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Published January 23, 2017
This is a rush transcript from "Hannity," September 7, 2016. This copy may not be in its final form and may be updated.
SEAN HANNITY, FOX NEWS HOST: And this is a ‘Fox News Alert.’ Welcome to ‘Hannity.’ Tonight, Donald Trump, Hillary Clinton participated in a presidential forum earlier tonight. Now, Clinton went first, where she was asked about her private e-mail server scandal and once again -- well, she came up with a new excuse, spinning the fact that the FBI found it held classified information. Now we got a new excuse. Let's take a look at it.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
HILLARY CLINTON, D-N.Y., PRESIDENTIAL NOMINEE: Classified material has a header which says top secret, secret, confidential. Nothing -- and I will repeat this and this is verified in the report by the Department of Justice -- none of the e-mails sent or received by me had such a header.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
HANNITY: As for Donald Trump, he was asked about the military under President Obama's leadership, and used the opportunity to explain how he would take a much different approach than Hillary Clinton if, in fact, he becomes the commander-in-chief.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
MATT LAUER, NBC: Have you lost faith in the military commanders?
DONALD TRUMP , R, PRESIDENTIAL NOMINEE: I have great faith in the military. I have great faith in certain of the commanders, certainly, but I have no faith in Hillary Clinton or the leadership. You look at what's happened. And you know, when she comes in and starts saying, Oh, I would have done this, I would have done -- she's been there for 30 years. I mean, we need change, Matt. We have to have it, and we have to have it fast.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
HANNITY: Now, this comes as a brand-new NBC News poll shows that Donald Trump has a 19-point lead over Hillary Clinton among registered active duty military and veteran voters.
Here with reaction, from the Trump Organization, Eric Trump, and Donald Trump's campaign manager, Kellyanne Conway. You know, I'm watching media coverage, everybody is getting it wrong. The moment of the night was this.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
CLINTON: I think that the decision to go to war in Iraq was a mistake. And I have said that my voting to give President Bush that authority was, from my perspective, my mistake. I also believe that it is imperative that we learn from the mistakes, like after-action reports are supposed to do. And so we must learn what led us down that path so that it never happens again.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
HANNITY: She voted for the war. She voted to pull out early. It created a vacuum for ISIS to emerge with the financial backing and the oil, that they got out of Iraq. Wow!
OK, Kellyanne, if you are the mother of one of, what, up to 5,000 people that were killed, and here's a woman that wants to be president -- Oh, I made a mistake, but it's important that we learn from the mistake -- you have a dead child, you have a child that lost their limbs, have been disfigured as a result of her decision -- wow! I can't believe that's not front and center on every TV show tonight.
KELLYANNE CONWAY, TRUMP CAMPAIGN MANAGER: But that's not on her -- well, thanks for making it front and center on your show, and thanks for having the Trump campaign here.
That's not what's on her mind. What's on her mind right now, Sean, is that she's on the verge of losing two consecutive presidential races because -- in part because of her vote on the war in Iraq. She lost the primary to Barack Obama in 2008, where he pounded her about the war in Iraq vote mercilessly. And now you've got Donald Trump being able to take the superior position to her on this. He's saying, I was against the Iraq war, and I said we should have taken the oil and gotten out of there -- before we got out of there. And so she doesn't have a lot of ground here.
And by the way, it's not like it's just the Iraq war that's part of her secretary of state and U.S. Senate record. What about Libya? What about Syria? What about the Russian reset? What about Benghazi?
And look, I think this election, Sean -- we're starting to see it's complex people and very simple ideas. You're either with the 70 percent of Americans who say, I want to go in a different direction, I want change in leadership, or you're not.
(CROSSTALK)
CONWAY: You either are with the 30 percent of America that thinks she tells the truth, or you're not. This is very simple.
HANNITY: Thirty-seven percent of Americans -- 37 percent -- we're on the wrong track. I think this is key.
Eric, I want to get to you and this forum tonight, and very specifically -- I made a mistake, 5,000 Americans died, many more injured, then created the vacuum for ISIS. And I know people are critical -- oh, your father was critical of some of the generals. Well, I don't think Obama's listening to the generals. That's a separate issue. But seriously, 5,000 people, Oops, I'm sorry, we've got to learn from it?
ERIC TRUMP, DONALD TRUMP'S SON: We were sitting there with General Flynn tonight. It's amazing. I mean, the thing he said, and it was very, very clear -- we've been handcuffed. We've been totally handcuffed. We're not allowed to do our jobs. It's no different than the border control.
They've been handcuffed. They can't do their jobs.
And it's not just the lives -- and the lives are the most tragic thing in the entire world, it is so sad, thousands and thousands of lives -- it's also trillions and trillions and trillions of dollars.
And I think my father's point is, what do we have to show for it at this point, Sean? I mean, what do we have to show for it? We have three, four, five different countries that are in total ruin. We have civil war. We have anarchy. We have ISIS. I mean, you can't flip on the TV anymore without seeing another ISIS attack either in our country or around the world.
We have pandemonium in the Middle East. Her foreign policy destroyed the Middle East! It destabilized every single one of those nations and it's proven to be absolutely disastrous for our nation.
HANNITY: And by the way, I haven't even got to the Iranian deal, and I thought her answer was pathetically weak because we're enabling the Iranians to spin their centrifuges with our money. They get to partner with Russia for missile defense. They get to build up their conventional arms.
Then we've got Benghazi. Let's see, they denied 600 requests for security before. They denied help during because she was worried about what our military rescue team was going to wear! And they changed the uniforms four times!
And then, of course, the lies afterwards. She told her daughter the truth, the Libyan president the truth. She told the Egyptian prime minister the truth, but she told us a lie. So to me, there's a lot of things that came out tonight.
Now, we learned something new. We got a new excuse. First, of course, we heard the, Well, there was -- I neither sent nor received anything classified. I neither sent nor received anything marked classified. Now we got a new excuse tonight, anything marked with a header. The problem is, her own staff took away the header that marked it classified. And she's the only person in Washington that doesn't know that ‘C’ equals classified, especially if there's no A and B before the C, that can't be alphabetical.
Now, I want to play James Comey responding to Trey Gowdy's question on how Hillary Clinton lied again and again about what the -- excuses she gave to you, the American people, on the use of this private server.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
REP. TREY GOWDY, R, SOUTH CAROLINA: Secretary Clinton said there was nothing marked classified on her e-mails either sent or received. Was that true?
JAMES COMEY, FBI DIRECTOR: That's not true. There were a small number of portion markings on, I think, three of the documents.
GOWDY: Secretary Clinton said, I did not email any classified material to anyone on my e-mail. There is no classified material. Was that true?
COMEY: There was classified material emailed.
GOWDY: Secretary Clinton said she used just one device. Was that true?
COMEY: She used multiple devices during the four years of her term as secretary of state.
GOWDY: Secretary Clinton said all work related emails were returned to the State Department. Was that true?
COMEY: No, we found work-related emails, thousands that were not returned.
GOWDY: Secretary Clinton said her lawyers read every one of the emails and were overly inclusive. Did her lawyers read the email content individually?
COMEY: No.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
HANNITY: Wow! She lied! She lied repeatedly! He discovered that she lied! She lied about Benghazi repeatedly! And I'm listening to her tonight and then her saying what she did about, Oh, it was a mistake.
CONWAY: Well, and the funny thing is, the ironic thing is, Sean, that Matt Lauer couldn't even get to all of Hillary Clinton's foreign policy failures because he had to spend the first 14 minutes -- and I credit him for this -- on her email server and then on her vote in Iraq.
I mean, she was on defense from moment one, and she looked it. I don't think the Clinton campaign could be very happy with tonight's performance. I don't think it looks good for the upcoming debates. And that's not a loop that they're going to want to have rerun and rerun.
And I would just remind everybody of one thing. Republicans in the past have been what I call hearing impaired when it comes to doing these hearings, and they don't do a very good job. This was masterful today by Trey Gowdy. Just lay out the...
HANNITY: A couple weeks ago.
CONWAY: Yes, it was a couple of weeks ago.
HANNITY: It was masterful.
CONWAY: And like, for Jim Comey, I want to remind people -- I want to remind people that he's under oath when he testifies in Congress.
HANNITY: Why isn't she under oath?
CONWAY: Well, she's not under oath when she's at a forum. He's not under oath when he gives a press conference. And I think that you're going to see that in an ads -- you're going to see that, what we saw tonight, in an ad this fall, I promise.
HANNITY: Let me just remind -- and I'll get Eric's response to this because she gave multiple answers as it relates to the e-mail server scandal and it kept evolving. And tonight, we got a new explanation.
Let's roll tape.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
CLINTON: Laws and regulations in effect when I was secretary of state allowed me to use my e-mail for work. That is undisputed.
It clearly wasn't the best choice, and I take responsibility for that decision.
I thought it would be easier to carry just one device for my work and for my personal emails instead of two.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: iPhone or Android?
(LAUGHTER)
CLINTON: iPhone.
(CHEERS AND APPLAUSE)
CLINTON: OK, in full disclosure...
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Blackberry.
CLINTON: And a Blackberry.
I have a -- you know, an iPad, a mini-iPad, an iPhone and a Blackberry.
I believe I have met all of my responsibilities, and the server will remain private.
In order to be as cooperative as possible, we have turned over the server. They can do whatever they want to with the server to figure out what's there, what's not there.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
HANNITY: Oh, but not only did they not clean the server with a cloth, as she glibly told our own Ed Henry, but they actually used BleachBit to make sure, as Trey Gowdy said, that God couldn't find those emails, some 33,000.
When you look at the evolution, and yet a new excuse tonight, what are your thoughts?
E. TRUMP: I'm a civilian and I just think the American people deserve a lot better than this. I mean, it's disgusting. You see that whole train . You see the lies. You see the deception. You see the lies to Congress. You see the lies to the Department of Justice, right? I mean, it's really disgusting.
The American people deserve better than this, Sean. I think that's exactly why my father's running. You know, I mean, you see the corruption down in Washington. You see the amount of money that the Hillary Clinton -- you know, that the Clinton Foundation took in, the amount of money that they've profited off of government. American people...
HANNITY: I've never seen anyone enrich themselves...
(CROSSTALK)
HANNITY: What are your other takeaways here? Because on Libya, it got short shrift a little bit because before there were 600 requests. During, she was arguing about what our rescuers are wearing. And after were the lies.
Then it's the Iranian deal. Then it's her answer on the VA. Well, VA corruption still exists today, and they weren't -- they're not waiting six days. I think your dad said six days. No, they've waited years. People died because they have two sets of lists, and bureaucrats got their bonuses based on creating the second list, which is corruption at the highest level at the expense of our brave men and women!
CONWAY: The fundamental difference between Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump is this, and you can't get it in one-hour town hall forum tonight, Sean. It's that he's out there giving policy speeches every day. What did he do today? He went down to Philadelphia, went to the Union League and gave this military preparedness speech on the day that he also...
HANNITY: Tonight...
(CROSSTALK)
HANNITY: ... watched it.
CONWAY: She didn't do that. So if you want to know what his full plan is as commander-in-chief, go read that speech. If you want to know what his plan is on middle class tax relief, on law enforcement, on communities of color, on defeating radical Islam and terrorists, on education tomorrow -- I mean, we're going to have ObamaCare coming up. In other words, at least you can see -- Veterans Reform Act, 10-point plan. She doesn't do this!
HANNITY: The liberal media, I can tell already, is fixated on, Well, Donald Trump said that -- he's questioning the generals, saying he knows more about ISIS. What's your response to that?
E. TRUMP: Oh, I think it's crazy. I think my father's exact point has been the generals have been handcuffed. And I said it...
(CROSSTALK)
HANNITY: That's how I interpreted it, as well.
E. TRUMP: ... has been handcuffed. And so have law enforcement across the country. And so have our border control across the country. You need to give them the tools that they need to succeed. They've been asking for the tools, and they've been denied those tools. We have amazing military. We have the best military in the world. We have the leaders there to beat ISIS. ISIS isn't -- I mean, ISIS is a force...
HANNITY: But the key is, Obama, Kerry and Clinton don't listen to the generals!
(CROSSTALK)
CONWAY: That's right. And he mentioned all three of them, in fairness to him, and I hope people will play the full clip, Eric and Sean, because what Mr. Trump said was -- Matt Lauer said, Do you have a problem with the military (INAUDIBLE) No, I respect the military. It's President Obama's leadership that has to change.
HANNITY: We're get into that and play it in full.
CONWAY: I mean, he took on Kerry later on, too. And look, the polls are tightening. I think the Clinton folks are getting nervous. And why are the polls tightening? They call Donald Trump unfit and unpresidential. So you know what's happened? He shows that he's presidential. He goes to Mexico. He goes to Louisana.
HANNITY: Mexico, Baton Rouge, Detroit...
CONWAY: (INAUDIBLE)
HANNITY: ... Philly today, yes.
CONWAY: Yes. America -- what's her greatest liability? Her greatest liability is people think she lies for a living. What's happened to that?
That's only gotten worse.
HANNITY: Well said.
CONWAY: (INAUDIBLE) mistake.
HANNITY: All right, guys, good to see you both.
CONWAY: Thank you.
HANNITY: Thank you.
And joining us now here with reaction, host of "War Stories," Lieutenant Colonel Oliver North. Colonel North, I think you know a thing or two about radical Islamic terrorism and you know something about fighting a war -- 58,000 brave Americans. You fought in that war. You have multiple Purple Hearts that given you in that war.
If you hear a presidential candidate glibly say, OH, I made a mistake sending you there and it's imperative we learn from the mistake -- if you're the father or mother of one of those dead soldiers, airmen, Marines, Navy men, as Obama would say, Navy ‘corpseman,’ my question to you is, I don't think I'd like that answer one bit. I'd be angry.
OLIVER NORTH, "WAR STORIES" HOST: Well, I'm one of those, as is my brother, my next younger brother, who was sent to war by Lyndon Johnson, who made a terrible mistake and then didn't run again for reelection because of it. And Richard Nixon brought us home with the intention of winning the war.
Now, look, the national security of this country and its strategy, its budget, its military end strength, its equipment buys, all of that, which were raised peripherally by Matt Lauer tonight, all have to be based on what I would call a cascade of risk, from the greatest risk to the least.
And that requires we know our adversaries and the threats posed. Did anybody hear Mrs. Clinton talk about radical Islamic terror tonight? I didn't.
HANNITY: I didn't hear that, either. I mean, she spent a lot of time having to explain herself on her email.
NORTH: Exactly.
HANNITY: Now, she says she can be trusted after corrupting national security and compromising it. I know of a case because I interviewed the mother, her son, who innocently sent classified information, will be spending two years in jail, one instance. One instance!
NORTH: I would point out that I was indicted for altering, removing and destroying U.S. government classified documents, and therefore, aiding and abetting -- the actually charge was aiding and abetting the obstruction of Congress.
Now, mercifully, I was exonerated. But at the end of the day, that's exactly what she did. I simply point out that there is a truly different standard for those of us who serve in the armed forces and most who serve in government and the treatment that Mrs. Clinton is being given by the Justice Department.
HANNITY: What did you think -- and this didn't get enough play tonight, and I think it really should have, is -- I want to go back to Benghazi because, you know, at this point, ‘What difference does it make?’ was Hillary's answer, but I think what's really imperative here -- there were 600 separate individual requests for security before the incident happened.
Remember, they were watching it in real time. The Brits had left. The Red Cross had left. The incident's happening, they're watching it, and she's negotiating with her team. She's the highest-ranking cabinet official at the table, and she's negotiating whether or not we need permission from Libya and what uniforms our brave men and women that are going to rescue them and risk their lives should be wearing!
NORTH: Ever since...
HANNITY: And then they lied afterwards!
NORTH: Yes, ever since this terrible event, I've said the crimes that were committed before, during and after Benghazi are the things that really she ought to be held to account for. They did nothing to prepare for what always will be -- listen, it's just a few days away -- 9/11 will always be a terror target because it's a holiday for them. It's a great victory for them.
HANNITY: Such a good point.
NORTH: And so 9/11, no preparations were made. When it was happening, nothing was done about it. And afterwards, they had to lie to cover up their tracks.
HANNITY: All right, Colonel, we got to let you go. Safe home, my friend. Always good to see you.
NORTH: Appreciate you, buddy.
HANNITY: And coming up, at tonight's forum, Trump and Clinton -- they both laid out their plans to defeat ISIS. When we come back, Dr. Sebastian Gorka, Lieutenant General Mike Flynn are here with reaction.
Then later, Wikileaks founder Julian Assange -- he says the liberal American media is, quote, "erecting a demon" by protecting Hillary Clinton from scrutiny. We're going to have part two of my interview with Assange.
That's coming up later as we continue tonight right here on ‘Hannity.’
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
HANNITY: Welcome back. Tonight, now, earlier, both Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump talked about the rise of ISIS at the commander-in-chief forum.
Let's take a look.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
D. TRUMP: Part of the problem that we've had is we go in, we defeat somebody, and then we don't know what we're doing after that. I always said, Take the oil. One of the benefits we would have had if we took the oil is ISIS would not have been able to take oil and use that oil...
LAUER: Let me stay on that...
E. TRUMP: ... to fuel themselves.
LAUER: Let me...
D. TRUMP: If I win, I don't want to broadcast to the enemy exactly what my plan is.
LAUER: But...
CLINTON: We have to defeat ISIS. That is my highest counterterrorism goal. And we've got to do it with air power. We've got to do it with much more support for the Arabs and the Kurds. We are not putting ground troops into Iraq ever again, and we're not putting ground troops into Syria.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
HANNITY: Here with reaction, author of ‘Defeating Jihad: The Winnable War,’ Dr. Sebastian Gorka, as well as the author of ‘The Field of Fight: How We Can Win the Global War Against Radical Islam and Its Allies,’ retired lieutenant general Michael Flynn.
General Flynn, I think it's wise not to give details. You don't -- you don't telegraph what you're going to do, especially if you're fighting an enemy like ISIS. Obama and Hillary -- they told the world, Well, we're pulling out on this date. Good, we'll wait it out.
GEN. MICHAEL FLYNN, U.S. ARMY (RET.), TRUMP ADVISER: And we have this many troops going in. Sean, we have got to stop being what I describe as the best enemies in the world! We continuously telegraph every single move we're going to make, whether we're going to take troops out of whether we're going to put troops in. I mean, we have to stop doing that.
HANNITY: Were you at all offended -- because the liberal media, this is where they are going with this. They're going to ignore the fact that she made a mistake that resulted in 5,000-plus dead Americans and many others injured.
But when he talked about the generals, my interpretation was -- and tell me if I'm wrong -- is that the generals have not been given the ability to do their job, and the only generals that stuck around were the people that would say yes. Is that true? Is that fair?
(CROSSTALK)
FLYNN: Donald Trump has enormous respect for our military. He has enormous respect for the leaders that we have in our military that are serving today. What he knows is that the decisions that have been made, the incredibly poor judgment on decisions to pull out of Iraq, that led to the rise of ISIS -- - I mean, we really haven't talked about Libya. The decision to go into Libya was almost solely placed on Hillary Clinton, and Libya is a disaster. It's a non-nation state now. So and ISIS and al Qaeda are running...
(CROSSTALK)
HANNITY: I was just talking about that, I mean, 600 specific requests denied before it happened.
FLYNN: Right.
HANNITY: Literally while we're watching in real time!
FLYNN: And you know what? She said something tonight, Sean? I'm sorry. She said something tonight that no one died in Libya, Four Americans died in Libya, to include...
(CROSSTALK)
HANNITY: ... at this point, what difference does it make?
FLYNN: Well, I just...
HANNITY: I'm quoting her, obviously.
FLYNN: I know you are. But these are -- this is about judgment. And what we saw tonight and what we've seen in the last couple of years -- I mean the last decade -- is just the incredibly poor judgment. And I was -- you know, I like to hear people talk about winning and how we're going to win.
HANNITY: Dr. Gorka, that brings up a great point here because she's saying, We were wrong in Iraq. Sorry about all you people that died and all you people that lost your legs and limbs and bled on the battlefield to win Mosul, Ramadi, Fallujah, Tikrit, and Baghdad -- sorry! Oops! Mistake!
Then they pull out. Then they create the vacuum for ISIS.
But it's bigger than that. Then you got an Iranian deal, as we have discussed, that gives the mullahs, the number one state sponsor of terror all this money to spin their centrifuges and build nuclear weapons. Then you've got, of course, Libya, which the general is talking about.
You know, at what point does she have to bear responsibility for all of these decisions being so destructive and so wrong?
SEBASTIAN GORKA, ‘DEFEATING JIHAD’ AUTHOR: Sean, don't hold your breath on that one. It's not going to happen. This is the Teflon Don of national security. She's never going to take responsibility for the disastrous Iraqi policy, the Libya policy, the Syria policy.
The general is absolutely right. It is a failure to have judgment. They're not interested in national security, Sean, they're interested in politics. Again, what are they doing? They're telegraphing our moves! I'm not...
HANNITY: What about what Trump said, generals have been fired, reduced to rubble. In other words, how was your interpretation of that? Because mine is very different than what I'm hearing on other networks.
GORKA: Look, the general knows better than anybody else. But as somebody who works very closely with military, in the last seven-and-a-half years, the general officer corps, the flag corps, has become very politicized. If you don't agree with the White House, you could find yourself in the kind of place that General Petraeus.
HANNITY: Hasn't that happened?
GORKA: Yes. Absolutely.
HANNITY: General -- I think I know one right here.
(CROSSTALK)
HANNITY: Didn't that happen to you?
FLYNN: Yes. I mean, you know, let's be very honest...
(CROSSTALK)
HANNITY: ... story. You were a contrarian.
FLYNN: Yes, very much so.
HANNITY: And what happened?
FLYNN: I mean, to me, you know, you're -- you're -- I'm sitting here today.
(LAUGHTER)
FLYNN: I'm sitting here today, so...
(CROSSTALK)
FLYNN: I'm stuck with you, Hannity.
(CROSSTALK)
FLYNN: But this is very serious. This is very serious because what Dr. Gorka is talking about, and I know -- I know inside of our military, there is great frustration. There is. I mean, you don't -- and the polls of how many of our military support Donald Trump is not a mistake. I mean, this is a big deal.
HANNITY: Here's a tough question because you're on the inside. Is it true that our generals know that there's no hope of getting through to Obama and he's going to do what he damn well pleases anyway?
FLYNN: Nothing is going to change. Nothing will change.
HANNITY: And they know that. The generals know that.
FLYNN: They know that. I mean, they know that. Nothing's going to change. You know, here's what I would tell you and I would tell the American public. There is no enemy that is unbeatable. I mean, we know how to beat these guys. We can beat these guys. And there's no ideology better than the American ideology, the American, you know, idea of our way of life.
HANNITY: I want to pick that up when we get back because I think we've got to rethink. I know Donald Trump laid out a 10-point plan today. Don't we have to rethink how we approach war? We can't send kids in Humvees that even -- are not even up-armored, going door to door, when we should be building the technology, the new advanced method of warfare. And I think that's missing.
We'll take a break. More with Dr. Gorka, Lieutenant General Flynn after the break.
Then WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange broke news right here last night by revealing that he could release new documents about Hillary as soon as next week. We'll have part two of that interview and much more straight ahead.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
LAUER: Have you lost faith in the military commanders?
E. TRUMP: I have great faith in the military. I have great faith in certain of the commanders, certainly, but I have no faith in Hillary Clinton or the leadership. You look at what's happened -- and you know, when she comes in and starts saying, Oh, I would have done this, I would have done -- she's been there for 30 years. I mean, we need change, Matt. We have to have it, and we have to have it fast.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
HANNITY: And he reiterated no faith in Obama or the generals working with Obama because he's not listening to them anyway.
Here with us, Dr. Sebastian Gorka, retired lieutenant general Michael Flynn.
I want to put emphasis on this. You disagreed with Obama. You were pushed aside. Is that true?
FLYNN: Yes. I mean (INAUDIBLE)
(CROSSTALK)
HANNITY: ... kicked out.
FLYNN: I mean, part of that is that it's this whole notion of the ideology, that radical Islamist ideology that we know -- and those of us in the intelligence community and those of us in the military know this is what we're facing.
We've been fighting them. I've sat across these guys in interrogations. I know exactly what I'm talking about here.
What Donald Trump said tonight is that he has enormous respect for those...
HANNITY: He said that repeatedly, and that's being ignored by the media.
(CROSSTALK)
FLYNN: You know, the American public are not that dumb, Sean.
HANNITY: So you -- this is very key to me, though. You had a contrarian view. You believe we can defeat ISIS. You have a plan. Dr. Gorka has a plan, but they wouldn't listen to you, and you're out!
FLYNN: Yes. And I think that the other thing...
(CROSSTALK)
FLYNN: You know, part of the problem is, is that inside of the military right now, I know their hands are tied. I mean, it's like the border patrol that has come out and said we support Donald Trump --
HANNITY: This is crucial.
FLYNN: These are law enforcement and military professionals.
HANNITY: Hands are tied.
FLYNN: Their hands are tied.
HANNITY: He's the commander in chief.
FLYNN: We're talking about ISIS, an enemy that can be beaten. No enemy is unbeatable.
HANNITY: Let me bring Dr. Gorka in. His story, if you don't mind me using you, General, here, is crucial to Trump's comments here. And it puts context and texture to the entire answer. And if his hands were tied and he's thrown out for being contrarian, that tells me Obama's not listening to anybody but his own arrogant, radical self. And that's where the problem comes in.
GORKA: Sean, it's the echo chamber, OK. It's very important to listen to what happened to the general. The general was the director of the Defense Intelligence Agency, the highest ranking military intelligence professional in America, who was never invited to meet the commander in chief. This is the man who revolutionized our intelligence gathering in Afghanistan when General Flynn was responsible in Afghanistan for intelligence. You need to listen to what he's saying. The viewers need to understand when the general says is absolutely true. There is no enemy America cannot defeat. But we have to have a president who believes we are at war and wants to defeat our enemies.
HANNITY: Dr. Gorka, I didn't hear Hillary challenged on why she can't utter the phrase "radical Islam." I think that's crucial. You have to fight them, right?
GORKA: It was a dog and pony show, Sean. You have to look at the Philadelphia speech. Donald Trump's Philadelphia speech laid down the reality. The cops in the Army, the cops in the Navy --
HANNITY: If Hillary is going to admit wars are politicized -- oops, it's a mistake, sorry your kid's dead, and we did the same thing in Vietnam. Does America need to invest strategically and tactically in the notion that we're not going to send kids door to door like we did in Iraq without up- armored Humvees getting their legs blown off or blown to smithereens? And is there a new way to fight wars without putting these kids on the ground, General?
FLYNN: So, I would love to hear Sebastian Gorka's answer on this, too. The short answer, yes. The longer answer is we have to give the resources, the resources that our commanders need.
HANNITY: And the sequester.
FLYNN: And in terms of building up our military readiness. People should go and listen to what Donald Trump said today in Philadelphia.
HANNITY: We're running out of time. Dr. Gorka, do we need strategic tactical shifts to ensure the safety of brave men and women when politicians are going to say, oops, sorry, your kid's dead, I made a mistake?
GORKA: Re-field the fight by the general. Check out my book ‘Defeating Jihad.’ But most important of all, the rules of engagement have to be changed. Our guys are handicapped right now.
HANNITY: All right, guys, thank you all for being with us. General, good to see you. Dr. Gorka, thank you.
Coming up, part two of my interview with WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange. Last night he revealed that he may release more documents pertaining to Hillary Clinton as early as next week. I asked him how significant that material is. He'll give us that answer next.
And then later, we'll have more reaction to tonight's commander in chief forum. We'll check in with A.J. Delgado, Lisa Boothe as we continue tonight here on HANNITY.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
HANNITY: Welcome back to ‘HANNITY.’ So last night WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange made news on this program when he announced that he'd reveal and release several batches of documents related to Hillary Clinton possibly as early as next week. Here's part two of my interview with him.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
HANNITY: Let me go to the Hillary issue for a second. You did liken her to a demon, which I found amusing, but then you went on to say ‘the American liberal press is falling all over themselves to defend Hillary Clinton, erecting a demon that is going to put nooses around everyone's neck as soon as she wins the election, which is almost certainly what she's going to do,’ meaning if she wins. I don't think anyone can accurately predict right now which way this election is going to go.
That's my own personal opinion. What did you mean by that?
JULIAN ASSANGE, FOUNDER, WIKILEAKS: Well, it's a bit taken out of context by critics like ‘The New York Times.’ I wasn't talking Hillary Clinton as a person but rather the climate that they are erecting. It is a demon, that climate, if Hillary Clinton is elected.
And they have legitimized a climate of calling opposition leaders Russian agents, calling critical press Russian agents. Her campaign team has done it both to Mr. Trump, to us, for the Green's candidate, Jill Stein, and another small publisher in the United States. They are legitimizing that climate. When "The New York Times," a kind of standard bearer of the liberal press, says that's an OK thing to do for a ruling party candidate, to come out and say that the opposition leaders and the press are foreign agents in order to turn around a domestic scandal, that's a really serious problem.
HANNITY: You know, I give you more credit than those in the liberal press.
I'm a commentator. I am a talk show host. I openly tell this audience I have strong conservative opinions. But I would expect objective journalists to be doing a lot of what you're doing. And you're right, I think they are unwilling to do that because they've got a political agenda in play.
You have talked at length about other information that you have that you'll be releasing to the American public prior to the election in November. Can you give us any insight about that information? Do you think it will have a dramatic impact on the electoral results?
ASSANGE: I don't know about electoral results. I'm quite cynical about politics, or skeptical about politics, as I'm sure you probably are as well, Sean. Things can happen in interesting way. I do think the material that we have that we're working on around the clock is significant, and it's up to people to look at it and run with it.
Now, I'm sure Fox News will run with some of that, but in the DNC leak, yes, we saw the resignation of five of the top DNC officials, including the president. But did ‘The New York Times’ run with it? No. Did MSNBC run with it? No. In fact, MSNBC, ‘Politico,’ and NBC were exposed as conspiring with the DNC to subvert Bernie Sanders' campaign.
But people in the United States came to our website, some journalists also came, and it was the public that really took it up and pushed it. So I hope that will happen again.
HANNITY: You said you were going to release more information before the election in November 8th. If you had to maybe rate it on a scale of one to 10, 10 being most significant, how significant is it?
ASSANGE: Well, it's not just one type of piece of information. We have thousands and thousands of records. So it's, you know, each hundred records gives you a story. So you have to kind of understand each story, and that is a lot of work to format it, to verify it, to put it in particular batches to be released. WikiLeaks is tax deductible in the United States, if people want to buy and help us do that. We're a small outfit that has been attacked by the Obama administration for six years now in an investigation that's been condemned by Human Rights Watch, by the U.N., by even by the ACLU.
HANNITY: You have said that if you had information on any candidate you feel the public has a right to know. Do you have any information, any batches, if you will, on Donald Trump?
ASSANGE: We have information which touches on the Republican Party's campaign. In assessing that information, we will publish it, of course. But Donald Trump is -- he makes very controversial statements. He doesn't have a history of being in government.
HANNITY: He doesn't use e-mail, you know that, right? He doesn't use e- mail personally.
ASSANGE: I'm sorry?
HANNITY: Donald Trump does not use e-mail personally.
ASSANGE: Right, probably a wise choice.
(LAUGHTER)
HANNITY: Let me ask you one last question on the morals and ethics of this. I actually do applaud -- you've exposed a lot about our government that I am appreciative of as a citizen, because I think there have been things that have been going on that we need to know about, and I hope it wakes people up. What do you -- where do you draw a line in terms of the right to citizens, private citizens, or, you know, people even in the public to have privacy?
ASSANGE: Well, look, we publish information from political parties and governments. We're not interested in information from private individuals unless they are billionaires or trying to manipulate or drive the political system in some way. So people don't need to worry about WikiLeaks' being interested in that.
Before these big, corrupt organizations, you know, dodgy politicians and so on, we just say what they say. If you've got nothing to hide, you've got nothing to fear. What's their problem in the public knowing the truth? Because that's all we publish. There's no allegation that we haven't been completely accurate.
HANNITY: That's 100 percent true. Somebody like George Soros would be on your radar. He's trying to influence elections. He's trying to impact the political process.
ASSANGE: We will be publishing quite a lot of information about George Soros. It has been published elsewhere, but in a very unusable form. That's part of what we do, as well, is take records that are extremely hard to use, like some of the State Department records. We create this wonderful library of how modern institutions actually behave across the world in the United States and other countries, as well, published 650,000 documents on Russia, most of them critical, 2.3 million of Bashar al Assad and Syria, even including his personal emails.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
HANNITY: And coming up, we have more reaction to tonight's commander in chief forum. We'll check in with A.J. Delgado, Lisa Boothe. They're here next as we continue. Glad you're with us on HANNITY.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
HANNITY: And welcome back to HANNITY. Here with more reaction to tonight's commander in chief forum, 'Washington Examiner,' contributor Lisa Boothe, Trump campaign senior adviser, our friend A.J. Delgado. What are the headlines from tonight's event from your perspective, not the liberal media perspective?
A.J. DELGADO, TRUMP CAMPAIGN SENIOR ADVISER: I thought it was an amazingly poor performance from Hillary Clinton, a surprisingly bad one, which is kind of has me wondering now how she'll perform in a debate. She faltered badly under pressure, Sean. She honestly seemed as though she was going to have some sort of emotional breakdown when he started questioning her about the emails. She knows she's lying. She knows she has been caught lying.
She knows she broke the law.
HANNITY: She extended the lie tonight. We got a new answer, we got a new lie tonight.
DELGADO: When do we not? They come in every day.
HANNITY: I could play Trey Gowdy again and again. But Trey Gowdy interviewing Comey, 'No, that's a lie. No, that's a lie. No, that's a lie.' It was pretty profound, right?
LISA BOOTHE, 'WASHINGTON EXAMINER' CONTRIBUTOR: We've heard a million different iterations of the classified information. I didn't send classified information. OK, I sent classified information but I didn't really know what the "c" meant. I thought it meant it was alphabetized. But, I mean, come on. Hillary Clinton, I believe Donald Trump is right when he says Hillary Clinton has disqualified herself from being commander in chief. The reality is, let's look at the women's actions. She reportedly spent $140,000 out of her own pocket to set up a private e-mail server, deleted tens of thousands of e-mails using BleachBit.
HANNITY: BleachBit, my favorite part, because Ed Henry goes, ‘Did you wipe the server clean?’ ‘Like, with, like, a cloth, Ed?’ They are using BleachBit. Jesus can't find it. That's what BleachBit is for.
BOOTHE: Not even that.
HANNITY: You're an attorney and went to Harvard Law, correct? Isn't that intent, criminal intention?
DELGADO: They had a subpoena and destroyed evidence. It doesn't get clearer than that. And Sean, I have a homework assignment for everybody.
Go Google.
HANNITY: I don't like to do homework.
DELGADO: It's an easy one. Go Google the name Bryan, I want to make sure I get it right, Bryan Nishimura. Bryan Nishimura was a Naval reservists who pretty much did what Hillary Clinton did. He was fined and he can no longer have security clearance.
HANNITY: Julian Assange is on my radio show for an hour tomorrow, but I'm also interviewing a guy going off to jail because he sent out classified material one time, once, two years ago.
DELGADO: She should be in a trial room right now, in a courtroom, not running for president. She's not just unqualified. She's disqualified.
BOOTHE: And it's also the fact of other information that we learned from the FBI putting out some of those documents, the document dump prior to Labor Day is the fact that her aides quite literally smashed phones with hammers.
HANNITY: By the way, it was multiples devices. There were 13 devices.
(CROSSTALK)
BOOTHE: She said she used one for convenience.
HANNITY: Thirteen.
BOOTHE: There is no question anymore if she was hiding something. You don't take those actions if you aren't trying to hide something.
HANNITY: A.J., I have 13 more in the green room. You can bust that up with a hammer. It's my iPhone.
(LAUGHTER)
(CROSSTALK)
HANNITY: Just hammer away.
DELGADO: That is not weird at all.
HANNITY: Beat the crap out of it and erase it for me.
DELGADO: Very presidential.
HANNITY: Do you have BleachBit? Anybody?
DELGADO: It's very expensive. I've never had the money.
BOOTHE: I never tried to hide something to that degree. Sorry.
HANNITY: Why can't you just, if it's about yoga, a wedding and a funeral, why not delete it like everybody else?
DELGADO: Or hand them all over like she said she did?
(CROSSTALK)
BOOTHE: We know that she had lied because she said that she turned over her work related e-mails. That is not the case.
HANNITY: We've got to break. When we come back, we need your help, a very important question of the day.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
HANNITY: And time for our 'Question of the Day.' In the wake of tonight's presidential forum, who do you think would make a better commander in chief? It's a simple question. We want to hear from you. Go to Facebook.com/SeanHannity, @SeanHannity on Twitter, let us know what you think.
That is all the time we have left. We have a busy show coming back here tomorrow night. We hope you'll join us. As always, thanks for being with us.
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