00:00:57.000If you want to get involved with Turning Point USA, come to America Fest, everybody, December 18th, December 19th, December 20, 21, tpusa.com/slash A-M-F-E-S-T TPUSA.com/slash amfest.
00:01:41.000We will not embrace the ideas that have destroyed countries, destroyed lives, and we are going to fight for freedom on campuses across the country.
00:02:37.000So, I kind of want to start with some would call it an evolution from you being a political commentator to now kind of a cultural phenomenon and kind of a voice in the middle of sanity.
00:02:48.000Talk a little bit about that because I think some of our audience is just getting reintroduced to Megan Kelly.
00:02:53.000They saw you for years on TV, and I think this would be really helpful.
00:02:57.000Well, it's funny because I feel like my career as more of a political commentator is in its infancy.
00:03:04.000Because, you know, while I was out in Fox and I had been at ABC for a short stint before that, and then ultimately NBC, I was in more of a straight news journalist role.
00:03:13.000And when I did the Kelly file, you know, primetime cable is at best a mix of journalism and some opinion.
00:03:40.000You know, I can say what I want and I'm not under anybody's control, whether it's Fox or NBC, and it's liberating.
00:03:47.000Well, and I think that's where a lot of Americans are too, where there's kind of this pressure to always kind of say things that people want you to say.
00:03:55.000Can you talk kind of about how what you've learned in the last couple of years of kind of getting into this space of, you know, kind of some of the political orthodoxies out there of things you're not allowed to talk about?
00:04:07.000For example, critical race theory or the trans issue.
00:04:11.000I'm sure you get some backlash for even talking about these things.
00:04:14.000Well, listen, I would say the one advantage to having been called all the worst names, you know, I've been called them all.
00:04:24.000When you touch these dicey issues, whether it's the trans stuff or the race stuff.
00:04:28.000And then to wake up one morning and see those names hurled at you on the front cover of every newspaper in the country, it's terrible to go through, but it's also quite liberating because the bad thing happened and you're fine.
00:04:48.000And now that the bad thing has happened, I feel totally free to talk about everything in exactly the way I want to because they've already fired that bullet at me and I'm still standing.
00:04:59.000So it's, it's all, it's like the, um, it reminds me of the scene in Jerry McGuire where Kelly Preston's character looks at Tom Cruise and she's like, you can't hurt me, Jerry.
00:05:37.000You've decided to speak out about this, saying, I don't want to put words in your mouth, but you've given some opinions about this, especially given your own family in New York City and kind of all the drama surrounding that.
00:05:49.000Comment a little about where you think our country's at with this.
00:05:51.000And do you consider kind of wokeism to be a threat to the American way of life?
00:05:58.000I mean, I think it needs to be fought and we need all hands on deck because while their army is a lot smaller than our army, it's powerful.
00:06:06.000And it may be small in number, but they have control of some key institutions, including the media, including academia, now sports and so on.
00:06:15.000And so if we don't fight, they're only going to grow further and more powerful.
00:06:21.000And I get that it's scary, but I'm kind of done listening to how scary it is because this is an existential moment for our country, of our way of life.
00:06:31.000And I just interviewed John McWhorter.
00:06:32.000You know, he's a brilliant Columbia University professor.
00:06:34.000He and Glenn Lowry, they speak sense when it comes to race and all this stuff that we've been listening to.
00:06:40.000And McWhorter just said to me, and I quote, and it's in his new book, make no mistake, they are coming for your children.
00:06:48.000And so if you won't fight for yourself or risk your job or risk being called names for yourself, do it for your kids because CRT is incredibly racist and damaging.
00:06:57.000And I view it as like, if we don't, we're going to create a whole next generation of racists.
00:07:04.000If that's not worth fighting, I don't know what is.
00:07:06.000Well, and what, but what's surprising is how few people are willing to talk about this.
00:07:11.000You've been willing to talk about it, Barry Weiss and others, but it's almost like this dissident network of truth tellers.
00:07:26.000Talk about the unprecedented nature of these ideas.
00:07:28.000We haven't lived through anything like this, at least in the last couple of decades.
00:07:32.000I think most people are, they don't have the advantage of having been called all the terrible names in the paper and all of our social media.
00:07:39.000They're pre the names and they don't want it to happen.
00:07:43.000And they still think that they can sort of hold on to their street cred with these people, with these magazines, what have you.
00:07:51.000And other people's people are worried about jobs and that's real.
00:07:54.000The name calling you got to get past because it's coming for you one way or another.
00:07:57.000And, you know, unless you subscribe to all of the woke ideals, they're coming for you.
00:08:02.000You can't put enough chips in the bag for them not to turn on you.
00:08:05.000But I do think there are a few of us who just kind of don't care.
00:08:08.000And it's some on the center left, some on the center right.
00:08:12.000You know, I think people on the established right, for the most part, are good, sort of saying how they feel.
00:08:17.000But there's a collection of us closer to the center that have had some love for the main from the mainstream media.
00:08:22.000And I think those of us who have been have managed to sort of break free of those chains are important to this fight, right?
00:08:30.000Because we're a little bit closer to the ones we need to get on our side and in our army.
00:08:34.000Do you find yourself becoming more conservative the more you see this nonsense?
00:08:41.000Has it changed your views at all, or has it just made you speak out against this nonsense more?
00:08:46.000I mean, I don't know if I'm, I'm certainly more conservative than I was when I was in my young 20s for sure.
00:08:53.000It's tough to say because I'm just not ideological.
00:08:56.000I don't think of myself as a political person.
00:08:58.000I'm more like the lawyer that wants the arguments on both sides.
00:09:01.000And I know when I feel comfortable, you know, somebody's giving me enough evidence.
00:09:14.000Like, I still like the intellectual exercise.
00:09:17.000It's like Frank McCourt wrote, it's like chewing rubies in your mouth when you get really smart people talking about their ideals, even if you don't agree with them.
00:09:27.000So I guess overall, look, I would say on the ideological scale, one through 10, you know, one being like a far left liberal wokesters and 10 being, you know, far, far right.
00:11:01.000I don't think we need to demonize them.
00:11:03.000You know, I think in order to get those folks to work with us, you know, we shouldn't be saying like every day the left does this, the left does all that, because some on the left are lunatics, but a lot are pretty cool and pretty reasonable and just whatever.
00:11:32.000But on this stuff, like getting out and protesting against CRT, against this crazy radical trans ideology, it's really damaging to children.
00:11:42.000Even on protesting a lot of the COVID bizarre mandates from masks to vaccines and children and so on, it's almost like you just agree to table all the other stuff.
00:11:52.000You can fight those good fights on another day.
00:11:54.000But right now, we have a really important fight we all need to get all hands on deck for.
00:11:59.000And when we're fighting those battles, just don't talk about the other stuff.
00:12:04.000It's back to school time, and you may be feeling the burden of college bills or private tuition school expenses.
00:12:10.000With home equity at a all-time high and interest rates low, refinancing your house could be a great way to get some cash and pay out those bills.
00:12:16.000But look, I'm going to cut it to you straight.
00:12:18.000Stop using banks to refinance your home that hate you.
00:12:54.000I don't think many people would because I don't think they have a retail operation.
00:12:57.000Don't go to this brick and mortar nonsense of these people that are woke USA, wearing two masks, take your money and deposit it, charge you fees, and then say, oh, let's take out a loan.
00:13:07.000By the way, the money we make is going to go fund the downfall of America.
00:14:12.000Start supporting the good guys and stop taking out loans of people that hate you and hate your values.
00:14:20.000And that's the essence of building a coalition, which I think is so sorely needed right now.
00:14:26.000Yeah, I'm not sure how I see it, which is kind of how, and you would know because you live there, what percentage of the people in Manhattan or New York actually support this stuff.
00:14:36.000And maybe it's a very vocal minority, or maybe people are just voting passively for stuff they don't quite agree with.
00:14:43.000But let's just focus on the trans issue.
00:14:45.000You know, what you just said out loud is, you know, when I say that I get picketed and protested or whatever, you know, most people aren't even allowed to say that, you know, giving puety blockers to seven-year-olds is a bad thing, which it obviously is.
00:15:00.000I'm just curious, just kind of in what you see, do you really believe that there is a majority of people that stand against it?
00:15:06.000Because we're not always seeing that reflected in public policy.
00:15:09.000Is it just people are afraid to take it on?
00:15:26.000I do think there's a fair amount of people who aren't, right?
00:15:29.000I mean, I know all my liberal friends aren't, but having just left the schools and understood who was on the school boards and driving policy, they weren't just left.
00:15:37.000They were woke and thus had to be left.
00:15:40.000But like I just visited my good girlfriends in the Midwest, Chicago and Detroit.
00:16:00.000So it's like they're out there, but they would never take the helm on an issue this divisive because they recognize where the media is and that there's no benefit for them to speak up publicly.
00:16:12.000Well, I think that's one of the advantages of the school board movement is that it's one thing to see a cable news segment about, you know, wokeism and what it means or Christopher Rufo's take on wokeism.
00:16:26.000Like, okay, yeah, I don't agree with that.
00:16:28.000And then all of a sudden your five-year-old comes home and you're like, oh, yeah, by the way, the white kids go to this classroom and the black kids go to this classroom.
00:16:35.000And the Bernie Sanders, you know, bumper sticker Prius driving, you know, liberal mom is like, wait a second, what?
00:16:43.000Like that, and it's kind of all of a sudden, there's this, there's this confusion that sets in.
00:16:50.000Can you talk about the educational piece?
00:16:52.000Because I think that's actually what is moving people more than anything else, especially in that kind of demographic you describe.
00:17:00.000And I think it's why we had the National School Board Association or National Association of School Boards write that letter and that we now know, thanks to parents defending education, a great group that's fighting against this nonsense, they subpoenaed or they FOIA'd the board members on the NASB because their stuff's not protected and it's publicly accessible.
00:17:40.000They recognized how effective these parents are and how damaging these images are.
00:17:46.000And the messaging, I mean, the parents who will not be silenced, who won't let go of the mics because they want America to hear what's happening.
00:17:58.000In the same way you and I probably sat in our separate locations saying, right on.
00:18:03.000They sat in their separate locations saying, oh my God, we've got to silence them.
00:18:08.000Like we've got to do something about this.
00:18:09.000This is, we're going to lose this fight.
00:18:11.000That's why the White House wanted this to happen.
00:18:14.000And when I, like, I experienced everything, I feel like almost the canary in the coal mine in this having come from New York City private schools, which are about as woke as they come.
00:18:23.000I mean, truly, I've seen all the national stories.
00:18:25.000I don't think there's a group more woke than the New York City private schools.
00:18:30.000And I left because my husband and I did a year plus investigation, like, can we change it?
00:18:35.000You know, like, do, can it, can we fight the battle and win it?
00:18:39.000And really came to the conclusion that in New York, the answer was no.
00:18:41.000Talked to people who are billionaires who had donated tens of millions to some of these schools whose views were completely dismissed.
00:18:55.000So it didn't seem like the tide was going our way.
00:18:58.000But the reason I spoke out about it after leaving is because I wanted to throw a lifeline to the parents who are still stuck there, unable to say anything because the tide is against them.
00:19:06.000And they're all worried about little junior getting into Harvard or whatever.
00:19:09.000And the instinct is to not be a squeaky wheel.
00:19:12.000But I'll tell you, Charlie, you just to short form my one story.
00:19:16.000At our school, the messaging that being circulated was literally, literally, they're quoting this so-called scholar saying, in every classroom where a white children, where a white child learns, there is a future killer cop.
00:19:30.000I mean, that was the messaging that we need studies on white mothers and why they are indoctrinating their children in black death.
00:19:42.000I could go on the transgender education program that was forced on my third grade boy, who was only eight at the time, which we found out about at a parent-teacher meeting when one of our fellow parents, a dad, raised his hand and said, Why did my son come home and ask if it's true that he was taught in, he was taught in school and he wanted to know if it was true that he could take a pill to prevent puberty.
00:20:03.000And then at age 18, he could have a surgery to cut off his penis and then he would be a woman.
00:20:43.000Well, and, you know, Megan, I'm sensing from you, which I sense from others, like this righteous indignation, which is like, yeah, you're not going to do this to my kid.
00:20:51.000And we'll pull out, we'll declare war on the school.
00:21:28.000And day by day, while you can counter program as we had been with our kids, you can't let the messaging go on and the abuse go on day by day by day and not expect it to have some effect.
00:21:40.000And, you know, we looked at our son, now he's 12.
00:21:43.000At the time we pulled him, I guess he was 10.
00:21:46.000His two best friends, one is brown, one is black, right?
00:22:13.000You know, that beautiful sort of innocence they have as kids stays with them.
00:22:16.000Nope, they were going exactly the opposite way.
00:22:19.000So, I mean, when I saw that letter being circulated at the school that they wanted to be mandatory reading for the faculty about in every classroom where white children learn, I sent it to the superintendent of the school, the head of school, and said, the answer to racism is not more racism.
00:22:52.000Did you know that if you shop at Nike, they turn around and give your hard-earned dollars to pro-abortion groups like Planned Parenthood and the Population Council?
00:22:59.000Did you know that Airbnb gave $500,000 to the Marxist Black Lives Matter organization?
00:23:05.000Your first vote is at the ballot box, but that isn't enough to defend our traditional Judeo-Christian values.
00:23:11.000Left-wing corporations are subverting our democracy by taking money from conservative customers and giving it to radical organizations that support abortion, gun control, and critical race theory.
00:23:22.000You have another vote, a second vote at the checkout line.
00:23:25.000And that is where massively important organizations called Second Vote come in.
00:23:30.000The courageous people at Second Vote are exposing corporations for how they spend your money.
00:24:39.000What's your take on him and what he did?
00:24:42.000You know, it's funny, Charlie, because the day before the election, was it the day before or the day of, I did a long podcast about Trump versus Biden and what the considerations were going in.
00:24:53.000And obviously, I understand why, you know, Trump is criticizable, right?
00:24:58.000He's definitely a thin-skinned guy who picks petty fights and says stuff that, you know, you probably shouldn't say in polite company and all that.
00:25:05.000And Biden, you know, for the most part, you know, he knows how to behave in front of the cameras.
00:25:10.000I mean, he's drooling half the time, but he doesn't say the stuff that Trump said, right?
00:25:19.000But what he's done has been so incredibly divisive, and the media won't cover it, right?
00:25:23.000They have you believe that Donald Trump is the devil incarnate.
00:25:26.000And they don't, they give Biden a complete pass on the most divisive policies like taking away due process from young men who get accused on college campuses.
00:25:36.000He wants to go back to his old boss, Barack Obama's rules of you don't get a lawyer, you don't get the right to discovery, you don't get the right to cross-examine your accuser.
00:25:43.000You get tried in a kangaroo court that's your so-called jury is full of victims' rights advocates.
00:25:48.000The fix is in, and when you get kicked out of school and labeled a sex offender, there's virtually no right of appeal.
00:25:53.000He's the racist remarks that Biden has made over and over and over, complete pass, not to mention his son, who's used the N-word repeatedly, we now know.
00:26:02.000Whereas Donald Trump Jr., my God, if he ever had that.
00:26:07.000The stuff that Biden has done with respect to trying to award in the school system, writings based on Kendi and D'Angelo and the 1619 project.
00:26:17.000I mean, I could go on that helping only the black farmers and not the white farmers, even though the socioeconomic disparity between the two of them might favor the black farmer.
00:27:11.000Because we are talking about the destruction of fundamental principles that we've agreed to live by for many, many years-from due process to free speech to equal protection, all of which he wants to throw out the window.
00:27:42.000So, I want to pick up on one of those things you mentioned, which is one of the fruits of the Enlightenment, which is equal protection and the presumption of innocence.
00:27:50.000You know, kind of talk about Me Too, where I'm not saying you were part of that movement, but there was definitely some would characterize, you know, part of kind of what you went through and how it was kind of cataloged.
00:28:06.000Because now it's being put into policy where people are losing their potential legal protections on college campuses.
00:28:12.000And this doesn't get as much coverage now, but this is an element of the kind of woke world, which is if you're a man, you're bad, and you don't get any sort of rights.
00:29:26.000It was something I was dragged into, I don't know, sort of not against my will, but just not exactly of my own choosing.
00:29:34.000But when faced with a question of what Roger Ailes was, you know, and whether I was going to tell my story or not, there was no question in my mind what the right thing to do was.
00:29:44.000The Me Too movement, I want to start with this.
00:29:50.000And I know that because, given my role, I get letters from young women all the time, like thanking me they were in an abusive situation and now they've gotten out of it, right?
00:29:59.000So it's one of those things where you can't just bash it all together.
00:30:04.000So, and I, those things bring tears to my eyes when I find out how women have gotten out of abusive situations with bad bosses and so on.
00:30:29.000The whole thing got driven by an insane lunatic lawyer, Michael Avenatti, who started alleging gang rape with absolutely no support.
00:30:36.000By the way, NBC was fine going to air with those allegations, but held on for months, not reporting on Harvey Weinstein because they allegedly didn't have the story.
00:30:54.000The entire board had to resign because that organization cared more about access to power than actually protecting any women.
00:31:00.000So I think to the extent it's given young women the idea that they don't have to take it, that no is an available option to them when their boss tries to paw them or condition advancement on sexual favors.
00:31:15.000But that's in no way an endorsement of the whole thing because it's gone too far and it's become weaponized to take out, you know, either political people or people who are just unpopular, who you might not like, right?
00:31:25.000Like some, maybe some guy who did nothing.
00:31:27.000But there are some women who are opportunists and misuse it.
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00:33:01.000So we have a lot of young women that listen to this podcast.
00:33:04.000Can you speak to how that balance needs to be articulated and how we have to strike that balance?
00:33:10.000Because sometimes I'm afraid that women have an expectation that if they go into workplace, it's there and they must find it.
00:33:18.000They must root it out and become an activist before ever experiencing anything.
00:33:23.000And so can you talk about in your own personal experience and how you say you obviously don't want it to become an anti-man movement, which it has, unfortunately, but also that it's a legitimate thing and some men are awful pigs like Harvey Weinstein and that people have a right to speak out.
00:33:38.000How do we strike that balance without tearing down our entire society?
00:34:07.000Now, that doesn't mean you should ignore power dynamics, especially as a guy in the office setting, right?
00:34:15.000If the man is in the position of power or the woman, but who's ever in the position of power, it's very fraught with peril to chase somebody who's beneath you.
00:34:21.000That's the Matt Lauer situation, right?
00:34:23.000Where women said yes, even though they didn't want to say yes, they were afraid of him.
00:36:24.000But I laughed and laughed and laughed it off.
00:36:26.000But then when he grabbed me and tried to shove his tongue down my throat three times in the office setting, and then when I wouldn't do it, asked me when my contract was up.
00:36:55.000And what you're talking about is nuance, which is definitely missing in our country and in our society where there's just an overgeneralization to try to indict people just because you think they might kind of fit a certain archetype.
00:37:07.000Talk a little bit about in our closing here about your podcast, what you're trying to do with it, some of the guests you've been having on.
00:37:14.000I kind of like how you're not allowing people to pinpoint you.
00:37:16.000You're saying some things that people would deem very conservative and then some things that people would deem liberal.
00:37:21.000I think these labels all are kind of meaningless.
00:37:25.000But talk about what you're working on now: the podcast, the guests you're having on, the work you're trying to get them.
00:37:32.000I mean, I would say it's sort of, you know, Megan Kelly, nobody's sycophant.
00:37:37.000You know, I'm really not tribal in my approach to the news, and I never have been.
00:37:43.000I think that's why I did well on Fox, because people knew they could come to me for the straight skinny, but that they weren't going to be getting, you know, a liberal in conservatives clothing, right?
00:38:18.000And I just think it's sort of maybe it's me unleashed, right?
00:38:21.000At Fox, you kind of understood there was only so far you could go if it was a Republican in trouble.
00:38:26.000And at NBC, it was, of course, you know, originally I thought I wasn't going to be doing politics there, but the amount of editorial control they tried to exercise over everything was just insufferable and always in one direction.
00:38:53.000I had on The Wolf of Wall Street the other day, Jordan Belfort, fascinating X-rated discussion about his life, really interesting stuff.
00:39:00.000Last year, I had on a cast of Willy Wonka, my favorite movie.
00:39:03.000I mean, he's like, it's so random, right?
00:39:05.000But, you know, everybody from true MAGA country, we put on Julie Kelly to talk about what's being done to those January 6th protesters and how messed up that is, to more, you know, liberal people like we had on James Carvel, right?
00:39:19.000Like across the spectrum, I will say, I don't interview the woke.
00:39:23.000I'm more in the John McWhorter camp of it's not worth your time.
00:39:27.000So they don't really have an invitation to come on and it wouldn't go anyway because I don't, I don't like what they're doing.