Ep 311 ｜ Seeking the Truth in a Post-Truth Era ｜ Guest： Megyn Kelly
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Summary
Megyn Kelly has been in the news world for a long time. She started her career as a reporter at Fox News, where she was one of the first women to break down the 2016 presidential election. She has been covering both sides of the political aisle since the early days of the Trump administration, and now she is covering both the right and the left. In this episode of Relatable, Megyn talks about why she decided to start her podcast, why she started it, and what it means to be pro-Trump.
Transcript
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Hey guys, welcome to Relatable. Happy Friday. Hope everyone has had a great week. So I am
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so excited about this episode and this interview. I am talking to Megyn Kelly. And guys, if
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you know me, you know how much I have admired her and how long I have admired her. Maybe the only
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people who really know that are my husband who's listening to this and my parents who is listening
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to this. But guys, I was in high school when I watched Megyn Kelly on Fox News and I always told
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myself, I want to be like her. I want to do what she's doing, which of course I don't do exactly
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what she did at Fox News. And I probably never will. And that's okay. I like the path that I'm
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on. I am communicating about the things that I think matter and I believe are true. And that's
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all I've ever wanted to do my whole life. But Megyn Kelly was the first person in media
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that I admired. And so it is very, it's surreal and it's an honor to get to talk to her. She is
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so composed and dignified, such a good interviewer, such a solid thinker and analyzer. And I'm just
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so excited for you guys too, to get to listen to this conversation. So without further ado,
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here is Megyn Kelly. Megyn, thank you so much for joining me.
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First of all, you are starting a podcast. Can you tell us a little bit about it and why you
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Well, I'm basically sick of people telling, not just me, but all of us,
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what we have to feel, what we have to do, what we have to say, what's not okay. Like
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who died and gave the woke skulls all the authority over who we are as humans?
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You know, this is still America and I'm sick of them and I'm sick of the media and I'm
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sick of the dishonest coverage of Trump. And then on the other side, the sycophantic coverage
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of Trump, I'm just sick of it. I don't trust the media. I've been really frustrated during COVID
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in particular, in terms of finding a news source I trust. And, you know, necessity is the mother
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of all invention. I feel like, well, I'm going to do it. I'll be, I'll be the person. I'll go out
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there. I'll get back on my horse and hopefully provide a place where we can have those conversations.
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And you've been in the news world for a long time. Has it been like this forever? Or have you
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seen a significant change even just since Trump became president?
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Oh, there's been a huge change. When I started in news, which was 2003 at an ABC affiliate in DC,
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it wasn't this way. There's always a left-wing bias in news, but it wasn't okay to show it. You know,
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now they embrace it. They're not even trying to hide it anymore. You know, from the New York Times
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to NBC, you name it. And that's new. It wasn't until I'd say really President Obama that I remember
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people really embracing their partisanship. And then forget it. In the era of Trump, forget it.
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Jorge Ramos came out before the last election and said, we have an obligation not to cover Trump
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fairly. We have an obligation to cover him for what he is. Right. And then Jorge Ramos' opinion,
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that's awful. And he won that argument. That is what the mainstream press decided to do.
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Right. So in 2016, there were probably some people on the right who accused you of being partisan. I'm
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sure there are some people today who accused you of being partisan, but that probably shows that
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you're really not. You really are trying to cover both sides fairly. What do you say to the accusations
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of people on either side who, you know, said then that you're anti-Trump, who say now that you're
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pro-Trump? What's your response to something like that? I mean, on all these things, I call them like
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I see them. And when I, when I offer opinions and I, I try to present the news in an unbiased fashion.
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So my viewers can make up or my, now my listeners, their own minds. I trust my audience to make up
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its own mind with actual facts, you know? And the only reason people thought I was anti-Trump is
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because of that debate question, which is just absurd. Right. I mean, it's like I was anti-Ben Carson.
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He also got it right between the eyes. Uh, and then Trump kept coming after me, which was unpleasant.
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Yeah. So I've never been, I've never been anti-Trump. I mean, the left loved me because
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they thought I was anti-Trump and then they found out I wasn't. And they were like, Oh no. Right.
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The media, um, I'm not, I really don't have a partisan bone in my body. I'm just not built that
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way. Yeah. Um, can you talk to me about what you thought about the debates, which as this podcast is
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coming out, it was a couple of nights ago. Um, some of the coverage around that, did you think it was
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fair? Did you think Pence did a good job? How'd you think Kamala did? Uh, I thought
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the coverage was typical and predictable. I thought I watched some of MSNBC. I watched a
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little of CBS. MSNBC actually had two anchors on there describing Pence repeatedly as quote
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flaccid and lame. Now you tell me what they were trying to project with that kind of language and
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whether that's appropriate and what would happen if similar language were used about Kamala, you know,
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it's just out of line. But the craziest thing I saw the entire time was Gail King, who I like,
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but Gail King in all seriousness said when the fly landed on Mike Pence's head, it may have been a
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message because she said he was saying Donald Trump's not a, he doesn't believe it. There's
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no systemic racism. And she said the fly was like, say what? Right. Yeah. Earth to Gail.
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So a lot of people have said that Trump kind of broke journalists. And obviously you just said
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that there has been a big shift since Trump became president in the partisanship and the media.
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Why do you think that is like, what is the nature of Trump that have made journalists go that direction
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Well, I think he walked into an environment in which the media was not covering Republicans in general
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fairly. And he accurately deduced that and understood that his main enemy, both in the lead up to the
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first presidential contest he won and to this one and while governing would be the media. You know, when
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he says the media is the enemy of the people, that's not exactly right. But the media is his enemy that
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he's got that right. And so he needed to demonize them. So people would see what he was seeing that
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they can't cover him fairly. 90% of the coverage of president Trump has been negative 90. And I
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realize he tweets insane things and says insane things. But if you look at his policies, there is
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stuff in there that the left should really like. We've gotten a bit more isolationist as a nation.
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We he passed the anti sex trafficking law. He passed criminal justice reform. He has been very
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focused and good on focused on and good to Israel. Like there's a bunch of things here that should be
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celebrated by both sides. And he never gets any credit for it. So I, I think I like to say that
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the media is dead. It wasn't a murder. It was more of a suicide. But Trump was like Kevorkian.
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Yeah. Right. They're helping. Right. I think a huge disservice to the American people is not the
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fact that Trump is criticized, because I think we would both agree. That's fine. You should hold the
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people and power accountable by reporting what is actually true and factual. The problem is, is that it
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doesn't seem like the other side is ever held accountable. There are a lot of things that Joe Biden
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said during the debate that Kamala Harris said that they have said in general in their campaign
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throughout their careers, the policies that they've put forth that deserve a spotlight that
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deserve digging a little bit deeper to say, did he really say, why aren't they answering the
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question about the court packing? What about this piece of legislation that never become things?
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They never become moments because it seems like we don't have a media that is interested in making
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them moments and making them things. And so a lot of people who think that they are very well
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informed because they're reading the Washington Post and New York Times and and watching CNN,
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who used to be kind of maybe a middle of the road outlet. They think that they are well informed and
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that Joe Biden is completely scandal free. He's this moderate Uncle Joe and that Donald Trump is a
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complete dictator. And those are people who are informed think that way. So how do you encourage people
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to to to dig through the partisanship in the media and actually know what Joe Biden and Kamala are for
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and actually dig into the truth when it seems like there aren't very many sources giving us that?
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I think that this is where digital media comes in. I think the relationship of the future between
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news consumers and those who deliver the news is going to be much more direct. You're not going to
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have channels that you choose. You're going to have anchors that you choose, personalities that you choose
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to give it to you straight. And it's one of the things I like about this business and why I wound
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up here with a podcast instead of somewhere else. If you want to, you know, do something other than
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that, what I do every morning is I go to real clear politics dot com and they post editorials from
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the left and the right on every issue right there. You can go down the list and read them both and a set
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of facts will emerge, but you shouldn't have to work that hard for it. You know, I'll give you one
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example of something I saw at the vice presidential debate that probably would have been phrased
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differently if it had been a Republican who said this. Kamala Harris said on packing the Supreme
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Court, which is the hugest issue in this in this election. If Democrats pack the Supreme Court,
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the Supreme Court is gone. It's basically gone. They're getting rid of the top, the top court in
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the third branch of government because it will have no credibility. The Republicans will pack it more
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when they get back in control. We're going to wind up with 75 justices on there. It's it's truly the
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beginning of the end. So it's very controversial. It's treated like it's a nothing. So if I had
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Kamala Harris in front of me, I would have said you specifically said earlier in this campaign
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that you thought we should, quote, talk about packing the Supreme Court. Well, now's your chance.
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Are you going to do it or aren't you? And as soon as she started to give me a history lesson,
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starting an 18 something with Abe Lincoln, I 100 percent would have interrupted her and said,
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I'll let you answer with your history lesson. But let's start with this. Yes or no. And if she
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didn't answer, then I'd jump in just a third time, just a third. And I'd say, so you refuse to answer
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it. Yes or no. That's just me protecting the audience at home. That's not me trying to badger
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Kamala Harris or if I had to do it to Mike Pence. It's about me protecting the audience at home.
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I'm their advocate to get answers to the questions I'm going to ask because I've been chosen to do
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this role. And I just thought, like, that's a huge issue and I want to hear her answer it. And she
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Was there anything that Mike Pence that he kind of obfuscated that he avoided to answer that you
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would have pressed him on a little bit harder? Yeah. Like, what's he going to do if Trump dies?
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I mean, yeah, he he she's going to be underneath the guy who's 77 years old and he's going to be
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underneath a guy who's I mean, he'll be 78 at some point in his first in his second term.
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It's reelected. And and he's had covid, which he appears to be fighting well. But
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we we need to know, like, what is the plan? Have you talked about it? How would you govern? What would
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be I mean, I think that was a very fair line of inquiry and they both dodged it. No one would answer.
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Right. What do you say to the people who have unpopular, unorthodox opinions, which you have
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had several times and you very boldly and factually present those? What do you say to the people
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who feel not just unprepared, but afraid to speak up? Say it's typically, I would say,
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conservative who is afraid to maybe tell their liberal friends or their liberal families what
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they believe or why they're voting for Trump or why they're pro-life, whatever it is.
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What kind of encouragement do you have to people who are afraid to speak up and to say
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things that are unpopular? I think the reason they feel that way is because the far left controls
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the media and controls Hollywood. So everything they're taking in, whether it's news, it's movies,
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it's television shows, it's award shows, it's the newspaper is controlled by people who do not think
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like conservatives think. And that is why it's very easy to shame them about their very mainstream
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opinions. And I don't think there's any way out of it. I think the left is going to maintain its
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control over those industries. And so I don't think there's any way out of it other than conservatives,
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forgive the phrase, growing a pair and getting out there and saying what they believe unapologetically.
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You know, I don't know if you've read Douglas Murray at all. He's brilliant. And he wrote this book
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The Madness of Crowds, among other things. He's been speaking out about cancel culture. And he was
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talking about all these mandated inherent bias classes that you must go to at certain corporations,
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which actually create bias. They create bias. They don't they don't cure anyone from it. And
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he said, what you could say to your employer is, I refuse. I refuse to let you re-racialize
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my country, my workplace or myself because they're trying to shame people into silence.
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And so far, conservatives have have been silent. And that's not the way forward.
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And I think a lot of people have been looking for exactly that kind of advice. I get messages like
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that all the time. And there's, you know, times where I don't know what to say because I don't know
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what's at stake for them or their family if they do speak up at work. And it's a lot of responsibility
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to give someone that advice. But I think what you just said, what Murray just said is is is so good
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to be able to be forthright and to use their language and their ideas back on them to say
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and to be able to say, look, I'm not racist. I don't have internalized white supremacy.
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And I refuse to let you project that onto me and resegregate not only my mind, but also my life
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in my workplace. And so I think that's a really good piece of advice. You have dealt with cancel
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culture and kind of the arbitrary double standards that are out there in the media. Can you kind of
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just talk about how you dealt with that, how that felt when that was going on and what you've learned
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since? Well, when I was first at NBC and, you know, came under fire for my comments on how 30 years
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ago, people didn't really react that much to blackface costumes, which happens to be a fact,
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right? They just didn't. And what's happened in today's society when people wear it is evidence of
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that. That's what I was trying to say. Like today you will get in trouble. 30 years ago, it really
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didn't turn out to be a thing. And that's why we've seen it. So on so many television shows since then
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and movies and, you know, yada, yada. But I think at first the backlash was so strong. I was I'm always
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quick to reexamine. I was like, do I have a blind spot? Did I say something that wasn't true
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and just step in it in a way that's really offensive? I'm open minded. And all the people
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around me were saying, yes, you know, not not people outside of the building, but the people
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there. And so I did apologize because I don't want to offend anybody and I don't want to hurt
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people, especially on an issue of race. But what I've realized since then, Ali, is that it's
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I made the mistake of assuming good faith on the part of the critics who are coming after me.
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And I now see that those attacks, for the most part, were not made in good faith. They
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smell blood in the water and they wanted to put an end to me at NBC and they got their scalp.
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Yeah. And how do you distinguish between people who are genuinely trying to solicit an apology for
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something? Maybe you actually authentically did wrong and someone who just kind of wants to bring
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you to your knees and get you to acquiesce to arbitrary cultural demands? I don't think you look
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at them. You look inside your heart. You know, I think you ask yourself, do I feel that I said or did
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something wrong? Can I stand by what I said or what I did? And, you know, I tried to explain to the
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audience what I was trying to get at. And we had a roundtable discussion of blackface then and now.
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But, you know, what I know is that the people who hate you don't want to hear it and the people who
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love you don't need to hear it. So it's almost like speaking into the void. You know, it's not bad to
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have more conversation. I believe in more conversation rather than less conversation. But it's the same thing
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I tell my kids when we walk by a tabloid that's got me on the cover with something awful next to my
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name. Yeah. They said, Mommy, why don't you say that that's a lie? And I say, because my fans know
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who I am and the people who believe that stuff want to believe it. So it's not worth it's not a battle
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I would say cancel culture, maybe it's always existed to some extent. I'm not sure, but it
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definitely seems like it has heightened over the past few years. Would you agree with that,
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that this is a little bit of a newly intense phenomenon canceling people for opinions we don't
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like? Oh, yeah, because corporate America bowed to the mob. They didn't used to have control of
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corporate America. Corporate America wasn't like the media and Hollywood. It had a backbone and it
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understood principles of free speech and that we're not going to get rid of great employees because
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they say something that may be mildly controversial or even very controversial. It's just not who we are
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as Americans. And now they've bowed. I think all those kids who are at those universities being told,
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run to your safe spaces. No one's allowed to say anything that mildly offends you
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have now moved into the workplace. And, you know, look what the employees at Spotify are doing to
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Joe Rogan, trying to get him canceled and threatening to, quote, strike, which is not the right word for
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what they want to do at Spotify unless he gets punished or pulled or canceled. And thankfully, so far,
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Spotify has had Joe's back. But in time after time, we've seen corporations completely bow.
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And a new standard is slowly but surely being set. What we need is more companies like the Wall
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Street Journal that when some of its employees objected to an editorial that appeared in their
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paper, the Wall Street Journal basically said, you don't like it? That's tough. Anyway, that's the way
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to go. That's the way forward. Just grow a spine, stick by it. And when selecting the company for which
00:21:08.000
you would like to work, try to find one that has a proven record of not being highly partisan or weak.
00:21:15.200
So is that that's the way forward then is not apologizing for things that you don't actually
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need to apologize for, not kowtowing to the emotional demands of a mob that are not actually
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based on any real objective principle, but are just based on partisanship and emotions and moving
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forward in the pursuit of depending, I guess, on what organization you are, quality service or truth.
00:21:41.280
If you are if you are a media outlet, you're saying that basically you just have to stick to those
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things and stick to those values. Stop kowtowing to the mob and stop kowtowing to cancel culture and
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apologizing for things that you're not sorry for. Is that what kind of you're suggesting for a way forward?
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Yes, I think you need to fight back. And I think I know it's easy to say because no one wants to lose
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their job. Trust me, I understand that, you know, everyone's paycheck is important to them. But I do
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think the more people stay in silence and just get punished for it for mainstream viewpoints, you know,
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like if you're if you're anti-abortion, that's mainstream, right? Like something like 80 percent of
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the country or 90 percent of the country doesn't believe in abortion in the third trimester.
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And yet we're still having debates about whether women can have abortions on demand all the way
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through their pregnancies. What's wrong with standing up for what you believe in, even even if you don't
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want any abortion, even if you don't believe in Roe v. Wade, you want it to be outlawed. There are
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millions and millions of people in this country that feel that way. You're not out of the mainstream
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and you're allowed to have these beliefs. It's it's some woke jerk who barely got out of college
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who's trying to tell you otherwise. Yeah. And unless we start standing up like what? What if
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you went in? You know, there was some guy, I think it was a radio, a DJ over in the UK who got fired
00:23:03.960
summarily for saying he didn't think that the I think that that the U.S. was systemically biased
00:23:09.980
fired. Well, we can go through the facts, right? Like I what I've been doing my time off is trying to
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listen to as many black intellectuals as I can, trying to read as many as I can, because
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I want the honest truth about what they think in terms of the police and, you know, our education
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system and the relations with whites and the language that's being used right now about them,
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about us. And I'm learning. And I think the more you can get your information for people from people
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who are actually experiencing, you know, prejudice if they if they have or have interesting thoughts on
00:23:46.240
how to handle it, the better off you are. I'll give you one example. Larry Elder is so interesting,
00:23:51.900
and he sent me the movie Uncle Tom, which he he just did. And you can get it right now on iTunes
00:23:56.820
if you want it. It's on Apple. It's like 17 bucks. It's worth your time. But he's got all it's it's it's
00:24:04.640
all people of color talking about how they reject they reject this pejorative paternalistic treatment
00:24:13.240
of black people in this country and their own choices in terms of individual responsibility
00:24:19.540
and working hard and forging forward. And even even if you get turned away from a job because the
00:24:25.980
would be employer is racist, what to do there? Right. It's it's eye opening. And I think people
00:24:31.620
have to educate themselves because this is a subject that's been forced upon us. And now we've got to talk
00:24:38.000
about it because that jerk Robin DiAngelo got her crazy leanings into every boardroom and school room
00:24:44.500
in the country. Right. Right. It's infiltrating. I mean, this is I'm an evangelical Christian. We talk
00:24:50.540
a lot about theology on this podcast. It's certainly infiltrating the church, not just cancel culture,
00:24:55.400
but critical race theory and things like that. And we hear a lot from the left and more progressive
00:25:00.860
people that we need to listen to people's experiences and that the way forward is is is empathy,
00:25:06.520
which I agree with to some degree. I don't think empathy should be can stand alone. It has to be
00:25:13.340
subjected to objective truth. But people don't want to hear the experiences of the people that you just
00:25:17.960
talked about. They don't want to hear people like oftentimes Glenn Lowry or Coleman Hughes or John
00:25:24.200
McWhorter, those intellectuals that you were talking about that kind of have unorthodox views about police
00:25:30.240
brutality and systemic racism. And so really what you're seeing is just mob rule of a of
00:25:36.500
tiny group of people, not the majority, dictating what is OK to think, dictating what is an OK,
00:25:43.960
legitimate experience to build some kind of idea or ideology off of. And you make such a good point
00:25:51.200
that these things that are being canceled, that people are being canceled for are very mainstream.
00:25:56.960
And people have actually believed for thousands of years like it's OK to be against Black Lives Matter
00:26:03.220
as the organization because you're against Marxism. It's OK to be for capitalism. It's OK to be for the
00:26:10.340
preservation of of life inside the womb. It's OK to be for the Second Amendment and the First Amendment.
00:26:15.360
Like these are very traditional views and we can't be pushed into thinking that they're radical.
00:26:20.260
Right. I mean, I am thinking about even just critical race theory or inherent bias training,
00:26:27.800
implicit bias training. What the studies have shown and go and do your own research so you have the
00:26:32.100
data. But what the studies have shown is that creates racism. If you do have, let's call it latent
00:26:37.700
racism inside of you. What the studies found is that if you just leave it alone in ninety nine percent of
00:26:43.600
the cases, people never act on it. It's it's not in the frontal lobe. But these so-called training
00:26:48.860
sessions bring it to the frontal lobe and actually cause racist behavior. That's what the psychologists
00:26:55.960
have determined. And the people who have done deep studies into this method of deracializing people
00:27:02.380
have found. So get your facts before your company tries to make you do this, because it is
00:27:07.900
re-racializing us. It is taking us past Martin Luther King's dream of seeing the little white
00:27:14.160
boy and a little black boy walk down the street holding their hands and holding hands and not
00:27:18.140
and not thinking about color. And it isn't racist to not see color. It's I had somebody suggest that
00:27:24.300
my children, if they have black friends, which they do and don't see color, that's racist. That's
00:27:30.500
their inherent white supremacy. I'm sorry, but it's just nonsense. And you can't fight it unless
00:27:37.820
you have your facts. So get them. Get educated. And it makes it makes me so sad. I tell people,
00:27:42.500
you know, we hear this crazy definition of anti-racism, that you can't just not be racist,
00:27:47.380
that you have to be anti-racist, Ibram X. Kendi says. And of course, that means latching on to all
00:27:52.840
leftist policy prescriptions and feeding into the ideology of critical race theory, white privilege and
00:27:58.520
basically self-loathing for white people. And I just tell people it's really simple. If you want to
00:28:04.240
truly be anti-racist, love your neighbor as yourself. Love God, love your neighbor. That's
00:28:09.680
what we talk a lot about on this podcast. But love people, befriend people, no matter what they look
00:28:14.840
like. That doesn't mean that you have to deny that there are cultural differences. If they're from a
00:28:19.500
different culture, you can celebrate those differences. That's great. But as you pointed
00:28:24.360
out, critical race theory and these implicit bias trainings are actually telling us to elevate our
00:28:30.080
immutable differences to the point of not being able to not see them and assuming that someone who
00:28:36.020
doesn't look like us must hate us. And there is just there's there's no there's no nature of
00:28:42.500
reconciliation there. Critical race theory has the tells the white people you have to go into the room
00:28:49.020
and be silent. The black people then have to tell the white people how racism has affected them,
00:28:54.400
how that white people's racism has affected their lives and racism in the country has affected their
00:28:58.500
lives. And the white people are not allowed to say anything. And then when they're done,
00:29:03.380
you're not allowed to challenge. You're supposed to sit in the quiet of your own racism.
00:29:09.620
Right. It's like, come on. My black friends are like, this is absurd. We're not we're not doing it.
00:29:16.560
You know, it's it's black Republicans are against this nonsense to a man, to a woman. This is a not a
00:29:24.600
black white issue. It's a Republican Democrat issue now because they have very different beliefs.
00:29:29.980
You know, Democrats want to say everything is a systemic problem and the government needs to swoop
00:29:33.580
in and solve it. And Republicans say we believe in the individual and an individual has to get
00:29:38.440
himself up and get himself successful. And we have a country that will allow that.
00:29:42.540
So they're two very different points of view, but they're it's not black white.
00:29:47.020
Right. I actually saw a Pew Research article recently, a study that showed exactly what you're
00:29:52.280
talking about, that over the past just the past 10 years, if you look at the idea of systemic racism
00:29:58.920
and between Republicans and Democrats and which side agrees with the statement that discrimination is
00:30:05.160
the number one reason why black people can't get ahead in this country and America is systemically
00:30:10.100
racist today. Republicans over the past 10 years have barely changed on this. I think it's like
00:30:16.840
four to five percent who actually believe those things among the Republican Party.
00:30:20.820
Well, over just the past 10 years alone, Democrats have gone from the minority believing in those
00:30:26.140
things to the vast majority believing in those things. And I just can't understand what caused that
00:30:32.760
change. If you had any guesses, what caused that change just in the Democratic Party, not in the
00:30:37.600
Republican Party. I think it's it's slow growth. It's it's been this day by day, week by week
00:30:45.320
gravitation towards identity politics and celebration of one's identity, identitarianism
00:30:51.660
over everything else. And it's because it's not just a skin color thing. It's also gender.
00:30:57.280
You know, if you're a woman, it's all about any parts. If you're if you're black, it's all about the
00:31:00.680
color of your skin. If you're gay, it's all about your sexuality. If you're trans, it's all about
00:31:05.580
your gender. I mean, who wants to be known for the color of their skin? Right. It's like
00:31:13.440
Ben Carson used to talk about how, you know, he was the most successful pediatric neurosurgeon in
00:31:18.620
the world. He pulled himself up out of nothing. He had no money, no background, very little chance
00:31:24.020
at a good education, but he made it happen. And he didn't want to be known as the number one black
00:31:29.100
neurosurgeon in the country. He's just the number one pediatric neurosurgeon in the country. Same thing
00:31:34.240
for Serena Williams. Nobody says Serena Williams is the best black female playing. She is. I think
00:31:40.900
she's the goat, period. But at a minimum, she's the best woman because they do have a male and a
00:31:45.280
female lead. But no one no one talks about her color. So it's it's the it's the liberals. It's
00:31:50.700
sort of the far left, not even not all liberals, not all Democrats, but the far left that's tried to
00:31:55.380
inject this identity thing into everyone. And the problem with it is it's very closely tied to
00:32:00.820
victimhood, to an embrace of victimhood. And where's my where's my posse? Where's my team
00:32:05.660
that's also been victimized so we can get together and as a group try to make change.
00:32:10.800
But the change that they're affecting is always about some system that needs to be torn down.
00:32:16.320
And there is a strain of Marxism in there, which is what BLM says it stands for. And I don't know
00:32:21.000
that everybody understands that, but it's it's not about Americanism. It's not about capitalism.
00:32:26.540
I think the country was founded on very different beliefs about bootstraps. You can't say that now
00:32:31.500
it's racist about forging your own way forward, believing in the American dream. I'm not saying
00:32:37.040
it's easy for anybody, but I think the presumption now that it's a racist, awful country that would
00:32:42.660
never let it happen for people of color is belied by the facts. Yeah. Yeah. I just wish everyone
00:32:48.580
was required to read Thomas Sowell in school rather than these critical theorists like Robin DiAngelo.
00:32:54.860
Our country would be vastly different. I'm reading or I read discrimination and disparities,
00:33:00.660
and he points out that it's this logical fallacy that if you look at disparities between two groups
00:33:05.820
and you automatically assume racist discrimination, you're not actually looking at the factors that
00:33:11.220
go into that. And I think the entire argument of systemic racism and critical theory is based on
00:33:16.320
that fallacy that all disparities equal some sort of white supremacy and racism, ignoring the fact
00:33:22.220
that Asian Americans have a much higher success rate than white Americans and no one is talking
00:33:26.220
about Asian supremacy. So that's exactly right. If you look, it's funny because a lot of the
00:33:31.540
leading intellectuals on this are economists because they actually deal with facts and numbers and they
00:33:39.000
understand how to look at it factually. And the evidence isn't there. And they give the example of
00:33:45.020
mortgages, they say, but banks don't grant mortgages to black applicants as much as they do to whites.
00:33:52.020
And what people like Thomas Sowell have pointed out is they also don't grant mortgages to white people
00:33:58.060
as much as they do to Asians. So are they discriminating in favor of Asians or is it about
00:34:03.440
what's in your bank account, your history of credit and so on? And listen, we can talk about why people
00:34:09.040
wind up where they do. But just the mere fact that mortgages are easier to get if you're white
00:34:14.720
does not mean the banking system and the mortgage system is inherently racist.
00:34:19.580
Yep. Yep. OK. Can you give some encouragement to people who are afraid to wade into what is now
00:34:27.580
considered these controversial conversations like the one that we just had? But they want the courage
00:34:33.460
to not just seek truth, but also speak truth in these very crazy polarizing cancel culture times.
00:34:39.420
What would be your one piece of encouragement to them?
00:34:42.960
Um, look, I think Trump was elected in part because he was willing to fight these battles
00:34:50.240
and has. But he's not someone who has any credibility with the left. You could never point to him in your
00:34:58.420
office space and say, well, Trump says critical race theory is bad. That's not going to convince anybody.
00:35:02.980
I think if there were more of a groundswell on the other side with people who are perceived as
00:35:08.620
reasonable, just reasonable, it could help because I'll be out there saying all this stuff and so
00:35:14.820
will you. But civilians, people who are at home right now and don't have a public platform are
00:35:19.280
afraid to even like a tweet because they could get fired. And they're right. They could. So the more
00:35:24.000
people they have saying that this stuff isn't nuts, it's something we need to consider. Somebody like
00:35:30.320
Coleman Hughes is amazing because he's, he's a liberal, he's a Democrat or Thomas Chatterton
00:35:34.800
Williams. These are black men who are definitely on the left who are trying to say, hold on. And my
00:35:40.540
response has been, if, if black lives matter, if black voices matter, and we shouldn't be silencing
00:35:45.020
black voices, what about their voices? People like that need to get out there more, which is why I always
00:35:50.320
try to retweet these guys because I want my audience to see what they have to say. I'd love to give them a
00:35:56.180
voice. Um, so I think you can, you can fight the battles big and small, but I think fighting back
00:36:02.620
even gently, even to say, well, you know, this is what this person is saying about it. Maybe it's
00:36:07.800
something we can discuss. Um, and by the way, and also calling out the lack of credibility of the
00:36:12.520
people who are being held up in front of us as the reason we have to take these classes or we have to
00:36:17.720
apologize for being white. I mean, even X. Kendi the other night when Amy Coney Barrett was announced,
00:36:24.000
the first thing he did was tweet out something saying, I'm not talking about Amy Coney Barrett.
00:36:30.300
She's got two kids. She adopted from Haiti. She's got seven kids, but two of them adopted from Haiti.
00:36:34.480
I'm not talking about Amy Coney Barrett, but white people have a history of basically stealing black
00:36:40.660
babies, colonizing, uh, them and, you know, to the, to the great consternation of the black family.
00:36:47.000
And he goes on, it's, it was worse than I'm actually reiterating. I mean, this is not someone
00:36:53.300
anyone should be listening to, right? This is not somebody who should be telling you what's racist.
00:36:58.720
That was incredibly racist, right? That what he said was incredibly racist and a sacrifice of his
00:37:04.440
own credibility, or just go read Coleman Hughes's response to how to be an anti-racist to that book
00:37:09.400
by Kendi. It's amazing. So, but people are busy. They're leading their lives. But if you really care
00:37:14.240
about this stuff, study up because the fight is on. And if you think these values, which I think
00:37:20.260
almost all of them boil down to the first amendment, you know, the ability to be who you want and say
00:37:25.100
what you want and think how you want. This is America, uh, requires preparation. You have to read,
00:37:32.280
you have to get knowledgeable, get smart and be open-minded to the other, other side's arguments,
00:37:35.720
listen. And if there's something you need to learn, learn it and be open about it and be open
00:37:40.380
about your growth as you go down that lane. But you care about this. You can't sit back anymore.
00:37:45.640
Yep. You're absolutely right. Good point about credibility and hypocrisy. Ibram X. Kendi is someone
00:37:50.260
who is an anti-capitalist. He believes that that is a way that you have to be anti-racist. He makes
00:37:55.040
$20,000 per virtual session that he gives at universities for, you know, 45 minutes. And so that's
00:38:02.540
also a good thing to look at when you hear people like Bernie Sanders or Robin DiAngelo
00:38:07.220
or Ibram X. Kendi say, you know, anti-capitalism is the way to go for equality and they've got three
00:38:13.140
houses of their own. Maybe that's a good reason to take a step back and say, maybe they're not
00:38:17.660
supposed to be the moral authority in my life. And think about it in terms of your children.
00:38:22.760
Like if, if my schools that my kids are at started to say what Robin DiAngelo says,
00:38:28.980
if they started to say to my children, this is what she wants white people to do.
00:38:33.220
Every time you walk into a room with a black person, the first thing you should start with
00:38:37.940
is I'm sorry. Sorry for my racism. Sorry for my white supremacy, the white supremacy of America.
00:38:44.760
And then you should repeat that on the opposite end of the conversation. I would pull my kids so
00:38:49.320
fast. It would make your head spin because what are you doing? You're turning them into little bigots.
00:38:53.420
That's what you're doing. You're, you're telling them that race is everything and that the white
00:38:59.020
people are bad. You're the oppressors. And you're telling black people, black kids who have
00:39:03.400
no semblance in their head that they are somehow victims that they are right. You need, you need
00:39:10.220
people to go in there like a Thomas Sowell, like a Larry Elder to say, all of us can do whatever we
00:39:16.380
want to do. And here's how we do it. It's something uplifting. You don't want little kids,
00:39:21.140
black or white being taught that there's this huge difference based on skin color,
00:39:24.640
which they can't control. And somebody needs to be ashamed and somebody else needs to be
00:39:28.040
victimized. It's totally unhealthy. Well, guess what? It's unhealthy for adults too.
00:39:32.920
Yep. Yep. You are absolutely right. Well, thank you so much for all of that analysis. I personally
00:39:38.160
am really looking forward to your podcast. I have missed you being out there. I mean,
00:39:43.020
I've been following you still, but have missed you having a voice in this arena because I just think
00:39:47.560
it's so important. I hope you do interviews too, because you are probably the best interviewer in
00:39:52.440
the industry. So I highly encourage people to go, uh, uh, subscribe to your podcast. Can they do that
00:39:58.000
yet? Can they subscribe? Yeah. So if you just Google or, you know, search in the podcast app,
00:40:02.760
uh, Megan Kelly show, I'll pop up and then I guess I'm new to the podcast world, but I understand it's
00:40:08.460
subscribe, um, download. You have to do both of those things and give it a five-star rating. And then I
00:40:14.100
leave me a note in the reviews because I have been reading them and it's been super fun.
00:40:18.160
A lot of my audience has been with me for a long time and they'll reference old interviews or they
00:40:22.460
met me at some convention and it's super fun. It's a walk down memory lane in a way. And, uh,
00:40:27.240
so I'm loving it. And I hope, I hope folks come over. Yeah. Well, thank you so much. Definitely go
00:40:31.560
subscribe everyone. And thank you, Megan, for taking the time to talk to me. Thanks for having me.