Nigel Farage: Manchester blast 'marks a new low'

This is a rush transcript from "Hannity," May 22, 2017. This copy may not be in its final form and may be updated.

SEAN HANNITY, FOX NEWS HOST: And welcome to "Hannity," and this is a "Fox News Alert." Nineteen are dead, around 50 injured during an Ariana Grande concert in Manchester, England. Police are currently treating this incident as an act of terrorism and they are expected to hold a news conference this hour.

Authorities are advising people to avoid the area around the arena, and the train station that is nearby is also closed. Concertgoers describe hearing a loud explosion or explosions as the event ended, causing a massive panic. And one eyewitness is saying that he saw people lying on the ground covered in blood.

New video appears to capture sound of this blast. Listen.

Joining us now on the ground via the phone is Daily Mail reporter Jake Wallis Simon is with us. Sir, how are you? Welcome to the program. Can you tell us the latest?

JAKE WALLIS SIMONS, DAILY MAIL (via telephone): Well, the latest is, you know, on the ground that 19 people have been confirmed dead and 50 people have been confirmed injured. This is a very, very high death toll indeed. We haven't seen an attack this bad in The United kingdom since 2005, 12 years ago, when 52 people were killed in a coordinated spate of suicide bombings across London.

Now, this evening at the moment, things are calm here at the scene. There's a sense that things are more under control. There's almost an eerie feeling in the air because you just know how much suffering is going on behind closed doors here. In the Manchester Royal Infirmary, the hospital just a mile away from the scene here, and also in various hotels around about the scene...

HANNITY: All right, Jake, if I may interrupt you, sir, for one second, the press conference starting. Let's go to that.

MANCHESTER POLICE: ... an explosion at Manchester Arena in the city center. This was at the conclusion of the Ariana Grande concert.

Currently, we have 19 people confirmed to have lost their lives in the explosion and around 50 casualties that are being treated at six hospitals across greater Manchester. My thoughts are very much with those who have been injured and lost their lives and their loved ones at this terrible time.

We are doing all that we can to support them. Officers from Greater Manchester Police and emergency services are working at the scene and are supporting those affected. We are coordinating the operation here at Greater Manchester Police headquarters.

An emergency number is available for all those concerned about their loved ones or anyone who may have been in the area. The number is 01-61-856-9400.

We are currently treating this as a terrorist incident until we have further information. We are working closely with National Counterterrorism Policing Network and U.K. intelligence partners.

This is clearly a very concerning time for everyone. We're doing all that we can working with local and national agencies to support those affected as we gather information about what happened last night.

As you will understand, we are still receiving information and updates so we'll provide further detail when we have a clearer picture. I want to thank people for their support and ask them to remain vigilant, and if they have any concerns at all, to report them to the National Anti-terrorist Hotline. The number is 0800-789-321.

It is important also for people here in Manchester avoid the area around Manchester Arena so that emergency services can continue to effectively deal with the incident at that location.

Thank you very much.

HANNITY: It appears that ends the press conference, Manchester, England, Sky News covering it. And as we've been talking about here, we're now following everything we've been reported now seems to be confirmed at that press conference. They gave out a number for people that are in Great Britain to call if they have any information that they can share with the police there.

Joining is now with the very latest, our own Trace Gallagher. He's in our West Coast newsroom tonight -- Trace.

TRACE GALLAGHER, FOX CORRESPONDENT: It's kind of fascinating, that news conference, Sean, of what he didn't say, which was pretty much everything.

I mean, we have confirmed a number of facts, and all he really did was confirm that it was 19 dead and 50 injured -- yes, 50 wounded. That number, of course, may change.

But what he did not talk about and what U.S. officials have already confirmed to a number of media outlets is that this was, in fact, a suicide bomber that hit this arena, outside the arena of the Ariana Grande concert. That was talked about early on because we knew as the hospital reports started coming in, they saw wounded people coming in with shrapnel wounds, specifically nail wounds. So they figured this was some type of nail bomb device. And U.S. officials through U.K. officials have, in fact, confirmed this was a suicide bomber.

What you played at the top of the show, Sean, is fascinating because that was the explosion that was heard on that dashcam video. And what nobody understood was how he was inside his car, the dashcam facing it, and yet you could still hear the explosion very loud that we thought it initially was inside the building. You had witnesses coming out. Some of them were injured. And they all felt like they heard something. Or in fact, they did hear something. They felt some things. But nobody saw anything. There was no smoke seen inside the arena.

And then the reports started coming in that the explosion was in the foyer area, just outside in the hallway as people were exiting. And you had eyewitnesses saying that in that foyer area, they smelled smoke. They smelled kind of a gassy smell.

And then you had the arena officials coming out and saying that this was, in fact, outside the arena altogether, in the box office area that's between Victoria station and Manchester Arena.

For those who don't know the area, this is kind of one contiguous building. The train station kind of goes up into the arena. 21,000 people it seats. It's one of the biggest arenas in the U.K. And Ariana Grande among young people -- she is extraordinarily popular. This was packed, according to all accounts, with anywhere from 6-year-olds to 20-year-olds. That was the lion's share of the audience, mostly female.

And if you look on line now, if you look on social media, you see these heartrending pictures of missing children, of parents and families already posting their pictures of missing children as young as 6 years old. Again, we won't show them because it's unconfirmed if they are missing or if of hotels in that area that have taken in children who do not have or did not have parents waiting to pick them up at the time. So there's a good possibility that some of them were in those hotels.

And we should also point out that not only did the constable not talk about where the location of this attack was, there's been no at all of the breakdown on who was killed and who was injured, no ages given at all. We just know that one man who was probably the most -- the clearest eyewitness to date said that he was picking up his family, and he looked down the hallway and he saw a number of bodies lying there. And that's when the numbers started coming out, 19 dead, 50 wounded. And again, Sean, that might change.

But this is being looked at as terrorism right now, and it certainly has all the hallmarks, though there has been no call for responsibility as of yet -- Sean.

HANNITY: All right, Trace Gallagher joining us tonight.

As I said, the U.K. police are treating this event as a terrorist attack, a specific attack in this case that would be targeting children and young teenagers.

Joining us now, our reporter on the ground in Washington is our own Catherine Herridge, who has been in contact with our own Department of Homeland Security and has a report for us.

CATHERINE HERRIDGE, FOX CORRESPONDENT (via telephone): Thank you, Sean. A government official confirmed that the Homeland Security secretary John Kelly is monitoring the situation. He has been briefed. And we should expect a statement from the department in the very near future.

Government officials said they are working to assess what happened in Manchester, and they noted the following. They said if it is confirmed as terrorism, it is a level of sophistication beyond the recent U.K.-based plots that have involved knives and vehicles as weapons.

They also pointed to the reports of shrapnel as deeply concerning because this is another indicator of premeditation and a plot that may have been directed by a foreign terrorist organization.

Also reports of the explosion at an exit -- that's another indicator suggesting premeditation. Also, a closed space amplifies the concussive effect of the explosion, disfiguring impact of shrapnel and also maximizing casualties.

I asked them if there had been anything in the recent chatter. So this is the discussion through social media and in chat rooms amongst those who are sympathetic or followers of various terrorist groups. And they said it's been very steady among these Islamic terror cells. And the call has been to hit so-called soft targets, as well as civilians.

This person did not go as far as to talk about confirmation of a suicide bombing in this case, but just based on the open source media reports, it does suggest that's a strong possibility, Sean.

HANNITY: All right, Catherine Herridge in Washington tonight.

Joining us now, FOX News senior correspondent Geraldo Rivera, from the American Center for Law and Justice, Jay Sekulow, former FBI special agents Manny Gomez.

You know, it's very -- this is the first instance that I -- we know that children have been targeted. We know that children have been used as suicide bombers. We know that children have been indoctrinated. But a specific attack, in this case, as police in Great Britain are treating this incident as an act of terrorism targeting children and young teenagers, Geraldo.

GERALDO RIVERA, FOX CORRESPONDENT: You know, the first thing, Sean, when I heard this news, I did was to text my daughter, Simone, who was in the stadium in Paris...

HANNITY: I remember that night.

(CROSSTALK)

RIVERA: ... November 2015. And the feeling that a parent has when they don't know the fate of their child in one of these public venues that is under attack by vicious terrorists is indescribable. It's something I will never forget. I pity those parents now, those who don't know what is happening to their youngsters.

Ariana Grande, the former Disney star, clearly, her fans now middle teens, late teens. This was -- and most of them little girls. I mean, this takes a particular pervert, a real sickness that hatred is so vicious.

You know, and I understand, though, from the Sky reporter that they haven't had a major mass murder on the terror scale, but it was only in March they had the -- the guy in Westminster palace in London mowing down people, killing five or six. I don't remember the exact number before he was killed. They rounded up 10 people in the plot, many of them from Manchester, from this middle-sized northern English town.

It is -- it's horrifying. I saw a couple of tweets from groups purporting to be ISIS claiming credit. I don't know that that is confirmed yet, but this has all the hallmarks, particularly with the talk of a nail bomb...

HANNITY: You know...

RIVERA: ... designed to inflict maximum casualties.

HANNITY: Which is always the case.

Jay, I want to go you, especially -- I had prepared a show tonight before this act of terror, as they are believing it is, in Great Britain and police are investigating it as such, about a tale of two presidents. And that was Barack Obama's apology tour and specifically the speech in Saudi Arabia that Donald Trump gave this weekend where he framed this fight against ISIS.

And I'm going to give you a couple of quotes here -- and other terror groups -- as a battle between good and between evil. "A better future is only possible if your nations drive out terrorists and drive out extremists," he said. He said, "Drive them out. Drive them out of your places of worship. Drive them out of your communities. Drive them out of your holy land. Drive them out of this earth."

And then he said "deny all territory to the foot soldiers of evil." And then he went on to say, "It is a choice between two futures and it's a choice, this case, America cannot make for you. And he says, "Our friends will never question our support. Our enemies will never doubt our determination. We are not here to lecture," and he goes on from there.

I mean, if -- he understands the nature of this conflict, and this is the conflict that I believe, if the police are right, is on display here in England tonight!

JAY SEKULOW, AMERICAN CENTER FOR LAW AND JUSTICE: No, that's absolutely correct. And Sean, it was four years ago today that that British soldier was hacked to death by two Islamic terrorists in southeast London. ISIS utilizes dates as significant. So it was just four years ago today. Could it be chance? Yes. Most likely, it's not. These are planned.

The other thing is Geraldo said, the utilization of this type of device, which is reminiscent of what took place and has taken place in Israel, suicide bombers with the basically nails being shrapnel, has done unbelievable damage. They’ve confirmed already 19 dead and 50 injured. I mean, this is a serious, serious situation.

And then I'll take it a step further. What the president said is absolutely correct. And this means in the communities -- when he says in the places of worship, that means in the mosque! If someone is showing signs of radicalization, that community has an obligation at British citizens, or if they're in the United States, as Americans, to let authorities know. In the communities, if you see something, you've got to talk with the police, talk with Homeland Security, talk with the FBI.

The same thing is you're going to have to drive them out. This is -- this is good against evil, but Sean, look at the target here. The target here were young girls at a concert. These barbaric terrorists are convinced on doing one thing, one thing only, the destruction of Western civilization as we know it!

HANNITY: This is the caliphate...

(CROSSTALK)

HANNITY: All right, Manny, let me actually play the Trump speech from this weekend -- "Drive them out." It was beyond powerful, especially in light of what police are treating as an incident of terror tonight.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

DONALD TRUMP, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: It's a choice between two futures and it is a choice America cannot make for you. A better future is only possible if your nations drive out the terrorists and drive out the extremists. Drive them out! Drive them out of your places of worship! Drive them out of your communities! Drive them of your holy land! And drive them out of this earth!

(END VIDEO CLIP)

HANNITY: Manny, I'll say in -- considering the location of where he said that, compared to 2009 and Barack Obama -- by far -- and I know the liberal destroy Trump media tinfoil hat conspiracy theorists are not covering it to the extent they should have. Networks didn't even cover that speech! But he gets it. He has the moral clarity to understand the nature of this conflict.

MANNY GOMEZ, FORMER FBI SPECIAL AGENT: Absolutely. And he didn't sugarcoat it. And he said it in a venue that was very appropriate. He said in Saudi Arabia.

HANNITY: Appropriate and courageous.

GOMEZ: Appropriate, courageous...

HANNITY: Yes.

GOMEZ: ... and timely, given today's actions and given the actions that have happened in the world and the United States in the last few months. We've had attacks go on unchecked and without our leaders, our former leadership, saying much about it.

Now we have a leader that has come out in their territory and told their leaders, Hey, check yourselves.

HANNITY: Let me go -- Nigel Farage is joining us. Of course, he was one of the leaders of the Brexit movement and a personal friend of mine. And as the police I know in Great Britain are treating this as an incident, an act of terrorism, and as I mentioned and Geraldo mentioned, targeting young children, targeting young teenagers.

First, Nigel, as a dear friend, my thoughts, my prayers. And all of our prayers go out to you and our friends in Great Britain and England and Manchester.

And your thoughts on what's going on there and what you think this is and what it means.

NIGEL FARAGE, BREXIT LEADER (via telephone): Well, horrified. I think it marks a new low in terrorism, I mean, to willfully set out to kill and injure young girls. I think it's something when the nation awakes in the morning -- and don't forget, this news didn't really break until after midnight our time. I think the country's going to wake up and be very, very shocked indeed.

The fact that it happened outside London will also surprise people because we kind of think of terrorist attacks, whether it's the bombings on the underground or whether it's Lee Rigby, who was killed four years ago today on a London street -- so they'll be surprised that it took place outside London, in our second city of Manchester.

And also the fact that it took place in public space. That's going to worry people even more because what do you do? You can check bags going into the venue. You can scan people. But clearly, the way this suicide bomber planned this was to be in a place where he simply couldn't be detected.

And I have to say we are 16 days away from a general election in which open-door immigration and in which dealing with terrorism has to date not even been discussed. I think from tomorrow morning, it will be.

HANNITY: You know, Nigel, you and I had many discussions. And I know you supported President Trump when he was a candidate. And I know he's taken great fire and heat for wanting to protect America's borders, and of course, vetting refugees from countries whose values they grew up with directly contradict our constitutional values. I called it a clash of cultures.

If you grow up under sharia law, where men oppress women and gays and lesbians and Christians and Jews, we have a right to know if you want to bring those values with you, or if you want to assimilate into our societies. I've talked about the Islamization (sic) of Europe, and you have warned your friends here America that we are headed down the wrong path that you believe your country is headed down.

FARAGE: Well, one of the reasons Brexit, Sean, is that I made it very clear to the British people, when Angela Merkel invited a million people to come into Germany totally unchecked -- not a security check for a single one of them -- that ultimately, those people would be able to come to Britain because they get European passports. And it was one of the contributory factors to Brexit. I mean, I -- you know, we've got a problem in this country. I think the problem is even worse in France and in Belgium.

And one of the reasons that I wanted to support Donald Trump and I still very much do support Donald Trump -- and by the way, I thought that speech that he gave in Saudi Arabia was tremendous. I mean, he looked like a global statesman giving that speech.

HANNITY: He -- you know, I felt -- I felt for many years that Prime Minister Netanyahu was the lone voice of moral clarity on the world stage. I've even said during the Obama years he was the only adult on the world stage that understood the nature of this evil. And now it's clear that this -- that -- that the prime minister now has a partner.

And to target -- I mean, if you don't believe in evil, if you target children and young adults, I don't think there's anything more profoundly evil than that. And recognizing that truth and confronting it the way he did is so important, I believe, for the safety and security of good and free people around the world. And you're right, by allowing the Islamization (sic) of Europe and not checking people's backgrounds, once they get into Germany or France, they also get into the entire European continent.

FARAGE: Yes. I mean, we've -- we've with Brexit given ourselves a chance to deal with this, but we haven't focused too much of it so far in this election campaign. We will now start to have a proper conversation about it.

But my feeling is -- my feeling is that you in America have got a real opportunity not to make the same mistakes that so many countries in Europe have made. And I think you've got a leader. And yes, moral courage. You know, whatever people say about Donald Trump, you know, whatever way he might upset them sometimes, whatever fights he occasionally picks and you wonder why he did it, when it comes to the big stuff, Trump has got it absolutely right.

HANNITY: Nigel, our thoughts and prayers go out to you, my friend, and the people of Great Britain.

FARAGE: Thank you.

HANNITY: You have been a very good friend to the United States. We, I'm sure, will want to support you in any way we can.

Let me go back to Geraldo. In so many ways, you and I have had relatively minor conflict in regard to immigration. You now support a wall. You support a lot of these measures. You've got to admit, Geraldo, the conflict of civilizations -- if you grew up under sharia and you're a man and you can oppress women, and you do oppress women, you put gays and lesbians to death -- Christians can't build a church. Jews can't build a synagogue. It is a clash of cultures that is so wide and deep that we've got to admit a truth here!

RIVERA: Well, I totally agree with the major thrust of your remarks. I'm not going to quibble about my, quote, unquote, "support" for a wall. I've withdrawn my objection because I think the majority of people in the majority of states have spoken and...

HANNITY: Because I've influenced you over the years.

RIVERA: Well, I think...

HANNITY: No, I'm kidding.

RIVERA: ... that Trump has -- has accomplished without a wall -- what he needs to accomplish on the southern border is to it.

Four hundred foreign-trained, ISIS-trained fighters have left the United Kingdom to get trained in Syria and Iraq, and/or Iraq, to fight there, come back with those deadly skills, bring them home to the U.K. Many of them -- and this is what makes it so damnable difficult for investigators to see what's happening -- many of them leave the country and return because they are native-born, many of them Christian-born.

They leave the U.K. They say they're teaching English in Afghanistan or English in the Middle East someplace, when really, they're fighting for ISIS. They come back, they bring back these deadly skills, like the click that did that fatal mowing down of the folks in March near Westminster, where the British parliament -- native-born, Christian-born, converted to radical Islam. The attack in Mosul, a suicide bomb attack from a many by -- from Manchester in Mosul just recently.

What you have to watch -- and I think the key is when you see -- and kids that were usually in gangs or historically in gangs with guns and so forth are now becoming radical Islamists, and they use the jihad as the kind of context for their violence and their acting out.

HANNITY: Let me go to Jay...

RIVERA: And this was -- this was a vicious, low-down and dirty…

HANNITY: Jay, I want to be clear to our audience. Police are currently treating this as an incident or as an act of terror. We don't have full and complete knowledge of all the facts yet.

But there's been so many and it almost always turns out to be -- it's a perfect time, in light of the president's speech, to examine all of this. And I think we really need a reassessment as free people around the world, and that is to go exactly to the heart of what the president challenged the Muslim world to do on their own, to throw them out, to get rid of them or to drive them out of their places of worship, drive them out of their countries.

SEKULOW: Right.

HANNITY: No ground will we cede to them. And it's got to be treated as a cancer in human society.

SEKULOW: Sure.

HANNITY: You know, we're indoctrinating these kids, Palestinian kids, when they're 3! They're being taught to hate Jews and Christians and Americans.

SEKULOW: Yes. So this is the -- what the president did was lay out what should have been done over the last eight years, but President Obama just would not do it. And I don't want to politicize this, but when you have eight years of the vacuum that was created, no wonder, as Geraldo said, these cell groups metastasized. They went out for training and then came back in.

I mean, des anyone want to argue tonight that we shouldn't have an executive order restricting who's coming into the country so that we know who these people are? I mean, does anybody think that tonight? Does anybody want to argue that case tonight that we should not know from these particular countries of origin who these people are before we let them into the United States of America? I'd like to take on that argument!

But to the point you made -- this is a significant enough issue now globally. It's hitting everywhere. It's not just in the United States. It's not just in Europe. It is everywhere, that when you look at -- when the president says your places of worship, that means you got to go into the mosques and you got to root it out, into the communities, into those towns. If you see something, you go to report to the authorities.

But Sean, it's going to have to also include the Muslim community willing to do this because what's happened in Europe -- it's been a failed experiment. They allowed in this population. They allowed in sharia law as to be part of almost -- part of the culture within these communities. And it's one thing to respect somebody's culture, but it's another thing to allow them to violate the laws of your country. And that's what's happened her.

And we've got right now a situation where you've got an Islamitization of Europe that is significant. Obviously, we're seeing it in the U.K.. You're seeing it in France. You're seeing it in Germany. But let's not think we're not immune to it here in the United States because we're not immune to it.

The plan from the Islamists -- I said this when I wrote that book some four years ago now, three years ago, "Rise of ISIS," that this was the plan all along, to infiltrate and to inculcate these people and they'll do it to the youth. But here, as we've saying all night, they picked on young girls. That's who was the target of this concert, young girls.

HANNITY: But it's always been -- this...

SEKULOW: Of course!

HANNITY: Nobody seems to understand...

SEKULOW: This is nothing new.

HANNITY: ... the whole caliphate -- what the caliphate is. The caliphate is convert or die. The caliphate is a worldwide expansion. And you either accept their way or they will kill you. That's -- that's what it says! That's what the ideology is.

Look, hang on, Jay. Let me bring in now the editor-in-chief of Breitbart London, Raheem Kassam, who is with us. You know, all throughout human history -- I wrote a book in 2004 and the book was "Deliver Us From Evil." And I did a study and a research on Stalin and the gulags and Russia and Nazism and fascism and the killing fields in Cambodia, and in the last century, Raheem, 100 million human souls killed by evil! This is evil in our time!

And the two world leaders that are speaking out the loudest -- and he was alone for a long time -- were the prime minister of Israel, Benjamin Netanyahu, and now this weekend he has a president that has the same moral clarity as he does!

RAHEEM KASSAM, BREITBART LONDON: Absolutely. And you only have to look through social media tonight, Sean, to see that there are anti-Trump people out there in the media and in the comedy sphere who are actually making light of this attack in Manchester, in my home country, in one of the largest cities in my home country.

Here's the thing. We have to look at the indicators of this attack. We have to look at the style. We know the Islamic State has recommended to its soldiers around the world to use nail bombs, to use Molotov cocktails. We have to look at other indicators, such as populations around places like Manchester. And then I suggest we start looking up and down places like the United Kingdom all across Europe, as I recently did when I went on a tour of these infamous no-go zones, and look at what these Muslim populations are saying about the areas in which they are the majority.

They are claiming that those are Muslim areas now. They're not shy about it. And what does the Quran say? It says that driving the infidels, driving the non-believers out of Muslim areas, violence is perfectly acceptable in that regard.

So while we don't quite know yet -- we didn't hear much from the Greater Manchester Police earlier. While we don't quite know yet...

HANNITY: Oh, Raheem, I mean...

KASSAM: ... we can come to some serious conclusions here.

HANNITY: You know, it's funny because when I have studied the Quran and some of these controversial statements within it, I'm told that my interpretation is wrong, even though when you take the exact verbiage out of there -- and I'm willing to listen to those -- I've always felt there's been -- there have been those that have spoken out against evil in their religion.

With all due respect to the Saudis, where the president spoke this weekend, they have played both sides of the fence. They have treated women, they have killed -- horribly. They have killed gays and lesbians for no reason! They have persecuted Christians and Jews. And they are bigoted and they do not allow the free practice of religion or freedom of speech or equal rights to women, and what they do to gays and lesbians is evil in our time. They throw them off roofs and they hang them.

Now, I want them to take on their radical elements, but they also need to modernize. And we've got to demand that from them, as well.

KASSAM: But, Sean, for the last eight years you had the most supine, pusillanimous in chief, in Barack Obama. And his first speech in Cairo, you only have to look to that where he quoted the Koran three times totally out of context, totally using different translations in order to try and bend over before the Arab and Muslim world and really created the conditions around the world where radical Islam could spread very easily and where it was excusable around the world very easily. President Trump says drive them out, drive them out. In reality, European leaders, the British prime minister, needs to be looking at how we drive these people out of our country, full stop, let alone drive the extremist ideology out.

HANNITY: Raheem, please convey to all our friends in Manchester in England and all the victims and their families our deepest sympathies, our thoughts and prayers.

KASSAM: Absolutely.

HANNITY: Thank you for being with us. Joining us now is our own Shepard Smith. Shep will be picking up the coverage at 11:00 eastern tonight, 8:00 pacific as we go off the air. And Shep, what's the very latest?

SHEPARD SMITH, FOX NEWS CORRESPONDENT: The latest as we have it is forensic experts have been on scene, which is not surprising, really, Sean. Within about three hours after the attack, various reports we get indicate that it's very clear that forensic experts -- speaking of, this is American officials quoting their British counterparts, it's very clear that to them at least in the early going that was a suicide bomber. The wounds on the victims as reported from hospitals are shrapnel like wounds which would indicate that high temperature caused nails or whatever was in this bomb presumably to create what looks like shrapnel wounds on the victims.

And then the authorities who arrived there were able to discern that in their estimations, this was a suicide bomber in the early going, according to U.S. official, and many reports here in the United States indicated to them that this may have been a suicide bomber. But of course, nobody has claimed responsibility. There is no outright confirmation of terrorism.

HANNITY: Shep, let me interrupt you. What you are describing sounds a lot like the Tsarnaev brothers in the Boston Marathon with the pressure cooker that maximized the flow, if you will, the explosion and the expansion of the shrapnel that they had put in that bomb.

SMITH: I think one of the things that we can be sure of, Sean, that whoever did this, if in fact it does turn out to be a suicide bomber, had that person gotten into the arena and gotten in the middle of a bunch of people where it was concentrated people, it could have been -- it's a phrase I don't like to use. It could have been so much worse, especially when you're talking about 19 people killed and 50 injured here in the early going.

But this from all reports right now is this person didn't actually get it. We don't know why. Was it possible that security services stopped them? Sean, I spoke with two people live on air tonight who said, well, I had my bag checked. One woman told me I had to throw out a bottle. It sounds like security was strong enough to where maybe security kept whoever this was outside and this person waited for people to come out.

I spoke with person after person, Sean, who was a parent waiting for the kids to come out of there. And it was parents who saw the explosion or heard the explosion and ran in to get their kids with all these people injured and maimed around them. And just so thankful I think so many of them were that thisexplosion did not happen inside. There's nothing good from this, certainly. The only good thing might be is that this person wasn't inside amid tightly packed concert going. As you know, Sean, many of the age of your own children. And it's just a horrifying thing to think about.

HANNITY: Shep, what you're really describing here, as awful, as horrible, these numbers are awful and horrible and evil. You're right, inside this could have been 10 times what we see here. And again, the nature of evil and the threat in our time is monumental and must be dealt with. And by the way, Shep will continue his coverage tonight, 11:00 eastern, 8:00 pacific. Shepard Smith, thank you for joining us, appreciate it.

Geraldo, you wanted to weigh in?

GERALDO RIVERA, FOX NEWS SENIOR CORRESPONDENT: Just the fact that the explosion happened outside I think two things. One is remember that three suicide bombers at the stadium in Paris at that France versus Holland soccer game did not get inside either. Francois Hollande, the president of France, was inside, along with my daughter and her friends, of course. Many of the children were injured as they stampeded out after the fact. But the three suicide bombers were thwarted.

But what this can say, in terms -- if they are now targeting unprotected, open public spaces -- this really is the next frontier in the war -- in the --

HANNITY: I don't want to interrupt your flow, but we have seen this all throughout Israel. Pizza parlors, malls. We've discussed you and I on this program and privately, what's the next layer? It's going to be the Mall of America. We will wake up one day, simultaneous surface to air missiles taking out commercial airliners. We are not ready, Geraldo, in my opinion.

RIVERA: We're not. And look at the nut job in Times Square. I don't know what motivated him, schizophrenia or post-traumatic stress or whatever it was. But it could as easily have been an Islamic terrorist. People are vulnerable in open society. That's why it's a clash of civilizations. They want to shut down the way we live. They want to punish our civilians for what's happening in their countries. Even after we wipe out ISIS --

HANNITY: They want to convert you. They want you to convert, Geraldo, or die.

RIVERA: I think that that is definitely one of their fantastical notions.

HANNITY: You lost some friends on 9/11. I did. Manny, you lost friends too. And I think Geraldo is right. I interviewed Prime Minister Netanyahu the time before this most recent interview, and the last words he said in the interview to me, a preview of coming attractions for you, America. It was always said that Israel was the little Satan but that we are viewed as the great Satan. And obviouslyEurope is in the mix as well.

GOMEZ: Absolutely. And we are viewed as the great Satan because we are helping the little Satan protect their interests as well as our interests in that area. By the same token, we've just given a weapons deal to Saudi Arabia, over $100 billion. And so we need to hold them accountable to put their people under notice that their government will not accept anything.

HANNITY: Hang on. Manny, stay right there. We have Sky News has aired new video of this explosion at tonight's concert in Manchester. Listen to this.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

(SHOUTING)

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Oh, my god.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

HANNITY: Wow. That was extremely loud. Joining is now with reaction to that, FOX News national security expert Dr. Walid Phares. Dr. Phares, your reaction to our discussion and news out of Manchester tonight?

DR. WALID PHARES, FOX NEWS NATIONAL SECURITY EXPERT: Sean, the message here is very important to analyze. The individual or the team, the unit who perpetrated this horrible acts are really acting as a group that wants genocidal results, that these are killing, mass killing children. This tells me that the ideology behind it and the movement behind it, because this is not just an individual. This has been organized and been inspired by others, is an ideology and a movement who knows that now after Riyadh, after that address in Riyadh there is a rise of a worldwide coalition. They're trying to intimidate. They're going to tell us that they're going to continue to struggle not just in the Middle East but in Europe and even here in the United States.

HANNITY: You and I have discussed at length radical Islamic terrorism. And again, I want to be clear they are treating this incident as an act of terrorism. We haven't confirmed. Many experts I'm talking to believe that the fingerprints of the type of attacks that we have seen are very similar to what we saw in Manchester tonight.

And Walid, there's one other thing that President Trump said in Saudi Arabia. He said terrorists do not worship God, they worship death. Your life will be empty, your life will be brief, and your soul will be fully condemned. I don't know anybody that was as truthful, honest, and outspoken on this issue than the president bravely speaking out in Saudi Arabia.

PHARES: He needed to deliver that speech. Actually the past two presidents needed to deliver that speech since 9/11. Certainly not in the last eight years. But by addressing them with this clarity, he is now mobilizing them and also pushing them to be responsible. The next day, they said they're going to have an army of 34,000. These are the troops that we need in Syria, in Iraq, and maybe in Yemen and in Libya. But beyond that what is important is that for them to wage an ideological war.

This is where we need them. Yes, they launched this center of counter extremism, but they need to do more, to spend more on these issues, because the network we are facing is not just in the Middle East. It's now embedded in the west.

HANNITY: Jay Sekulow, I'll bring you back in if I may. And again, we go back to those statements. Those are pretty strong, powerful statements, and probably the only person I know that has come close to it with that moral clarity that I discussed is the prime minister of Israel.

JAY SEKULOW, AMERICAN CENTER FOR LAW AND JUSTICE: I think it's very much the same kind of approach and that is you've got to call this exactly what it is. And understand he did this in front of 50 leaders from Muslim countries that understand the nature of the threat as well.

So this was historic not just from perception but reality because what the president did was issue a clarion call. And that call was we cannot tolerate this, and you, the Muslim world, have to engage this. You have to engage it at the most serious of levels. In your community, in your worship centers, that's what this has to go.

The horrific nature of this event in Manchester, England, should be sending a message to the rest of the world, though, because we had this in the United States. Remember this, they're looking for those soft targets. Remember the airport incident in Fort Lauderdale? Remember that it was in the baggage claim area. The person went off, got the weapon and came back in.

We have to recognize now there is no such thing as a safe zone. And we have to govern ourselves accordingly, which means our security apparatuses, our intelligence gathering has to be utilized at the most sophisticated level. And that doesn't mean it stops this, by the way, Sean, but we've you have got to route this out at the core. And there is no time. Time is of the essence here. We can't waste an hour.

HANNITY: One of the things I think the world is going to have to come to grips with is a very simple thing. And I thought I saw this on Saturday. No apologies, no political correctness, and no happy talk, no Pollyanna fantasy here. And draw a line. There is good and there is evil. As I mentioned earlier, 100 million human souls, communism, fascism, Nazism, imperial Japan, the killing fields in Cambodia, you put it all together, that's 100 million human beings slaughtered. This is not a game. And if we treat this with, oh, we've got to be kind and we can't offend people, people are going to die because we are weak. We've gotten, by the way, Sky News a longer version of the video showing the explosion from inside the Manchester arena. This just breaking. Let's play that.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

(SHOUTING)

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Oh, my God.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: What's going on?

(SHOUTING)

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Oh, my God.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

HANNITY: Wow. That sounds exactly like an explosion that is strong, deep, powerful, and as we pointed out, Geraldo, if that had happened at a different location based on what we're being told and Shep reported, I shudder to think the damage, the murder, the death, the destruction.

RIVERA: The one caution on these casualty figures we are getting now is it is always worse than initially --

HANNITY: By the way, Sky just went up to 59 injured, NBC has 20 dead. We have 19 here at the FOX News Channel. Still a dramatic toll, and it could have been worse based on what we're learning, dramatically worse.

RIVERA: And remember that there were children, generally speaking -- little girls, teenagers and younger at the concert. So the casualties, picture the hospital in your mind. When you picture these horrific events, you think of adults being victimized. But in this case, the most vulnerable part of your population being torn to shreds, these are not kind weapons. This is not a bullet. This is these nails where multiple pieces of shrapnel tear at each little body. It is absolutely horrifying when you think of it.

HANNITY: The shrapnel you're talking about, I just recently watched coincidentally a post Tsarnaev Boston bombing video live, just the injured. It has been since that time, I know we are in the news business. We have to move on. We talk about other stories. But the deadly aftermath that these people live with day in and day out -- stay right there. From the Heritage Foundation, Nile Gardiner, and the president for the Security Studies Group Jim Hanson. Jim, you had some pretty controversial remarks you want to address it with our audience?

JIM HANSON, SECURITY STUDIES GROUP: I don't know what's controversial about noting the way the media covered --

HANNITY: I stand corrected and apologize.

HANSON: No worries, Sean. I think the problem we have right now is we live and an open society, as you mentioned. We cannot secure ourselves. We cannot hide. And we need to recognize that the Islamists are attacking us, as the president said, and we need to do something about it.

So the only way to stop them is to look at the ideology, to look at where they live, where they worship, and where they are being told to commit these kind of acts, and conduct the surveillance necessary to catch them before they do it, not pick up the pieces afterwards.

HANNITY: I think that's well said. Go ahead.

HANSON: Absolutely. Proactivity is the name of the game. We have been reactive in the prior administration. This administration is a lot more proactive. We have General Kelly as department of homeland security secretary, we are posturing ourselves to be strong militarily, strong internally with our security operations. And make no mistake, this is scarier than the Boston bombing because this is somebody that took their lives to kill others. That has not happened here yet.

HANNITY: We haven't heard from Nile yet. Sir?

NILE GARDINER, HERITAGE FOUNDATION: Yes, I have to say that tonight's terrorist atrocity is an act of sheer barbarism. This is savagery committed by savage people who seek the destruction of the free world. And we have to acknowledge directly what we are up against. We're up against an enemy of complete and utter brutality. We have to identify clearly the nature of the Islamist threat. They have targeted today innocent children, women, a lot of young people. We cannot tolerate this kind of act. All over Europe you have seen again and again a series of terror attacks on European soil. This cannot become the new normal for Europe. We have to acknowledge. We are at war against the Islamists. We have to emphatically win this battle against the Islamists. Just as Churchill defeated the Nazis, we have to win this war.

HANNITY: The one thing that I'll also take out of President Trump's speech in Saudi Arabia, as courageous as it was because he was speaking before the entire Muslim world and 50 Arab countries is that he went right to the heart of it dealing with it head on in a way we haven't done before.

Our own Catherine Herridge is now saying a government official said they are working to assess what happened in Manchester, and based on preliminary media reports, they are now noting in Great Britain if confirmed as terrorism, and again, the police are currently treating the incident as an act of terrorism. If confirmed, it is a level of sophistication beyond recent U.K. based plots involving knives and vehicles as weapons. And these reports of shrapnel that we've been talking about now are concerning and point to a premeditation and a plot that may have been directed by a foreign terrorist organization.

And the explosion at the exit again shows the potential that there could have been much more carnage as a closed space amplifies the effect of the explosion and the disfiguring impact, in other words of the shrapnel, maximizing casualties, maximizing injuries, which shows the degree of sophistication and level of evil that we have been talking at length about tonight. Jay, you wanted to weigh in at length?

SEKULOW: Because, Sean, what I'm concerned about here is both the act itself and where it was done. And the fact that in a free society, how do you prevent a guy, a terrorist, from doing that?

But I want to go a step further, and this was just mentioned by one of the others, and that is you've got to go into these communities and rat this out. And that means real surveillance. And I know that the left is going to be screaming civil liberties. There's nothing inconsistent about going in and finding out who these people are, because you know what happens after these every single time? Every single time they will do a roundup of 20 people and find out who was the one that made this bomb. That happened on every one of these events. You have the terrorist attacks, then they have the roundup and they find the 10 or 12 people that were involved in some capacity.

Why is it that we're not finding that on the front end? And that is because we are still in the west not really ready to recognize that this threat is at our front door. And it is. And because of that we've got to take, you want to call at extreme measures, call it whatever you want. I'll tell you what I think at the end of the day -- if we don't take this threat for what it is we pay the consequences. Unfortunately that happened to a bunch of people, at least 19 or 20 or more, in Manchester.

And, by the way, you've got to understand the scope and nature of that device, that in an outdoor area they were able to kill or wound 80 or 90 people. From one device, if that's what it is, yes, it's a new level of sophistication. But let's round them up before, not after.

RIVERA: There's another point, though, and I think it is complicated enough that rather than talking about politics, we have to address the fact, it is a fact, that 400 ISIS trained fighters have returned to the United Kingdom. I don't know how many have returned to the United States of America.

But the people that have returned from ISIS training to come back with these savage skills, they told their family allegedly they were teaching in Afghanistan. They were doing some other benign task in some foreign country. Those families had to know. They had to suspect. If you have your own 22-year-old or 25-year-old and he tells you he's teaching in Afghanistan, don't you want to see a postcard from Afghanistan, a souvenir from Afghanistan? Were you really in Afghanistan? Does the mom know you were in Afghanistan teaching, or were you really in Syria or Iraq learning from ISIS how to commit mayhem and mass murder using easily obtainable chemicals from a hardware store and nail from the hardware store and so forth? I think that these communities really have a burden here. And when was -- they have the burden of telling people that something doesn't smell right.

SEKULOW: Right, exactly right.

HANNITY: Wait a minute. Go back. I forget which case it was. It was San Bernardino. Do you remember that there were neighbors that saw the late activity at night in the garage, and they were afraid. Why were they afraid? Because they didn't want to be blamed for, quote, "racial profiling" or Muslim profiling. But meanwhile the activity was odd and strange and weird and it raised their suspicions, and they were afraid out of political correctness and a pressure that comes from a liberal media to speak up.

RIVERA: Orlando is an example. People knew that that was a dysfunctional family. The father was an erratic character. How is it that the suspicion didn't extend farther that even his wife purports not to know what the Orlando mass murderer was up to?

SEKULOW: How about Fort Lauderdale? In that situation, you had the father of the terrorist come to the FBI and say I think my son has been radicalized. That's what happened in that case.

You mentioned Orlando. He was under surveillance by the FBI on multiple occasions. The Tsarnaev brothers, interviewed and reviewed by the FBI. There's a fundamental problem if that's happening, these guys are let out and then they do the act. Something's not right within the intelligence structure itself. And I am hopeful that the new administration and the leadership is going to that fixed.

RIVERA: Not if they're distracted by the politics.

HANNITY: Hang on, this is important.

SEKULOW: I think this shows you have got to get the politics out of it.

HANNITY: And 80 percent -- you saw the Harvard study, 93 percent of CNN, who colluded with Hillary, coverage is negative to Donald Trump. Or NBC, obsessed with the conspiracy theory. I will get into this tomorrow. In spite of zero evidence, month after month after month after month --

SEKULOW: I'm going to be on it tomorrow morning. I'll be back on it tomorrow morning, Sean. They'll be talking about General Kelly and Donald Trump's associates in Russia. That will be there news in the morning.

HANNITY: CNN is collaborators, and in a political art of war, advancing leftism conspiracy theories. It is bizarre and beyond belief. By the way, I will be addressing both of them as soon as possible on their show.

Joining us now on the phone, Act for America President Brigitte Gabriel. She's been on the phone many, many times, herself growing up under very difficult circumstances in strict Sharia, if I remember correctly, Brigitte, and warning people as often as you possibly can the dangers of a clash of cultures.

BRIGITTE GABRIEL, PRESIDENT, ACT FOR AMERICA: Exactly, Sean. I remember my own 9/11 happening to me when I was 10 years old when the Islamists blew up my home, burying me under the rubble wounded. I can smell the smoke. I can relate when I hear people talking about the different smells that they are smelling.

But what is so sad about this attack and what is so concerning is that they were prepared for them in London. The British authorities were monitoring, thinking we have to be careful in London. We have to be prepared. But they were not prepared in Manchester, which shows you that the terrorists have become so sophisticated that they chose a location where it was the last place that the authorities and the police are going to be monitoring.

And that is a concert for young girls, as young as six and seven years old, and as old as 20. So they were able to do such an attack without any care about girls. And what is shocking as I heard some of the British authorities saying we were shocked that they would do this. I don't know why they would do this. It's like, why do we even ask after 16 years, after 9/11 we still ask when we see ISIS people training children to behead people, raping young girls, kidnapping young Yazidis and torturing them, this is not a surprise.

HANNITY: It's not a surprise at all. You've been through this over the many years, and we've discussed it over the many years.

One of the great evils of radical Islam and Sharia law, Brigitte, is the treatment of women and the abuse of women. And we mentioned earlier, gays and lesbians killed. We mentioned earlier the mistreatment and the lack of tolerance for freedom of religion and the persecution of Christians and Jews. There's a big story that we have covered on this program, and I covered it extensively on my radio program, there is a modern day genocide against Christians and a purging of Christians and Yazidis in Iraq and around the world, and a purging that very few people have time to cover, like CNN or NBC, because they're so busy advancing a theory about collusion with no evidence whatsoever about Donald Trump.

GABRIEL: Exactly. Look in America. We are now seeing a rise of FGM, female genital mutilation, honor killings, sexual assault committed by refugees against American women, and this is happening here in America. Look in just a couple of weeks, we're going to have the remembrance of the attack on the Orlando nightclub where young Americans are having a good time on a weekend.

This is something that the American public needs to pay attention to. And we are fortunate that we are way ahead of Europe. At least we have learned from what happened in Europe, and we are mobilizing here in America. And I want to bring to the attention of our listeners that there are marches nationwide in America on June 10th, a march against Sharia and a march for human rights to bring attention to the treatment of women under Sharia, the treatment of young girls. We want to protect women. The

treatment of gays, for those interesting you can go for information at ActforAmerica.org. We now have 24 cities scheduled in 20 states. This is an issue that the American public watching the news tonight needs to be aware of and needs to be involved in stopping this from coming to our country.

RIVERA: I got a tweet from somebody in the U.K. I suggested and brought up the fact that several of the terrorist arrested in mowing down the pedestrians outside West Minster in London in March were from Manchester and that it's a hotbed of Islamic radicals. I got a tweet from the U.K., "Manchester Muslim doctors working through the night, Manchester Muslim taxi drivers taking people home for free. You don't know Manchester." That's a tragedy of this. That's the tragedy of radical Islamist terrorism. So many people in the community who just want to get along, who just want the best for their children and want what everybody else wants.

HANNITY: By the way, I want to go right back to you. Ariana Grande in her verified Twitter account just tweeted moments ago, two minutes ago, about "Broken from the bottom of my heart. I am so sorry. I don't have words." Obviously nobody holds her accountable. These are young -- even preteenagers. My daughter likes Ariana Grande. Her friends like her. Teenage girls like here. And that just adds a level of evil.

I actually think that what we've got to do, Jay Sekulow, I'll go to you, we have got to look at what has happened in Israel and the level of attacks and the pure evil as what Prime Minister Netanyahu said to me about America, a preview of coming attractions.

SEKULOW: That's exactly right. The Israelis have dealt with this since the independent of and the foundation of Israel in modern times in 1948. They have dealt with it consistently. But look, we are a lot bigger territory and we're a lot bigger target in that sense. But the prime minister is absolutely correct. The tragedy of all of this is, and I was thinking about what you just said, Geraldo, with the Muslim cabdrivers and the Muslim doctors working all night, I don't doubt that at all. But you have 10 percent of your community radicalized. That's a lot of people.

RIVERA: Even one percent is a lot of people.

HANNITY: How many Muslims worldwide?

RIVERA: It's the largest religion on earth. And it's a religion that -- I hate to put communal responsibility, but no one knows the Muslim community better than Muslims. Let's face it. Nobody knows what happens in the mosque better than an imam.

HANNITY: Isn't there a certain fear among those that are moderate, those that are peaceful, for example, under Sharia law in countries, if you are an apostate, the penalty for apostasy is death.

RIVERA: I just wonder if this attack will be found to be in retaliation for the president's speech. I wonder if they weren't looking, knowing that the president was planning this mid-eastern trip, I wonder if ISIS didn't order this attack to coincide with the president's visit to Israel. And of course, they didn't know the content of his speech that he would make, but clearly they knew that the visit was going to take place.

SEKULOW: The fourth anniversary of that police officer being hacked to death in London, fourth anniversary of that today. That's what this is. Dates are important events.

HANNITY: There is a friend of mine that works here in the studio with us, and I worked with him almost 20 years. How many years have you been here? About 20. OK. And his wife is from England, and Manchester. He says these towns are prepared for terrorism. And you reported Manchester police had done a terror attack training, et cetera, so maybe we should clarify that in fact - everybody is preparing for it. That's the whole thing.

SEKULOW: But you have to get on the front end, Sean. This after the fact arresting of 10 people –

HANNITY: Identify it like Trump did.

SEKULOW: Yes. From the community, inside the community, that's how this has to happen.

HANNITY: Thank you all. I want to remind you what the president said this weekend. A battle between -- I can't read without my glasses. A battle between good and evil. Terrorists don't worship God, they worshiped death. And then he said drive them out, drive them out of your places of worship, drive them out of your communities, drive them out of your holy land, and drive them out of this earth. That's a good way to end on the program.

That's all the time we have left. Stay tuned for our continuing coverage. Our friend Shepard Smith is next. We'll see you back here tomorrow night.

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