Ron DeSantis speaks out about Florida primary victory

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Ron DeSantis speaks out about Florida primary victory

On 'The Ingraham Angle,' Republican Florida gubernatorial candidate says his campaign had unstoppable momentum.

This is a rush transcript from "The Ingraham Angle," August 28, 2018. This copy may not be in its final form and may be updated.

SEAN HANNITY, FOX NEWS HOST: You know, they can pull them out quick. Let not your heart be troubled. Ingraham is here taking it over.

LAURA INGRAHAM, FOX NEWS HOST: I love the red card. I mean, if you are nice, you want to give him a yellow card. Hannity, when I played field hockey, I got just a few yellow cards and maybe one red card. It was --

HANNITY: I got in trouble. I played ice hockey. I spent a lot of time in the penalty box. I was a big fan of the broad street bullies and Bobby Clark and Reggie leach and Hound Dog Kelly and Dave Schultz. That's what I grew up...

INGRAHAM: Oh my god. That's why people love you Hannity. Awesome show tonight.

HANNITY: Bobby Clark was my favorite. He had no teeth, none.

INGRAHAM: Oh no, that's like Gordie Howe on those guys. They're just like gums.

HANNITY: Yes. They played (inaudible). It's like, did you ride a bicycle? When you rode a bicycle, did you wear a helmet?

INGRAHAM: Never. Are you kidding? A helmet?

HANNITY: But you make your kids wear a helmet now. It's crazy.

INGRAHAM: No, no. Bubble wrap our children, Hannity. That's what we do today. (Inaudible).

HANNITY: Helicopter parents.

INGRAHAM: Great show tonight. Thanks so much.

HANNITY: All right. Have a good show.

INGRAHAM: All right. I'm Laura Ingraham. This is 'The Ingraham Angle' from Washington. What a show we have for you tonight. The case of Hillary Clinton's private server just will not go away. Now, there are reports -- and this doesn't surprise me in the slightest -- that China was hacking her emails in real-time. Peter Schweizer, best person we could have to break it down is here tonight.

Plus, primary voters hit the polls in three states across the country tonight and at this hour, polls have now closed in Arizona where candidates from both parties are vying for the chance to succeed retiring Republican Senator Jeff Flake. It's too early for Fox News to project a winner on both sides, but we will have a live report on the ground at all the pivotal races for this November's midterms.

Plus, we'll talk to one of tonight's big winners -- we already know. And that president is also taking aim at some tech giants who he believes and many of us do, are unfairly targeting unfairly targeting conservatives. That will be a spirited debate later in the hour.

But first, the press, prosecutors and partisans and their incestuous relationship. That is the focus of tonight's Angle. OK, last month, CNN ran with a bombshell of a story.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

JIM SCIUTTO, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Sources with knowledge tell, myself and Karl, that Michael Cohen claims that then candidate Donald Trump knew in advance about the June 2016 meeting in Trump Tower in which Russians were expected to offer his campaign dirt on Hillary Clinton. Crucially, these sources tell us that Cohen is willing to make that assertion to the special counsel, Robert Mueller.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

INGRAHAM: Why is Chris Cuomo's head so much bigger than the other two heads? I don't know why I focused on that. OK. Well, the accompanying article on their website revealed that "contacted by CNN, one of Cohen's attorneys, Lanny Davis, declined to comment." And just a week ago, Lanny Davis, Michael Cohen's attorney, doubled down again on CNN.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

LANNY DAVIS, MICHAEL COHEN'S ATTORNEY: I think that the reporting of this story got mixed up in the course of a criminal investigation. We were not the source of this story.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

INGRAHAM: OK, a little problem there. He was lying! Lanny Davis was actually the major source for the entire story. He was also the anonymous source that confirmed its other outlets. Now this week he came clean telling "The Washington Post" that he is not certain the claim is accurate and that he could not independently verify it.

And yesterday, he tells "BuzzFeed News" that he regrets his whole role as an independent source in a subsequent denial of his involvement in the story, if you can follow that. Davis merely saying he "made a mistake." But he actually didn't. Lanny Davis is an old Clinton fixer who has been spinning information and using the press to do his bidding for decades.

Now, this was deliberate, and the folks at CNN were only too happy to join him in this misinformation charade. Why? Because they have a common enemy. It's Donald J. Trump. So Davis floats a malicious and salacious story to target a political adversary and the media gleefully disseminate it.

Now CNN's Sciutto and Bernstein delighted in this tale of Trump's misdeeds because it fits the pathetic Russian narrative that they have been trying to substantiate for a year now. They used to call CNN, remember, the Clinton News Network in the day. Well, with Lanny Davis as an unpaid contributor, it is more fitting than ever. Forget 1998. It's fact.

But this reminds me of the disgraced FBI Director Jim Comey. We call him James "Too Tall" Comey, OK, fine -- who's planted more stories than Martha Stewart has planted hydrangeas. OK? Comey passed his memos of classified conversations between himself and the president to a friend. Remember that memo to the file? And he did it for media consumption.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

JAMES COMEY, FORMER FBI DIRECTOR: I understood this to be my recollection recorded of my conversation with the president. As a private citizen, I felt free to share that. I felt it very important to get it out.

SEN. ROY BLUNT, R—MISSOURI: So why didn't you do give those to somebody yourself rather than get them through a third-party?

COMEY: Because I was buried the media was camping at the end of my driveway at that point and I was actually going out of town with my wife to hide and I worried it would be like feeding seagulls at the beach.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

INGRAHAM: Oh my god, I had forgotten he said that. So, we are led to believe that he really doesn't like the press, Comey, while he is throwing them life sustaining chum, oh, to the seagulls. And remember these greatest hits from the WikiLeaks Podesta inbox? CNBC's John Harwood sent emails to Hillary Clinton.

Campaign chairman John Podesta shamelessly sucking up to him offering campaign advice and praising the candidate. He was with her while he was covering the campaign. Then there was Juliet Eilperin of "The Washington Post." She dropped Podesta a line to give him a heads up on a story she was going to publish, and she included a little preview, so helpful.

And "The New York Times" unbiased Glenn Thrush, he put an appearance as well. He wrote to Podesta a story in progress to make sure "I'm not effing anything up." He said. Like Lanny Davis, Podesta was apparently kind of like a freelance editor for both "The Washington Post" and "The New York Times."

Now, these are just a few examples of collusion that we know about only thanks to WikiLeaks. But today we learn from Congress and Mark Meadows the danger of this kind of politicization of the media and partisan story planting. He tweeted in part, "We've learned new information suggesting our suspicions are true. FBI/DOJ have previously leaked info to the press and then used those same press stories as a separate source to justify FISA" -- Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act -- and Meadows then spoke to "America's Newsroom" following closed door hearings with FBI officials.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

REP. MARK MEADOWS, R—N.C.: We know that some people like the Department Of Justice and FBI actually gave information to the media, then the stories were reported, then they used those reports to justify further investigation.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

INGRAHAM: Now, it should be noted that the FBI tonight is pushing back hard on this story. A source clarified the agent testified that the FBI routinely uses media materials to corroborate their work product including FISA materials, but "never said directly that we utilize FBI leaks for FISAs." Boy, that was a carefully worded statement. Got to really parse that one.

But with partisans using the media too bait prosecutors are justify bogus investigations, don't we need to be more careful and ask more questions? I think America needs journalists that we can trust. But as it stands now, we not only have to worry about the objectivity of our news sources, we have to worry about their sources as well. And that is "The Angle."

Joining us now with reaction, the Washington Examiner's correspondent, Byron York, along with attorney and RNC committeewoman Harmeet Dhillon. All right, Byron, what do we need to know here? This has been a wild day. Let's start with a Lanny Davis and CNN saga, which is both stunning on his part and I think even -- we are kind of used to that from the Clintons and the Clinton spokesman surrogates, but CNN?

BYRON YORK, CORRESPONDENT, WASHINGTON EXAMINER: CNN's reaction is really baffling here. Why are they -- they are sticking with the story and --

INGRAHAM: The story being?

YORK: Their original story, saying that Michael Cohen was prepared to tell Robert Mueller that Donald Trump knew about the Trump Tower meeting in advance. It was a huge, huge story. Now "The New York Post" had reported this. They went back, re-reported it after Davis confessed that he had not told them the truth, and told their readers what was going on.

So did "The Washington Post." Now, what's going on with CNN? It seems to be that their position is a source gave us inaccurate information. We pass that onto you, the listener, but we told you what he said. Now we found out that it's not true, but we stand by the story. It doesn't make any sense. You should do with "The Post" did and what "New York" and "Washington Post" did, which is go back, re-report it, and tell the readers what happened.

INGRAHAM: Harmeet, Kellyanne Conway was on with Chris Cuomo at CNN just recently and it was this unbelievable exchange where he was up on his, you know, high horse about morality and truth seeking and how hard CNN works, and I want to play this for you now because in light of what we have discovered with this Lanny Davis phony sourcing, I think it is more important than ever to watch this.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

CHRIS CUOMO, CNN HOST: But I will tell you this now and I make it to you as a promise, all right? As you know, nobody works harder than we do to do this job.

KELLANNE CONWAY, COUNSEL TO PRESIDENT TRUMP: Who, you?

CUOMO: In this place, on my team, in this shop of CNN. We work very hard to tell people what is true.

CONWAY: Any pause for humility. But Chris, let me just have a word about that.

CUOMO: Nobody outworks us every day. I'm telling you this.

CONWAY: OK, but let me just have a word about that.

CUOMO: All I wanted to tell you was that you need to own the truth.

CONWAY: Well you sound like a scold most of the time.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

INGRAHAM: Harmeet, you need to own the truth. What you think about that tonight?

HARMEET DHILLON, RNC COMMITTEEWOMAN: I mean, you know, what's there to say. As a lawyer, I have to say I'm temporarily happy to know that the lawyers are not the most despicable people here in the eyes of the public I think today based on these lies and their failure to admit what went on here.

You know, everybody who was a reporter -- I'm a former reporter before I became a lawyer and occasionally a source will burn you and, you know, I mean, OK. You got corrected, move on. I mean, that's what they do. It is part of their job and it happens.

But to not own it I think is really showing that we all have reason to doubt the sincerity of other stories that they've had out there if this is their corporate attitude towards, you know, grossly misleading the public.

I think it is really bad news for the media it is a black eye for CNN and, you know, I think the public expects better, the viewers expect to deserve better from them.

INGRAHAM: And we wonder why the press' numbers, real numbers are in the toilet. And this comes after Sunday's "Meet The Press" where Chuck Todd -- I'm going to play the sound bite -- laid blame on this network for causing the problems for credibility. Let's watch.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

DAVID BRODY, CHRISTIAN BROADCASTING NETWORK: I hate to say it, I know I'm sitting on a "Meet the Press" round table, but the truth of the matter is, 62 percent think the media's bias. So in other words, if you look at the approval rating of Donald Trump versus the approval rating of the media --

CHUCK TODD, MSNBC HOST: Well, the conservative echo chamber created that environment. It's not -- no, no, no, I mean, it has been a tactic and a tool of the Roger Ailes created echo chamber.

BRODY: Yes.

TODD: So, let's not pretend it's not anything other than that.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

INGRAHAM: OK, I think the press' credibility has been pretty low before -- even before 20 years ago if Fox News started.

YORK: Also, can I say something about the larger agenda here? I mean, Lanny Davis is doing what he's doing, he's telling CNN what he's telling them for a reason. And we seem to have the situation in which Michael Cohen, the client here, the president's former lawyer, is kind of jumping up and down and waving his hands at Robert Mueller saying, hey, notice me, notice me, I've got something.

Now, we've never gotten a story out of the Robert Mueller shop that -- we've never found out a story about this that Mueller didn't know about six months ago. He's been way ahead of the reporting on this. So, we have to figure out that there is no -- that he has no particular interest in Cohen right now because he farmed his case out to prosecutors in New York. So you have to wonder, what are they doing here? I don't really know the answer, but this Lanny Davis stuff didn't just come out of nowhere.

INGRAHAM: The Bruce Ohr -- you've been doing a reporting on this -- Bruce Ohr saga for months and months and months. What do we take from today's developments?

YORK: Well, the big question had been with Bruce Ohr, how high and how far did knowledge about the dossier go? The Steele Trump dossier, go inside the FBI and inside the Justice Department, because we did know that after Christopher Steele was terminated as a source because he was dying to get bad information about Trump out into the public before the election, right?

So we talked to the press, which was against the rules, so the FBI terminated him. And then they used Bruce Ohr as the go-between. So Ohr would go talk to Christopher Steele and then he'd go to the FBI and tell them what Steele had told him.

So now, I think what they learned today was who else was who else was Ohr briefing on this? Who else was being kept up on this? Not just at the FBI but at the Obama Justice Department.

INGRAHAM: Doesn't he have an obligation, Harmeet, to divulge his connection to the firm that was producing the dossier that then led to the FISA warrant and the surveilling of the Trump campaign? I mean, isn't there some basic sense at the Justice Department that you have to reveal these types of obvious conflicts? I mean, he was promoting his wife. He was promoting her firm and at the same time, added bonus, get the president, or get the candidate.

DHILLON: Right. Well, he was creating demand for his wife's consulting services, so that's an obvious conflict of interest. It's also a violation of the, you know, government's rules to not disclose that. But more importantly for me as a civil libertarian, the fact that this was not disclosed to the FISA court is shocking and I think it's obstruction of justice, quite frankly.

Laura, I ran the numbers as of last year, 21 warrants had been denied by the FISA court out of over 40,000. That is 99.999, OK? 99.999 are granted.

INGRAHAM: That's despicable.

DHILLON: So, the people at the DOJ and FBI say, hey, don't worry about this, there are safeguards in place. Not only does a high level of the FBI have to sign off but also high levels of the DOJ have to probe this and sign off. In fact, it appears that no oversight was done and they didn't ask -- didn't ask the obvious questions about this.

So, I think this does go higher. We don't know what was said exactly in the testimony but there are a lot of questions that need to be asked, and it isn't just what happened to Carter Page. This seems to be a systematic issue with the DOJ and the FBI and, you know, creating stories.

INGRAHAM: All right. Great segment, guys. And by the way, former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton's private email server was reportedly hacked by another foreign entity. That issue had been raised before but now it looks like we have some confirmation. It was a Chinese owned company. They inserted code that forwarded Clinton's emails to them in real time. That, according to "The Daily Caller" News Foundation.

Even worse, the FBI was reportedly warned about this by the intel community's inspector general, but did nothing in response. Here with his reaction is investigative journalist Peter Schweizer. Peter, this doesn't come as any surprise to any of us who had followed this issue.

There is no security on this private email server. Classified information clearly on it. What is your take away? Apparently no Russia but yes, China.

PETER SCHWEIZER, INESTIGATIVE JOURNALIST: Yes, Laura, this is a huge a story and I'll tell you why. Think about this for a second. If the story is true and the reporter that broke the story, Mr. Pollock, is an excellent reporter. If the story is true, it means that the only set of all of Hillary Clinton's emails as Secretary of State resides in Beijing, China.

Because remember, she deleted 30,000 emails and never turned them over to the FBI. If you think about the Steele dossier, the concern that was always raised about that fake dossier was that it would lead to blackmail on Donald Trump, these e-mails would be a massive blackmail too for the Chinese against Hillary Clinton.

Those 30,000 deleted emails were personal emails, they were probably very sensitive, that's why they were deleted in the first place. You have the existing set of the other 30,000. This is a huge story, and the fact that this information was discovered, then turned over to the FBI and the FBI counterintelligence office, including Mr. Peter Strzok, apparently took no interest in it, is shocking.

You know, China is the big threat here. They are the rising power challenging United States. Russia is the declining power. If I were looking at an intelligence threat, the number one threat would be China. That is what this FBI director today is saying. China is the one we are worried about. But there was no interest in this apparently by Mr. Stzrok and others. It's a shocking story.

INGRAHAM: Peter, I think you reported on this at the time, I believe. When this e-mail server was discovered, it also came out, I believe, that the person in charge of Hillary's security on her system was told, we might've had some intrusion in the system, and kind of blew off the concern.

I had to go back and get the actual language so I get it verbatim. But that was reported. I guess through investigators, he said that there was a concern raised, but basically he was shot down when he raised that concern. Period.

SCHWEIZER: Yes, that's exactly -- that's exactly right. The service that was taking care of the servers raised this with the Clinton people and it was dismissed because they didn't want attention focused on even existence of the server. So the way they tried to cope with this was pretending that the server wasn't there.

This is a massive breach. And look, we were told in the 2016 campaign that Hillary Clinton was the adult. She is the professional. She's the diplomat that knows how to get things done and to do things in an orderly way. This thing was a massive failure.

INGRAHAM: Yes. Well, she knows how to get things done to cover up for the Clinton's and Clinton Foundation I guess, but get things done for the American people, she got a lot done for China. And I say thank god Hillary Clinton wasn't elected given the fact that if the story is true, China has a treasure trove of information, which I don't think is just about her daughter's wedding or her grandkids or whatever or yoga class. I don't think the Chinese care about, you know, the down dog in Hillary. I think they are interested in some other issues.

SCHWEIZER: Yes, you know, that is exactly right. And the bottom line here is I think if you gave any counterintelligence official a choice between being concerned about a discredited dossier or being concerned that your president of the United States has 60,000 emails in the possession of an enemy power and you don't even know what's in 30,000 of them.

I think they would view that is a much larger counterintelligence threat than anything that is raised by the dossier. That is why this issue needs to be re-investigated and looked at. It's a counterintelligence issue and problem going forward.

INGRAHAM: Yes. Jeff Sessions should convene an investigation, a real serious investigation just into this issue alone, frankly. Peter, great to have you on tonight. Thank you so much.

And by the way, as I said earlier, it is election night for primary voters in Florida and Arizona. We've got live reports for you on the ground next and we'll speak with Congressman Ron DeSantis, who tonight just became the Republican nominee for Florida's governor. He just got a surprising opponent this fall, we'll tell you about that, next.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

INGRAHAM: Voters hit the polls in primaries across three states today but two particular states will greatly impact November's midterms. For more on what we go to now is in Florida, Ed Henry, standing by live in Miami. Ed?

ED HENRY, FOX NEWS CHIEF NATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Laura, great to see you. Big developments tonight here, breaking this hour. In Florida, the governor's race is going to come down to a dramatic clash between a key ally of President Trump, Ron DeSantis, against a Democrat backed socialist Bernie Sanders, Andrew Gillam. It's going to be interesting as we see the Democratic Party in swing states like this tilt even further left.

On the Republican side as I mentioned, Ron DeSantis tonight easily beat the state agriculture commissioner Adam Putnam, where the deciding factor, very clearly was the coattails of the president. The president a short time ago tweeting this out there about the race "such a fantastic win for a Ron DeSantis and the people of the great state of Florida. Ron will be a fantastic governor onto November." That from the president.

Now look at how dramatic, how pivotal the president' support was. In mid- June polling had Putnam beating DeSantis by 15 points, mid-June. A week later, June 22nd, the president tweeted an endorsement of DeSantis. By late July, DeSantis was up by 12 points, a 27-point swing.

Now tonight here, DeSantis running to replace retiring Republican governor Rick Scott, who easily beat -- easily won the GOP nomination for a senate seat against incumbent Bill Nelson. They will face off in November. That is expected to be a very tight race.

I mentioned Andrew Gillum on the Democratic side. He beat back a challenge from a more moderate candidate. He's the Tallahassee mayor. He won after key endorsements from Bernie Sanders and after an infusion of $650,000 from liberals George Soros and Tom Steyer, who's been pushing for impeachment for a long time so watch that.

Meanwhile, another important Trump factor in Arizona tonight, Republican Senator Jeff Flake retired because he's at odds with the Trump agenda, unlikely that he would get re-elected, he decided to retire. He endorsed Congresswoman Martha McSally. She said she doesn't want the endorsement because she is competing with Dr. Kelli Ward and Sergio Arpaio over who is more pro-Trump.

The winner of the GOP primary likely to face Congresswoman Kyrtsen Sinema in a pickup opportunity for Democrats. Interesting, we have not been able to call this race in Arizona just yet. The polls just closed a short time ago, Laura, but that race is very significant as well.

INGRAHAM: Ed, Steyer and Soros, a huge infusion of money in Florida, that I understand is going to be happening in other races, including in even statewide initiatives in places like Arizona, Colorado, Ohio, and beyond. So this is just the beginning of what we are seeing.

HENRY: It is, and what could be significant is in a battleground like Florida, which is typically tight, and presidential races and midterms, whether it's governor or this big senate race here. You have Andrew Gillum, who has been polled very far left because as you say, he's got Tom Steyer and George Soros money behind him. He's a Tallahassee mayor, a relatively unknown.

This was a surprise win, a shocker really, and he beat back the daughter of Bob Graham, the former senator and governor, beat back a challenge from here. She's a more moderate Democrat, former congresswoman, someone who is seen sort of middle-of-the-road, might've been a tougher challenge or against Ron DeSantis. Now you got the party pulled to the left. It will be fascinating how it plays out in November.

INGRAHAM: Ed, thanks so much. And joining me now is one of the men who just won one of these important races. Congressman Ron DeSantis is now the Republican nominee for Florida governor. He is here now and his first interview since his primary victory. Congressman DeSantis, congratulations. You must be feeling pretty good tonight.

RON DESANTIS, FLORIDA GOP GUBERNATORIAL CANDIDATE: Yes, Laura. And I remember you and I talking after we did the debate on Fox News, and you were like, "you are not going to be behind much longer after this." And sure enough, I mean, we really pulled ahead. We had the president come at the end of July with a huge event for us.

And we really just had unstoppable momentum. And the good thing is, we are going to carry this all the way through November and post a strong victory so we can continue on Florida's path to success and make it even better.

INGRAHAM: Are you surprised that Gillum wins on the Democrat side? So he'll be your challenger, endorsed by Bernie Sanders, as you just heard us talk about. Soros and Tom Steyer both pitched in a total of about $650,000. It seemed to make a difference down the home stretch. So you are going to be running against a hard left former Tallahassee mayor.

DESANTIS: He is the most liberal candidate that the Democratic Party has ever nominated in the state of Florida by a country mile in a governor's race. He wants to abolish ICE. He wants a billion dollar tax increase. He wants a single-payer health care system in Florida, which would bankrupt the state.

I'm trying to make Florida even better. He wants to make Florida Venezuela. But he also combines the far left ideology with managerial incompetence. As mayor of Tallahassee, his tenure has been absolutely disastrous. Tallahassee is one of, if not, the most crime-ridden city in all of Florida, year after year, rising crime, he is embroiled in a lot of corruption scandals. This is not -- the guy who can't even run the city of Tallahassee. There is no way Florida voters can entrust him with our entire state.

INGRAHAM: Now, Congressman DeSantis, in your jubilation and your celebration, you may have missed that Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez tweeted out congratulations not to you, but to your challenger, Andrew Gillum, saying, "the progressive movement is transforming the country and he proved that again tonight. Gillum ran on Medicare for all, legalizing marijuana, abolish ICE and more. Thank you Florida voters! On to November. I'd wear that as a badge of honor tonight, congressman.

DESANTIS: Well look, we have people who in Florida who have fled socialist countries like Cuba and Venezuela. They don't want that imported into Florida. We also have people who flee from left-wing policies in states like New York and Connecticut and they don't want that imported into Florida. So, I think we want to keep Florida great. We want to keep it going in a good direction. And going in the direction of an Ocasio-Cortez is just untenable and it will not happen in Florida.

INGRAHAM: Congressman, some of your critics will throw out this, they'll say, well, you won on Trump's coattails, but you are short on your own policy initiatives on a statewide level. How do you answer your critics?

DESANTIS: That's not true at all. We have a solid vision for how to create high-paying jobs in Florida. I've been very strong on our environmental problems and solving our water crisis that we have in different parts of the state, and then only one of the few people have stood up against some of the entrenched interests. Laura, you know they were spending millions of dollars to stop me in the race and yet we did that. We've been very strong on illegal immigration, saying we need E-Verify in Florida, we can't have sanctuary cities. I've been somebody that's been a wholesale supporter of education reform, from parental choice to vocational education in the classrooms, to more civics education. So we've been talking about these key issues time and time again, and we're going to continue to do that and spread the message far and wide.

INGRAHAM: Did you hear from Putnam tonight? Did he give you a call?

DESANTIS: Yes. Look, he's a class guy. He worked very hard. He was a tough competitor. People say you won big, but this guy built a huge organization, he raised a boatload of money, and he ran a very tough race. He tried to knock me around a lot, that's politics. But he's supportive of where we are going. He knows we've got to keep Florida in Republican hands, and he's going to help me. So that's just how these things go. I would've supported him if he had beaten me, and you got to move forward as a team.

INGRAHAM: Absolutely. And the president, I don't care what anybody -- he's very popular in Florida. The endorsement did help a lot, but he also did a great job on the on the hustings. Congressman, congratulations, thanks so much.

And big tech is once again showing their true colors when it comes to conservative speech online. President Trump is now calling them out. That debate, don't miss it, ahead.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

INGRAHAM: It got hot today. President Trump taking aim at big tech and their alleged bias against conservatives. The president first took to Twitter singling out Google for what he calls rigged news search results against him. He even went further this afternoon.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

DONALD TRUMP, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: I think Google is really taking advantage of a lot of people, and I think that's a very serious thing and it's a very serious charge. I think what Google and what others are doing, if you look at what is going on at Twitter, if you look at what is going on at Facebook, they better be careful because you can't do that to people.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

INGRAHAM: Joining me now with reaction, former Trump campaign manager Corey Lewandowski and Jason Nichols, a Democratic strategist. All right, Jason, let's start with you. What about the president's thoughts here? A lot of conservatives that I talked to think, wait a second, my impressions on Twitter are way down with no real clue as to why, search results seem to kind of speak to themselves when you put in "Trump and news," it's all negative. What do you think?

JASON NICHOLS, DEMOCRATIC STRATEGIST: First of all, when we look at the search results on Google, just like when you do a Google scholar search, what you get are the sources that received the most citations, the ones that are cited the most, the ones that actually have the most news bureaus. So this has nothing to do with politics. If he wants better stories, then create better news is what he needs to do.

INGRAHAM: Like consumer confidence at an 18-year high?

NICHOLS: Or 2,500 kids being traumatized by being separated, being accused in court under oath of committing a crime, there's a lot of things that he has done that actually show he doesn't have a whole lot of good news to talk about. So --

INGRAHAM: Jason, the fact that 41 percent of Americans now say the country is going in the right direction, the last year of Obama, do you know where that number was? Twenty to mid-twenties. The country sees things going the right track. They might not like everything Trump tweets, but I'm saying, and I want Corey to get in on this, because it is true that when conservatives say bias, bias, bias, Dorsey and Sergey Brin, all of these guys will come out and say this is just the way the searches go. This is the way the technology rolls. Sometimes conservatives will get the short end of the stick and sometimes liberals will, too. Everybody complains all the time, that is where we need to be. That's what they will say.

COREY LEWANDOWSKI, FORMER TRUMP CAMPAIGN MANAGER: Yes, but look, Eric Schmidt was a supporter of the Clinton campaign, and that is perfectly fine for him to be able to do that, no one is questioning that.

INGRAHAM: It doesn't mean he's biased, though, right?

LEWANDOWSKI: It doesn't mean he's biased. But look, Dorsey has said that the company tends to be more left-leaning than conservative. And again, that is the way he wants to run his company. But what we have at Google specifically is they fired one of their engineers, and he said they did that because they were mistreating individuals who were conservatives there. That is what he was fired for. Now he is suing Google for his job back.

INGRAHAM: Harmeet Dhillon's client.

LEWANDOWSKI: And so the reason is, look, you can run a company anyway you want to, but it is such a monopoly. Between Google and Facebook, it reaches 1.8 billion people on a daily basis. These are massive numbers. And I'm not in favor of government overzealous regulation, but you can't have a company that is going after people based on their conservative thought and shadow banning them or banning them in an unfair manner. And we have to look at this because it is a problem that's only going to grow.

INGRAHAM: NRA spokeswoman Dana Loesch spoke about what happened to her on Twitter. Let's watch.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

DANA LOESCH, NRA SPOKESWOMAN: We have to deal with situations where you have crazy people running amok on Twitter, and Twitter having inconsistent applications of terms of service. And that's what this comes down to. I'm simply asking for these -- for people like Jack Dorsey and Mark Zuckerberg and these individuals who own these platforms to maybe rein and their employees' biases and evenly and consistently apply and enforce terms of service.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

INGRAHAM: And the thing that got her really upset is a tweet that has since been deleted about, well, 'if Dana Loesch has to have her children murdered before she'll understand, I guess that's what needs to happen.' And the individual, Milan Legius, whatever his name is, has not been permanently banned from Twitter. I guess he was temporarily banned. That is the kind of stuff -- that is not political speech. That is -- that's terrifying actually.

NICHOLS: I agree. And as somebody who comes on conservative media and gets death threats --

INGRAHAM: And we love you coming on. I adore you.

NICHOLS: Thank you.

INGRAHAM: May be even more than Corey.

NICHOLS: Those people sending me threats right now, I want you to know I'm certainly not afraid of you and I'm not backing down. But I will tell you that I absolutely deplore that. I think that she has an argument in terms of trying to get those people to be banned from those platforms. I think that Twitter is a large universe and there are some things that Twitter sometimes misses.

But the idea that they are targeting conservatives, and I think what Corey said, while it may have some validity that this person has a claim, it has nothing to do with the algorithm in which Google works. That's not what this is about. This is one guy feeling that he was discriminated against at work.

LEWANDOWSKI: Laura, when you look at Twitter, and you look at what they did to Candace Owens, and she took a tweet that was written actually originally by the op-ed writer of "The New York Times" and she changed one word in that tweet, and all of a sudden her account was suspended. Not for doing anything other than literally changing one word. She changed the word from "white" to "black." It was against a conservative African- American woman who was literally reposting something that had already been posted. The original post was never considered derogatory or exculpatory or anything else for that person. But as soon as Candace Owens put that out, she immediately was notified by Twitter that her account had been suspended. I don't think that's right.

INGRAHAM: Do liberals complain about getting banned?

LEWANDOWSKI: I've never seen one get banned.

INGRAHAM: I always say, if the shoe was on the other foot -- I try to do this to myself, too. But if the shoe were on the other foot, and it was a company this big in this powerful run by the Koch brothers or some other conservative group of people, and the left felt like their views were not - - it's an interesting conversation. Oh, this is just an algorithm. I hear that algorithm thing all the time. It doesn't seem to give me much comfort. Close it out.

NICHOLS: I think that people on the left absolutely get banned from some of these --

INGRAHAM: Who? Some of the most horrible hateful things said about Ivanka Trump. I didn't see a lot of things banned. Was it Chelsea Handler, it might not be her, but they are all the same person to me.

LEWANDOWSKI: And I think there is the difference between saying something vulgar and saying something that is threatening. I think what was said about Dana Loesch, that was a borderline threat and I think that she has every right to complain about that. But what we've seen, and I'm telling you as someone who gets a lot of threats, probably getting them right now, I think of that is despicable, but I think that it needs to be applied on both sides and I think usually does.

INGRAHAM: Great conversation, guys.

An immigration controversy that doesn't get enough attention, visa overstays in the hundreds of thousands. Details on that crisis in just a moment. And later, the Jacksonville shooter this past weekend shared some telling traits with other violent colors. A psychotherapist is here to tell us what they are. So stay there.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

INGRAHAM: OK, there might finally be a solution to one of the biggest problems plaguing U.S. immigration which is visa overstays. We don't talk about it enough, but in 2017, approximately 700,000 travelers to the United States overstayed their visas. That according to Homeland Security. But Congressman Steve King is introducing new legislation that would require nonimmigrants to post bonds before visiting the United States. So would this help to finally get illegal immigration, these visa overstays, under control?

Joining us now with reaction is Tom Homan, the former acting direct of ICE, along with Allen Orr who is an immigration attorney. Allen?

ALLEN ORR, IMMIGRATION ATTORNEY: So this is a problem. Not that big of a problem, --

INGRAHAM: Wait a second, 700,000 -- Allen, I adore you. You know that. But 700,000 people is not a big problem?

ORR: So that is a reporting problem from the government. So right now, the way that the government relates to people who leave through land ports isn't properly recorded, and sometimes when students change their status, that isn't also properly reported. So I don't really trust the facts that are presented --

INGRAHAM: You don't trust the numbers from Homeland Security.

ORR: There actually have been other reports from Robert Warren who used to work for the government and also now works for the Center for Immigration Studies that debunks most of this study, saying this is just an exaggeration and another way to push more restrictive policies down at immigration.

INGRAHAM: So you don't think there really is any problem with these overstays?

ORR: I think visa overstays is an issue, but I don't think bonds are a solution, because what that will do is make getting visas a class issue, so therefore people who have the money to post a bond will then get a visa, and then if they wanted will still overstay because money would not be an issue for them.

INGRAHAM: Tom?

TOM HOMAN: First of all, I disagree with my friend here. I think it is a huge problem. Maybe a few years ago I wouldn't trust the numbers, but the recent methodology used by CBP now is about 90 percent accurate, so you're talking about several hundred thousand dollars a year. Bond is a good idea as long as it's high enough so it's a deterrent so they are not willing just to forfeit and stay illegally.

Also what I think part of this legislation should is criminalize those overstayed visa. Again, most of those who overstay a visa come to this country with a full intent of never leaving. That's just like illegal entry. So if you criminalize it, that's another consequence, another deterrence to stop this from happening.

INGRAHAM: OK, so five countries with overstay rates of over 30 percent, Chad, Djibouti, Eritrea, Liberia, and the Solomon Islands. So when folks from Chad or these other countries come command, there's a pretty good chance they are not leaving. Something has to be done. We know this is what's happening, and it's like, stamp the visa, come on in, and then they don't leave. I can't blame them for not leaving. No one's really hunting them down.

HOMAN: This bond issue has been a law for decades. They just need to finally implement it. We've been asking for that for years. But I also think equally to the bond, again, they need to be high enough where it's going to be more than what they could pay.

INGRAHAM: How would it work? How would it work? Before they leave their country, their home country, they would post, let's say, $1,000, $5,000? What about Allen's point that this is a class issue. Now people that have no money, they can never come to the United States. Is that fair?

HOMAN: What Allen is forgetting is this is a sovereign country. We have the right to decide who comes in and out of this country. We have the right to maintain a legal immigration system. I can tell you, there are hundreds and thousands every year. And you are right, the population is not a priority, hasn't been a priority. When I was acting director, I made it a priority, but we certainly don't have the resources for overstays, not when we are kicked out of jails, we've got to walk the streets looking for criminals. So by adding this bond requirements, and make it a criminal act to overstay a visa, I think you would see a drastic change in overstays.

INGRAHAM: There a lot of countries, Allen, where you don't have to have a visa. They are called visa waiver countries. So you have Greece, Hungary, and Portugal have the highest overstays for countries where you don't need a visa at all. But we are categorizing, so we know who the high risk people are. Greece, we know they're having a lot of problems, Hungary, Portugal, I guess people -- everyone wants to come to United States. But we have to be able to control this.

And didn't the 9/11 commission say we should do fingerprint entry and exit? Am I remembering this correctly? But we don't implement that. This is the 9/11 commission, bipartisan groups of experts who spent, what, years of studying this after 9/11? Why don't we have this?

ORR: I think we do have entry-exit systems, there is just not modernized yet and they're not talking--

INGRAHAM: Modernized? After 9/11 they're still not modernized?

ORR: It's the U.S. government and our systems are a little bit antiquated.

But also remember reciprocity. So if we start charging bonds to people that come here, bonds are going to be charged to U.S. citizens that go to these countries, and maybe some students won't be able to make those bonds because of their classifications or just their funding won't be able to go to other countries. So that's a limiting restriction on U.S. nationals who want to travel.

INGRAHAM: If we are talking about losing a few backpackers in the summer versus keeping our country, our integrity of our immigration secure and sound, I think we can lose of your backpackers.

ORR: This has been an issue for years. And addressing it is the same way we address all of our other immigration problems. We modernize our immigration system. The problem is, if more people were able to stay here illegally, we wouldn't have the problem with overstays. Things like ending TPS, ending DACA is going to only to increase the amount of overstays that are here because we know --

INGRAHAM: So you really don't want to put any limits. You want no limits on people who can come to the country on visas, you really want to know limits, correct?

ORR: It's not about no limits. It's about appropriate limits. If we are able to absorb 700,000 people a year or whatever the numbers may be into our society and they are able to stay and they're working at places and they're here productively, then something says --

INGRAHAM: They're not all here. We have a list of how many --

HOMAN: We are the most welcoming country of the world.

INGRAHAM: They are also committing crimes here.

HOMAN: -- than all other countries combined.

INGRAHAM: Guys, we are out of time. But ahead, how the media's skews facts about gun violence with the goal of ignoring some truly disturbing trends. That next.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

ALI VELSHI, MSNBC ANCHOR: It's worth taking another look at gun laws in Florida. Florida does not require a permit to buy rifles or handguns. It doesn't require firearms to be registered, and it does not require gun owners to be licensed. Florida does not require a permit to carry a rifle. It does require a permit to carry a handgun. And if a gun is purchased in Florida, there is a three day waiting period, but this doesn't apply if you trade in your old gun for a new gun.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

INGRAHAM: Those are some nifty graphics that Ali Velshi was using there. What an insightful report that would be if it wasn't totally wrong. The gun used in Sunday's horrific Jacksonville shooting was actually obtained in Maryland and the shooter purchased it legally.

We've heard this type of deflection from the antigun rights people time and again. And it's often used I think to obscure some other contributing factors in these mass shootings. Mental illness, things like video games obsession, and antidepressant dependencies.

Joining us now with more is Dr. Carole Lieberman, a forensic psychiatrist. Dr. Lieberman, there is no study saying that indicate if you are on antidepressants, there is necessarily a causal relationship to going out and shooting someone, but the list of the mass shooters and how many of them or taking antidepressants, just go through some of them, David Katz, the Jacksonville shooter we just mentioned, Eric Harris, Columbine, James Holmes, Aurora, Colorado, Adam Lanza, Sandy Hook, Nikolas Cruz, all of them are on some SSIR drugs, antidepressants. What should we think?

DR. CAROLE LIEBERMAN, FORENSIC PSYCHIATRIST: Well, it is not really the antidepressants fault. But this isn't a gun-control problem either. It's mainly a video game control problem and access to good mental health treatment problem. With antidepressants, the problem is that instead of treating people who, if they need antidepressants, instead of seeing them every week for therapy and monitoring their antidepressants, and the dose and so on, and if they need that or something else, that isn't happening. The psychiatrists are giving people prescriptions and sending them away for months or two or three. That is the problem. It's not the antidepressants themselves.

But I will tell you what the problem is. There is a pattern here with all of the school shooters. David Katz is just the latest one. And that is, first of all, there is some kind of mental illness. David Katz seems like he might be on the autism spectrum.

INGRAHAM: Look at him.

LIEBERMAN: Depression certainly. If you look at -- all you have to do is look at him.

INGRAHAM: Look at his eyes.

LIEBERMAN: His high school yearbooks.

INGRAHAM: Yes, Adam Lanza's eyes. There's something dead in their eyes. The eyes are the giveaway.

LIEBERMAN: Absolutely. And in David's high school yearbook, I don't know if you saw that, but it's the same eyes, the same depressed eyes. And so he was born with some kind of predilection for some kind of mental illness. But what really happened, and this is what happens in most of these families, broken families. Now for David Katz, his parents got divorced when he was around 11. They went through a 10-year divorce and custody battle.

INGRAHAM: So family breakdown, doctor, family breakdown, depression. We're going to have you on radio and do this for, like, an hour because it's so big. Thank you so much. We'll be right back.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

INGRAHAM: That mini-discussion we just had with Dr. Lieberman is extremely important, and we are sorry we didn't have more time, but we're going to stay on this. We'll do a longer segment this week, next week, and a course on radio. So tune in tomorrow.

But we do want to hear what you have to say about tonight's show, so be sure to tweet me @IngrahamAngle. And the great Shannon Bream and the "Fox News @ Night" team are up next. Shannon?

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