Cruz, Hannity spar about Trump in upcoming interview

[nashvillegoldenflash]

Texas Sen. Ted Cruz slammed Donald Trump's lack of solutions in a yet-to-air interview with Fox News that rankled interviewer Sean Hannity.

"Donald's perspective is government is the answer to everything and whatever the problem is we need more government," Cruz told Hannity. "He doesn't really disagree with Obama and Hillary on substance, he just says they're not doing a good enough job, he'll negotiate a better deal with socialized healthcare and Obamacare.

"And here's the key, if you want economic growth, you know two words that never come out of Donald's mouth? Small business. Because to Donald's perspective the economy is about giant corporations, New York billionaires sitting down with politicians, whether it's Hillary Clinton or John Boehner, and suckling off government and getting rich at the expense of the working men and women. Listen, to heck with big business. The focus of growth has got to be small business."

Cruz said that Trump has not listed a specific government program or agency that he would seek to cut as president, and added that Trump's yelling, cursing and insults do not make him an insurgent presidential candidate.

Hannity, a Trump fan and Fox News broadcaster, quickly grew unhappy with Cruz and suggested the senator was preoccupied with Trump over "solutions." Hannity said Trump told the broadcaster that he would "make America energy independent" before asking, "Do you just not believe him?"

The Florida crowd shouted, "No," before Cruz could respond, so Hannity immediately pivoted to ask whether Cruz thought Trump would build "a wall."

When Cruz cited Trump's unwillingness to release an off-the-record conversation with the New York Times that reportedly showed the former reality television star hedging his positions on illegal immigration, Hannity interrupted to defend Trump.

"He said he was flexible," Hannity said.

"No, no, no. OK, that's what he claims he said, but he hasn't released the tape," Cruz replied. "What was reported is that he told them, 'Listen, I don't believe this language I'm using about immigration, I'm just saying it because it scares people and makes them vote for me, but I don't intend to do it.' ... Donald is telling us he's lying to us."

Portions of Hannity's interview appeared more tense than their recent meetings, which represents a stark departure from the reception that Cruz previously received on the primetime television program.

_________________________________________________________________________________

Has Hannity every stuck up for Cruz during his, so-called "interviews" with Trump?

I'm so sick of Hannity and O'Reilly sticking up for their friend Trump that I'm not going to watch their shows after this election is over. "The Culture Warrior" is proving to be a fraud and Hannity isn't much better.

http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/c...t-trump-in-upcoming-interview/article/2585583

 

[nashvillegoldenflash]

 

[Blueraider_Mike]

Now you guys are demonizing Hannity who has been a hard core supporter of conservatives for a generation.

Flash - I don't get it. The enemy is not Hannity or Trump.

 

[nashvillegoldenflash]

I agree that Hannity has been a hard core supporter of conservatives for a generation but now he is to Trump what Melissa Harris Perry is to Obama. Hannity's support of and bias for Trump is obvious. The problem I have is Trump is not a conservative. He is a nationalist. But because Hannity and O'Reilly are friends with Trump, they both have become shills for Trump. I'm just saddened to see them sell out their principles to win. True conservatives support Cruz, it's that simple. But they both decided to give Trump all this air time. What a disgrace!

 

[bigbadjohn45]

Now you guys are demonizing Hannity who has been a hard core supporter of conservatives for a generation.

Flash - I don't get it. The enemy is not Hannity or Trump.

I agree that Hannity has been a hard core supporter of conservatives for a generation but now he is to Trump what Melissa Harris Perry is to Obama. Hannity's support of and bias for Trump is obvious. The problem I have is Trump is not a conservative. He is a Nationalist. But because Hannity and O'Reilly are friends with Trump, they both have become shills for Trump. I'm just saddened to see them sell out their principles to win. True conservatives support Cruz, it's that simple. But they both decided to give Trump all this air time. What a disgrace!

Now you guys are demonizing Hannity who has been a hard core supporter of conservatives for a generation.

Flash - I don't get it. The enemy is not Hannity or Trump.

Here we go with "you guys" again. Just curious, who's "you guys"? Also, why are you characterizing Flash's disagreement with Hannity's coverage of Trump as "demonizing" him? Good gravy, Mike, we're just friends here having a little fun discussing politics. I, nor Flash, has ever accused you of "demonizing" anyone that I'm aware of. Just to be clear, though, I do still respect your opinions and appreciate your input.

--BBJ

 

[Blueraider_Mike]

Let me quote the tweet "I cannot understand why anyone who isn't a Trump worshiper watches Hannity at this point. The man is a disgrace"

and you liked the post...you liked it not because it was funny but because you agreed. Now, a man that has defended conservatives for a generation is a disgrace because he gives Trump time on his show - the front runner for the nomination. The same man that gave Rubio and Cruz that same one hour.

Life is not black and white, some one who was good it not now a disgrace...well, I will check that, now, Ben Carson is a disgrace.

Love you guys, but we hold a completely different view on what is happening politically in this country.

 

[nashvillegoldenflash]

"The same man that gave Rubio and Cruz that same one hour."

Yes, Hannity gave Trump a full hour, but how many people are watching at 1 AM on a Saturday? Although Cruz was suppose to be on Friday 9:00 P.M. (CST), Hannity decided to have back-to-back coverage of Trump at 9:00 and then repeated the same thing again at 10:00. I never did see when Hannity showed Cruz until I read the tweet below.

@CCPAC4Cruz #Cruz eviscerates Trump on economy. Too bad Fox tried to hide this at 1AM on a Saturday.

If I didn't see the article below with its youtube link of Cruz on Hannity, I would never have seen any of it.

Watch Ted Cruz Reduce Sean Hannity To Silence As He Takes Donald Trump Apart

I’ve never been a huge Sean Hannity fan but there are parts about him that I do like. Increasingly, the conservative opinion spectrum is dominated by the same sort of privileged snots that dominate the left. You have upper middle class kids who had college paid for by Daddy and Mommy and who have never held a job that requires manual labor. That cultural disconnect and class disdain bleeds over into their opinions and it has never been more evident than this year. Hannity, at least, has experience in living from paycheck to paycheck and I have a huge respect for his persistence and work ethic if not for his insights.

The class war going on the GOP this cycle though has turned Hannity is something of a shill for Donald Trump. In fact, there have been days when I dearly hoped that Trump had a glass panel installed in his navel, because Hannity’s head was so far up Trump’s ass that was the only way Hannity would ever see daylight again.

On Friday, Hannity made the mistake of inviting Ted Cruz onto his road show to talk about Hannity’s pet subjects, the flat tax and the “penny plan.” Ted Cruz, however, wanted to talk about Donald Trump. It is long, it is fun to watch just to watch Hannity’s expression. If you don’t want to invest the time, a transcript is provided.



TRANSCRIPT

HANNITY: I want to go back because you talked about a flat tax. I have asked every candidate in every interview, 95 million Americans out of work, we have 40 million Americans on food stamps, 50 million in poverty, median income down in the last eight years under Obama, he will leave office having accumulated more debt than every other president before him combined. That, to me, is an insurmoutable amount of money that we’re talking about. News came out today that we took in more federal revenues, $1.25 trillion in the last five months, but still have a $353 billion budget deficit for that period of time. The government spends too much.

CRUZ: And our problem, we don’t have a debt because we’re undertaxed. We have a debt because Washington is spending money it doesn’t have and digging us into a hole.

HANNITY: How do you get Washington to spend less. I’ve always liked the “penny plan.” Because it’s simple. You cut one cent of of each dollar for six years and you get to a balanced budget. But that’s part of it. What would you do?

CRUZ: The only way you can do it with, one, strong conservative leadership in the White House backed up by the people. You know, one of the striking things last night, in the entire course of the debate it became very evident that Donald Trump has no solutions to any of these problems.

HANNITY: [unintelligible] But I think the question most Americans want to know is how do you get to a balanced budget. But…eliminate baseline budgeting…

CRUZ: All of that matters but the most import piece, if you want to turn around the deficit and the debt, is economic growth. If we stay at 1 and 2 percent economic growth…

HANNITY: …can’t do it…

CRUZ: …the math doesn’t work. You can’t cut enough and Donald, at the end of the day, doesn’t understand where growth comes from. Because Donld, he’s said a lot of times, you know, nobody knows the system better than he does. And he may well be right. Because Donald is the system, he is Washington, and notice his perspective, Donald’s perspective is government is the answer to everything. That whatever the problem is, we need more government. And to every issue he doesn’t really disagree with Hillary and Obama on substance, he just says they’re not doing a good enough job, he’ll negotiate a better deal with socialize health care and ObamaCare. And here’s the key, if you want economic growth you know two words that never come out of Donald’s mouth: small business. Because to Donald’s perspective the economy is about giant corporations, New York billionaires, sitting down with politicians, whether it’s Hillary Clinton or John Boehner and suckling off government and getting rich at the expense of the working men and women. Listen, to heck with big business. The focus of growth has got to be small business.

HANNITY: There seems to be a two prong approach we need. That is, one, I think government needs to spend a lot less…

CRUZ: Absolutely.

HANNITY: I would cut a lot of government, maybe not the military, our military has deteriorated, and then the other part is the growth factor. Energy independence would add to that…

CRUZ: Hugely.

HANNITY: Corporate inversion, allowing corporations to repatriate… there are trillions of dollars overseas, those are solutions to me. And that’s part of your economic plan. Explain how the flat tax gets people out of poverty and back to work.

CRUZ: Okay. So let’s start with spending because that was the first part of your question. I’ve laid out a very, very detailed spending plan. $500 billion in specific spending cuts. Did you notice last night in the entire debate Donald was not willing to list a single thing he’d cut. He wouldn’t list an agency, he wouldn’t list a program. I asked him “when have you ever stood up to a Washington lobbyist on anything?” He couldn’t point to a single instance. Donald and Hillary are the flip side of the same coin. They are Washington. They are power. They are big business. They are corruption. And instead… listen, why do other candidates not do what I’ve done which is specify exactly what I’d cut? Because you tick off all the lobbyists. All the people getting the money are real unhappy when you say “I’m cutting your money.” And they don’t want to get attacked. And if we’re going to turn Washington around you’ve got to demonstrate the courage to take on Washington. It’s not being an insurgent simply to yell a lot and curse and insult people. That doesn’t make you an insurgent. That just makes you ill-mannered.

HANNITY: I want to focus as much as I can today on solutions. You’ve brought up Donald Trump a lot. When he says he’s going to build the wall, when he tells me he’s going to make America energy independent and he supports the “penny plan”, do you just not believe him? Do you think he’s… do you not believe… for example, you don’t think he’d build the wall, you think that is all talk?

CRUZ: Well, it’s interesting. I mean it’s been reported that Donald told the New York Times editorial board that he wasn’t going to build the wall. That he wasn’t going to deport everyone. That he said he went to Mahattan just a couple of months ago and he told the New York Times, “listen, guys…”

HANNITY: He said he’s flexible…

CRUZ: No, no, no. That’s what he claims he said but he hasn’t released the tape. What was reported is that he told them, “listen, I don’t believe this language I’m using about immigration, I’m just saying it because it scares people and makes them vote for me. But I don’t intend to do it.” And he’s since claimed that all he’s said is he’s flexible. But if he releases the tape, we can all see. The fact he won’t release the tape… Donald is telling us he’s lying to us. And here’s the difference. As president, Donald said he’ll be a completely different person the day after he’s elected. He’ll be the most politically correct person on earth. Sean, I will be the exact same person the day after I’m elected that I am today.

There wasn’t anything I didn’t like about this interview though the most fun was putting Sean Hannity in the position of being on stage and on air with an actual conservative, so he couldn’t carry Trump’s water, and had to sit silently while he was told the guy he has been boosting is a fraud and indistinguishable from Hillary Clinton.

http://www.redstate.com/streiff/201...ean-hannity-silence-takes-donald-trump-apart/

 

[bigbadjohn45]

"The same man that gave Rubio and Cruz that same one hour."

Yes, Hannity gave Trump a full hour, but how many people are watching at 1 AM on a Saturday? Although Cruz was suppose to be on Friday 9:00 P.M. (CST), Hannity decided to have back-to-back coverage of Trump at 9:00 and then repeated the same thing again at 10:00. I never did see when Hannity showed Cruz until I read the tweet below.

@CCPAC4Cruz #Cruz eviscerates Trump on economy. Too bad Fox tried to hide this at 1AM on a Saturday.

If I didn't see the article below with its youtube link of Cruz on Hannity, I would never have seen any of it.

Watch Ted Cruz Reduce Sean Hannity To Silence As He Takes Donald Trump Apart

I’ve never been a huge Sean Hannity fan but there are parts about him that I do like. Increasingly, the conservative opinion spectrum is dominated by the same sort of privileged snots that dominate the left. You have upper middle class kids who had college paid for by Daddy and Mommy and who have never held a job that requires manual labor. That cultural disconnect and class disdain bleeds over into their opinions and it has never been more evident than this year. Hannity, at least, has experience in living from paycheck to paycheck and I have a huge respect for his persistence and work ethic if not for his insights.

The class war going on the GOP this cycle though has turned Hannity is something of a shill for Donald Trump. In fact, there have been days when I dearly hoped that Trump had a glass panel installed in his navel, because Hannity’s head was so far up Trump’s ass that was the only way Hannity would ever see daylight again.

On Friday, Hannity made the mistake of inviting Ted Cruz onto his road show to talk about Hannity’s pet subjects, the flat tax and the “penny plan.” Ted Cruz, however, wanted to talk about Donald Trump. It is long, it is fun to watch just to watch Hannity’s expression. If you don’t want to invest the time, a transcript is provided.

View embedded media

TRANSCRIPT

HANNITY: I want to go back because you talked about a flat tax. I have asked every candidate in every interview, 95 million Americans out of work, we have 40 million Americans on food stamps, 50 million in poverty, median income down in the last eight years under Obama, he will leave office having accumulated more debt than every other president before him combined. That, to me, is an insurmoutable amount of money that we’re talking about. News came out today that we took in more federal revenues, $1.25 trillion in the last five months, but still have a $353 billion budget deficit for that period of time. The government spends too much.

CRUZ: And our problem, we don’t have a debt because we’re undertaxed. We have a debt because Washington is spending money it doesn’t have and digging us into a hole.

HANNITY: How do you get Washington to spend less. I’ve always liked the “penny plan.” Because it’s simple. You cut one cent of of each dollar for six years and you get to a balanced budget. But that’s part of it. What would you do?

CRUZ: The only way you can do it with, one, strong conservative leadership in the White House backed up by the people. You know, one of the striking things last night, in the entire course of the debate it became very evident that Donald Trump has no solutions to any of these problems.

HANNITY: [unintelligible] But I think the question most Americans want to know is how do you get to a balanced budget. But…eliminate baseline budgeting…

CRUZ: All of that matters but the most import piece, if you want to turn around the deficit and the debt, is economic growth. If we stay at 1 and 2 percent economic growth…

HANNITY: …can’t do it…

CRUZ: …the math doesn’t work. You can’t cut enough and Donald, at the end of the day, doesn’t understand where growth comes from. Because Donld, he’s said a lot of times, you know, nobody knows the system better than he does. And he may well be right. Because Donald is the system, he is Washington, and notice his perspective, Donald’s perspective is government is the answer to everything. That whatever the problem is, we need more government. And to every issue he doesn’t really disagree with Hillary and Obama on substance, he just says they’re not doing a good enough job, he’ll negotiate a better deal with socialize health care and ObamaCare. And here’s the key, if you want economic growth you know two words that never come out of Donald’s mouth: small business. Because to Donald’s perspective the economy is about giant corporations, New York billionaires, sitting down with politicians, whether it’s Hillary Clinton or John Boehner and suckling off government and getting rich at the expense of the working men and women. Listen, to heck with big business. The focus of growth has got to be small business.

HANNITY: There seems to be a two prong approach we need. That is, one, I think government needs to spend a lot less…

CRUZ: Absolutely.

HANNITY: I would cut a lot of government, maybe not the military, our military has deteriorated, and then the other part is the growth factor. Energy independence would add to that…

CRUZ: Hugely.

HANNITY: Corporate inversion, allowing corporations to repatriate… there are trillions of dollars overseas, those are solutions to me. And that’s part of your economic plan. Explain how the flat tax gets people out of poverty and back to work.

CRUZ: Okay. So let’s start with spending because that was the first part of your question. I’ve laid out a very, very detailed spending plan. $500 billion in specific spending cuts. Did you notice last night in the entire debate Donald was not willing to list a single thing he’d cut. He wouldn’t list an agency, he wouldn’t list a program. I asked him “when have you ever stood up to a Washington lobbyist on anything?” He couldn’t point to a single instance. Donald and Hillary are the flip side of the same coin. They are Washington. They are power. They are big business. They are corruption. And instead… listen, why do other candidates not do what I’ve done which is specify exactly what I’d cut? Because you tick off all the lobbyists. All the people getting the money are real unhappy when you say “I’m cutting your money.” And they don’t want to get attacked. And if we’re going to turn Washington around you’ve got to demonstrate the courage to take on Washington. It’s not being an insurgent simply to yell a lot and curse and insult people. That doesn’t make you an insurgent. That just makes you ill-mannered.

HANNITY: I want to focus as much as I can today on solutions. You’ve brought up Donald Trump a lot. When he says he’s going to build the wall, when he tells me he’s going to make America energy independent and he supports the “penny plan”, do you just not believe him? Do you think he’s… do you not believe… for example, you don’t think he’d build the wall, you think that is all talk?

CRUZ: Well, it’s interesting. I mean it’s been reported that Donald told the New York Times editorial board that he wasn’t going to build the wall. That he wasn’t going to deport everyone. That he said he went to Mahattan just a couple of months ago and he told the New York Times, “listen, guys…”

HANNITY: He said he’s flexible…

CRUZ: No, no, no. That’s what he claims he said but he hasn’t released the tape. What was reported is that he told them, “listen, I don’t believe this language I’m using about immigration, I’m just saying it because it scares people and makes them vote for me. But I don’t intend to do it.” And he’s since claimed that all he’s said is he’s flexible. But if he releases the tape, we can all see. The fact he won’t release the tape… Donald is telling us he’s lying to us. And here’s the difference. As president, Donald said he’ll be a completely different person the day after he’s elected. He’ll be the most politically correct person on earth. Sean, I will be the exact same person the day after I’m elected that I am today.

There wasn’t anything I didn’t like about this interview though the most fun was putting Sean Hannity in the position of being on stage and on air with an actual conservative, so he couldn’t carry Trump’s water, and had to sit silently while he was told the guy he has been boosting is a fraud and indistinguishable from Hillary Clinton.

http://www.redstate.com/streiff/201...ean-hannity-silence-takes-donald-trump-apart/

Flash, I watched the video. Thanks for posting that as I wondered what happened to the interview. I tuned into "Hannity" this past Friday night, expecting to see the one-hour interview with Ted Cruz that Fox News had been advertising--only to see Hannity talking with Donald Trump! Very disingenuous of Fox News to bait-and-switch like that. At any rate, I enjoyed the video clip you posted! Thanks, buddy!

BTW, there wasn’t anything I didn’t like about this interview though the most fun was putting Sean Hannity in the position of being on stage and on air with an actual conservative, so he couldn’t carry Trump’s water, and had to sit silently while he was told the guy he has been boosting is a fraud and indistinguishable from Hillary Clinton.

 

[Blueraider_Mike]

Fox news job is to build a business to drive people to watch so they can charge fees for advertising. Cruz doesn't warrant the same coverage because he doesn't drive viewership like Trump. This is the truth. Do you think Hannity makes the call on when the Cruz interview will be shown?

This is the free market at work. So I guess we are free market friendly when it works for us. Pot meet Kettle.