Just a few short months after saying he did not think the COVID vaccine should be mandatory, President Joe Biden is now forcing mass vaccinations for millions of Americans in order to keep their jobs and including strict new measures on private businesses. Is this kind of scary?
00:03:18.940Sorry to break it to you, King Joe, but you don't have the power to get governors out of the way.
00:03:25.560And so there's already a battle unfolding like that between DeSantis down in Florida and between President Biden.
00:03:33.360And he is trying to get Governor DeSantis out of the way because he's trying to allow vaccine mandates at the school district level that DeSantis is trying to stop.
00:03:41.460DeSantis said, I'm going to defund the school board members who, you know, issue vaccine mandates that I've said are unlawful.
00:03:48.680And Biden's saying, well, I'm going to refund.
00:03:51.040I'm going to give that money back to those school boards.
00:05:24.320Number two, if the federal government can do it, can they issue such a broad mandate?
00:05:30.520Can they make people take a vaccine as a condition to work in?
00:05:33.860And third, if the federal government can do it, and this is the most important one, is it in the hands of the president, the executive branch, as distinguished from the legislative branch?
00:05:43.620In my new book, the case for vaccine mandates, I argue, yes, the federal government can do it because it crosses state borders.
00:05:50.960But no, probably the president cannot do it, except in the event of a dire emergency.
00:05:58.000Now, this is a problem that's lasted for a long time.
00:06:00.800There's a 75-day window of opportunity.
00:06:03.020So it's going to be hard to justify it as an emergency.
00:06:06.400This should have been left to the legislature.
00:06:09.380Congress should pass this mandate, not the president.
00:06:12.520But the president has been expanding powers.
00:23:29.180We're going to be taking calls in about an hour.
00:23:31.080Just want to let you know that's when we're going to be taking them.
00:23:32.680But we'd love for you to line up and call us and we'll chat next time.
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00:23:54.420Manulife wants you to see healthy living differently so you can live a longer, healthier life.
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00:24:05.220Welcome back, everyone, to The Megyn Kelly Show.
00:24:12.980Joining me now is Deborah Burlingame, one of the activists who's dedicated the last 20 years to keeping the memories of those lost on 9-11 alive.
00:24:21.720Her brother, Captain Charles Burlingame, Chick as he was known, was pilot of Flight 77, which crashed into the Pentagon building.
00:24:30.000As we approach the 20th anniversary of the deadly attacks tomorrow, we are faced with new dangers now.
00:24:35.220From Afghanistan after the country fell to the Taliban and we walked away.
00:24:41.180This is the Department of Homeland Security has issued a nationwide heightened threat environment for the coming days.
00:24:47.800Deborah has a lot to say about the recent events unfolding in the Middle East and what could potentially, what it all could mean for our country.
00:24:55.280Deb, thank you so much for being with us on this of all days.
00:24:58.480I've been thinking about you nonstop in the past few weeks.
00:25:02.240I've been thinking about our men and women in uniform, and I've been thinking about you, people who lost folks on 9-11 for whom the events in Afghanistan had to be particularly painful.
00:25:13.660How are you feeling today, one day before the actual 20-year mark?
00:25:17.100You know, I've been very busy since the Afghanistan blew up.
00:25:22.200And I haven't had time to really think about tomorrow.
00:29:01.540He died two weeks on his first deployment, hit by an IED.
00:29:06.980I mean, these brave hearts, these are the people I think about.
00:29:11.500And, of course, I've met a lot of the wounded warriors and done events with them.
00:29:16.040And, you know, they've really struggled.
00:29:18.060They've really, really had a rough time.
00:29:19.940Not only losing parts of their bodies and traumatic brain injury, but the PTSD.
00:29:27.160Those are the ones I immediately thought of when I saw these people clinging to the airplanes and the people left behind.
00:29:34.440Because I knew that the suicide lines were going to be hotlines were going to be rigging off the hook.
00:29:39.480And I'm sure that this is harder on them than anybody, these vets, these combat vets.
00:29:44.500You've been such an outspoken advocate in the war on terror for measures to keep us safe, for people to be honest about who attacked us and why and not try to sugarcoat anything, not try to demonize whole swaths of people, but to be honest about what we were up against that day and thereafter.
00:30:03.020And I wonder if you think now, in the wake of what happened in Afghanistan, we're less safe.
00:30:11.360I mean, how safe are we today on this 20-year mark versus on September 10th, 2001?
00:30:18.280We're in much, we're in much graver danger, Megan.
00:30:21.860Much more, much more danger now because we now have the Taliban.
00:30:28.300Remember, the Taliban is a terrorist organization.
00:30:52.100They were taught to kill the pilots, but they used short knives and they practiced on sheep and camel.
00:31:00.900And that was all provided to them and made safe for them by the Taliban.
00:31:04.320I actually, you know, when the whole issue of this war paradigm versus legal paradigm was being argued,
00:31:12.600and I was arguing for the war paradigm for prosecuting these people in war crimes, not in federal courts like bank robbers.
00:31:20.540I wanted to know who these people are because are the, what I call the, what they call themselves the Gitmo Bar,
00:31:28.180the pro bono lawyers from some of the biggest white shoe firms in all of America.
00:31:31.800We're defending them and saying, well, these are just goat herders and, you know, innocent people who got caught up in, you know, in the fog of war.
00:31:39.220No, I read their combat status reviews.
00:31:45.420They came from all over the Arab world, all over the Muslim world, because to die in defense of the fifth pillar of Islam, which is the defense of religion, you know, spreading the ummah,
00:31:56.840is to die as a shaheed, a holy warrior, is, it is the highest thing you can happen to you, you can do in life.
00:32:05.040And so, yes, some of them came from Kuwait, from Saudi Arabia, from little countries I'd never heard of, and some of them were educated.
00:33:19.380So, and it's important to note that five hours or five and a half hours after he said those words at the Pentagon, our embassy in Cairo was attacked.
00:33:28.740The American flag was taken down from this giant embassy.
00:33:32.160The black flag of ISIS was hoisted up.
00:33:35.120It stayed there for three days because Morsi, the president of Egypt, had been installed in the Arab Spring, a Muslim Brotherhood figure, a member.
00:33:53.940That's their answer to these declarations by American presidents who don't know who these people really are.
00:34:03.240They think it's not just a fight over territory.
00:34:05.500It's a fight over for them, for their divinely inspired mission.
00:34:09.900Well, that's, I mean, to me, it's crazy when you listen to the chairman of the Joint Chiefs say, yeah, we're likely to see attacks on America between 12 and 13 months from now launched from Al Qaeda in Afghanistan.
00:34:23.880OK, we fought a whole war to try to stop that from happening again.
00:34:30.840Our secretary of defense saying the same thing and saying, oh, don't don't worry, because we're going to keep eyes on them from other countries in the region.
00:34:38.360You know, we're going to be able to sort of keep eyes on them.
00:35:31.400And you have this administration now talking, already talking.
00:35:35.140I'm telling you, it's really hard to take it all in.
00:35:39.860They're talking about all the humanitarian aid they plan to give the new emirate of Afghanistan, Islamic emirate of Afghanistan, to help the poor people who are being brutalized and starved by this new government.
00:35:56.200That we helped install our former enemies, I say our current enemies.
00:36:01.840We're now going to go and mitigate the crap they do to these poor Afghan people by sending them aid, which will never, of course, get to them.
00:36:11.260And it will be millions, if not billions of dollars.
00:36:16.300And yes, we're more in danger because we don't have the territory.
00:36:19.860We don't have the eyes from the sky because, you know, they say over the horizon.
00:36:23.580And well, as somebody, one of these security experts who does the geospatial stuff said, no, it's really more over the horizon, over the horizon.
00:36:34.800To pretend that it's anywhere near as good as us having boots on the ground there and actual intel on the ground is, of course, a fallacy.
00:36:42.720The other thing I wanted to ask you about is this, you know, I see it all the time.
00:36:48.600I'm sure you see it more than I do, that people are losing sight of what happened to us that day, how severe it was and who did it.
00:36:57.720And as I saw that story I mentioned in the intro about the Virginia Department of Education releasing some two hour video telling students we will not be getting into American exceptionalism as we approach this 9-11 moment, as we I don't want to call it an anniversary.
00:37:13.600You know, it seems like celebratory in some weird way.
00:37:15.920But as we approach the 20 year mark, there will not be discussion here of American exceptionalism, that our teachers need to be culturally responsive and inclusive in discussing 9-11, teach students about it in a way that does not cause harm.
00:37:29.920And they mean toward anybody of the Muslim faith and that that basically it would be highly inappropriate to talk about extremists being behind the 9-11 attack, that you should not have to identify them as Muslim extremists or call them out as terrorists at all.
00:37:45.880So this video, they put it out. It's now been taken down.
00:37:49.760But the woman behind it, Amara DeCure, is one of the featured speakers and stands by this position that that we shouldn't be talking about Muslim extremism on 9-11 and certainly not American exceptionalism.
00:38:02.300Well, I my response to that is a simple one.
00:38:07.660You must not really care too much about Muslims themselves because they are the number one target of this.
00:40:20.620And I just I've been dying to ask you about your your piece in The Wall Street Journal on people who keep comparing 9-11 to January 6th, who actually say January 6th was worse than 9-11.
00:40:34.720And we've played the soundbite before they I mean, Matthew Dowd, George Will, I could go on on those who have made this, I think, disgusting comparison.
00:40:47.340It's almost hard to it's flabbergasting to me.
00:40:51.040They I think they're there, but they hang it on their hook is that January 6th was it was a threat to democracy.
00:40:59.100Well, that's, I think, intellectually kind of shifty and thin, because you could I think you could argue that virtually everything Congress is doing right now is a threat to democracy when they're trying to, you know, basically create one party rule in perpetuity.
00:41:38.380Most of the charges I've looked at them, I've read some of the charge sheets, they're for very low level felonies.
00:41:47.100And what they're trying to do is leverage these people to plead out because honest to God, Megan, if they had lawyers and they took these to court and it would be a big burden on the courts because there's, I think, 50 people or more who've been charged.
00:42:02.960Like, I think they'd all get acquitted because there's no intent in any of these things.
00:42:11.480You have to, it's a, you know, it's part of almost every felony.
00:42:16.760You have to be, you have to intend to do it.
00:42:19.260And in too many of these cases, they were invited in and there's video of them standing there with security guards telling their people, okay, no, don't touch anything.
00:42:32.740I'm talking some of the defendants, okay?
00:42:36.620And so I think, I think Christopher Ray, they got this, they created this thing, shock and awe, where they went out and arrested people in mass in real scary ways.
00:43:32.260Coming up, the CEO of the incredible Tunnel to Towers Foundation, Frank Siller, and a story of what his brother did on 9-11 that will touch your heart.
00:44:06.600I want to bring in, as we wait to talk to you guys, the story.
00:44:11.100I want to bring in Frank Siller and the story of his brother.
00:44:15.120Frank and I have known each other for a long time now.
00:44:17.080He runs an amazing, amazing organization called Tunnel to Towers.
00:44:21.660And there's a very good reason that they called it that in honor of his brother, firefighter Stephen Siller.
00:44:28.020For those of you who are too young, because there really are people like that, you know, it's hard to believe to remember this fateful day.
00:44:34.240You know that it remains the deadliest terrorist act in world history.
00:44:50.520That's the one that Deb Burlingame's brother was flying, where he was killed and the terrorists took over.
00:44:56.180The fourth plane crashed into a field in Shanksville, Pennsylvania, after it had been taken over by the passengers who refused to let the terrorists crash it, as we believe, into the U.S. Capitol.
00:45:06.900We believe that they saved countless lives for doing that.
00:45:15.900New York City lost 441 first responders.
00:45:20.160An estimated 200 people jumped or fell off of the Twin Towers as they faced the horrific choice of either being burned alive or jumping to their death.
00:45:31.520In the weeks after, Ground Zero was a disaster area, and firefighters and other first responders continued to dig through the remains, trying to find any survivors initially, and then just the remains of loved ones for those waiting for some sort of a word and some sort of a piece of their loved ones.
00:45:48.640More than 2,700 people have died from cancer after having sifted through that rubble.
00:45:53.260Many other illnesses caused as well by the exposure to what remained of the Twin Towers there.
00:45:59.480Cancers have been reported nearly 13,000 of those who helped.
00:46:04.420Nearly 80,000 responders have enrolled in the health program that came out of that effort.
00:46:11.400Think of that, just the massive amount of damage done.
00:46:13.640We're not even talking about the loss of life in Afghanistan and then Iraq and so on.
00:46:19.420It just unleashed such hell on our nation, and it should never be compared to anything because it's singular in its horror.
00:46:28.980The people who make us think about 9-11 and feel something other than horror, make us feel proud, make us feel grateful to be Americans, are people like Stephen Siller.
00:47:03.760My brother was a New York City firefighter who on September 11, 2001, he just finished his night tour in Squad 1 in Brooklyn.
00:47:11.800As a matter of fact, I was just there a few, less than an hour ago, and he was on his way home to play golf with myself, my brother George, my brother Russ, and he heard on his radio scanner that the towers were hit.
00:47:25.740So he turned his truck around, called his wife up, Sally, and said, hey, tell my brothers I'll try to catch up with them later.
00:47:32.360Went to his firehouse, got his gear, and drove to the mouth of the Brooklyn Battery Tunnel.
00:47:36.500Now, for those who might not know, that tunnel connects Brooklyn with downtown Manhattan.
00:47:43.160It was closed for security reasons because cars were abandoned, and they didn't want anyone coming into New York other than first responders, but they couldn't get the fire trucks through anymore because everything was abandoned.
00:47:54.820So he strapped 60 pounds of gear on his back and ran through that tunnel, came out the other side.
00:48:00.360And, you know, I was just listening to your previous segment and your introduction here when you were saying that people were faced with a horrific decision.
00:48:13.040So my brother came out of that tunnel, and he saw two buildings, the Twin Towers, inflamed, and people that were faced with a decision to jump or burn, people above the fire line.
00:48:24.720And that's what has to be told, that story.
00:48:27.360But my brother ran into what we believe is the South Tower.
00:48:31.120He was never recovered, but his other Squad 1 buddies all died in the South Tower, so that's where we believe he was.
00:48:38.380You would want to fight this fire with the people you train with every single day.
00:48:43.360And he gave up his life, and he so inspired his older siblings, and Stephen was the youngest of seven, that we started a foundation called the Tunnel to Towers Foundation.
00:48:53.960In his honor and the honor of all those who perished that day, but most certainly our first responders.
00:48:59.800It's so moving to think about this 34-year-old guy, father of five kids.
00:49:15.580I mean, honestly, there are some people in the world who would have said, my shift is over.
00:49:20.020And when faced with not being able to get through the tunnel, strapping the 60 pounds of gear on his back and running for it, running for it, saying, no, no, I will be the one who gets there.
00:49:31.000I will be the one who runs into the burning building.
00:49:33.280And the stories are that the firefighters, the first responders, a lot of them hugged one another before they went into those buildings, and they knew very well that they could be climbing those stairs to their death.
00:49:44.000But they did it by the hundreds, Frank, by the hundreds, to try to save others.
00:49:47.900Well, it's very emotional even just hearing you say that because we filmed about 75 different stories this year, Megan, of the stories of the 9-11.
00:50:00.560And to almost every one of them, these firefighters did hug each other and said, hey, bro, I don't know if I'm going to see you after today.
00:50:08.800So they knew the possibility that they weren't coming out was very high, and yet they still went in there.
00:50:15.360I mean, if that's not a hero, we don't have any in this world.
00:50:19.500And thank God we do have them here in America, and we better always take care of these heroes when they do things like this.
00:50:26.040So my brother Stephen, I couldn't be more proud of him and what he did.
00:50:30.360And that's why our foundation, it's a very simple mission.
00:50:35.040We want to first make sure we never forget, and we want to honor the sacrifice, and then we honor the sacrifice by doing good.
00:50:42.400And Megan, we're doing good for these great American families that pay the ultimate sacrifice for our freedom, whether they serve for our country or for our community, and they leave young families behind.
00:50:51.920And you've been a part of it for a long time.
00:50:54.680I'm very proud to be a part of it and associated with you guys.
00:50:58.660It must be said, police, too, on that day ran into the buildings.
00:51:02.860And, you know, that's one of the hard things about seeing them demonized as a group.
00:51:06.660It's like the cops I remember are the ones who ran into those burning buildings alongside Stephen.
00:51:12.140You know, they're not all good, but they're not all bad either.
00:51:15.120It's one of the terrible things that's happened in our current society is there's these swaths of people demonized.
00:51:23.360But can you tell me, because if you do the Tunnel to Towers run, because they do it every year, Frank's organization, you can go and you can actually do the run that Stephen Siller did.
00:51:31.840But you see Iraq and Afghanistan vets, guys who have no legs doing this run.
00:51:39.800And I'm telling you, you want to feel something about your country.
00:51:42.760Some you want to feel proud of your country.
00:51:44.480And then you go there and you see these guys.
00:51:46.500They it takes everything they've got inside of them.
00:52:12.180But what we're really there for is to support severely injured veterans and other people in law enforcement who have lost their primary wage and are in the line of service and so on.
00:52:33.500These great heroes that gave their bodies for our country.
00:52:38.160Megan, we have hundreds and hundreds of gold star families that come out and run the race in honor of their loved one that gave gave their life.
00:52:47.640We have we have a you know, we lost 13 service members recently in Iraq, 13 that we shouldn't have.
00:53:08.520We know that the widow of United States Marine Corps, Lance Corporal Riley McCollum, his wife, Jenna, is going to be giving birth in a couple of days.
00:53:20.720I'm going to talk to her tomorrow on 9-11 and I'm going to tell her and she knows already, but I'm going to speak to her that we're going to deliver her a mortgage free home.
00:53:29.580And I don't know if she has a home yet.
00:53:30.920If she doesn't, we're going to build a one.
00:54:04.720Instead of spitting on the ground, some Americans do when they see them, they should kiss the ground to go on because without them, we have no society.
00:54:31.180It's very dangerous what these guys do.
00:54:33.340And, you know, obviously we saw it on 9-11 and in some of the incidents I mentioned thereafter, you know, those guys who work tirelessly at Ground Zero.
00:54:40.300My close friend Janice Dean, her husband was one of them.
00:54:44.440But they have to live with the fear that, you know, anytime he gets a cough, it's related to what happened at Ground Zero.
00:54:51.160And families like yours are still dealing with the fallout from the loss.
00:54:55.100Frank, I saw a story this week about the New York City Medical Examiner's Office still, after all this time, sifting through the remains to try to find any way to ID some of those remains to the names,
00:55:10.880some 1,100 names that have still not, there's been no actual proof of death.
00:55:15.640I mean, we know they died in 9-11, but, and they found, they find tiny bone fragments and they are able to test them against DNA provided by the families.
00:55:24.380And they are still maybe one a year now able to say, okay, we found the remains of your loved one.
00:55:47.080I mean, don't get me wrong, but I don't need that to move on and be happy in life.
00:55:52.500Be quite frank with you, his burial ground is at Ground Zero.
00:55:55.920That's where it would have been for me, no matter what, that's where Stephen's soul is, and his spirit is with many people, certainly with his family, but that's where Stephen's burial ground is.
00:56:09.480If other families do, I don't, you know, I understand.
00:56:13.180I don't ever speak for anybody else, but I certainly don't need, I don't need that.
00:56:17.660But look, we're blessed as a family that we took on, right after Stephen died, we made a conscious decision that all we wanted to do was take that evil and to make some good out of it.
00:56:30.840And that's what we do at the Tunnel to Towers Foundation.
00:56:33.440And I've been on a journey this last six weeks, to be quite frank with you.
00:56:40.580I started walking on August 1st from the Pentagon.
00:56:44.420I've walked to Shanksville, Pennsylvania, and tomorrow morning I'll be walking, retracing my brother's final heroic footsteps when he ran through that tunnel.
00:56:53.940I'll be doing it when the sun is coming up tomorrow morning.
00:56:57.880And I couldn't be more proud of what my brother did 20 years ago, and I just wanted to do something to honor him.
00:57:15.360I just had a late brunch with them, with some guys that work with my brother, other new guys that, you know, they're in the firehouse, because he was pretty close to the Brooklyn Battery Tunnel.
00:57:26.560And I was just eating with them, and we're laughing.
00:57:28.760And I'll be honest with you, I was crying too, because I was by his locker.
00:57:32.380And I was with my son, and to be with the people that knew him and loved him means all the world to me.
00:57:42.220So you never get over something like this, Megan.
00:57:44.840You never get over something like this, but you learn to live with it.
00:57:57.960So you tell me, because I was reading, and my team prepares, you know, research packets for me, some data about the reception you've been getting in Pennsylvania and elsewhere along this route you're traveling.
00:59:32.780But they wanted to honor and do something also because they lost so many great friends that day.
00:59:36.920But anyway, I was at Shanksville Fire Department on August 21st.
00:59:41.200And all my buddies, about 70, 75 firefighters, New York City firefighters, cooked breakfast for them.
00:59:47.860And then we all walked up, hundreds and hundreds of us walked up to the site of Flight 93 that came down in the fields of Shanksville, Pennsylvania.
00:59:57.720And I had the privilege to go right to the impact zone, right, where Flight 93 came down.
01:00:03.720And you just hit a nail on the head earlier when you said, these are the 40 Americans that won the first battle of the war against terrorism.
01:00:10.500When they took that plane back and they saved American lives on the ground and they brought it down.
01:00:14.780And I was at that impact zone and I was with these New York City firefighters and I knelt down right at the boulder and I put my hand on the boulder and I said to them, anybody want to join me in a prayer?
01:00:25.600They all came, they knelt down, we put our hands on the boulder and I started to say the Lord's Prayer and the emotions were gushing out of us like I can't even explain to you.
01:00:36.480Because I know they're thinking of their firefighter brothers that they lost that day.
01:00:41.120I know they're thinking of all those who perished.
01:00:43.860I'm thinking of my brother, of course, and I'm thinking of these 40 great heroes.
01:00:47.260I'm thinking of what happened to Pentagon and it all just came out of us in that moment.
01:00:52.520And it's a moment I'll never forget the rest of my life.
01:00:55.680And I know that will be a moment that I will have tomorrow morning when I walk up to ground zero,
01:01:00.420when I go to 10 house, a firehouse where my brother actually worked a part of his career for the FDNY and his name is on that wall there with 343 other firefighters.
01:01:11.360And and I and I say my prayer there with my family, with my kids, with my grandkids, with my brothers, with my sisters and others, nephews and nieces.
01:01:28.080And also, Frank remembers the courage, remembers the courage that happened on that day, not just the cowardice of the terrorists and and the awful behavior,
01:01:36.120but the courage of guys like Todd Beamer and the others on board that flight.
01:02:10.380But listen, Megan, I got to say once again, everybody that you personally have helped build many of the first specially adapted smart homes that we built for our country's most catastrophically injured service members.
01:03:28.080Coming up next, military veteran and U.S. Congressman Dan Crenshaw will be here with his thoughts on where we are now, 20 years later.
01:03:35.960And after, Dan, we're going to be taking your calls.
01:03:39.200Let us know what you think about Afghanistan, about the COVID orders that we got from King Joe at the top of the hour we talked about, or about what you're thinking about this 20 years after 9-11.
01:03:57.240Welcome back, everyone, to The Megyn Kelly Show.
01:04:02.500We're taking your calls now at 833-44-MEGYN.
01:04:06.620That's 833-446-3496 if you have thoughts on Biden's COVID announcements or on 9-11 and whether we are safer now than we were on September 10, 2001.
01:04:20.700Joining me now with his thoughts this morning is Congressman Dan Crenshaw.
01:04:24.020Congressman, thank you so much for being here.
01:04:25.740And on this day of all days, I have to thank you for your service as we kick it off.
01:04:30.940Before we get to Afghanistan and 9-11, can we talk about last night?
01:04:34.400Because it was an extraordinary moment to listen to the President of the United States issue edicts as though he were king about 80 million Americans having to get a needle in the arm or be fired.