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fray when leading the caronavirus earlier today schiff told fox news that, quote. of the president and vice president don't inspire confidence. well, last night on this program, the great one mark levin had some choice words for the democratic leadership who were critical of the white house's response to the caronavirus. watch this. >> the last people i want playing doctor with me or the american people would be chuck schumer and nancy pelosi. they attack the president of the united states, not one negative word for the dictator of china and the way they have mishandled this entire thing. from january 16th to february 5th, the united states senate was paralyzed by the house democrats and chuck schumer and nancy pelosi with this outjudge impeachment trial where the senators had to sit on their hands and shut their mouths and couldn't conduct any business. they couldn't inpass a bill to increase funning. they say they want more funding. they couldn't do it. they couldn't hold hearings on the caronavirus they couldn't do anything because

pelosi and schumer shut down the entire united states congress. >> jason: more on that in a moment. president trump announced he was nominating congressman john ratcliffe to be the next director of national intelligence. joining us now to react to all of this is arkansas senator tom cotton. senator, thank you so much for joining us. i want to first go to john ratcliffe who you served with. one of the most consequential appointments a president can make is the director of the dni. the director of national intelligence. what's your perspective about this nomination of john ratcliffe? >> i know john ratcliffe pretty well. his district in texas borders arkansas. we have worked together on a number of issues. john is a seasoned prosecutor. he has now served many years on the house intelligence committee. i think the sound pick and i suspect that john will get a lot of support among the senate. i can't say that many senate democrats support him. they are still suffering from donald trump derangement syndrome and opposing every person the

president nominates to office. i think john ratcliffe is a good pick. i commend the president for it and i thank john for his willingness to search in this new role. >> jason: he really is immensely qualified and a great solid person and i can't imagine there is a single republican that would oppose his nomination we will see how it goes. it is washington, d.c. senator, have you been highly critical of china throughout your career. what's your reaction or perspective on how china has handled the caronavirus in general and are they doing enough today? >> no, they are not doing enough, jason. china has engaged in rampant malpractice, dishonesty and deceitfulness from the very beginning. if they hadn't concealed the outbreak of this violence in early december from the world health organization and own people. they might not only protected their own people effectively but prevented it from spreading all over around the world. they are still lying to their own people and still lying to the world. they are responsible for the

spread of this virus outside of their own borders. that's one reason why we need to take a new look once again at our entire relationship with china, in particular, the relationship we have in trade where we have so many of our medical devices and equipment or even basic pharmaceuticals manufactured in china. i think that's a real surprise to most americans. something i have been working on for a long time to try to change. i suspect that's going to change in the months ahead. >> jason: and then the "new york times" op-ed is calling this the trump virus. you have nancy pelosi and chuck schumer initially there were criticisms that trump was overreacting. now they are saying he is underreacting. again, what's your perspective? >> yeah, this is just an example of the president's critics criticizing anything he does. remember, the single most consequential and valuable thing done to stop this virus from already spreading throughout the united states was when president trump decided to shut down travel to china last month. what happened then?

joe biden accused him of xenophobia. "the washington post" accused him of overreacting. even the so-called experts who opposed the decision at the time now admit that it bought us valuable time to prevent the spread of this virus in the united states. so we can do more to stockpile drugs and medical equipment. work on vaccines and therapeutics and getting testing kits out to the front line. this is just another example though of you who the president is going to be criticized no matter what he does. i know that he is working to make sure that we protect the health and safety of the american people. irrespective of what his critics say. >> jason: senator cotton, thank you for joining us tonight. we do appreciate it. coming up tomorrow, voters head to the polls for the soutsouthcarolina primary. it's make or break for vice president joe biden. today is he actually walking back a false claim he has made. we will explain next as this special edition of hannity continues. ♪ guys, it's that time... and nothin's happenin'. well now there's score!, from force factor,

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♪ >> jason: this is a fox news alert. the associated press is reporting that governor kate brown is confirmed the first case of caronavirus in oregon. we will continue to follow this story. but, first, as the trump administration takes bold action to combat the caronavirus, democrats are shamelessly playing politics. and trying to use this serious public health threat to attack the president. here's just a small sample. take a look. >> and yesterday donald trump and mike pence decided to silence our leading national medical experts. >> the president is not a scientist. that's a nice ways to put it. [laughter] hard to believe but he doesn't even believe in science. he is not leading, he is reacting and he is reacting

much too late. >> you would think that you would have a president of the united states leading. working with scientists all over the world. bringing people together to figure out how we're going to deal with this crisis. he is here in south carolina. he doesn't even have any opposition in the republican primary. why is he here? he is here to try to disrupt the democratic primary. >> jason: and meanwhile joe biden is still doing clean-up after being caught telling another lie. this time about being arrested in the 1970s while trying to see nelson mandela because he is now claiming that he just misspoke. despite telling the same story multiple times. watch this. >> they had me get off a plane. got short pants and guns let me -- led me biden might be

the one to say the party after all. take a look. >> i saw this last night and i started crying. it's pretty long. we just cut it. this is joe biden at peek biden. he has this way of empathizing with pain and people. is he like the anti-mayor pete. nothing is scripted. >> interesting to me that religious people, some who are on trump's team like evangelicals i don't really understand how they don't go with biden. >> i believe that a man like joe biden is the person that can change sort of the tenor of this country.

>> jason: although president trump isn't buying a biden comeback, just listen to him earlier tonight in south carolina. >> the unemployment rate in the great state of south carolina, you ever hear of that place? [cheers] now sleepy joe would say the unemployment race in the great state of ohio -- no, no, you are in south carolina. joe, joe, you are south carolina. come up. ever see the guy come up -- no, no. it's south carolina. not ohio. okay. [laughter] and then he goes all right. iowa, did you say iowa? no. he did that like seven times. if i did that once, it would be the end of the road, right? it would be the end of the road. they would say trump has lost it. they like to say that anyway, i guess. >> jason: joining me now for reaction former white house chief of staff reince priebus and fox news contributor tammy bruce. thank you both for being here. reince, i want to start with you. because, you have an interesting theory about the

actual trump support. it's actually probably larger because in 2016 there were a lot of republicans that stayed home that have now converted to actually being trump supporters. >> yeah. that's right, jason. if you look at 2016, certainly it was close. and everyone can agree to that. but you take the state of wisconsin and michigan and ohio and all the rest of those battleground states, the president probably left hundreds of thousands of republican votes on the table. take wisconsin, for example, and it's friday so i will show you a note card and you look at these two numbers. now, the president won wisconsin by 22,000 votes. a little bit more than that the first number, the 74,000 that's how many more votes a conservative u.s. senator ron johnson got than president trump. people were not sure but they were going to vote for ron johnson. they weren't 100 percent sure on donald trump. now he is at 95% approval in

the republican party. those 74,000 people are not voting for bernie comrade sanders. and then the second number is how many votes gary johnson got in risk. a libertarian got 106,000 votes in wisconsin. they are not voting for comrade bernie sanders. so if you take the 22,000 that the president won wisconsin, the 74,000 the 106,000. that's plus 200,000 votes just in wisconsin. in 2020 that president trump could get that he didn't get in 2016. the party and the trump campaign, i'm sure, are tearing through that data. and identifying the exact people that they need to identify that will bring more to the table for trump than he had in 2016. >> jason: it's interesting. and very karl rove of you. so thank you, reince

priebus. >> party chairman being in charge of a lot of boring things. that's what party chairman do. >> jason: amen to that tammy, i have got to tell you, democrats more than anything, they just want to win. i don't think they even necessarily care who, they just want to win. but joe biden, who very well might win in south carolina had to apologize again for spewing a lie. >> yeah. >> and you know, where there is a lang of enthusiasm, remember, the clyburn endorsement will make a big difference because of the infrastructure that that brings n get out the vote effort. but when you go past south carolina, there's a problem. the big news for joe biden withins last couple of days was a super pac was going to spend i think like low six figures for him during super tuesday. now, you've got millions that need to be spent and are being spent by the other candidates but it's because the money isn't there for him. and you are looking at infrastructure that still doesn't exist there. so, this is really one state after the other. and he may have, you know,

some lead-off from south carolina going in to super tuesday. which is just obviously a few days later. but the fact is, if there is no money and there is no real infrastructure, what's going to happen here? eneand i think to your point the earlier clip that you played jason, all of those things were lies that the democrats were saying about the president and his response to the caronavirus dynamic while he was gearing up for this and deal with flights and how to get americans back and keep everyone safe. they were still going with impeachment and fake russia hoaxes and even more recently they had pivoted right back to russia. don't forget that this is -- i know we used the word unhinged a great deal but all the american people should be extremely concerned that this is a major american party that has moved into this framework of lies and obstruction without any -- knowing, by the way, that this is a life and death

dynamic for all of us. it transseconds. it doesn't matter what party you are in. could be a governor, a regular worker it. doesn't matter. but the democrats know this and they do not care, it appears. >> jason: america wants us to come together when you are fighting a disease. that's not some political party. >> why are we the only ones saying it. only the republicans are saying it? >> yes. i think america will see through that tammy and reince, thank you so much for joining us this evening. really do appreciate it. >> thanks, jason. >> jason: up next, it is not only the democrats trying to use the caronavirus against president trump. the mainstream media is digging in. you won't believe what they have said in the past 24 hours when hannity continues. ♪ ♪

♪ ♪ >> jason: welcome back to this special edition of hannity. just like the democrats, the liberal media has been using the caronavirus outbreak to try to bludgeon president trump. cnn, in particular, is being called out by critics. take a look. >> our government is woefulfully i will prepared, i -- ill preparedit seems at thy stage. you are just getting the sense that the snowball is just starting to go down the hill. >> politically speaking this president may have to reap what he has sown when it comes to the public trust or lack thereof in the institutions built to keep this democracy healthy. >> the president, in front of all of us, we could all see it, struggling to accept the reality of the situation. and what have you seen today

and last night when dow futures fell while that press conference is going on is a no confidence vote from financial markets. >> jason: joining me now with reaction the hill's joe concha and conservative columnist jeffrey lourdes. i want to go first to you, joe, is the media overplaying their hand here? are they building sensationalism where there isn't as much as they say there is. >> well, jason, fear sells. it's a great motivator and ratings are up this week as a result of caronavirus and rightfully s so. insomething we should take seriously. i saw a headline just yesterday in the "new york times" opinion section that said we might as well just call this trumpvirus instead of caronavirus and that was by gail collins who has been with the paper a long time. think about, this now we are going to blame president trump for caronavirus when this virus originated in communist china. easily the stupidest h

headline of 2020: that wins it no question. this has been going on for a while now where we take a situation and automatically blame the president. for instance, just last year "the washington post" runs a headline and this is from the editorial board by the way. when it comes to extreme weather, and in this case it was about a hurricane, mr. trump is complicit. in other words, a hurricane is about to hit the mainland, u.s., therefore the president somehow is to blame. also, cnn a couple weeks ago ran an analysis a few weeks back that said caronavirus task force, another example of trump administration's lack of diversity. you have to expect at this point that the houston astros cheating scandal is going to be blamed on president trump because of the culture he created and the fact that he and russia cheated to win the 2016 election at least that's the allegation; transfer, trump is to blame for everything, including this virus, we should be educating the american people at this point there's a lot of things that people don't understand and in terms that they mortality rates and in terms of who is most at risk

and that's what should be going on right now not this stupid blame game that everybody is sick of, jason. >> jason: jeffrey, i think the american people do see through this the aabsurdity of it all. when you have the "new york times" op-ed calling it trumpvirus that is pretty over the top, isn't it? >> oh my goodness, absolutely, yes. i'm at cpac. and the vice president was here yesterday. he is doing -- at newly assigned to this. he is doing a great job. secretary azar is doing a great job. but, look, here's the problem. cnn, back in early february, was running a story that said that the trump restrictions on travel from china were not good. they were going to backfire. now they are saying oh, oh, he is not doing enough. you know, this is something where the liberal media has damaged their credibility incredibly with the whole trump-russia collusion hoax. and that "new york times" headline, i will tell you what they didn't say in that story that joe was

referencing. after going after the vice president for being put in charge of this, they never mentioned a word that way back in the way back when the ebola situation was happening the obama administration put not the vice president but the former chief of staff of the vice president then joe biden and a washington lobbyist in charge of their response team. hello, hello. not a peep about that in the "new york times" in the day as i found out today in doing some research for a news buster's column tomorrow. they were glowing. with all sorts of wonderful things to say about this. this is all about double standards. they shot themselves in the foot with their credibility in terms of the american people and this is not going to help them. >> jason: i would argue that having a former governor like mike pence, the current vice president, he knows what these governors are up against. all across the country. because they are going to actually be the front line

and their counties and their health departments are going to be the ones that are going to have to deal with this. and having a former governor helping to lead and spearhead this effort i think is probably going to do as much as anything to instill confidence particularly when it comes to state and local governments. gentlemen, thank you so much for joining us tonight. well, coming up, senator ted cruz and congresswoman alexandria ocasio-cortez exchange some heated jabs on twitter after aoc lashed out at vice president pence. we'll tell you exactly what was said coming up next. ♪ ♪ - [announcer] the following is an urgent passover appeal from the international fellowship of christians and jews. - right now in the former soviet union, there are thousands of jewish holocaust survivors trapped in relentless poverty. there's no heat, no electricity, no running water. they're cold, hungry, and sick, and they're suffering and dying needlessly.

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♪ >> jason: welcome back to this hannity special. congresswoman ocasio-cortez is fanning the flames of caronavirus hysteria.

but senator ted cruz is giving the freshman represenrep amuch needed check. writing on twitter we see evolution every day the dem party is rapidly evolving into an angry anti-scientist social ideology. you insulted pence and i asked you three real questions regarding science you ignored all three and responded with your resume and ad whom them attacks instead of insults, address the substance. joining us now for reaction, american conservative union chairman matt schlapp and senior legal advisor to the trump 2020 campaign jenna ellis. matt, i want to start with you, first of all, congratulations on an amazing cpac. you get grade crowds, amazing speakers and huge crowd there react specifically to this battle back and forth and aoc and what she is trying to spew now. >> yeah. you kind of never know what's coming from the squad and what's coming from aoc. you know, i don't know

whether it's a lack of just education or knowledge or just a desire to constantly propagandize. and i think ted cruz has a mean twitter game by the way. i think that's what we all have to do in this day and age. we have to push back on the facts because they don't have them. socialism doesn't work. and thank god for people like ted cruz who are making the case. >> jason: jenna, when you see this battle back and forth and aoc trying to disparage and take down vice president pence, what's your reaction? >> yeah. this is just yet another low blow and attack based not in fact but just trying to take down vice president pence. and, you know, her tweet started out saying that the vice president literally doesn't believe in science. i mean, this is the party that refuses to see the evidence that shows that an unborn child is a human being that is living and valuable inside the womb.

and wants abortion on demand. this is the party that believes that there is 37 genders and whatever one feels that can be their identity. let's remember, why was it such a joke when elizabeth warren 1/1,024th of her d.n.a. proved that she wasn't actually the american indian that she claimed to be. why? because of science. we can look at nay and we can see that the democrats are completely on the wrong side of the truth here. and for her to make that claim, aoc to make this claim against vice president pence is just ridiculous. that's right. it's trying to propagandize and start a battle that she can't win and so she needs to -- yeah, she just needs to be quiet and i think that ted cruz's twitter game is great. >> jason: i think ted cruz did put her back in her place. matt, cpac there, expensives from all over the country, really the world that have come in, there what's their reaction to socialism and the type of future that an

aoc is trying to convince america that they should change to? whole theme is america vs. socialism not capitalism. it strips each individual of their human dignity. tonight our keynote address at our reagan dinner was trump's national security advisor ambassador robert o'brien. and he told the crowd what the trump doctrine is overseas on socialism and, of course, we never want it to seep into this country. we have the son of president of brazil here talking about what socialism does. it destroys, it wreaks havoc. it creates poverty. human misery, and you know what, jason, you know, this it has absolutely never worked anywhere ever. >> jason: no, it hasn't. it hasn't. i'm glad you are doing that robert o'brien is one of the best editions to the trump administration. matt and jenna, thank you so

much. well, coming up, you won't believe the puff piece the "new york times" did on hunter biden. trace gallagher has the full report next as this special edition of hannity continues. ♪ ♪

♪ >> jason: welcome back to this special edition of "hannity." i made an ongoing suit and total exposure of his corrupt dealings , hunter biden is attempting to create a new picture of himself in the public eye. breaking news correspondent trace gallagher joins us here in studio. >> great to be here. hunter biden says he took up painting after his brother died of brain cancer in 2018. he admits doing something artistic is a big step considering during his years as a crack addict and an alcoholic he didn't read, write, or think. he said, for years i wouldn't call myself an artist. now i feel comfortable saying it. you have to be really focused in

order to be able to alert or alter it to your own imagination. his art has been described as psychedelic florals. biden was also involved in a lengthy paternity battle with the former arkansas stripper who used dna to prove he fathered her child. now he's been ordered to appear in arkansas court room settle child support payments by reviewing years of his financial records, including his lucrative, controversial and baffling stint as a board member of the ukraine energy giant, burisma. one art expert says she thinks biden could have a big career in the art world. of course, because of his last name. >> jason: i can't wait to see this piece of psychedelic floral art that you talk about. trace, thank you so much. unfortunately that is all the time we have left this evening. as always, thank you for being with us. sean will be back on monday. you don't want to miss it. have a great weekend.

let not your heart be troubled, laura ingraham is up next. ♪ critic. how we have not exactly done ♪ >> dana: hello, everyone, i am dana perino, it's 5:00 in new york city. this is "the five." president trump commenting on the coronavirus just moments ago as there are 62 confirmed cases in the united states. here is the president. >> we haven't lost anybody yet and hopefully we can keep that in tact. there've been no deaths in the united states at all. >> dana: the president going after the media. first, he's looking to loom large over a major dendritic primary. set for a big