The Megyn Kelly Show - Alex Murdaugh Takes the Stand and MSNBC’s ‘Non-Apology’ to DeSantis, with Ben Shapiro, Ronnie Ritcher, and Peter Tragos

00:00:00.600 Welcome to The Megyn Kelly Show, your home for open, honest, and provocative conversations.

00:00:11.680 Hey everyone, I'm Megyn Kelly. Welcome to The Megyn Kelly Show, live from the New York offices of Sirius XM, broadcasting live on Sirius XM Triumph Channel, 111, just in case you never listen to us live, which you should do because that's the most exciting way to consume the show.

00:00:25.180 We have a jam-packed show for you today and a great lineup for you. Just a short time ago in South Carolina, unbelievable news, as Alex Murdoch himself, on trial for the double murder of his wife and son, stunned the court and the nation and opted to take the stand.

00:00:41.400 In his double murder trial, this is like O.J. Simpson taking the stand. I mean, it's that big. He flat out denied that he shot his wife and son. Listen to this.

00:00:50.180 On June 7th, 2021, did you take this gun or any gun like it and shoot your son, Paul, in the chest in the feed room at your property off Moselle Road?

00:01:03.320 No, I did not.

00:01:05.040 Mr. Murdoch, did you take this gun or any gun like it and blow your son's brains out on June 7th or any day or any time?

00:01:16.000 No, I did not.

00:01:17.340 No.

00:01:20.180 Mr. Murdoch, did you take a 300 blackout such as this and fire it into your wife Maggie's leg, torso, or any part of her body?

00:01:35.840 No, I did not.

00:01:37.740 Did you shoot a 300 blackout into her head, causing her death?

00:01:43.600 Mr. Griffin, I didn't shoot my wife or my son any time, ever.

00:01:51.660 Oh, but he was slick. He was slick. It's shocking to me that they put him on the stand, but I understand why.

00:01:58.880 We'll get into it in our second hour. We're going to keep close tabs on this trial. We have a stellar Kelly's court coming up for you.

00:02:04.280 We were prepared for the moment. We didn't really think it would happen, but then it did. So thankfully, we're ready.

00:02:08.080 First, though, let's get right to one of my favorite guests ever, whether it was my time at Fox, my time on this show, or listening to him every day on the one and only Ben Shapiro Show.

00:02:19.320 He is Ben Shapiro. He's the editor emeritus of The Daily Wire and host of The Ben Shapiro Show, the greatest podcast in America.

00:02:26.720 And it's a pleasure to have you here. How are you doing?

00:02:28.320 It's great to be here. Good to see you.

00:02:29.540 Oh, it's great to have you in person, no less.

00:02:31.480 It never happens.

00:02:32.280 No, we never get to do this.

00:02:33.400 I mean, I hate coming to New York, I'll be honest with you.

00:02:34.980 I know. Why are you here?

00:02:37.540 I don't know. To see you. I mean, really, to see you.

00:02:41.860 Put you on a plane and you just do what they tell you to do.

00:02:43.620 That's pretty much correct.

00:02:44.400 Okay, yeah. Well, we have a couple of dates going on today, but we'll hold that in abeyance until later.

00:02:48.340 All right, so this is where we have to start, even though there's so many fun stories to discuss today.

00:02:51.460 So many fun stories.

00:02:52.240 The lunatic grand jury foreperson, forgive me, she's not a lunatic, but she's a very strange young woman who, in breaking the protocol of virtually every grand jury ever, has decided to go on a press tour.

00:03:07.840 Just so the audience understands what we're talking about, this is the grand jury looking into whether Trump broke any laws or his compadres and colleagues broke any laws in trying to get the Georgia election results overturned.

00:03:19.060 They impaneled a grand jury. They've been at it for the better part of a year.

00:03:22.880 And now we find out the other day through the grand jury report, which doesn't actually indict anybody.

00:03:27.220 It just makes recommendations to the DA that they want indictments.

00:03:30.960 They do believe that several people should be indicted, but we don't know who.

00:03:34.700 Okay, so that was news.

00:03:35.840 It wasn't particularly shocking, given the politics down there.

00:03:38.500 But, okay, that's where we stood until Emily Kors, K-O-H-R-S, decides to make herself a star.

00:03:46.580 And she is doing interview after interview.

00:03:50.880 Here is just a little flavor of how Emily sounds.

00:03:55.020 This is Sot One with NBC.

00:03:58.400 Did the grand jury recommend indictments of multiple people?

00:04:08.500 Yes. I will tell you, it's not a short list.

00:04:13.900 I mean, we saw 75 people, and there are six pages of the report cut out.

00:04:20.120 So we're talking about more than a dozen people?

00:04:23.700 I would say that, yes.

00:04:25.860 Are these recognizable names, names that people would know?

00:04:29.840 There are certainly names that you would recognize, yes.

00:04:33.400 There definitely are some names that you expect.

00:04:36.440 She goes on to say she's going to be disappointed if the DA decides not to do anything.

00:04:41.760 And talks about how exciting it was to swear in Rudy Giuliani.

00:04:46.060 And how it would be so amazing if she could get access to President Trump.

00:04:49.560 Because that's the moment she really wanted, but he didn't wind up testifying.

00:04:52.280 Ben, what do you make of this?

00:04:53.500 So, she's weird.

00:04:54.940 I mean, let's just start with that.

00:04:56.160 That is a very weird human being.

00:04:57.660 Yes.

00:04:57.940 And there is something absolutely delicious about a media that is hungering for Trump to be indicted.

00:05:02.520 In any case, right, New York, Georgia, D.C., it doesn't matter to them.

00:05:05.380 They want Trump indicted, but they couldn't help themselves having on this lady to essentially taint the entire jury pool of the state of Georgia.

00:05:12.560 So they have on this crazy person.

00:05:14.420 And she, I mean, on her page, apparently her Pinterest page is just filled with, like, witchcraft and Wiccan pins and stuff.

00:05:22.680 I wondered, how do you become the grand jury forewoman?

00:05:25.500 Is this like the people in the grand jury were like, it's got to be her.

00:05:28.440 She's the best spokesperson.

00:05:29.740 She's the one who can put it all together.

00:05:30.820 Because I just wonder, it just, you know, it keeps going through my brain that the great shortcoming of the jury system is that your fate will be adjudicated by people who are too stupid to avoid jury duty.

00:05:40.380 Yeah.

00:05:40.680 And that is what you see right there.

00:05:42.240 Never mind grand jury duty, which is the worst because you get impaneled for 18 months.

00:05:45.920 They only get people who are basically unemployed because no normal working person could ever do that.

00:05:50.820 So you might get some normal people on there, but you will often get people like Emily on there who are enjoying the process just a little too much.

00:05:57.820 Charlie Kirk had a great line, speaking of the witchcraft stuff, saying that she puts the witch in witch hunt.

00:06:05.480 It's just, it's very weird.

00:06:06.780 And again, I think that the big fail here is the members of the media.

00:06:09.540 Because what the media should have done is they should have said, okay, well, I mean, we're not going to get any real breaking news from this.

00:06:16.100 But we have to have her on.

00:06:17.160 We have to have her on.

00:06:17.840 We need it.

00:06:18.680 They need the ratings.

00:06:19.260 And it just goes to show you that everything about 2024 for the media is an exercise in disingenuousness.

00:06:25.260 Because on the one hand, like Trump's a threat to the republic.

00:06:27.380 He must be stopped.

00:06:28.040 And on the other hand, anybody who declares for the presidency, from Nikki Haley to Vivek, Ramaswamy, everyone becomes the enemy the minute they declare.

00:06:35.340 Because the media desperately wants Trump.

00:06:37.160 They desperately want to be the nominee.

00:06:38.560 He's great for ratings.

00:06:39.360 And they think Biden's going to beat him.

00:06:40.580 So it's like they can't help themselves.

00:06:42.700 Yeah, they're correct that Nikki Haley and as much as I love Vivek, they're not going to be the ratings juggernauts.

00:06:48.140 Right.

00:06:48.480 Trump is 100 percent, always has been, always will be.

00:06:51.360 I can't leave Emily yet.

00:06:52.680 And we need to get to know her a little bit better.

00:06:54.160 Okay, here she is talking about the possibility of Trump being indicted.

00:06:57.820 She didn't reveal the card.

00:06:58.880 She didn't say who's going to be indicted.

00:07:00.800 Just multiple indictments.

00:07:02.080 She wouldn't lift the dress up on President Trump and his fate.

00:07:04.800 But here's just, let's get to know her a little bit better.

00:07:06.920 Here we go.

00:07:07.300 Saw two.

00:07:07.560 Did the grand jury recommend an indictment of former President Trump?

00:07:15.200 I'm not going to speak on exact indictments.

00:07:19.680 Would we be surprised?

00:07:21.140 Are there bombshells of who is being recommended for indictment?

00:07:24.920 I don't think that there are any giant plot twists coming.

00:07:28.220 I don't think that there are any, like, giant, that's not the way I expected this to go at all.

00:07:35.960 I don't think that's in store for anyone.

00:07:41.840 So nothing that would surprise people who have been following this?

00:07:49.380 Probably not.

00:07:51.360 I wouldn't want to characterize anyone else's reaction, of course.

00:07:55.220 But, so that was something we heard a lot in testimony.

00:07:58.380 But probably not.

00:08:00.040 It probably wouldn't shock you.

00:08:01.160 I would not expect you to be too shocked.

00:08:05.840 No.

00:08:06.320 And that includes the former president.

00:08:09.300 Potentially.

00:08:10.940 Potentially.

00:08:11.740 It might.

00:08:13.140 Oh, my God.

00:08:14.320 What is even happening?

00:08:15.620 The fact that there are quacks in the back is absolutely perfect.

00:08:19.380 It was straight out of central casting.

00:08:20.920 It's so good.

00:08:21.700 It's so good.

00:08:22.940 She's, like, giggling for the listening audience who didn't get to see it.

00:08:25.700 You really should go to YouTube to check it out.

00:08:27.000 But she's, like, coy.

00:08:29.040 She's making sort of flirtatious faces.

00:08:31.540 She's shrugging her shoulders.

00:08:33.660 You remember that Emmy's broadcast where Winona Ryder was up on stage with the cast of Stranger Things.

00:08:38.820 And she's just, like, making weird faces during the entire speech that her co-star is making.

00:08:43.540 She's kind of gazing off into the distance.

00:08:44.940 She's kind of quizzically looking around.

00:08:46.400 The eyebrows are going up and down.

00:08:47.420 So people turned that into an internet meme with a bunch of, like, random equations appearing around her.

00:08:51.040 Like, she doesn't understand math.

00:08:52.420 And that's this lady.

00:08:54.020 Like, I don't, where is she?

00:08:55.140 Like, the camera's here, lady.

00:08:56.400 Like, you're talking to the camera.

00:08:57.360 Like, here.

00:08:58.020 Or the anchor is there.

00:08:59.420 Like, what are you doing?

00:09:00.040 She's looking all over the place.

00:09:01.400 Like, these are the people who decide the fate of the country.

00:09:03.940 Well, and she's loving her moment in the sun too much to be in charge of something this serious.

00:09:07.960 But this is the way the system works.

00:09:09.520 Just a couple of bits of color.

00:09:10.980 She said that she spoke of how the gravity of the special grand jury's work was not lost on her.

00:09:16.200 Quote, I told my boyfriend at one point during the proceeding.

00:09:18.400 During all this, I came home and I told him, do you know that if I was in a room with Donald Trump and Joseph Biden and they knew who I was, they would both want to speak with me.

00:09:28.560 Oh, good Lord.

00:09:30.280 Then she goes on to add this.

00:09:31.900 She says one of the big moments for her was the moment when she came in and she was eating, what kind of popsicle was it?

00:09:39.700 Oh, a ninja turtle popsicle as she swore in the late House Speaker of Georgia, David Ralston.

00:09:47.640 So, she adds the details like that.

00:09:49.360 That's a very specific memory.

00:09:50.880 You're not surprised at all that she likes ninja turtle popsicles, are you?

00:09:53.320 No.

00:09:53.620 That's actually the least surprising thing I've learned about her today, actually.

00:09:56.640 Wow.

00:09:57.080 So, now Trump is out there already using this, as of course you would, saying there was a very enthusiastic young lady who went on a press tour about my grand jury proceeding down there.

00:10:09.520 Extremely energetic young woman.

00:10:11.660 And get this.

00:10:12.680 He says she's going around, she's doing a media tour, revealing incredibly the grand jury's inner workings and thoughts, which she kind of is.

00:10:19.180 She is talking about how they felt about certain witnesses and so on.

00:10:21.620 He says this is an illegal kangaroo court and some even who don't necessarily support Trump are saying this supports moving the trial out of this jurisdiction.

00:10:32.740 This undermines the credibility of the whole process and it actually could lead to a legitimate objection by the Trump team that there was something tainted about this indictment in the first place.

00:10:42.640 She needed it too badly for personal reasons.

00:10:45.720 There was a clip from CNN that was going around of one of their lawyers who they like to talk to who's lamenting the fact that this may have tainted the grand jury pool.

00:10:52.640 And you could hear the Price is Right sad music, the sad trombone happening with the CNN anchors while this person was speaking.

00:11:00.300 And, again, this is the problem, is that the media culture has created so much of this controversy.

00:11:06.040 And I've got to be honest, I'm puzzled as to why it would take two years to investigate this.

00:11:10.880 Like the Brad Raffensperger call, that transcript was available within days of it happening.

00:11:15.240 What else is there to investigate, really?

00:11:18.820 Like that's either going to be one thing or another thing.

00:11:20.300 What's the extraneous evidence going to be?

00:11:22.420 And they're not getting Trump on this stuff.

00:11:24.060 This is not going to happen.

00:11:25.640 This is too ambiguous.

00:11:26.640 I know they think they've got him because he had that one line, I need 11,000 whatever votes.

00:11:29.860 But that's too ambiguous, believe it or not.

00:11:31.180 If you listen to the whole thing, he's not clearly saying, go find me illegal votes.

00:11:34.900 He's trying to say, I don't trust the process.

00:11:36.700 And this is how far behind I am.

00:11:38.100 And this is the extent to which I was hurt by what I believe is an illegal process.

00:11:41.560 I will say this.

00:11:42.460 It's fun to listen.

00:11:43.020 And so the media can't stop themselves from putting her on, even though they know it's

00:11:45.740 going to taint this process that they love and that they want.

00:11:48.500 And then you get the media reaction to what's happening here.

00:11:52.220 TPM, talking points, bam, all far left.

00:11:54.680 Juries, including grand juries, are composed of ordinary people, Ben.

00:11:57.140 OK, that's what they say.

00:11:58.000 And they do ordinary people things.

00:11:59.500 OK.

00:11:59.740 But with the fate of the republic and the rule of law hanging in the balance at this perilous

00:12:05.900 moment, it is not time to jeopardize long-running investigations with public winks and nods about

00:12:10.400 what's coming.

00:12:11.200 The fate of the republic is at issue with this Georgia indictment, didn't you know?

00:12:15.300 Well, I mean, also, this is a normal person.

00:12:18.200 She is a representative of the people.

00:12:20.320 Wicca is a thing, man.

00:12:22.200 It's big and it's a thing.

00:12:23.520 And those are the people.

00:12:24.760 Oh, that we really need to screen better, honestly.

00:12:26.920 But what can we do?

00:12:27.580 Because like I say, not everybody can sit for 18 months on a grand jury panel.

00:12:31.880 So we'll see where it goes.

00:12:32.700 I love Emily Kors.

00:12:33.860 I personally would like to see more of her.

00:12:36.080 A hundred percent.

00:12:36.580 I'd watch a reality show with her, wouldn't you?

00:12:37.900 Maybe we'll have her on.

00:12:38.840 I'd like to know about those posts.

00:12:39.860 Oh, my gosh.

00:12:40.460 What is it about Wiccanism that so appeals to you?

00:12:43.140 Yeah, I want to know the actual spells.

00:12:45.420 Apparently, there were spells on there.

00:12:46.520 Have they ever worked for her?

00:12:48.460 I'm kind of curious, I'll be honest with you.

00:12:49.980 Was there anybody in the proceeding who she cast went on?

00:12:51.600 I will bring her one of those SpongeBob Popsicles or whatever the hell it was.

00:12:55.600 Ninja Turtle, same thing.

00:12:57.400 OK, so the other big news today is that finally, Pete Buttigieg went to East Palestine right

00:13:04.120 after Trump did.

00:13:04.940 Right.

00:13:05.380 You got to give this one to Trump.

00:13:06.740 Of course.

00:13:07.200 He went out there and said that the only reason he's going is because I shamed him into it.

00:13:11.220 I mean, I think he's right.

00:13:12.140 He is, of course, right.

00:13:13.080 I mean, two things.

00:13:14.560 One, it's a slam dunk and Trump still gets credit for the slam dunk.

00:13:18.520 I mean, it's a 360 windmill jam on this one because they left the door wide open.

00:13:23.080 I mean, literally all anyone, anyone of prominence from the Biden administration had to do it

00:13:27.320 was just go there.

00:13:28.320 Yeah.

00:13:28.460 Let people yell at them and just go there and let people yell at you and that's it.

00:13:31.560 Right.

00:13:31.660 Just show some empathy.

00:13:32.640 Again, this is the empathy administration.

00:13:34.420 We have to go and we have to show.

00:13:35.420 Now, listen, I'm not a big fan of the politicians go to places and look at things tour.

00:13:39.640 Like, I just don't like that.

00:13:40.440 I think it's stupid.

00:13:41.100 I think because I don't see politicians as people we should emulate or treat as heroes.

00:13:44.860 I agree.

00:13:45.200 In these little plays.

00:13:45.740 I remember back when Hurricane Katrina happened, people were like, why isn't George W. Bush

00:13:49.280 going to visit this?

00:13:50.440 What's he going to do?

00:13:51.340 Like, do cleanup?

00:13:53.000 The only time I've ever seen anything remotely like that that I thought was useful was when

00:13:57.060 W. went to the site of the World Trade Center after 9-11.

00:13:59.460 That was like the only one.

00:14:01.100 So, I get it.

00:14:02.260 But that is part of the job.

00:14:04.200 Everybody understands that's part of the job.

00:14:05.480 And people who judge understands that better than anyone because he is a photo op.

00:14:08.160 He's a walking photo op.

00:14:09.360 He's never actually done anything in politics.

00:14:11.560 He was the mayor of the fourth largest city in Indiana and didn't fill the potholes there.

00:14:14.940 But he is gay.

00:14:15.880 So, he got to run for president.

00:14:17.280 And then he became the candidate of the elite white college educated women.

00:14:21.060 And so, he did okay in a couple of early primaries.

00:14:23.140 And this made him transportation secretary somehow because he liked airports and trains.

00:14:27.120 He literally said that, right?

00:14:28.160 He was picked for transportation secretary and gave an entire speech about how airports

00:14:30.980 grew romantic, which I don't know about you.

00:14:33.020 Airports are not romantic.

00:14:34.120 Airports are horrifying.

00:14:35.640 In any case, all he has to do is just go there.

00:14:38.140 And so, he spends two weeks not going there because part of the problem for, I think,

00:14:41.760 a lot of top Democrats is that the media protect them to such an extent that they don't actually

00:14:45.980 feel the need to do these things.

00:14:47.700 The media will defend Pete Buttigieg to the end.

00:14:49.740 They'll say he didn't do anything wrong.

00:14:51.080 They'll defend him when he goes on paternity leave for two months and just never tells anybody.

00:14:54.480 And then they'll make him a hero when he comes back because he's now standing up for

00:14:56.940 all of the men who need paternity leave.

00:14:59.140 And so, I don't think he felt the need to do this.

00:15:00.660 So, Trump completely wrong-footing him by being the – this is the best version of

00:15:04.460 Trump, right?

00:15:05.060 So, this campaign was a complete dud.

00:15:06.980 He launched it.

00:15:07.700 It was a fail.

00:15:08.660 And he didn't have any electricity.

00:15:09.940 He did nothing.

00:15:10.100 He did absolutely nothing.

00:15:10.860 Nothing.

00:15:11.180 His original launch campaign should have been done in a stadium with 10,000 people to show

00:15:14.160 that he actually has him back.

00:15:15.120 And instead, he did it at Mar-a-Lago with like 400 of his friends and, you know, Roger

00:15:18.980 Stone.

00:15:20.080 And that was a fail.

00:15:21.200 And part of that is because 2016 Trump is very different from 2024 Trump.

00:15:25.780 2016 Trump, his entire pitch for the people who really liked him was, I'm taking the

00:15:30.240 bullet for you, right?

00:15:31.260 I walk in elite circles.

00:15:32.640 I'm extremely wealthy.

00:15:33.860 Hillary Clinton was at my wedding.

00:15:35.640 These are the people that I hang out with.

00:15:37.060 But I don't really like those people.

00:15:38.200 I like you.

00:15:38.600 And the reason that they hate me is because they hate you.

00:15:40.940 Because until five minutes ago, I was their best friend.

00:15:42.420 But then I ran.

00:15:43.580 And they hate you, so they hate me.

00:15:44.740 So, I'm taking the bullet for you.

00:15:45.960 And a lot of people said, okay, I hear that, right?

00:15:47.640 He's a man of the people, even though he's not really a man of the people.

00:15:50.300 He has a gold-plated tower.

00:15:51.540 But he does like McDonald's.

00:15:53.060 And then 2020 happened.

00:15:54.380 And I think he became extremely angry, obviously, and very frustrated.

00:15:58.420 And so, his pitch, bitter is right.

00:16:00.240 And his pitch changed to, instead of, they hate me because they hate you, they hate you

00:16:05.680 because they hate me.

00:16:06.880 And so, they hate me, which means they hate you.

00:16:08.860 And that means that you have to go out and repeat everything that I say.

00:16:11.500 So, I won the 2020 election, and you are disloyal and bad if you don't go out there and take

00:16:15.500 the bullet for me.

00:16:16.060 I took the bullet for you.

00:16:16.820 Now, you're going to take the bullet for me.

00:16:18.060 That's a really crappy electoral pitch.

00:16:19.680 Nobody wants to take the bullet for a politician.

00:16:21.320 That's not our job.

00:16:22.360 And the job of the politician is to defend the people.

00:16:24.240 It's not the other way around.

00:16:25.240 And this is the first time I saw Trump actually go back to 2016 Trump, where I was like,

00:16:28.960 I'm out here doing the thing for you.

00:16:31.240 And it was the first time I saw in his campaign, oh, there's still people aside from Trump who

00:16:35.520 he actually cares about in terms of this campaign.

00:16:37.760 So, going there and doing all of the Trumpy things that the media hate, but are actually

00:16:41.300 kind of charming.

00:16:42.060 Like him going there and saying, here's the Trump water, and the other water is inferior,

00:16:46.040 but here's Trump water.

00:16:46.920 Like, or him going to McDonald's and saying, I know the menu better than anyone else in

00:16:50.020 here.

00:16:50.340 And then McDonald's.

00:16:52.880 It's actually kind of charming and funny because, obviously, he can afford not to eat

00:16:56.320 a McDonald's, but he does eat a McDonald's, just like a normal human.

00:16:59.300 And so, I thought it was a great look for Trump.

00:17:01.800 I thought it was his, it reinvigorated a certain magnetism about him.

00:17:05.380 And he does have that magic when he's doing that mode.

00:17:07.940 The problem for Trump is that he got out of that mode.

00:17:09.580 If he'd been that guy for all four years, he'd still be president of the United States right

00:17:12.160 now.

00:17:12.320 Oh, that's such a good analysis.

00:17:14.140 And to me, it's like, it reminds me, when Mitt Romney was running for president, one

00:17:17.700 thing you could always see, you could count on for Mitt Romney when he was in the GOP

00:17:21.240 field, is he would be the very last person to put out a statement on anything.

00:17:24.100 He would wait for all the others to take a risk.

00:17:25.920 What's the messaging going to be from the GOP side?

00:17:27.840 Wait for him to do it.

00:17:28.560 Wait for him to do it.

00:17:29.100 Okay, now I'll do it.

00:17:30.100 He'd need to go last.

00:17:31.500 And Trump has made Buttigieg and Biden look like they're going last.

00:17:35.740 He was the first one there.

00:17:36.680 He's not an elected official right now.

00:17:38.380 He's a civilian at the moment.

00:17:39.660 And our president went over to Ukraine and he made the most of it.

00:17:43.520 He got out there and basically said, you better hope that, I think we have it, where he said,

00:17:47.020 you better hope that this president has got some dough in the coffers when he comes back

00:17:50.720 from taking care of the people of Ukraine.

00:17:52.180 Here it is in Saat, well, you guys know, eight.

00:17:55.440 We have told you loud and clear, you are not forgotten.

00:18:01.180 You are not forgotten.

00:18:02.420 I sincerely hope that when your representatives and all of the politicians get here, including

00:18:10.960 Biden, they get back from touring Ukraine, that he's got some money left over.

00:18:17.280 Yeah, I mean, right.

00:18:20.300 That's the right message.

00:18:21.460 And it looks so bad that Buttigieg did follow him.

00:18:23.640 Just earlier this week, he went out there saying, I'll go when the time is right.

00:18:26.760 Right.

00:18:27.200 When the time is right.

00:18:27.960 And then it magically became right.

00:18:29.080 And that is amazing.

00:18:30.060 Amazing.

00:18:30.420 Amazingly coincidence.

00:18:31.080 And honestly, to your point, yes, I agree with you about George W. Bush in front of the

00:18:34.000 fallen towers on 9-11 and how the photo ops don't.

00:18:36.200 But like this situation is different, not because there was a huge loss of life.

00:18:39.920 Thank God there wasn't.

00:18:41.640 The reason they need to get there is because there's a real question about whether the air is safe

00:18:44.960 and the water is safe and all these people are being told is, it's fine, it's fine, it's

00:18:48.080 fine.

00:18:48.800 So go out there, Pete Buttigieg.

00:18:50.240 If you want the people to believe you, go take a drink out of the faucet.

00:18:53.520 Go take a shower with somebody's well water.

00:18:55.340 I'm not even sure that it's because this is a particularly special situation.

00:18:58.160 I mean, it's obviously egregious and terrible.

00:18:59.900 But I think that because this is not only the expectation, but we can tell which things

00:19:04.500 you're going to.

00:19:05.520 They pick and choose which things they want to go to.

00:19:07.320 There are certain disaster areas where they're just not going to touch it with a 10-foot pole because

00:19:10.300 it is not people that they care as much about.

00:19:12.300 And then there are certain disaster areas that will be a mass shooting and they'll arrive at

00:19:14.880 the funeral or there'll be or there'll be a shooting by there'll be a police beating

00:19:19.500 and somebody will die.

00:19:20.300 And the vice president of the United States will show up at the funeral.

00:19:22.680 Yep.

00:19:22.960 Right.

00:19:23.240 Not knowing the family, not knowing anything.

00:19:24.540 But this is a political point.

00:19:26.100 So if we're going to treat these situations as political opportunities, then you have to

00:19:29.040 ask why this was not a this was such a nonpolitical opportunity that you're going to wait for

00:19:33.440 two weeks to actually go there or to send Pete Buttigieg, who has nothing better to do.

00:19:37.480 I mean, let's literally nothing.

00:19:38.560 Secretary of Transportation is one of the cushiest jobs in America.

00:19:41.000 You didn't even know the name of a like name past secretaries of transportation.

00:19:44.520 Go.

00:19:45.160 OK, like it's how it's like a lane chow or what?

00:19:49.040 I can't go back.

00:19:51.100 Exactly.

00:19:51.720 Like that's not a cabinet secretary who's very prominent.

00:19:54.920 But Buttigieg has made himself prominent.

00:19:56.840 And so you're going to take the hits for that.

00:19:58.700 And so at the very least, you have to go and do this sort of.

00:20:01.120 So do we think it's because he's Palestine went 40 percent or 40 points for Donald Trump?

00:20:05.620 I mean, do we think because I did wonder, I hate to be so cynical, but I did wonder, would

00:20:09.340 they be reacting differently if this were a swing county in Pennsylvania?

00:20:13.340 Ohio's red and this county's red.

00:20:15.460 It's not in play for them.

00:20:16.520 And, you know, I hate to be that person, but one has to ask.

00:20:19.420 I mean, on a political level, I think probably it played some role.

00:20:23.040 I think also Pete Buttigieg is just he's he's gun shy when it comes to any sort of real

00:20:26.940 controversial situation.

00:20:28.020 And I don't think I'm not sure that as a politician, he's the kind of person who's willing to take

00:20:33.080 the hit.

00:20:33.740 Like part of politics is you have to go there and you have to let people yell at you.

00:20:36.180 Yep.

00:20:36.480 Right.

00:20:36.660 If you're the secretary of transportation, you have to go there and you have to say, I'm

00:20:38.980 here and I'm going to let you cry on me.

00:20:40.560 I'm going to let you I'm going to let you show me that you're really angry at me and

00:20:44.040 you think that it's my fault.

00:20:44.900 And even if I don't think it's my fault, I have to hear out what you're saying.

00:20:47.800 I mean, that's what it means to be a politician in a position of responsibility.

00:20:51.340 This was like a sweet spot moment for Trump, especially because there was no other

00:20:54.800 candidate who could have done that, meaning Ron DeSantis is governor of Florida.

00:20:57.360 He can't go to Mike DeWine's state and just arrive there with a bunch of water.

00:21:00.260 It makes Mike DeWine look bad.

00:21:01.380 Plus, he's running his own state down in Florida.

00:21:03.520 Nikki Haley can't do it because that's not her common person feel.

00:21:06.260 That's not what she does.

00:21:07.720 Vivek is theoretically, Vivek could have done it, but Vivek is not famous.

00:21:11.360 He's not Trump.

00:21:11.840 And he launched his candidacy like 10 hours before.

00:21:13.760 Right, exactly.

00:21:14.580 So this was like the perfect moment for Trump.

00:21:17.060 And credit where credit is due.

00:21:18.500 I mean, it was I think it was a softball, but you still have to hit the ball.

00:21:21.260 And he hit it out of the park.

00:21:22.340 I mean, I thought I thought it was the best moment of his campaign by far.

00:21:24.480 I think it puts some new life into his candidacy, which I thought was kind of dying.

00:21:29.000 Yeah, no, he wasn't doing anything to nurture it.

00:21:30.700 So it's kind of an interesting 24 hours.

00:21:32.420 So you have not Biden.

00:21:33.600 Biden's in Ukraine.

00:21:34.580 We'll talk about that in one second.

00:21:36.060 But you got Buttigieg going out to East Palestine.

00:21:37.900 You got Trump taking the lead and showing leadership.

00:21:40.620 And you're right.

00:21:40.940 People love the Trump water stuff.

00:21:42.220 I mean, it's like there's entire towns that they call Trump towns.

00:21:45.040 You think these people get upset that he brought some water to them?

00:21:47.200 They rode in the Trump helicopter in Iowa in one of the most important moments of the 2016 campaign.

00:21:51.820 They love this about him.

00:21:52.780 But at the same time, you got Biden with his big victory lap in Ukraine.

00:21:56.680 And then, let's face it, that video of him falling again up the stairs is embarrassing.

00:22:03.120 And it serves as such a reminder to us all of the fact that the guy is he's feeble.

00:22:08.780 He's infirm, not just physically, but potentially mentally as well.

00:22:12.220 We've seen that many times as well.

00:22:13.440 Here he is.

00:22:14.180 It's funny because I go on with Paul Murray in Sky News Australia once a week.

00:22:17.280 And I love Paul.

00:22:18.240 And he always calls Biden.

00:22:19.600 Every week he calls Biden, the man who's so incredible he can fall up the stairs.

00:22:23.340 And here it is again, Ben.

00:22:25.560 And just the juxtaposition of the two guys, it hasn't been a favorable moment for Biden.

00:22:29.760 No.

00:22:30.060 I mean, I think that he got a couple of photo op wins when he went to Ukraine.

00:22:33.120 But I do think that it's hard.

00:22:35.460 He's hard to watch.

00:22:36.380 He's a very hard to watch person.

00:22:37.920 And just like any elderly relative that you have, and they're coming up the front steps of your house to come to dinner or something.

00:22:44.480 And you're like, you want to grab them?

00:22:46.360 The same feeling you have with your toddler.

00:22:47.740 Correct.

00:22:48.400 And when you watch Biden, you just get the feeling that he's Nick Walenda walking a tightrope over Volcano.

00:22:54.060 But physically, every single time.

00:22:56.120 Is he going to make it up the stairs?

00:22:57.200 We don't know if he's going to make it up the stairs.

00:22:58.500 And then, of course, we'll get all the headlines about what a healthy and jovial and vital guy he is.

00:23:03.900 I mean, look, the Democrats don't have any choice.

00:23:05.400 They have to run him.

00:23:06.020 They do not have any backup plan.

00:23:07.440 Did you see that report in Politico today saying he's more hesitant than they want?

00:23:12.280 I think that's wish casting.

00:23:13.340 They were going to announce in February, and now they're saying maybe April.

00:23:16.680 I think the only reason why he would not run is if he thinks that Trump isn't going to get the nomination.

00:23:21.740 I think that in Biden's own head, he beat Trump once, he'll beat Trump again.

00:23:24.360 So if Trump runs, his entire claim to fame is, I stopped the fascist onset of Donald Trump.

00:23:29.580 This is what he said at that crazy speech they gave in Philadelphia.

00:23:33.400 And so that's how he thinks of himself.

00:23:34.700 If Trump isn't the nominee, I could see a world where he – or he thinks Trump won't be the nominee, I could see a world where he steps aside.

00:23:40.180 But for what?

00:23:41.000 The Democratic Party needs him there.

00:23:42.380 I mean, they're going to taxidermy that guy, and they're going to wheel him around, and it is not going to matter.

00:23:47.340 He ran as a dead person last time, and it worked.

00:23:49.600 So I think that everybody on the right is taking it a little bit lightly because he is so old and because he is so infirm.

00:23:55.760 But he was able to carry it out last time, and a lot depends on who the Republicans select as their candidate.

00:24:02.120 And this is always the temptation of Trump.

00:24:04.660 Is it gold or is it fool's gold?

00:24:05.740 Who knows, right?

00:24:06.400 When you get a moment like you see in East Palestine, you're like, that guy is great.

00:24:09.500 I mean, that's great.

00:24:10.020 And then, you know, 24 hours later, he'll be on Twitter yelling at Coco Chow or something.

00:24:15.840 Or he's teasing the NFT of himself, right?

00:24:18.400 Like the superhero, like, what are you doing?

00:24:20.320 Stop that nonsense.

00:24:21.780 But wait, I want to get back to Biden and Ukraine one second.

00:24:23.980 But the fact that you said they ran a dead person, forgive me, but it reminded me of what's happening with John Fetterman,

00:24:29.180 where the Democrats, they don't care how infirm the person they're running is.

00:24:32.980 As long as they get them over the finish line, they're happy.

00:24:35.900 And they realize that you're going to pull the right lever.

00:24:37.500 The thing with Betterman that's so outrageous to me right now, and look, I hope the guy feels better.

00:24:42.300 I really do.

00:24:42.720 He's hospitalized for depression now, severe depression.

00:24:45.400 The thing that bothers me is the lack of transparency and how the media gives him a complete pass for misleading on these very real problems time and time again.

00:24:54.600 Even the New York Times, which finally, now that he's in office, decided it would be a good idea to be honest about the fact that he'd been in the hospital for three nights

00:25:01.180 and actually had a severe problem in the wake of his stroke and we didn't know what it was.

00:25:05.700 Well, they'd had an interview with him.

00:25:06.760 They had an interview with his staff at the time talking about his problems, his physical problems.

00:25:10.820 OK, then like four days later, the news drops.

00:25:14.940 He's going in the hospital for potentially a month or more to deal with severe depression, which was conveniently not in the New York Times report.

00:25:22.020 They had obviously not been told the full story by his staff.

00:25:25.380 And instead of being ticked off as the reporters on the story to try to get the full scope of this U.S. senator's mental and well-being state,

00:25:34.000 everybody launches immediately into, good for you, good for you, thank you for being honest.

00:25:39.800 The reason they're not angry is because they were the ones lying.

00:25:42.880 It's not that they were lied to.

00:25:44.000 They were complicit in this.

00:25:44.900 I mean, you remember, there was a reporter who actually said, you know, he's got all of these disabilities.

00:25:48.960 He couldn't understand what I was saying to him when I was talking.

00:25:50.860 Josh Burns of NBC.

00:25:51.660 And she got ripped up and down.

00:25:52.820 There were people calling for her firing.

00:25:54.000 There were people in the journalistic outlets like Kara Swisher at the New York Times who were saying, you know, she should be losing her job because of this.

00:25:59.320 It's ableism.

00:26:00.200 All the rest of this kind of garbage.

00:26:01.100 And it's an absurdity.

00:26:02.700 I mean, what makes it the most absurd, the Fetterman thing, and truly outrageous, is you even understand politically why people would lie in order to get this guy into office in the first place because they desperately want the seat.

00:26:12.520 Okay, now he's in office.

00:26:13.600 The question is, why are you still doing this?

00:26:16.380 Why are you still lying?

00:26:17.400 Okay, because right now the governor of Pennsylvania is a Democrat.

00:26:20.520 So if John Fetterman were to step down, which is exactly what he should do, he's not capable of holding that office.

00:26:25.500 Josh Shapiro would appoint his replacement who would be a Democrat.

00:26:28.140 So what they are doing right now is they are basically saying we would rather have six years of a person who is not mentally capable of holding this office than two years of a Democrat and then have to go up for reelection again with the voters of Pennsylvania able to look full face what the Democrats did to them in 2022.

00:26:44.280 It's disgusting.

00:26:45.320 And frankly, you know, his wife bears a huge amount of blame here.

00:26:49.500 We don't want her.

00:26:50.980 Okay, if she ends up being appointed to that, I don't think Josh Shapiro would do that.

00:26:54.320 But if he ends up stepping down and she ends up being appointed to that seat, I mean, that's some Lady Macbeth crap right there.

00:26:59.180 Absolutely.

00:26:59.580 No qualifications.

00:27:00.600 I mean, none.

00:27:01.400 It's insane.

00:27:02.120 I think we'd be better off with Emily Croft or whatever.

00:27:04.520 But beyond that, can you imagine treating your own spouse this way?

00:27:07.380 No.

00:27:07.500 I mean, like, I can't imagine if, God forbid, God forbid, something would happen to my wife saying,

00:27:12.460 okay, but it's important that we lie to the entirety of the voting public and just continue to put you out there endangering your health.

00:27:17.640 The New York Times admitted that this endangered his health to be out there all the time.

00:27:20.720 And they've been intentionally vague on how long he's been suffering from this severe depression.

00:27:23.660 Actually, they've telegraphed that it wasn't just in the wake of the stroke, that this has been an ongoing thing.

00:27:28.360 So she knew, she knew that he had problems with severe depression, which is a serious problem, and then had a serious stroke that they didn't disclose the full details on.

00:27:37.140 It was much more of a cardiac event than we apparently knew and had the defibrillator put in and the pacemaker put in and never gave us access to a doctor who could explain to us what exactly had happened,

00:27:47.200 the cardiologist then or now, and now back in the hospital for an unspecified period.

00:27:51.680 Like, she knew. We didn't know, but she knew. And to your point about the press, so you mentioned Dasha Burns correctly,

00:27:58.520 because she was the NBC reporter who went in there and did this interview, and she had this, you know, moment of honesty where she said,

00:28:03.440 my God, didn't seem like he even understood the small talk before the interview.

00:28:06.840 Rained down Kara Swisher and others on her. Well, listen to how she covers the latest news, okay?

00:28:11.580 She does sort of a couple of bullet points. A senior aide says it's tough to distinguish the stroke from the depression.

00:28:17.140 It's hard to tell at times if he's not hearing you or if he's crippled by his depression and his social anxiety.

00:28:21.320 Okay, fine. This is normal reporting in the wake of the news about the depression.

00:28:24.180 Then she goes on to say this. A senior aide tells me both the staff and Fetterman himself were taken by surprise by the severe onset of the depression.

00:28:31.860 The aide also says this hasn't compromised his ability to do the job going forward. Sure.

00:28:35.740 And he'll be back to work once he's taken care of his mental health. Then she adds this.

00:28:39.300 Anyone who has ever suffered from severe depression, myself included, knows how important it is to ask for help.

00:28:46.640 But damn, it is hard to do. Glad the senator is now getting the care he needs.

00:28:52.360 What? Where's her outrage that she was lied to repeatedly?

00:28:56.260 And about. And then about, right?

00:28:57.740 Right, and then about. This is her licking the boots of the media, Ben, because she fell out of favor and she's like,

00:29:03.180 I'm a good girl. I'm a good girl. I am. I'm a good girl. Please love me again. That's what she's doing.

00:29:07.420 It's totally insane. Also, by the way, this is a common side effect of severe stroke.

00:29:11.780 A common side effect of severe stroke is that you end up being depressed about your mental state.

00:29:15.900 So to pretend that this is somehow unforeseen, it is absolutely foreseen.

00:29:20.020 I mean, this is an actual complication that people suffer in the aftermath of having a severe debilitating stroke

00:29:24.580 and being put in a position of high stress.

00:29:26.600 In the original New York Times article that was reporting about how he was hospitalizing himself,

00:29:30.260 it suggested that his depression had cropped up over the course of the last few weeks.

00:29:33.860 Well, what could have happened over the course of the last few weeks?

00:29:35.520 Could it be that you became an actual sitting United States senator who is demanded to do jobs

00:29:39.460 that you do not have the capacity to do?

00:29:41.080 I mean, you'd be depressed. I'd be depressed. Anybody would be depressed.

00:29:43.120 You're sitting there with an important job and you can't understand the words that people are saying to you

00:29:47.000 and you're frustrated. Of course you'd be depressed.

00:29:49.160 But the question here is, like, I like that they're creating in their minds a villain that does not exist, right?

00:29:54.440 The villain that does not exist is people who are like, man, that guy never should have gotten treatment for depression.

00:29:58.400 Man, that guy should have been sitting there and being depressed all day long.

00:30:01.420 He shouldn't have gotten treatment.

00:30:02.340 Like, who is that person?

00:30:03.540 Everybody wants people who are depressed to get the treatment that they need.

00:30:06.560 That is not the question.

00:30:07.420 The question is, who lied to whom?

00:30:08.840 Who is still lying?

00:30:09.960 And is this person capable of holding out the office?

00:30:12.560 And if not, then why aren't you just replacing him with another Democrat?

00:30:15.800 That's the part that's totally insane to me.

00:30:17.320 He will get replaced with another Democrat.

00:30:18.940 You're not even saying control of the Senate hinges on this person who is mentally unfit being in the office.

00:30:23.820 That'd be gross, but you'd at least understand it politically.

00:30:25.680 But now they're saying that not even control of the Senate, continued control of the Senate for four more years after the next two years, is contingent on keeping a person in place who does not have the capacity to hold down the job.

00:30:36.240 No, they don't care about him at all, notwithstanding this kind of coverage.

00:30:40.020 There's much more to discuss.

00:30:41.240 I want to pick up on what you said about you don't believe in making heroes out of politicians.

00:30:45.500 I completely agree with you on that.

00:30:47.700 And I want to ask you whether the media, the right-wing media, is doing that right now with Ron DeSantis.

00:30:52.360 Oh, there's a tease.

00:30:53.640 Ben Shapiro stays with us after this break.

00:30:56.040 Don't go away.

00:31:00.300 I've got to talk for a minute about Ukraine because President Biden goes over there.

00:31:04.160 And honestly, you would have thought it was a George Bush moment in front of the towers.

00:31:08.580 The way the media covered this.

00:31:10.460 Like he was in grave danger and he braved the flames to go speak to the Ukrainian people.

00:31:16.920 We've Grabian, who does great mashups of all sorts of news events, put together a little butted shot of it.

00:31:21.940 And here's a sampling of how they reacted.

00:31:24.380 Joe Biden has put solidarity ahead of his own personal safety.

00:31:28.400 Air raid sirens and no real guarantee of security.

00:31:32.140 Has air raid sirens blared?

00:31:34.280 This was incredibly dramatic, Andrea.

00:31:36.160 It was historic as well.

00:31:37.960 Historic, timely and brave.

00:31:40.520 With Biden's trip to Europe, you know, he is welcomed as not only, frankly, the savior of Ukraine, but also the savior of Europe as a whole.

00:31:48.780 It's historic.

00:31:49.460 It's the first time that a U.S. president has gone into an active war zone that the U.S. military does not have control over.

00:31:56.820 And against all odds, it was successful.

00:32:00.060 The continuing threat quite literally sounding all around the two leaders.

00:32:03.720 The skies here are not safe.

00:32:05.520 And in fact, an air raid siren went off while President Biden was here.

00:32:09.680 Seeing the American president there walking the streets of Kiev while air raid sirens literally sounded in that moment about possible incoming fire from Russia.

00:32:20.600 And the wail of an air raid siren.

00:32:22.620 Air raid sirens wailing in the background.

00:32:25.160 Seemingly undeterred by an air raid siren.

00:32:27.900 Undeterred by the sound of air sirens.

00:32:30.200 President Biden's ability with his aviators on to walk through in broad daylight in Kiev.

00:32:35.660 The swagger of this trip.

00:32:40.200 Ben.

00:32:40.680 So, let's just start with this.

00:32:44.560 His national security advisor, Jake Sullivan, said on a phone call with the media that the Americans called up the Russians and said, Joe Biden is traveling into Ukraine and he's going to be traveling through Ukrainian airspace.

00:32:54.740 So, in other words, don't shoot down the plane and don't try to kill the president.

00:32:58.280 Right.

00:32:58.680 Which, like, you should do because you don't want the president to get killed in a war zone.

00:33:02.200 You're going to have a much bigger problem on your hands if you blow up Joe Biden.

00:33:04.760 As it turns out, yes.

00:33:06.000 And so, Vladimir Putin is not totally crazy.

00:33:08.320 And so, of course, he was not going to try to kill the president of the United States while he was flying into Ukraine.

00:33:13.400 Now, listen, I happen to be a supporter of military aid being given to Ukraine.

00:33:18.300 I think that repelling Vladimir Putin's invasion is a good thing.

00:33:20.580 I think it's in America's interest.

00:33:21.960 However, the kind of treatment of Joe Biden went to, I mean, just the insane bravery.

00:33:26.220 Just insane.

00:33:26.940 I mean, it's like a rappel from a helicopter and shot in Laden between the eyes.

00:33:29.860 No.

00:33:30.440 Tom Cruise.

00:33:31.920 It's just ridiculous.

00:33:33.060 It's just ridiculous.

00:33:34.040 And everybody, I think, can see that it's ridiculous.

00:33:37.200 But I think the real question that we ought to be asking ourselves is why this particular timing?

00:33:41.680 So, people were saying it was about the one-year anniversary of the Ukraine war.

00:33:44.780 I really doubt that.

00:33:45.480 I mean, there have been other foreign dignitaries who have gone there, right?

00:33:47.300 And Boris Johnson famously went to Kiev maybe four months ago.

00:33:50.620 There are a lot of people from the American government who have gone to Kiev over the course of the last year or so.

00:33:54.800 In fact, a bunch of House Republicans went this week to Kiev as well.

00:33:57.780 Sean Penn went.

00:33:58.480 Yeah, exactly.

00:33:59.060 So, the bravery.

00:34:00.640 Oh, the bravery of Sean Penn.

00:34:01.520 Or the question is, was this possibly an attempt to reset a presidential campaign and to get people to stop talking about the fact that he let a giant Chinese spy balloon float over the entirety of the continental United States before spending a bunch of $400,000 Sidewinder missiles to shoot down Valentine's Day balloons from Party City.

00:34:19.020 Like, he had a couple of really crappy weeks, and then the way that you reset is you get the media to tout how brave it is for you to go to Ukraine.

00:34:27.480 Apparently, they had those plans on the books for, like, a while.

00:34:29.660 They knew what to do.

00:34:30.500 They knew how they were going to implement it.

00:34:31.480 And he only made the call on Friday that he was going to go in, and then he went in.

00:34:35.020 But this treatment is like, wow, it was like the great escape.

00:34:38.220 He was digging a tunnel into Ukraine.

00:34:39.780 And it's just – it's so over the top.

00:34:41.320 The mention of the aviator shades.

00:34:43.120 Oh, the aviator shades.

00:34:44.640 In broad daylight, he was wearing shades.

00:34:46.260 In broad daylight, not at night even.

00:34:47.660 Like, in broad daylight.

00:34:48.860 Just try to pretend that you're not madly in love with any Democrat.

00:34:51.980 They don't really love Joe Biden, but they understand he's going to be up for re-election, and we're now getting the GOPs raising their hands.

00:34:57.940 And so they've got to start shoring him up because they can't lose.

00:35:00.140 They can't lose to Trump, and they hate DeSantis maybe almost as much as Trump.

00:35:03.940 And that leads me to the question of, is the right wing lionizing DeSantis right now and too much before they know whether he should be the guy?

00:35:15.300 You know, this time in 2015, right, leading into the 16th election, Jeb Bush was leading in the polls.

00:35:21.280 Rudy Giuliani was up there, too.

00:35:22.640 They completely collapsed.

00:35:24.040 Trump was nowhere in the polls.

00:35:25.120 He wound up, of course, being the nominee and then their next president.

00:35:27.560 And so I always get – I like Ron DeSantis.

00:35:30.100 I think he'd probably be a great president.

00:35:31.660 But I'm always like – I'm not pledging my love to any of these people.

00:35:34.600 Like I'm a journalist, so I'm, first of all, like skeptical of everybody and love no politicians.

00:35:39.900 I really don't.

00:35:40.480 I never – I've never fallen in love with a politician.

00:35:42.720 But I get uncomfortable when I see like the right wing doing like the equivalent of what that Graebian shot shows, the left wing doing to President Biden.

00:35:51.860 So what do you make of it?

00:35:52.880 So I think that you're right, that nobody should worship at the altar of any politician.

00:35:57.200 That's true of Trump.

00:35:57.760 It's true of DeSantis.

00:35:58.400 It's true of literally anyone.

00:35:59.440 But when it comes to DeSantis, I think that the enthusiasm for DeSantis, unlike a lot of the other politicians you're talking about, is not actually based on personal magnetism.

00:36:08.160 Because the truth is that if you watch DeSantis, he's not personally magnetic.

00:36:11.600 He has an edge to him and he'll cut people on the other side, which I think is the major quality that distinguishes him from some of the other Republicans who are in the race.

00:36:18.180 He's not soft.

00:36:18.840 He's very hard and he will go up against the media.

00:36:21.440 And the media took their shots at him over the course of two long years, lionizing Andrew Cuomo and all the rest.

00:36:26.380 Oh, my God.

00:36:26.940 Trigger.

00:36:27.180 But the fact that a lot of people are resonating to his governance is of benefit.

00:36:33.700 I will distinguish him from Jeb, who had not been governor for a very long time by the time he ran, or Giuliani, who had not been mayor of New York by the time that he ran for a very long time, from DeSantis, who is currently governing in Florida and took a state that was a 0.4 percentage point victory from in 2018 and turned it into a 20 point victory for him in 2022.

00:36:49.220 And has proceeded to basically hit every cultural right wing erogenous zone in terms of legislation while making the state significantly more red.

00:36:58.600 Right.

00:36:58.660 So he's doing all the things that you need to do in terms of basic government.

00:37:01.240 In terms of how he's governed Florida, there's no controversy from anyone on the right that he has done an amazing job in the state of Florida.

00:37:06.560 Well, Trump, there's some controversy.

00:37:08.680 Trump's like, it's Florida, beautiful oceans, no state income tax, everybody would do well there.

00:37:13.540 Right.

00:37:13.800 So Trump is the only person in Florida who's unhappy with Ron DeSantis by statistics.

00:37:17.840 In Florida, and I'm a Floridian, he is very popular.

00:37:20.880 He's popular with independents.

00:37:21.860 He's even popular with a lot of Democrats.

00:37:23.160 He's winning counties that were blue and have now turned red because of him.

00:37:26.120 Like Miami-Dade.

00:37:26.580 The Republicans now have a super majority in the legislature, so they're ramming through a lot of very conservative bills.

00:37:32.340 Like all this is really good.

00:37:33.560 Whether that wears nationally, we have yet to see.

00:37:37.340 But I think that one of the things that Republicans don't want is a multi-person race.

00:37:42.780 And what they're afraid of is a repeat of 2016, not in that Trump gets the nomination, but that somebody sneaks through with 25, 30%.

00:37:48.760 Yeah.

00:37:49.160 And that would, I think, be really, really hard for the Republican Party.

00:37:52.400 If this ends up being another 10-person race, and nobody drops out, and it ends up that Trump sneaks through with 35% of the vote,

00:37:58.860 because I think that his floor probably is about 20% to 25% in any given primary.

00:38:03.200 If you split the rest of that 75% seven different ways, you've got a real problem on your hands.

00:38:07.340 And so I think what you're seeing is an attempt by a lot of Republicans to say, okay, let's make this a two-person race.

00:38:11.640 And then if Trump beats DeSantis, okay, and if DeSantis beats Trump, okay, we're okay with both of those guys.

00:38:15.760 But what we don't want is Nikki Haley taking 7%, and Tim Scott taking 6%, and Larry Hogan taking 0.3%.

00:38:22.240 We don't actually want that.

00:38:23.940 And so I think a lot of the resonance of DeSantis has been, he is winning.

00:38:27.400 He is doing things that are effective.

00:38:28.960 He has stood up to the media.

00:38:30.000 In fact, the thing that he did over the last 24 hours to MSNBC, I thought was great.

00:38:33.060 Well, we've got to talk about that.

00:38:33.320 Let's talk about that.

00:38:33.840 I love this story, too.

00:38:35.060 So Andrea Mitchell, who I think is the senior political correspondent, or is the chief international, whatever.

00:38:39.940 She's got a big title over there.

00:38:41.020 She's been there forever.

00:38:41.980 Chief Washington correspondent.

00:38:43.080 She interviews Kamala Harris last Friday, okay, today's Thursday, so we're almost a week later, and completely misrepresents Ron DeSantis' educational program down in Florida.

00:38:54.760 I think we have the original soundbite.

00:38:56.800 Here she is questioning Kamala, misrepresenting Ron DeSantis from last Friday.

00:39:00.040 What does Governor Ron DeSantis not know about black history and the black experience when he says that slavery and the aftermath of slavery should not be taught to Florida schoolchildren?

00:39:15.380 I don't know what he knows and what he doesn't know, but I know this.

00:39:19.440 Oh, no.

00:39:20.040 Any push to censor America's teachers and tell them what they should be teaching in the best interest of our children, in partnership with the parents of America, is, I think, wrong-headed.

00:39:39.940 Oh, God.

00:39:40.940 This clip started off as a critique of Andrea Mitchell, but any time you put Kamala Harris on camera, I can't.

00:39:47.540 I'm sorry, I can't.

00:39:48.080 I saw you girding yourself.

00:39:49.220 She's political colon cancer.

00:39:50.800 She just is.

00:39:51.860 I mean, you're watching her, and you're like, how is this person, the vice president, how did this person elevate to this particular level?

00:39:57.380 You just have to call Joe Biden racist, and then he walks you right in.

00:40:00.100 Oh, and maybe suggest that he's a rapist.

00:40:01.860 If you do those things, then you can become vice president of the United ... And anyway, the original story's been Andrea Mitchell.

00:40:07.340 I'm sorry, I got sidetracked by the horror show, the dumpster fire that is on top of an actual wildfire that is also on top of a flaming volcano of garbage that is Kamala Harris.

00:40:17.340 I was genuinely scared when Kamala Harris, I can tell you this.

00:40:20.820 Oh, God.

00:40:21.060 I was like, oh, no, she's going to start talking about Venn diagrams and electric school bus again, isn't she?

00:40:24.560 Or rocket science.

00:40:25.820 Okay, so that was incorrect, to put it mildly.

00:40:29.360 And Ron DeSantis' office hit Andrea Mitchell and actually put out a memo saying he's not going on any NBC property, no MSNBC, no NBC, no Peacock, none of that, until she corrects the record and ideally apologizes.

00:40:41.840 And so this was the lame response by Andrea Mitchell just yesterday, Wednesday.

00:40:46.780 So it took several days for her to put out and listen to this.

00:40:50.340 You tell me whether this is an apology or an actual correction.

00:40:52.420 In my interview last Friday with Vice President Harris, I was imprecise in summarizing Governor DeSantis' position about teaching slavery in schools.

00:41:03.480 Governor DeSantis is not opposed to teaching the fact of slavery in schools, but he has opposed the teaching of an African-American studies curriculum,

00:41:10.700 as well as the use of some authors and source materials that historians and teachers say makes it all but impossible for students to understand the broader historic and political context behind slavery and its aftermath in the years since.

00:41:24.840 She's sorry.

00:41:26.100 She seems very sorry.

00:41:28.000 She was imprecise but totally right, as it turns out.

00:41:31.240 It was like Don Lemon.

00:41:32.060 I was just inartful.

00:41:33.220 It's just inartful.

00:41:34.080 Exactly.

00:41:34.720 Main point was Stance.

00:41:35.860 She is amazing.

00:41:37.460 So DeSantis' team, they said, well, no.

00:41:39.440 So then the answer is no, we're not going to go on your network.

00:41:41.380 And good for him.

00:41:42.240 That is the way that the media ought to be treated.

00:41:43.940 I mean, if they're going to lie, and that is a lie.

00:41:46.200 You know, a few things that we can still do in Florida, as it turns out.

00:41:48.840 Not only can we do, we must.

00:41:50.400 I mean, so you have to teach your children about slavery and the aftermath of slavery in any accredited public or private school in the state of Florida.

00:41:57.760 Other things we can do.

00:41:58.520 We can say the word gay in Florida, as it turns out.

00:42:00.040 You know, apparently, according to the media, you couldn't say the word gay and like the DeSantis capos would like break into your house and drag you away screaming to some sort of concentration camp.

00:42:07.300 Turns out that that's not true.

00:42:08.640 Are you just visiting parent-teacher night going gay, gay, gay, gay, see how you did it?

00:42:11.600 Yeah, at my Orthodox Jewish Day school.

00:42:13.020 That's actually what we do like all the time.

00:42:14.420 But it is insane the way that the media have covered him.

00:42:17.140 And this is one of the reasons why I think he is, again, riding high with a lot of Republicans is because he does not treat the media as potential allies.

00:42:23.700 He does not treat them as people who ought to be given the time of day.

00:42:26.820 In fact, I mean, I will say I think that he treats the media with more discipline by far than Donald Trump did.

00:42:34.620 Donald Trump actually liked the media is the dirty little secret of Trump, right?

00:42:38.100 I mean, he was on the phone with Maggie Haberman a lot.

00:42:40.380 A lot.

00:42:40.720 And he was talking with members of the media a lot because he actually wanted to see what they would say about him in response.

00:42:46.400 DeSantis is a very disciplined politician.

00:42:48.280 And you can see it in the way that he's treating the media.

00:42:50.060 You can see the way he's treating Trump, right?

00:42:51.080 Trump is taking shots.

00:42:51.840 And I mean, he's just like, listen, I'm here governing.

00:42:53.500 I'm not going to say a bad word about the president.

00:42:55.040 I'm just going to do what I do.

00:42:56.180 I really wonder what NBC's next move is going to be because they do have this group standards and practices that pours over every single on-air statement.

00:43:03.420 And honestly, those guys are like lawyers who don't want to get sued.

00:43:06.240 So I would have expected them to make her dial it back much more than she just did.

00:43:10.120 And I love the thought that like, oh, without the context that has been newly provided basically by Ibram X. Kendi, which is essentially what she's referring to,

00:43:17.520 no one could ever understand the Civil War or the aftermath of slavery and so on.

00:43:22.120 Baloney, right?

00:43:22.800 People, they've been, we've been understanding it for, you know, a couple hundred years.

00:43:26.340 So it's a lie.

00:43:27.160 So we'll see what their next move is and what his next move is.

00:43:29.440 All right.

00:43:29.600 I want to get to this.

00:43:30.720 I heard you the other day.

00:43:31.620 You did such a great bit on one of my favorite stories.

00:43:33.780 It's horrifying me what they're doing to Roald Dahl.

00:43:35.680 He wrote, of course, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, which became my favorite movie, Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory.

00:43:41.000 And his words and his writings are meant to be intentionally disturbing on some level.

00:43:46.540 That's part of the Roald Dahl effect.

00:43:48.480 I mean, James and the Giant Peach and the BFG and Willy Wonka.

00:43:52.060 We could go down to James and all of it.

00:43:53.820 The Witches.

00:43:54.800 Like, it's kind of creepy and it's kind of dark.

00:43:57.060 And then eventually there's some important message in his work.

00:44:00.340 No more.

00:44:01.280 Now, thanks to his publisher and also his family, they sold eventually, I guess, to Amazon.

00:44:08.600 I think it was an Amazon or Netflix.

00:44:10.580 They're completely revising his books.

00:44:12.300 He's dead.

00:44:12.800 So it's not with his permission.

00:44:13.980 His publisher, Puffin, has made hundreds of changes to the original text, removing many of his colorful descriptions and making his characters, I mean, completely uninteresting.

00:44:21.420 Frankly, here's just a couple of examples.

00:44:23.320 The word fat has been removed from every book.

00:44:25.420 Augustus Klub.

00:44:26.640 No longer.

00:44:27.380 He's not fat.

00:44:28.000 He can't be fat.

00:44:28.500 The Oompa Loompas are no longer tiny.

00:44:30.760 Now, they're just merely small.

00:44:32.340 They're not even men anymore.

00:44:33.520 They're just small people.

00:44:34.460 By the way, I can't remember the book.

00:44:36.060 Well, for sure in the movie, there were no female Oompa Loompas.

00:44:37.920 So I don't know what the problem is.

00:44:39.920 In The Witches, there's a paragraph explaining the witches are bald beneath their wigs.

00:44:45.600 And the new line is, it adds on at the end of the line, there are plenty of other reasons why women might wear wigs.

00:44:52.480 And there is certainly nothing wrong with that.

00:44:54.440 What?

00:44:55.200 What are you saying?

00:44:56.380 The James and the Giant Peach, you know, the weird ants, Ant Sponge and the other one.

00:45:02.420 Spiker.

00:45:02.840 Yeah.

00:45:03.180 Thank you.

00:45:03.660 And Spiker.

00:45:04.120 They were terrifically fat and tremendously flabby.

00:45:06.940 And the other one was thin and dry as a bone.

00:45:09.040 That's all been removed.

00:45:10.100 That's been sanitized.

00:45:11.660 And we could go down the list.

00:45:13.020 They removed all our references to crazy and mad.

00:45:16.000 My favorite was in Matilda.

00:45:17.160 So in Matilda, there's a reference to a series of books that Matilda reads.

00:45:20.260 And it talks about how she's reading Rudyard Kipling.

00:45:22.720 And it talks about how she's...

00:45:23.780 Jane Austen.

00:45:25.460 Right.

00:45:25.680 And so they replaced it with Jane Austen and John Steinbeck.

00:45:27.960 You're not allowed to use Rudyard Kipling anymore.

00:45:30.220 Apparently, he's bad because he's an imperialist.

00:45:32.080 And you're also not allowed to use Joseph Conrad because even though we're all forced to read Heart of Darkness in high school, you're not allowed to mention Joseph Conrad anymore.

00:45:38.380 And they left Ernest Hemingway, which is weird because Ernest Hemingway...

00:45:42.880 Pretty dark.

00:45:43.660 He had a record.

00:45:44.640 I mean, Ernest Hemingway was not great with the ladies, to put it mildly.

00:45:47.640 You know, the insanity of taking these kids' books and then trying to remove the kind of cruelty and meanness of them, the whole point of Roald Dahl's books...

00:45:55.880 And I've read them to my nine-year-old and now my six-year-old.

00:45:58.240 By the way, kids love these books.

00:45:59.640 Yes.

00:45:59.920 And the reason that kids love these books is because the books are mean.

00:46:02.340 Yeah.

00:46:02.700 Okay.

00:46:02.920 It's a dirty little secret about kids.

00:46:04.360 They're mean.

00:46:05.000 Okay.

00:46:05.240 Kids are terrible little people.

00:46:06.280 They're innocent and they're wonderful.

00:46:07.700 And they're terrible small people.

00:46:09.300 They're normal human beings.

00:46:10.200 Yeah.

00:46:10.740 Except more so.

00:46:11.980 And what that means is that teaching them that the world is not the nicest place is actually a way of ushering them into adulthood.

00:46:20.080 Okay.

00:46:20.180 The reality is that...

00:46:21.580 I know that's something very unpopular.

00:46:23.580 Being fat is harder in life than being skinny.

00:46:26.040 Being enormously fat, as Augustus Gloop is, if you can avoid it, it's something you probably should avoid.

00:46:31.820 It's not empowering.

00:46:32.380 The goal should not be to get everybody to embrace fat form.

00:46:35.280 The goal should be to embrace wellness.

00:46:39.540 And wellness requires a level of thinness.

00:46:42.060 It does.

00:46:42.380 Ask your doctor.

00:46:43.040 The whole point of the Augustus Gloop character is that he's not fat because he has a genetic condition.

00:46:46.540 He's fat because he keeps eating everything.

00:46:48.420 Yeah.

00:46:48.560 That's literally the point of the character, right?

00:46:49.880 I mean, if you watch the movie...

00:46:50.780 This is why what you guys are doing at Daily Wire is so important.

00:46:52.580 I mean, honestly, not to make this into a big promo, but you guys are taking this on.

00:46:55.160 You took on Disney.

00:46:55.880 You've created your own children's division now to fight back against this nonsense.

00:46:58.820 Yeah, so we're sinking about $100 million into the making of children's content over the course of the next couple of years.

00:47:03.660 That's going to start coming out in the next few months.

00:47:05.660 And it really is good stuff.

00:47:07.200 It embodies traditional values.

00:47:08.780 It's not going to be sucker punching you.

00:47:10.140 One of the big things that we see all the time is the way that a lot of the major corporations that are making kids' content...

00:47:16.860 It is a spoonful of sugar makes the medicine go down with a lot of these folks.

00:47:19.880 So if you watch the Disney Super Bowl ad, I saw you commented on this, the Disney Super Bowl ad, which was all legacy material, right?

00:47:26.520 They've got Peter Pan in there.

00:47:27.380 Well, if you actually watch Peter Pan on Disney+, there's a placard at the very beginning that warns you about cultural insensitivity.

00:47:31.960 But they were willing to make money off it and feature it in the Super Bowl commercial.

00:47:35.640 And this is true for a lot of the stuff that Disney does.

00:47:37.860 They're perfectly happy to push forward this legacy material.

00:47:40.780 But at the same time, the stuff that they really want you to watch is the proud family lecturing you about white privilege.

00:47:45.800 Right, exactly right.

00:47:46.600 So that's why the Daily Wire, if you don't already subscribe, you must subscribe.

00:47:49.940 There's all sorts of great exclusive content.

00:47:51.860 And you get all sorts of behind-the-scenes things with not just Ben Shapiro, but his favorite Michael Knowles.

00:47:57.200 We love Michael.

00:47:58.760 We love Ben.

00:47:59.560 Thank you so much for being here.

00:48:00.540 Good to see you.

00:48:00.960 Great to see you, too.

00:48:05.380 Alec Murdoch on the stand today.

00:48:08.660 It's unbelievable.

00:48:09.800 Taking a stand in his own defense in a South Carolina courtroom.

00:48:12.980 While Murdoch's lawyers have said all along that Alec may testify, most of us didn't believe it.

00:48:18.060 Most lawyers thought that's just a punk to make the prosecutors spin their wheels and waste their time because most defendants do not take the stand in their own defense.

00:48:26.400 It opens up the door to so much that could be damaging to them.

00:48:29.840 So this is a truly shocking development.

00:48:32.100 Again, Alec is accused of murdering his wife Maggie and his son Paul in 2021.

00:48:36.280 Paul was 22 years old at the time.

00:48:38.280 But on the stand today, he denied that he was a murderer.

00:48:42.260 And my two guests right now have been watching all the developments in this trial since the beginning, including all the testimony today.

00:48:48.160 Peter Tragos is a partner of a law firm in Florida.

00:48:50.540 He's been covering the trial on his YouTube show called The Lawyer You Know.

00:48:54.800 Also with us, Ronnie Richter.

00:48:56.900 He's an attorney in South Carolina and the founding partner of the Bland Richter Law Firm.

00:49:02.160 Guys, thank you so much for being here.

00:49:04.240 I mean, absolutely stunning, absolutely stunning.

00:49:08.520 Peter, let me start with you on your reaction to the fact that he did it.

00:49:12.020 He actually got up on the stand and it's ongoing.

00:49:14.360 It really seems like he did it against the advice of counsel.

00:49:17.380 But I think his lawyers did a good job of setting the record for any appellate issues that, you know,

00:49:22.180 judge, this may have gone differently if all the financial crimes and the side of the road incident and all that didn't come in, judge.

00:49:27.880 Maybe this would have been different, especially if this goes poorly for our client.

00:49:31.520 They might as well have said, because this is going to be an appellate issue.

00:49:34.300 If it goes poorly, if he gets convicted, they've justified.

00:49:36.720 If all this other stuff wouldn't have come in and now he's got to explain himself.

00:49:40.420 Now he's got to talk to this jury.

00:49:41.760 But to me, it seemed like he was pretty resolute.

00:49:44.020 He wanted to talk to this jury regardless of what his lawyer said.

00:49:46.500 Ronnie, I see him up there and I think to myself, this is a guy who always thinks he knows better.

00:49:51.540 This is a guy who's such a skilled and effective and successful for much of his life liar.

00:49:55.940 He's used to doing it and he is convinced that he is, he and he alone can bring this jury over to the promised land.

00:50:03.180 What do you make of it?

00:50:04.620 I agree.

00:50:05.400 I said last night, I would put this in the legal pantheon of bad ideas for him to take the stand.

00:50:10.500 I thought, I thought his defense was frankly doing a pretty good job of creating some people down.

00:50:16.940 I didn't think this was necessary.

00:50:18.540 I thought the only thing you could do is talk your way into jail.

00:50:20.740 But obviously, he's very comfortable in his home court and he feels like these are his people and he can talk to them.

00:50:27.160 It's great.

00:50:27.460 So this courtroom, as I understand it, actually has pictures of his granddad and maybe great granddad who were the prosecutors there, the lead prosecutors in that jurisdiction.

00:50:35.100 It comes from a long line of solicitors, meaning chief prosecutor in the district.

00:50:38.880 It's his courtroom.

00:50:39.880 He's familiar in it.

00:50:40.960 He's tried cases in it, I'm sure, as a trial lawyer himself.

00:50:43.780 And there he is up there just one more time.

00:50:46.740 All I can do is spin this jury.

00:50:49.240 I can spin all the evidence I've heard so far.

00:50:51.700 And he is, I believe, guilty.

00:50:53.920 I don't know whether he's guilty, but I believe he did it.

00:50:56.140 And so he's a master manipulator.

00:50:57.620 Even if you think he didn't do this, but he just did all those financial crimes, he is a master manipulator.

00:51:03.220 And you can see him up there.

00:51:04.340 One of the things I noticed, Peter, is he's talking about the dog collars down at the kennels.

00:51:09.500 He's like, yeah, you were down there.

00:51:10.980 The dogs have five, maybe six collars normally down there that track him.

00:51:16.300 Oh, see, it's me, Alec Murdoch.

00:51:17.620 I just want to help you, members of the jury.

00:51:19.560 That's how precise I am when it comes to facts and wanting to be your very good assistant.

00:51:23.880 I just came up here to set the record straight because you've been so misled by the big, bad prosecutor.

00:51:28.140 Absolutely.

00:51:28.760 And I think that he's spot on with how the defenses performed in their theory of this case is all, you can't prove this.

00:51:36.640 There's not enough evidence.

00:51:37.840 It was a bad investigation.

00:51:39.380 There's reasonable doubt here.

00:51:40.420 And I don't understand.

00:51:41.820 I think there are some cases where the defendant can testify, can do a good job, can help his or her case.

00:51:46.200 But in this situation, when you're saying the investigation was horrible, they don't have enough evidence, they missed evidence, they can't prove this beyond a reasonable doubt, just to put Murdoch up on the stand is going to create issues with exactly what you're saying.

00:51:58.020 People are going to pick apart everything he said.

00:52:00.240 It's either too detailed or it's not detailed enough.

00:52:02.460 That's too simple of an explanation or it's too complicated of an explanation.

00:52:06.640 I don't see how he helps his case when your theory is they can't prove it.

00:52:10.440 They don't know what happened and it's up to them to prove what happened in that 15 or 17 minute period of time.

00:52:15.920 Ronnie, it seemed to me, given the way they began his direct testimony, and I'll play part of this, there was a reason he took that stand.

00:52:25.900 And it was the Snapchat video that Paul, his son, the victim, one of the two, took right before the murders that we've had multiple witnesses testify has Alec Murdoch's voice on it.

00:52:38.900 It was, according to the prosecution's timeline, I think within six minutes of the murders, Alec had told investigators he wasn't there at the time, that he was back at the house taking a nap.

00:52:48.920 And this video is the closest thing we've had in the case to a smoking gun, showing that Alec misled investigators.

00:52:54.880 He was clearly there moments before the murders.

00:52:56.960 He was not back at home sleeping.

00:52:58.540 And that is how they kicked off his testimony.

00:53:02.320 We've got a little bit of it.

00:53:03.600 Listen.

00:53:04.380 Alec, why did you lie to Agent Owen, Agent Croft, and Deputy Rutland about the last time you saw Maggie and Paul?

00:53:11.620 Well, as my addiction evolved over time, I would get in these situations or circumstances where I would get paranoid thinking.

00:53:24.980 And it could be anything that triggered it.

00:53:27.380 It might be a look somebody gave me.

00:53:28.920 It might be a reaction somebody had to something I did.

00:53:32.080 It might be a policeman following me in a car.

00:53:35.580 That night, June 7th, after finding Mags and Paul, don't talk to anybody without Danny with you, all my partners were just repeatedly telling me that I had a deputy sheriff taking gunshot tests from my hands.

00:54:05.580 I'm sitting in a police car with David Owen asking me about my relationship with my wife and my son.

00:54:17.360 And all those things coupled together, after finding them, coupled with my distrust for SLED, caused me to have paranoid thoughts.

00:54:30.100 Ronnie, what did you make of that?

00:54:32.820 Well, I agree with you.

00:54:34.460 If there was a moment that would have compelled him to the stand, it was the fact that he had lied to investigators about his whereabouts at the kennels.

00:54:42.380 But for that fact, I don't think the state really had much of a chance of winning this case.

00:54:46.320 So if there was a moment that he had to speak to, it was this moment.

00:54:49.900 And that explanation is terrible.

00:54:52.260 It's terrible.

00:54:53.140 I mean, the idea that the drugs made me lie.

00:54:57.440 It's a Monday.

00:54:58.260 He's already testified it was a work day.

00:55:00.180 He was completely lucid to go to work that day.

00:55:02.740 He was completely lucid to have dinner with his family.

00:55:05.360 He was completely lucid to drive into town to tend to his mother.

00:55:09.080 But at the moment the investigator showed up and he had to speak to them for the first time, it was the drugs that caused him to tell a lie.

00:55:15.760 And then on a going forward basis, he just maintained that lie.

00:55:19.360 And it was also, according to his testimony, his distrust of SLED.

00:55:24.720 I mean, the family held the solicitor's seat for 100 years.

00:55:28.980 They are SLED.

00:55:30.240 They are law enforcement in Hampton County.

00:55:32.340 So the explanation is preposterous.

00:55:35.360 Did you hear, Peter, did he claim that he took drugs after finding the bodies?

00:55:43.340 Because Ronnie's got a good point.

00:55:44.660 He was doing all this stuff.

00:55:45.820 He looked fine.

00:55:47.080 We saw a videotape of him about an hour prior to that where he's dealing with the families, dealing with the tree that they're replanting.

00:55:53.880 He did not look like somebody who was out of his mind.

00:55:56.320 Did he claim that he saw the bodies and he took a bunch of drugs and they drove him out of his mind and that's why he lied to SLED?

00:56:01.340 No, he specifically said it was his addiction, ongoing addiction, which this guy is getting multimillion dollar verdicts while he's a drug addict on these pills.

00:56:11.800 And I thought he said a very important word in that explanation.

00:56:15.900 And that was these drugs and this addiction create paranoia.

00:56:19.840 And if I'm the attorney general and I get up there and I say, so you were paranoid, you started to hear something and that would make you run down and do bad things, right?

00:56:27.820 Like lie, like lie to law enforcement.

00:56:30.020 And then you spin that into you get this news on six, seven.

00:56:33.380 They were on to you.

00:56:34.120 It's crashing down.

00:56:35.040 Mr. Tinsley's coming after you.

00:56:36.760 You think Maggie and Paul might have sold you out and now you're paranoid.

00:56:39.780 I think that's an easy thing to flip for the AG's office.

00:56:42.240 I think they are sitting over there salivating.

00:56:44.620 They cannot wait for cross-examination.

00:56:46.420 I expect it to be a long cross-examination.

00:56:49.320 And we don't know.

00:56:49.960 We're taping this today at 1 p.m.

00:56:51.720 Eastern.

00:56:52.200 We don't know how long the direct is going to last and when the cross will get started.

00:56:56.960 I'm thinking if you're Dick Harpoulian, you want to make the prosecution get started today.

00:57:02.900 You'd much rather not give them the fresh overnight to do all their prep and sick them on your client the next morning.

00:57:08.500 I don't know.

00:57:09.020 What's your guess on how long the direct testimony goes on?

00:57:11.160 I mean, I think that they're going to continue to go on for most of the day today, but I think you're exactly right.

00:57:17.260 I think they're going to have them start cross.

00:57:18.760 But because it's going to be such a long cross, I think there's no way they don't get the overnight to prep at least some questions tomorrow.

00:57:24.700 There's another word that Alec Murdoch used on the stand today that jumped out at me just as a human, as a woman, as a wife, as a mother.

00:57:32.100 And it was he apologized to his relatives for lying in that bit that we just showed part of.

00:57:37.640 He's admitting now that he lied to the authorities about it when he said, I never went down to the kennels that night prior to finding their dead bodies.

00:57:43.680 And he says, I would never do anything intentionally to hurt them.

00:57:49.380 Meaning Maggie and Paul intentionally.

00:57:50.920 Who would say that?

00:57:52.220 Who would say that?

00:57:53.400 You would say I would never hurt my son.

00:57:55.400 I would never hurt my spouse ever.

00:57:57.120 Like the placeholder of like intentionally in his own mind.

00:58:01.960 I feel like that's sort of his own justification from having done it.

00:58:05.040 Maybe he's telling himself it was the drugs that made him do it or it was the outside pressures that made him do it.

00:58:09.640 But like the real Alec Murdoch wouldn't do it.

00:58:12.420 I just thought that was an odd word that jumped out at me.

00:58:15.280 What did you make, Ronnie?

00:58:16.580 Like listening to him today, because of course he did.

00:58:18.500 OK, so he denied that he killed them.

00:58:20.460 He admitted that he lied about being at the kennels prior to finding the bodies, you know, right around the time of the murders.

00:58:25.880 What else jumped out at you so far that was meaningful about what he said?

00:58:31.680 Well, what's jumped out at me so far, not about his testimony so much, but they keep panning to the audience.

00:58:36.700 And to see the reactions in the audience, we can't see the jury.

00:58:41.100 I'd love to see how they're reacting right now.

00:58:43.180 But not a tear has been shed, not even Buster, not his sister, not his brother.

00:58:49.580 I mean, everyone in attendance is emotionless, which is really striking.

00:58:53.860 So if they're my proxy jury, if the jury's receiving it the same way, then it may be falling on deaf ears.

00:59:00.820 You know, I thought the problem for his testimony was not so much the cross, which we know is going to be withering.

00:59:07.260 I mean, he has to stick the landing on the direct.

00:59:10.220 I mean, if he can't deliver that, if he can't emote and make that connection, then we don't even need to talk about the cross.

00:59:16.300 And again, if the audience is any measure of the jury, I'm not seeing any impact whatsoever on the people inside that courtroom.

00:59:24.160 So, Peter, what's interesting is, yes, he is slick.

00:59:27.320 I mean, I was kind of like, he's so slick.

00:59:30.400 And so he took that stand.

00:59:31.640 He was so casual.

00:59:33.180 And forgive me for using this word in this context, but he was kind of likable.

00:59:37.060 I mean, he the way he talks, you know, there's something about him that's kind of likable, but you don't like him.

00:59:43.920 And that's what he's up against, because this jury, they're not going to fall under his spell.

00:59:48.980 The odds are against that, because even though he has this likable way of talking, they've gotten to know him.

00:59:55.420 We've heard with the last couple of days of testimony, we heard about how he stole money from was it a cop or a relative of a cop who got shot and he was trying to bring a case on that guy's behalf.

01:00:07.580 And he stole the money.

01:00:08.900 He stole the money of his housekeeper who died where he pursued that lawsuit and he got four point whatever million dollars and he didn't tell the young boys about it.

01:00:17.320 He kept it for himself.

01:00:19.100 Meanwhile, the boys were facing financial hardships.

01:00:20.820 He didn't like the jury, I'm going to guess, even if they don't think he committed these murders, arrives at this relationship with him, hating him.

01:00:31.460 Oh, yeah.

01:00:32.060 I mean, I think there's no doubt about it.

01:00:33.400 He's definitely nothing wrong with saying he's a likable guy.

01:00:35.880 He went through his whole career.

01:00:37.160 That's how he got all these clients.

01:00:38.360 That's how he got all these verdicts.

01:00:39.780 That's how he lived his entire life was being likable.

01:00:42.280 And that's why he was able to keep up the scheme as long as he was, because he's a likable guy.

01:00:46.340 But at this point, it's once you really know him, he's not a very likable guy.

01:00:49.600 And I think some testimony came out yesterday.

01:00:51.820 He stole money from his closest friend who was dying of colon cancer.

01:00:54.840 Yes.

01:00:55.140 I mean, it does not stop with what this guy is capable of, which is exactly the reason that they keep propensity evidence out of cases like this, which is I think that's going to be an interesting discussion on appeal.

01:01:07.240 Explain that.

01:01:07.820 I mean, there's a lot of stuff to not like about him.

01:01:10.400 But Mark Ball, one of his law partners yesterday, I know Ronnie knows much more about this than I do, because I know he's been involved in some of this.

01:01:16.780 But Mark Ball yesterday, I thought, put it perfectly.

01:01:20.500 He's a jackass.

01:01:21.700 I don't like him.

01:01:22.440 He's a bad guy for stealing money.

01:01:23.760 But just because he's done all that does not then mean he's done what he's accused of doing here in this courtroom.

01:01:28.740 We have just doesn't mean he didn't do it.

01:01:30.540 We have a little bit of that.

01:01:31.580 We'll play it and then we'll get Ronnie to respond.

01:01:33.320 Go ahead.

01:01:33.540 When September the 2nd hit, it changed everything that I knew about Alec.

01:01:42.920 I would have never believed that a guy that, you know, was like family would have ever stolen from me, would have stolen from his family, would have stolen from his clients or any of that.

01:01:54.660 And so immediately you've got this rage, this emotion that you've got.

01:02:04.060 And then on the 3rd, we go through this whole ordeal of determination.

01:02:09.120 And then the 4th, it hits.

01:02:10.920 And you're like, you know, did the jackass kill himself because of anything else?

01:02:16.580 And then as time progressed on and you see the scope of it, I mean, I don't know the guy that after September the 3rd and leading out, I don't know who that guy is.

01:02:30.860 I mean, that's not Alec that I knew and Alec that I loved and Alec that all of us loved.

01:02:38.380 Just to set that up, Ronnie, for the audience before I get to you, that was him on cross-examination.

01:02:43.040 He was Alec Murdoch's witness, and he's talking about how three months after the double murders, Alec Murdoch staged a fake attempted murder on himself.

01:02:53.740 They said it was an attempt to suicide by, you know, with help from somebody else so that he could get his remaining son a $10 million life insurance policy.

01:03:02.100 Many don't believe that.

01:03:03.080 They think he just was trying to engender sympathy for himself or try to make it look alternatively like the murderer is still out there and now he's after me.

01:03:10.580 That's more the prosecution side.

01:03:11.720 So what are your thoughts on all of that?

01:03:14.380 Yeah, so Mark Ball, I thought he was a compelling witness.

01:03:16.980 I thought he was a real boomerang witness, right?

01:03:18.780 So the defense calls him, you know, really for two purposes.

01:03:21.940 One, to say that the investigation was sloppy because Mark had visited the scene as well and saw things there that disturbed him.

01:03:27.900 We all heard that testimony.

01:03:29.200 Like a golf ball size piece of Paul's skull, which both made you feel like sick and horrified about the nature of this crime,

01:03:37.000 but also reminded you, what was that doing there?

01:03:39.140 Like why the defense is doing a good job of showing us how crappy SLED managed the crime scene.

01:03:45.640 Sorry, go ahead, Ronnie.

01:03:46.700 Yeah, no, no.

01:03:47.120 The forensics are terrible.

01:03:48.460 And if there's a sweet spot for the defense, it's hang on the motive, hang on the forensics, right?

01:03:53.360 So they bring in Mark for that purpose, and by the end of it, Mark has to sit there and catalog all the different thefts that Alex engaged in,

01:04:02.660 all the different victims that he left behind, and then culminate with that testimony that you just played that said,

01:04:08.420 you know, I knew the guy for 30 years.

01:04:10.280 Now looking back on it, I don't think I know him at all.

01:04:12.940 So he is this chameleon.

01:04:15.760 He's a skilled and cunning liar.

01:04:18.240 And it's not just the theft of money, but it's the theft by deceit.

01:04:22.460 And it's Alex's practice of when he's caught in a lie, he's that guy that will not admit it until you've got both shoulders pinned on the mat and a 10 count.

01:04:33.420 And then he'll concede it, but then he'll move on to the next story.

01:04:36.880 Yes, that's what he's doing right now, I believe, with respect to that Snapchat video,

01:04:40.220 where, you know, you had witness after witness because it was just voices.

01:04:43.980 There's a video from an hour before the murders actually showing him.

01:04:47.280 But then there's a video where you just hear him four minutes before, five to six minutes before.

01:04:52.240 And in that one, we had witness after witness say, I am 100 percent sure, who know the family forever, including him.

01:04:57.140 That's Alec. That's Alec Murdoch.

01:04:58.560 That's Alec. That's Paul. And that's Maggie.

01:05:00.420 Moments before the murder, he had no choice but to concede that it had been a lie that when he told law enforcement he wasn't there and he was inside sleeping.

01:05:10.220 So one of the things, so Ronnie points out that no one's shedding a tear yet, Peter.

01:05:14.680 Like, I think people are slightly sitting there arms crossed, you know, defensive, like, mm-mm.

01:05:20.360 But he's working it.

01:05:21.800 And you know who is shedding tears or at least pretending to?

01:05:25.160 Alec Murdoch, who a couple of times broke down in tears or at least purported to.

01:05:31.580 Here's a little bit of that when he's talking about going back to grab a gun from the house.

01:05:37.040 This is the allegedly innocent Alec stumbling upon the crime scene, wondering what's next.

01:05:42.600 It's Sop for 35.

01:05:45.420 Why did you go back to the house to get a gun?

01:05:51.340 I just didn't know.

01:05:52.640 I didn't know.

01:05:53.200 I mean, I didn't know if somebody was still out there.

01:06:06.340 A few moments like that with a sniffing and the voice breaking.

01:06:13.000 I mean, I, to me, that looked like maybe he did.

01:06:16.440 He was, you know, flirting with the verge of tears.

01:06:18.640 But for me, that was because he's probably going to prison for the rest of his life.

01:06:23.040 I mean, that's, is it really that hard to conjure up a few emotional moments if you're that defendant?

01:06:27.100 I don't think it proves that he didn't do it just because he's crying.

01:06:31.580 I think he could still be sad.

01:06:32.640 There could be a lot of regrets, your family, that this happened to.

01:06:35.160 And there were some chunks of saliva and things coming from his nose and mouth that you could literally visibly see as you're watching this.

01:06:42.480 But again, hard to see real tears.

01:06:45.080 But I don't think that whether he cries one way or another is going to prove much because the prosecution did a great job of setting up.

01:06:50.980 This was the kind of guy that would cry in closing arguments to try to manipulate that jury and work the jury to give more and more and more money and run up the score.

01:06:59.020 So I think this was to be expected.

01:07:01.080 I don't think it's going to have the effect that it may have from a normal witness.

01:07:04.540 But I mean, he sure is trying to make it seem like he is just pouring tears up there.

01:07:08.920 Ronnie, you're a South Carolinian.

01:07:10.260 He's he's working the South Carolina thing, right?

01:07:13.640 Talk about his he calls his wife, Maggie, Maggs.

01:07:16.360 He refers to Paul, his dead son, as Pawpaw.

01:07:19.500 And that's what we call him, Pawpaw.

01:07:21.760 Every time he's got his pet name for his boy, whenever he refers to him.

01:07:25.740 He's got the South Carolina thing, you know, talking about his mama and, you know, what she was like and how they love the housekeeper.

01:07:32.640 And I mean, he's leaning into it, I think, is a big manipulation.

01:07:36.300 But what's your reaction to, you know, how he's working that angle and trying to charm this jury?

01:07:42.860 Well, I got to tell you, I'm a native Charlestonian.

01:07:45.820 I mean, we're not all plantation owners down here, so he kind of has rich Southerner problems.

01:07:53.140 And I would worry for him that that's what he's communicating.

01:07:56.420 We don't we don't all have kennels and dove fields and duck ponds and housekeepers and multiple properties.

01:08:03.660 So he's got a whole lot of rich Southern problems going on.

01:08:07.200 And I don't really know how that's touching this jury.

01:08:11.080 He seems to be on his heels about the fact that he touched the bodies.

01:08:16.120 I'm not sure what's happening here, but they spent some time on why he allegedly, again, under his story, walked in.

01:08:24.640 There they are, dead in the kennels, shot, brutally shot.

01:08:28.220 And they talked about, you know, Paul's brain being on the ceilings, this ceiling.

01:08:33.020 This is allegedly what he walked into.

01:08:34.880 And this is Alec discussing at SOT 33.

01:08:37.600 What did you do when you went up to Paul at some point in time?

01:08:46.320 Paul was so, so bad.

01:08:53.120 At some point, I know, I mean, I know I tried to check him for a pulse.

01:08:59.780 I know I tried to turn him over.

01:09:01.440 When you say you're trying to turn him over, why were you trying to turn him over?

01:09:11.120 I don't know.

01:09:12.840 I don't know.

01:09:13.540 I don't know why I tried to turn him over.

01:09:15.500 Me and my boy's laying face down.

01:09:19.980 He's done the way he's done.

01:09:22.540 His head was the way his head was.

01:09:26.780 I could see his brain laying on the sidewalk.

01:09:32.260 What's going on there, Peter?

01:09:34.160 Why are they having this intentional exchange?

01:09:37.980 So, I mean, I think they're trying to explain away why and how he did what he says he did with he was in shock.

01:09:45.280 He's just not sure.

01:09:46.100 Although he was very specific at one point saying that he picked him up by his belt loop and the phone popped out.

01:09:52.120 That was a very specific fact.

01:09:53.680 And you pick somebody up by their belt loop, I guess, as a way that you don't get blood all over you.

01:09:57.220 But again, I'm not sure how he specifically checked their pulses and just got a little bit of blood on the fingertips, which is how he's trying to explain away the fact that there was so little blood on his clothes, but a little bit of blood in the suburban.

01:10:09.520 Here's what they're doing.

01:10:10.840 They're connecting dots with a plausible story that I don't think they needed to call Alec Murdoch to do.

01:10:16.340 I think they could have argued all of this in closing argument without opening him up to cross-examination.

01:10:21.060 He has not given us one single fact the other evidence didn't already point to as the way that the defense is presenting it.

01:10:26.540 And that's why I still so far don't see a reason why the defense called Alec Murdoch, except for the fact that he wanted to take that stand and he wanted to talk to this jury.

01:10:35.720 Right.

01:10:36.300 And if you want to do it as the defendant, you're allowed to do it even if your defense counsel has advised against it.

01:10:41.300 It's ultimately your call.

01:10:43.520 You know, he gets into the crime scene a little and he talks about, you know, sort of arriving there.

01:10:50.220 I wonder, like one of the other big things about that was against him, Ronnie, was the outfit change.

01:10:57.380 You know, he he I think there's new testimony.

01:11:00.040 What I heard this morning was there's new testimony by Alec about his clothes because you had his housekeeper take the stand and talk about him being in one outfit when he went off to work.

01:11:10.740 Then we saw the video on Paul's phone an hour before the murders in which he had on this sort of turquoise T-shirt and khaki pants.

01:11:21.540 Then the next thing we see is him being interrogated by cops after the murders and he's got on shorts and a white shirt.

01:11:28.300 So by my count, the prosecution has gotten in three outfits in front of the jury on the day of the murders.

01:11:34.860 He testified, no, I went to work in that turquoise shirt and pants that were on the video you saw from an hour before the murder.

01:11:45.500 I was working the farm.

01:11:47.860 I was sweaty.

01:11:49.040 I went home.

01:11:50.620 That's when I took a shower because we know from the prosecution's witnesses that the shower had recently been run.

01:11:54.960 The prosecution's getting us to believe it was run after he committed the murders.

01:11:58.840 He says, I was in that seafoam shirt.

01:12:02.860 I went home to shower.

01:12:04.380 I'd been doing the yard work.

01:12:06.000 And that's when I changed into the outfit that you would later see me in.

01:12:09.820 That is, if true, a helpful explanation for the outfit change.

01:12:14.860 How important was that explanation?

01:12:17.740 And how do you reconcile the fact that it seems to conflict with what the housekeeper testified about his outfits earlier in the day?

01:12:24.520 Well, I don't think it was important enough to take the stand for, okay?

01:12:28.840 I mean, I never would have put him on the stand for the purpose of explaining the wardrobe change.

01:12:33.860 And you don't want to set up Alex in a swearing contest with any other person.

01:12:37.600 So if we're going to test the credibility of Alex against the credibility of the housekeeper who said those clothes were never found again,

01:12:45.140 you don't want to compare his credibility to any other witness in this case.

01:12:48.740 So, again, to Peter's point, they're not offering in the evidence, you know, any markers, any points that aren't already there and already available for argument.

01:12:59.220 They don't have to prove a thing.

01:13:00.740 Just the reasonable doubt was there for them, or so I thought it was.

01:13:05.240 I only see himself talking himself into trouble here.

01:13:09.160 And the cross is going to be on this heavily.

01:13:11.960 It's going to be so brutal.

01:13:13.200 And I wonder, though, like with the clothing, I haven't heard this discussed yet, and maybe it's happening right this second,

01:13:20.440 but one of the points has been, okay, you didn't change out of your seafoam shirt and your long pants because you had blood on them.

01:13:30.060 All right, that's your theory.

01:13:31.540 You want us to believe you were just sweaty and you took those off before any murders happened.

01:13:36.420 Let's have them.

01:13:38.080 Let's see them.

01:13:39.240 Give them to me.

01:13:40.000 If an innocent man would say, and they're sitting in my hamper right now with absolutely no blood on them, just my sweat, go ahead, go find them.

01:13:49.720 That's been a big question.

01:13:51.140 And his defenders, Peter, have been saying, not his obligation, prosecution's obligation, go try to find the clothes.

01:13:57.560 But here he is on the stand.

01:13:59.520 Let's hear that one explained.

01:14:00.640 He did with them and let him say I threw him in the hamper or whatever, but I am absolutely in the corner that it is not his duty or obligation.

01:14:11.060 Nobody accused of a crime has to present evidence in the case, has to give evidence to law enforcement, has to waive any of their rights.

01:14:17.560 It's law enforcement and the state attorney's job to prove the case.

01:14:20.580 And I think that's the real point with the clothes, why I think it's kind of a nothing burger, is they didn't search for it.

01:14:26.240 So Blanca can say, Blanca's the housekeeper, can say that she never saw it again.

01:14:30.260 But we've got confirmation from SLED that they didn't go look for it.

01:14:33.280 They didn't look at it.

01:14:33.760 But wait, I agree with you if Alec Murdoch hadn't just taken a stand.

01:14:36.580 But if I am the prosecutor, I'm spending time on this.

01:14:39.980 I'm going to say, so by your story, you threw him in the hamper and then you took a shower.

01:14:44.560 Once you recognize, because you're telling us, you're paranoid.

01:14:46.920 You're so paranoid about law enforcement, you lied to them about whether you've been down to the kennels.

01:14:50.800 So you must have realized it's important for me to maintain those earlier clothes.

01:14:54.000 Somebody's going to think I did an outfit change because I shot my wife and son.

01:14:57.020 What did you do with them?

01:14:57.980 Where are they?

01:14:58.640 What efforts have you made to retrieve them so that you could just show the world, you know, not under a legal obligation to do it.

01:15:04.640 But of course, you'd want to do it morally, ethically as a matter of setting the record.

01:15:08.140 What effort did you make to find your clothes?

01:15:11.480 Two very easy responses to that.

01:15:13.100 I think that they did not need him to take the stand for is he lost a bunch of weight and got rid of a bunch of clothes over some period of time.

01:15:19.340 And he was not charged with this crime for a year.

01:15:22.480 So I don't know where some clothes are I wore a year ago.

01:15:24.780 It's not like this was the next day or the next week that they charge him with the crime and he could go back in his closet and say, here's this shirt.

01:15:30.420 Here are these pants.

01:15:31.320 I got rid of a bunch of stuff over that over that year.

01:15:33.800 I lost a bunch of weight, got off the pills, whatever.

01:15:36.700 My life changed.

01:15:37.640 So I don't know where a lot of my clothes are from back then.

01:15:39.720 Clothes here, clothes there, clothes everywhere.

01:15:41.560 That sled never bothered to search and try to find what clothes were there because they always thought it was the white shirt with the blood spatter on it the entire time until that was disproven.

01:15:50.600 And now they've come up with this alternate theory that it must be on the shirt that we never looked for as law enforcement.

01:15:55.620 What about the one of the other ways in which he's been dinged up in the course of this tribe before taking the stand, Ronnie, is the prosecution had a witness who said he said in the interrogation and there's tape of it and they played the tape and tried to convince us that this is what we heard.

01:16:11.120 Um, I did him so bad with the accent so bad and you can hear, you can hear him saying he, he intentionally in that soundbite, I think that I just played for you said so bad, so bad.

01:16:21.880 But, you know, he did it again and I think he's getting ready to say, you know, of course, I did not say I did him so bad.

01:16:27.300 I said they did him so bad.

01:16:29.520 Is it possible they thought that sort of off piece of testimony because we all heard the tape and people were split on whether they heard they or I.

01:16:37.700 Is it possible they thought that was damaging enough that that's what he's doing up here?

01:16:42.740 No way.

01:16:43.320 No, no way.

01:16:44.060 And I don't see where the state could think that that that statement was valuable enough.

01:16:47.780 I know a big to do was made of it at the time, but I think it amounts to little or nothing.

01:16:54.500 I do think he said they.

01:16:56.520 It sounded to me like they.

01:16:58.540 And frankly, I think he said they did it so bad.

01:17:01.200 And so the question I'd be wanting to ask is, who are they and what is the it?

01:17:06.580 The it is the hit.

01:17:08.280 So if you didn't do it, you obviously know who did.

01:17:11.880 I mean, the more plausible theory is he arranged for something that he thought was going to be a more romantic hit,

01:17:19.140 where it's like the movies and you just put the silencer on the pistol and everybody goes to sleep.

01:17:23.880 And he comes upon this terrible crime scene where they did it so bad.

01:17:28.000 I mean, I don't know what that means.

01:17:30.260 It's not a confession.

01:17:32.160 And it's certainly no reason to put Alec Murdoch on the stand.

01:17:35.220 That's interesting.

01:17:35.780 All right, wait, I want to ask you about that, the possibility that he had somebody else commit the murder rather than himself.

01:17:42.180 But first, let me just take this soundbite.

01:17:45.480 This is from Buster Murdoch, who did take the stand in his father's defense.

01:17:48.780 We'd been speculating all along.

01:17:49.980 Will he?

01:17:50.780 Won't he?

01:17:51.400 If he does take the stand, will it be as a prosecution witness?

01:17:53.740 No, it wasn't.

01:17:54.640 It was as a as a witness for the defense.

01:17:57.680 It wasn't like hugely big, I have to say.

01:18:00.120 But Buster Murdoch was asked about that moment we were just discussing.

01:18:04.120 Here's what he said.

01:18:06.440 Were you here when a video was played of an interview with your dad on June 10th?

01:18:14.980 Yes, sir.

01:18:17.220 And there was a question about whether your dad said I did him so bad or they did him so bad.

01:18:24.760 Do you remember that?

01:18:25.520 Yes, sir.

01:18:28.320 Do you recognize your dad's voice?

01:18:30.060 I do.

01:18:30.920 If you listened to it, would you be able to tell the jury whether it's I or they?

01:18:33.980 Yes, sir.

01:18:36.020 Your dad would like to pull up Exhibit 153, the clip.

01:18:44.080 What did your dad say?

01:18:51.080 He said they did him so bad.

01:18:53.160 Was that the first time you'd heard him say they did him so bad?

01:18:56.200 No, sir.

01:18:57.360 When was the first time you heard him say they did him so bad?

01:19:00.140 First time I heard him say that was the night that I went down to Moselle, the night of June the 7th.

01:19:06.060 Did he say that more than one time?

01:19:07.740 He did.

01:19:09.340 You guys tell me, but the biggest point of Buster was to show the jury Buster still believes in his dad.

01:19:15.220 Buster knows better than anybody whether his dad is capable of this and is still on his side.

01:19:20.820 What do you think, Peter?

01:19:21.640 Yeah, I mean, that's what I said.

01:19:24.120 I said I think it's huge for the defense when it first happened.

01:19:26.580 Everybody's like, what?

01:19:27.940 He didn't even say anything.

01:19:29.020 What's the big deal that he testified for the defense?

01:19:31.760 He didn't do anything to help his dad.

01:19:33.180 He was emotionless.

01:19:34.620 He said, I'm old enough to remember at the beginning of the trial when a lot of us were discussing, is he going to testify for the state?

01:19:39.980 Is he going to testify to the defense?

01:19:41.240 Is he going to sit behind the state?

01:19:42.780 Is he going to sit behind the defense?

01:19:44.140 Who is he supporting?

01:19:44.860 The fact that he was a witness for his dad clearly does not believe his dad did this.

01:19:49.700 I think was a huge win for the defense, even though not a ton came out of his testimony.

01:19:53.860 I agree with you.

01:19:54.320 It wasn't all that impactful.

01:19:56.020 It got a couple of points across.

01:19:57.360 But the overall theme that he still supports his dad and does not believe his dad did this, he saw his dad the night of right after it happened.

01:20:04.000 He spoke to his dad after the murders occurred while his dad was driving to his grandmother's house.

01:20:09.060 And he seemed totally normal.

01:20:10.220 And then he was with his dad the days following.

01:20:13.620 I think that was important for the defense that he came and just testified at all to support his dad.

01:20:17.760 All right.

01:20:18.020 I'm going to take a quick break.

01:20:19.180 But when we come back, I want to talk about what Alec Murdoch says the story is of that night.

01:20:24.480 He told the story.

01:20:25.320 He is now on record as having said exactly what happened in the house that night.

01:20:29.740 It was all very matter of fact, very normal evening, clearly trying to show this jury like nothing unusual was amiss.

01:20:36.680 You know, I had no reason to believe anything was going to happen, and I wasn't involved.

01:20:40.680 It was very interesting the way he sort of spun it as just a normal night at home for a normal American family.

01:20:46.880 We'll pick it up there with Ronnie and Peter right after this.

01:20:51.760 This is the interesting thing, Peter, is he's now and he's the only person who can do it, telling us the story of what allegedly happened that day.

01:20:59.940 And maybe you can just help the audience understand Alec's story on, you know, what the day looked like.

01:21:06.040 He went to work, and then he talks about getting back to Moselle, which is how they refer to their property.

01:21:10.320 And maybe you can outline for us just a bit of, like, what he says happened, how his evening went.

01:21:14.620 Hanging out with Paul, just doing stuff around the farm, and then they get back to the house.

01:21:19.240 Blanca's made dinner.

01:21:20.320 Paul eats it fast.

01:21:21.840 He sits down with Maggie in their den.

01:21:23.620 The TV's on, which is important because the TV stays on later.

01:21:27.440 When we had the audible expert about how he couldn't hear the gunshots, he makes sure to let us know the TV's on.

01:21:32.520 They eat dinner together.

01:21:34.660 Maggie goes down to the kennels first.

01:21:36.440 Alec doesn't want to go because he's already showered.

01:21:38.440 He doesn't want to mess with the dogs anymore because he was sweaty.

01:21:41.200 He already showered and changed into the white T-shirt and the green slash khaki shorts.

01:21:46.620 Eventually, he goes down to the kennel.

01:21:48.880 He is there at 844, which we have video proof of.

01:21:51.720 But then he leaves immediately after, goes back to the house, and he tries to fit in, I think, some of the story that he's already told Sled, which we know is not true.

01:22:00.260 That he lays down on the couch, maybe dozed off for a couple minutes, and then he leaves shortly after 9 o'clock, drives straight to mom's house, hangs out with mom for a while, drives straight back, finds the bodies, calls 911.

01:22:13.560 And again, it's easy to explain on direct that I was on 911, I was checking pulses, doing stuff with the bodies.

01:22:21.180 But I think the state is going to nitpick over how many seconds he had to actually check the pulse for when he called 911, when he told them he's already checked the pulse.

01:22:31.360 He didn't say I'm actively doing this stuff.

01:22:33.760 And I think that I've seen some tweets and some DMs come through already to me that he's doing a great job.

01:22:38.440 This is the easy part, and I don't think a lot of what's happened on direct has been necessary.

01:22:43.560 So when Cross comes, that's when we're going to find what kind of job he did on the stand.

01:22:46.560 He also, Ronnie, seemed to feel the need to address the testimony from the SLED agent at the end of the prosecution's case, who said on Alec's phone, they had pinpointed when he would have been standing over the two dead bodies, that Alec had allegedly searched up a restaurant on Google and possibly taken a look at a bikini photo of a woman that had been sent to him or that was on his phone.

01:23:13.060 You know, they can tell everything you do on your phone these days. Alec spoke to that today. Here's a bit of what he said.

01:23:20.000 How do you account for that?

01:23:22.120 Obviously, they're unintentional. I mean, I'm doing something with my phone trying to call people, but I'm not trying to call those people.

01:23:29.100 I'm not doing a Google search for any Whaley's restaurant, and I'm certainly not reading any texts.

01:23:35.820 What do you make of that, Ronnie? Because it's like if the phone says you did it, you did do it.

01:23:40.740 You know, I thought he gave a good account for that.

01:23:44.860 I mean, to me, it makes perfect sense that you're in some panic phase and, you know, your fingers are clumsily playing with the phone.

01:23:53.680 And obviously, he activated some data.

01:23:56.280 He revived some old search.

01:23:58.800 So I thought he gave a good account for that.

01:24:00.540 I think the part that got really sketchy for him and, I mean, Peter's recall of the events was just spot on.

01:24:06.660 But where the timeline is really dodgy is from that 845 to the 907, because we now know he was there at 845.

01:24:16.320 According to his testimony, after the video, some time was spent getting the chicken out of Bubba's mouth, right?

01:24:23.340 The dodge.

01:24:23.720 So there's still some time there at the kennel.

01:24:26.300 Some time was occupied getting back to the house.

01:24:29.660 He then says that maybe he dozed off.

01:24:32.460 But he's on the move by 907.

01:24:36.320 So that's a very tight window.

01:24:38.700 I mean, at 845, we know he's at the kennel.

01:24:41.300 He's still there for a period of time after that.

01:24:44.240 He gets back to the house.

01:24:45.580 To me, it feels like the perfect amount of time to get back to the house and then haul butt down to Alameda.

01:24:53.960 We know from the OnStar that he went at high speed back and forth to get to his mom's house.

01:24:59.120 But it's an odd point in time to say it's at that moment that I decided I need to go see mom.

01:25:06.840 And he's off.

01:25:08.640 So I think that window is tough.

01:25:10.700 I decided to squeeze in a quick nap when you're just off of your visit to the kennels.

01:25:16.640 It's not like you've been sitting there for two hours watching some boring television show.

01:25:19.760 You're awake.

01:25:20.540 You're up.

01:25:21.020 You were up moments ago.

01:25:22.500 And it's almost time to go to bed anyway.

01:25:24.380 You're approaching 9 p.m. at night.

01:25:25.800 Who takes a nap?

01:25:27.540 But he's got to say that because that's what he originally told law enforcement.

01:25:31.140 And yeah, then he pops back up.

01:25:32.880 Can you speak to Peter something that's been bothering me?

01:25:34.980 And I don't know exactly how this works.

01:25:36.580 But what's the evidence of Maggie's cell phone allegedly being with Alec Murdoch in the car on the way to the mother's?

01:25:44.600 I mean, did that testimony come in?

01:25:47.500 I don't feel like that's what the evidence has shown so far.

01:25:50.960 I actually think that the defendant's theory of he couldn't have thrown it out the window at that time based on the movements of the cell phone,

01:25:57.820 based on how fast his car was driving, based on what time his car crossed the spot where they found Maggie's cell phone.

01:26:05.620 I actually don't think any of that lines up.

01:26:08.140 And I think Ronnie's timeline there gave Alec even a little bit of the benefit of the doubt,

01:26:13.400 because I think between 902 and 906 is when we saw all those steps taken by Alec, 200 and something steps.

01:26:20.820 But Ronnie's kind of given him until 907 before he left for moms, which is true.

01:26:25.800 But what was he doing from 902 to 906?

01:26:28.020 He was not napping.

01:26:29.140 Where was he walking?

01:26:30.340 Things like that, I think he's going to have to explain.

01:26:33.460 Where were you?

01:26:34.140 You obviously weren't sitting on the couch dozing off.

01:26:36.380 Did it take you 270 steps to walk to the car?

01:26:38.920 That doesn't make sense.

01:26:40.160 So I think he's going to have to answer all of those questions.

01:26:43.320 But one other thing, Ronnie and I seem to be in lockstep.

01:26:46.060 We haven't talked about this before.

01:26:47.880 The only thing I would push back a little bit on if I was the defense is,

01:26:51.460 I don't think he sped to and from moms.

01:26:53.860 I think the fact that it took him 16 minutes on the way there and 18 minutes on the way back,

01:26:57.940 and when SLED did a test drive, it took them 17 minutes, it's more likely he was passing

01:27:01.960 a car or going faster and slower.

01:27:03.820 But it took him about the right amount of time to get to moms and back.

01:27:08.480 So I think each side has a lot of good arguments with this evidence, which is why I felt like

01:27:13.420 it was a mistake for him to take the stand.

01:27:15.020 Because the OnStar shows that he went at least 80 miles an hour in the car, but that could be in a moment.

01:27:18.940 We all know when you're trying to pass another car, you put it into a different gear and then

01:27:22.280 you slow back down.

01:27:23.940 All right.

01:27:24.200 So if we go with that timeline, 844, he's on the tape.

01:27:27.040 We know he was at the kennels, but at 844.

01:27:28.760 And then you say, the story is that he then had to deal with getting the chicken or the

01:27:32.640 guinea or whatever it was out of the dog's mouth.

01:27:35.000 So that eats up another minute or two.

01:27:36.560 And then he goes back to the home.

01:27:38.920 Then he allegedly lays down.

01:27:41.760 We don't know exactly.

01:27:42.620 Lies down.

01:27:43.660 And then by 902, the fast footsteps start.

01:27:46.880 We've got that, too.

01:27:47.920 The iPhone shows everything.

01:27:49.340 So he's definitely moving around.

01:27:50.840 So 844, let's call it 846, 847 by the time he's back home.

01:27:54.260 So now you got, what, 13 minutes plus two after nine.

01:27:56.960 That's 15 minutes to squeeze in your nap and then get up and start walking around super

01:28:02.440 fast.

01:28:03.060 That's his version, right?

01:28:04.100 That's the best he could be stuck with right now.

01:28:08.220 Which he didn't have to testify for us to get.

01:28:10.320 I mean, they could have argued all that.

01:28:11.660 He's literally given us no details that makes it more or less reasonable that that's what

01:28:15.900 he did.

01:28:16.200 What do you think, Ronnie?

01:28:16.900 Well, I agree 100%.

01:28:18.800 If anything, he ate into that same timeline by volunteering that he spent some time with

01:28:24.360 the chicken or the guinea or whatever it was.

01:28:26.660 And he said, he misstated it was 100 yards of the house.

01:28:30.240 It's actually 1,100 feet.

01:28:31.920 So maybe even more time to get back to the house.

01:28:35.300 So that narrow window from 844 is even tighter.

01:28:38.840 And it really dispels the idea that the guy could have sat down and taken a nap.

01:28:42.220 I mean, that's completely not believable.

01:28:43.800 So the testimony from law enforcement, no, forgive me, from the defense witness, the so-called

01:28:49.060 expert witness who, I mean, I don't know how much of an expert this guy was in like actual

01:28:54.180 forensics of a crime scene or firearms.

01:28:56.620 It seemed to me they found a guy who they'd been using in another way.

01:29:00.960 And the guy agreed to be their expert in this.

01:29:02.760 And that's the guy who was like, couldn't be Alec Murdoch because Alec Murdoch is 6'4".

01:29:06.720 And I think that this shooter was either 5'2 or 5'4", given the way the bullets entered the victims.

01:29:12.420 But that guy, I think, is the one who testified you couldn't necessarily hear the rifle, the

01:29:19.520 shot of a shotgun back at the house.

01:29:23.500 And correct me if I'm wrong, but, Ronnie, they had the prosecution did not introduce any

01:29:28.280 testimony on that.

01:29:29.400 They probably didn't go there because they didn't want to know if it was they just want

01:29:32.860 people to assume you could hear a shotgun up at the house, 1,100 feet away or whatever

01:29:36.380 it was.

01:29:37.380 But how important was that moment where he said he gave Alec cover that if he were in

01:29:42.360 the house and if the TV were on and if he were snoozing or close to it, you might not

01:29:47.760 hear these gunshots.

01:29:49.640 No, that was definitely a defense win.

01:29:51.600 The rest of his testimony, the 5'2 shooter theory, I mean, humans have knees, so that's

01:29:57.220 completely without value.

01:29:58.880 But, you know, the decibel testing is pretty objective.

01:30:02.880 And the methodology they used sounded very reasonable to me.

01:30:06.380 So it was an issue that bothered me about the case, that if you are at the house and

01:30:11.140 I accept that, how did you not hear World War III break out in the side yard?

01:30:16.020 Well, they did a pretty adequate job of explaining that and, again, creating more reasonable doubt

01:30:20.760 about the state's case, all the more reason, again, not to call Alex Murdoch.

01:30:24.780 You know, the other thing they seem to be doing, Peter, is addressing whether he lured Maggie

01:30:29.960 and Paul to the crime scene.

01:30:32.660 Can you speak to that at all?

01:30:33.560 Yeah, I think there's been some testimony of that.

01:30:36.720 I don't feel like it's particularly something that is going to be probative in the jury's

01:30:42.980 mind to prove that this proves that he did it.

01:30:45.560 We've had some other testimony of other reasons Paul may have come because of the dealings

01:30:49.600 with the sunflower plants or whatever they're doing on the farm.

01:30:53.200 Um, we had some testimony recently of Ms. Mixon, one of the caretakers who called Alec and told

01:30:59.100 him, you know, you got to come see mom.

01:31:01.000 And this was at four o'clock.

01:31:02.360 So at some point he found out he does have to go see his mom.

01:31:05.200 And then he's talking to Maggie about that.

01:31:07.080 But if Maggie wasn't going to be staying at Moselle, the dogs wouldn't have been there

01:31:10.420 and the dogs were there.

01:31:11.440 So I feel like there's been some testimony on both sides of that.

01:31:14.360 But I think it's definitely going to be something that's in the state's mind to, um, show that

01:31:20.140 this was all planned.

01:31:21.220 He was the only one that knew they were there.

01:31:23.080 They weren't planning on going there, but for that day.

01:31:25.560 But then how does that fit in with the motive of everything's coming, crashing down that

01:31:29.560 day?

01:31:29.780 Because he gets confronted with the check.

01:31:31.460 What time exactly was he confronted with the check versus when he calls Maggie to show

01:31:35.620 up, the state never put, in my opinion, a clean timeline of motive and getting them

01:31:42.960 to Moselle at the right time to commit this crime, to then show up at mom's house to create

01:31:48.640 this alibi.

01:31:49.720 Instead, they've just kind of given conclusory statements about, oh, this is what happened.

01:31:54.280 He lured them there.

01:31:55.520 Financial motive was closing in, decided to kill them and then create an alibi.

01:31:59.480 And again, I think that goes just not the state attorney's fault or the attorney general's

01:32:03.600 fault, but that goes to the investigation that goes to SLED.

01:32:06.340 They're just missing a lot of evidence that they would have.

01:32:08.360 I thought they did a good job of establishing that he lured Maggie there, that, that, uh,

01:32:12.080 the sister talked about how he got her there by saying, I want you here to go visit.

01:32:16.900 I can't remember which of the parents, both of his parents were ailing, but I want you

01:32:19.700 to come, uh, to visit the parents and that the sister felt so bad.

01:32:22.900 She cried on the stand saying, I told her to do it.

01:32:25.140 You know, it's like the parent, you need to go.

01:32:27.840 So that to me actually was persuasive.

01:32:30.400 Um, I'll say one of the thing about the timeline before Alec, they,

01:32:33.600 put on a friend of Paul Murdoch and the prosecution got that guy to admit that Paul's

01:32:39.180 schedule was erratic, that it was totally unpredictable, that you never knew where he

01:32:43.060 was going to be.

01:32:44.280 And I thought, I was guessing that the reason for that was, um, the prosecution is trying

01:32:50.200 to undermine that, um, like some intruders, like somebody who was lying in wait could have

01:32:56.460 known that Paul was going to be at the kennels that night at 9 PM and committed this murder

01:33:00.720 that only somebody who was very close to him, like a dad would know exactly where he was.

01:33:05.360 Um, that brings me to, before we go, Ronnie, that your thought, do you believe that there

01:33:09.960 is a possibility Alec Murdoch wasn't the trigger man that Alec Murdoch may have hired another

01:33:15.900 murderer who committed these crimes?

01:33:18.100 Yeah, absolutely.

01:33:19.180 You know, if, if you had asked at the end of the state's case that they proved that

01:33:22.260 Alex pulled the trigger on the gun that killed Paul, I don't think so.

01:33:25.760 Or did they prove that Alec, you know, pulled the trigger on the gun that killed Maggie?

01:33:29.820 I don't think so.

01:33:30.940 If the question was, did they prove that Alec was involved in some way?

01:33:35.640 I think absolutely.

01:33:37.480 That, you know, the absence of any other viable, um, suspects, um, his presence at the, at

01:33:43.220 the kennels, his lies about being there.

01:33:45.340 Um, the fact that, that weapons from the house appear to have been used in the commission of

01:33:50.700 the crimes, um, his association with drug dealers, his $50,000 a week habit, if he really

01:33:55.740 had one, I mean, did he, did he have involvement?

01:33:58.340 Yes.

01:33:58.980 Um, is he the trigger man?

01:34:01.840 I don't know about that.

01:34:03.620 I know.

01:34:03.840 I feel as you guys do that as compelling as the case is, and I do think he's guilty.

01:34:09.240 It's my opinion.

01:34:10.180 And, um, they've been doing a pretty good job of establishing reasonable doubt, especially

01:34:14.320 with their attacks on SLED.

01:34:15.780 And it's stunning to me that they would take this risk.

01:34:18.560 I realized they had a couple of things to explain, but it's just stunning.

01:34:21.860 Ronnie, Peter, please come back.

01:34:23.240 That was a great discussion.

01:34:24.180 Really appreciate it.

01:34:26.040 Thank you.

01:34:26.960 And we'll continue our coverage of this trial tomorrow.

01:34:28.720 How will the cross-examination go?

01:34:31.020 That's really the thing to keep your eye on.

01:34:33.340 We will soon find out and we'll have it covered for you on the next program.

01:34:36.260 Thanks for listening to The Megyn Kelly Show.

01:34:41.980 No BS, no agenda, and no fear.

The Megyn Kelly Show - February 23, 2023

Alex Murdaugh Takes the Stand and MSNBC’s ‘Non-Apology’ to DeSantis, with Ben Shapiro, Ronnie Ritcher, and Peter Tragos ｜ Ep. 499

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