The Megyn Kelly Show - ＂America First＂ and Trump's ＂Don-roe Doctrine,＂ and Tim Walz DROPS OUT Amid Fraud Scandal, with Walter Kirn and Aaron Mate ｜ Ep. 1223

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00:01:00.800 Welcome to The Megyn Kelly Show.

00:01:02.600 Live on Sirius XM Channel 111 every weekday at New East.

00:01:12.540 Hey everyone, I'm Megyn Kelly.

00:01:14.300 Welcome to The Megyn Kelly Show.

00:01:16.040 We're back.

00:01:16.960 We're so happy to be back with you.

00:01:19.240 We hope you all had a wonderful holiday season and new year with your family and friends.

00:01:24.600 I was just saying to the team, I love the time off.

00:01:27.160 I love being with my family.

00:01:28.760 I love when my kids are not in school and I can have so much time with them directly.

00:01:32.480 But by the second week, I was going a little stir crazy.

00:01:35.800 I'm not going to lie.

00:01:36.540 I miss being with you all.

00:01:37.980 I miss doing the show.

00:01:39.120 It's like my therapy.

00:01:40.640 And without my therapy, I don't know what to do.

00:01:42.580 I was like, weirdlessly idle, you know, weirdly idle.

00:01:46.860 Like, you think you're going to do all these things.

00:01:50.720 You're going to read every book and you're going to do everything on your to-do list and

00:01:53.880 answer every single email.

00:01:54.920 That's not really how it happened.

00:01:56.600 I don't know about you.

00:01:57.380 I don't know what to do with myself.

00:01:58.940 We did ski some, though the snow wasn't great in Montana.

00:02:02.700 If you haven't checked out my Instagram to see the bear that emerged on the ski trail

00:02:07.720 because it was so warm, you should.

00:02:11.140 In any event, it's a long-winded way of saying, I missed you.

00:02:14.480 I'm thrilled to be back with you.

00:02:16.480 And boy, oh boy, are we starting the new year with a bang.

00:02:20.700 A news cycle that is breaking on multiple fronts at this hour.

00:02:24.060 Just getting ready for the show this morning, we had Tim Walz announce that he's dropping

00:02:30.020 out of politics in the wake of that Nick Shirley report and other reporting on Minnesota

00:02:34.820 fraud, which has been out of control.

00:02:36.760 We, of course, appear to have launched some sort of military action in Venezuela.

00:02:41.740 We're claiming that it was just in support of a law enforcement effort, but somewhere

00:02:46.860 between 40 and 80 people in Venezuela are dead.

00:02:50.700 So query just how military and just how legal it was.

00:02:54.800 We're going to get into that in detail.

00:02:56.580 We've got President Trump saying Cuba needs to watch out.

00:03:00.320 So does Colombia, Mexico, and Iran.

00:03:03.100 Oh, and possibly Greenland.

00:03:04.360 And, okay, all while Venezuela's former leader is in a New York City courtroom today after

00:03:11.280 having been captured and arrested in this daring mission on Saturday by U.S. Delta Force operators.

00:03:17.540 What else?

00:03:18.200 Oh, just before we came to air, the New York Times dropped an interview with Brian Kohlberger's

00:03:22.440 sister, who for the first time is defending her family, not exactly her brother.

00:03:28.660 And then we find out that there was a 26-year-old man who took a hammer and yesterday tried to

00:03:36.540 break into Vice President J.D. 0.96

00:03:38.280 Vance's Ohio home.

00:03:40.800 And by the way, we have some serious questions about that so-called, quote, man.

00:03:46.780 We'll get into it.

00:03:48.200 But there's a lot to get to.

00:03:49.780 But we're going to start with what's happening in Venezuela, obviously, and the newly coined

00:03:53.620 phrase, the Don Roe Doctrine.

00:03:56.900 That's President Trump's term to represent his foreign policy maneuverings.

00:04:02.160 Now, in just a bit, we're going to be joined by Walter Kern, who is more supportive of President

00:04:07.280 Trump's actions in Venezuela.

00:04:08.700 And by the way, his publication is one of the ones that first broke the fraudulent activities

00:04:17.140 in Minnesota.

00:04:18.140 So he, too, had a direct hand in Tim Walz's stunning announcement today.

00:04:23.740 The only real question I have about Tim Walz is whether he's going to jail.

00:04:27.660 I mean, truly, that's what I'm wondering. 0.99

00:04:29.420 And what about Keith Ellison, his obviously corrupt attorney general who let this shit happen? 0.99

00:04:35.740 I mean, he's on tape. 0.99

00:04:37.280 We'll play some of it for you, seeming to be just fine with what the Somalis were doing. 0.99

00:04:43.380 So he's the perfect person to get into a lot of this with.

00:04:46.660 But we begin with a friend of the show who's been more critical of Trump's actions.

00:04:50.780 And I, having read everything over the past 48 hours, the supporters, the detractors, the

00:04:57.200 Republicans, the Democrats, I really think this is something we need to consider both sides

00:05:03.460 on.

00:05:03.760 I really do.

00:05:04.320 I don't think.

00:05:05.500 Let me just tell you something.

00:05:06.600 When I was at Fox News, which was a long time, 14 years, I would have known exactly

00:05:11.220 what to do in the wake of Trump's attack in Venezuela, his retrieval, shall we say, to

00:05:16.960 put it in mild terms, of Nicolas Maduro.

00:05:19.800 I would have known that I was supposed to cheerlead it.

00:05:23.000 And I turned on Fox News yesterday, and I'm sorry, but it was like watching Russian propaganda.

00:05:29.360 There was nothing skeptical.

00:05:31.040 It was all rah, rah, cheerleading.

00:05:34.260 Yes, let's go.

00:05:35.500 And that's fine.

00:05:36.360 I love our military as much as anyone.

00:05:38.620 And I believe in President Trump.

00:05:40.340 But there are serious reasons to just exercise a note of caution before we just get on the

00:05:46.580 rah, rah train.

00:05:48.360 All right.

00:05:48.560 I have done that enough times in my career as a Fox News anchor to have been embarrassed

00:05:55.880 enough to know I'm going to stay on the yellow light for this.

00:06:01.120 I'm not in the green light territory.

00:06:02.860 I'm not in the red light territory either, but I am staying in the yellow light territory

00:06:07.260 for now.

00:06:09.340 I see all of the strategic advantages of what he's done.

00:06:13.140 Trust me, I do.

00:06:14.340 I see that other countries like Russia and China and Cuba were all over Venezuela and its 0.83

00:06:21.180 oil posing a potential threat to the United States.

00:06:23.960 I get that.

00:06:24.500 That's actually the most persuasive argument and obviously the real one and none of this 0.97

00:06:28.220 bullshit about law enforcement. 0.69

00:06:29.320 But I have seen what happens when you cheerlead unabashedly U.S. intervention in foreign countries 0.99

00:06:38.460 thinking it's for our good and for the national, the international good, only to wind up with

00:06:43.640 what we've called quagmire in places like Iraq, not to mention Libya.

00:06:52.160 We're not great at going into these foreign countries, decapitating them at the leadership 1.00

00:06:57.740 level and then saying either we're going to steer the country to a better place or it's

00:07:03.160 going to steer itself.

00:07:04.480 Either one.

00:07:05.720 They just nine times out of 10, they don't work out well.

00:07:09.500 And what does it mean in terms of boots on the ground?

00:07:11.700 Trump is saying, I'm actually fine with that in Venezuela.

00:07:14.440 Well, whose boots?

00:07:15.620 Because I have a 16 year old boy and I have a 12 year old boy and I have a 14 year old

00:07:20.040 girl.

00:07:20.380 And a lot of my listeners have children, too, who are actually the ones who might have to

00:07:24.440 fill the boots.

00:07:25.120 So I think I speak for a lot of moms and dads, for that matter, when I say I'm staying in

00:07:30.920 yellow territory until we know more.

00:07:33.940 And I will not be joining the Fox News cheerleading brigade this time.

00:07:39.020 I've been burned too many times.

00:07:42.040 So that's why we're beginning the show with Aaron Maté.

00:07:45.820 He's an independent journalist. 0.98

00:07:47.480 He's co-host of the Useful Idiots podcast. 0.97

00:07:50.060 And he was one of the journalists who challenged the allegations of collusion by President Trump 0.97

00:07:54.700 and the Russian government back in 2016. 0.94

00:07:56.160 He knew that was bullshit before most did, even though he wasn't exactly a Trump supporter. 0.97

00:08:01.380 He called a spade a spade back at the time. 0.93

00:08:04.580 Aaron, again, is not supportive of the Trump administration's actions this weekend.

00:08:07.920 He says it was nothing short of a kidnapping of Maduro.

00:08:10.700 And he's back to offer that piece of the analysis for us.

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00:09:21.340 Aaron, welcome back.

00:09:22.380 Great to see you.

00:09:22.940 So outline, broad brush for us, if you will, why you object to what the United States did in Venezuela on Saturday morning.

00:09:32.620 Megan, thanks for having me.

00:09:33.700 And I appreciate you being open to a dissenting perspective on this.

00:09:37.380 It's important we have debate.

00:09:38.500 And in fairness to Fox News, it wasn't just Fox News that is cheerleading this.

00:09:41.760 You could see so many major news networks cheering this on, CBS News and NBC.

00:09:49.280 So this truly, which underscores that this is a, even though this is Trump's policy, it is bipartisan.

00:09:54.620 There's been a regime change campaign going on in Venezuela by the U.S. for a very, very long time, which everybody in power has supported.

00:10:01.700 And it's important to raise questions and to, you know, challenge the assumptions that have been made to justify this campaign.

00:10:08.820 The reason why I object to this is, first of all, I don't think we have the right to regime change foreign countries.

00:10:15.120 We don't accept foreign countries interfering in the U.S. 0.83

00:10:18.380 If we believe in the rule of law, international law, you know, states being equal, states having rights, we don't have the right to go and overthrow a foreign government just because we don't like them.

00:10:28.220 And in Venezuela in particular, it's obvious why we've been doing it.

00:10:32.020 I mean, Trump, to his credit, has been very clear about this.

00:10:34.200 It's for their oil.

00:10:36.100 He said that on Saturday that we're going to take their oil under the so-called Donro Doctrine.

00:10:41.660 And I don't grant any state the right to do that.

00:10:44.720 It's also going to have serious human consequences.

00:10:48.560 As you mentioned earlier, people were already killed in this attack, which hasn't gotten very much coverage.

00:10:53.080 But dozens of people, at least, were killed, including civilians inside Venezuela.

00:10:58.020 And if this regime change campaign escalates, many more will be fated to die, including possibly, as you mentioned, U.S. soldiers who will be forced to go in and finish the job.

00:11:09.360 But this has been going on for a very, very long time.

00:11:11.780 A brief history, you know, Venezuela first faced a U.S.-backed regime change campaign back in the early 2000s when the Bush administration supported the ouster of Hugo Chavez.

00:11:23.740 Tried to install someone who tried to cancel the Constitution.

00:11:27.740 That was reversed by popular uprising and loyalist military members.

00:11:31.720 But the campaign has continued ever since.

00:11:33.900 And it's been pursued in recent years with sanctions that have had devastating consequences to Venezuela, which then is subsequently used as a pretext to justify regime change.

00:11:45.660 So, for example, there have been many migrants coming from Venezuela.

00:11:48.340 And then if you listen to Marco Rubio, he says, this is one of the reasons why we have to intervene, because we have to stop this migration crisis. 0.97

00:11:54.920 Well, what doesn't get mentioned by Marco Rubio and most media accounts of this is that the sanctions we imposed on Venezuela knowingly caused migration.

00:12:04.140 Thomas Shannon, who served under Trump in his first term at the State Department, he warned at the time that, in his words, the sanctions were going to grind the Venezuelan economy into dust and have huge human consequences, one of which would be out-migration.

00:12:18.740 And that's predictable.

00:12:19.740 When you target a country's economy with crippling sanctions, especially Venezuela's oil industry, which accounts for most of its revenue, you're going to cause economic misery.

00:12:30.000 A lot of people fled that as a result.

00:12:32.340 So then we take the migrants and the fact that they're fleeing, and we use that as a pretext to go and overthrow the government, when it's the regime change effort to begin with that has caused this.

00:12:42.980 So, look, legally, I don't think we have the right to.

00:12:46.080 And in terms of consequences, I just think this is a disaster for everybody, because as we've seen, regime change campaigns abroad have spell over effects everywhere, including inside the U.S.

00:12:55.360 You know, the one thing I keep thinking about is, before we got Gaddafi in Libya, and that place just turned into a hellhole, we were having sort of proxy fights with Libya.

00:13:10.040 I mean, they weren't really proxy.

00:13:11.120 It was kind of on the nose.

00:13:12.340 But they were conducting certain terrorist operations against us, and then we conducted certain military operations against Libya.

00:13:22.440 And it all culminated in the bombing of Pan Am Flight 103 over Lockerbie, Scotland, by Libya. 0.69

00:13:32.920 And that was one of my first introductions to international terrorism as a young woman, because I was starting at Syracuse University in 1988.

00:13:42.940 And it happened that there were 35 Syracuse University students on board Pan Am 103.

00:13:49.040 They had been studying abroad in London and were on their way home.

00:13:51.880 And that flight had been targeted by Libya for terrorist activity back at a time when we weren't requiring bags to be identified with their passenger.

00:14:00.160 You could put one on in one city, and it would be transferred if the plane had a layover without any question that the person who owned the bag is no longer flying on board the plane.

00:14:10.380 And that's how they managed to bomb this flight that brought down hundreds of Americans, killed hundreds of Americans, including 35 students at my own university where I just started.

00:14:19.980 And it was something that always—I always remembered.

00:14:22.960 I mean, we were there every four years.

00:14:24.380 There would be the memorials.

00:14:26.080 There were some young people, you know, 18-, 19-year-old people with their whole lives in front of them.

00:14:29.720 My point is simply you start these actions, and you think, great, okay.

00:14:34.400 Like, back at the time, they had attacked us.

00:14:36.300 There had been terrorism by Libya, so, of course, we bombed them. 1.00

00:14:39.120 Okay, great.

00:14:39.740 Yes, go America.

00:14:41.360 Again, put on your cheerleader uniform. 0.99

00:14:43.200 They deserved it.

00:14:44.180 Good for us.

00:14:45.600 And now, you know, you look at those parents of the 35 Syracuse University students.

00:14:49.260 I'm sure they're not feeling so great about it.

00:14:50.840 So it's just—that's just one example, Aaron, where I—you just don't know what you're starting.

00:14:56.420 And our mutual friend, Glenn Greenwald, has been pointing out that it's very normal for the cheerleading to happen after an action like this.

00:15:03.640 There's, like, a froth that builds up amongst the media.

00:15:07.000 We love our military.

00:15:08.240 We're proud of our guys for, you know, superbly executing such a difficult and dangerous mission.

00:15:13.260 Of course we are.

00:15:14.080 And we're proud of the United States of America for being able to do that in a way that probably no other country can.

00:15:18.420 But that doesn't really answer the bigger question about how is this going to come back to haunt us?

00:15:22.440 And not just us, but our kids, our children.

00:15:26.420 Yes, because it's people on the ground who have to pay the price of these decisions made from above.

00:15:32.080 I mean, how many people lost their lives in Vietnam and so many other countless wars that were a disaster for everybody involved?

00:15:40.360 And if you look at some of the reasons that we get—so another reason, a major one that the Trump administration claims is Maduro is a narco-trafficker.

00:15:48.220 I mean, Megan, you have a legal background.

00:15:50.520 I'd be curious your thoughts on the indictment and the strength of it.

00:15:54.060 I mean, I noticed that one of the counts that Maduro faces is possession of machine guns, which I don't—I mean, first of all, I don't understand why it's a big concern for the U.S. that Maduro has machine guns.

00:16:05.100 And to me, it speaks to kind of this not being such a robust indictment.

00:16:09.560 But he's accused of being a narco-trafficker.

00:16:12.260 And again, I don't think the evidence supports that.

00:16:15.500 And it's also a harder case to make when Trump recently pardoned a convicted narco-trafficker in the same court that indicted Maduro.

00:16:23.560 In the New York court, Juan Orlando Hernandez, the former president of Honduras, he was found to take a bribe from a cartel, $1 million.

00:16:31.600 He was caught on tape vowing to stuff the drugs up the gringo's noses, quoting him. 0.89

00:16:37.440 There was a prison murder tied to his case.

00:16:40.420 And Trump pardoned him.

00:16:41.340 So just as he's launching a regime change campaign in the name of fighting narco-trafficking, he goes and pardons a convicted narco-trafficker.

00:16:53.700 So this strikes me as just yet, as we saw with Iraq, the pretext there was Iraq WMDs, which didn't exist.

00:17:02.580 And I think we're following a very similar playbook here.

00:17:05.420 At least Trump has the honesty.

00:17:06.540 I don't disagree.

00:17:07.820 I totally agree with you that it's pretextual.

00:17:10.520 That it is not about narco-terrorism.

00:17:13.780 I'm sure Trump does object to the amount of drugs coming our way from Venezuela.

00:17:17.960 But, of course, if you really want to crack down on countries that are sending drugs in the United States, you'll start with China and Mexico, not necessarily Venezuela.

00:17:26.320 But, and to your point, he just pardoned this other guy who was obviously a party to that, too.

00:17:31.080 I agree that it's pretextual.

00:17:32.800 It is about regime change.

00:17:34.220 And I think he was being honest, though, when he said it's the Don Road Doctrine.

00:17:37.880 That I believe.

00:17:38.500 And if you look at that, you know, I was actually, I haven't spent a lot of time studying the Monroe Doctrine, I'm going to be honest, from our fifth president, that basically said, not in our hemisphere.

00:17:47.560 Not in our hemisphere.

00:17:48.380 You're not, you're not going to, at the time it was Europe.

00:17:51.320 You're not going to come and colonize anything in our, in the Western Hemisphere, period.

00:17:54.580 And we'll fight you if you do.

00:17:56.340 And we did.

00:17:57.260 You know, we enforced that over years.

00:17:58.440 And I was just kind of researching this morning.

00:18:00.640 What, what was the constitutional authority for that?

00:18:02.960 You know, like there wasn't really any, we kind of just made it up and said, we're just not going to allow it.

00:18:08.320 And we've been doing it for 200 years now and getting away with it.

00:18:13.460 And so I kind of understand his decision that, forget the narco terrorism stuff.

00:18:21.200 He had to use that as a pretext to get around congressional approval and all the other, you know, legal requirements that would be there if this were actually declared a war or a military invasion or incursion of some sort.

00:18:32.420 Um, I think it really is Trump saying not in our hemisphere.

00:18:35.700 I've seen that Cuba's basically infiltrated Venezuela entirely.

00:18:39.640 The, the, the relationship between those two has been totally interdependent and they don't like Cuba, especially Marco Rubio.

00:18:45.000 Um, and China was there when we captured Maduro there.

00:18:49.740 They were getting closer and closer thanks to China's Belt and Road policy where they're trying to inculcate themselves into various, uh, nations all over the world, including in South America.

00:19:01.240 America to make them less dependent on the United States and more dependent on China and where that goes. 0.77

00:19:05.740 We don't like, we don't know, but we know we don't like and Russia too with the oil.

00:19:09.700 So I think that was the honest answer.

00:19:11.620 We don't like it.

00:19:12.460 Cause one of the reporters said to Trump, Aaron, what, what about the oil?

00:19:16.360 Like what, what, why the oil?

00:19:18.600 And he said, why don't you ask Russia that?

00:19:20.600 Why don't you ask China that they're, they're the ones who are focused on the Venezuela oil.

00:19:23.660 And I do believe that's his actual reason, which I guess I share in that concern of Trump's that them getting a big foothold in Venezuela, you know, the Chinese, the Russians and Cuba.

00:19:35.860 It's not a great thing for the United States of America.

00:19:37.980 Well, listen, I don't share that view, but regardless of what you think about Venezuela's choice of, of allies, I think, uh, the question for the U S government is.

00:19:48.820 If you are imposing policies that are designed to destabilize a foreign government, which I would argue has been the focus of U S policy in Venezuela for more than two decades, starting with the coup I mentioned earlier, the coup attempt against Hugo Chavez.

00:20:01.280 What do you expect a country to do?

00:20:03.380 If you support the overthrow of a government, they're not going to be too enthusiastic about working with you and they're going to choose other allies.

00:20:10.560 And that's what I think happened in Venezuela.

00:20:12.580 I think if the U S hadn't been trying to overthrow the Venezuelan government for more than two decades, I don't think they'd be as keen to, uh, embrace allies like Russia and China.

00:20:23.200 Maybe they would be, but certainly, uh, if you are, um, imposed, if you were supporting the overthrow of a foreign government, which would the Bush administration did under Hugo Chavez.

00:20:31.620 And that's continued, you know, again, under both parties, uh, under Obama, Obama declared Venezuela to be a national security threat to the U S which had the impact of deterring, uh, investment in Venezuela.

00:20:45.200 Cause that's what, if the most powerful country in the world says that you're a threat, banks are not going to want to do business with you.

00:20:50.360 And so all these actions have isolated Venezuela and to the extent that they would be willing to cooperate with the U S they haven't been so keen about that given the efforts at regime change there.

00:21:01.620 Now, I personally think that States have the right to make the alliances that they want, but we're, we don't have to agree on that.

00:21:07.160 I think when you have decades of policy aimed at regime change and, and, you know, the U S has spent a lot of money via agencies that the Trump, Trump has actually criticized via groups like the national endowment for democracy and USAID supporting the opposition in Venezuela.

00:21:22.820 And so when you have a country doing that, I can understand why in Venezuela's case, they went and sought other friends.

00:21:28.420 It does make you wonder too, like, where was it going in Venezuela?

00:21:33.340 I would really like to see, hear that explained, you know, like what exactly was the fear that they are going to get control of Venezuela's oil.

00:21:41.920 I mean, Russia already has a lot of oil.

00:21:44.320 It's a big gas company.

00:21:45.600 They say John McCain famously said masquerading as a country, like, uh, so they're worried about what exactly, because Russia's already involved in a very costly taxing war right now.

00:21:57.480 It can't exactly hope to open up another front war against the United States from Venezuela.

00:22:04.480 I'm not exactly sure what the threat, what the thought is there.

00:22:07.320 China too is suffering economically right now.

00:22:09.660 They really are.

00:22:10.440 So is the thought that they're going to launch a war against us from Venezuela, Cuba, Cuba is not going to launch a war against us from Venezuela.

00:22:17.060 By the way, Cuba already has an, an out, an outpost off of our border against us if they want.

00:22:23.220 And it's called Cuba.

00:22:24.360 Um, now Trump is saying on camera, he said this, that Cuba is likely to fall because Cuba has been struggling as Venezuela has been struggling.

00:22:32.460 Cuba has been struggling because Cuba is very dependent on Venezuelan oil.

00:22:35.740 We have that here.

00:22:36.800 Listen to thought 11.

00:22:39.680 Cuba is ready to fall.

00:22:41.300 Yes.

00:22:42.340 Cuba looks like it's ready to fall.

00:22:44.060 I don't know how they, if they're going to hold out.

00:22:45.920 But Cuba now has no income.

00:22:49.100 They got all of their income from Venezuela, from the Venezuelan oil.

00:22:52.860 They're not getting any of it.

00:22:54.480 And Cuba literally is ready to fall.

00:22:56.580 And you have a lot of great Cuban Americans that are going to be very happy about this.

00:23:01.580 Oh my God.

00:23:02.060 I mean, I'm sorry, Aaron, but the fact that Lindsey Graham is standing next to him going, yes, yes, is enough for me to know.

00:23:09.120 I don't, I don't want it.

00:23:10.580 I'm concerned.

00:23:11.480 All of the neocons have been celebrating this whole thing like it's, you know, Christmas in January.

00:23:18.700 And that alone gives me pause.

00:23:20.520 When Lindsey Graham is cheering, I'm not.

00:23:23.560 Yeah.

00:23:24.160 And the fact that Marjorie Taylor Greene is now leaving office and she's split with Trump, I mean, it speaks to the direction that he's gone.

00:23:30.580 And he's gone with the Lindsey Graham faction of his party, which amazingly Trump ran against.

00:23:35.480 I mean, part of the appeal of his 2016 campaign was he was running against the neocon legacy of people like Lindsey Graham.

00:23:42.140 But as you can see there, he's fully embraced them as he's also embraced Israel firsters like Mark Levine, who recently grabbed Trump like sort of like a puppet.

00:23:50.420 The White House put his arm around him and said, what a great president he's been for Israel.

00:23:54.480 And the point of people like Marjorie Taylor Greene.

00:23:55.480 They call him the first Jewish president.

00:23:57.120 The first Jewish president.

00:23:58.080 And the point of people like Marjorie Taylor Greene is that that's not what Trump ran on.

00:24:01.980 And you can see where he's going.

00:24:03.700 Look, I agree with Trump.

00:24:05.120 I'll be shocked if Cuba survives all this. 0.90

00:24:07.360 They're already in a terrible state and they rely heavily on Venezuela and people there are really suffering.

00:24:14.160 The part that gets omitted from mainstream discussion of it is that our policies have been designed to increase suffering in Venezuela.

00:24:21.300 And this goes back to 1960 after the Cuban Revolution.

00:24:24.620 The State Department even had a memo saying that our goal should be to decrease wages and bring about hunger so that the government.

00:24:31.800 Are you talking about Venezuela or Cuba now?

00:24:33.500 I'm talking about Cuba.

00:24:34.580 And that's been the policy for decades.

00:24:36.340 And that's also now the policy in Venezuela is to impose sanctions that increase desperation.

00:24:42.000 This doesn't mean the government is is perfect, can't be criticized.

00:24:45.660 It doesn't have responsibility for its problems.

00:24:47.400 But if we're concerned about the suffering there, our responsibility is to not participate in it.

00:24:52.780 And that has been exacerbated by these crippling sanctions.

00:24:56.700 And on the issue of oil in Venezuela, I think Venezuela would love to work with the U.S.

00:25:01.680 because the sanctions on its oil sector have crippled it.

00:25:05.540 There's a great Venezuelan economist named Francisco Rodriguez, who is a bitter critic of Maduro, thinks he's a tyrant, thinks he's mismanaged the economy egregiously.

00:25:14.440 But Francisco has the honesty to recognize that U.S. sanctions have destroyed Venezuela's economy, its main source of revenue, that when Trump imposed these sanctions in 2017, after that, Venezuela's oil output drastically fell.

00:25:30.060 And that's just a reflection of the power that the U.S. has via its control of the global financial system.

00:25:34.540 So Venezuela needs the U.S. for its oil industry to work.

00:25:38.960 And I think they'd be open to that.

00:25:40.140 I think even Maduro was open to that.

00:25:41.800 The problem is the U.S. traditionally demands complete submission.

00:25:45.720 And if you have some national pride, as I think Maduro and his allies have, they're not going to offer you complete submission.

00:25:51.920 So if we weren't, I think the problem here is hegemony and the demand for complete control.

00:25:56.820 If we're more open to compromise, to working with people, even if we don't like their system of government, we wouldn't have to go to these drastic steps.

00:26:03.920 Mm-hmm, right.

00:26:05.840 It's, I mean, it's, you can certainly say it's not isolationist.

00:26:10.340 It's not non-interventionalist, which is what a very large faction of the Republican Party prefers now.

00:26:19.420 And it's, I think, in large part, the very same faction of the party that had to fight the last two endless wars or cheerlead in support of it because they were patriotic and they loved America and they were very upset over 9-11 and they wanted someone to pay.

00:26:37.160 It was all good motivations, not like the Lindsey Grahams of the world.

00:26:40.800 I just, he's never seen a conflict he doesn't want to join.

00:26:42.940 Um, but I think it's largely that same group.

00:26:45.720 I mean, I, the first time I really started to think seriously about this was when I had, you know, every Memorial Day, we do a, like a storied soldier on this program.

00:26:55.300 And we talk about their war experience.

00:26:56.960 We've had Dakota Meyer.

00:26:58.400 I mean, we've had all of the best ones.

00:27:00.300 And those guys, Aaron, those guys are the ones who really gave me pause.

00:27:05.420 I mean, Sean Ryan came on, um, a couple of Memorials days ago and asked the question, what if we're not the good guys?

00:27:12.940 What if we're not the good guys? 0.96

00:27:14.340 And I was shocked by it, but this isn't Ward Churchill, the crazy ass professor, you know, saying that stuff, suggesting that we need to be bombed. 0.98

00:27:23.920 This is a decorated soldier. 0.98

00:27:26.260 This is a Navy SEAL.

00:27:27.160 This is like, and I've heard it time after time.

00:27:29.800 Like, we have to be honest about asking these questions about whether, not our soldiers, not our men and women in uniform, but those who make decisions about where they go and what they do, are making the best decisions, are expending and risking American blood and treasure in the best way.

00:27:45.740 And I just, I just, I mean, you got Trump talking about Cuba's going to fall. 0.99

00:27:50.720 Colombia's president, better quote, watch his ass. 0.99

00:27:53.420 We're ready and loaded to go into Iran. 1.00

00:27:56.320 Iran, if protesters there get shot because protests are happening in Iran as well.

00:28:02.000 So we're going to be doing a shooting campaign in Iran.

00:28:05.320 We're going into Colombia.

00:28:06.660 We're potentially taking over Cuba.

00:28:08.800 We're quote, running and quote, in charge of Venezuela now.

00:28:13.760 And, you know, somebody's making the point on Twitter.

00:28:15.400 How's that going to go, Aaron, as we inch toward the midterms and people are still worried about the cost of eggs and bread and milk, but Venezuela is going swimmingly.

00:28:24.620 Yes, exactly.

00:28:27.140 If there was a study in Trump's first term, which showed that communities in the U.S.

00:28:31.860 with the highest rate of military sacrifice in the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan disproportionately went for Trump.

00:28:37.820 So people who bore the brunt of wars, who suffered the casualties, suffered the injuries, voted for Trump in far higher numbers than for Hillary Clinton because he was speaking to the folly of the conflicts that they had to fight.

00:28:50.060 And Hillary Clinton, his opponent, was seen as the representative of the bipartisan neocon consensus, which Trump was running against.

00:28:56.920 And so, you know, to your point, I think Trump is turning his back on those same communities, on that same base of support that got him into office.

00:29:05.040 And I don't think that will bode very well for him in the midterms.

00:29:08.820 Now, granted, you can never rule out Democrats screwing everything up and handing Trump another victory.

00:29:13.760 I can never rule that out.

00:29:14.680 But I think, yeah, Trump is not.

00:29:18.180 Look, there's two different factions within MAGA.

00:29:20.280 You have people like Lindsey Graham claiming that make America great again.

00:29:24.200 And America first means engaging in all these foreign wars. 0.93

00:29:27.200 But you have people like Marjorie Taylor Greene and many others who don't agree with that.

00:29:31.160 And Trump has turned his back on them.

00:29:33.760 And I have the same questions about what this means for his electoral chances.

00:29:38.920 And this idea that all this is going to magically help people with the issue of affordability, I don't see it.

00:29:44.900 First of all, it's going to take a long time.

00:29:46.020 Even if we do manage to steal all of it as well as oil, it will take a long time for it to be going again because of the damage that's been done to that industry.

00:29:53.200 And the people who will mainly profit are the people who Trump is surrounded by.

00:29:57.560 It's billionaires, the people who own oil companies, not who.

00:30:01.140 Yeah, ExxonMobil.

00:30:02.580 Yeah, yeah, exactly, exactly.

00:30:04.520 But by the way, Chevron's been operating inside Venezuela.

00:30:08.100 And Chevron hasn't had very many complaints, which speaks to the fact that if we wanted to, there could be a nonviolent way to do this, to work with Venezuela and for everyone to benefit.

00:30:20.020 The new government of Venezuela, led by Delce Rodriguez, has issued a statement saying they want to work with Trump.

00:30:25.640 But Trump has been very clear that he wants Venezuela to follow his orders.

00:30:29.420 And if you're a self-respecting state and you care about your sovereignty, you're just not going to take orders from a foreign government.

00:30:36.860 Yeah, but just Delce Rodriguez, she apparently, well, she's Maduro's VP.

00:30:42.320 We don't recognize her as the legitimately elected VP. 0.99

00:30:46.040 We don't.

00:30:46.660 We didn't recognize Maduro as the legitimately elected president because he lost in a landslide in their election back in July of 2024 and refused to leave power.

00:30:56.640 So now suddenly we recognize her, I guess, as legitimate because she seems to be saying to us she's going to do what we tell her while she's massaging the Venezuelan population, or at least maybe the military that seems to still back Maduro by saying, screw President Trump, screw America, we're independent.

00:31:14.920 You know, she's not quite that nasty in her messaging.

00:31:17.360 But her messaging internally in Venezuela has been anti-Trump, anti-U.S.

00:31:22.420 And our government seems to be saying, just rolling its eyes, saying, take that with a grain of salt.

00:31:26.880 She's just doing what she has to do in order to not have them all turn on her.

00:31:30.620 So I don't know what's going to happen with Delce Rodriguez.

00:31:33.380 Meanwhile, the woman who did win the vote, I mean, she didn't win.

00:31:35.940 It was her right-hand man who won that election back in July of 2024 because Maduro made it such that this Maria woman could not run.

00:31:43.880 Anyway, Trump said she can't have it.

00:31:45.940 She can't come back and be the president, even though that's really who the Venezuelans wanted, because he thinks she's too weak. 0.85

00:31:52.180 And maybe he's right, because what happened in Libya after we got rid of Gaddafi was all these internal warring factions.

00:31:57.740 No one was strong enough to keep, you know, their hands at 10 and 2 on the wheel.

00:32:01.900 And it's been chaos over there ever since.

00:32:03.760 But Trump says that's not going to happen here.

00:32:06.100 You can't compare what happens in a Middle Eastern country to what we're about to do in Venezuela.

00:32:10.040 We're not leaving.

00:32:11.240 We're like, we're going to make sure.

00:32:13.000 I'm like, what?

00:32:13.780 We're not?

00:32:14.600 What do you mean?

00:32:15.500 What are we going to do over here?

00:32:16.720 And here's just a little bit of that.

00:32:18.360 This isn't the full thing, but here's just a taste of it.

00:32:20.320 And I think it's eight.

00:32:22.960 Speaking of those U.S. troops, I mean, one thing that Americans and a lot of people are wondering, you just sounded like you weighed out another strike, another land strike, at least in Venezuela.

00:32:35.400 You sound like you weighed that out.

00:32:36.520 Well, we didn't need it.

00:32:37.520 We were prepared to do a second strike if we needed.

00:32:41.340 We're totally prepared.

00:32:42.340 We're totally prepared.

00:32:43.340 But that's off the table.

00:32:44.340 We're still prepared.

00:32:45.340 No, it's not.

00:32:46.340 No, it's not.

00:32:47.340 If they don't behave, we will do a second strike.

00:32:48.340 Dealing with the people, we're dealing with the people that just got sworn in.

00:32:51.800 And don't ask me who's in charge, because I'll give you an answer and it'll be very controversial.

00:32:58.460 What does that mean?

00:32:59.200 It means we're in charge.

00:33:00.580 What is going to happen to those reserves?

00:33:02.120 We're going to run everything.

00:33:04.800 We're going to run it, fix it.

00:33:07.320 We'll have elections at the right time.

00:33:09.740 The main thing you have to fix, it's a broken country.

00:33:12.140 There's no money.

00:33:13.400 There's inflation.

00:33:15.820 Go ahead, Aaron.

00:33:17.900 Well, on his latter point about Venezuela being a broken country, there's inflation.

00:33:22.640 Yes.

00:33:22.980 But if Trump was concerned about that, he wouldn't be imposing sanctions that make life impossible.

00:33:26.960 I went to Venezuela once in 2019 after Trump and John Bolton had launched their first coup

00:33:35.320 attempt on trying to install Juan Guaido.

00:33:37.440 And I saw a very, very divided country.

00:33:39.400 There were big rallies in support of Juan Guaido, who Trump was trying to install.

00:33:43.120 There also were big rallies in support of Maduro, because people don't like a foreign government

00:33:46.840 coming in and telling them how they should run their country.

00:33:49.920 It's just pretty basic.

00:33:50.860 But I saw just on a very small level how these sanctions work.

00:33:55.840 So the translator I was working with, who hated Maduro, and one of the reasons why she 1.00

00:34:01.400 hated Maduro, she's a young person.

00:34:03.160 She was about 20 years old, and she was just tired of not being able to access apps in the

00:34:07.800 app store that her friends in other countries could access.

00:34:10.420 And she was sick of it.

00:34:12.020 And I wondered, though, if she had been allowed to download the apps that she wanted, if conditions

00:34:18.220 weren't tougher because of these sanctions, would she have had the same position? 0.83

00:34:22.260 Now, maybe she would.

00:34:23.380 But my point is, when you make life difficult for normal people in foreign countries, eventually 1.00

00:34:30.240 people are going to be tired.

00:34:31.540 Some people will be resilient, but a lot of people are just going to give up.

00:34:34.680 And I don't think it's our right to do that, to punish ordinary people because we don't

00:34:37.520 want to overthrow their government.

00:34:39.180 Certainly, it's not fair to solely fault their government.

00:34:41.740 I'm not saying you can't have criticisms of Maduro, but to solely fault them for inflation

00:34:45.880 when our policies are designed to increase inflation, to make the economy not able to function.

00:34:50.620 Well, and he's terrible on human rights, which is another point that everybody makes.

00:34:54.680 But we can't go around getting rid of leaders of foreign countries who are terrible on human 1.00

00:35:00.720 rights.

00:35:01.360 We'll be policing the entire world.

00:35:03.100 By the way, we should start in China if we're going to do that.

00:35:05.660 If that's our policy, we just get rid of all the bad people because we believe so much in

00:35:09.320 human rights.

00:35:10.340 We're going to be very, very busy.

00:35:11.740 We don't have enough troops to support that kind of policy.

00:35:14.080 I would start with our ally Israel, which has killed hundreds of thousands or tens of 0.99

00:35:18.860 thousands of people in what I think is a genocide.

00:35:21.160 But I agree with your point that, yeah, we don't have the right to overthrow governments

00:35:24.100 because we don't think they respect human rights, which, again, we do not care about

00:35:29.640 given the allies we have, including Israel, which has killed so many people and destroyed 0.99

00:35:35.760 Gaza.

00:35:36.200 And there's just on the issue of the elections, too, I want to say one thing, you know, I

00:35:42.900 was shocked or I was very surprised when Maduro claimed to have won the last elections, given

00:35:48.320 how just broken the country was and how tough conditions were.

00:35:53.600 But what I do know is this.

00:35:54.880 I think after 20 years of trying to destabilize a government, which is what I think we've done

00:35:58.620 in Venezuela, we spent a lot of money propping up the opposition.

00:36:02.060 We've imposed sanctions that have made the country miserable.

00:36:04.100 We haven't respected Venezuela's elections back when there was no question about them.

00:36:09.080 The Carter Center, run by Foreign President Jimmy Carter, certified previous Venezuelan

00:36:13.060 elections, but we didn't respect those results.

00:36:15.380 So given that, I don't think we have the right to go and complain if an election is not on

00:36:19.740 the up and up.

00:36:20.440 I'm not saying that Maduro's claim was valid.

00:36:24.040 I'd be surprised if there wasn't some corruption going on there.

00:36:28.400 I want to finish by asking you a question.

00:36:31.020 You mentioned Israel.

00:36:31.680 One of my big frustrations in following what's been happening in Gaza is the propaganda that

00:36:37.360 gets put out by Hamas in particular, which is very, very good at propaganda. 0.61

00:36:42.820 And this is why I just, I've been so skeptical of all the numbers.

00:36:46.320 So let me ask you as somebody, I realize you're a big Israel critic.

00:36:50.140 Where do you get your information from?

00:36:52.500 Like what, why are you, like, what are the numbers that you're citing and who are you relying

00:36:56.540 on for them? 0.81

00:36:59.460 Well, the Israeli military kept its own casualty account.

00:37:03.840 And according to Israeli media, they, they came to the conclusion that 83% of the casualties

00:37:08.620 were civilians.

00:37:09.900 That's one source.

00:37:10.880 And yeah, the Gaza health ministry, I think is a credible source.

00:37:14.020 The state department has long relied on it way before October 7th.

00:37:17.620 Um, and it just makes sense to me that if you have a death camp, which is what Gaza is, 0.92

00:37:23.240 people are trapped there.

00:37:24.080 2 million people, one of the most densely populated areas of the world.

00:37:27.620 And they're being bombarded every single day with the most powerful weapons in the world

00:37:31.880 at a magnitude far greater than the U S unleashed on Japan in the second world war.

00:37:37.180 It makes sense to me.

00:37:38.380 You're going to have tens of thousands of deaths.

00:37:40.180 And if anything, I think the official toll from the Gaza health ministry of around, of

00:37:45.600 tens of thousands is a vast undercount given.

00:37:48.800 I mean, the Israelis have said tens of thousands.

00:37:51.280 Yeah.

00:37:51.540 And I think it's a vast undercount given just the, the scale of weaponry that Israel unleashed

00:37:56.620 on Gaza.

00:37:57.300 People can't go anywhere.

00:37:58.960 They're in a very densely populated area.

00:38:01.260 I think the death toll, the official one from the Hamas run health ministry is a vast undercount.

00:38:06.980 And I don't think people need to be swayed by propaganda to believe that this was a,

00:38:12.000 a horrific crime that we supported.

00:38:15.800 Well, okay.

00:38:16.940 That we'll save that one for another day because Israel will be with us for a long time in 0.95

00:38:20.200 this debate, but let's hope that Venezuela, Cuba, Colombia, Mexico, and Iran will not be

00:38:27.020 with us for the immediate future as areas in which we have massive wars breaking out that

00:38:31.980 potentially involve us interests.

00:38:33.880 Aaron, a pleasure.

00:38:34.480 Thank you so much for being here.

00:38:36.060 Thanks for having me.

00:38:36.980 All right.

00:38:37.760 Coming up next, Walter Kern will be here.

00:38:39.760 He's more defensive of the administration, and we look forward to hearing his take on

00:38:43.040 that and Minnesota, among other things.

00:38:45.280 By the way, Tim Wallace is in the middle, I'm told, of a presser.

00:38:48.120 It was supposed to start at noon Eastern.

00:38:49.780 Let's find out what he's saying.

00:38:51.200 I mean, because now, first he said that the whole thing, the accusations of fraud by the

00:38:55.480 Somali community, he attributed it to white supremacy.

00:38:58.480 Now he says he's no longer going to run for office because it would be a distraction

00:39:01.680 as he deals with his political nightmare and the accusations against him, and he also acknowledges

00:39:08.020 that people are taking advantage of Minnesotans' generosity.

00:39:10.820 So which is it?

00:39:11.900 Is this all white supremacy, or did bad people take advantage of Minnesotans' generosity?

00:39:16.400 I think we all know the answer, but let's hear what he's saying.

00:39:19.420 We'll get back to that in one minute.

00:39:20.620 Delta Rescue relies solely on contributions.

00:39:50.620 to stay open, and giving can bring tax benefits to you, too.

00:39:54.940 Speak with your estate planner about how you can grow your estate while helping animals

00:39:58.520 in need, and check out the estate planning tab on their website to learn more.

00:40:01.940 We love our thunder in Strudwick, but would like other dogs who need love to find it, too.

00:40:07.020 Visit DeltaRescue.org today to learn more.

00:40:09.500 That's DeltaRescue.org.

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00:41:15.500 Welcome back to The Megyn Kelly Show.

00:41:21.620 I want to get through a few of these soundbites before I bring in Walter, just so you can hear

00:41:25.460 Trump himself talking about it.

00:41:27.600 You heard him saying we were prepared to do a second strike in Venezuela, that we are going

00:41:32.060 to run Venezuela, we're going to fix it, we're going to have elections at the right time there.

00:41:36.840 Here is his warning to Colombia's president, Gustavo Petro, in Sat 10.

00:41:41.980 This is from yesterday. 0.98

00:41:42.960 Colombia is very sick, run by a sick man, who likes making cocaine and selling it to 0.96

00:41:50.280 the United States, and he's not going to be doing it very long, let me tell you. 0.98

00:41:54.040 What does that mean?

00:41:54.700 He's not going to be doing it very long.

00:41:56.000 He's not doing it very long.

00:41:57.620 He has cocaine mills and cocaine factories.

00:42:01.700 He's not going to be doing it very long.

00:42:02.880 So there will be an operation by the U.S. and...

00:42:05.000 It sounds good to me.

00:42:07.340 It sounds good to me.

00:42:08.400 There will be an operation by the United States?

00:42:10.820 It sounds good to me.

00:42:12.000 What?

00:42:12.660 What are we doing in...

00:42:14.100 What are we doing in Colombia?

00:42:16.860 What?

00:42:18.040 Here he is about Mexico, Sat 12.

00:42:20.260 And by the way, you have to do something with Mexico.

00:42:24.300 Mexico has to get their act together, because they're pouring through Mexico, and we're going 1.00

00:42:30.500 to have to do something.

00:42:31.640 We'd love Mexico to do it. 0.83

00:42:33.280 They're capable of doing it.

00:42:35.120 But unfortunately, the cartels are very strong in Mexico.

00:42:37.640 I remember one time you actually, speaking of Mexico, I asked you about Claudia Scheinbaum,

00:42:41.540 and you told me at one point you had offered to send U.S. troops into Mexico to combat drug

00:42:46.600 trafficking there.

00:42:47.360 Is that something you were supposed to go about?

00:42:48.260 Well, I like Claudia. 0.50

00:42:49.380 I think she's a terrific person.

00:42:51.560 I would say every single time I talk to her, I offer to send troops in.

00:42:55.680 And she's just not willing? 0.88

00:42:56.760 Okay, so that one's more ambiguous.

00:43:12.420 You have to do something with Mexico. 1.00

00:43:14.600 Mexico has to get their act together. 0.93

00:43:16.600 That's less about us doing something in Mexico, though somewhat ambiguous.

00:43:22.840 Here he is on Iran, Sat 13.

00:43:26.760 There's been protesters killed in Iran.

00:43:29.580 You said we were locked and loaded, ready to go.

00:43:32.000 What is the line there for when the U.S. is going to get involved in those protests?

00:43:35.460 We'll take a look.

00:43:36.200 We're watching it very closely. 0.96

00:43:38.260 If they start killing people like they have in the past, I think they're going to get hit

00:43:42.420 very hard by the U.S.

00:43:43.380 Can I just add something?

00:43:45.260 I played the soundbite of Trump saying about Cuba, that it's ready to fall.

00:43:49.180 Looks like it's ready to fall.

00:43:50.340 I don't know if they're going to hold out.

00:43:51.500 Here's his secretary of state doubling down on that in an appearance on Meet the Press

00:43:57.240 yesterday, Sat 15.

00:43:58.280 Is the Cuban government, the Trump administration's next target, Mr. Secretary, very quickly?

00:44:06.500 Well, the Cuban government is a huge problem.

00:44:08.940 Yeah, the Cuban government is a huge problem.

00:44:11.700 First of all, is that a yes?

00:44:12.740 But I don't think people fully appreciate.

00:44:15.700 I think they're in a lot of trouble.

00:44:16.760 Well, yes, I'm not going to talk to you about what our future steps are going to be and our

00:44:20.420 policies are going to be right now in this regard.

00:44:22.240 But I don't think it's any mystery that we are not big fans of the Cuban regime.

00:44:25.600 It was Cubans that guarded Maduro.

00:44:27.180 He was not guarded by Venezuelan bodyguards.

00:44:29.340 He had Cuban bodyguards.

00:44:30.480 In terms of their internal intelligence, who spies on who inside to make sure there are no

00:44:34.580 traitors, those are all Cubans. 1.00

00:44:37.160 OK, but saying there that Cuban government is a huge problem, they're in a lot of trouble. 0.99

00:44:41.700 And then there's Greenland.

00:44:43.540 And Trump was a little bit reluctant to talk about Greenland.

00:44:46.960 Greenland, when asked about it on Air Force One yesterday, was not his idea to raise it.

00:44:51.400 But when it was raised, here's what happened.

00:44:53.180 Stop 14.

00:44:55.560 On Greenland, you know.

00:44:57.460 What, Greenland now?

00:44:58.620 Yeah, on Greenland.

00:44:59.520 How did we come up to Greenland?

00:45:01.000 So do you expect to take an action against Greenland?

00:45:04.660 Well, I don't want to talk about Greenland.

00:45:06.020 Let's talk about Venezuela, Russia, Ukraine.

00:45:10.560 We'll worry about Greenland in about two months.

00:45:13.540 Let's talk about Greenland in 20 days.

00:45:16.720 I will say this about Greenland.

00:45:18.800 We need Greenland from a national security situation. 0.50

00:45:23.720 It's so strategic.

00:45:25.160 Right now, Greenland is covered with Russian and Chinese ships all over the place.

00:45:30.680 We need Greenland from the standpoint of national security.

00:45:35.080 And Denmark is not going to be able to do it, I can tell you.

00:45:37.620 You know what Denmark did recently to boost up security on Greenland?

00:45:43.880 They added one more dog sled.

00:45:46.840 It's true.

00:45:48.080 They thought that was a great move.

00:45:50.260 What would the justification be for a claim to Greenland?

00:45:53.800 Oh, I don't want to talk about Greenland now.

00:45:55.960 I just say this.

00:45:57.980 We need Greenland from the standpoint of national security.

00:46:01.600 And the European Union needs us to have it.

00:46:05.100 And they know that.

00:46:07.300 Okay.

00:46:07.940 Joining me now, Walter Kern.

00:46:09.380 He's editor-at-large of County Highway and co-host of the America This Week podcast.

00:46:15.420 Welcome back to the show, Walter.

00:46:16.460 So why should I move from yellow into green when it comes to supporting President Trump

00:46:23.820 in all of these initiatives, which, like, I'm feeling overwhelmed with the number of countries

00:46:31.500 that he wants us to get involved in.

00:46:34.700 Well, he wants hemispheric dominance.

00:46:36.960 And so you could just substitute the words Western Hemisphere for this list of individual countries.

00:46:46.320 That's something we had once by default, but we have ceded it to some extent to China,

00:46:54.160 especially in South America.

00:46:56.860 And this grab back of this lost power is, I think, you know, what he's seeking.

00:47:05.060 Okay, I agree.

00:47:08.240 I do think the seizing of Maduro was about that and keeping China and Russia and Iran and Cuba

00:47:15.820 from growing in power in our hemisphere.

00:47:19.360 But this is like, I mean, if we actually go into Colombia, if we actually went into Iran

00:47:26.500 and started, like, actually bombing them because they shot a protester, something we don't support,

00:47:31.500 but my God, you know, I mean, lots of countries shoot protesters.

00:47:35.100 It's terrible, but we don't normally make it a United States problem.

00:47:38.080 If we actually go into Cuba, if we do something in Mexico, if we invade Greenland, I mean, this is,

00:47:43.320 this is, I'm sorry, but this is not what we voted for.

00:47:48.360 We won't be invading Greenland.

00:47:50.540 I mean, it has a tiny population located on the coast.

00:47:53.600 We, we've lost more, we lost more people in Biden's withdrawal from Afghanistan than we've

00:48:00.340 lost in Trump's wars, quote unquote, so far.

00:48:03.240 Agree, agree.

00:48:04.540 And Trump talks tough, but he delivers, so far, rather short confrontations, as in Iran and

00:48:14.520 as in Venezuela, that lead to rather decisive conclusions.

00:48:19.040 Now, there's always time for a quagmire, there's always time to get bogged down and bite off

00:48:24.240 more than you can chew.

00:48:25.880 But I guess I'd rather have confrontational rhetoric and fewer casualties than I would

00:48:33.400 a peace talker like Biden, who allowed a war that, and in some ways, I think helped trigger

00:48:41.360 a war in Ukraine that has killed hundreds, thousands.

00:48:46.060 I mean, I, I, you know, at the, at the same time, I agree with you that Trump was a kind

00:48:53.740 of non-interventionist, America first, somewhat even isolationist candidate, and this is not

00:49:01.080 consonant with that.

00:49:02.740 I also have to look at the fruits of what's going on.

00:49:05.720 And, you know, so far, these have not been forever wars of the kind that his predecessors

00:49:15.800 started.

00:49:16.920 True.

00:49:17.640 People raised these same warnings before we bombed Iran, and they responded with, with 1.00

00:49:22.680 like a symbolic campaign attacking a military base where we had warning.

00:49:27.340 It was like a nothing that they responded with.

00:49:29.160 That did not result in World War III, and Trump's decision to go into Iran, which I 0.66

00:49:33.920 supported, was proven to be correct.

00:49:37.400 But I do worry about long-term consequences on these things.

00:49:40.300 Like, I don't know what's going to happen in Venezuela that we're, quote, running.

00:49:43.780 I don't like that term.

00:49:45.300 But I see his point.

00:49:46.400 If you go in there, you just oppose the leader, and then you leave it, then you do wind up

00:49:50.140 with another Libya or Iraq.

00:49:52.320 And while some people are like, well, Iraq kind of is democratic now, it's still a mess. 1.00

00:49:56.400 It's still a hot mess over in Iraq. 1.00

00:49:58.560 It's a little better than it was, thanks to us.

00:50:01.340 We left, and then we went back.

00:50:03.240 But no one wants to go back.

00:50:04.840 No one wants to turn Venezuela into an Iraq. 0.99

00:50:09.000 Well, I mean, this is mob boss behavior on Trump's part.

00:50:14.740 It's big talk.

00:50:16.040 It's intimidation.

00:50:17.560 It's squaring off.

00:50:18.920 It's giving veiled warnings and veiled threats and even ones that are not so veiled anymore.

00:50:25.940 And he's obviously doing it from what he believes is a position of strength.

00:50:30.920 He believes he holds cards that maybe aren't shown to the world.

00:50:36.180 But from his point of view, what he's trying to do is roll back Chinese influence.

00:50:42.660 He's trying to secure what they believe are critical resources from certain metals to oil,

00:50:53.340 to other things.

00:50:54.820 He's trying to dominate world markets in oil, particularly now.

00:50:59.360 And he's sending out a kind of warning that is almost JFK-like, you know, we will stand strong

00:51:11.940 in the defense of freedom and so on.

00:51:13.680 He doesn't want to lose, be the one to lose these countries in our own hemisphere to a global

00:51:19.720 game of risk.

00:51:20.700 And it will all be in the results.

00:51:25.100 It will all have to be judged by how it works out.

00:51:29.080 I have a sense that Trump being Trump, what he does is he over promises.

00:51:34.020 He over threatens.

00:51:35.420 He starts the negotiation with his strongest offer or his strongest threat.

00:51:40.640 And then things, then the real world comes into play and things don't quite turn out that

00:51:47.780 way.

00:51:48.120 But he's striving for a 25 percent better outcome.

00:51:52.060 Here he is talking about how it's going to be different under him.

00:51:55.520 I mean, and he's not the same as Biden.

00:51:57.600 We can all agree on that.

00:51:58.660 Sot four.

00:52:00.620 Mr. President, the U.S. has something of a mixed track record of ousting dictators without

00:52:05.660 necessarily a plan for what comes afterwards.

00:52:07.700 Did that weigh on your decision?

00:52:09.100 Well, that's why we had different presidents.

00:52:10.620 But with me, that's not true.

00:52:11.960 With me, we've had a perfect track record of winning.

00:52:15.920 We win a lot.

00:52:17.440 And we win.

00:52:18.100 If you look at Soleimani, you look at al-Baghdadi, you look at the Midnight Hammer.

00:52:23.400 We have essentially peace in the Middle East because of that.

00:52:26.560 If you didn't, if we weren't successful with Midnight Hammer, you wouldn't have peace in

00:52:30.940 the Middle East.

00:52:31.580 So with me, you've had a lot of a lot of victory.

00:52:35.200 You've had only victories.

00:52:36.280 You've had no losses.

00:52:36.980 It's not wrong there, Walter, but this is the first time we've taken out a country's 1.00

00:52:40.780 leader.

00:52:42.600 Oh, well, not the first time we've done that.

00:52:45.240 We took out the country's leader in Ukraine back in 2014, which is one of the reasons 1.00

00:52:49.520 we have the Ukraine war.

00:52:50.740 Of course I'm talking about under Trump.

00:52:53.520 Under Trump.

00:52:55.160 I mean, the history of the United States in South and Central America is that of taking 0.98

00:52:59.400 out leaders constantly.

00:53:01.740 Sometimes it works.

00:53:02.680 Well, that's what we're trying to...

00:53:04.120 He's trying...

00:53:04.540 I'm sorry.

00:53:05.060 Forgive me.

00:53:05.560 I should have waited to start this until the opposite side of this break, which I will

00:53:08.420 do.

00:53:08.640 We'll be back in just one minute.

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00:56:28.820 Hey everyone, it's me, Megan Kelly.

00:56:32.380 I've got some exciting news.

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00:56:59.880 Welcome back to the Megan Kelly Show.

00:57:06.220 Walter Kern is editor-at-large of County Highway and co-host of the America This Week podcast.

00:57:11.220 He's back with me now.

00:57:12.080 We'll get back to Venezuela, Cuba, Colombia, Mexico, Iran, and Greenland in just one second.

00:57:19.400 But we had an interesting discussion over the commercial break, Walter, with the team,

00:57:23.920 and it's yet another thing I strongly disagree with Jake Tapper on.

00:57:26.840 We, over the break, watched Nuremberg, starring Russell Crowe and Remy Malek,

00:57:33.860 and Tapper's out there highly recommending it, as he loved it.

00:57:39.820 I hated it.

00:57:41.460 I thought it was terrible.

00:57:44.100 It was so poorly done.

00:57:46.180 I thought the acting was bad.

00:57:48.300 I thought the screenwriting was bad.

00:57:49.840 I thought the directing was bad.

00:57:51.740 You know, usually you're not noticing the acting or the directing.

00:57:54.900 If you're noticing it, something's gone wrong.

00:57:58.140 And Remy Malek, while he did a great Freddie Mercury in the, you know, movie about Queen,

00:58:03.940 it's, he was, my husband made this point, and he was right.

00:58:06.100 It was almost like taking a play, an actor from the theater and putting him onto a movie screen

00:58:11.140 where all the gestures are too big, the emotions are too big,

00:58:15.420 and the way Claire Danes is now totally carried away with the over-facial expressions when she cries, 0.99

00:58:20.040 Remy Malek with a huge jaw.

00:58:22.340 It just doesn't work.

00:58:23.320 It's, he's calling too much attention to himself in every scene.

00:58:26.260 And even Russell Crowe, you couldn't forget that he was Russell Crowe.

00:58:29.560 He did not sell me on Herman Goering, on Nuremberg, Nuremberg did not.

00:58:33.880 Crowe played, Crowe played Goering?

00:58:36.820 Yes.

00:58:37.260 And other than getting enormously fat, it didn't work.

00:58:42.100 Like, he was fat like Goering.

00:58:43.740 Okay, that's great, but did not buy it at all.

00:58:47.340 But secondly, on the bright side, the whole family went physically to the movies,

00:58:51.940 and we actually saw in the theater The Housemaid,

00:58:56.240 which is based on the book by Freedia McFadden, who is a very fun author.

00:58:59.980 Like, if you just want to put an audio book on your phone and get some stuff done around the house,

00:59:04.620 I love her books.

00:59:06.000 You can go through them fast.

00:59:07.880 They require just enough attention that, like, you're interested and you're not thinking about your problems,

00:59:11.780 but not so much that, like, you have to stop what you're doing.

00:59:15.280 And it stars Sidney Sweeney and some very hot guy who plays the male lead,

00:59:21.580 who I never heard of before, but he's excellent.

00:59:24.920 And I loved it, and the whole family loved it.

00:59:28.060 My daughter had listened to the book as well, but the other three of us had not,

00:59:31.940 and they all loved it.

00:59:32.680 Very good thriller, twists and turns.

00:59:34.380 It wasn't exactly like the book.

00:59:35.680 I won't give anything away, but the changes they made I approved of

00:59:38.840 and really thoroughly enjoyed the two hours and 11 minutes

00:59:41.660 and loved my movie popcorn on top of it.

00:59:44.380 So I just wanted to give you my, as a screenwriter yourself,

00:59:47.620 I wanted to give you my armchair analysis of the latest offerings.

00:59:51.020 Well, I'm a screenwriter who also lives in the middle of Montana,

00:59:54.560 where these movies will come somewhere next year, I suppose.

00:59:58.020 I guess Russell Crowe played Goering and put on weight because changing your body in extreme ways

01:00:05.640 is how you win Oscars as an actor.

01:00:07.680 Yes, that's right.

01:00:09.200 That's what they say.

01:00:10.020 The only reason to make a movie about Nuremberg at this point is to control the narrative about Nazis

01:00:16.480 and the judgment of public officials, which I found immediately suspicious.

01:00:22.160 Are they trying to forestall the moment when America decides to judge its former officials

01:00:28.420 and that they're trying to control the sort of context for that?

01:00:33.380 When they pick historical events out of the hopper, there's always a reason.

01:00:40.820 There's always an agenda, believe me.

01:00:42.940 There are plenty of interesting things.

01:00:43.880 Well, let me tell you something along those lines, okay?

01:00:46.580 So I don't think this is a spoiler alert because it's history.

01:00:50.900 You know, everybody knows what happened at the Nuremberg trials.

01:00:54.740 But it's not a spoiler alert.

01:00:56.880 But the cross-examination of Goering was done by Supreme Court Justice Jackson.

01:01:02.920 And they have him completely fall on his face and do very poorly.

01:01:06.780 And then they have the British prosecutor stand up and save the day.

01:01:10.080 I did do a quick Google search to see whether that happened because it sounded very much like, 0.99

01:01:14.560 oh, Hollywood would just shit on the U.S. Supreme Court justice. 0.97

01:01:17.140 It does sound like he didn't do the greatest cross-examination. 0.98

01:01:19.800 Maybe it wasn't as bad as they portrayed in this film.

01:01:21.800 And that the British prosecutor was the one who brought it home at the end.

01:01:24.720 Okay, fine. I'll give you that point.

01:01:25.980 But the movie ends with the character played by Rami Malek is a psychiatrist who they sent in there to go examine Goering and the other Nazis who we were about to put on trial for crimes against humanity, a new crime we had just invented.

01:01:40.420 And they asked him to violate his ethical oath by telling the U.S. brass what he'd learned in those examinations.

01:01:46.420 Well, duh. I mean, obviously, he was going to have to do that.

01:01:49.780 They weren't, like, trying to get Goering the help he so desperately needed by sending in a psychiatrist.

01:01:55.120 He was an American psychiatrist designed to get information that would help us in the trial.

01:01:58.940 Hello. Everybody knew that.

01:02:00.460 But they play up his ethical conflict.

01:02:04.000 Okay, whatever.

01:02:04.920 But the movie ends with Rami Malek's character, the psychiatrist, going on a radio tour back here at home.

01:02:12.520 Excuse me.

01:02:13.200 And in the radio tour, he has American radio hosts asking him about the unique evil of these Nazis. 0.75

01:02:20.120 And it ends with him making the strong case that this could easily happen in the United States of America, that this is what evil is and that men in power can be turned to this.

01:02:29.740 And, you know, it was like, okay, except we've gone 250 years without it happening.

01:02:36.200 But, sure, that's the message these filmmakers wanted to leave us with.

01:02:39.920 It could happen just as easily in the United States as it did in Nazi Germany. 0.91

01:02:44.520 You know, it reminds me of a Rachel Maddow monologue.

01:02:47.640 There'll be about everything.

01:02:48.800 She'll start about the price of, you know, food. 0.99

01:02:51.740 And it will end with the condemnation of Trump and a warning about the future.

01:02:55.820 You waited two hours for the inevitable comparison.

01:03:03.000 Yes.

01:03:03.380 You know, when I was at the 2016 Republican convention, I was sitting next to a German film crew watching Donald Trump give his acceptance speech.

01:03:12.160 And the German reporter turned to me and he said, someday we may have to invade you to save you from fascism.

01:03:19.940 And I looked at him and I said, go away.

01:03:22.920 I, you know, this is how you this is how you thank us for, you know, first beating and then reconstructing your country.

01:03:33.320 Yeah, I could have seen that softball flying a million miles away. 0.97

01:03:38.740 It was ridiculous, honestly. 0.94

01:03:40.760 Like, I watched it. 0.89

01:03:41.640 I was excited to watch it, too.

01:03:42.900 The preview, the trailer was excellent.

01:03:45.320 I couldn't wait for it.

01:03:46.620 And what a disappointment.

01:03:47.960 OK, let me I don't I want to move on to Minnesota and some other news, but I do want to make this one point first.

01:03:54.780 Ann Coulter made some good points online and she said it's about time.

01:04:00.320 She's totally in favor of what we've done in Venezuela.

01:04:02.640 She said Maduro has been indicted over and over for drug trafficking.

01:04:05.000 And she says, unlike, for example, off the top of my head, Iran, which poses exactly zero threat to any American.

01:04:11.820 The drug cartel known as the Maduro regime is responsible for the deaths of hundreds of thousands of young Americans and will continue to kill them unless we crush it. 0.99

01:04:18.800 Drop the horse shit, she writes, about making Venezuela great again. 0.99

01:04:21.500 Other than Uruguay, which is 88 percent white European, she writes, no Latin American country has ever achieved long lasting peace. 1.00

01:04:28.920 The rest are cauldrons of revolution, civil war, coups, coups, military dictatorships, etc.

01:04:36.600 They did this to themselves.

01:04:38.080 It's what they like.

01:04:39.560 How did Venezuela become communist again?

01:04:41.500 It's not that complicated, she writes.

01:04:43.000 Poor people in Venezuela voted for it.

01:04:44.760 Oh, boy, did they vote for it. 0.97

01:04:46.160 The ridiculous peasant, Hugo Chavez, promised Venezuela's poor that he would take vengeance on the rich, the squalid ones, and give their stuff to the poor. 0.97

01:04:55.080 Millions of poor people responded, yes, the U.S. military can depose. 0.98

01:05:00.220 It cannot change the nature of people.

01:05:02.800 Set up a friendly government.

01:05:04.200 Get the American oil companies in and get out before fat female National Guard members start painting George Floyd murals and instructing the local ladies on feminism. 1.00

01:05:12.880 She's got away with them word things.

01:05:16.820 Though her final point is, send all the Venezuelans who have fled to our country home. 0.99

01:05:23.160 Now, there was a troubling soundbite from Kristi Noem on that, because you may recall they fought a legal battle, the Trump administration did, that just resolved in October, all the way up at the Supreme Court,

01:05:34.660 about whether they could revoke the temporary protected status that Biden had given some 600,000 Venezuelans here, and Trump revoked it.

01:05:44.480 Well, there was a lawsuit the U.S. Supreme Court held in October.

01:05:47.940 It was fine to revoke it.

01:05:50.140 They can be shipped back home, those Venezuelans. 1.00

01:05:52.580 And Kristi Noem was asked by Fox News on Fox News Sunday whether that's still happening, TPS, temporary protected status.

01:06:01.920 The revocation is still in place, and these people are still going home.

01:06:05.520 And here's how that went.

01:06:09.140 Madam Secretary, are you going to force these people to return to Venezuela now, even as their government is in complete flux?

01:06:17.200 Well, Venezuela today is more free than it was yesterday, and it's going to continue to be that way as long as President Trump is in the White House

01:06:26.800 and is making sure that he's protecting the interests of the American people, because that ripple effect will continue to bring that kind of liberty to Venezuela as well.

01:06:36.800 These programs, we're bringing integrity back to them.

01:06:39.580 The decisions are made in conjunction with the State Department, with the White House,

01:06:43.560 and then we at Homeland Security implement them and make sure that they are followed through.

01:06:48.860 So every individual that was under TPS has the opportunity to apply for refugee status,

01:06:55.520 and that evaluation will go forward.

01:06:57.660 But we need to make sure that our programs actually mean something and that we're following the law.

01:07:02.860 Okay, so it started off well, and then we meandered to every single individual who had the TPS revoked

01:07:09.320 is going to be able to apply now for refugee status since Venezuela is the way it is.

01:07:15.120 Now, I will say DHS clarified on X that that's not what she meant.

01:07:21.520 They said that's not what she said.

01:07:23.200 Well, it is what she said, that they could become refugees.

01:07:27.400 They could apply to become refugees.

01:07:28.660 But then they said that President Trump is bringing stability to Venezuela

01:07:33.520 and bringing to justice an illegitimate narco-terrorist dictator who stole from his own people.

01:07:37.900 Secretary Noem ended TPS for more than 500,000 Venezuelas,

01:07:41.300 and now they can go home to a country that they love.

01:07:44.380 So I'm somewhat heartened by the clarification,

01:07:46.840 but I am a little disturbed by the comment that they can all become,

01:07:50.020 apply to become refugees here in America.

01:07:51.880 I am going to go with what they put in writing as opposed to a meandering thought on a cable news hit.

01:07:57.900 But let's just pick it up where we left off on whether Trump is right,

01:08:02.780 that because he has never deposed a head of state and led that country into chaos,

01:08:08.500 that we can trust him to have deposed this head of state in Venezuela and not anticipate chaos there.

01:08:19.240 Well, listen, all the predictions about Donald Trump turn out to be wrong.

01:08:24.000 And so I greet this prediction with a certain skepticism that he's going to, you know, get us into some morass.

01:08:35.360 Tariffs didn't lead to inflation.

01:08:37.680 Iran, we're not at war with Iran at the moment.

01:08:42.300 All sorts of doomsday predictions have, as I say, not come true.

01:08:47.640 I think that Venezuela was the gateway to a lot of things from migration, you know, come up through there or you leave there,

01:08:58.300 to drugs, to they were importing oil to Cuba at very low rates, basically propping up the Cuban regime.

01:09:07.860 What Trump's trying to do, I think, is make the minimal intervention for the maximum effect.

01:09:13.900 And he may succeed in gaining some of those virtuous effects.

01:09:19.500 But as yet, he has a pretty good record of scaring everybody into thinking the world's going to end,

01:09:27.480 and then it somehow doesn't.

01:09:30.240 And I guess I will rely on that track record so far as he urges us to rely.

01:09:38.000 And, you know, if he's in over his head, then we'll soon see.

01:09:43.920 But, you know, saying that we're going to run Venezuela is probably, to me, the most grandiose and inaccurate statement he has made so far.

01:09:57.020 He keeps making it.

01:09:58.320 He said it.

01:09:59.200 And then Rubio came out and said, we didn't mean run.

01:10:02.960 He didn't say that explicitly.

01:10:03.780 He goes, what we mean is we're going to use our oil embargo that we have on the tankers in place right now

01:10:10.160 to try to basically strong arm or threaten or persuade this vice president, Maduro's vice president, to do what we want.

01:10:19.560 And then Trump came out last night on Air Force One and said, if I say what I mean, I'm going to get in trouble.

01:10:24.120 And you heard the reporter say, what do you mean?

01:10:25.560 And he said, we're in charge.

01:10:27.260 We're going to run it.

01:10:28.360 So I think he means what he says.

01:10:30.780 Well, yes, he may.

01:10:33.400 But there is some element of good cop, bad cop, strategic confusion and what they call Matt, what Nixon called madman theory, meaning you kind of make the ultimate threat and make everybody believe that you are on the verge of actually being unstable, causing them to, you know, start to look at their cards a little differently.

01:10:57.380 In case you bring out a gun and it's not a card game anymore.

01:11:01.140 So this is kind of behavior that I would expect from someone who's trying to use the fewest troops to do the most change.

01:11:12.540 Yeah.

01:11:13.280 OK, let's keep going, because we're going to have Venezuela to deal with for quite some time now that we're running it.

01:11:17.940 But Minnesota, your former state, now you're in Montana, where I was over the holidays.

01:11:25.300 My home state, Minnesota.

01:11:27.140 Yeah, your home state.

01:11:27.820 I grew up there, went to elementary school, high school, and, you know, I consider it my boyhood home, yeah.

01:11:34.700 Yeah, that's where you're from.

01:11:35.900 I feel like you are from pretty much where you went to high school.

01:11:40.220 Yeah.

01:11:40.380 So Minnesota is sadly being exposed daily, including by County Highway, for massive amounts of fraud within its ranks, all permitted by, that's the best case scenario, Tim Walls and his attorney general, Keith Ellison.

01:12:01.820 You guys did a huge expose on it, a county highway, then after you, City Journal came, then after that, New York Times came, then after that, Nick Shirley, an independent journalist who's only 23 years old.

01:12:17.500 Blew the doors off the story, yeah.

01:12:19.900 Yes, and the reason the Nick Shirley piece was so additive is because it had video, right?

01:12:25.600 Like, I don't know if you remember when my young friend at NYU and her best friend, her best friend got attacked, and the guy, like, wailed on her from behind.

01:12:36.180 He hit her in the behind, and then he yanked her to the ground by her hair. 0.99

01:12:39.900 And our friend, Summer, was her best friend and went to the liquor store in front of which it happened and got the video.

01:12:47.180 And we put it on Twitter, and then we put it on this show, and it went viral, and they caught the guy.

01:12:52.520 It turned into a big story because we had the video.

01:12:56.600 And I think Nick Shirley going and getting the video was a very powerful addition to the reporting that had been breaking, not by the Minneapolis Star Tribune, by the way.

01:13:05.040 Didn't see them at all on the list, nor are they even covering these huge news stories like the Nick Shirley stuff.

01:13:12.600 Most of these, most of the broadcast networks aren't really covering it.

01:13:16.060 Most of the legacy press, like New York Times, Washington Post, not covering it, just ignoring it.

01:13:20.900 And, by the way, then you have CNN, instead of attacking the Minnesota fraud story as, like, let's roll up our sleeves and get it ourselves, attacking Nick Shirley as, like, he's just some doofus kid who we couldn't verify his reports because we called the daycare centers, and they said that they do have children there.

01:13:40.680 Oh, okay, well, if they said it, certainly a fraudster, when asked directly, would definitely tell the truth.

01:13:47.340 If you could believe what criminals and government officials say, we would have no need for a press.

01:13:53.480 Right. 1.00

01:13:54.340 It's ridiculous. 0.77

01:13:55.020 The reason we have one is that they lie about everything, or at least they have incentives to lie. 0.89

01:13:59.900 Yeah.

01:14:00.040 So I'm looking forward to CNN's apology to Nick Shirley because Tim Walsh just ended his campaign for re-election as Minnesota governor because of this cumulative reporting, including yours, including Nick's.

01:14:16.660 And if this is such a made-up scandal that never happened, CNN, why did Tim Walsh just announce he's not running for governor again?

01:14:24.700 I'll let you hear him explain it in part right here.

01:14:27.380 This just happened.

01:14:30.020 I don't want to mince words here.

01:14:32.200 Donald Trump and his allies in Washington and in St. Paul and online want to make our state a colder, meaner place.

01:14:39.060 They want to poison our people against each other by attacking our neighbors, and ultimately, they want to take away much of what makes Minnesota the best place in the country to raise a family.

01:14:50.580 They've already begun trying to withhold funds that were meant to help families afford child care, and they have no intention of stopping there.

01:14:58.620 A single taxpayer dollar wasted on fraud should be intolerable.

01:15:03.520 And while there's a role to play for everyone, from the legislature to prosecutors to insurance companies to local and county government, the buck does stop with me.

01:15:14.500 My administration has been taking fast, decisive action to solve this crisis.

01:15:19.080 We'll win the fight against the fraudsters.

01:15:21.660 But the political gamesmanship we're seeing from Republicans is only making that fight harder.

01:15:26.920 He says he can't run for office and address the fraud crisis at the same time, so he's going to just do the latter.

01:15:37.040 So he's admitting that it's a crisis.

01:15:40.080 He's admitting that there's fraud.

01:15:42.080 He's not specifying at what level, but we already know what level.

01:15:46.260 Record-setting historic levels.

01:15:49.000 And yet, at the same time, it's all politics.

01:15:52.820 Choose.

01:15:53.620 Which one is it?

01:15:54.560 Is it Donald Trump lying about Minnesota, or is it Minnesota getting together to defraud the federal government?

01:16:03.260 Because remember, this was federal money flowing through Minnesota, not just state money.

01:16:09.120 It was primarily federal money that was being appropriated and directed into these state-overseen programs where it just disappeared.

01:16:18.980 And it disappeared all over the world, and it disappeared into the pockets of politicians, and it disappeared into the pockets of the culprits, and bought their cars and their homes and their watches.

01:16:32.400 And it did so at a level that America was stunned by and continues to be stunned by.

01:16:38.480 And it's only a paradigm for other states.

01:16:42.060 Tim Waltz, you were almost the vice president of the United States, which means you would have been a heartbeat away from being the president of the United States.

01:16:51.860 This story was not covered during that election, yet it existed.

01:16:56.180 All the facts that have come out recently were there for the press to look at when Tim Waltz was running for the vice presidency.

01:17:04.080 To me, he's the luckiest man in the world.

01:17:08.640 He might be giving the governorship over to someone who will be in a position to pardon him for various crimes.

01:17:16.560 He might be surviving to fight another day, but I don't think his troubles are over.

01:17:22.920 And to go out blaming somebody when you're also supposedly taking responsibility is a classic have-your-cake-and-eat-it-too political move.

01:17:37.000 He's over with.

01:17:38.720 Yeah.

01:17:39.540 It's amazing.

01:17:40.520 This guy was within a breath of the vice presidency.

01:17:45.320 Which means you're a heartbeat away from the presidency.

01:17:47.800 Yeah, and let's not forget, this was the one decision Kamala Harris made on her gut, on gut instinct.

01:17:58.060 That's what she said.

01:17:58.900 She interviewed him, and she just knew Tim Waltz was right for the job.

01:18:02.520 Oh, my God.

01:18:03.680 So here's the deal.

01:18:06.400 Let me play a little bit more of him explaining why he can't both be governor and run for re-election, given the amount of this fraud now.

01:18:14.200 This is him just within the last hour.

01:18:17.800 But as I reflect on this moment with my family and my team over the holidays, I came to the conclusion that I can't give a political campaign my all.

01:18:27.300 Every minute that I spend defending my own political interest would be a minute I can't spend defending the people of Minnesota against the criminals who prey on our generosity and the cynics who want to prey on our differences.

01:18:40.280 So I've decided to step out of this race, and I'll let others worry about the election while I focus on the work that's in front of me for the next year.

01:18:47.140 Okay, so criminals who prey.

01:18:49.400 Is he going to turn into Batman now?

01:18:52.400 He's going to be a private citizen seeking out fraud and avenging wrongs?

01:18:57.440 What's he even talking about?

01:18:58.900 So he says, I can't devote any time away from focusing on the criminals who prey on our generosity.

01:19:06.920 Now, literally, he was just calling those of us who are pointing at the Somali community within Minnesota saying, it's them.

01:19:17.400 Hello.

01:19:17.980 We saw them.

01:19:19.020 We see them copping pleas, getting found guilty for earlier frauds by the day.

01:19:23.840 And now we see the Nick Shirley report about what's happening with the children's care in this explosive report that hit over the holidays.

01:19:32.080 And you called us all white supremacists.

01:19:34.540 You literally said that you're a white supremacist if that's what you want to focus on.

01:19:40.420 Okay.

01:19:40.940 Or you just want to go where the facts lead, which happens to be here, the Somali community.

01:19:47.080 Here's one of the reasons why he's doing that, in my view.

01:19:50.960 Keith Ellison is his attorney general.

01:19:53.640 Keith Ellison was caught on tape.

01:19:56.880 And this group, The American Experiment, had an exclusive with airing this.

01:20:01.700 I'm just going to play you a little bit of Keith Ellison in the problematic sound bites.

01:20:05.280 And then I'm going to play you the one where he says Tim Walsh is right there with him, like, you know, two peas in a pod on his attitude about Somali fraud.

01:20:16.000 Here he is on tape to some of the feeding our future scandal individuals, people involved in it.

01:20:24.380 And he's all about how he's going to help them.

01:20:28.220 Not how he's going to crack down on them, but how he's going to help them.

01:20:31.420 Because Keith Ellison, of course, himself is a radical, and he's been running cover for groups like this for a long time.

01:20:37.880 Here he is in SOT 30.

01:20:38.780 Of course, I'm here to help.

01:20:41.960 I mean, but let me be clear.

01:20:43.880 I'm not here because I think it's going to help my re-election.

01:20:46.740 I don't give a, I don't care about no re-election.

01:20:49.340 I voluntarily threw my congressional career away.

01:20:53.400 I'm like, I don't want to do it anymore.

01:20:55.340 It's boring to me.

01:20:56.360 So to do this, to do what I'm doing now.

01:20:58.880 So, of course, I didn't leave that job to do nothing in this job.

01:21:02.540 I mean, is this, am I going to get more hits than I got by prosecuting a police officer and giving them life in prison?

01:21:10.200 Right? 0.75

01:21:10.780 So we're going to, yeah, so let's just go fight these people.

01:21:14.560 So the question is figuring out exactly how to put a stop to it, right?

01:21:22.980 So the how is the real question for me here.

01:21:26.880 The how.

01:21:27.900 How do we do it?

01:21:28.760 Okay, so this group would be charged a month later by the feds, accused of fraud.

01:21:35.420 But here he is on tape, like, how can I help you?

01:21:38.600 I'm here to help.

01:21:39.780 And then here's more, where he asks some of the Feeding Our Future scandal individuals,

01:21:45.040 the names of the government's officials denying them money.

01:21:47.800 He's pissed off that the government is pumping the brakes on giving this group that would be charged within a month of fraud by the feds,

01:21:56.340 that they're pumping the brakes and giving them money.

01:21:58.280 Take a listen here.

01:21:59.320 Next thought is thought 31.

01:22:02.300 And just send me the names of all these folks who are just hung up and, like, hanging on by a thread and barely going to and probably ain't going to survive unless they get their money soon.

01:22:11.820 That I can take that list and start saying, and I can call Jody Hartstead, the person over at Education,

01:22:20.520 and say, what is going on?

01:22:23.440 Why am I getting these complaints?

01:22:25.700 And I'll call them in my office and demand some explanations.

01:22:28.940 Maybe it's because they are accused of committing fraud.

01:22:32.940 Maybe there were some sniffs, some aromas of the fraud, Keith, which you should have looked into as attorney general rather than running cover for this group,

01:22:42.400 which is a very large constituency.

01:22:43.640 I don't have to tell you that, Walter, in Minnesota, that he knew he needed to win re-election.

01:22:49.780 Here's the third one.

01:22:51.160 So at 32, he talks about Governor Walz and his attitude on this whole nasty business.

01:22:59.100 Listen.

01:22:59.300 Here's the thing.

01:23:01.260 As big as you are collectively, most are pretty small.

01:23:05.380 And you're running small, tiny businesses out of business over nothing.

01:23:11.600 And a lot of times, if you think there's a problem, I mean, look, everybody has to comply with what the rules are.

01:23:17.620 But if somebody submits something that's not in the right format, then you call them and say, this is not in the right format.

01:23:24.140 Not, you're out.

01:23:26.040 You're done.

01:23:26.940 Your contract's over.

01:23:28.020 And so this has my attention.

01:23:31.540 I'm extremely frustrated by it.

01:23:34.760 But we are in the middle of a battle with the agencies now.

01:23:38.720 And I can tell you this. 0.99

01:23:42.700 Walz agrees with me that this piddly, stupid stuff running small people out of business is terrible. 1.00

01:23:50.380 Piddly, stupid stuff. 1.00

01:23:51.800 According to my team, that was Salim Saeed on this tape. 1.00

01:23:57.180 In the meeting with Keith Ellison.

01:23:59.960 Saeed was convicted of 20 counts after this.

01:24:03.560 One count of conspiracy to commit wire fraud.

01:24:05.280 Four counts of wire fraud.

01:24:06.360 One count of conspiracy to commit federal programs bribery.

01:24:08.800 Eight counts of bribery.

01:24:09.800 One count conspiracy to commit money laundering.

01:24:11.920 Five counts of money laundering.

01:24:13.120 Brought by the feds.

01:24:14.580 Obviously, not Keith Ellison.

01:24:16.740 He and his colleague, Amy Bach, took advantage of the COVID-19 pandemic, according to the feds, to carry out a massive fraud scheme that stole money meant to feed children.

01:24:25.200 The defendants falsely claimed to have served 91 million meals, for which they fraudulently received nearly $250 million in federal funds. 0.99

01:24:34.480 Not piddly, stupid stuff. 0.99

01:24:37.220 Running small people out of business, like Keith Ellison said. 0.99

01:24:41.300 And like he said, Governor Walz agreed with him on.

01:24:44.720 Instead, said the feds, it was used to fund their lavish lifestyles.

01:24:47.700 Today's verdict, after they got the conviction, sends a message, said the feds, to the community, that fraud against the government will not be tolerated.

01:24:54.620 This is uncovered by the Minnesota think tank American experiment obtained December 2021 audio.

01:24:59.740 And that's that's, I believe, Walter, why Tim Walz will not be running for reelection.

01:25:05.440 And it's not because defending the people of Minnesota is going to be a big distraction for him.

01:25:11.340 Well, he's got his own defense to pay attention to.

01:25:14.880 And I'm sure he's got teams of lawyers on speed dial ready to prepare it.

01:25:19.680 And it's going to be a full time job.

01:25:22.380 Remember the movie The Godfather?

01:25:24.800 They go up to the gangsters go up to testify before Congress.

01:25:29.800 And all of them are olive oil importers and just small businessmen.

01:25:34.080 And, you know, that's the same defense you're seeing here.

01:25:38.340 When your business is fraud, we want you out of business.

01:25:42.300 But Ellison sees his job as keeping the money flowing.

01:25:46.600 It's clear from that whole tape that what he's guaranteeing is we're going to keep the money flowing.

01:25:52.520 If if you have a problem, call me and we'll help you get it.

01:25:56.840 And everybody's going to be happy.

01:25:59.520 And treating that as a business is is maybe he believes that that's a legitimate business.

01:26:05.380 But then that's even scarier that that running daycares without children, school lunch programs without food, transportation programs for health care without passengers is business only to him.

01:26:20.260 Mm hmm. The the attempts to take down the Nick Shirley reporting are stunning, even to me, like the absence of interest in the allegations as opposed to the supreme interest in exposing Nick Shirley, because he used to post what they said were hoax videos as a high schooler.

01:26:41.940 However, how about actually kicking the doors? Because this didn't come out of nowhere.

01:26:45.460 As I pointed out, you guys broke a massive fraud story about Minnesota months ago and then City Journal did and then New York Times did.

01:26:54.080 So Nick Shirley didn't pop out of the blue. Right.

01:26:57.160 So, like, where was the interest? Why didn't the Minneapolis Star Tribune blow the lid off of this, Walter?

01:27:03.000 Or why did you break it in Montana? And why now do we have CNN and CBS as well appearing to try to run cover for the fraudsters as opposed to blow more of the lids off of the fraud examples?

01:27:18.620 Well, first, if they admit that it's a major story, then they also have to explain why they never covered it and they can't.

01:27:25.900 Secondly, one of the reasons this story didn't get the national attention it should have is that anyone who went in to report it, and I can tell you this for a fact, felt very apprehensive about their future.

01:27:40.540 They knew that not only the criminals would be coming after them, but so would this curiously silent press, which had basically, I wouldn't say collaborated, but had, if silence is consent, then they were consenting.

01:27:57.620 If silence is consent, the Minneapolis Star Tribune was allowing this to go on.

01:28:02.480 So everybody's implicated. Nick Shirley, Huckleberry Finn, All-American Boy, Lois Lane comes along.

01:28:10.040 You know, does his shoe leather and shows us in five seconds that what looks like a daycare actually looks like a bombed out strip mall adult store with blacked out windows and kids, if they even did attend, shouldn't be allowed to.

01:28:24.480 That point was made visually in such a, I think, decimating way, especially to Americans at Christmas who are feeling a little stressed about their credit card bills, buying presents for their families, while these people rode around in their sports cars, having used our good nature.

01:28:44.000 And let's listen, Minnesota is so good natured that it may, you know, not survive.

01:28:50.340 Everybody wants Minnesota nice.

01:28:52.480 Yeah. Everybody there wants to believe themselves to be a great person.

01:28:55.800 And, and it's like a Monty Python sketch.

01:28:58.640 They will still, when they have nothing and their cities are burning on the horizon, say, at least I was a nice person.

01:29:07.380 And, and so that now you have the feds saying we have shut down the funding to these alleged childcare institutions because of these reports.

01:29:19.340 And then Tim Walsh's response is, they're mean, the feds are mean.

01:29:24.500 Donald Trump wants more meanness here in Minnesota.

01:29:27.980 He, he wants the money to go to actual children, not to obvious Somali fraudsters. 0.54

01:29:37.740 Exactly.

01:29:38.480 Megan, the, the, the people who should be most outraged by this are the people who want children to be fed.

01:29:45.380 The people who want there to be decent daycare, the people who want there to be transportation systems to get people to their medical appointments and so on.

01:29:54.400 The people who want autistic children to be cared for. 0.99

01:29:58.340 All of this money basically came out of the mouths and minds and bodies of the people who should have been getting it.

01:30:06.220 And because it was diverted from them, the charity toward them and the, the good feeling toward them has been vastly reduced.

01:30:15.580 They're making everything seem like a scam because everything that they've done looks like one.

01:30:22.240 Meanwhile, the problems go untreated.

01:30:24.500 And shouldn't it be the liberal, good-hearted, kind-hearted people who want to see these real problems addressed, who are the most outraged?

01:30:33.440 Instead, they're the most angry about this.

01:30:37.380 I mean, a truck pulled up before the money got to the kids, before the money got to the autistic, you know, children, before the school lunches got to the hungry and took it all away. 0.89

01:30:49.340 Mm-hmm. Yeah, they're like, Nick Shirley, he may have gone there in hours that it wasn't open, the daycares, every single one?

01:30:56.900 Because he went on a Tuesday in the middle of broad daylight, and the centers for alleged daycare services claim they're open from 7 a.m. to 10 p.m.

01:31:06.200 So what was it, like Northern Lights in Minnesota when he got there?

01:31:10.800 Because he says he was there in the middle of the day, and there were no children in center after center after center.

01:31:16.740 And instead of seeing Somali workers saying, yes, I'm not going to let you put them on camera, but you can come in and you can see if you want that there are 20 children sitting here.

01:31:26.800 You know, you can verify it with your eyes.

01:31:29.100 No, they all, here's what happened instead.

01:31:30.800 I'll just give you an example.

01:31:31.680 We could be here all day showing his 45-minute report, which is well worth your time on YouTube.

01:31:35.440 It's been seen by almost 150 million people now.

01:31:38.020 Here's thought 26.

01:31:41.140 We're just wondering where the children are.

01:31:44.080 Where the children are?

01:31:45.180 Yeah, where are the children?

01:31:46.580 It says you have 102 children here, and you got $2.66 million this year in funding, and $2.5 million last year.

01:31:55.500 We're just wondering where the kids are.

01:31:57.580 And who are you?

01:31:58.860 My name is Nick Shirley.

01:32:00.000 Nick Shirley.

01:32:00.700 And where are you?

01:32:02.340 Oh, we are from ourselves.

01:32:06.040 Yeah.

01:32:06.480 Hello, we'd like to ask where the money's going.

01:32:08.380 Look at that.

01:32:11.920 Shut us down.

01:32:12.760 No children inside of this daycare center.

01:32:14.920 And look at this daycare center right here.

01:32:16.780 No children inside of this daycare center.

01:32:18.520 But between those buildings, over $2.6 million.

01:32:23.920 We are just curious, where are the children at?

01:32:27.220 Do you know where the children are at?

01:32:29.580 Where are the children at in these daycare centers?

01:32:32.020 I don't know.

01:32:32.660 Where are the children?

01:32:34.420 I will sue you.

01:32:35.400 You don't have any permission.

01:32:37.300 We have nothing to do with this.

01:32:38.980 Okay.

01:32:39.740 So leave.

01:32:40.780 Please leave.

01:32:41.380 Are there children here?

01:32:42.460 Please leave.

01:32:44.420 In center after center, where are the children?

01:32:46.820 They don't say they're inside.

01:32:48.380 They don't say they're.

01:32:49.380 David, the guy who was with him, said he goes by there every day.

01:32:51.880 There's never a child.

01:32:53.280 They had witnesses that they interviewed who said,

01:32:55.180 I've never seen a child at any of these places.

01:32:57.460 And then you get CNN like, we called and they said they had children there.

01:33:02.800 Or CBS is like, we went by and we saw four children.

01:33:05.600 Oh, you mean after Nick Shirley's report, you found a couple of children that obviously

01:33:12.000 these fraudsters brought from their own home because they knew this is a national story.

01:33:16.360 The vice president of the United States was tweeting about it.

01:33:18.600 And you rolled up your carpet and said, this story's done.

01:33:22.020 That's let me give you a sample.

01:33:23.400 Here's just sample, Walter, and then I'll give it to you.

01:33:25.620 CNN correspondent Whitney Wilde, who I've never heard about and is not going to make it at CNN,

01:33:30.860 with her report on her investigation.

01:33:34.700 Stop 35. 0.97

01:33:35.600 We're from CNN.

01:33:38.140 Can we talk to you?

01:33:39.220 This is MAGA YouTuber Nick Shirley.

01:33:42.160 Back at a daycare in Minnesota, he alleged was a fraudulent facility in a now viral video.

01:33:47.800 But surely you don't think a daycare should just be unlocked.

01:33:50.700 You shouldn't be able to just walk into a daycare.

01:33:52.340 It shouldn't be a reception.

01:33:53.580 No, every daycare is locked.

01:33:56.460 You bring up a fair point.

01:33:57.420 Then why can't they actually give me information how to enroll a child?

01:34:00.520 How do you know that all the allegations that you're making are true?

01:34:03.280 How do I know that they're true?

01:34:04.400 Well, we showed you guys what was happening, and then you guys can go ahead and make your

01:34:09.020 own analysis.

01:34:09.440 We're coming so we can make our own analysis.

01:34:11.300 Are you 100% sure you're true?

01:34:12.960 Yeah, I am 100% sure I'm true.

01:34:14.660 We reached out to several of the daycares featured in the now viral video.

01:34:18.560 Only one daycare facility answered and said they are a legitimate business.

01:34:22.320 Have you seen the videos, you know, purporting that some of these daycares don't have kids

01:34:27.480 inside?

01:34:28.160 At the daycare where Shirley showed back up, a stream of children walk inside.

01:34:32.880 You're saying that this is a fraudulent daycare.

01:34:34.580 There's kids being dropped off right now.

01:34:36.180 Yes.

01:34:36.580 The commissioner of children literally said a week ago this place was closed.

01:34:39.140 Did you know that?

01:34:39.620 They're showing face right now.

01:34:40.680 Yeah, but are you true?

01:34:43.820 With the meaningful cross-examination by CNN, Walter, are you true?

01:34:48.800 Yes, I'm true, you weird lady from CNN. 1.00

01:34:52.140 Nick Shirley could probably buy CNN at this point with its low ratings and his high ratings

01:34:57.720 and YouTube income.

01:34:59.840 And I hope he does.

01:35:00.460 150 million views.

01:35:02.460 I hope he does.

01:35:03.660 You know, American was always supposed to be a sort of a show me common sense country.

01:35:08.680 And he did show me common sense reporting and he struck a nerve.

01:35:13.140 CNN has, you know, tried for years to make itself relevant.

01:35:18.500 And I remember back when Al Gore was going to start, I think, a network that used citizen

01:35:24.000 reporting.

01:35:24.560 It was a very high-minded approach, citizen journalist, until somebody actually succeeded

01:35:32.000 at it.

01:35:33.460 And that's his sin, his success.

01:35:38.780 He didn't claim to be the kind of person who goes and, you know, first of all, he's only

01:35:45.640 one person, stakes places out around the clock and so on.

01:35:48.760 But he did at least 10,000 times what CNN did and has done since.

01:35:54.560 And no one's stopping anyone from checking his work.

01:36:00.080 But that was not checking his work, putting a camera on you while you made a speakerphone

01:36:05.400 call and took as gospel the statement of someone who is at least an alleged fraudster.

01:36:15.440 Here's a little sampling of how CBS handled it with their reporter, Jonah Kaplan.

01:36:24.560 Sop 36.

01:36:26.940 We visited those sites, too, as did state inspectors many times over the last six months.

01:36:33.540 And we found the facts on the ground tell a different story.

01:36:37.100 Those daycares, many of them were written up for safety violations, things like maybe busted

01:36:43.040 equipment or staff training issues.

01:36:45.920 But that's not the same as being fraudulent.

01:36:49.800 So it's important to put all of this into context.

01:36:53.780 Yes, sure.

01:36:55.100 What in the world?

01:36:55.640 That's apples and oranges.

01:36:57.440 That these places that apparently don't have kids in them also have busted equipment.

01:37:02.040 Isn't it?

01:37:02.480 I like how you use the word busted, trying to minimize it, using the high school term.

01:37:07.140 Oh, it's just busted.

01:37:07.840 Uh, you know, uh, why they are running cleanup for this operation is the biggest mystery of

01:37:14.740 all.

01:37:15.060 And I would challenge the young crusading reporters of America to try to figure out why they're

01:37:21.860 doing it.

01:37:22.940 Mm hmm.

01:37:23.500 Yeah.

01:37:23.840 Figure it out.

01:37:24.500 And by the way, if you want to show me that there are kids there, then maybe show me the

01:37:28.220 kids.

01:37:28.860 Um, you don't have to show their faces.

01:37:30.440 You could blur their faces.

01:37:31.440 Don't show me yourself, Jonah.

01:37:33.720 That's really not that persuasive.

01:37:35.200 Just you asking me to believe that everything Rick Nick Shirley showed me on camera with

01:37:40.080 people running and slamming doors in his face was a lie.

01:37:43.040 You did not persuade me.

01:37:44.340 You persuaded nobody.

01:37:45.660 And this is one of the many reasons why Walter, the new experiment over at CBS Evening News

01:37:50.580 is going to fail.

01:37:52.120 I tweeted this out when Tony Doka pool, the new CBS Evening News anchor who no one's ever

01:37:56.360 heard of, um, tweeted out like we're on a new mission and we are going to not, you know,

01:38:02.160 we're going to listen to you.

01:38:04.320 Here's a little sample of what he said in Sot 42.

01:38:09.200 People do not trust us like they used to on too many stories.

01:38:13.340 The press has missed the story because we've taken into account the perspective of advocates

01:38:19.200 and not the average American, or we put too much weight in the analysis of academics or

01:38:25.320 elites and not enough on you.

01:38:28.140 I have felt this way too.

01:38:30.840 I felt like what I was seeing and hearing on the news didn't reflect what I was seeing

01:38:35.680 and hearing in my own life and that the most urgent questions simply weren't being asked.

01:38:43.480 Okay, nice.

01:38:45.600 Good try.

01:38:46.720 It's going to fail.

01:38:48.240 CBS Evening News will fail.

01:38:50.640 CBS will not be turned around by Barry Weiss or anybody else.

01:38:53.900 I'm sorry, but its days have passed.

01:38:57.440 CBS was never for the past two decades seriously in the running for dominance in the morning

01:39:02.540 or the evening or any place else in the lineup.

01:39:05.200 It was living off of its legacy from the Walter Cronkite years, which Dan Rather maintained for

01:39:11.620 some semblance of time.

01:39:12.780 And then he imploded over fake documents during the Bush administration when he was running

01:39:18.780 for office, when George W. Bush was running for re-election that had been misrepresented

01:39:23.700 on 60 Minutes.

01:39:24.920 In any event, CBS News has not been relevant in forever, and it doesn't matter who they put

01:39:30.880 in the evening news chair or how late in the game, they've realized that none of us trusts

01:39:37.220 or, more importantly, needs them any more.

01:39:42.460 So you can take your suit coat off, you can act like Joe Friday, my buddy who's just going

01:39:47.140 to be there trusting me, the consumer, and what matters to me.

01:39:51.260 It's too late.

01:39:53.020 You should have talked to Jonah Kaplan and others like him about how to report on real stories 0.97

01:39:59.700 before he tried to sell us this line of bullshit and clasp to some last gasp of relevance 0.93

01:40:06.260 at a time in which the world has moved past the dinosaur that is evening news. 0.98

01:40:13.960 Well, Megan, how can I add to that?

01:40:16.540 That was the Gettysburg Address of Condemnations.

01:40:20.440 The fact is that when he says that he's felt sometimes that he can't trust the news, it

01:40:27.140 so vastly understates the problem that it feels like a fraud in itself.

01:40:31.680 Now, these are people who went every day to the White House to press conferences, to other

01:40:39.840 events who are stationed there and couldn't tell us that our president had dementia.

01:40:45.380 These are people who claimed that Donald Trump was a Russian agent, despite no proof and still

01:40:51.040 no proof.

01:40:51.880 These are the people who claimed that, you know, the withdrawal from Afghanistan was somehow

01:40:56.620 not the absolute deadly debacle that it was, that it's not that they sometimes gotten things

01:41:04.000 wrong.

01:41:04.360 It's that they always get things wrong and they get things wrong in a big way.

01:41:09.400 And they did it through COVID and they did it through the first Trump presidency.

01:41:13.100 And they have done it right up until this very moment with this new big story, which is the

01:41:19.800 defrauding of the United States taxpayer by a vast array of social welfare schemes that

01:41:26.100 aren't helping anyone except politicians, gangsters, and foreign, even foreign recipients and,

01:41:34.900 you know, gangs.

01:41:36.160 Al-Shabaab overseas.

01:41:39.180 So this guy has been at CBS for nine years.

01:41:42.500 He was at NBC prior to that.

01:41:44.160 What did you do, Tony, to show that you had a loathing and objection to the way CBS News

01:41:51.820 was covering everything?

01:41:53.480 Because all I remember of Tony Docapul was he stood up to Ibram, no, it was to Ta-Nehisi

01:41:59.420 Coates, who spent 10 days in Israel and then declared himself an expert on the oppression

01:42:05.180 happening over there. 1.00

01:42:06.400 And he did a good job of cross-examining him on his empty, meaningless, stupid-ass book when 0.99

01:42:12.060 he went on one of the shows that they have on CBS that Tony was a part of, CBS Mornings. 0.99

01:42:17.420 So he did a good job there.

01:42:18.880 And then he got the evening news rule because he stood up for Israel and Barry Weiss is now

01:42:23.260 running CBS.

01:42:24.160 And so she gave him the top job.

01:42:25.860 Great.

01:42:26.360 OK, so I think we can expect him to stand up for Israel.

01:42:29.280 And there is a lot of left-wing bias against Israel, so we'll look forward to seeing that. 1.00

01:42:32.900 What else has Tony done?

01:42:34.220 Seriously, what is a single instance in which he has stood up for the regular Joe on corporate,

01:42:41.400 corporate media bias?

01:42:43.480 None. 1.00

01:42:44.400 Bullshit. 1.00

01:42:44.980 This is fucking revisionist history meant to set him as the new truth teller. 1.00

01:42:50.160 Where was he in the independent lane? 0.99

01:42:51.840 Where was he standing up for people who were in the independent lane trying to tell the truth

01:42:55.420 about media, about government, about the Biden administration?

01:42:58.620 I don't remember you, Tony. 0.98

01:43:00.820 So I find this utter bullshit condescension, Walter. 0.99

01:43:03.900 And I do believe it will fucking fail as all these networks are failing because the audience 1.00

01:43:09.720 has caught on to their bullshit. 1.00

01:43:12.920 Well, if they wanted to take a big swing, they would have hired Walter Kern kite. 1.00

01:43:18.080 He's sitting right here in front of you.

01:43:20.060 And he has paid a very dear price for his dissent on these stories, frankly.

01:43:26.420 I've lost jobs.

01:43:27.680 I've lost friends.

01:43:29.180 I've lost social standing among the people that used to bug me when I had to go to their

01:43:36.160 parties.

01:43:36.640 So that's no loss.

01:43:38.060 But there are a lot of people who've lost a lot in this fight for the truth.

01:43:43.560 And he's not really one of them, frankly.

01:43:46.520 Yeah.

01:43:46.900 Walter Kern kite.

01:43:47.920 They would do a lot better.

01:43:49.200 Now, speaking of people we love, you are definitely at the top of the list.

01:43:53.100 I do want to give an update on our pal, Victor Davis Hanson, who underwent a radical surgery

01:43:59.040 on Tuesday that was dangerous.

01:44:02.040 And he has come out, issued a statement through his boss at the Hoover Institution, Condoleezza

01:44:08.440 Rice, that reads, I wanted to share a brief health update.

01:44:11.540 I recently underwent surgery to remove a cancerous tumor and am now recovering.

01:44:15.820 I'm doing well and hopeful as I move forward.

01:44:18.060 Thank you for the many messages of support and prayers.

01:44:20.320 They truly mean more than I can say.

01:44:22.080 As I focus on recovery, I may not be able to respond to everyone, but please know how

01:44:25.320 grateful I am from VDH.

01:44:28.160 And I've been in touch with his wife, too.

01:44:30.340 And I know that he's doing a lot better.

01:44:32.180 And he did come through the surgery with a complication or two, but he's doing very well

01:44:36.100 now.

01:44:36.420 So God bless him.

01:44:37.360 He needs your prayers.

01:44:38.740 Walter, God bless you, too, my friend.

01:44:40.600 Great to have you.

01:44:41.400 Thank you.

01:44:43.080 See you again soon.

01:44:44.140 And we are back tomorrow.

01:44:45.440 See you then.

01:44:47.280 Thanks for listening to The Megyn Kelly Show. 0.94

01:44:49.520 No BS, no agenda, and no fear.

The Megyn Kelly Show - January 05, 2026

＂America First＂ and Trump's ＂Don-roe Doctrine,＂ and Tim Walz DROPS OUT Amid Fraud Scandal, with Walter Kirn and Aaron Mate ｜ Ep. 1223

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