This is a rush transcript from “Hannity,” September 22, 2009. This copy may not be in its final form and may be updated.
SEAN HANNITY, HOST: You see me go head to head with Bob Beckel time and time again on this program. Everyone knows his views, radical left wing, socialist. He says he’s a Democrat. But what may surprise you is that he actually has a conservative brother.
He is actor Graham Beckel who has appeared in hit TV shows like “Grey’s Anatomy” and “CSI,” and has been in major Hollywood movies like “Pearl Harbor” and “L.A. Confidential.”
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP FROM “L.A. CONFIDENTIAL”)
GRAHAM BECKEL, ACTOR: This is for ours, poncho!
(END VIDEO CLIP)
HANNITY: And for the first time ever the brothers Beckel join me now.
• Video: Watch the Beckel brothers showdown
Bob, Graham, welcome. Good to — first of all, what happened to him? You’re so normal. You’re conservative, right?
G. BECKEL: Yes, that’s true. My brother wasn’t loved by my mother in the same way that I was.
(LAUGHTER)
BOB BECKEL, DEMOCRATIC STRATEGIST: If I can point out here that at birth, he is one of my best friends in the world. You’re my brother. I love you both. You were both dropped on your heads at birth. That’s what happened to you.
G. BECKEL: Well, apparently that’s a good thing to have happened because we are straight and you’re crazy.
B. BECKEL: Yes, OK. Well, look, let’s get back down there. I was —
HANNITY: No, no, wait, but one second.
B. BECKEL: Sorry, go ahead.
HANNITY: Before you a take over the show as you normally do, let me ask you a question.
B. BECKEL: Yes.
HANNITY: When you watch him on this show and he makes the comment, he does it every week just to tick me off. Barack Obama, who is going to go down as one of the best presidents in history.
B. BECKEL: True.
HANNITY: And I say one of the worst. When you hear him say stuff like that what do you think of him when you’re watching the program?
G. BECKEL: I scratch my head and wonder what you’re going to do next. And it’s remarkable to me that these words can come out of his mouth. It’s —
HANNITY: And you’ve watched him all these years, and I’m thinking, you know, what happened to him?
G. BECKEL: I can’t tell you. I know that when he was nominated to be a deputy secretary of state, we got in a fight behind the McDonald’s in Alexandria, Virginia. I mean he was going through his FBI background check. And he’s —
B. BECKEL: I got through that FBI background check which is amazing given all the drugs I had done. I mean — but I got through it.
(LAUGHTER)
The — no. I was —
HANNITY: Confess all your sins now.
B. BECKEL: You know that, everybody knows that on this show.
Look, you guys — I listen to you rail on Obama. You rail on Obama. The fact of the matter is, what you guys forget is six months ago, a mere six months ago, this country and the world was heading into a great abyss and a depression. And you give him no credit for bringing us out of it, do you?
HANNITY: But Bob, the unemployment — we’ve lost four million jobs since Obama.
B. BECKEL: And we could have lost eight million jobs.
HANNITY: Oh, OK. That’s the answer. We could have lost eight.
B. BECKEL: Yes.
HANNITY: We saved four million jobs so Obama —
(CROSSTALK)
B. BECKEL: You think he should have done nothing? You think he should have done nothing?
G. BECKEL: Absolutely should have done nothing. Let the thing work.
HANNITY: Cut taxes.
G. BECKEL: Yes. He should cut taxes. It’s absurd. I’m from California, Bob. I know what’s up with this. You keep raising people’s taxes eventually they are going to say no. I mean, I’ve had it with it. I don’t want to send my money to a bunch of Hugo Chavez-loving, Ivy League ideologically educated, politically opportunistic careerist in Washington, D.C.
B. BECKEL: Wow.
G. BECKEL: I’m tired of it.
B. BECKEL: Did you get with Hannity last night and get brain washed by that? That line, that Hugo Chavez line was most unbelievably — even for you that’s going — a stretch. And I love you. Believe me, I love you. But we have been close all our lives. I just don’t get it.
Where is your empathy for people? Where is your sense that the government can do good things for people?
G. BECKEL: Bob, I’ve worked in a homeless shelter for a couple of years.
B. BECKEL: Yes, I know you did.
G. BECKEL: I have a plaque on the wall. When I hear the president of the United States in a great little rhetorical flourish talk about the leavening hand of the government, everybody knows that leavening hand is attached to the long arm of the Internal Revenue Service. And no one mistakes the Internal Revenue Service with something called liberty.
HANNITY: He is good.
B. BECKEL: Yes.
HANNITY: Where have you been?
B. BECKEL: Of course you were going to say that.
HANNITY: He is good. We have had the wrong Beckel on this program for all these years.
(LAUGHTER)
B. BECKEL: Well, good. Let me just say to you and you, ba fanabla.
(LAUGHTER)
The fact of the matter is, you guys are both — you refuse to accept the fact there’s a role for the federal government. It’s an important one.
HANNITY: Wait a minute. I got it. You mean the one that bankrupted Social Security and Medicare?
B. BECKEL: Here we go.
HANNITY: The one that bankrupted Fannie and Freddie? The one that can’t run the Post Office? Which government you want?
B. BECKEL: Let me ask you this.
HANNITY: They can’t run ‘cash for clunkers.’
B. BECKEL: Did you want — ‘cash for clunkers’ are highly successful. You got 600,000 cars off the road.
HANNITY: No one is buying a car, Bob.
(CROSSTALK)
B. BECKEL: What do you mean? Ford sold a bunch of cars.
HANNITY: Yes, but now.
(CROSSTALK)
HANNITY: Now everyone’s waiting for another handout before they buy one.
B. BECKEL: Who’s going to bail — if you want to let Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac go under?
HANNITY: No, no. I don’t want Fannie and Freddie. I didn’t want them giving loans to people that couldn’t afford to pay them back.
B. BECKEL: But they were there, OK? So they went under. Right? And they were going to go under completely and people lose their mortgages.
HANNITY: No, no. Wait a minute. It was the Democrats, and I’ll throw this to your brother. The Democrats, because they believe in socialism, redistribution, forced the banks and financial institutions to make the risky loans.
G. BECKEL: Well, yes. I think that the new models of Chevrolet should have Barney Frank as a hood ornament.
(LAUGHTER)
B. BECKEL: Barney right out front.
G. BECKEL: Yes, I know these guys.
B. BECKEL: Where did you come up with this? This is the problem being on with an actor. You don’t know when you’re — when there are lines and when there’s a reality. Barney Frank did more to save the financial institutions of this country than any other single human being next to Barack Obama who is and will be the greatest economic president since Roosevelt.
G. BECKEL: Has it ever occurred to you that these guys are just out and out con men who are seeking power?
B. BECKEL: No. It hasn’t. But the people who are seeking power, the con men, were the ones in the last administration and the Republicans on Capitol Hill who said that they wanted small government, and what did they do? They ended up with big government.
G. BECKEL: You know what? I agree with you. I don’t have a problem with that. A pox on both their houses. But do not try to tell somebody from California that what’s going on now in Washington is, by any stretch of the imagination, reasonable.
B. BECKEL: The facts are in, and the facts are that, if we went back six months ago, we were all scared. We all thought this economy…
HANNITY: And unemployment — and unemployment, we lost 4 million jobs.
B. BECKEL: And if Barack Obama hadn’t been elected, how many jobs had been lost?
HANNITY: We would have had jobs by now, because the free market would have recovered.
B. BECKEL: Oh, get out of here.
Look, the fact of the matter is I sit here, and I will repeat what I said when we started this segment here. And that is that I love you both. You’re one of my best friends. You’re my brother. I can’t help it if you both are misguided, and I want you all to get some help. And I would like to offer that up at government expense.
HANNITY: We’ll give the last word to the Hollywood Beckel.
G. BECKEL: I must say that the Democrats have no better partisan than my brother.
HANNITY: It’s true.
G. BECKEL: Barack Obama has no larger defender than my brother. And I have tremendous respect for him for being true to his school and for taking it yard on their behalf.
However, Bob, I think in this case you’re part of the problem.
(LAUGHTER)
HANNITY: Ouch. Ouch. On that note…
B. BECKEL: I love you.
HANNITY: And I love you after that. All right. The fight will be after the show in the parking lot.
All right, guys. Thank you.
— Watch “Hannity” weeknights at 9 p.m. ET!
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