This is a rush transcript from "Hannity," December 12, 2016. This copy may not be in its final form and may be updated.
SEAN HANNITY, HOST: And welcome to "Hannity." So after President-elect Donald Trump's decisive victory, all of a sudden, hacking now matters to those sore liberals on the left and the Obama administration and of course, the never Trumpers. And that's tonight's opening monologue.
All right, so tonight we have John Bolton, Newt Gingrich, Rudy Giuliani. They'll all join us.
But first, you saw over the weekend The Washington Post, The New York Times, two abusively biased liberal mainstream media outlets, publish stories saying that the CIA, without any concrete or new evidence, they now think that Russian hackers tried to help Donald Trump win the election.
Now, President-elect Trump reacted to these reports on "Fox News Sunday." Take a look.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP, "FOX NEWS SUNDAY" )
PRESIDENT-ELECT DONALD TRUMP: I think it's ridiculous. I think it's just another excuse. I don't believe it. I don't know why, and I think it's just -- you know, they talked about all sorts of things. Every week, it's another excuse.
If you looked at the story and you take a look at what they said, there's great confusion. Nobody really knows. And hacking is very interesting. Once they hack, if you don't catch them in the act, you're not going to catch them. They have no idea if it's Russia or China or somebody. It could be somebody sitting in a bed someplace. I mean, they have no idea who it was.
CHRIS WALLACE, HOST: So why would the CIA put out the story that the Russians wanted you to win?
TRUMP: Well, I'm not sure they put it out. I think the Democrats are putting it out because they suffered one of the greatest defeats in the history of politics in this country. And frankly, I think they're putting it out.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
HANNITY: So this morning, President-elect Trump tweeted, "Can you imagine if the election results were the opposite and we tried to play the Russian/CIA card. It would be called a conspiracy theory!" which, by the way, it is.
Now, the president-elect, he's absolutely right about this. Now, earlier today, Clinton's campaign manager, John Podesta, he said that Electoral College electors have the right to see intelligence on potential Russian hacking before they vote on December 19th, one week from today. Now, can you imagine if the tables were turned and it was Donald Trump's campaign trying to do this? The left would go nuts!
Now, before we get into the blatant hypocrisy on this issue, let's set the record straight. Let's lay the foundation. The left's recount scheme failed and failed miserably. So now they're going to blame the Russians. They'll blame hacking. Now, there's no smoking gun. What we are now seeing is President Obama, the Democrats -- they're trying to politicize this issue to try and hurt and delegitimize Donald Trump.
Now, according to a new report, the FBI is now reaching a much different conclusion than the CIA on all of this because they have not found conclusive evidence that Russia was actually trying to help Trump win the election. And government officials, they're now saying that the CIA's assessment of what happened isn't as clear-cut and definitive as what the liberal mainstream media is telling you and reporting.
So in other words, there is no consensus between the FBI and the CIA. And according to The New York Times, there's no new information, intelligence or evidence from the CIA's investigation into these allegations.
So then why is this all of a sudden a big story? Now, the DailyBeast is also reporting that there's a revolt going on inside the CIA. Why? Because employees, quote, "hate Trump's guts" and they don't like his national security adviser nominee, retired Lieutenant General Michael Flynn.
And then you have "Never Trumpers" like Senator McCain and Lindsey Graham. Well, they're joining Chuck Schumer for a, quote, "bipartisan investigation" into the so-called hacking when we have no new information, nothing new from before the election.
Now, we shouldn't be surprised by any of this. Why? Because they all have one thing in common. They hate President-elect Trump.
Now, if all these people care so much about these Russian allegations, then why didn't they feel the same way about Hillary Clinton's private server scandal and the great threat that that posed to our national security? You may remember when the FBI Director James Comey, said there was little doubt that foreign actors gained access to Hillary Clinton's emails. Remember this?
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP, JULY 5)
JAMES COMEY, FBI DIRECTOR: We did not find direct evidence that Secretary Clinton's personal email domain in its various configurations since 2009, was hacked successfully. But given the nature of the system and of the actors potentially involved, we assess we would be unlikely to see such direct evidence. We do assess that hostile actors gained access to the private commercial email accounts of people with whom Secretary Clinton was in regular contact from her personal account.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
HANNITY: Ah! And don't forget Director Comey, he said Clinton's private server was less secure than a Gmail account. And according to Bret Baier's reporting from November -- remember? -- authorities believed there was a 99 percent chance that up to five foreign intelligence agencies may have accessed Clinton's server and taken emails.
So where was the great outrage from the left that is all up in arms now? And if they're so concerned about interference and influence, why didn't they care about the media and their collusion with the Clinton campaign? Remember WikiLeaks? Well, they exposed how the mainstream media was caught red-handed. What were they trying to do? Influence the election, help Hillary Clinton win, including interim DNC chair Donna Brazile leaking debate questions to the Clinton campaign. How about doing an investigation into that? How did they help Hillary cheat?
Now, liberals in the media, well, they've also been pushing the idea that Russia used Julian Assange to try and impact the election and gave WikiLeaks access to John Podesta's inbox. Now, Assange has said that Russia did not give him the emails. And when I interviewed Julian Assange on my radio show, here's what he told me about the Democrats pushing a connection to Russia.
(BEGIN AUDIO CLIP, "THE SEAN HANNITY SHOW," SEPT. 8)
JULIAN ASSANGE, WIKILEAKS: The Democrats are always speaking about how terrible McCarthyism was. And it was in many ways. But at least the USSR actually existed then and there were actually Russian influence campaigns in the United States which were serious.
What we're seeing now is Hillary Clinton and her campaign trying to whip up a near-McCarthyist hysteria where she claims -- she claims that, effectively, Donald Trump is an agent to the Russians, that WikiLeaks is an agent to the Russians.
So what do we have here? We have -- let's look at it objectively. We have the ruling party's preferred successor running around calling the opposition leader, in fact multiple opposition leaders and the critical press, foreign agents.
HANNITY: By the way, isn't that the very --
ASSANGE: Terrible, terrible climate to commit (ph).
(END AUDIO CLIP)
HANNITY: All right, let's concede. Julian Assange is a controversial guy, and a lot of people have very strong opinions about him. All right, so let's put that aside for now. What Assange has done is he has exposed to America that we have a major cybersecurity problem. Obama could have fixed this eight years ago. It's a problem that President Obama has done nothing to fix.
And in the past couple of years alone, well, government agencies like the Office of Personnel Management, the IRS, the Department of Defense, the State Department, the White House have all been hacked, and the list goes on and on and on.
So where was the outrage from Obama and the left on that? There wasn't much, and now they're up in arms over allegations of hacking because they lost an election, so they want to delegitimize the guy that won.
Well, let's keep in mind that while Democrats fire up their fake moral outrage machine, well, what are we going the do about it now?
Here with reaction, Fox News contributor John Bolton. Good to see you. There's no new information. We knew it all ahead of time. The FBI and CIA disagree. Nobody showed any outrage -- you know, WikiLeaks goes back 10 years. They haven't done anything to fix -- he hacked into NASA and the DOD when he was 16 years old.
JOHN BOLTON, FMR. U.S. AMB. TO U.N., FOX NEWS CONTRIBUTOR: Yes. Look, the director of national intelligence, James Clapper, said conveniently in early October that he assessed that it was the Russians that had hacked into the DNC a month before the election. It's one of the quickest consensuses to form within the intelligence community ever.
And so now when you have Obama saying, Let's have a report, by the way, before I leave office, on this, it makes me nervous, given over eight years of politicization of the intelligence community by the Obama administration.
HANNITY: This is important, what you're saying. For example, do you remember when the CIA -- And I want to make a distinction. I love our intelligence officials, the guys on the ground. They risk their lives for their country and I love them. But other officials at the CIA -- they did alter officially the talking points for Benghazi. They bought into a narrative.
They never talked to the guys on the ground in Benghazi. And they did alter those talking points and they did buy into the false narrative that it was spontaneous, as if people had RPGs and mortars in their back pocket and just decided spontaneously to pull them out.
BOLTON: Yes. I can't underline enough from my own experience in government how shocked I was to hear the CIA was writing talking points for members of Congress on this issue to begin with.
HANNITY: Right.
BOLTON: It's one thing to supply the information. Intelligence is not a block of granite. There are facts and then there is analysis. And the analysis is open to interpretation by anybody who's involved in it.
My concern is here is that when you have this kind of controversial subject, the risk of politicization is very high. And let's also be clear, whether it was Russia or China or whoever it was who hacked into the DNC and the RNC, it followed years, years of hacking into the government, private sector with no response, effectively, by the United States.
HANNITY: So in other words...
BOLTON: They thought they could get away with it.
HANNITY: ... this is selective moral outrage in your opinion?
BOLTON: Yes. This is the last event that happens to fit into a narrative about Hillary Clinton's defeat. Where was all the outrage when China, for example, took hundreds of thousands, maybe millions of personnel records from the federal government and lifted them and sent them to Beijing? This is the sort of thing -- it's no wonder that people thought they would get away with it because the Obama administration had downplayed the damage that was being done for years.
HANNITY: I had people abusing me because I changed my position on Julian Assange in this way. I said, He's done America a favor. He's exposed that we have no cybersecurity. That give us a chance to fix it. And he also exposed how corrupt government is. I know you have not been a fan of his. But shouldn't we have learned 10 years ago to fix it?
BOLTON: Well, unfortunately, Bradley Manning and Edward Snowden also exposed the problems. We do have problems with security if these guys can take the material they did out there. So I think as we look at who did this, I think it's very important that we do have an open discussion.
HANNITY: Right. I want...
BOLTON: The reason I've raised the possibility of a false flag operation, that it was people planting evidence to point their finger at Russia, is there may be somebody else with stakes here. And if I could just say -- I have not believed and have never said it was the Obama administration that did that.
HANNITY: Right.
BOLTON: I think it was potentially another foreign government. And nobody's ever explained really why they are so certain it's the Russians.
HANNITY: All right, John Bolton. I hope you end up serving in the Trump administration. I think you'd be a real asset to the country. I won't ask you if you're involved. Nobody gives me a straight answer anyway!
(LAUGHTER)
BOLTON: And I wouldn't have, either. But thank you very much.
HANNITY: All right. Good to see you.
And coming up, former speaker of the House Newt Gingrich -- he's here to react to the, quote, "Russian hacking hysteria."
And also tonight...
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
TRUMP: He's in charge of an oil company that's pretty much double the size of his next nearest competitor. It's been a company that's been unbelievably managed.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
HANNITY: That was President-elect Donald Trump talking about ExxonMobil CEO Rex Tillerson. Now, sources tell Fox News that President Trump -- or President-elect Trump is expected to maybe pick him for secretary of state. There's some mixed messages coming out. On Friday, former New York City mayor Rudy Giuliani pulled his name out of consideration for any Cabinet post. He'll tell us why, and much more straight ahead.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
(NEWSBREAK)
HANNITY: And welcome back to "Hannity." Joining us now with more reaction to the liberal hypocrisy over Hacking is the author of the best-selling book "Treason," former Speaker of the House, Fox News contributor Newt Gingrich.
You also are coming out tomorrow with a brand-new book on Trump, right?
NEWT GINGRICH, R-FMR. HOUSE SPEAKER, FOX NEWS CONTRIBUTOR: Yes, we have a new book that's an electronic book on electing Trump. And I'm also tomorrow giving a speech at Heritage on the principles of Trumpism and how dramatic a change it's going to be for America. So very exciting time for us.
And this is, by the way, about as stupid as...
(LAUGHTER)
GINGRICH: ... and anything I've seen the left try.
HANNITY: I tried to say that, but you said it better!
GINGRICH: No, think about it. Barack Obama is now saying that his administration was so incompetent that they stood around sucking their thumb while the Russians snuck in and hacked into an American election because of the utter incompetence of the Obama defense system.
Now, I don't know why one would want to go make that case. I happen to believe Obama is amazingly incompetent about national security, but he's basically making the case that they now have to investigate whether or not the Russians hacked in despite the Obama national security system.
And we're now supposed to believe the guys who failed are going to tell us why they failed because it was the Russians who did it because they were too stupid to protect the system. I mean, this whole thing will go down -- this would be a parody, it would be a comedy if it was a movie.
HANNITY: If Trump did this, this would be labeled what it is, a conspiracy theory. You know, think about this. So we had before the election Project Veritas exposing Democratic officials wanting to incite violence to impact an election. We also had, of course, media exposed colluding with the Clinton to impact an election and helping her cheat, going into town halls and debates and asking questions of the DNC that they could bury Trump with.
And I'm thinking nobody cared about any of that hacking or 99 percent certainty that foreign intelligence agencies got into Hillary's e-mail server. That didn't bother anybody, either! What is your reaction to the hypocrisy? You're laughing.
GINGRICH: Well, I have a whole new theory. No, here's my new theory, that they're right, the KGB did it, even though they've been gone for 20 years. The KGB came and they convinced Hillary to set up a truly stupid secret server. They then convinced Hillary to eliminate 33,000 e-mails and they then convinced Hillary to lie about the rest.
So it's not Hillary's fault. It's not Bill's fault. It's not the Democrats' fault. In facility, it's a secret...
HANNITY: It's George Bush's fault!
GINGRICH: ... Russian agent who undermined Hillary's ability to do anything competent. But she would have been a great president except for the fact that this Russian kept manipulating here.
HANNITY: OK...
GINGRICH: I mean, how do you -- how do these people live with this stuff?
HANNITY: There is zero -- understand, since before the election, zero new evidence, not one bit, not one iota. At the end of the day -- the CIA, the FBI disagree on the interpretation. The only thing that's shifted is they took the same information they had way before the election, and they put a new spin on it to politicize it.
And the media is falling all over themselves when they didn't care about Hillary's e-mail or their collusion.
GINGRICH: Remember, this is the perfect example of what I'm starting to call the propaganda media rather than the news media. The propaganda media tells you whatever they need to tell you for their left-wing values because they can't stand the truth.
HANNITY: Do you...
GINGRICH: And so rather than covering the new president -- I mean, look how well Trump was received at the Army-Navy game. Look at the outpouring of affection and enthusiasm. Well, if you are the propaganda media, that drives you crazy and you've got to grab something to try to smear him, so they do.
HANNITY: Well, I don't know what to make of all of this except to me, it's about delegitimizing Trump. Now, when I said a while back -- I made the statement that Julian Assange has done America two favors. He has exposed beyond any doubt we don't have any working cybersecurity, and that gives us an opportunity to fix it. Number two, he exposed just how deeply, fundamentally corrupt not only the DNC is but also America's news media. And he's done us a favor -- probably inadvertently, but it's been a favor. And they've done nothing in all of that time to fix it.
So if there was any influence, who would get the blame? I would argue Obama since Wikileaks now has been out there 10 years.
GINGRICH: Look, I don't -- but let's be really clear. I don't believe that the Russians carried Pennsylvania. I think Donald Trump did. I don't think that the Russians carried Wisconsin. Donald Trump did. I don't think the Russians carried Michigan. Donald Trump did.
The problem the left has is they cannot come to grips with the reality that the American people are turning against them, that the American people defeated them. And frankly, if the election were held today, the margin would be bigger because people have now begun to realize that Donald Trump is not in any way the kind of things that The New York Times and The Washington Post said he was.
HANNITY: He's not the caricature that they tried to paint leading up to the election. But the country -- we really do need to wrap our arms around cybersecurity. And probably the person...
GINGRICH: Absolutely.
HANNITY: ... that put us in most jeopardy was Hillary. And when there's a 99 percent chance that at least five foreign intelligence agencies hacked into her top secret special access programs on her server that was in a mom and pop shop in a bathroom closet, you know, maybe they should have shown a little concern about that, too, but they didn't.
GINGRICH: Well, look, I mean, that's the tragedy of this whole thing. What it does is it trivializes the serious. There were really serious security problems. There would normally be, I think, jail time for things on this scale. And only her political nature has saved her from going to jail.
HANNITY: That might change. We have a new...
GINGRICH: Really, people need to confront how serious it was.
HANNITY: Look, it's not Donald Trump's call. I know he said he doesn't want to bring any pain to the Clintons, but won't that be the decision of the Justice Department...
GINGRICH: Sure.
HANNITY: ... our incoming attorney general, not -- it won't be Donald Trump's decision, will it.
GINGRICH: Absolutely. No. And then the new attorney general may decide to appoint an independent counsel so there's no question of any kind of political agenda. But I think it's ironic for The New York Times and The Washington Post, they can't cover this things that are real so they have to make up junk in order to hide behind the noise.
HANNITY: Well said. All right, Mr. Speaker, good to see you. Thank you for being with us.
And coming up next tonight on this busy news night on "Hannity"...
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
TRUMP: He's in charge of an oil company that's pretty much double the size of his next nearest competitor. It's been a company that's been unbelievably managed.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
HANNITY: Sources telling FOX News that President-elect Trump will pick the CEO of Exxonmobil, Rex Tillerson, to be his secretary of state. We'll get reaction from former New York City mayor Rudy Giuliani. You might recall, last week he took his name out of consideration for a cabinet spot. He did this on Friday. So what does he think of Trump's potential pick?
And also tonight...
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: We're talking about a candidate who's lost in a historic way in terms of the popularly vote, but clearly won in the Electoral College. Is this something of a national emergency?
(END VIDEO CLIP)
HANNITY: Yes, CNN in a state of national emergency in terms of being unhinged with their biased coverage. We'll ask Monica Crowley and Doug Schoen coming up straight ahead.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
HANNITY: And welcome back to "Hannity." So sources have confirmed to Fox News that President-elect Trump will nominate ExxonMobil CEO Rex Tillerson to be his secretary of state.
Now, while a formal announcement is expected later this week. Trump had this to say about Tillerson during his interview on "Fox News Sunday." Take a look.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
TRUMP: He's much more than a business executive. I mean, he's a world- class player. He's in charge of, I guess, the largest company in the world. He's in charge of an oil company that's pretty much double the size of his next nearest competitor. It's been a company that's been unbelievably managed.
And to me, a great advantage is he knows many of the players and he knows them well. He does massive deals in Russia. He does massive deals -- for the company -- not for himself, for the company.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
HANNITY: Joining us now is former New York City mayor Rudy Giuliani. Mr. Mayor, Good to see you.
RUDY GIULIANI, R-FMR. NEW YORK CITY MAYOR: Good to see you.
HANNITY: OK, your name was bantered (sic) about for a long time. No decision was coming, and what, about a week and a half ago, in reality, it wasn't announced until last week, you pulled your name out of consideration.
GIULIANI: Yes, I think it was the 28th or 29th of November, I gave the president-elect a letter saying that I didn't want to be considered for a federal appointment. It seemed to me he had a number of candidates. They were all very, very qualified. Any one of them could have done the job really, really well. John Bolton was on the list at that point, and I guess John was probably my favorite.
HANNITY: I think you and John together would have been a great team. That's my opinion.
GIULIANI: And I have a lot of obligations in my own private law practice, private consulting firm that I just had to make a decision...
HANNITY: Yes.
GIULIANI: ... that I just couldn't wait around, you know, two or three weeks.
HANNITY: But you talked about it with him at some point.
GIULIANI: I did, when there was competing decisions between a number of different people. I could see this is going to be a hard decision for him. I thought I'd make it easier for him by just pulling out.
My objective in joining his campaign -- and you know this because we talked about it...
HANNITY: Right.
GIULIANI: ... was for America. Now, I may be romanticizing it, but I believe helping to save America from becoming socialist and becoming a second-rate or...
HANNITY: Well, America is in a precipitous decline...
(CROSSTALK)
GIULIANI: ... a power that was no greater than anyone else. I want an ascendant America. I want an America that is exceptional. I want an America that is the leader of the world. And that's why I supported Donald Trump, the only reason. I didn't want a job. I love what I do. I love my law firm. I love my consulting firm...
HANNITY: Yes, listen...
GIULIANI: ... going to -- going to Poland for...
HANNITY: You're going to make a lot more money doing what you do...
(CROSSTALK)
GIULIANI: ... two or three days this week. I just got the award from the Colombian government, the Colombian embassy for reducing crime in Medellin by 48 percent...
HANNITY: The media went out to attack you early, the fact that you have a business. Like, I understand -- let's use Colombia. You were hired as a consultant based on all of your success in New York.
GIULIANI: By the defense ministry of Colombia.
HANNITY: Right, to lower crime.
GIULIANI: And my firm was paid to lower crime in Medellin, and crime is down by 48 percent in Medellin. I suspended it when I was going to run for possible secretary of state, but now...
HANNITY: Or you were going to put your name under consideration.
GIULIANI: But now -- but now we'll go back, and we'll get do Cali and we'll do Bogota and we'll get paid for it. But...
HANNITY: Yes.
GIULIANI: We get paid for our services. I don't lobby. I don't use influence. I do hard work, sometimes dangerous work. We were in Qatar.
HANNITY: Medellin is bad. Medellin is tough. So is Qatar.
GIULIANI: How about Guatemala where I've done work and El Salvador where I've done work.
HANNITY: With the guerillas and the fighting.
GIULIANI: FARC has a contract out to slit my throat for the work that I did in Columbia which is one of the reasons I got the award. I also was in Qatar, and they made that a big deal. I was in Qatar. I was in Qatar during the war when Qatar had 35,000 American troops in Qatar. And the government wanted the city to be made safer for among other reasons, the protections of our troops.
HANNITY: What do you think of Tillerson?
GIULIANI: I think he obviously has worldwide experience. I think his knowledge of Russia will be enormously valuable to the president-elect. I can't speak about him. I don't know him.
HANNITY: You don't know him.
GIULIANI: I know Donald Trump and I know he makes excellent choices. I think he's made some remarkable choices in the cabinet. And I'm part of the transition team, and I can tell you the transition team is way ahead of any other administration in history.
HANNITY: Where are you --
GIULIANI: And vice president Pence gets credit for that as well.
HANNITY: Pence is solid as a rock.
GIULIANI: Boy, does he run it well.
HANNITY: What do you make of, oh, the Russians hacked and tried to influence the election when nobody cared -- first of all, the CIA and FBI disagree as we've been discussing. On second thought, nobody cared about Hillary and the fact that 99 percent certainty that five intelligence agencies --
GIULIANI: I think it's been politicized way beyond the way it should be. First of all, this investigation should be done quietly. It should be done by professionals. There shouldn't be a battle between the CIA and the FBI --
HANNITY: Embarrassing isn't it?
GIULIANI: -- over it. I do cyber-security for a living, so I have a pretty good sense of, look, they can hack anything they want if they want to hack it.
HANNITY: That means we need to fix it.
GIULIANI: But also I've seen the statements that have come out of the government that there is no indication that it affected the election in any way --
HANNITY: There's no new information.
GIULIANI: -- in any way possible. Nor do I see a way in which they could really have had an effect on the states that turned out to be the states that were the crucial states. So I think in terms of the election results, this sounds more like a political issue. If we're talking about hacking as a general issue, we sure as heck have to catch up. I mean, the Obama administration has left us a disaster. Look at the OPM hack where background checks, FBI background checks --
HANNITY: Released.
GIULIANI: This is what I'm going to devote most of the rest of my life to, which is to try to figure out a much better solution to hacking. I do it all over the world and I work a lot with Israel. And in Israel they have a special place where they do research on how to defend against hacking, and they're the best, the very best.
HANNITY: A friend of mine from Israel, he has a different phone number every day with encryption and all sorts of technologies that we should have here.
GIULIANI: You should see the technologies. They're great. And the thing is to then do that and have your phone number changed, but have it done automatically so your phone number never changed but it really changed.
HANNITY: It's amazing.
GIULIANI: It sounds a little strange, but it can be actually done.
(LAUGHTER)
HANNITY: We're going to have you on I'm sure a lot throughout -- they're going to be brutal to Trump. They want to take him out. Nobody is listening.
GIULIANI: I've never seen anything like this.
HANNITY: It's going to get worse.
GIULIANI: We never saw anything in the election like we saw. Why are we surprised?
HANNITY: I'm not. All right, good to see you.
GIULIANI: Good to see you.
HANNITY: Up next, tonight on this busy news night here on "Hannity."
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
BRIAN STELTER, CNN CORRESPONDENT: We're talking about a candidate who's lost in a historic way in terms of the popular vote but clearly won in the Electoral College. Is this something of a national emergency?
(END VIDEO CLIP)
HANNITY: CNN with their alt radical left insanity and their biased anti-Trump coverage. We'll check in with Monica Crowley, Doug Schoen, they're next. Later I go one on one with Geraldo about immigration and the crisis in the country, straight ahead.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
HANNITY: And welcome back to "Hannity." So many liberals in the mainstream alt-left media, they continue to try and discredit president-elect Donald Trump and his victory. Yesterday CNN's pipsqueak Brian Stelter, he raised this question about possible Russian interference. Watch this.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
STELTER: Here's something I've been asking myself. Julia, we're talking about a candidate who's lost in an historic way in term of the popular vote but clearly won the Electoral College. Is this something of a national emergency? Interference in an election, is this a crisis and a national emergency?
(END VIDEO CLIP)
HANNITY: The Keith Olbermann wannabe. While those at CNN continue to question November's free and fair election results, liberals over at the The New York Times, they're welcoming a new reporter to their team, Glenn Thrush. Of course you might remember he was the guy, the former Politico so-called journalist who was outed by WikiLeaks for sending the Clinton campaign articles for approval before they were actually published.
Here now with reaction, Fox News contributors Doug Schoen and Monica Crowley. I mean, It's the perfect marriage. You've got the "The New York Times," they gave approval to Hillary, Glenn Thrush did. Perfect marriage.
MONICA CROWLEY, THE WASHINGTON TIMES: We've known that the elite left wing media has been biased for decades, Sean. But what made this election cycle so different was that they ratcheted it up to another level. They opposed Donald Trump ideologically. They opposed Donald Trump personally. So not only do they hate him because he's not one of them, he's not an elitist, but also they fear him because what Donald Trump has promised and what we have seen so far in terms of his cabinet picks is that Donald Trump is promising and is going to deliver a complete reordering of the existing system. He's going to come in and smash the way things are done, not just diplomatically, not just economically, not just politically and culturally, but with the press as well. And so not only do they oppose him ideologically, but now they are terrified that he's going to strip their power away.
HANNITY: Let me play some of the comedians, those that have left wing opinions, Doug. None of them saw this coming. You are the only Democrat that I know that said he's got a good shot to win and Hillary better take it seriously. They didn't listen to you. But these people, they were so arrogant. They thought they had this figured out. Take a look.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIPS)
SETH MEYERS, COMEDIAN, APRIL 30, 2011: Donald Trump has been saying he will run as president as a Republican which is surprising because I just assumed he was running as a joke.
JOHN OLIVER, GUEST HOST, "THE DAILY SHOW"/COMEDY CENTRAL, AUG. 5, 2013: Do it. Do it. Look at me. Do it.
(LAUGHTER)
OLIVER: I will personally write you a campaign check now on behalf of this country, which does not want you to be president but which badly wants you to run.
BILL MAHER, HOST, "REAL TIME"/HBO, JUNE 19, 2015: Which Republican candidate has the best chance of winning the general election?
ANN COULTER, COLUMNIST: Of the declared ones, right now Donald Trump.
(LAUGHTER)
REP. KEITH ELLISON, D-MINN., "THIS WEEK"/ABC, JULY 26, 2015: This man has got some momentum, and we better be ready for the fact that he might be leading the Republican ticket.
GEORGE STEPHANOPOULOS, HOST: I know you don't believe that but I want to go on.
(LAUGHTER)
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Sorry to laugh.
PRESIDENT BARACK OBAMA: "President Obama will go down as perhaps the worst president in the history of the United States! exclamation point," @RealDonaldTrump.
(LAUGHTER)
OBAMA: @RealDonaldTrump, at least I will go down as a president.
(APPLAUSE)
(END VIDEO CLIPS)
HANNITY: And it goes on. But now he's the president-elect. Now they're trying to take away his legitimacy.
DOUG SCHOEN, FOX NEWS CONTRIBUTOR: And here's what I say. Look, I am a mainstream centrist.
HANNITY: You're a Democrat.
SCHOEN: Yes. I was going to say a former advocate, ally, and supporter of the Clintons. But this is silly. And I'll tell you why. Donald Trump is the president-elect of all of the United States, that's Democrats, Republicans, independents. And what is so sad to me is that the bias that Monica speaks of is all too apparent. We need to pull together behind our president. We have serious global challenges, serious domestic challenges. Let's give the guy a chance to get inaugurated.
HANNITY: First it was the recount, now you go John Podesta out there, oh, the Electoral College members have a right to know. Isn't this all about taking away legitimacy, the very thing she excoriated Trump about?
CROWLEY: Absolutely. This is about delegitimizing Donald Trump as a person and as a president, delegitimizing his election, and therefore delegitimizing everything that he subsequently does as president. Doug speaks and is the exception to the rule in the Democratic Party. The far left, which is driving all of this, they are at war. They're at war not just with the Republicans and the conservatives. They're at war with the very foundation of the country, Sean.
HANNITY: I agree with you. But Doug, I've been saying this. It's going to get worse. I promise you.
SCHOEN: All of us, because we're not born as Democrats and Republicans. We are Americans.
HANNITY: I came out of the womb a conservative. I did.
CROWLEY: So did I.
SCHOEN: I was brought up in the Eisenhower-Johnson period to be focused on America.
HANNITY: I agree with you.
SCHOEN: And you know what? We all lose if this war continues.
HANNITY: It's going to get continue. It's going to get worse.
SCHOEN: I hope Donald Trump governs as he has been making a --
HANNITY: He's reached out to people. I would not have the graciousness, I would not be as magnanimous as he's being, let me put it that way. Monica would. I wouldn't.
(LAUGHTER)
SCHOEN: All I can say, Sean, is I am hoping and praying that from January 20th on we can all cross the aisle and do what we all --
HANNITY: I go to break real quick.
CROWLEY: The single most effective thing he can do to silence his critics is to get a booming economy going.
HANNITY: Well said.
SCHOEN: Monica could not be more correct.
HANNITY: I 100 percent agree.
SCHOEN: It's about jobs and the economy.
HANNITY: Very well said. Good to see you.
And up next tonight right here on "Hannity."
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
TRUMP: On immigration we will build a great wall.
(APPLAUSE)
TRUMP: And we will put an end to illegal immigration.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
HANNITY: The president-elect, he vows to fix our broken immigration system, and it couldn't come at a more critical time. New report out that shows ICE spent more than $110 million just transporting illegal immigrant children around the country over the last couple of years. I'll have a one-on-one debate with Geraldo up next straight ahead.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
TRUMP: On immigration we will build a great wall.
(APPLAUSE)
TRUMP: And we will put an end to illegal immigration. And we're going to have people come into our country, hundreds of thousands of people. We want them to come in because we're going to have big, beautiful doors in that wall. But they're going to come in legally, through a process legally.
(APPLAUSE)
(END VIDEO CLIP)
HANNITY: President-elect Donald Trump promising to build a border wall, to put an end to illegal immigration. Trump's promises couldn't come soon enough. According to Immigration Reform Law Institute, Immigration and Customs Enforcement, they spent more than $100 million of your dollars to transport illegal immigrant children around the U.S. in just the past couple of years. Also according to reports, the border patrol, they have been forced open a new shelter in Texas because of the large number of people flooding across the border.
Here with reaction, Mr. Open Borders himself, Fox News, what? Did you vote for Trump? I want to know.
GERALDO RIVERA, FOX NEWS SENIOR CORRESPONDENT: I will tell you this, that I totally blame this problem with the flood of undocumented immigrant children on Vladimir Putin and the KGB.
(LAUGHTER)
RIVERA: It's the Russian hackers have done it.
You know, the world is in flux right now. There are 65 million people estimated by the United Nation to have been displaced by their country for one reason or another. The ones we know about obviously Syria and Afghanistan and Eritrea.
HANNITY: I want to help them. I'd like a safe zone, food, water, medicine, supplies, baby formula.
RIVERA: But why don't we propose something like that in Latin-America also?
HANNITY: I have no problem.
RIVERA: Here you have places that have more murders per capita, places like Honduras and Guatemala than they do --
HANNITY: Guatemala, Medellin.
RIVERA: Why don't we -- Columbia I think has healed itself in an admirable way. But I think that we should pay more attention to the economic well- being and the law and order aspects of Central America.
HANNITY: With that said, I agree, and I want to be compassionate. I don't think victims of civil war, for example, in Syria, we can send food, water, medicine, supplies, baby formula, secure an area for them. That would be the right moral thing to do. But we've got to build a wall, we've got to protect our own borders because it's costing us trillions in dollars. We've got to eliminate criminal alien aliens. You want them out too, right? Every one of them.
RIVERA: I think that Trump is -- we're in line with each here in terms of priorities.
HANNITY: That means you voted for Trump?
(LAUGHTER)
RIVERA: You made me lose my train of thought.
HANNITY: Good.
RIVERA: Here you have a situation where you have tens of thousands of children being rush across the border. Ironically, something bitter irony is why are they coming now? Why were there 45,000 last month as compared to a year ago? They're coming because they fear the wall. They fear that the wall will start construction on January 20th and they won't be able to come and go the way they have been for decades.
HANNITY: How about, let's build a wall. If you have a leaky boat -- wait a minute. You're a boater, right?
RIVERA: Yes.
HANNITY: If you have a leaky boat, what's the first thing you do? You plug the hole. You plug the hole, and then we'll deal with the criminal aliens, and then we'll go from there.
RIVERA: My beautiful 11-year-old, she said daddy, why don't we have a wall? Don't countries separate themselves with walls? This is an 11-year- old saying that. I said, you know, honey, that is why I don't really object to the wall anymore. If you want to build a wall, like I said build a wall.
HANNITY: Finally. It's taken years.
RIVERA: But I just don't think that that is the solution to the problem.
HANNITY: What are you going to say? Hannity, you're right. You've been right the whole time about the wall. And I voted for Trump. Did you vote for Trump?
RIVERA: Hannity, the wall is a nonissue. As far as I'm concerned if you want to spend valuable infrastructure dollars to build it, build it.
HANNITY: I've got to go. Geraldo wants me fat. He gave me a big box this big full of chocolate for Christmas.
(LAUGHTER)
HANNITY: Thank you.
RIVERA: Thank you.
HANNITY: Coming up, we need your help. An important "Question of the Day" straight ahead.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
HANNITY: Time for our "Question of the Day." So is all the talk about Russia interfering in an election, an attempt by the left to undermine and delegitimize Donald Trump's victory? Go to Facebook.com/SeanHannity, @SeanHannity on Twitter, let us know what you think.
That is all the time we have left this evening. As always, thank you for being with us. See you back here tomorrow night.
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