're clearly in the business of torture.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: We ought to start at home with Donald Trump and a potential new controversy simmering tonight after a remark that at best was a joke and at worst was an implied threat of violence.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
HUCKABEE: The amazing thing is we could have run an hour of those clips and still not had them all. Joining me with reaction are radio national syndicated host Larry Elder and FOX News contributor and former Clinton pollster Doug Schoen. Doug, let me jump into this with you. You've been in this business a long, long time. You've seen a lot of stuff.
DOUG SCHOEN, FOX NEWS CONTRIBUTOR: Sure.
HUCKABEE: But you're a fair guy even though you're unapologetically a Democrat. Is the mainstream media treatment of Donald Trump unique in your worldview?
SCHOEN: The way I would say it is they've certainly been harsh and hostile, and Donald Trump, between his comments about the Second Amendment and ISIS, has allowed that, in fact, to happen. He has been discursive, off the cuff, when he shouldn't be. This is a business, as we were saying before. He has played into them and allowed them to attack him.
I wish, governor, that they talked about the issues, both sides, because when we fight the way we are, you know who loses? The American people.
With this kind of rhetoric, we are now facing a resurgent Russia that's potentially going to go back into Ukraine. ISIS, as you've been discussing, is a serious threat, underestimated. We're not talking about.
We all lose. So, yes, you're right in your premise. But Donald, unfortunately, has played into it.
HUCKABEE: Larry Elder, around these parts, we sometimes use the term "fair and balanced." I just wonder if you want to weigh in. Do you think the media has been fair and balanced in their treatment of Hillary Clinton? I mean it's not like she has had nothing to answer for this week.
LARRY ELDER, RADIO TALK SHOW HOST: No, they haven't been fair and balanced. Hillary has a lot of issues out there that the people who have attacked Donald Trump haven't even broached. I will mention something that might make our friend Doug a little uncomfortable, and that is that Bill Clinton was credibly accused of rape by a woman named Juanita Broaddrick in the 1980s. "Dateline NBC" did a TV show about. And she said two weeks after this alleged rape, Hillary verbally intimidated her. There hasn't been, governor, a single reporter, not one, who has ever asked Hillary about the veracity of the allegation.
This is a woman, Hillary, who once said, when women make allegations of sexual assault, they should be believed and they should be supported. I'm not saying Broaddrick is telling the truth. I'm saying I defy you to make the same allegation against Donald Trump and have zero reporters ever ask him about it. That's just one of many issues.
HUCKABEE: Doug, Hillary hasn't answered a whole lot. First of all, she doesn't do a press conference. She doesn't make herself available to a lot of interviews. Donald Trump does, but he gets no credit for that, none at all.
SCHOEN: Hillary Clinton is now about six or seven points ahead. She answered a couple of questions last Friday and got herself in some trouble with her answers on the e-mails and Director Comey and her needing her own reset. So why should she? She's trying to win, not win a prize for, you know, good conduct.
And, again, I go back to what I said. Larry, it's certainly fair to raise those issues, but this is an election about war and peace and the economy, not what her husband allegedly did, and I underscore allegedly, many years ago. I wish we talked about the real problems facing this country.
HUCKABEE: We all do. Larry, go ahead.
ELDER: Doug, you just said this is about winning an election. One more time, had there been a similar allegation made about Donald Trump, it certainly would have been brought up. Paul Begala was a top aide for Bill Clinton, and when Mitt Romney was running in 2012, he brought up some 40- year-old allegation about Mitt Romney allegedly as a teenager holding down some gay kid and cutting his hair. Romney didn't even remember it. The gay kid's family said he never reported it. Paul Begala mentioned it on CNN and then wrote an article that said, once a bully, always a bully.
This allegation against Hillary about Juanita Broaddrick and others are out there and they don't even raise the question.
All I'm saying is there's no consistency here. It's not fair. We're talking about winning an election. When you win an election, you bring up issues that hurt your opponent. This is an issue that would hurt Hillary, and it hasn't even been mentioned by the media. It's not fair.
HUCKABEE: Well, Doug, if you were advising Donald Trump, which I know you're not.
SCHOEN: I'm not, no.
HUCKABEE: But if you were, what would you say to him when it's not going to be fair and it's not going to be equal?
SCHOEN: Here's what I would say. First, my answer to Donald would be talk about the economy, talk about jobs, talk about growth, and talk about foreign policy and stopping terror.
To Larry's comment, if the Democrats do it, it's wrong. If the Republicans do it, it's wrong. I find the whole line of conversation that he was raising to be abhorrent, whichever side does it in a presidential election, and I hope we can talk about the real problems. That's right for the country. It also is the best advice I could give Donald Trump.
HUCKABEE: I will pass it along.
SCHOEN: Please do.
HUCKABEE: Thank you both. Great to have you both here.
Coming up next on this special edition of "Hannity".
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
TRUMP: For everybody of religion, this will be maybe the most important election that our country's ever had. So go out and spread the word.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
HUCKABEE: Donald Trump reaching out to religious voters. Reverend Franklin Graham, Dr. Robert Jeffress, and the president of the American Renewal Project, David Lane, are going to be here next with reaction, that and more as "Hannity" continues.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
HUCKABEE: Welcome back to this special edition of "Hannity: Road to the White House." Donald Trump continues to reach out to religious voters.
Yesterday he was in Florida where he spoke to hundreds of evangelical leaders at an event put together by the American Renewal Project. Take a look.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
TRUMP: For everybody of religion, this will be maybe the most important election that our country's ever had. So go out and spread the word. You have to get the people in your churches, you have to get them to go out and vote. Whether you have bus drives, do whatever you have to do.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
HUCKABEE: Joining me now, the president of Samaritan's Purse, Reverend Franklin Graham, the president and founder of the American Renewal Project, David Lane, and FOX News contributor Dr. Robert Jeffress. He's a member of Trump's evangelical advisory board.
David Lane, let me start with you. You have rarely done television interviews. In fact you have avoided the press about like Hillary has.
But tonight we get you on, and you just hosted that event where Donald Trump was speaking in Orlando yesterday. How did he connect to the pastors in your view?
DAVID LANE, AMERICAN RENEWAL PROJECT: I thought he did well. Thank you, governor, for having me on. He used a term which I hadn't heard before in the repeal of the Johnson amendment. He talked about leverage, that pastors in America have been neutered and lost their leverage.
And so he connected well. He did well. As you know, there's nothing good or bad about the Democrat Party. There's nothing good or bad about the Republican Party. They're holding vessels that you pour things into like my constituents. Evangelical Christians and prolife Catholic Christians are not housed in the Democrat Party. They don't believe anything that we believe. So evangelicals, the estimated 65 million to 80 million evangelicals who are going to turn America are going to have to get registered and vote.
HUCKABEE: Franklin, you have conducted rallies and prayer meetings across the country at state capitols. And by the way, I want to acknowledge that none of the three of you have officially endorsed a candidate. You may have a preference but you have not gone out and officially endorsed a candidate. But Franklin, in the rallies where you've been speaking to people at state capitals, what are people saying to you? What is it they're worried about?
REV. FRANKLIN GRAHAM, SAMARITAN'S PURSE: Thank you, governor. I was just in Cheyenne, Wyoming, today. People are fed up. People realize that our political system is broken. Both the Republican Party is broken, the Democratic Party is broken. Our process is broken. And the only hope for the country is almighty God and his son, Jesus Christ. And I think this election is going to come down, really, governor, to the debates and when they can see candidates side by side answering questions from a fair moderator and hope the election commission will put a fair moderator in there. And I would vote for our friend Greta Van Susteren. She is absolutely fair and there's no drama with her. But it's going to come down to I think the debates.
But our country is broken. And I have been leading these prayer rallies.
I was in Cheyenne today, and I'll be up in the northeast next week. And you see thousands of people coming out at noon to stand on the capitol grounds to pray. And people realize we're in trouble and God is the only one who can fix this, governor. He's the only one to fix it.
HUCKABEE: I would love to second the motion for Greta Van Susteren but I know that if I did that would absolutely kill any chances she would ever have to be one of the moderators. Great suggestion.
Robert Jeffress, I know you hear some of the same things I do from some people, particularly, evangelicals, that Donald Trump isn't really one of us. Sometimes he's vulgar. Sometimes he says things that are uncomfortable for us as Christians and we just don't know because he's not sitting in the front row of church every Sunday. What do you say to those folks?
DR. ROBERT JEFFRESS, FOX NEWS CONTRIBUTOR: First of all, Donald Trump is a friend of mine, and I'm very supportive of him for president. But Mike, this election is about religious liberty, and Hillary Clinton is no more capable of protecting religious liberty than she is protecting her e-mail servers.
I mean, look at what she has said in the past. She's said at the Women of the World conference for women to have unfettered access to abortion, quote, "that deeply seated religious beliefs of many will need to be changed." She continues to demonize conservative Christians like us for believing in traditional marriage and believed that confused men shouldn't wander into women's bathroom.
You compare that to Donald Trump who has said he will appoint conservative justices to the Supreme Court, justices who will not create imaginary constitutional rights for some but protect the real constitutional rights of all people.
And governor, I want to say this as clearly as I can. Any conservative Christian who stays at home in November and allows Hillary Clinton to become the next president has forever forfeited his or her right to speak out about the sanctity of life, the sanctity of marriage, or religious freedom.
HUCKABEE: I would say that is pretty clear, Dr. Jeffers. I appreciate the candor. David Lane, the events you've conducted over the country, not just this time but in every election cycle, not just presidential, for at least over 20 years, have been to mobilize the pastors to just get their people to try to vote. You don't tell how to vote. You don't even try to tell their pastors that they ought to tell their people how to vote, but to vote both their conscience and vote the Bible. Why is that important? What is it about the evangelicals that if they don't vote, something doesn't happen right?
LANE: Somebody's values are going to reign supreme. Our values, or if our people stay home, as Dr. Jeffers said, then the other people putting their elected officials in are obviously going to impose their will, their agenda. That's the reason that evangelical Christians who didn't show up in 12 and didn't who up in 08, evangelical Christians and prolife Catholic Christians are going to have to engage the culture and vote.
Politicians are not going to save America. Wall Street is not going to save America. From a Christian perspective, if America is going to be saved, it will be men and women who know the times and know what to do, who bringing our values to the public square, American exceptionalism, which is somebody's character. And virtue is a key component of freedom. So pastors and pews have to get engaged if we're going to turn the country.
HUCKABEE: David, I wish I could keep going. I would love to keep you guys on all night, and I would if I could, but I've got to go.
More of this special edition of "Hannity: Road to the White House" right after this, so stay with us.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
HUCKABEE: Welcome back to this special edition of "Hannity." Quick Programming note. Before we go, this Tuesday at 10:00, Sean is going to be in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, for a one-hour town hall with Donald Trump. If you live in the area and want to be part of the event, go to Hannity.com for more details.
Unfortunately that's all the time we have got this evening. Sean is going to be back on Monday. This is Mike Huckabee in for Sean. Have a very wonderful weekend.
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