On today's show, Megyn Kelly is back from her holiday break and ready to bring you the latest news and notes from the past week. She talks about what she's been up to since returning to work, why she decided to take a break from politics, and why she's not going to run for re-election in 2020. Plus, the latest on a man who took a hammer and tried to break into Vice President J.D. Vance's home.
00:09:38.500And in fairness to Fox News, it wasn't just Fox News that is cheerleading this.
00:09:41.760You could see so many major news networks cheering this on, CBS News and NBC.
00:09:49.280So this truly, which underscores that this is a, even though this is Trump's policy, it is bipartisan.
00:09:54.620There'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.
00:10:01.700And it's important to raise questions and to, you know, challenge the assumptions that have been made to justify this campaign.
00:10:08.820The reason why I object to this is, first of all, I don't think we have the right to regime change foreign countries.
00:10:15.120We don't accept foreign countries interfering in the U.S.
00:10:18.380If 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.
00:10:28.220And in Venezuela in particular, it's obvious why we've been doing it.
00:10:32.020I mean, Trump, to his credit, has been very clear about this.
00:10:36.100He said that on Saturday that we're going to take their oil under the so-called Donro Doctrine.
00:10:41.660And I don't grant any state the right to do that.
00:10:44.720It's also going to have serious human consequences.
00:10:48.560As you mentioned earlier, people were already killed in this attack, which hasn't gotten very much coverage.
00:10:53.080But dozens of people, at least, were killed, including civilians inside Venezuela.
00:10:58.020And 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.
00:11:09.360But this has been going on for a very, very long time.
00:11:11.780A 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.
00:11:23.740Tried to install someone who tried to cancel the Constitution.
00:11:27.740That was reversed by popular uprising and loyalist military members.
00:11:31.720But the campaign has continued ever since.
00:11:33.900And 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.
00:11:45.660So, for example, there have been many migrants coming from Venezuela.
00:11:48.340And 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.
00:11:54.920Well, 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.
00:12:04.140Thomas 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.
00:12:19.740When 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.
00:12:30.000A lot of people fled that as a result.
00:12:32.340So 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.
00:12:42.980So, look, legally, I don't think we have the right to.
00:12:46.080And 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.
00:12:55.360You 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.
00:13:12.340But they were conducting certain terrorist operations against us, and then we conducted certain military operations against Libya.
00:13:22.440And it all culminated in the bombing of Pan Am Flight 103 over Lockerbie, Scotland, by Libya.
00:13:32.920And that was one of my first introductions to international terrorism as a young woman, because I was starting at Syracuse University in 1988.
00:13:42.940And it happened that there were 35 Syracuse University students on board Pan Am 103.
00:13:49.040They had been studying abroad in London and were on their way home.
00:13:51.880And 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.
00:14:00.160You 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.
00:14:10.380And 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.
00:14:19.980And it was something that always—I always remembered.
00:14:22.960I mean, we were there every four years.
00:14:45.600And now, you know, you look at those parents of the 35 Syracuse University students.
00:14:49.260I'm sure they're not feeling so great about it.
00:14:50.840So it's just—that's just one example, Aaron, where I—you just don't know what you're starting.
00:14:56.420And our mutual friend, Glenn Greenwald, has been pointing out that it's very normal for the cheerleading to happen after an action like this.
00:15:03.640There's, like, a froth that builds up amongst the media.
00:15:14.080And we're proud of the United States of America for being able to do that in a way that probably no other country can.
00:15:18.420But that doesn't really answer the bigger question about how is this going to come back to haunt us?
00:15:22.440And not just us, but our kids, our children.
00:15:26.420Yes, because it's people on the ground who have to pay the price of these decisions made from above.
00:15:32.080I mean, how many people lost their lives in Vietnam and so many other countless wars that were a disaster for everybody involved?
00:15:40.360And 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.
00:15:48.220I mean, Megan, you have a legal background.
00:15:50.520I'd be curious your thoughts on the indictment and the strength of it.
00:15:54.060I 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.
00:16:05.100And to me, it speaks to kind of this not being such a robust indictment.
00:16:09.560But he's accused of being a narco-trafficker.
00:16:12.260And again, I don't think the evidence supports that.
00:16:15.500And it's also a harder case to make when Trump recently pardoned a convicted narco-trafficker in the same court that indicted Maduro.
00:16:23.560In the New York court, Juan Orlando Hernandez, the former president of Honduras, he was found to take a bribe from a cartel, $1 million.
00:16:31.600He was caught on tape vowing to stuff the drugs up the gringo's noses, quoting him.
00:16:37.440There was a prison murder tied to his case.
00:16:41.340So just as he's launching a regime change campaign in the name of fighting narco-trafficking, he goes and pardons a convicted narco-trafficker.
00:16:53.700So this strikes me as just yet, as we saw with Iraq, the pretext there was Iraq WMDs, which didn't exist.
00:17:02.580And I think we're following a very similar playbook here.
00:17:13.780I'm sure Trump does object to the amount of drugs coming our way from Venezuela.
00:17:17.960But, 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.
00:17:26.320But, and to your point, he just pardoned this other guy who was obviously a party to that, too.
00:17:38.500And 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.
00:17:57.260You know, we enforced that over years.
00:17:58.440And I was just kind of researching this morning.
00:18:00.640What, what was the constitutional authority for that?
00:18:02.960You know, like there wasn't really any, we kind of just made it up and said, we're just not going to allow it.
00:18:08.320And we've been doing it for 200 years now and getting away with it.
00:18:13.460And so I kind of understand his decision that, forget the narco terrorism stuff.
00:18:21.200He 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.
00:18:32.420Um, I think it really is Trump saying not in our hemisphere.
00:18:35.700I've seen that Cuba's basically infiltrated Venezuela entirely.
00:18:39.640The, the, the relationship between those two has been totally interdependent and they don't like Cuba, especially Marco Rubio.
00:18:45.000Um, and China was there when we captured Maduro there.
00:18:49.740They 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.
00:19:01.240America to make them less dependent on the United States and more dependent on China and where that goes.
00:19:05.740We don't like, we don't know, but we know we don't like and Russia too with the oil.
00:19:09.700So I think that was the honest answer.
00:19:18.600And he said, why don't you ask Russia that?
00:19:20.600Why don't you ask China that they're, they're the ones who are focused on the Venezuela oil.
00:19:23.660And 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.
00:19:35.860It's not a great thing for the United States of America.
00:19:37.980Well, 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.
00:19:48.820If 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.
00:20:03.380If 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.
00:20:10.560And that's what I think happened in Venezuela.
00:20:12.580I 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.
00:20:23.200Maybe 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.
00:20:31.620And 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.
00:20:45.200Cause 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.
00:20:50.360And 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.
00:21:01.620Now, 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.
00:21:07.160I 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.
00:21:22.820And so when you have a country doing that, I can understand why in Venezuela's case, they went and sought other friends.
00:21:28.420It does make you wonder too, like, where was it going in Venezuela?
00:21:33.340I 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.
00:21:41.920I mean, Russia already has a lot of oil.
00:21:45.600They 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.
00:21:57.480It can't exactly hope to open up another front war against the United States from Venezuela.
00:22:04.480I'm not exactly sure what the threat, what the thought is there.
00:22:07.320China too is suffering economically right now.
00:22:10.440So 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.
00:22:17.060By the way, Cuba already has an, an out, an outpost off of our border against us if they want.
00:22:24.360Um, 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.
00:22:32.460Cuba has been struggling because Cuba is very dependent on Venezuelan oil.
00:23:24.160And 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.
00:23:30.580And he's gone with the Lindsey Graham faction of his party, which amazingly Trump ran against.
00:23:35.480I mean, part of the appeal of his 2016 campaign was he was running against the neocon legacy of people like Lindsey Graham.
00:23:42.140But 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.
00:23:50.420The White House put his arm around him and said, what a great president he's been for Israel.
00:23:54.480And the point of people like Marjorie Taylor Greene.
00:23:55.480They call him the first Jewish president.
00:24:34.580And that's been the policy for decades.
00:24:36.340And that's also now the policy in Venezuela is to impose sanctions that increase desperation.
00:24:42.000This doesn't mean the government is is perfect, can't be criticized.
00:24:45.660It doesn't have responsibility for its problems.
00:24:47.400But if we're concerned about the suffering there, our responsibility is to not participate in it.
00:24:52.780And that has been exacerbated by these crippling sanctions.
00:24:56.700And on the issue of oil in Venezuela, I think Venezuela would love to work with the U.S.
00:25:01.680because the sanctions on its oil sector have crippled it.
00:25:05.540There'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.
00:25:14.440But 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.
00:25:30.060And that's just a reflection of the power that the U.S. has via its control of the global financial system.
00:25:34.540So Venezuela needs the U.S. for its oil industry to work.
00:25:41.800The problem is the U.S. traditionally demands complete submission.
00:25:45.720And if you have some national pride, as I think Maduro and his allies have, they're not going to offer you complete submission.
00:25:51.920So if we weren't, I think the problem here is hegemony and the demand for complete control.
00:25:56.820If 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.
00:26:05.840It's, I mean, it's, you can certainly say it's not isolationist.
00:26:10.340It's not non-interventionalist, which is what a very large faction of the Republican Party prefers now.
00:26:19.420And 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.
00:26:37.160It was all good motivations, not like the Lindsey Grahams of the world.
00:26:40.800I just, he's never seen a conflict he doesn't want to join.
00:26:42.940Um, but I think it's largely that same group.
00:26:45.720I 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.
00:26:55.300And we talk about their war experience.
00:27:14.340And 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.
00:27:27.160This is like, and I've heard it time after time.
00:27:29.800Like, 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.
00:27:45.740And I just, I just, I mean, you got Trump talking about Cuba's going to fall.
00:27:50.720Colombia's president, better quote, watch his ass.
00:27:53.420We're ready and loaded to go into Iran.
00:27:56.320Iran, if protesters there get shot because protests are happening in Iran as well.
00:28:02.000So we're going to be doing a shooting campaign in Iran.
00:28:08.800We're quote, running and quote, in charge of Venezuela now.
00:28:13.760And, you know, somebody's making the point on Twitter.
00:28:15.400How'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.
00:28:27.140If there was a study in Trump's first term, which showed that communities in the U.S.
00:28:31.860with the highest rate of military sacrifice in the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan disproportionately went for Trump.
00:28:37.820So 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.
00:28:50.060And Hillary Clinton, his opponent, was seen as the representative of the bipartisan neocon consensus, which Trump was running against.
00:28:56.920And 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.
00:29:05.040And I don't think that will bode very well for him in the midterms.
00:29:08.820Now, granted, you can never rule out Democrats screwing everything up and handing Trump another victory.
00:29:18.180Look, there's two different factions within MAGA.
00:29:20.280You have people like Lindsey Graham claiming that make America great again.
00:29:24.200And America first means engaging in all these foreign wars.
00:29:27.200But you have people like Marjorie Taylor Greene and many others who don't agree with that.
00:29:31.160And Trump has turned his back on them.
00:29:33.760And I have the same questions about what this means for his electoral chances.
00:29:38.920And this idea that all this is going to magically help people with the issue of affordability, I don't see it.
00:29:44.900First of all, it's going to take a long time.
00:29:46.020Even 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.
00:29:53.200And the people who will mainly profit are the people who Trump is surrounded by.
00:29:57.560It's billionaires, the people who own oil companies, not who.
00:30:04.520But by the way, Chevron's been operating inside Venezuela.
00:30:08.100And 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.
00:30:20.020The new government of Venezuela, led by Delce Rodriguez, has issued a statement saying they want to work with Trump.
00:30:25.640But Trump has been very clear that he wants Venezuela to follow his orders.
00:30:29.420And 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.
00:30:36.860Yeah, but just Delce Rodriguez, she apparently, well, she's Maduro's VP.
00:30:42.320We don't recognize her as the legitimately elected VP.
00:30:46.660We 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.
00:30:56.640So 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.
00:31:14.920You know, she's not quite that nasty in her messaging.
00:31:17.360But her messaging internally in Venezuela has been anti-Trump, anti-U.S.
00:31:22.420And our government seems to be saying, just rolling its eyes, saying, take that with a grain of salt.
00:31:26.880She's just doing what she has to do in order to not have them all turn on her.
00:31:30.620So I don't know what's going to happen with Delce Rodriguez.
00:31:33.380Meanwhile, the woman who did win the vote, I mean, she didn't win.
00:31:35.940It 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.
00:32:22.960Speaking 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.
01:01:25.980But 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.
01:01:40.420And they asked him to violate his ethical oath by telling the U.S. brass what he'd learned in those examinations.
01:01:46.420Well, duh. I mean, obviously, he was going to have to do that.
01:01:49.780They weren't, like, trying to get Goering the help he so desperately needed by sending in a psychiatrist.
01:01:55.120He was an American psychiatrist designed to get information that would help us in the trial.
01:02:13.200And in the radio tour, he has American radio hosts asking him about the unique evil of these Nazis.
01:02:20.120And 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.
01:02:29.740And, you know, it was like, okay, except we've gone 250 years without it happening.
01:02:36.200But, sure, that's the message these filmmakers wanted to leave us with.
01:02:39.920It could happen just as easily in the United States as it did in Nazi Germany.
01:02:44.520You know, it reminds me of a Rachel Maddow monologue.
01:03:03.380You 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.
01:03:12.160And the German reporter turned to me and he said, someday we may have to invade you to save you from fascism.
01:03:19.940And I looked at him and I said, go away.
01:03:22.920I, you know, this is how you this is how you thank us for, you know, first beating and then reconstructing your country.
01:03:33.320Yeah, I could have seen that softball flying a million miles away.
01:03:47.960OK, 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.
01:03:54.780Ann Coulter made some good points online and she said it's about time.
01:04:00.320She's totally in favor of what we've done in Venezuela.
01:04:02.640She said Maduro has been indicted over and over for drug trafficking.
01:04:05.000And she says, unlike, for example, off the top of my head, Iran, which poses exactly zero threat to any American.
01:04:11.820The 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.
01:04:18.800Drop the horse shit, she writes, about making Venezuela great again.
01:04:21.500Other than Uruguay, which is 88 percent white European, she writes, no Latin American country has ever achieved long lasting peace.
01:04:28.920The rest are cauldrons of revolution, civil war, coups, coups, military dictatorships, etc.
01:04:46.160The 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.
01:04:55.080Millions of poor people responded, yes, the U.S. military can depose.
01:05:00.220It cannot change the nature of people.
01:05:04.200Get 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.
01:05:16.820Though her final point is, send all the Venezuelans who have fled to our country home.
01:05:23.160Now, 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,
01:05:34.660about whether they could revoke the temporary protected status that Biden had given some 600,000 Venezuelans here, and Trump revoked it.
01:05:44.480Well, there was a lawsuit the U.S. Supreme Court held in October.
01:06:09.140Madam Secretary, are you going to force these people to return to Venezuela now, even as their government is in complete flux?
01:06:17.200Well, 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
01:06:26.800and 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.
01:06:36.800These programs, we're bringing integrity back to them.
01:06:39.580The decisions are made in conjunction with the State Department, with the White House,
01:06:43.560and then we at Homeland Security implement them and make sure that they are followed through.
01:06:48.860So every individual that was under TPS has the opportunity to apply for refugee status,
01:09:30.240And I guess I will rely on that track record so far as he urges us to rely.
01:09:38.000And, you know, if he's in over his head, then we'll soon see.
01:09:43.920But, 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.
01:10:33.400But 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.
01:10:57.380In case you bring out a gun and it's not a card game anymore.
01:11:01.140So this is kind of behavior that I would expect from someone who's trying to use the fewest troops to do the most change.
01:11:40.380So 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.
01:12:01.820You 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.
01:12:19.900Yes, and the reason the Nick Shirley piece was so additive is because it had video, right?
01:12:25.600Like, 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.
01:12:36.180He hit her in the behind, and then he yanked her to the ground by her hair.
01:12:39.900And our friend, Summer, was her best friend and went to the liquor store in front of which it happened and got the video.
01:12:47.180And we put it on Twitter, and then we put it on this show, and it went viral, and they caught the guy.
01:12:52.520It turned into a big story because we had the video.
01:12:56.600And 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.
01:13:05.040Didn't see them at all on the list, nor are they even covering these huge news stories like the Nick Shirley stuff.
01:13:12.600Most of these, most of the broadcast networks aren't really covering it.
01:13:16.060Most of the legacy press, like New York Times, Washington Post, not covering it, just ignoring it.
01:13:20.900And, 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.
01:13:40.680Oh, okay, well, if they said it, certainly a fraudster, when asked directly, would definitely tell the truth.
01:13:47.340If you could believe what criminals and government officials say, we would have no need for a press.
01:14:00.040So 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.
01:14:16.660And 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?
01:14:24.700I'll let you hear him explain it in part right here.
01:14:32.200Donald Trump and his allies in Washington and in St. Paul and online want to make our state a colder, meaner place.
01:14:39.060They 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.
01:14:50.580They've already begun trying to withhold funds that were meant to help families afford child care, and they have no intention of stopping there.
01:14:58.620A single taxpayer dollar wasted on fraud should be intolerable.
01:15:03.520And 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.
01:15:14.500My administration has been taking fast, decisive action to solve this crisis.
01:15:19.080We'll win the fight against the fraudsters.
01:15:21.660But the political gamesmanship we're seeing from Republicans is only making that fight harder.
01:15:26.920He 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.
01:15:54.560Is it Donald Trump lying about Minnesota, or is it Minnesota getting together to defraud the federal government?
01:16:03.260Because remember, this was federal money flowing through Minnesota, not just state money.
01:16:09.120It was primarily federal money that was being appropriated and directed into these state-overseen programs where it just disappeared.
01:16:18.980And 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.
01:16:32.400And it did so at a level that America was stunned by and continues to be stunned by.
01:16:38.480And it's only a paradigm for other states.
01:16:42.060Tim 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.
01:16:51.860This story was not covered during that election, yet it existed.
01:16:56.180All the facts that have come out recently were there for the press to look at when Tim Waltz was running for the vice presidency.
01:17:04.080To me, he's the luckiest man in the world.
01:17:08.640He might be giving the governorship over to someone who will be in a position to pardon him for various crimes.
01:17:16.560He might be surviving to fight another day, but I don't think his troubles are over.
01:17:22.920And to go out blaming somebody when you're also supposedly taking responsibility is a classic have-your-cake-and-eat-it-too political move.
01:18:06.400Let 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.
01:18:14.200This is him just within the last hour.
01:18:17.800But 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.
01:18:27.300Every 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.
01:18:40.280So 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.
01:19:19.020We see them copping pleas, getting found guilty for earlier frauds by the day.
01:19:23.840And 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.
01:19:32.080And you called us all white supremacists.
01:19:34.540You literally said that you're a white supremacist if that's what you want to focus on.
01:19:56.880And this group, The American Experiment, had an exclusive with airing this.
01:20:01.700I'm just going to play you a little bit of Keith Ellison in the problematic sound bites.
01:20:05.280And 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.
01:20:16.000Here he is on tape to some of the feeding our future scandal individuals, people involved in it.
01:20:24.380And he's all about how he's going to help them.
01:20:28.220Not how he's going to crack down on them, but how he's going to help them.
01:20:31.420Because Keith Ellison, of course, himself is a radical, and he's been running cover for groups like this for a long time.
01:22:02.300And 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.
01:22:11.820That I can take that list and start saying, and I can call Jody Hartstead, the person over at Education,
01:22:25.700And I'll call them in my office and demand some explanations.
01:22:28.940Maybe it's because they are accused of committing fraud.
01:22:32.940Maybe 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,
01:24:16.740He 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.
01:24:25.200The defendants falsely claimed to have served 91 million meals, for which they fraudulently received nearly $250 million in federal funds.
01:24:37.220Running small people out of business, like Keith Ellison said.
01:24:41.300And like he said, Governor Walz agreed with him on.
01:24:44.720Instead, said the feds, it was used to fund their lavish lifestyles.
01:24:47.700Today'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.
01:24:54.620This is uncovered by the Minnesota think tank American experiment obtained December 2021 audio.
01:24:59.740And that's that's, I believe, Walter, why Tim Walz will not be running for reelection.
01:25:05.440And it's not because defending the people of Minnesota is going to be a big distraction for him.
01:25:11.340Well, he's got his own defense to pay attention to.
01:25:14.880And I'm sure he's got teams of lawyers on speed dial ready to prepare it.
01:25:59.520And treating that as a business is is maybe he believes that that's a legitimate business.
01:26:05.380But 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.
01:26:20.260Mm 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.
01:26:41.940However, how about actually kicking the doors? Because this didn't come out of nowhere.
01:26:45.460As 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.
01:26:54.080So Nick Shirley didn't pop out of the blue. Right.
01:26:57.160So, like, where was the interest? Why didn't the Minneapolis Star Tribune blow the lid off of this, Walter?
01:27:03.000Or 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?
01:27:18.620Well, 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.
01:27:25.900Secondly, 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.
01:27:40.540They 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.
01:27:57.620If silence is consent, the Minneapolis Star Tribune was allowing this to go on.
01:28:02.480So everybody's implicated. Nick Shirley, Huckleberry Finn, All-American Boy, Lois Lane comes along.
01:28:10.040You 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.
01:28:24.480That 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.
01:28:44.000And let's listen, Minnesota is so good natured that it may, you know, not survive.
01:28:52.480Yeah. Everybody there wants to believe themselves to be a great person.
01:28:55.800And, and it's like a Monty Python sketch.
01:28:58.640They will still, when they have nothing and their cities are burning on the horizon, say, at least I was a nice person.
01:29:07.380And, and so that now you have the feds saying we have shut down the funding to these alleged childcare institutions because of these reports.
01:29:19.340And then Tim Walsh's response is, they're mean, the feds are mean.
01:29:24.500Donald Trump wants more meanness here in Minnesota.
01:29:27.980He, he wants the money to go to actual children, not to obvious Somali fraudsters.
01:29:38.480Megan, the, the, the people who should be most outraged by this are the people who want children to be fed.
01:29:45.380The 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.
01:29:54.400The people who want autistic children to be cared for.
01:29:58.340All of this money basically came out of the mouths and minds and bodies of the people who should have been getting it.
01:30:06.220And because it was diverted from them, the charity toward them and the, the good feeling toward them has been vastly reduced.
01:30:15.580They're making everything seem like a scam because everything that they've done looks like one.
01:30:24.500And shouldn't it be the liberal, good-hearted, kind-hearted people who want to see these real problems addressed, who are the most outraged?
01:30:33.440Instead, they're the most angry about this.
01:30:37.380I 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.
01:30:49.340Mm-hmm. Yeah, they're like, Nick Shirley, he may have gone there in hours that it wasn't open, the daycares, every single one?
01:30:56.900Because 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.
01:31:06.200So what was it, like Northern Lights in Minnesota when he got there?
01:31:10.800Because he says he was there in the middle of the day, and there were no children in center after center after center.
01:31:16.740And 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.
01:31:26.800You know, you can verify it with your eyes.
01:31:29.100No, they all, here's what happened instead.