Below is the transcript from the Sean Hannity interview sent to me by my FNC colleague Joy Lin. Note that it is a rough transcript, not perfect.
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Transcript
16:13:32: HANNITY: “Congressman Paul Ryan, the next Vice-President of the United States is with us, how are you?”
RYAN: “Hey Sean, how are you doing?”
HANNITY: “thanks for being with us”
RYAN: “my pleasure, good to be with you again”
HANNITY: “you know, I watched you when you were up in Wisconsin with Governor Romney and it was, you know, the whole story of how you got to this position and this moment in your life, you seem really touched by it”
RYAN: “Yeah. Well you know me, I’m kinda an emotional irish guy at times and it’s just you know – (HANNITY LAUGHS) really kind of caught me up. And I’m a reformer, I’ve dedicated a lot of my life to the ideas of this country and fighting them in congress and to come home to Wisconsin where we’ve had, a lot of these kind of political fights, a battle of ideas, um that kind of homecoming was just overwhelming to me.”
16:14:26: HANNITY: “Well let me ask you, there was an interesting backstory, tell us when you finally got asked by governor Romney to be his running mate?”
RYAN: “He asked me in Beth Myers’ living room, I mean dining room, so –
HANNITY: “And when was that?”
RYAN: “It was the Sunday before I gave the speech at the deck of the USS Wisconsin, so it was at the beginning of the week we made the announcement so – “
HANNITY: “So you knew the last time you were on with me that you were going to be the VP?”
RYAN: “No, I don’t think I was on with you…”
HANNITY: “Was that the week before? Oh ok, I was going to say you didn’t even tell your good ol’ friend Sean Hannity…”
RYAN: “Yeah I know you asked me about that but no, I don’t think I was, I obviously tried not to do any media from the moment he asked me and we had a shooting in the district and we obviously got involved in that, I didn’t do any media other than that.”
16:15:12: HANNITY: “let’s talk about the tone of the campaign, we’ve come a long way from hope and change haven’t we?”
RYAN: “We’re now attack and blame, smear and fear, the President doesn’t have a record to run on, it’s a terrible record. It’s failed leadership, broken promises, so he can’t run on that – he will have to divide, distract, distort in order to try and win this election. People are going to see through this, I just don’t think people are going to fall for it this time around and I think we’re going to win this election, restore this country’s founding principles and get our country back on track, get people back to work.”
HANNITY: “You said to me in a prior interview that you thought we had two or three years before the credit markets abandoned the United states of America, how bad is it – because this is what you deal with everyday (RYAN: “IT IS”) and even, by the way, Erskine Bowles, we played it on the program yesterday. I mean he said you’re a genius and you’re really smart, you know numbers better than anybody, I mean a lot of Democrats have praised you over the years but this is what you do, in case people don’t know, you look at the budget and you see how bad things are”
RYAN: “That’s not my prediction, 2 or 3 years, that’s what the experts who come to testify at congress are telling us which is that you can’t spend money you don’t have. Our government’s borrowing 40 cents of every dollar it spends, it’s basically the culmination of politicians from both political parties making a lot of empty promises to people and then when the debt crisis hits those empty promises become broken promises. But that’s exactly what’s happening in Europe, we know we will have the same kind of fate as Europe if we stay with these current policies. And our whole entire point is – get off of this track, change this agenda by changing this President and prevent or preempt a debt crisis in the first place by getting people back to work, getting spending under control, reforming those government programs that are the drivers of our deck. And we believe that we have a narrowing window of opportunity to do that and it’s clearly going to be done within the next Presidency. The next 4 years will make or break this country and decide what trajectory we’re going to go on for a long time.”
16:17:21: HANNITY: “For the average person, and we have a big audience, we’re all over the state of florida and all over the country, you know they’re trying to project an image that you want to kick – and they ran the ad a while back of a Paul Ryan lookalike, of you throwing Granny over the cliff. Explain to everybody, and I went through an hour on the program yesterday explaining what your plan was, but I don’t think I can do it better than you – now the President did cut $741 billion dollars from Medicare. So he did cut Medicare. Explain what your plan is and why it’s necessary and what it would mean, say for an elderly person that’s living in Florida or maybe somebody that’s 50 and living in Florida, explain both cases?”
RYAN: “I am eager to have this debate. I asked for this debate and we are going to win this debate. And the reason you’re hearing these kinds of things is because the President knows that he is so vulnerable on this issue. It’s the President who took $716 billion, the number is $716 billion dollars, from the Medicare program to spend on Obamacare. That’s cuts to current seniors that will lead to less services for current seniors. We don’t do that – we actually say end the raid and restore that so that those seniors get the benefits today that they organize their lives around. One more thing, the President also (FEED CUTS OUT) in addition to raids from Medicare (FEED CUTS OUT) he puts this new board of bureaucrats in charge of putting further cuts on Medicare providers, which will clearly lead to denied care for current seniors.”
RYAN: “Here’s what we do: we say leave current seniors alone. They already organized their lives around this promise that the government made to them, we can fulfill that promise but in order to fulfill that promise you must reform that process for the younger generation – for people 54 and below – and the way we propose to reform it is a plan that is bipartisan. It originated from the Clinton plan to save Medicare, it’s bipartisan in Congress today. And it says let future seniors, 54 and below, when they become Medicare eligible have a plan that works like I have as a Congressman or for federal employees, where you have a list of guaranteed coverage options to choose from, including traditional Medicare, and Medicare subsidizes your premium based on who you are. Less for a wealthy person, more for a middle income person, and must more for a low income or sick person. That’s the best way to save the program, prevent it from going bankrupt.”
16:19:50: RYAN: “so the President raids it, then he puts a board in charge of cutting it which hurts current seniors. We remove all of that, protect current seniors, save it for the next generation so we can prevent it from going bankrupt which happens under the Obama plan.”
HANNITY: “So even people under the age of 55, they still get traditional Medicare?”
RYAN: “Well of course, it’s among the options they can choose from – here’s the idea – we believe that 60 million seniors should choose how their Medicare works for them instead of 15 unelected, unaccountable bureaucrats appointed by President Obama – that’s the critical difference for future seniors. And this current board starts cutting in just under 2 years under Obamacare.”
HANNITY: “Well only because we’re short on time, and I’m going to have the pleasure, in case you don’t know it and nobody told you, of seeing you out on the road this week and I’m looking forward to being out there with you – but what did you think of Joe Biden’s comments?”
16:20:43: RYAN (SIGHS): “You know, these are the kinds of things you say when you’re desperate in a campaign. I think you’re going to hear more of these things as we go on because they have a terrible record and can’t run on it so they’re going to kind of sink this campaign to these low levels to distract people. To try and you know, stoke the emotions of fear and envy, and it’s just not going to work. People are going to see through this. We’ve gone from hope and change to anger and division and blame and attack and I think people are going to see through this.”
HANNITY: “Well, there’s so much of it. Governor Romney, basically, even though he left the company he’s responsible for a woman’s cancer death – (RYAN LAUGHS) they have a truth team member that called him a racist, you have Biden’s comments, the President himself said that, you know, the Republicans plan is for dirty air and dirty water and they want kids with autism and down syndrome and for the elderly to fend for themselves – the president said that.”
RYAN: “It’s a classic strongman argument, which is that affix views to your opponent that they don’t have in order to defeat the argument, defeat those views, and win the argument by default. It won’t work and I think people are going to see through it. We’re offering positive solutions to get the economy growing, you know get people more take home pay, more jobs, less spending, less debt. We are offering specific solutions. The President is offering nothing but distractions, anger, division, distortion to try and get people off of the fact that his record is just utter failure.”
16:22:10: HANNITY: “Now when you get elected Vice-President you’re not going to forget your buddy Sean Hannity?”
RYAN (LAUGHS): “I won’t forget my buddy Sean Hannity, I won’t”
HANNITY: “You’re still going to give me an interview every once in a while aren’t you?”
RYAN: “You’ve got it buddy”
HANNITY: “Well I’m going to see you out on the campaign trail. I think it’s great having you on the ticket, I’m very happy personally, I’ve gotten to know you over the years and I look forward to seeing you out on the campaign trail.”
RYAN: “Hey – thanks a lot, Sean Hannity. Nice to be here, I appreciate it.”
16:22:37: HANNITY: “You know, there’s some people that you met who have a level of decency – Romney is one of them, Ryan’s another. Just decent people.”
Joy Lin
FNC Producer
