The Megyn Kelly Show - 60 Minutes' Shoddy ＂Havana Syndrome＂ Report, and Hillary Attacking Undecided Voters, with Glenn Greenwald

00:00:00.600 Welcome to The Megyn Kelly Show, live on Sirius XM Channel 111, every weekday at New East.

00:00:12.200 Hey everyone, I'm Megyn Kelly. Welcome to The Megyn Kelly Show.

00:00:15.320 Later, our friend Maureen Callahan will be here in studio with me to talk

00:00:19.140 Meghan Markle, Shakira, J.K. Rowling.

00:00:22.140 Oh, and that little thing about Lizzo quitting.

00:00:24.960 Well, that lasted about four hours before she was like,

00:00:28.240 never mind, I'm back. We'll be airing that full interview with bonus content tomorrow morning

00:00:35.620 as a special episode on our podcast feed and YouTube feed, so stay tuned for that.

00:00:41.580 But we begin today with the very first guest on this show, and someone who's been on more than

00:00:48.240 just about anybody else over the past 750 episodes. That's how much we love Pulitzer Prize-winning

00:00:54.580 journalist Glenn Greenwald. And I really do love Glenn. It's perfect timing because have you heard

00:01:00.220 of Havana Syndrome? We've talked about it on this show, including with Glenn, back in episode 185.

00:01:06.520 But 60 Minutes just did a bombshell report on it on Sunday night. But like so many other recent 60

00:01:13.940 Minutes segments, there are more major journalistic questions about it than answers. Glenn is the host

00:01:21.280 of Rumble's system update, and he joins me now. Glenn, how's it going? Good to see you.

00:01:28.040 I'm doing very well, Megan. Always great to see you. I'm thrilled that I'm the most frequent guest,

00:01:31.920 though. I would like to have some kind of medal or a plaque commemorating that. I don't know if you

00:01:37.700 guys have that, but I'd like to register my request. But yeah, thanks for having me on.

00:01:41.940 You know, I'll put it in the mail, and you'll get it just as soon as I get my million subscriber

00:01:46.740 button from YouTube, which I still don't have. And I'm edging in on 2 million, and I still don't

00:01:52.720 have it. Poor little Thatcher. Check the mailbox for weeks. Finally, we just gave up on YouTube.

00:01:57.820 In any event, maybe I'll do better than them, Glenn. So the 60 Minutes thing, I thought of you

00:02:02.120 as soon as we saw it. We had discussed this back in episode 185. We put on a former military four-star

00:02:08.600 general who talked about the fact that he had seen this repeatedly. He'd suffered from it,

00:02:12.800 and he thought it was real, this so-called Havana syndrome. And then we had you come on to say,

00:02:18.860 maybe, not really sure about this being some foreign weapon that's getting used against our

00:02:26.760 top spies. Well, I mean, in my view, that's how responsible journalism is done. You point out,

00:02:33.220 these are the allegations. Here's a contrarian point of view, if required, right? I mean,

00:02:37.860 not every story requires that. This one does. Nope. 60 Minutes went full-on balls to the wall.

00:02:45.640 The Russians are after us. It is the Russians. And I will say, if you watch this piece, Glenn,

00:02:51.840 as you know, you would have walked away saying, oh, we're under attack. The Russians are taking out

00:02:57.900 our top spies. You would not even know that there's like serious criticism of this theory even being a

00:03:07.240 thing. And to me, it was just yet another dereliction by 60 Minutes. So I'm sure you

00:03:12.840 watched the report. I watched your response to the report. So give us your overall take on what we saw

00:03:17.240 on CBS News Sunday night. Well, I think the most notable part of all of this is that the media has

00:03:24.060 been saying, and this goes back to the Trump years, that not only are our diplomats and our service

00:03:30.740 members and intelligence operatives overseas being attacked, and it originated first with claims of

00:03:38.140 people in Cuba, and that's why it's called the Havana syndrome. There were these reports about people

00:03:42.780 who had severe headaches of a kind they had never experienced before, and then it became dizziness and

00:03:47.720 other forms of cognitive disorientation. And always with Russia's stories, when Trump was

00:03:55.520 president, the subtext was, because Trump is captive to or controlled by the Kremlin and Vladimir Putin,

00:04:03.400 he's unwilling to do anything to protect our country from this attack by Russia. And so there

00:04:08.240 was no questioning at all. There was a wave of stories like this about what Russia was doing. And so

00:04:13.320 many of it ended up being debunked, like Russia had put bounties on the heads of soldiers in

00:04:17.040 Afghanistan. In this case, there's been an obvious willingness on the part of the U.S. security state,

00:04:23.020 the CIA, the FBI, Homeland Security, to endorse almost every one of these conspiracy theories about

00:04:29.280 Russia. They're the ones from whom it typically originates. But in this case, Megan, the people who

00:04:35.980 are leading the way in arguing that there's no evidence for this, that in fact the available evidence

00:04:41.800 negates the existence of this narrative that Russia has secretly developed this kind of mysterious

00:04:48.140 24th century technology where they can attack the brains of our citizens using a kind of directed

00:04:57.140 energy weapon that nobody understands, nobody possesses. Those who are denying vehemently that

00:05:03.960 this happened are not people like me. It's the CIA and the FBI and the Justice Department and

00:05:10.060 experts that they've retained, all of whom say things like, the people who are claiming these

00:05:16.020 symptoms have no detectable brain injuries. They have no intelligence that Russia has a weapon like

00:05:22.280 this, let alone that they've used it. Remember, we always claim that we have Russia under such

00:05:26.940 meticulous surveillance. So we know that Vladimir Putin is the one who ordered the hacking of the DNC,

00:05:33.480 that he personally did it. There's claims that we know that Vladimir Putin did things like ordering

00:05:37.740 the murder of Alexei Navalny in prison. So there's constantly claims that we have Russia under

00:05:43.600 these extreme surveillance mechanisms, and I don't doubt that we do. And yet the position of the

00:05:49.820 intelligence community, the official position of the government, is that there's no evidence to

00:05:54.360 support this after they investigated it for years. There's independent medical expertise. For example,

00:06:00.260 one of the very first bits of evidence that was presented was the people who thought they were

00:06:04.200 victimized by this claim that they were able to record the noise that the machine and the weapon

00:06:09.800 was emitting. And they recorded it and they turned it over to medical experts and scientists. And when

00:06:15.240 they investigated, they discovered that the sound that these people thought was coming from the weapon

00:06:19.560 perfectly matched spectrally a sound that an exotic cricket that is coming to that region, the Caribbean

00:06:27.540 region. It's a cricket. Hold on, I'm going to play it. We did this the last time. Viewer warning,

00:06:33.080 like a strobe light warning, this could cause some sort of Havana syndrome in your ear. Not really.

00:06:38.280 But here's the sound of the cricket. The actual sound being reported as having caused this alleged

00:06:43.000 syndrome in SOT 22. Okay. It's annoying, but it's not a weapon. It's a cricket. It's a female cricket.

00:06:56.940 Sending out the signal. She wants to get it on. Right. And so we know that the media has this

00:07:05.220 obsession with Russia. And I think it's important to think about why that is. There's obviously a

00:07:10.900 strong desire that most Democrats support, a lot of Republicans support sending billions and

00:07:15.860 billions more over to Ukraine in order to get the American people on board with that. You need to

00:07:19.520 convince them that Russia poses a threat to the United States. Otherwise, why is that our war in Ukraine?

00:07:25.020 But there's also a narrative that the United States and our democracy is under attack by Russia. And

00:07:31.960 that's the reason they need more control over social media and the internet to protect us from

00:07:36.800 things like Russian disinformation. So there's a lot of important policies and a lot of power that

00:07:41.280 depends on fear mongering about Russia. And so I don't mind that 60 Minutes gave a platform to employees

00:07:49.040 of the government who insist that they have these symptoms or even people who think Russia did it.

00:07:54.980 The problem is, is that there's a mountain of evidence starting with the US government itself

00:07:59.400 that ordinarily does not reject conspiracy theories about Russia. And I can spend the rest of your show

00:08:04.760 going through the evidence negating it. They can't even find anything. You know, they looked at,

00:08:08.600 they did MRIs and brain scans of the people who are claiming these symptoms. They have no ability to

00:08:13.860 detect any kind of brain injury. So what a lot of scientists have concluded is these people aren't

00:08:20.700 lying. You know, like they do feel these symptoms. They do feel headaches. They do feel disorientation.

00:08:26.340 But a lot of times we have the ability as human beings to create symptoms, you know,

00:08:31.720 psychosomatically. This happens all the time. If you go to an ER and you think that you're not

00:08:35.300 being attended to right away, the anxiety of that convinces you that now you have other symptoms. And it's

00:08:40.500 not like you're lying. You really do have those symptoms. But, you know, you have elevated blood

00:08:44.540 pressure, but because your brain has created them and this social contagion can happen, where if

00:08:49.320 you're a State Department employee or an employee of an intelligence agency and you constantly hear

00:08:54.960 about this dangerous advanced Russian weapon injuring people's brains, there's a social contagion

00:09:00.440 that happens where you think, oh, maybe I have this symptom. And then you talk yourself into it.

00:09:04.700 And all the evidence suggests that that's what's happened here.

00:09:07.560 Well, and there's another syndrome that apparently many people suffer from in America and elsewhere

00:09:16.140 that can be easily explained that has nothing to do with spies, where this can happen. It's sort of like

00:09:22.120 a trip wire goes off in your brain and you start to have a lot of these same symptoms. So some experts

00:09:28.400 have said, why are we immediately attributing this set of symptoms to spies using some

00:09:36.140 supersonic weapon in our ears where they can target through a window as opposed to this other syndrome

00:09:44.480 that a lot of neurologists see and treat all the time?

00:09:47.800 Yeah. I mean, there's some, you know, first of all, if Megan, if Russia has developed this very potent

00:09:55.000 secret weapon that can cause people more or less overnight to become cognitively disabled and to

00:10:01.720 suffer from extreme, you know, neurological problems and other kinds of physiological disabilities,

00:10:09.140 why are they not using it on the battlefield in Ukraine? Why aren't Ukrainian generals and like

00:10:13.780 President Zelensky complaining about this? Why didn't they use it against Navalny and other Russian

00:10:20.260 dissidents whom they've attacked in all kinds of other ways? This would be a much more indetectable

00:10:24.360 and effective way of attacking their enemies. And yet they are only using it against American

00:10:30.000 diplomats. And there's no real motive why these people were targeted. But I do want to stress that

00:10:35.220 like there are, I know one of the things we covered in our show is, I don't know if you've had this

00:10:39.440 before. A lot of journalists I know have, and I certainly have. There's this community of people

00:10:44.320 inside the United States who strongly believe that they are being targeted with microwave weapons.

00:10:50.500 And there's a whole list of syndromes, symptoms that they are all convinced they have. And if you

00:10:55.520 interview them individually, they'll all tell you they have the same symptoms. And yet most people

00:11:01.300 treat them as like crazy conspiracy theorists. They believe they're being targeted and gang-stocked by

00:11:06.520 the government or their bosses or corporations. And most people treat them as crazy conspiracy

00:11:11.980 theorists. The thing is, they're not lying. They do have these symptoms, but they have these symptoms

00:11:16.340 because they've been convinced by discourse that these things are real. And as you say, this is a

00:11:24.520 common set of symptoms that neurologists treat, that psychiatrists treat. We have social contagion all

00:11:32.640 the time where social animals, like we, you know, I mean, this is one of the things that happens with

00:11:36.240 gender ideology. Like why suddenly overnight did huge numbers of young girls start identifying as

00:11:42.820 male? Whereas before they didn't, it's because you see other people doing it. And as social animals,

00:11:47.560 we're prone to copy that. The question I have is, as you asked, why would we suddenly blame it on

00:11:52.640 Russia? And secondly, why when examining these reports as 60 Minutes did, did they essentially

00:11:59.580 include no dissent, no examination of the huge evidentiary holes? That's what turns it from a

00:12:06.820 reasonable journalistic examination into an obvious propaganda piece.

00:12:11.760 Yes, that's exactly right, Glenn. I'm looking at this and I'm like, oh, wow, this is a dramatic

00:12:16.240 car chase, which we'll show the audience in a second. This is, you know, they got this moment on

00:12:19.780 camera. Okay, great. I can't wait until these people get tested with the other side of the story,

00:12:25.600 as you know, you've been outlaying. Nope, didn't happen. If you are a 60 Minutes CBS News viewer,

00:12:31.200 you have no idea there is another side. And when the truth comes out at some point,

00:12:37.780 as it probably will, if it's not a 60 Minutes posited, they're going to be journalistically

00:12:44.060 humiliated again, again. It's not the newsman's obligation to have every story perfectly right

00:12:51.080 when the story is not yet fully known. It's his obligation to bring the full facts as we know them

00:12:57.920 as of today to the audience. And where there's a serious dispute in the evidence to flag that for

00:13:03.100 the audience so the audience knows, this is evidence we have on one side, but here's the other side.

00:13:08.940 So here is, first of all, okay, I'm sorry, with all due respect to this woman, and I appreciate her

00:13:13.680 working for the FBI. There are a couple of red flags in this piece to me. The ridiculous, quote,

00:13:20.840 disguise that they put on the one female FBI agent, Carrie, who was, I joked online, they got their

00:13:28.340 disguise tips from Clark Kent. It was like, well, I can see everything about this woman, but I guess

00:13:35.420 I'm supposed to think she's in disguise. Here she is describing the alleged attack against her.

00:13:40.620 She says in 2021, she was home in Florida when she was hit by a crippling force.

00:13:49.900 And bam, inside my right ear, it was like a dentist drilling on steroids. I immediately felt pressure,

00:13:57.840 and pressure and pain started coursing from inside my right ear, down my jaw, down my neck,

00:14:05.560 and into my chest. And I remember complaining to my colleagues for months after that. I felt like I

00:14:13.080 had early Alzheimer's.

00:14:15.940 Okay, so that's my one red flag. Granted, I don't know what she looked like before. They did show

00:14:23.160 some of the hair and makeup process, which looked like my own. It's like, I'm like, okay.

00:14:27.960 It felt very familiar, didn't it? Right? It wasn't like, bring in the prosthetics team.

00:14:33.720 Okay, so that's fine. They put a wig on her, probably. But yeah.

00:14:37.140 Yeah, but she had on a blonde wig. Okay. Yeah. Okay. Secondly, they used political hack

00:14:44.220 Mark Zaid. And I saw you talking about him, too. So let's play his soundbite. He's the lawyer

00:14:49.920 representing some of the alleged sufferers with Havana syndrome. And with no disclosure about

00:14:57.720 this guy's politics or controversial status, here they are promoting him as just like this

00:15:05.040 well-meaning lawyer trying to help these injured people, Sot-17.

00:15:08.940 Do you know whether there are other FBI agents who have also suffered from these anomalous health

00:15:17.020 incidents? There are other FBI agents and personnel, not just agents, analysts.

00:15:24.620 Were any of these members of the FBI counterintelligence people in addition to Kerry?

00:15:29.000 The one thread that I know of with the FBI personnel that is common among most, if not all of my clients,

00:15:38.500 other than the family members connected to the employee, was they were all doing something relating to Russia.

00:15:47.020 Okay. Glenn, you and I both know. I used to like this guy because he's in Albany, where I'm from.

00:15:55.580 So I went to him a couple times earlier in my career from Albany. And then I learned. Then I

00:16:01.880 understood, wait, wait, what am I dealing with? He's a partisan hack. And one only need look at his

00:16:07.840 X feed to see the litany of examples of his crazy resistance, hashtag resistance thinking when it

00:16:17.580 comes to Trump, Russia, or anything that might look bad for Republicans or in particular MAGA.

00:16:26.400 Yeah, exactly. So first of all, that was a huge red flag for me as well.

00:16:30.400 And the fact that there's no disclosure of this, of the fact that he has such strident politics that

00:16:37.540 would motivate him to affirm these claims, is exactly the way in which the media in its more

00:16:43.560 subtle forms can so aggressively manipulate the news. So who you pick as an expert and how you choose to

00:16:51.760 present them goes a very long way in how the story is shaped. So when the government wanted to appoint

00:17:00.380 as the head of the Department of Homeland Security's disinformation unit, which is basically a ministry

00:17:05.500 of truth inside the US government, one of the reasons it became so controversial is not just because of

00:17:11.080 the existence, but because the woman they chose to lead that agency, Nia Yankovic, all you had to do

00:17:17.040 is just take one look at her text feed. And you can immediately understand what she is exactly along

00:17:22.360 the lines of Mark Zaid, this kind of extremist caricature or cartoon of not just an American

00:17:28.460 liberal or Democrat, but someone who identifies themselves as part of the hashtag resistance,

00:17:32.320 who endorses every crazy conspiracy theory about Trump and Russia, including, again, many that ended

00:17:37.600 up being debunked. And I think the point you made about the media is the key one here, at least for me,

00:17:42.480 which is Americans don't expect journalists to get everything correct or everything perfect.

00:17:48.600 Americans don't hold against journalists the fact that sometimes the story in the beginning is

00:17:52.820 incomplete. Sometimes journalists get misled. Sometimes facts are wrong. That's always been

00:17:58.020 true. Even when Americans had a lot of faith in media, the difference is between making a good

00:18:02.680 faith effort to get a story right and occasionally having mistakes that you then promptly correct versus

00:18:09.040 constantly making, quote, errors in the service of the same ideological agenda.

00:18:17.420 So one of the crucial foundational policies of American liberals, of the establishment Democratic

00:18:24.200 Party is this fixation on Russia. Now, I'm no fan of the Russian government or Vladimir Putin.

00:18:31.120 Obviously, that's an authoritarian regime. No American should want to live under a regime like

00:18:35.720 that. But so much of what has been said about what Russia is doing vis-a-vis the United States

00:18:40.340 or Republican politicians has been long ago debunked. So many stories have ended up being

00:18:46.600 false. It obviously has a very strong partisan angle to it. There's also policies like the war in

00:18:52.520 Ukraine or the attempt to control the Internet, that this fixation on Russia and this constant

00:18:58.100 insistence that they're attacking the United States is served by these stories. And so when 60 Minutes

00:19:04.100 does a story like this, that has no dissent to it, that basically conceals all the reasons why even

00:19:10.000 our own government has concluded this didn't happen, when they're putting people on like Mark Zaid and

00:19:14.480 not disclosing who he really is, pretending that he's just some noble, crusading, neutral lawyer,

00:19:20.140 these are all indicia that this is, as I said, a propaganda story designed to promote a narrative for

00:19:26.780 partisan ends. And that is what has caused the American public to turn against media, the belief that

00:19:32.280 they are not trying their best to tell the story, but that instead they're basically because they've

00:19:37.080 become, especially in the age of Trump, partisan activists who view their mission not as being a

00:19:42.440 journalistic one, but a political one. And to me, this is a perfect illustration of that.

00:19:47.860 We saw that with Scott Pelley's interview with Moms for Liberty, which was completely one-sided.

00:19:54.180 He had an agenda. He completely disregarded facts that would suggest there is a woke ideology

00:19:59.900 making its way into grade school and middle and high as well, and inappropriate sexual content and

00:20:07.300 so on. He just completely ignored it and treated the litany of evidence as just a one-off here or

00:20:12.320 there. So Mark Zaid, back to the lawyer, just a couple of examples. He said of Trump in 2017,

00:20:18.600 we will get rid of him. This country is strong enough to survive even him and his supporters. We

00:20:22.960 have to. Tweeted out in 2017 when Trump had a dust-up with his then-acting U.S. Attorney General

00:20:28.980 Sally Yates, who refused to defend his Muslim ban, so-called. He tweeted out, hashtag, the coup has

00:20:35.880 started. First of many steps. Hashtag rebellion. Hashtag impeachment will follow. Went on, since January

00:20:44.280 20th, I would much rather be in Canada. What a great country. We'll be great again when at real Donald

00:20:48.520 Trump leaves. What goes on after December, this is 20th, 2023, so just recently. I do believe Trump

00:20:56.620 was engaged in a serious effort to overthrow the government. Goes on. That's who they put up there

00:21:02.900 as their, you know, independent expert who we should trust to evaluate the state of our international

00:21:08.520 affairs. And let's not forget the fact that Mark Zaid's whole business is representing individuals

00:21:13.260 who leave the intelligence agencies or who are still in them, who want to sue for something or

00:21:19.360 another. So of course, Mark Zaid believes Havana syndrome is real. His mortgage depends on it.

00:21:28.120 Where's the expert who represents defendants? Where's the experts who have taken a hard look at this,

00:21:33.320 including medical experts who have said, try as we might, we can't find anything special on the MRIs

00:21:38.860 of most of these folks. And while some, some MRIs have shown some suspicious, you know,

00:21:44.460 problems, we don't know what caused that. The vast majority of these people do not have

00:21:50.120 a brain exam that would suggest that they were injured by some sort of weapon that somehow the

00:21:56.900 Russians have managed to develop. And we have no idea what it is or how to create the same thing.

00:22:05.100 You know, to your point about the Russian spying before Tucker went over to interview Putin,

00:22:09.160 he went out there and said, our government was spying on me for sure. And they knew about my

00:22:13.980 interview before I'd announced it. Same. I've said this publicly before. Um, I found out that the

00:22:20.560 intelligence agencies knew that I was getting the interview with Putin before I knew they're

00:22:25.720 monitoring everything. They know a lot more about what's happening inside the Kremlin than they reveal.

00:22:31.000 And if there were this super powerful weapon that can debilitate you through the window from afar,

00:22:38.100 it's not plausible. We wouldn't know.

00:22:42.580 You know, Megan, I spent three years of my life reporting, you know, on top secret documents

00:22:47.040 of the NSA and of related intelligence agencies, and was able to show that the extent of their

00:22:52.580 surveillance capabilities was far greater than anyone understood and that it was often directed

00:22:56.520 not at our foreign adversaries, but at the American people. Of course, they have Russia

00:23:02.440 under an extremely comprehensive and tight surveillance net. That's something that is a

00:23:08.860 legitimate function of any government, which is to surveil the leaders of foreign governments,

00:23:13.840 of adversary governments. So the idea that Russia has somehow been able under everybody's noses,

00:23:20.060 think how many scientists would be required, you know, even back in the days of, of the world war

00:23:26.920 two with the Manhattan project, when there was no real kind of electronic surveillance, I mean,

00:23:32.740 there was a little bit, the Russians were constantly aware of the tests that the Americans were conducting

00:23:39.280 in order to pursue a nuclear weapon. So were the Germans. It's very difficult to keep major scientific

00:23:44.640 project secret, even before the era of massive comprehensive electronic surveillance. The idea

00:23:50.260 that the Russians would be able to develop a weapon that has these very mysterious effects,

00:23:56.800 because not only, Megan, is it true that the vast majority of MRIs and other brain tests don't show

00:24:01.760 any unusual brain injury, they don't actually show in the majority of cases any brain injury at all,

00:24:07.240 which is why these scientists have concluded that in a lot of cases, it's psychogenic, meaning it's,

00:24:11.640 it's manufactured by the brain, which again, will be perceived as very, very real. But I think,

00:24:18.180 you know, we have to remember, this is the critical context to me, I think a lot of people in media

00:24:22.700 don't understand this, because their world doesn't tell them this ever. In 2016, the 2016 election was

00:24:29.720 drowned by a conspiracy theory, that not just that the Russians had hacked the DNC and John Podesta's

00:24:35.100 emails, but that the Trump campaign conspired with them to do that. That was the major conspiracy

00:24:41.100 theory that dominated our politics for three years, it led to the appointment of a special

00:24:45.220 counsel, who had unlimited subpoena powers, supposedly the A team of prosecutors. After 18

00:24:51.220 months, he closed his investigation and said, we could not find evidence to establish that this

00:24:56.440 happened. The whole thing was basically debunked this conspiracy theory about Russia. And then in 2020,

00:25:02.940 when the New York Post got hold of authentic documents from Hunter Biden's laptop about what

00:25:07.180 the Biden family was doing in Ukraine and China that raised a lot of serious ethical questions

00:25:11.220 about Joe Biden, again, they lied. The CIA invented a claim, a conspiracy theory that the media ratified

00:25:18.300 that said, oh, don't pay any attention to this reporting. These documents are not real. They're

00:25:22.900 Russian disinformation. Only for the media, once Joe Biden was safely elected, to admit that they were

00:25:28.220 authentic all along. So they don't realize, but I think Americans do, that there has been this series

00:25:34.300 of extreme claims that the media has ratified and endorsed about Russia, about Trump, about the

00:25:41.120 attacks on the United States by the Kremlin that have proven to be false, that were disseminated

00:25:46.520 purely for political aims. And in their world, they think their reporting was great. They gave

00:25:52.540 themselves Pulitzers for it. But in the actual world, the people who aren't in the media, I think

00:25:57.400 there's a lot of valid suspicion about stories like this. And this is, this shows why, this shows how

00:26:03.420 they do it. Okay. So I mentioned the moment of the car chase that aired on 60 Minutes show on Sunday,

00:26:11.020 and it was very dramatic. I'm going to show it to the audience. And then we'll talk about it. Here it

00:26:16.420 is. In 2020, near Key West, Florida, deputies tried to stop the Mustang for speeding. It ran 15 miles

00:26:26.400 miles, until it hit spike strips laid in its path.

00:26:34.000 Get out for now!

00:26:35.200 A search of the car found notes of bank accounts.

00:26:46.000 Citibank, Discover Savings, $75,000.

00:26:50.800 And this device that looks like a walkie-talkie can erase the car's computer data, including its GPS record.

00:27:00.200 There was also a Russian passport.

00:27:04.200 What's your first name? Vitaly.

00:27:05.800 V-I-T-A-L-I-I.

00:27:07.800 Okay. And what they say is that this guy, Vitaly, was being investigated by Kerry, our friend with the

00:27:15.800 Whig. And that after Vitaly got arrested and went into jail, that's when Kerry got attacked by obviously

00:27:23.800 not Vitaly, but maybe somebody Russian who was mad that Vitaly was now behind bars. That's the theory,

00:27:30.440 as I understand it anyway. For me, I was like, okay, this is great. They appear to have gotten,

00:27:36.760 I guess, a Russian spy. Scott Pelley says that in the anchor track that follows, that they think he's

00:27:42.360 a Russian spy. And I'm like, terrific. What do they have? Okay, bank accounts. That's exciting. I have those

00:27:51.160 too, but okay. I'm with you still. Show me what you got. And it's like, the device, the walkie-talkie

00:27:56.360 device. I'm like, there it is. They found it. He's going to say, and we found, if you point it through the

00:28:01.000 window, it can do the thing to the ear, cause vertigo, the massive headaches. It wipes your GPS clean.

00:28:07.560 I'm like, wait a minute. This is the Russian, here he is, the Russian spy. He's in on it.

00:28:16.440 He's connected to the woman you have on camera who gets attacked. Where's his weapon, Glenn?

00:28:22.520 Didn't happen. Hasn't been found. Well, also, they had him in custody for 18 months. He served 18

00:28:29.640 months in prison. They said the FBI had extensively interrogated him. Why didn't the government,

00:28:34.520 which again, believes the Havana syndrome does not exist, that there's no evidence of a

00:28:39.560 secret weapon being employed against us by any foreign adversary, including Russia? Why,

00:28:44.680 if this person was such a high level Russian spy and a technical genius, did he have no evidence of

00:28:50.520 it that they extracted from him? But this is the thing, Megan, this is what I found so interesting.

00:28:54.760 This story depended on the kind of dot connecting and crazy conspiracy theory that if it came from

00:29:00.760 anyone else, like some person on Facebook, you would probably not only get mocked, but probably

00:29:05.560 even censored. Because what they tried to do here is to say that the motive that the Russians had for

00:29:13.720 attacking Harry, who was working for the FBI, was that she was investigating this guy who's Russian,

00:29:19.960 who was detained. Let's assume that he was a Russian spy. Even if that were the case,

00:29:24.440 what, how would that be a motive that the Russians would have? I mean, so you're, you cause the FBI

00:29:30.280 investigator a headache and have headaches and dizziness. So, okay, now she's disabled and she

00:29:36.440 just gets replaced by some other FBI investigators. Not like she was the head of the FBI or some like

00:29:41.640 unique specialist or some like that they had, you know, put her in the Kremlin after years. She was just

00:29:46.920 like a random FBI investigator who could be replaced at any moment. So even that motive that they tried

00:29:53.240 to imply was so strong is actually incredibly weak. It makes no sense. Again, you would much more likely

00:29:59.320 be seeing, you know, if I had that secret weapon and I were the Russians, I would use it against

00:30:03.400 Zelensky or like the top Ukrainian commanders that's actually involved in a war with my country. Why

00:30:08.680 would you use it on a like relatively low level FBI investigator just because she's happens to be

00:30:16.520 investigating some guy who might or might not have connections to the Russian government because it

00:30:21.800 wouldn't achieve anything. It's not like it erases her brain or her memory or whatever she learned.

00:30:26.680 She could pass that on to somebody else and then she can be replaced in the investigation.

00:30:30.600 So it's really, it's, I'm not saying it's definitely untrue. Like you also can't say that

00:30:36.520 like 9-11 theories are definitely untrue. You can take a look at them and then say, Ben,

00:30:41.560 understand like this relies on some wild conspiracy theories and like some crazy dot connecting

00:30:47.240 and very dubious. But that's the same. I felt that with the 60 minutes piece that I was watching

00:30:53.320 a kind of random internet conspiracy theorist, but it had the imprimatur of 60 minutes and therefore

00:30:59.560 it was supposed to be taken more seriously. Yeah. Well, you won't be surprised to hear the

00:31:05.640 counter view from John Bolton. Take a listen here to, uh, to him.

00:31:11.080 When I was a national security advisor, I was briefed on this. I was very concerned about it. I,

00:31:18.840 I did then and do now think that there's, uh, very likely some hostile adversary behavior here,

00:31:26.040 whether it's Russia, China, maybe somebody else, more than likely Russia.

00:31:31.800 Shocked. Are you? It would be, I would fall over my seat. I mean that without hyperbole,

00:31:37.720 if he had said anything but that, and this, you know, make it the, the, you know, 20 years ago,

00:31:42.840 John Bolton was on television telling everybody that it was basically proven that Saddam Hussein

00:31:48.280 had nuclear weapons, that he was in an alliance with Al Qaeda. Every time there's a new enemy,

00:31:53.160 John Bolton is there endorsing every allegation against that adversary or enemy. That's the function

00:31:59.560 that he plays. And I guess I, you know, I do think the Iraq war and whatever you want to say

00:32:05.320 about that in terms of what the media got wrong. And everyone admits that the government and the

00:32:08.840 media were wrong about what Saddam Hussein had made a major dent in the credibility of the media

00:32:14.280 and in the government in terms of people's willingness to trust it. And then you've add

00:32:17.160 on to that many other things, including some of which I said. So how is it that John Bolton,

00:32:22.040 who has a long history of endorsing these kinds of claims and conspiracy theories that turns out to be

00:32:27.240 false, still gets put on television as an expert to trust. It's it's, there's no accountability

00:32:35.000 for it. And, and they put him on because they know he's going to say that. And that's what they want

00:32:38.920 to hear. Mm hmm. You've talked so many times about how these, there are multiple, uh, stenographers

00:32:46.680 in the mainstream media for our intelligence agencies, and they just don't question. They just

00:32:51.160 write what they're told to write. And that's how they get used. And we get misled because the average

00:32:57.720 American citizen is not thinking about this stuff. They're living their lives. They're paying their

00:33:01.880 bills or taking care of their kids. And yet the manipulation that happens at, you know, at levels

00:33:07.080 high and low in media and the nice dual pigeons, whatever you want to call them, who just go along

00:33:12.440 without, without questioning. It's really kind of shocking. And I want to be clear. I'm not saying that,

00:33:18.760 that, that it's impossible. You know, I've, as you know, spoken to people who say that they have

00:33:23.640 this people who are respectable, who are smart, who, um, you know, I, I believe there's in their

00:33:31.000 sincerity. And there was another woman featured in the 60 minutes piece who I, I thought seemed more

00:33:35.800 sincere and believable, um, perhaps than, than the woman we played with all due respect to Carrie.

00:33:41.560 Um, so it's, I'm not saying it's not possible. I'm just saying, I didn't think this is a balanced

00:33:46.920 piece at all. And their unwillingness to balance it. If anything made me more make,

00:33:52.600 made me less likely to believe them. And now I've got more suspicions than ever.

00:33:57.800 Right. I think, but that's the key is, you know, there are a lot of people who have symptoms that

00:34:02.200 we can't identify why they have. And, and, and, and the ability of the brain to manufacture symptoms

00:34:08.120 is very real. I mean, again, go talk to ER doctors and they will tell you a lot of people who wait

00:34:13.080 waiting rooms end up with blood pressure crises, even though there's nothing causing the elevated

00:34:17.960 blood pressure crisis, except for their anxiety, which produces it. It doesn't mean their blood

00:34:22.200 pressure isn't high. It just means it's caused by mental health issues, by severe anxiety or other

00:34:29.160 forms and, and, and produce our brains are very powerful, but to lead from that subject subject to

00:34:35.560 that kind of suggest suggestion. I mean, just ask anybody who's ever seen, like you find out your

00:34:41.000 kid has lice. You're like, you can feel them all over you. Right. It's like anybody has been through

00:34:47.880 that. Well, and also you go, if like every medical student or doctor will tell you, I I've heard this

00:34:53.320 so many times from them that if you are in medical school and constantly studying diseases and what

00:34:58.040 the symptoms are, you constantly start finding that you have, Oh my God, I think I have this disease.

00:35:02.920 And that, you know, cause you're constantly hearing about these symptoms and reading about them.

00:35:05.720 And then your brain starts creating them. This is a very powerful motivator. And, and especially when

00:35:10.920 this has been going on, you can find stories from 2018 and 2019 about how people overseas who work

00:35:16.360 for the U S government are being attacked by Russia with this brain weapon. So if you're somebody who

00:35:20.600 works for these intelligence agencies and you're hearing these reports, I'm sure there are a lot

00:35:24.920 of people who start developing these symptoms because they're convinced they have them because of the power

00:35:29.560 of suggestion because of this social contagion. But to go from that to this gigantic leap that we're

00:35:35.720 under attack from Russia is just on an evidentiary basis. So dubious, but when you add onto it,

00:35:42.600 all the reasons, the partisan reasons and the other policy reasons, why so many people have an

00:35:47.320 interest in promoting that narrative. That's what I think, I mean, this is not just a weird little

00:35:52.680 story that may not be true. It has serious implications. Obviously if Russia is attacking our

00:35:57.960 country with brain weapons, that requires a lot of action, but if they're not, that requires other

00:36:03.960 ways of thinking about policy and politics. And I think that's why it's worth talking about so much.

00:36:10.200 So to sum up, could be healthy dose of skepticism is warranted, but what is certain is we are being

00:36:18.840 manipulated by a dishonest media. There you go. That's, that's the first half hour of our show summed

00:36:24.760 up 60 minutes for you. Uh, that ladder lesson could be applied to virtually every day in media.

00:36:29.880 Glenn Greenwald, the one and only stays with us. You can see what you can see why he's been on so

00:36:34.360 many times, right? Why wouldn't he be one of our very favorites?

00:36:41.240 Let's talk politics for a minute. Hillary Clinton is back, uh, doing a late night tour. She spoke with

00:36:49.080 Jimmy Fallon and she had some thoughts on this boiling down to Trump versus Biden again.

00:36:57.320 What do you, what do you say to voters who are upset that those are the two choices?

00:37:01.320 Get over yourself. Those are the two choices. Yeah, I love that. And, you know,

00:37:08.360 it's kind of like one is old and effective and compassionate, has a heart and really cares

00:37:16.280 about people. And one is old and has been charged with 91 felonies. Yeah. Okay. I don't, I don't

00:37:28.040 understand why this is even a hard choice. Get over yourself. You, you don't matter. Do what's right

00:37:35.560 for the global citizenry, which is clearly to elect the compassionate one with the heart,

00:37:42.440 the guy who skipped officer Dillard's funeral, that fallen cop got shot by somebody who'd been

00:37:48.840 under arrest 21 times, uh, instead to go on the smart list podcast, because he thought it'd be

00:37:54.440 a better way to spend his time. That one, the one who kept checking his watch as the bodies returned

00:37:59.640 from Afghanistan at Dover air force base. That's the compassionate one. Just in case you weren't paying

00:38:03.480 attention, Glenn. I'm not even saying this, uh, to make a point. I'm saying this very seriously.

00:38:10.280 If I were the Trump campaign, I would set aside as money funds as I could to pay for Hillary Clinton

00:38:17.080 to go on a speaking tour around the United States, because I can't imagine anything more helpful

00:38:21.960 to their cause than to have her heard from as much as possible. I mean, this is the sort of thing that,

00:38:27.080 I mean, she had every advantage in 2016. She was really supposed to win. I mean, she was running,

00:38:31.720 Donald Trump was a game show host back in 2016 and like, you know, a very unpopular candidate.

00:38:36.040 That's what she says. Yeah, exactly. She's the legitimate president. And the reason she lost is

00:38:41.720 because Americans couldn't stand her precisely because of that, this kind of mentality. Because

00:38:45.960 what it, it, what it does is, you know, everyone knows she's an extremely wealthy and powerful

00:38:51.160 woman. She has been for, for a long time now. And Americans are looking at their political system.

00:38:57.480 They don't like it. They're looking at the way of life that they're very worried about. And she's

00:39:01.000 basically saying, you know, like not even a pretense of empathy. She's saying,

00:39:07.720 we don't care about your dissatisfactions. You need to do what you're told. And what you are told

00:39:14.520 is to ignore and forget about and get over your dissatisfaction with your political choices and

00:39:20.920 the system that we're providing you and just go to the polls and do your duty and elect a Democrat,

00:39:26.120 elect Joe Biden, because I have already couldn't think he's the better human being. Like just so,

00:39:31.800 you know, like just so entitled and so arrogant. And so just issuing these decrees to people with

00:39:38.840 no attempt to persuade them, who is going to respond to something like that. But you know,

00:39:44.040 the other thing that is like Jimmy Fallon, I have to say, I like, I've never seen anybody more

00:39:49.800 unctuous and just like sycophantic on television than Jimmy Fallon. He just like oozes over every guest.

00:39:55.320 But in this particular case, she's delivering a very partisan message. Okay, that's fine.

00:39:59.560 You have Hillary Clinton on your show. That's what she's going to do. But he was agreeing with

00:40:02.600 every word she was saying. And even like before you cut it, after you cut it off, he was like,

00:40:06.520 yeah, exactly. Couldn't agree more. I love that message. Get out and vote.

00:40:10.360 The reason like late night TV is another one of those institutions that used to command a lot of

00:40:14.760 respect among Americans. It was one of those things that all Americans left and right,

00:40:18.040 every politics gathered around and watch together. And they've all basically become that like

00:40:22.600 Colbert and Jimmy Fallon. They all have the same liberal ideology. And that's why they too have

00:40:27.320 lost. Nobody watches those shows anymore. Those used to be huge cultural forces. And that's part

00:40:33.240 of the reason as well. I did something I rarely do this morning. I went on Huffington Post and they

00:40:40.840 have a whole line of the late night hosts and little clips from every single one. They were bashing on

00:40:46.840 Trump. Fallon, Kimmel, Colbert. And they got, you know, we showed you a little bit of Fallon,

00:40:52.360 but it got more egregious as you went down that line. Of course, Colbert was the meanest,

00:40:56.600 nastiest. And we've said many times that they look for applause, not for laughs. And they're not getting

00:41:02.200 laughs anymore. They just want people to give them the thumbs up on their hard politics. And it's gross.

00:41:06.760 Okay, let me shift to RFKJ, who is all over the news today for this snippet of an interview he gave

00:41:14.680 over on CNN on Monday. Watch this. People talk about the threat to democracy that Trump poses.

00:41:21.560 Do you really think that that is, is it equal to Biden? I mean, listen, I can make the argument

00:41:29.960 that President Biden is a much worse threat to democracy. And the reason for that is President

00:41:34.920 Biden is the first candidate in history, the first president in history that has used the federal

00:41:41.160 agencies to censor political speech, so to censor his opponent. The greatest threat

00:41:47.080 into democracy is not somebody who questions election returns, but a president of the United

00:41:51.480 States who used the power of his office to force the social media companies, Facebook, Instagram,

00:41:57.960 Twitter, to open a portal and give access to that portal to the FBI, to the CIA, to the IRS,

00:42:05.320 the CISA, the NIH, to censor his political critics.

00:42:11.160 It was an amazing answer. And nobody's calling it. Even Trump's not calling attention to that.

00:42:16.600 It's one of the reasons why he's such an important figure in this race.

00:42:20.200 I couldn't agree more. I mean, when Donald Trump first ran in 2016, you can go find articles that

00:42:27.240 I was writing about Donald Trump that were extremely negative and even alarmed, you know,

00:42:31.560 about some of the rhetoric and some of the things he was saying. And what I concluded somewhat quickly,

00:42:37.720 it began with Russiagate and my suspicions of that, but then went on to many other things,

00:42:42.200 was that even if you see Trump as this kind of danger or threat, the union of institutions of power

00:42:51.400 and authority that formed this confederation of power centers that formed in the name of stopping

00:42:57.720 Trump and this belief that anything and everything they could do to stop him was justified from censoring,

00:43:05.080 to disseminating disinformation, to weaponizing the Justice Department was infinitely more dangerous

00:43:12.440 because they were more powerful than Trump and because their self-righteousness was so much greater.

00:43:18.360 And that's always what produces a destruction of limits on what human beings can do to the belief

00:43:23.160 that they're so noble in their cause and so benevolent that anything they do becomes justified.

00:43:28.600 And that point that he made, which is, okay, Trump questioned the 2020 election with,

00:43:34.040 in my view, without much evidence, obviously January 6th was a very negative event.

00:43:40.280 I think it's been wildly exaggerated in terms of what it is, but everyone can agree that you don't

00:43:44.120 want to see things like that. But the systematic attacks on our core liberties from the forces aligned

00:43:52.680 against Trump, whose only mission in life seems to be stopping Trump has been so much more severe in

00:43:58.920 terms of our political norms and our basic democratic values. And to hear R.K. Jr. say that on CNN was

00:44:06.920 incredibly refreshing and the way he said it as well was extremely convincing and I think articulate.

00:44:12.200 Mm-hmm. And it's something we have to worry about for obvious reasons, but also because it's likely to be

00:44:18.120 ongoing. We're about to get a Supreme Court decision, we believe, that's going to uphold that behavior as

00:44:24.360 constitutional. And there's going to be effectively a green light for further coordination, potentially,

00:44:30.840 between the social media companies and a heavy-handed government. And even though that was, you know,

00:44:36.520 technically lawful during President Trump's era, too, it wasn't done. What, anywhere near, like,

00:44:42.360 that we know of, to the extent that we've seen under Joe Biden, who feels perfectly comfortable

00:44:46.760 having the federal government try to curtail speech, thoughts, police thought crimes like

00:44:52.840 things that you can or cannot say about COVID, et cetera, he hasn't learned his lesson. He's in

00:44:57.640 there arguing that he should be given the right to continue it. And that's what's likely to happen,

00:45:01.240 Glenn. Megan, if you go and read those court decisions, like, you know, in the first instance,

00:45:06.040 you have a district court judge. There are tons of district court judges, hundreds and hundreds and

00:45:10.040 hundreds, I think thousands. You know, you can get a district court ruling almost that says anything.

00:45:14.760 It's not that. But what happened was, on appeal, three more judges, an appellate panel,

00:45:20.760 reviewed what the district court judge and not only affirmed it unanimously, but the language they used

00:45:25.400 was extremely assertive. It said that what the Biden administration did in forcing and coercing

00:45:34.520 and pressuring and threatening big tech to censor political dissent online was one of the gravest

00:45:41.160 attacks on the First Amendment rights of free speech in our history. This was the language of

00:45:46.920 the court. And I, the Supreme Court, you know, I think what happened there is that they're very

00:45:54.040 embedded in Washington. Supreme Court justices are creatures of Washington. I think they have

00:45:58.200 a lot of faith and faith and trust in top government agencies. So I think they were kind of like dubious of

00:46:04.920 the idea that we would actually have an elected government that would really go that far to like

00:46:09.560 threaten big tech. They seemed uncomfortable with the perspective that that was what was going on.

00:46:14.920 I do think it's pretty clear for moral argument, and sometimes you're wrong for moral argument,

00:46:18.680 but I think in this case, you can predict they are absolutely going to sanction this. I hope they

00:46:23.960 do it on some technical ground, like the plaintiffs don't have standing to sue, meaning they can't prove

00:46:28.680 that they were censored by the government and therefore have no right to bring the lawsuit,

00:46:31.720 as opposed to approving of this behavior. But whatever else is true, whatever the Supreme Court

00:46:35.880 says, the fact that the government has a program in place to, even if it's just to pressure big tech,

00:46:41.880 let alone coercion or threaten them, on top of all the other things they're doing. Remember,

00:46:46.680 we just talked about this attempt in homeland security to create a department that decrees what

00:46:51.560 is truth and what is falsity, like a cartoon of what Orwell warned about. All these efforts to

00:46:57.160 combat disinformation is, I think, as someone who, for whom the cause of free speech is my highest

00:47:04.680 cause, or one of my highest causes, is something I consider uniquely threatening. And it's absolutely

00:47:11.320 being done by the Biden administration and the liberal establishment that supports him,

00:47:15.240 because they really believe that these weapons are justified. Whatever you think Trump did,

00:47:19.800 the worst things he did, I don't think are even in the same category of being as threatening to

00:47:24.680 democratic values as this. Exactly right. And that's not even to touch on the lawfare that's

00:47:31.480 being used by, for sure, the Biden administration and their allies against Trump, their chief political

00:47:37.720 rival. Stand by. Glenn stays with us. Quick break before that. I'm Megyn Kelly, host of The Megyn Kelly

00:47:44.280 Show on Sirius XM. It's your home for open, honest, and provocative conversations with the most

00:47:50.520 interesting and important political, legal, and cultural figures today. You can catch The Megyn Kelly

00:47:55.320 Show on Triumph, a Sirius XM channel featuring lots of hosts you may know and probably love. Great

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00:48:40.040 We weren't asked our opinion of the hiring, but if we were, we would have strongly objected to it.

00:48:46.920 When NBC made the decision to give her NBC News' credibility, you got to ask yourself,

00:48:52.200 what does she bring NBC News? This isn't a difference of opinion. She literally backed an

00:48:59.240 illegal scheme to steal an election in the state of Michigan. And our democracy is in danger because

00:49:05.320 of the lies that people like Ronna McDaniel have pushed on this country.

00:49:08.600 We've also said to election deniers, it's not just they can do that on our airwaves,

00:49:12.360 but that they can do that as one of us, as badge-carrying employees of NBC News,

00:49:18.520 as paid contributors to our sacred airwaves. Take a minute. Acknowledge that maybe it wasn't

00:49:25.080 the right call. It is a sign of strength, not weakness, to acknowledge when you were wrong.

00:49:30.840 Welcome back to The Megyn Kelly Show. My guest today, Glenn Greenwald, a Pulitzer Prize-winning

00:49:35.320 journalist and host of Rumble's System Update. Why did I bring that back up? Because now Ronna McDaniel

00:49:44.360 is in talks with my lawyer, the brilliant Brian Friedman, who is amazing and who you definitely

00:49:52.760 want on your side if you're in a legal scrap, to go after NBC because they booted her before even

00:50:00.520 allowing her to fulfill her contract. And according to Politico, she is exploring potential,

00:50:07.640 not just breach of contract, but defamation claims against them and hostile work environment claims,

00:50:15.160 which is interesting given that, you know, those are her colleagues who engaged in a massive pile-on

00:50:22.920 and bullying attempt to get her right out the door. And it worked. And there was a headline

00:50:28.200 on Mediaite the other day, which is a media website covering events in media, saying Ronna McDaniel

00:50:35.320 will never work in media again. Something to that effect. But she's done. Not only is she fired from

00:50:40.200 NBC, she'll never get another contributor deal because of what happened to her with those colleagues

00:50:47.080 and those clips. And the left-wing media headline is, ah, she's going to get how many if you calculate

00:50:54.280 it out by the minute. You know, she was getting $300,000 annually. And so that's $600,000 that they

00:51:00.040 owe her. She did a not 20-minute interview. So it basically is going to cost NBC more than $30,000 a

00:51:07.240 minute or $500 per second. And there's an eye roll like she doesn't deserve it. But what do you make

00:51:14.520 as a former recovering lawyer, I should say, yourself, of these potential claims by Ronna McDaniel

00:51:20.200 against NBC? I mean, the irony of this from the beginning is that Ronna McDaniel is not like Marjorie

00:51:27.080 Taylor Greene or Carrie Lake or some very fanatical Trump supporter. Trump world can't stand Ronna

00:51:36.120 McDaniel. I mean, that's a big part of why she's no longer the head of the RNC. She's like the most

00:51:41.560 tepid and cursory kind of Republican who has to sort of support Donald Trump now that he's the nominee

00:51:51.880 and was a prior president. She's as moderate and tepid in that role as it gets. Plus, she's kind of

00:51:58.360 sweet. She's not easy to hate. She's a sweet woman. She's Mitt Romney's niece. She's very well-liked

00:52:07.800 personally. No, I've never heard a bad word for her about her as a person. I've heard a bad word

00:52:13.720 about her politics from Trump supporters primarily. And the fact that they turned her into

00:52:19.880 this kind of extremist who, I mean, you just showed some of the people that NBC employs in

00:52:27.960 its sacred halls. You have like Joy Reid, who, let us remember, invented a complex, complete lie

00:52:36.480 that she turned over to the FBI claiming that there was a hacker who wrote her bigoted blog posts that

00:52:44.680 were discovered 10 years ago. No one cared that she wrote bigoted blog posts from 10 years ago.

00:52:48.460 The issue is, is that she lied and said, oh, I didn't write these. It must have. I think it was

00:52:52.440 a hacker and the FBI is investigating. It was a complete fabrication, like a crazy conspiracy

00:52:56.640 theory. They promoted her after that. They have George Bush and Dick Cheney's press secretary or

00:53:01.340 communications director, Nicole Wallace, who, you know, from a liberal perspective, said a lot of

00:53:06.100 things that would put people off limits, including defending the Iraq war and torture and Guantanamo

00:53:09.820 and all sorts of things like that. You know, you have Jen Psaki, who like five seconds ago was the

00:53:15.580 press secretary for Joe Biden, who really says and does the same exact thing now on NBC.

00:53:20.760 So to turn Ronna McDaniel into this kind of like enemy of democracy, this like extremist who's so far,

00:53:27.080 far beyond the pale of, you know, anything that any news organization could be associated with,

00:53:33.420 it definitely, you know, had a serious, uh, did serious damage to her reputation,

00:53:39.000 whether, you know, you know, as well as anyone, Megan, that when you're a public figure, which she

00:53:43.640 is defamation is very difficult because you have a lot of leeway, even to say false things about

00:53:49.660 public figures, if they're in their own love of opinion, or even if you're wrong, if you're not

00:53:53.800 intending to destroy the person. But clearly there's a lot of contractual issues. I'm sure NBC is going to

00:53:59.000 end up paying her money. But I do kind of think that what they did with her reputation, the way

00:54:03.580 they all got together and trashed it on air in front of millions of people is something that if

00:54:10.020 I were her lawyer, um, and you're right, she has one of the best. I'm sure they're exploring a lot

00:54:15.240 of theories about that as well. I would definitely be suing more for more than the 600,000. This is what

00:54:22.020 these companies do, right? I mean, trust me, NBC has a history of this, but they're not the only

00:54:28.960 ones where it's not enough to separate from you. They try to absolutely ruin you on your way out

00:54:35.500 the door. They try to make you unemployable by anyone else because they're vicious, mean

00:54:41.960 assholes. That's why. And it's a different crew running NBC than, you know, the people I knew when

00:54:48.940 I was there, but these people threw her under the bus and then repeatedly backed over her time

00:54:54.940 and time again. And to the point where I didn't know this, I learned this in the political piece,

00:55:01.480 but Kristen Welker, who is now the host of Meet the Press began her interview of Ronna McDaniel

00:55:07.020 that for that one 20 minute interview by saying, I want to make clear this was booked when you were

00:55:13.760 just the former head of the RNC. I did not know that you were going to be an NBC news contributor

00:55:18.860 and I had nothing to do with your hiring. And then of course, Chuck Todd came on and was like,

00:55:24.120 oh, you've been put in a terrible position by our bosses. They owe you an apology.

00:55:26.680 But Politico reports that actually the truth is Kristen Welker did have something to do with the

00:55:34.580 hiring of Ronna McDaniel that she had met with her privately, along with another executive,

00:55:40.360 Kerry Budoff-Brown, senior vice president of politics in mid-February, which was a few days

00:55:46.400 after Budoff-Brown initially reached out to McDaniel's team to gauge her interest in joining

00:55:50.800 as a paid contributor and that that potential role as a paid NBC news contributor with a contract

00:55:57.840 was brought up in that meeting. But now Kristen Welker, I had nothing to do with it. Oh, who?

00:56:04.660 And the head of MSNBC too. She came out, Rashida Jones. She was like, don't worry. She'll never be

00:56:10.920 on MSNBC. She played a pivotal role in getting Ronna McDaniels hired too. So the executives and the

00:56:19.020 talent are lying about their role in hiring this woman. And then as soon as she gets there in

00:56:24.780 Rashida Jones's case anyway, and in Kristen Welker's sitting across from Chuck Todd, they let the mob

00:56:30.060 kill her. I mean, emerge with her jugular all while sitting there playing holier than thou.

00:56:35.960 Yeah. I mean, look, I have two views on this. So from the perspective of what was done to Ronna

00:56:41.600 McDaniel, I mean, it is so outrageous. They didn't even give her the chance. I think what would have

00:56:47.760 happened was, and you kind of saw this in the Meet the Press interview, when she was asked about some

00:56:52.380 of the claims that liberal media personalities find offensive, like Chuck Todd and Kristen Welker,

00:56:57.700 she was kind of distancing herself from those, especially stuff about the 2020 election saying,

00:57:02.120 well, look, as a BRNC chair, there were things that I kind of had to say it was part of my job.

00:57:07.480 And now that I'm here and free from that, I'm not necessarily going to endorse all those same

00:57:11.940 claims. So they didn't even give her a chance to kind of say what it is that she thinks now that

00:57:16.000 she's in a different role, because I don't think they recognize that because Jen Psaki, as I said,

00:57:21.560 didn't do that at all. Like there's nothing that she's doing now or saying now that wouldn't fit

00:57:26.440 perfectly when she was the Biden White House spokesperson. But that's the other thing is looking at it as

00:57:31.520 kind of a citizen or as a journalist or a consumer of these news or what. Well, I'm glad that NBC did

00:57:37.860 this, because what it really showed is that not just MSNBC, but NBC is an ideological actor, that

00:57:45.740 they have an agenda to which they're captive. It's kind of like what we just were saying about Jimmy

00:57:49.980 Fallon, that these institutions that were supposed to be politically neutral and nonpartisan and

00:57:54.980 nonideological are in fact everything the opposite of what they claim to be. And the more that becomes

00:58:01.840 manifest and evident, I think the better off it is, it's going to make like half the country or more

00:58:07.600 again, realize that there's no place for their views or their beliefs or people like them at a

00:58:13.420 major network like NBC. These people have learned nothing from 16 forward. They've learned nothing.

00:58:21.280 And that brings me to another story about MSNBC. It starts at a different publication,

00:58:27.220 which is the Cleveland Plain Dealer, which had its editor, Chris Quinn, write a letter in,

00:58:34.860 you know, publish a letter in the Plain Dealer. And it reads in part as follows. And then I'm going to

00:58:40.380 give you the reaction over on MSNBC to it. This is a tough column to write because I don't want to

00:58:46.220 demean or insult those who write to me in good faith, but no matter how I present it, I will offend.

00:58:52.180 The North Star here is truth. We tell the truth, even when it offends some of the people who pay us

00:58:58.100 for information. The truth is that Donald Trump undermined faith in our elections in his false bid to

00:59:04.920 retain the presidency. You know what? Just a pause. I'll give him that. I will concede.

00:59:10.100 That point. And then he goes on to say he sparked an insurrection intended to overthrow our government

00:59:17.440 and keep himself in power. No president in our history has done worse. This is not subjective.

00:59:25.580 There are not two sides to facts. People who say the earth is flat don't get space on our platforms.

00:59:29.720 If that offends them, so be it. He brings up Hitler because, you know, that's what you do when you're

00:59:35.340 talking about Donald Trump and his rise to power and the German leaders who helped create him and

00:59:40.380 then offers this. How are those German leaders different from people in Congress saying the

00:59:50.720 election was stolen or that January 6th was not an insurrection? How are the people who stood by as

00:59:58.260 Hitler rose any different from the people who deny this was an insurrection? Our nation does seem to be

01:00:05.000 slipping down the same slide that Germany did in the 1930s, says the guy who, again, wants you to know

01:00:12.680 we are all about truth. We're going to tell you the truth no matter where it takes us because that's

01:00:20.880 our North Star. OK, so this is a guy, Cleveland Flamingo dealer. Enter Donnie Deutsch over on MSNBC

01:00:30.420 and Morning Joe. And here are his thoughts. The media, as we know it, won't exist if they don't do

01:00:37.300 this the right way. It's very, very simple. What people have to understand that if Donald Trump wins,

01:00:43.100 he's going to do an Orbán. He's going to all of a sudden call up various networks and say,

01:00:46.780 hey, if you don't take this guy off, you don't take that off, I'm not going to let your next deal

01:00:50.740 go through. That's going to happen. So if the media wants to remain free, they better get that

01:00:55.320 message, that fantastic editor from the Cleveland Plain dealer. Got it.

01:01:04.140 You know, there's so much going on here. First of all, this attempt to depict Donald Trump as the

01:01:13.460 next Hitler, I think, would be easier if it weren't for the fact that he was actually the

01:01:19.260 president of the United States for four years. And everybody remembers that he was president for

01:01:24.140 four years. And there were no death camps that were created. Dissonance or critics weren't rounded

01:01:30.820 up. Media outlets weren't shut. That is happening in places like Ukraine and a lot of other places

01:01:36.420 around the world. But it didn't happen when Donald Trump was president. So they tried this in 2016 as

01:01:42.420 well. Oh, he's like a Hitler figure. He's going to bring fascism to the United States.

01:01:46.000 It didn't work in 2016. And that was before he was president. So Americans don't rely on these

01:01:51.860 people anymore to form their views about the world. But the other part of it, Megan, is that

01:01:56.940 I think it's like I said with, you know, NBC and Rodney McDaniel, it's kind of illuminating.

01:02:01.640 This really is how they think. I think it's so important to understand this. You know,

01:02:05.660 they all read from the same script. What that guy from the Cleveland Plain dealer said is what I've

01:02:09.340 heard from, you know, you hear any CNN or MSNBC or New York Times or Washington Post op-ed,

01:02:14.240 they all say the same thing. The job of a journalist is to stand firm in defense of truth,

01:02:19.920 even if it means being on the one side of the party rather than one party rather than the other.

01:02:24.460 I think like sometimes we have to remember that if you're a journalist and you're just living in like

01:02:29.520 very ordinary times, it's kind of boring. You don't feel like you're really doing anything that

01:02:34.800 exciting. But if you actually believe that you face another Hitler, this like singular evil,

01:02:40.780 and now it's your job to stand up to Hitler and to stop Nazism, it's a very flattering thing to think

01:02:47.360 about yourself. There's a personal motive in believing this that, oh, journalists are the

01:02:52.500 only guardians left to protect us from the new Hitler. And there's a very strong psychological motive,

01:02:59.140 especially when they all listen to each other and want each other's approval and applause,

01:03:02.840 to believe this about themselves. And then they do believe this about themselves. And this is why

01:03:08.100 they are now openly partisan, because what they're saying is, yes, we do think the Democrats are

01:03:13.120 superior to the Republicans, but that's not a corruption of journalism. It's a vindication

01:03:17.440 of journalism. It's what we journalism is here to do, to tell the truth. And truth is the Democrats

01:03:22.420 and Joe Biden and lies and fascism are Donald Trump. And the more they say that, again, the more

01:03:28.480 people will see them as partisan actors and the more journalism is destroyed. And every poll shows

01:03:34.080 that these journalists are hated by the public more than like sexually transmitted diseases.

01:03:40.100 You know, there's very few people left in our society, less hated and less unpopular and distrusted

01:03:45.640 than these media figures. And they never look in the mirror and ask why. And this is the reason.

01:03:49.840 To your point of we just know better, we do. It comes full circle with that Hillary Clinton clip.

01:03:57.940 It's just they're all of the same political persuasion, ideological persuasion,

01:04:01.720 and this false belief that, you know, truth is their North Star. Okay. Sure. Sure, Jan. Oh,

01:04:08.280 I haven't used that in a while. Here we go. Sure, Jan.

01:04:10.260 That's very millennial of you, Megan. That's a very millennial meme.

01:04:17.760 But it's also Gen X because that was our show. Hello. I grew up in the 1970s watching that.

01:04:21.540 That's true. The Brady Bunchy was ours. That is true.

01:04:23.960 Right. At my Nana's, at the boatyard with my TV dinner. Those were the days. Salisbury steak with

01:04:31.360 a little apple pie on the side. Delicious. Somehow we lived. On the subject of media, I would be remiss if I

01:04:38.740 did not point out my beautiful friend, Sage Steele, who's got a new podcast out. She's working for

01:04:45.240 Bill Maher, who's building, you know, a podcast network of his own. And she's making the rounds

01:04:51.380 to promote it and so on. And she'll be here soon. And she offered this in an interview with Fox about

01:04:57.460 her time at ESPN, about when she went in to interview Joe Biden, the president. Watch.

01:05:04.180 Got it for a wonderful day in sports. Opening day for America's national pastimes.

01:05:10.680 This was about two months after he took office. That was an interesting experience in its own right,

01:05:16.420 because it was so structured. And I was told, you will say every word that we write out. You will not

01:05:24.040 deviate from the script and go. To the word, like every single question was scripted, gone over

01:05:33.180 dozens of times by many executives, editors and executives. Absolutely. I was on script and was

01:05:41.000 told not to deviate. It was very much, this is what you will ask. This is how you will say it.

01:05:44.980 No follow ups. No follow ups. Next. Can you imagine telling your journalist there will be no

01:05:53.340 follow ups in your interview with the president of the United States, not to mention the scripting

01:06:00.060 of her questions by executives? That's an outrage. Yeah, I mean, there was, you know, Jon Stewart,

01:06:08.480 I don't know if you saw interviewed on his new or his old but new comedy show, The Daily Show,

01:06:16.160 the head of the FTC, Lena Kahn, who, whatever you think of her, has become an enemy of corporate

01:06:19.900 America. And he said when he was at Apple, when he had a show on Apple, he was barred from interviewing

01:06:24.880 her by Apple executives or even examining a lot of the issues raised by antitrust issues, because

01:06:30.900 obviously that contravenes Apple's corporate interests. Here, though, this is a news agency

01:06:37.480 that is protecting the most powerful political official in the United States from any difficult

01:06:43.000 questions. And I do think sometimes people get convinced that maybe it's like a conspiracy

01:06:48.160 theory that corporations control their journalists in that way. Obviously, a lot of people work for

01:06:52.940 media corporations are never told quite that explicitly. You can't say this or you can say

01:06:56.920 this. A lot of people wouldn't accept it. But again, when it comes to Joe Biden and Democrats,

01:07:02.780 they really see their mission as promoting the Democratic Party and not questioning him. And

01:07:08.460 honestly, it's shocking, but not surprising. To be told that you can't ask any follow ups of the

01:07:15.980 president of the United States. I mean, it does remind me a little bit of what happened to Dasha

01:07:20.420 Burns, the NBC reporter after she had her interview with John Fetterman. And she had the moment where

01:07:25.040 she said when we talked, he was he had difficulty understanding me in a small talk and he was very

01:07:29.780 reliant on the computer. And then the left, including the press, rained down on her as if

01:07:35.120 she had committed some cardinal sin. You're right. You don't deviate from the script. And the script is

01:07:41.060 support Democrats. The only ones we make look bad are the Republicans. Kara Swisher went off on her.

01:07:48.060 Many people went off on her. It's they get the message. And, you know, in both of those cases,

01:07:52.660 it's a young female reporter in Sage's case with a family to support. She's a single mom. You know,

01:07:58.860 it's it's not easy. It's it's easy in theory to say, I'm not doing that. Right. If you have power

01:08:03.720 at your organization and you're willing to walk and you know you have other options,

01:08:07.060 that's not always the case. Right. Most people actually need their paycheck. And while they'd

01:08:11.900 love to die on principle, they really can't because it's like their kids are going to starve. So

01:08:16.380 I feel for young journalists put in this position because it's it's hard. Those are hard battles to

01:08:21.920 fight. Yeah. You know, one of the points I made when I said about Jon Stewart, when I heard him say

01:08:27.260 that, you know, my that was exactly my point. Like if Jon Stewart, who obviously can walk away

01:08:32.560 from a contract, he doesn't need the money. He's a very wealthy person from the work that he's done

01:08:37.480 previously. If Jon Stewart isn't willing to tell Apple, I'm not going to live under these constraints.

01:08:42.180 I'm going to break my contract and walk away. Who is supposed to do that? And I think one of the

01:08:46.480 things that struck me, Megan, was when I was doing a lot of questioning and a lot of skeptics,

01:08:53.040 explaining a lot of skepticism to a lot of these Russiagate claims, I really was getting messages

01:08:57.320 a lot from younger journalists, like mid-level journalists who worked inside major news

01:09:03.100 organizations who were saying to me, oh, I'm really appreciative of what you were of what

01:09:07.740 you're doing. And the subtext of it obviously was, I wish I could, but I can't. And I understood

01:09:12.880 why they can't, because if they did, if they stuck their head ups and went even a little bit

01:09:17.880 off script and said, wait a minute, some of this Russiagate stuff seems excessive or without

01:09:21.140 evidence, they'd be the first one put on the list to get fired or laid off. They'd be the

01:09:25.760 last one to get hired. They would be viciously mauled by all their colleagues on Twitter.

01:09:31.720 Their reputation would be destroyed. And I think people like you and I who have developed a big

01:09:35.580 audience, who have an independence, who have a kind of freedom, I think it is important to

01:09:39.760 realize that that's not the case for most journalists. And while you wish journalists would

01:09:43.900 say, oh, F you, a lot of people can't do that. They need their paycheck. They need their job.

01:09:47.700 And these kinds of constraints of the kind she just described are very effective because

01:09:52.380 not everybody can just throw their jobs away the first second that there's something happening that

01:09:58.360 is a violation of their integrity. And that's the case for most journalists. And that's why it's so

01:10:03.200 powerful as a conformity weapon. And nothing is worse for journalism than conformity.

01:10:09.420 It does make you wonder, I don't have proof of this, but what happened, for example,

01:10:13.580 with Catherine Herridge, who recently got pushed out of CBS, who was reporting on intelligence

01:10:19.340 circles, as she has for her whole career, has very good sources, and was doing more heterodox work

01:10:26.980 over there that didn't always toe the party line, and then suddenly was one of the first to go when

01:10:32.500 they did a round of layoffs. And it's like, well, why would you get rid of one of the few people

01:10:37.900 here who actually makes and gathers news? Why wouldn't you get rid of one of these other

01:10:43.740 many bodies here? And that hasn't been fully explained or explored. I'm sure there is some

01:10:50.420 sort of a legal battle going on right now, given them trying to hold onto her papers and so on and

01:10:54.420 so forth. But yeah, because what happens is it would be rare that they would just turn around if

01:10:59.340 Sage Steele asked a follow up question and fired her. They're not that dumb. They understand that would

01:11:05.360 turn into a national news store. She'd go public with it. She'd tell people. Same thing with

01:11:09.460 Herridge. So they wait, like snakes in the grass. And when you're looking the other way, when enough

01:11:15.280 time has passed, that's when they get you. And then they have plausible deniability. It had nothing to

01:11:20.560 do with her going off script. It was just layoffs. It's just a tough, tough time economically. And it's

01:11:26.000 gross. It's how media works. But it also sends the message to other reporters what's expected.

01:11:32.320 Exactly. Glenn, it's wonderful to be free.

01:11:34.040 It sends the message.

01:11:35.360 Yes, it is wonderful to be free. And I think being free makes you realize how

01:11:38.800 excessive these constraints are. And a lot of times you don't even realize until you're free,

01:11:44.800 how many that you have. I think sometimes you kind of justify them away. But that's why

01:11:49.640 independent media is so important because they don't have those constraints. And that's what

01:11:53.360 makes it so liberating.

01:11:55.280 Yes. All right. If you want to know more about what exactly was wrong with that 60 minutes piece,

01:11:59.740 you've got to go to just Google Glenn Greenwald Rumble. And it's right there at the top of his

01:12:04.760 beat. And you can watch this whole episode because he does a great job of going through

01:12:07.560 it point by point. I loved it. And I hope and I believe that we will see you again soon.

01:12:13.880 Absolutely, Megan. Always great to talk to you.

01:12:16.120 Likewise.

01:12:16.360 Thanks for listening to The Megan Kelly Show. No BS, no agenda, and no fear.

The Megyn Kelly Show - April 03, 2024

60 Minutes' Shoddy ＂Havana Syndrome＂ Report, and Hillary Attacking Undecided Voters, with Glenn Greenwald ｜ Ep. 756

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