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Published January 23, 2017
This is a rush transcript from "Hannity," December 20, 2016. This copy may not be in its final form and may be updated.
ERIC BOLLING, GUEST HOST: Welcome to "Hannity." Germany is now treating the attack on a Berlin Christmas market as an act of terror.
I'm Eric Bolling in for Sean.
Tonight, Kellyanne Conway, Rudy Giuliani, Governor Scott Walker, Laura Ingraham and Mike Huckabee all join us.
But first, German chancellor Angela Merkel and the country's top prosecutor are now saying terrorism is the likely the motive behind a holiday rampage, and according to the Associated Press, ISIS is claiming responsibility for the truck attack. Also tonight, Russian president Vladimir Putin is vowing revenge after the country's ambassador to Turkey was gunned down yesterday.
President-elect Donald Trump is reacting to both stories by promising to fight radical Islam while the White House won't even utter the phrase.
Joining us now with reaction is Trump senior adviser Kellyanne Conway. Thank you for joining us, Kelly. Big news day. Lots going on in the world . Let's start with the Berlin attack. President-elect Donald Trump says he will fight Islamic terror. He used those words together. Why did he specifically do that so soon?
KELLYANNE CONWAY, TRUMP TRANSITION SENIOR ADVISER: Well, it's part of how he ran his campaign and won. People want tough, strong leadership. If you look at the polls, Eric, Americans feel less safe than they did four or eight years ago. Many of them feel less prosperous, as well.
But you know, in the last two years alone, we've had radical Islamic terrorists make its way onto our shores here. In San Bernardino, where the fiancee came -- the woman came through a fiancee K1 visa most Americans didn't even know existed as an option, and of course, down in Orlando this past May, the worst massacre of its kind in American history, 49 innocent lives being snuffed out by a man who was radicalized as an Islamist on the Internet.
And so we already know that this exists. We know that those who say that they're the JV team and they're no longer on the advance are just dead wrong. And you see it mostly in Europe. You see Nice and Paris, of course, and Brussels, and now, apparently, the market in Berlin, Germany. They're nondiscriminatory in terms of when they attack, who they attack, but we know why they attack, because they hate freedom-loving people and they're on a religious jihad.
BOLLING: So Kellyanne, yesterday, the White House said probably terror, or likely terror. Donald Trump came out and said, You know what? It's Islamic terror, and we're going to call them out for it and we're going to stop it, and since then, ISIS has claimed credit for it. So Donald Trump was right.
CONWAY: He's right again. And I was on a show earlier with someone said, Why does he get ahead of himself when he doesn't have the evidence? They said the same thing in San Bernardino about him. They said the same thing in Orlando.
The man's instincts are correct. And he's right this time, as well. By the way, he doesn't say that to be right, he says it to remind all of us, Eric, of who the enemy really is here, and you can't defeat them until you're willing to name them.
And one of the untold stories of the election, frankly, is how much it mattered to many Americans that Donald Trump, as the Republican nominee, was willing to stand up so many times and call it out radical Islamic terrorism, talk about the fact that the ham-handed way we got out of Iraq created this vacuum for ISIS, and its progenitor groups were able to flourish.
And he also -- you know, you may recall in August or September, he came out with this pretty muscular four or five-point plan to defeat them. So people can go and look it up. They can disagree if it. (INAUDIBLE) talks about extreme vetting. He talks about all those countries that harbor and train and export terrorists, where we have very little vetting process.
You and I know that they -- ISIS has promised to come in through the form of refugees, Syrian refugees and others. So they've been very clear that they're just getting started.
BOLLING: Sure. Kellyanne, the other big story yesterday was the Russian ambassador being assassinated in front of the cameras. In the aftermath of that, let's talk about this, because President-elect Donald Trump, President Donald Trump is going to walk into some sort of mess with this situation.
You have Russia on one hand saying, Our ambassador's killed and we want someone to pay for that, yet there are others like Ambassador John Bolton, former ambassador John Bolton, suggesting that maybe this is some sort of plot by the Russians now to use this tragedy to get Turkey to get out of NATO.
Now, it's a little wonky, though, but how is Donald Trump going to handle such a hot spot going forward?
CONWAY: Well, the way he handled this particular incident is he did two things, and they're both correct. He did what a leader does. First, he expressed outrage that an ambassador would be killed and that it violates every convention we can think of in orderly society. Number two, he expressed condolences to the gentleman's family.
That's what leaders do before they have all the evidence. And when he's president of the United States, he will make clear what his policies are. But I don't think the president-elect is going to speculate on the rest of it and come up with any type of theory, other than what he sees in front of him, which is a cold-blooded murder of an ambassador in a foreign country that he's been serving.
BOLLING: Talk to me a little bit, Kellyanne, about the very, very strategic and important country, Turkey, for many reasons -- its location to Iraq and Syria. Its access -- ISIS has claimed that they're selling oil to Turkey. It's -- part of being in NATO, it wants to be in the European Union. How does Donald -- what's Donald Trump's Turkey strategy?
CONWAY: Oh, I can't discuss that before he's the president of the United States. I know that he has discussed it and we're aware of it, but we're very respectful, Eric, until he is the president of the United States and the commander-in-chief starting on January 20th next month, that we have a president currently.
Everything that you just described about Turkey is 100 percent correct, and obviously, the president-elect is aware of that and discussing that with his leaders. He's made very clear, too, that as soon as he assumes office, he will be convening those leaders, his secretary of state, his secretary of defense, his national security adviser and others. And he will be conferring about the best strategies moving forward in Turkey and elsewhere.
BOLLING: OK, can we play this up? Can we talk a little bit about -- you know, clearly, Vladimir Putin -- he's ticked off. He lost an ambassador. How is -- has -- has Putin reached out to President-elect Donald Trump on this assassination yet?
CONWAY: I'm not aware that he has.
BOLLING: OK. All right, let's move on to this one. Now, there's some back and forth going on about a phone call that occurred on election night. Now, initially, Bill Clinton, former president Bill Clinton, suggested that Donald Trump had called him, Mr. Trump tweeted today, No, no, no, you got it wrong, he called me. Now, you have some intimate knowledge of this.
CONWAY: Oh, I do. Actually, it was -- the president-elect is correct. On Thursday, November 10th, which basically was a day after the wee hours of November 9th when he won and that Hillary Clinton called to concede and congratulate him, I received a call from President Bill Clinton's chief of staff who asked if we could arrange a call to have President Bill Clinton congratulate the president-elect.
The president-elect was in Washington, D.C., meeting with the current president on November 10th, that Thursday, as we'll all recall. And so we arranged a call. They had a great conversation.
But it did go that way, and I saw in his tweet tonight that President Bill Clinton did say, Donald Trump and I agree on one thing, I did call him. It's fine.
It may seem like a minor point to some, but it shows you the power of Donald Trump in his Twitter feed when he says, No, I'm going to correct the record right here. You actually called me, which is true.
I just think their war of the -- it's not really a war of the words, it's just a departure in facts when it comes to what just happened in this election.
BOLLING: Speaking...
CONWAY: I mean, Bill Clinton won the presidency twice because he knew how to win those important blue states in the upper Midwest and other places. His wife failed to do that. And she failed to do that not because Vladimir Putin told them to ignore Milwaukee, but because for some reason, they took for granted Wisconsin because it had gone blue in every election since 1984.
And so I think Bill Clinton, who knows politics so well, who is clearly the more gifted masterful politician in his two-person household -- he should know better than to be blaming Russian hacking or Jim Comey or Bernie Sanders -- how dare he run against...
(CROSSTALK)
CONWAY: Enough of these excuses!
BOLLING: He went even further than Jim Comey. He did. He blamed, what'd he call it, the fake e-mail scandal. Then he blamed Jim Comey. In this same comment where he said that Donald Trump had called him -- in that same comment, he said Donald Trump knows how to get angry white males to vote for him.
CONWAY: Well, that's not the only group -- first of all, it's insult. And I think Bill Clinton sounds like in that case a Trump voter these days. He seems pretty angry white male, but -- and that's too bad because he's a former president. We have enormous respect for him and for his legacy, as it were.
But we also have to point out that Donald Trump had a very broad coalition when he ran the tables among the same kind of Democratic union households that Bill Clinton won and Hillary Clinton lost. He ran the tables among rural voters. Frankly, he got almost as much as Mitt Romney got among women and he ran against the first female president.
Why did -- I would ask the Clintons, why didn't Hillary Clinton get 60 or 62 percent of the female vote? What's wrong with her, running as the first female president? Why does she have this wicked gender gap among men, where they disliked her, dismissed her, didn't want her to be president of the United States or commander-in-chief. They distrusted her.
She underperformed among millennials. She couldn't bring together the Obama coalition and she certainly couldn't bring together the Bill Clinton coalition. It's pretty simple.
BOLLING: So those comments I would call deplorable and irredeemable by Bill Clinton. Is that OK to do that?
CONWAY: I would call them -- yes, something like that. But I would just call them dead wrong, and it's time to -- look, it's time for the Clintons to do what the Obamas have done, which is to open up the door and say, We are here to help you have a peaceful transition in our great democracy. We're only one month away today, Eric, from January 20th, and it's really time for the Clintons to tell all of their adherers (ph), their protesters, this fanciful electoral strategy which failed, the hashtag -- it's time for them to tell everybody to support this guy.
BOLLING: So let's tell the audience -- I heard some news today. I heard a rumor today that Kellyanne Conway is going to move to Washington, D.C. Kellyanne, what are you going to do there?
(LAUGHTER)
CONWAY: Well, first I'm going to look for a house and some schools for my kids. We'll see how welcome the Trump people are in these schools, Eric. But we will -- I'm going to serve the president-elect and the vice president-elect in whatever capacity they would prefer me. And we've been talking about that. But either way, you can expect me in Washington, D.C.
We're just getting started. This is a man in a big hurry to do great things, and I am all too humbled and honored to be part of that because he's going to make good on these promises of his first 100-day plan. You see the activity and the energy already, just as president-elect and vice president-elect, and it's a very exciting time.
And I want to give a shoutout. I talked today on the phone for half hour with Valerie Jarrett, and I really appreciate the kind of counsel that I'm getting personally and others on the team are receiving from President Obama's administration and its officials. It's very helpful for us to talk to people who are actually there.
BOLLING: All right. Kellyanne, we're going to -- we're going to leave it right there. I'm going to tell you, I'm going to miss you around the neighborhood. I used to drive around and see Kellyanne and her -- and her beautiful family...
CONWAY: Oh, we're keeping our house here.
BOLLING: Kellyanne...
CONWAY: Well, come and visit.
BOLLING: Thank you. I will. I'll come visit you in D.C. Thank you very much.
Coming up -- after another stunning attack in Europe, the world is on edge, and President-elect Donald Trump is promising a new approach to fighting radical Islamic terror. Former New York City mayor Rudy Giuliani is here with reaction.
And later...
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
PRESIDENT-ELECT DONALD TRUMP: To protect our country from terrorism and extremism, we will suspend immigration from regions where it cannot be safely processed or vetted.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
BOLLING: Donald Trump is promising extreme vetting of refugees from countries with ties to terror. And now Wisconsin governor Scott Walker is asking the president-elect for more control of allowing refugees into his state. Governor Walker joins us later, along with Dr. Sebastian Gorka.
That and a whole lot more as "Hannity" continues.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
(NEWSBREAK)
BOLLING: Welcome back to "Hannity." Following another major terror attack in Europe, the world remains on edge and the Trump presidency couldn't come at a more critical time for the country.
Joining me now with reaction is former New York City mayor Rudy Giuliani. Mayor, thank you for being here. A lot going on in the world. It's a scary place lately.
RUDY GIULIANI, R-FMR. NEW YORK CITY MAYOR: Well, you know, it's been this way really for the last year. San Bernardino was about a year ago, remember, right before Christmas. Since San Bernardino, we've had more radical Islamic terrorist attacks than at any time since September 11. The number is beginning to become almost exponential.
And I think some of it has to do with the fact that we just haven't faced up to the fact that they're at war against us. I think somebody today in - - I think it was in Germany said we've got to recognize they're at war against us. So if they're at war against us and we're not at war against them, they're winning.
(LAUGHTER)
GIULIANI: So I think -- you might remember that when Donald Trump criticized NATO, all the emphasis was on the money they don't contribute. One of the things he said is NATO has not put together an anti-terrorism force. Within two months, they did. And it isn't quite what it should be. I think Donald Trump will make that force a much bigger force. And I know all throughout the campaign, he would talk about that.
In many ways, he's been prophetic about the fact that Europe has not paid enough attention to terrorism.
BOLLING: Well, let's talk a little bit about that. Now, you know, I think the numbers are somewhere around 1.4 million refugees have gone to Europe, 750,000...
GIULIANI: There's another place where he was right.
BOLLING: ... in Germany alone...
GIULIANI: There's another place where he was right and Angela Merkel was wrong. And of course, the whole world criticized him, and he turned out to be absolutely right.
BOLLING: Drudge has a big picture on there -- on his headline today with Angela Merkel with blood on her hands. What did she do wrong? What lessons can we learn in America that he has -- Iraq is -- mistakes she's making now?
GIULIANI: Well, you don't let large numbers of people in from a part of the world where there's a tremendous amount of terrorism. It's just common sense! Here's a hotbed of terrorism. Here's a hotbed of people who are planning to come and kill you in your own country. To make it easier, they even warn you that they're going to do that because Baghdadi said, I'm going to slip in terrorists with the refugees. He told us! We didn't even have to think about it. And we let them in anyway.
So as Donald Trump used to say before he came president-elect, it was stupid. It was just stupid.
(LAUGHTER)
BOLLING: This made the Germans -- they initially had a guy that they thought was the terrorist. It turns out it wasn't the terrorist because they have some rule that you can't keep someone more than a day...
GIULIANI: Right.
BOLLING: ... unless you have probable cause to keep them. Are they too politically correct?
GIULIANI: Well, she -- probable cause is a criminal concept. It comes out of -- I mean, in America, it would be the 4th Amendment, probable cause for arrest. We're at war! You don't need probable cause to hold somebody during a war. Suspicion is good enough during a war.
So we're playing -- they're playing by war rules, and the Obama administration has us playing by criminal justice rules. Well, we're going to lose that. And we are losing it. That's why we've had so many attacks in the last year. You just add them up -- San Bernardino, Orlando, Nice, Paris, Germany a couple of times, the priest who had his head chopped off. I mean, I can go on and on.
BOLLING: Mr. Mayor, how do you extreme vet someone when you don't know what their past is? A lot of these people are coming over -- we -- they have no past! There's no school records. There's no criminal records. There's no work records. They're coming over and saying, Hey, I'm here. Help me out.
GIULIANI: When you come from a certain part of the world like Syria -- let's make it really simple -- the burden has to be on you to prove that you're safe. The burden can't be on me to prove that -- that -- that you're not.
This isn't -- this isn't a trial. This isn't a criminal proceeding. And you have no right to come to the United States. The United States Constitution doesn't give anyone in this world the right to come to the United States. That's a privilege that we extend to you. So we have a right to condition that privilege on things that insure to our safety, rather than to create dangerous situations for the world.
So if you can't get the information, person doesn't come in. Extreme vetting means you search the documents, you're sure they're safe, you let them in. If you can't find a record of safety, you don't let them in.
BOLLING: (INAUDIBLE) just go to Mexico? Why don't they just find their way through South America straight up to our border?
GIULIANI: Well, unfortunately, some of them do. And that's the reason why the wall has to be built and the extra protection has to be put there, including the electronic surveillance -- the wall by itself is going to need electronic surveillance below ground and aboveground, more border patrol. That's the reason we have to do these things.
Everything Donald Trump ran on is actually happening. NATO has to increase its emphasis on terrorism. It's got to modernize and increase its emphasis on terrorism. And we should build a safe zone in Syria and keep those people in Syria.
BOLLING: Are they here, Mr. Mayor? Are the terrorists here?
GIULIANI: Well...
BOLLING: In other words, if they've had such an easy go either through the border or through the refugee system, are they just waiting and waiting and -- what can Donald Trump do with the ones that have already come over here?
GIULIANI: Well, if Jim Comey is right -- to talk about a different subject for Jim Comey, which is the number of terrorist investigations in the U.S., about four or five months ago, he said there were 1,000. That's a lot of investigations.
I mean, I spent 17 years in the Justice Department, 1,000 investigations is a lot of investigations. I think he has got to sit down and figure out what are the rules of engagement here? Are we going to play this like this is one crime after another after another after another, or are we going to wake up and realize this is a war?
If somebody, God forbid, in the name of jihadism bombs an American city, to me, that person's a prisoner of war. That person is not a person who is going to be indicted under the criminal justice system.
BOLLING: And meanwhile, we're letting go -- President Obama announced he's going to let go some more Gitmo terrorists. Let me ask you this. Put a number on this. After 9/11, you were there. We hardened a lot of our targets. Give us -- on a scale of one to ten, how safe were we on 2 -- in 2 -- September 2002? Just give me a one to ten number.
GIULIANI: Seven.
BOLLING: Where are we now?
GIULIANI: Six, five.
BOLLING: So we're worse off than we were...
GIULIANI: Oh, no, no. We are definitely worse off...
BOLLING: ... 14 years ago.
GIULIANI: ... than we were before September 11 just by the nature of the groups that we're facing. We were facing one large group, al Qaeda, located largely in a few places where we could find them and put them on the run.
Just look at between September 11 and Ft. Hood, there was no domestic Islamic terrorist attack. Under Obama, when we decided we weren't at war anymore, but they didn't decide they weren't at war anymore, we've had -- look at what we've had in the last year.
BOLLING: Six, five.
GIULIANI: Yes.
BOLLING: All right, we'll leave it right there, maybe on a happier note.
GIULIANI: I wish Trump were in the White House right now. I think the response would be quick, swift, and he'd quickly turn it around to our being at war against them and using different rules.
BOLLING: He's already said -- he's already used the term "Islamic terror," something we haven't heard from the White House in eight years.
GIULIANI: Yes.
BOLLING: Thank you, Mr. Mayor.
Coming up next right here on "Hannity"...
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
TRUMP: To protect our country from terrorism and extremism, we will suspend immigration from regions where it cannot be safely processed or vetted.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
BOLLING: President-elect Donald Trump is calling for extreme vetting of refugees from countries with terror ties. Earlier today, Governor Scott Walker sent the president-elect a letter asking for more control over who comes into his state. Governor Walker and Dr. Sebastian Gorka will join us next.
And later, President-elect Donald Trump and Bill Clinton are exchanging words as the former president continues to complain about the election results. Laura Ingraham will be here to weigh in.
That and a whole lot more as "Hannity" continues.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
TRUMP: To protect our country from terrorism and extremism, we will suspend immigration from regions where it cannot be safely processed or vetted. You know, I've used the expression "extreme vetting!" Extreme -- oh, it's going to be extreme!
(END VIDEO CLIP)
BOLLING: That was President-elect Donald Trump during his thank you tour promising extreme vetting of refugees from countries with ties to terror. Today, Wisconsin governor Scott Walker sent a letter to President-elect Donald Trump asking for his state to have more authority over deciding the amount of refugees to accept.
Joining us now to explain more is the man himself, Governor Scott Walker. Thank you for joining us. Governor, so what exactly do you want states, Wisconsin, and every state, frankly, to be able to do?
GOV. SCOTT WALKER, R-WIS.: Well, it's all about safety. We want to know who's in our state, particularly if they're refugees coming from places like Syria, where we know the Islamic State has a known presence. We don't want to have happen, sadly, what we've seen happen many places throughout Europe. We want to know the people have been properly vetted, and we don't have that under the Obama administration, and I believe confidently we're going to have that when Donald Trump's the president.
BOLLING: So it seems so logical, to let a state decide who's coming into the state. Why is that? Is this just an Obama policy and it would be as simple as a policy change for President Donald Trump to fix, or is it -- is it have to go through legal machinations?
WALKER: Oh, I think it's something can be done quite simply. I know last year, we were talking with the president's secretary of Homeland Security - - and I know there's a lot of frustration amongst the governors, not just amongst Republicans. Overwhelmingly, obviously, it's Republican governors we were upset. But even some Democrats were upset that they didn't even know who was in their state.
And when you think about it, this is not just people coming in from Syria. These are refugees. They're defined -- a refugee is someone who's eventually going to go back to their country of origin. I think the whole idea is ridiculous that we're not working with our allies in the Gulf region to make sure that -- a lot of those folks would be better suited going to some of our partners, some of our allies in the Persian Gulf area so that eventually, when things improve, they can go back there.
They're coming to the United States, chances are they're not going back. That defies the definition of a refugee. But even for those who legitimately are seeking asylum here, we can't -- under this current administration, we can't distinguish between those who might want to do us harm and those who legitimately want to get away from the problems they see...
BOLLING: So how -- how...
WALKER: ... in the Middle East.
BOLLING: How does it -- how does it work? Tell our audience who it works. Do the feds coming and say, Hey, you know, you're going to have, I don't know, 3,000 refugees who are seeking asylum from various countries coming to Wisconsin, we're placing them there?
WALKER: They're not even -- they're not even as candid as that. For all the talk and hype about what they do out there, you find out after the fact. The states don't have any real ability to have any real control over who's coming in or even knowing until they start -- sometimes, you actually hear about it as a governor in the media before you even find out about anything via the government at the federal level.
That's just absolutely wrong. It's wrong from the safety standpoint. I just spent -- about two weeks ago, I was in Afghanistan and Kuwait, the United Arab Emirates and Germany, talking to our service men and women, and I know the threats are real. I saw it very vividly in places like Afghanistan, where there's more than 20 different organizations that want to do Americans harm through terrorist-related groups, radical Islamic terrorism groups.
BOLLING: So...
WALKER: We know they're all over the world, and the last thing we is people in without vetting them and knowing that they're going to be safe for our families and our citizens.
BOLLING: Sure. And so governor, and so let's say a neighboring state like Illinois has a wide open, policy, We'll take as many as you want to give us, you're bordering Illinois. What's to stop a refugee to settling in Illinois and next year, move up north to Wisconsin?
WALKER: Well, that's the problem with this. The federal government isn't doing their job. One of the core elements of our federal government -- there shouldn't be many. I'm one of those people who think the federal government should be fairly limited. The powers should flow back to the states, and more importantly, back to the people.
But protecting us, protecting our borders, protecting our country through our military, protecting our national security should be one of the primary roles of the federal government. And they're failing it right now because we don't know whether they come to Wisconsin, Illinois, or anywhere else -- we don't know that there's sufficient vetting being done to ensure that these people are not radical jihads...
BOLLING: Yes, it's like...
WALKER: ... who are going to do us harm.
BOLLING: It's a big issue we have with Europe. When they go into one country, they can travel freely to another country, only on state level here.
Governor Walker, thank you for joining us. Keep us abreast of what's going on with that initiative.
WALKER: Merry Christmas to you and your viewers.
BOLLING: You, too, Governor, and everyone in Wisconsin.
Joining us now with reaction is the author of "Defeating Jihad," Dr. Sebastian Gorka. Dr Gorka, you just heard Governor Walker saying, Hey, I want a say in which refugees or any are coming into my state. This seems so logical. Why is the Obama policy just put people in where they want to do it?
DR. SEBASTIAN GORKA, AUTHOR, "DEFEATING JIHAD": I can't agree more with the governor. How outrageous. Are we not a republic made up of states? What is this that the federal authority can do whatever they wish, willy- nilly, placing people that we know, according to the director of the FBI, cannot be adequately vetted across the nation?
Not only that, let me add one more outrageous aspect to the way the Syrian refugee crisis has been dealt with. Once the federal authorities that cannot physically cannot vet these people adequately, hands over these individuals who have been given refugee status by Washington to the local charities that place them into American society, at that point the federal authorities are not allowed to know where those people live, only the charities that have placed them into the local communities. That is the recipe for disaster, Eric.
BOLLING: Travel freely as you say, they're not allowed to track them.
Doctor, so ISIS has said infiltrate the American refugee system, get our fighters in there through the refugee system. Do you think right now currently there are ISIS fighters, jihadists, within our refugee system, people we've taken in?
GORKA: Without a doubt. Look at what happened in Europe. Individuals with asylum status, refugees who had asylum status in the European Union executed attacks in Europe in the last two years, that is just a fact. The reality is that when you're coming from a warzone, unless we have the time to vet you with in depth counterintelligence interrogations, we don't know who you are, because Assad isn't going to give us the data to check who you are. As a result it is impossible to verify exactly your intentions.
So ISIS has said, we will use the refugee streams. Of the 400 plus terrorist cases that have been prosecuted in America in the last 15 years, more than half of them involved people who were not born in the United States, many of them who were immigrants or people who had refugee status. These are just the facts, Eric.
BOLLING: No, you touched on something very important. The federal government, the feds, are not allowed to track the refugees once they're placed. What do you mean they're not allowed?
GORKA: They're not allowed to know where these people -- so once the dossier gets -- once they've been picked, yes, you're an asylum seeker, yes you're a refugee, they've been approved by the federal government, and then a charity takes over. Often a campaign --
BOLLING: But why aren't they allowed?
GORKA: Sorry. Privacy rights of people who aren't Americans, Eric. This is the absurdity. This is the same reason that was given as to why the Facebook page of somebody like the San Bernardino killer, the woman who came on a fiance visa, why her Facebook page which had jihadist material on it could not be accessed, could not be read by a federal government employee because that could have been impinged her privacy.
BOLLING: Privacy rights of people who aren't American, and frankly we're having a hard time vetting. Dr. Gorka, thank you very much.
GORKA: Thanks, Eric.
BOLLING: Coming up, Donald Trump and Bill Clinton are in a war of words after the former president took a shot at the president-elect. We'll tell you what they're now saying, and Laura Ingraham will be here with reaction, next.
Plus --
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
TRUMP: I am asking Congress to support the construction of new roads, bridges, airports, tunnels, and railways all across our nation. We're going to do it.
(APPLAUSE)
(END VIDEO CLIP)
BOLLING: President-elect Donald Trump is vowing to fix America's crumbling roads and bridges as a new report says he's putting together a task force to help build his campaign promise. Former governor Mike Huckabee is here with reaction, that and more as "Hannity" continues.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
JACKIE IBANEZ, FOX NEWS CORRESPONDENT: Good evening, and live from America's news headquarters, I'm Jackie Ibanez in New York.
ISIS now claiming responsibility for yesterday's Christmas market attack in Berlin, Germany. Twelve people were killed, 50 injured when a truck driver slammed into the busy downtown market. German police are still hunting for the driver right now. They arrested a Pakistani man who matched witness descriptions but released him because there wasn't enough evidence to tie him to the rampage.
A brush fire burning dangerously close to home in Simi Valley California. Firefighters from both Ventura and Los Angeles counties fighting the flames which have burned more than 60 acres tonight. No evacuation orders have been issued and so far, there are no reports of injuries or damaged homes. It's not clear yet what sparked the brush fire. California has been plagued by severe drought.
I'm Jackie Ibanez. Now back to "Hannity." For all your headlines logon to FoxNews.com.
BOLLING: Welcome back to "Hannity." The election is over and the inauguration of President-elect Donald Trump is just a month away. But former president Bill Clinton is still making excuses for his wife's devastating defeat. Watch this.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
FORMER PRESIDENT BILL CLINTON: And she prevailed against it all, but, you know, in the end we had the Russians and the FBI, we couldn't prevail against that.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
BOLLING: The former president echoed those excuses to a local newspaper, saying that Trump, quote, "doesn't know much. One thing he does know is how to get angry white men to vote for him." Clinton also said that he received a cordial phone call from Mr. Trump after the election. The president-elect responded on Twitter writing, quote, "Bill Clinton stated that I called him after the election. Wrong. He called me with a very nice congratulations. He doesn't know much, especially how to get people, even with an unlimited budget, out to vote in the vital swing states and more. They focused on the wrong states."
This prompted a response from Bill Clinton who tweeted, quote, "Here's one thing that real Donald Trump and I can agree on -- I called him after the election."
Joining me now with reaction is Fox News contributor and editor in chief of Lifezette, Laura Ingraham. OK, Laura, it's funny the back and forth on the tweets and all, but it really started with president Clinton blaming everyone accept Hillary for her loss. He blamed the Russians, he blamed the phony e-mail scandal, he blamed Comey, he blamed everybody except her lousy candidacy.
LAURA INGRAHAM, EDITOR IN CHIEF, LIFEZETTE.COM: The amazing thing about that is Bill Clinton should really know better than to make that angry white male comment. I mean, he was governor of Arkansas. I mean, he's a good ole boy originally from Arkansas. He should know better.
Hillary Clinton made that catastrophic mistake with her "irredeemable and deplorable" comment. And now Bill Clinton comes out after the election, after the Electoral College, and makes that really bitter statement. That's the kind of thing that got them in trouble during the campaign.
And it really -- it's odd because he usually has better judgment than that. He actually has a better, I think, sense of the people of this country than his wife did, certainly. He's obviously a two-term president. But it doesn't win them any friends, certainly doesn't win them anymore support. So I find that really, that's odd. It's kind of sad actually for Bill Clinton as sadness goes for someone worth $175 million.
BOLLING: Do you know what else he forgot? He also forgot that he called ObamaCare a crazy system with a couple weeks left before the election. That didn't help either.
INGRAHAM: He also said that Obama, Obama the candidate in 2008 was, what did he say, one of the biggest fantasies ever. He trashed Obamacare. He at various times stepped in it during the campaign season early on for Hillary Clinton. He became in a way too big of a personality. People said over-shining her -- overshadowing her at some point.
And at this point again, it's sour grapes, and it's everything but what they need to do. What the Democrats need to do is figure out why the middle class white voter is leaving the Democrat party. And instead, they come out and Bill Clinton comes out and says well, he got a bunch of angry white males to vote for him. If you're a white middle class guy and you hear that, why are you ever going to vote Democrat again?
BOLLING: And this narrative it seems to be expanding. They want to keep on barking up this tree. MTV, I don't know if you saw it today, they had a video out with New Year's resolutions for white guys.
INGRAHAM: Oh, yes. Well, they're pushing the race narrative again because it allows them to avoid the conversation that they need to have amongst themselves and with the mirror. Everyone's to blame except in the man in the mirror.
Again, if you want to tell all white voters that they're bad people, they're dumb, they're a bunch of troglodytes, they're not smart, they're anti-intellectual, I guess you could do that. That to me seems like a really dumb political strategy and it's really mean. So there's the tolerant ones, they're the nice people, they like children, puppies, and lollipops on all the trees, but at the bitter end they are about identity politics, Eric. They're about dividing this country, and they're still doing that in the aftermath of the shocking defeat of Hillary Clinton. It's mindboggling.
BOLLING: And it's not working for them. Now the Republicans have the White House, Republicans have 52 senators, they have the Senate. They've got somewhere around 65 advantages. They have 31 governorships across the country and they're expanding. It doesn't look like whatever identity politics game they've been playing for years is working.
INGRAHAM: It doesn't work, and beyond that, looking to the midterm election cycle, they have an enormous number of seats to defend. And if Trump starts improving the country, the policies start being enacted, the economy continues to grow, I don't know where they're going to go with this argument.
I'm just trying to look practically going forward. It seems to me that they have to go back to the rustbelt on say, we heard you. We're going to tailor our policies and our message to your pain and we're going to focus on advancing the interests of all Americans, but especially those in the middle and the working poor that have been left behind. And that's what we're going to focus on. To me, that would be a better strategy for them.
BOLLING: It should be tailored a little bit more specific. We blew you off, we lost, now we're hearing you, maybe we'll fix this going forward.
Quick comment about a minute or so. Michelle Obama saying hope is leaving the country just as her husband and she are leaving the White House.
INGRAHAM: It's how she began. She began in the campaign of 2008 talking as for the first time as an adult she's proud of her country, and she seems to identify national pride with how she and her husband are doing. That's an odd thing to do. If you're successful, then you love the country. If you're unsuccessful or people don't buy into your policies, then you're not excited about the country or you're not hopeful.
And she said, Eric, if we don't have hope, what do we have? I'll tell you a couple things we have. We have our freedom. We have our independence. We have our founding documents. We have our representative democracy, and we have our faith. Sometimes it's hard to have hope, yes, for sure. A lot of people were demoralized in 2008 and 2012. But guess what. We have a lot to be thankful for and grateful for in this country regardless of what the political climate is. And that was another, that was a sad, sad moment, I think for Michelle Obama. And it's probably not the best way to end her time as first lady.
BOLLING: Laura Ingraham, thank you. We're going to leave it right there. We agree with you on all that stuff.
INGRAHAM: Merry Christmas, Eric. You did a great job this year.
BOLLING: Laura, Merry Christmas to you too. Did I say it loud enough. Merry Christmas to you too, Laura Ingraham.
INGRAHAM: You did a great job this year, Eric. You gave really, honest analysis and really on-target analysis when so many people were wrong. So hats off to you.
BOLLING: Thank you, and it goes right back at you as well. Thank you, Laura.
Coming up right here next on "Hannity."
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TRUMP: I am asking Congress to support the construction of new roads, bridges, airports, tunnels, and railways, all across our nation. We're going to do it.
(APPLAUSE)
(END VIDEO CLIP)
BOLLING: President-elect Donald Trump vows to fix America's crumbling roads and bridges. The Washington Post is reporting that the president- elect is working to create a, quote, "infrastructure task force" to get the job done. Former Governor Mike Huckabee is here with reaction, that and a whole lot more as we continue.
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(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
TRUMP: Another critical element of our jobs pledge is a historic $1 trillion investment in our crumbling infrastructure. Our infrastructure is going to hell. Our bridges are deficient. Our roads are in disrepair, and our airports are like third world countries.
I am asking Congress to support the construction of new roads, bridges, airports, tunnels, and railways, all across our nation. We're going to do it.
(APPLAUSE)
TRUMP: And we're going to build it on time, on budget, not for three times what it's supposed to cost.
(APPLAUSE)
(END VIDEO CLIP)
BOLLING: That was President-elect Donald Trump promising to rebuild America's infrastructure, and today, The Washington Post is reporting, quote, "President Donald Trump is preparing to create an infrastructure tasks force that will help carry out the ambitious federal spending program he intends to undertake upon taking office."
So what would this task force look like and how should fixing our infrastructure be paid for? Joining us now, former 2016 GOP presidential candidate, former governor Mike Huckabee. Good to have you. So Mr. Trump wants to spend I think he wants to spend over $1 trillion. First of all, you like the idea of spending $1 trillion, and then again, we got to get to this, how are you going to pay for it?
MIKE HUCKABEE, R-FORMER ARKANSAS GOVERNOR: Let's first talk about the fact that we really do have probably $2 trillion to $3 trillion in total needs that have been identified by Civil Engineers of America. And I know that sounds like let's just go spend a bunch of government money. But Eric, in some cases it's the government that has to spend the money to build things like roads and bridges and airports, water and treatment plants.
And here a fact. If you build roads, for every $1 billion that you spend in building a road, a highway, you put 7,900 people to work at the job site. If you start adding the indirect jobs, you're talking about 16,000, 17,000 more jobs. So the best way to get people off of government support is to give them a job. The most effective way to put people on a job is to do infrastructure jobs because it's the one thing you cannot outsource. You cannot say, China, build me a road and ship it over. You cannot do that.
BOLLING: So how do we pay for it? There's been some ideas floated, you increase the gas tax, slap a gas tax on because a lot of the infrastructure are going to be the roads and bridges used by the people who are driving, or do you use some other for a tax?
HUCKABEE: I think it's a combination of several things. For example, one thing Donald Trump has talked about is repatriating a lot of the money that corporations of parked overseas to protect it from the very onerous tax code. And he's talking about allowing it to come back to the U.S., maybe a 10 percent tax to bring it back. What if you can get all the tax off of that by investing it in infrastructure bonds? Safe bonds, good way to pay for it. When I was governor that's one of the things we did. We rebuilt our entire interstate system. We did it under budget, ahead of schedule, did it without long term debt.
Here's another factor. What about taking a lot of the extraordinary federal land that we have, putting it in private sector hands? And I'm not talking about selling off Yellowstone Park. I'm talking about the millions of acres that we have in many western states. It's not on the tax rolls. The federal government has kept an enormous amount of land that's not in protected forests or parks. It's just land. Using that in another way, putting the mineral rights up, for example.
BOLLING: That's a great way to do it as well. There are vast amounts of developable energy sector, you can drill, you can frack. And those are on federal lands. And you take some of those fees and apply it to infrastructure. Mike, $1 trillion, over what period of time?
HUCKABEE: We can look at a 10-year period, maybe looking at a five-year period. The needs are urgent. And one thing about infrastructure, Eric, that a lot of people may not understand -- for every year that you wait, you're adding great cost to the project.
For example, if you have a road that is in bad shape and you wait three years, now it's in worse shape and what would have cost $5 billion will cost $7 billion, $8 billion, $9 billion. So really there is no benefit to holding off on getting some of these things done.
BOLLING: Governor, thank you for explaining that with us tonight, thank you very much.
Coming up, tonight's "Question of the Day." Stay with us.
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BOLLING: Welcome back to "Hannity." Time for tonight's "Question of the Day." Do you think states should have more control over admitting refugees? Head over to Facebook.com/SeanHannity and Twitter and let us know what you think.
And that is all we have time for this evening. I'll be back tomorrow night filling in for Sean. Don't forget to catch "The Five" every week night at 5:00 p.m. eastern. We'll see you back here tomorrow night.
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