The Megyn Kelly Show - Another Trump Arrest Coming？ Plus, Rich and Woke Politicians, with Chris Rufo, Matt Lewis, Dave Aronberg, and Mike Davis

00:00:00.380 Welcome to The Megyn Kelly Show, your home for open, honest, and provocative conversations.

00:00:11.780 Hey everyone, I'm Megyn Kelly. Welcome to The Megyn Kelly Show.

00:00:15.100 Breaking news today as former President Donald Trump announces he has received a target letter

00:00:21.040 from Special Counsel Jack Smith, and he expects to be arrested and indicted again

00:00:28.860 in the coming days. We do not yet know what the specific charges might be or when exactly they

00:00:35.760 will be handed down, but Mr. Trump says they are in connection with the criminal investigation

00:00:41.940 into the events leading up to the storming of the Capitol on January 6th.

00:00:46.420 This will be Trump's third indictment in just over three months. It's never before happened in U.S.

00:00:52.360 history, and now it's happening three times in just over three months, where the former President

00:00:58.740 of the United States is being indicted, the leading candidate for the Republican nomination

00:01:02.600 is being indicted, and there may yet be a fourth. There is a Georgia grand jury that may be indicting

00:01:08.000 him sometime, excuse me, before September. Joining me now to discuss it, two attorneys

00:01:13.580 who are steeped in the cases against Donald Trump. Mike Davis is the founder and president

00:01:18.640 of the Article 3 Project, which defends constitutionalist judges and the rule of law.

00:01:22.920 Also with us, Dave Ehrenberg, he's the state attorney for Palm Beach County, Florida,

00:01:27.780 where Mar-a-Lago is based and is somebody very used to bringing indictments.

00:01:34.020 Guys, thank you both so much for being here. So President Trump released a statement that

00:01:39.780 reads in part, wow, on Sunday night, while I was with my family, having just arrived from

00:01:43.860 the Turning Point event in Florida, where I won the straw poll against everyone else by 85.7%,

00:01:48.340 blah, blah, blah. I received horrifying news for our country by my attorneys. Deranged Jack Smith,

00:01:57.600 the prosecutor with Joe Biden's DOJ, sent a letter, again, it was Sunday night, stating that I am a

00:02:02.480 target of the Jan 6th grand jury investigation, giving a very short four days to report to the

00:02:06.880 grand jury, which almost always means an arrest and an indictment. So let me start with you on that,

00:02:13.200 Dave. As a prosecutor, he's correct, is he not, that getting this kind of a letter from

00:02:18.320 the DOJ means he's about to get arrested and indicted?

00:02:22.520 Yes, Megan, good to be back with you. He is correct. He is going to be indicted. It's just

00:02:27.020 a question of when and it's going to happen sooner than later. He's being invited to testify before the

00:02:32.620 grand jury, but no one believes he's actually going to do that. In fact, prosecutors don't expect him

00:02:37.180 to do that. It's just a courtesy you give to a defendant who's a target who's going to be

00:02:42.080 indicted. And you hope that he comes and testifies because that usually goes poorly for the future

00:02:49.220 defendant. But he's not going to show up there because he's not going to get immunity. And they

00:02:54.920 are just going to move ahead with this case, which I think is not as strong of a case as the document

00:03:01.920 matter, but I think is more understandable to the public. The public saw what happened on January 6th.

00:03:07.900 So I think this will be something that's easier to sell to the public than the document case.

00:03:13.640 Mike, indicted on what? We don't know. But like the Alvin Bragg case, we had an idea where that one

00:03:20.800 was going. The documents case, we had an idea, like a pretty good idea. This one, I don't know what

00:03:27.760 they're going to indict him on in connection with January 6th. What do you think?

00:03:31.620 Well, it's very interesting, Megan. We've been talking about this since August. This is part of the

00:03:35.180 Democrat lawfare campaign against President Trump. They fear they can't beat him in November of 2024.

00:03:41.300 So they're simply going to indict him and try to get him to die in prison instead of facing Joe Biden

00:03:46.640 or Gavin Newsom. And so the theory I think that I've been seeing leaked improperly to the press is

00:03:53.340 that they're going to charge Trump maybe with some sort of conspiracy to overturn the election,

00:04:01.340 maybe file false electors or false paperwork regarding the 2020 election certification.

00:04:09.640 The problem with this theory is you are allowed to object to presidential elections in America.

00:04:16.880 It's specifically permitted by the Electoral Count Act of 1887. You're also allowed to twist arms

00:04:24.000 politically in America. That is allowed under the First Amendment.

00:04:27.800 If it were, it's only a crime to object to presidential elections in third world Marxist

00:04:34.160 hellholes. And if it's a crime to object to a presidential election, Democrats would be in

00:04:39.540 prison for objecting to Republican wins in 1968, 2000, 2004, and 2016. What Garland and Smith seem to

00:04:48.760 be doing is trying to lump everyone together on January 6th, a protest, a lawful protest from the National

00:04:55.560 Park Service that got out of control and turned into a riot and somehow put all that together into

00:05:01.240 this legal soup and come up with this bogus legal theory that Jack Smith is he's good at this. He's

00:05:07.800 good at coming up with bogus legal theories against Republican presidential contenders that later get

00:05:13.220 overturned unanimously by the Supreme Court.

00:05:15.360 That's his specialty. What a specialty, Dave. I I get I understand as a lawyer a possible charge of

00:05:26.000 inciting a riot, which is one of the things that they've discussed. I don't think that's going

00:05:30.180 anywhere because Trump's speech that day specifically said, you know, be peaceful. And it wasn't it just I

00:05:37.040 think they're going to have a very difficult time getting past his First Amendment rights in trying to

00:05:40.780 turn that speech into a crime. So I don't think that's what's going to come. If you read more left

00:05:48.060 leaning websites by lawyers who wanted to see this happen, this is what I've come up with in trying to

00:05:54.860 understand what we might expect here, that Trump wanted to use false electoral slates to obstruct

00:06:01.880 the Congress's certification of the election. So basically obstruction of Congress. That is what

00:06:08.920 Andy McCarthy has also predicted. This will likely be about. This is some months ago, not today, but

00:06:14.320 that's what he was predicting. Obstruction of Congress. 18 USC Section 1512 prohibits the obstruction

00:06:21.380 of an official proceeding. Could be that also linked to it that he wanted Mike Pence to block

00:06:27.860 certification or the to delay the count of the Electoral College and then that he wanted fraudulent

00:06:35.820 electoral certificates and submitted the same to Congress. He basically certifications. He didn't

00:06:42.780 want the actual vote that was coming in from the states to be certified because he said that it was

00:06:47.180 fraudulent. And his last resort was triggering an insurrection. Of course, we've heard that from

00:06:51.960 the Dems to delay the transfer of power. What do you think of those possibilities?

00:06:56.220 Megan, I don't think he's going to be charged with insurrection, and I don't think he's going to be

00:07:01.460 charged with inciting a riot or inciting an insurrection. I agree with you that the First

00:07:06.920 Amendment is broad and it protects his speech. I do think he's going to be charged with obstruction

00:07:12.880 of an official proceeding and or obstruction of Congress. And I think he'll be charged with conspiracy

00:07:18.160 to defraud the United States. These are crimes that many other rioters from January 6th have been

00:07:23.280 charged with. And you don't have to be there at the Capitol to be charged with those crimes.

00:07:28.220 There's also the possibility of wire fraud if he was involved with the fake electors scheme.

00:07:33.520 And there's the possibility of fraud when it comes to the fundraising that occurred. He raised

00:07:38.380 $250 million supposedly for his legal defense fund and it was sent other places. So I think those are

00:07:44.160 the potential charges. Get back something that I want to differ with my friend Mike about the fake

00:07:49.420 electors scheme. In a couple of the states where they had the fake electors, they actually had

00:07:54.980 disclaimer language on the bottom that says- Forgive me, Dave. Forgive me. Let me just jump

00:07:58.600 in. Can you just explain for people who aren't following this that closely, what were the fake

00:08:02.640 electors, the so-called fake electors?

00:08:04.980 Sure. The states provide electors to the Congress to be counted. That's what Mike Pence has to open

00:08:10.080 and count. And there are several states where individuals sent a false state of electors saying,

00:08:16.920 we are the real electors and here are Arizona's electors. And that was false. That could be

00:08:23.360 considered wire fraud. That could be considered altering an official document as far as a state

00:08:28.860 law. So that's the crime. Now, in a couple of the states, the people who signed on to these as

00:08:35.880 electors said that we are alternate electors in case there's a dispute over the electors. So in that

00:08:44.040 case, that's not a crime. In fact, Jack Smith will not prosecute in those states because that

00:08:49.200 disclaimer language protects you. But in the majority of the states that provided this language,

00:08:53.880 they didn't. They didn't say we're alternate electors. They said, we are the real electors.

00:08:58.520 And that's a fraud. And that's something you can't do. And I think that's going to be prosecuted.

00:09:04.100 What do you make of that one, Mike? The false electors claim, I confess, confuses me because,

00:09:08.340 you know, I know this is related to the now infamous John Eastman memo, this lawyer who is

00:09:14.420 advising Trump and he's come under much scrutiny for this plan. But the thought that instead of

00:09:20.260 taking the real electors that were coming out of certain states, Trump worked with his legal team

00:09:27.280 and others to create a false slate of electors. I mean, it was all out in the open. It wasn't secret

00:09:32.560 because he said those states votes were fraudulent and he wanted the vote to come down a different

00:09:39.500 way. Again, all out in the open, not not in any way a secret, hoping that Mike Pence then as the

00:09:44.800 guy whose real sole job was just as he was supposed to just count what was coming in, that he would

00:09:49.560 reject the actual slate in favor of the, quote, fake slate. So that how how is that? How do you see

00:09:57.680 all of that? And then I'll go back to Dave on the rest of what he was going to discuss. Go ahead.

00:10:01.040 I see this as a bogus legal theory to try to criminalize the political process. And that's

00:10:08.600 what Jack Smith has a track record of doing. He did this with Virginia Governor Bob McDonnell

00:10:14.560 when Bob McDonnell was a likely Republican presidential contender in 2016. Jack Smith came

00:10:21.680 up with a bogus legal theory of corruption, got this guy, got Bob McDonnell convicted. It was

00:10:28.080 overturned unanimously eight to nothing by the Supreme Court. It would have been nine to nothing,

00:10:32.820 but Justice Scalia died. But Jack Smith did what he wanted to do, which is take out a Republican

00:10:38.580 presidential candidate. This guy is a partisan. He's doing the same thing to Trump. This is a bogus

00:10:44.220 legal theory. They are criminalizing conduct that is protected, protected by the Electoral Count

00:10:49.860 Act of 1887. It's also protected by the First Amendment. How is it? How is the electors,

00:10:56.540 the so-called fake electors, a fraud, Dave, when we knew that there was a slate of electors coming

00:11:02.500 from these states? And then we knew that in a couple of states, Donald Trump had an alternate

00:11:06.460 slate, whether they specifically said that or not. Nobody was fooled. The elections were certified

00:11:11.260 with the regular slates. So how is that even arguably a fraud?

00:11:14.680 Well, if you say that we're an alternate slate of electors in case that the actual electors are

00:11:21.520 not counted, that's not a fraud. But if you say we're the real electors, that's a fraud.

00:11:27.040 And when Mike Pence is there to count, the whole plan was that Mike Pence would have these fake

00:11:33.340 electors and say, you know what, we're going to send this back to the state or we're going to count

00:11:36.580 the fake electors. But this was part of the whole plan with John Eastman and Jeffrey Clark and all the

00:11:43.040 folks on the inside to try to delay or obstruct the counting of the votes to send it back to the

00:11:50.320 states when they didn't have any legitimate reason to do so. There was no articulable fraud in the

00:11:58.240 election to warrant the rejection of the actual electors. Now, here's the thing. I think the reason

00:12:04.400 why they can get Trump on obstruction of an official proceeding is because if he went along with the

00:12:10.620 plan to send up fake electors or to send rioters to shut down the count, any of that stuff can get

00:12:20.420 you obstruction of an official proceeding. Just the plan, the planning of it gets you. You don't

00:12:25.400 have to be at the Capitol that day. It's a broad statute that's been used successfully already

00:12:29.280 hundreds of times against the rioters. So I think that's where they're going to get it. It's not on

00:12:34.320 seditious conspiracy, Megan. That's another thing I want to differentiate. Seditious conspiracy means

00:12:38.900 you have to have an agreement between two or more people to use violence to shut down the count.

00:12:44.820 I don't think you can connect Trump directly to the violence, so I don't think that's going to be

00:12:48.840 charged. But you don't need violence to charge someone with obstruction of an official proceeding

00:12:53.200 or a conspiracy to defraud the United States. But how? OK, so putting the fake electors thing to the

00:13:00.020 side, which I don't know, this seems like a stretch to me. It was all open and notorious.

00:13:04.400 Nobody was trying to pull the wool over anybody's eyes. And I mean, I guess I now, Jack Smith,

00:13:08.740 this is my understanding. I confess I haven't done deep research on the fake electors and how that went

00:13:12.580 down. All I know is Mike Pence certified the election. Joe Biden won and we were off to the races

00:13:16.660 and Trump had this legal theory that he was pushing that was that didn't go anywhere. But but on the

00:13:23.160 the interference, you know, like Trump encouraging rioters that day, I just like every time we go

00:13:30.640 back to what Trump did on the day of January 6th, Mike, I don't think they haven't like he's got to

00:13:35.600 have something beyond that day, does he not? Because Trump's speech at the Capitol, it was if you look

00:13:41.800 like over and over, he was saying be peaceful. He wasn't encouraging a riot. He did sit in the White

00:13:47.720 House and not say anything for a couple of hours. That's not criminal. That's a political matter that

00:13:52.580 the voters will or will not care about come the next election. Yeah, I mean, that this is political

00:13:59.060 speech. He had they had a permit from the National Park Service to show up to the Capitol on January

00:14:04.540 6th. They gave a speech which is routine. It got out of control and turned into a riot. There's no

00:14:10.780 evidence that Trump encouraged that. Right. And again, I think what Jack Smith is trying to do is

00:14:17.140 lump everything together between what happened with that riot versus the planning for what happened

00:14:23.160 on January 6th to have the protest, which is legal and the legal effort to object under the Electoral

00:14:29.160 Count Act of 1887 and the First Amendment. And they're trying to combine all this together into

00:14:34.100 this legal soup and come up with a novel and bogus legal theory to try to eliminate President Trump.

00:14:40.300 Again, if it's illegal to object to presidential elections, Democrats would be in jail for for 68,

00:14:46.860 2000, 2004 and 2016. Mm hmm. Right. Well, Stacey Abrams would be behind bars right now with Hillary

00:14:53.920 Clinton. This seems to me like the Democrats. Holy grail, Mike. I mean, this is the one they really

00:15:03.540 wanted. They'll settle for the documents case. They'll settle for Stormy Daniels and the payments not being

00:15:08.880 properly recorded in Alvin Bragg's New York prosecution. But this is the one they really

00:15:16.180 want. And it does make me wonder because Jack Smith, though, he certainly seems like a political

00:15:21.320 animal and he's got to understand how absurd this seems to most of us who who aren't, you know,

00:15:27.820 political like hacks. It's just how many indictments can you slap the former president United States

00:15:33.760 with, especially you, Jack Smith, working for the man, essentially, who's his chief political rival,

00:15:39.140 Joe Biden? Yeah, I mean, I said Alvin Bragg's bogus indictment won the Republican nomination for Trump.

00:15:48.320 Jack Smith's presidential records indictment won Trump the general election. This indictment is going

00:15:53.880 to win Trump a blowout in the November 2024 election. This is going to backfire spectacularly.

00:15:59.900 What I think the Democrats are trying to do is I don't think I don't think they expected these

00:16:04.380 indictments to help Trump in the polls. And now what I think they're trying to do with this

00:16:08.560 indictment by Jack Smith for January 6th is to try to tag him with like insurrection or

00:16:14.480 seditious conspiracy so they can try to move under the 14th Amendment to have him where he can't run for

00:16:20.640 the president. Have a federal judge say that he can't be a presidential contender because of the

00:16:26.060 he's disqualified under the 14th Amendment. That will not fly at all with the American people.

00:16:31.920 But I fear that's the path the Democrats are heading down. Wait, how how does that work?

00:16:37.980 Because, I mean, impeachment, if he had been convicted, which he wasn't, then he would not

00:16:42.460 have been permitted to run again. But how can they use the 14th Amendment here on this particular

00:16:47.480 prosecution to get to get him out of this race? So under the 14th Amendment after the Civil War,

00:16:52.880 the 14th Amendment disqualifies the candidates who are involved in an insurrection. And I think

00:16:59.380 that's the path. If you read those, you know, like the Andrew Weissman types, if you read their memos,

00:17:04.880 if you read their online chatter, it's the 14th Amendment theory. They think they can disqualify

00:17:10.340 Trump under the 14th Amendment, under the insurrection clause. So he can't even run in 2024.

00:17:17.560 Dave, you were shaking your head no when Mike was speaking. Why?

00:17:20.560 With respect to Mike, from a political standpoint, let me talk to you as a Democrat. And I love

00:17:26.600 coming on on your show as a Democrat, Megan. I can tell you the candidate the Democrats want to run

00:17:32.600 against is Donald Trump. He is the most beatable. The polls show it. Joe Biden does better against

00:17:37.980 Donald Trump than against anyone else in the Republican field. And so I strongly disagree with

00:17:43.520 the thought that. That's not true. I mean, he's in the latest polls. Trump's beating Biden by two

00:17:48.920 and DeSantis is either tied or like a point or two behind Biden. We may be looking at different

00:17:54.000 polls that, but I've seen another real clear politics average, but go ahead. All right. Well,

00:17:58.960 depends on what they include in the in the the average. But look, the thinking is I could tell you

00:18:04.500 the Democrats is that although no Democrat wants Donald Trump to be president, they do think that

00:18:11.540 he is the easiest to beat in a general election. I think that these indictments are going to hurt

00:18:17.160 Donald Trump when it comes to suburban moms in Atlanta. I mean, the swing states, yes, it will

00:18:21.260 help him in the Republican primary. I think it he's a lot to win the Republican primary. But in a general

00:18:27.100 election, I don't see how January 6 helps him when January 6 was there for everyone to see. People

00:18:33.260 were appalled by the conduct on that day. And when Jack Smith comes out with his evidence, I

00:18:37.380 anticipate it will be a stronger than what we're discussing now because we don't know what he has

00:18:42.000 access to. And also a federal judge has already come out and said that it's more likely than not

00:18:47.120 that Donald Trump committed the crimes of obstruction of an official proceeding and conspiracy to defraud the

00:18:52.580 United States. And one last point on that is that, you know, even if you can't show his direct

00:18:57.220 intent that he knew the election was legit and he did this anyways, I don't think as a

00:19:03.000 prosecutor, you need to show that even though I think they may have that evidence, they've

00:19:07.140 interviewed a lot of people around him. The fact is that if you think the election was stolen,

00:19:11.500 there's a way to challenge it. You go to the courts, you can make objections in Congress. That's the way

00:19:18.120 to do it. But that's not what happened here. You can't do fake electors. You can't rally the proud

00:19:22.680 boys. You know, you can't conspire. We did not rally the proud boys. He did not rally the proud

00:19:28.080 boys. Stand back and stand by is not a rally. Mike, what what about that, though?

00:19:32.880 Because Trump, if Mike is raising a good point on sorry, Dave is raising good point, Mike on

00:19:37.800 on fraud is generally you have to show that the person knew one thing and was saying a different

00:19:42.460 thing. And in this case, I do think that's a very high bar for Trump. I mean, I think

00:19:46.200 others from the outside may be looking at this saying, how could you possibly have believed you

00:19:51.640 won? Trump, I think is I think he was a true believer that he won and that he was screwed over.

00:19:57.080 Forget forget the stuff that we can all agree on, like the suppression of the Hunter Biden laptop and all

00:20:02.060 that. I think Trump genuinely believed there were shenanigans at the voting boxes. There were

00:20:06.720 shenanigans possibly at the Dominion voting, you know, all of that. But is he right that

00:20:11.500 Trump's actual mental state would be irrelevant for these claims for? I mean, conspiracy to defraud

00:20:19.260 requires fraud, which would require you to there's it has to be a disconnect between what you believe

00:20:25.100 and what you're saying and doing. Yeah, there has to be specific intent. You have to know what

00:20:30.920 you're saying is false and you're saying it anyway. And then people detrimentally rely on that. That's

00:20:36.040 fraud. And that's not what happened here. Trump legitimately believes he won the election. He

00:20:40.880 legitimately believes it was stolen from him. He still believes that he talks about it constantly,

00:20:46.340 both privately and publicly. And so it's going to be a very, very high bar. And look, I ran Senate.

00:20:52.920 I ran the nominations for the Senate Judiciary Committee, including for the Kavanaugh confirmation,

00:20:59.420 where Democrats obstructed the proceedings throughout the entire time. They weren't

00:21:04.360 charged with obstruction of the congressional investigation. They weren't charged with

00:21:08.800 seditious conspiracy. We just said that these were boneheads who got out of control. And this

00:21:13.620 is part of the political process. We didn't try to put these people in prison for the rest of their

00:21:17.700 lives. And this is this is a novel legal theory. This is obviously political. And it is overreach

00:21:25.500 by Jack Smith, the king of overreach, the king of getting overturned unanimously by the Supreme Court

00:21:32.080 when he goes after Republican presidential candidates. Just my team just sent this to me, Dave.

00:21:37.580 So so the real clear politics average shows Biden up over Trump by zero point four up over DeSantis by

00:21:47.480 one point four. So that's the real clear politics of all polls. It's all, you know, clustered right in

00:21:53.480 there. But I take your point that many Democrats do want to run against Trump and believe him to be

00:21:59.660 the most beatable. He's the best known. He's the most controversial. He's the most beloved within the

00:22:05.980 Republican Party. But when you take it out to a general electorate, could be a different story.

00:22:10.120 What's interesting to me is some of the political reaction we're getting right now, which is from

00:22:15.540 his GOP rivals. And for the first time, we're starting to see a little, you know, in the last

00:22:20.920 two indictments, the GOP got indignant. They knew that their voters were indignant. And now you're

00:22:27.540 starting to hear a little bit different of a message. Here's Nikki Haley responding on the spot

00:22:34.120 this morning after Trump's announcement of all this three.

00:22:38.260 It's going to keep on going. I mean, the rest of this primary election is going to be in reference

00:22:44.300 to Trump. It's going to be about lawsuits. It's going to be about legal fees. It's going to be about

00:22:48.400 judges. And it's just going to continue to be a further and further distraction. And that's why I am

00:22:54.920 running is because we need a new generational leader. We can't keep dealing with this drama. We can't

00:23:00.560 keep dealing with the negativity. Hmm. So is there a risk there, Dave, that the GOP accepts that

00:23:09.020 message? Somebody else ascends to the top of the polls right now, despite Trump's 30 point lead in

00:23:15.140 the GOP field. And the Democrats, you know, should get disappointed because Trump effectively is too

00:23:23.540 mired in legal morasses to actually run. Yeah, the Democrats would would fear running against Nikki

00:23:30.320 Haley, much more so than running against Donald Trump. And I think that Donald Trump is still a

00:23:36.380 lock because if this were a one on one race with Nikki Haley or with Ron DeSantis, he could be in

00:23:41.740 trouble. But this is not. It's like 12 on one. This is 2016 all over again. And I don't see a path

00:23:47.380 to victory when the anti-Trump vote is going to be split a number of ways. I'm going to be interested

00:23:52.120 to seeing how Mike Pence reacts to this. Will he start putting more daylight between him and

00:23:57.840 Donald Trump? Will Ron DeSantis do that? So far, DeSantis has been reluctant to attack the front

00:24:03.260 runner. And if you can't attack the front runner on stuff like this, then you're not going to

00:24:06.960 overtake the front runner. And not even just stuff like this, but in general, I mean, it's true that

00:24:11.980 DeSantis, you know, not attacking Trump has not been working for him. His approach thus far has not been

00:24:17.160 working for him, though he's starting to try new things. And that includes, Mike, a little bit of a

00:24:21.960 different messaging on today's news. He, like all of us, just learned about it this morning.

00:24:27.580 So it was a little bit, you know, OK, just reacting to the breaking news. But listen to his

00:24:32.880 message, which the first part of it is being used against him by the diehard Trump fans.

00:24:37.620 But listen to the whole message. Here it is.

00:24:41.080 Shown how he was in the White House and didn't do anything while things were going on. He should have

00:24:46.660 come out more forcefully. Of course that. But to try to criminalize that, that's a that's a

00:24:51.740 different issue entirely. And I think that we we want to be in a situation where, you know,

00:24:57.220 you don't have one side just constantly trying to put the other side in jail. Again, I have I just

00:25:03.380 someone whispered this to me, so I'm sure I'll have a chance to look at this in the future,

00:25:08.240 depending on the development. So, Mike, there's just even that first bit, you know,

00:25:14.400 you're just starting to see a little bit of percolation from these GOP rivals like,

00:25:18.500 you know what? He should have done more. And Nikki Haley, you know, it's too much drama.

00:25:24.560 This he's full of drama, like just bit by bit. I say, OK, that's fine. They should fight. They

00:25:29.140 want the job he wants. But he's 30 points ahead. I mean, consistently in poll after poll after poll.

00:25:37.140 And if you go down to the state level, it's almost as bad.

00:25:40.100 Yeah, I mean, I would say about Ron DeSantis, I think he's been America's best governor.

00:25:45.800 He's been one of the most underwhelming Republican presidential candidates I've ever seen.

00:25:50.880 And so maybe he should just stick to being the governor until 2028 and get out of this race.

00:25:55.940 He doesn't embarrass himself any more than he's already done. I think what the Democrats and a

00:26:00.760 lot of D.C. Republicans have done with this lawfare against Trump is they are they've done the

00:26:06.360 impossible. They have made Donald Trump sympathetic. And if you talk to real Americans

00:26:11.520 and real America, like my friends and family back in Iowa, they resent this. They resent the fact that

00:26:17.740 the elite think that they get to decide the presidential election instead of the American

00:26:22.140 people. And that's why this is backfiring. This is why President Trump's poll numbers are skyrocketing

00:26:28.100 and will continue to skyrocket.

00:26:29.620 The other thing I want to ask you about before we wrap it up is there's there's news in a couple

00:26:37.240 of the other cases. So in particular, in the documents case that's pending in South Florida,

00:26:41.660 where you are, Dave, they are now both sides now are going in for a procedural hearing today at two

00:26:47.240 and they want to push the trial date past the summer, which, of course, that's definitely going to

00:26:53.740 happen. Trump wants to put it into a point past the 2024 election. The prosecution wants it to be

00:27:01.680 mid-December. Now, the closer we get to the actual election of November 2024, the less likely any judge,

00:27:11.140 never mind the Trump appointed judge who's right now overseeing things like discovery and dates,

00:27:14.880 is going to want to actually schedule this thing. You know, they're going to be very reluctant to put

00:27:19.680 this. Oh, let's put it in October of 2024. Right. So Trump's team is trying to get it after November

00:27:25.120 2024. And the prosecution wants it well before November 2024, like this December. What do you

00:27:32.140 think the judge down there is likely to do? Because this is actually a very important this is very

00:27:35.780 important. I mean, if Trump can postpone this Mar-a-Lago documents thing till after the election,

00:27:41.000 he could win and pardon himself. Potentially, he could just have any Republican could win and pardon him.

00:27:48.420 Now, if he loses or if Joe Biden gets reelected, all bets are off. That's not great for him. But at

00:27:55.160 least he's got another lifeline available to him if he could postpone this thing. So what do you think

00:27:58.740 is likely to happen? Right. Although, Megan, it's unclear whether a president can pardon himself. He

00:28:03.840 can clearly order his Department of Justice to drop it all. And that's what would happen if this

00:28:08.480 doesn't get tried. I think today, Judge Cannon is going to deny Trump's request to have an indefinite

00:28:14.220 postponement. That's a bridge too far. The Speedy Trial Act doesn't allow you just to say indefinite

00:28:19.240 postponement. You've got to come up with a specific date. It's got to be in consultation with not just

00:28:23.340 the defense, but prosecutors. But I think that a December trial is also a bit expedited. I think

00:28:30.300 that'll be too fast. So I think this will get set perhaps in December, but eventually it will get

00:28:35.360 pushed back little by little by little. And I've used this analogy for Judge Cannon to make a ruling

00:28:42.680 that is best for Donald Trump. She doesn't have to hammer the Department of Justice with an

00:28:48.520 indefinite postponement. She just has to keep postponing it little by little, and it'll be a

00:28:52.740 death by a thousand paper cuts. Because it is in Trump's interest to postpone this as long as

00:28:57.620 possible. Because I do think this is the strongest case. I think this is a stronger case based on the

00:29:02.320 evidence than the January 6th case that is yet to come. I think you're right about that. I agree with

00:29:08.360 everything you just said. And let's face it, anybody who's ever tried a case knows that that's

00:29:12.380 how it normally goes. You get a delay, you get another delay, you get another delay. You don't

00:29:16.560 just get like the one big sweeping delay of two years. It's like just like you say, death by a thousand

00:29:20.800 paper cuts, which would be good for Trump. Also news that there's a possibility that the political

00:29:26.320 reporting as follows. All signs point to Trump's trial being held at the federal courthouse in Fort

00:29:31.380 Pierce, a city of fewer than 50,000 residents on the east coast of Florida. Judge Cannon does not

00:29:36.400 appear to have explicitly declared that yet. But holding the trial there could minimize disruption

00:29:41.000 at the other main federal courthouse in South Florida. It also would likely mean a jury drawn

00:29:45.160 from five relatively pro-Trump counties. That's all good for Trump, that the case, I agree with you,

00:29:51.420 Dave, that the case in Florida is strong on the papers. You know, forget the politics of it

00:29:56.740 against Donald Trump. But the jury pool is much better for him down there. And but Mike in New

00:30:02.540 York, that Alvin Bragg case is supposed to go to trial in March. I think that one, too,

00:30:06.440 will get delayed. I think it could potentially it probably will get delayed past election night.

00:30:10.480 Maybe I'm wrong, but that's a very bad jury pool for Trump. And Mike, if he gets indicted on Jan 6th,

00:30:17.700 that's a D.C. jury, which is a nightmare for any Republican. Never mind Donald Trump.

00:30:23.420 Yeah, I mean, this is this is lawfare. They know that they're going to they're going to try to hang

00:30:28.720 them with a criminal conviction somewhere. They're they're trying to hedge their bets by having it

00:30:33.900 in New York and D.C. And they have to have it in Florida because that's where they found the

00:30:38.720 documents. And so, again, this is lawfare. This is lawfare by the Democrats. This is lawfare by Merrick

00:30:44.200 Garland, Jack Smith, Matthew Colangelo, who joined Alvin Bragg's office up in New York from from the

00:30:52.220 the Biden Justice Department. He was the acting number three and then the number two to the number

00:30:56.560 three. This is, you know, why can't the Democrats just let the American people decide the next

00:31:03.000 presidential election? Why are they trying to eliminate a leading presidential candidate with

00:31:08.380 novel, I would say, bogus legal theories that have never been tried before, particularly against a

00:31:14.300 former president of the United States who happens to be the leading presidential contender against their

00:31:19.800 boss? We already had a whole impeachment hearing on on Trump's Trump's behavior around January 6th.

00:31:26.100 We had he wasn't convicted. We had a whole January 6th series of hearings on primetime television.

00:31:34.560 They've done their level best to make sure every American knows exactly what happened that day,

00:31:38.580 what Trump did and what he didn't do. Now it's in the hands of the American people. But apparently

00:31:43.400 that's not good enough. And they want to put it in the hands of a jury. If this goes into a D.C.

00:31:47.560 jury's hands, Trump's screwed. I mean, honestly, there's no I just what D.C. jury on anything

00:31:54.540 would acquit Donald Trump. This is getting uncomfortable. It's getting it's making me

00:32:00.140 feel uncomfortable as a citizen, the way that Jack Smith is behaving, the way this D.O.J. is

00:32:04.860 behaving. But, Dave, I also love having you on the show as a Democrat, honest attorney with your

00:32:10.380 honest analysis. Mike, you're on the other side of it and always appreciate your whip smart analysis.

00:32:15.580 You guys are awesome. Thanks for coming on. Thank you. Thank you. When we come back,

00:32:20.760 Chris Rufo is here to talk about what is happening in the D.E.I. world. There have a report. The

00:32:27.020 Ben reports that it's all but collapsing. This is the guy who helped expose it in the first place.

00:32:32.040 We'll ask him whether that's true. Joining me now, Chris Rufo. Chris has been one of the leaders

00:32:40.020 pushing back against the left's desire to shame children for their race and push radical trans

00:32:45.400 ideology in schools. He is now a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute and contributing editor for

00:32:51.380 the great City Journal. Love City Journal. You're not reading City Journal. You are missing out.

00:32:58.040 Trust me. And now he is the author of the new book just out today, America's Cultural Revolution,

00:33:04.280 How the Left, How the Radical Left, Conquered Everything. It's currently the number one best

00:33:09.280 seller on Amazon. Chris, welcome back to the show. Great to have you. So where are we? You've been on

00:33:15.640 the show many times over the past two plus years. We've been on going on three years now. And where

00:33:21.500 are we in terms of the D.E.I. fight? Because a couple of months ago, we saw a forum in which Robin

00:33:28.600 D'Angelo and others like her were lamenting that the appetite for their books and their programs

00:33:35.620 has fallen off a cliff, that their message and their message just wasn't resonating the way it

00:33:41.080 used to. Today, our friends over at Morning Wire, which is the Daily Wire's morning news podcast is

00:33:46.520 the answer to NPR. I love it. We're talking about how places like BlackRock and Larry Fink won't say

00:33:54.240 any more ESG, which is kind of like the corporate D.E.I. that they won't talk about investing,

00:34:00.680 investing in those terms. It's been very alienating. It doesn't mean they're not doing it anymore,

00:34:05.280 but they've at least been shamed out of owning it and touting it in the way they were right after

00:34:09.660 George Floyd. So give us an overview as to how your slash our fight is going.

00:34:17.780 Well, it's an important fight. And actually, the roots are much deeper than anyone really knows. And

00:34:23.460 what I've tried to detail in the book is the genealogy of the D.E.I. business. It started in

00:34:28.340 the 1970s as neo-Marxist intellectuals around the country had failed to achieve their political

00:34:36.300 objectives in the riots of the 1960s, the student protests in the early 1970s. And they wanted to

00:34:42.780 find another way of burrowing into the institutions, including corporations, and then bringing their

00:34:47.800 ideology into those institutions under the guise of racial sensitivity training, which then morphed into

00:34:52.860 diversity and inclusion training and finally reached its full form in the summer of 2020 as D.E.I.,

00:34:59.780 diversity, equity, and inclusion. When these programs were ubiquitous, it was every company,

00:35:05.100 school, church, government agency teaching the catechism of critical race theory. America is

00:35:10.780 systemically racist. White people are inherently privileged and oppressive. And minorities need to be

00:35:16.320 treated unequally as a group, awarded special advantages by the government in order to equalize

00:35:22.120 group outcomes. But as you've described, the energy has shifted dramatically. As the ascendant

00:35:30.180 movement of the D.E.I., C.R.T. ideologies seem to be overtaking the whole country. Now people,

00:35:38.360 now that it's been exposed through my reporting, through guests on your show, through a whole host of

00:35:44.420 other investigations, people are saying, hey, wait a minute, I don't want D.E.I. if what D.E.I. means in

00:35:52.020 practice is racial scapegoating, abolishing the First Amendment protections of free speech, and then

00:35:58.740 subverting all of the basic American principles such as freedom and equality and equal treatment as

00:36:04.560 individuals. And so we have this moment right now where if conservatives and moderates and classical

00:36:11.300 liberals can come together and really make a push for true colorblind equality, I think we have a huge

00:36:18.160 opportunity. Robin DiAngelo, Ibram Kendi, Black Lives Matter have been totally discredited. And now we

00:36:24.900 have to actually make these policy changes. And so what I've done with Governor DeSantis in Florida,

00:36:29.320 with legislators in Texas, is actually help pass legislation to abolish the D.E.I. departments

00:36:34.360 in all of those states, public university systems. We need to take that model and take it everywhere.

00:36:41.380 You know, the Supreme Court ruling two weeks ago on free speech, I think was an important victory in

00:36:47.460 this whole battle where we had the web designer who didn't want to do gay wedding websites. She would do

00:36:54.840 services for gay people, but just not the wedding websites and the Supreme Court held her free speech

00:37:00.860 rights and her right not to be compelled into speech. She doesn't support outweigh the the laws

00:37:08.940 that are supposedly about, you know, equality for various groups. They were basically saying you

00:37:15.260 cannot force somebody to support a cause like gay marriage if they're legitimately held belief doesn't

00:37:21.580 allow that. They don't want to support it. You can't make them say that they support it. You can't make

00:37:24.960 them design websites supporting it and so on. I really think it's got a direct parallel in the work that

00:37:30.320 you're doing. I mean, how many cases have you seen where kids are forced in the classroom to

00:37:36.780 participate in these racialized discussions that they don't want to participate in? And if they try

00:37:42.460 to sit back and just keep their heads down and like stay out of it, the teacher says your you must speak

00:37:49.840 up. We need to hear from you. And what she means is we need to hear you affirm our messaging about the

00:37:56.980 differences in races and how one is oppressed and one's the oppressor and so on.

00:38:01.880 Yeah. And this is really the key to understanding how all of these things work. I think a lot of

00:38:06.520 people the past few years have looked around and said, what happened? How did all of our institutions

00:38:11.860 suddenly become gripped by this ideology and really deranged away from their original mission

00:38:17.980 to provide education, to provide essential services, to provide a product for sale in the marketplace?

00:38:23.440 And then toward the total kind of ideological conditioning of society, according to these

00:38:31.340 basic tenets, whether it's a race theory, gender theory, et cetera. And you have to understand that

00:38:36.300 this is part of a long, decades long process where the left came up with a strategy, as I explain in the

00:38:43.160 book, in the early 1970s to go on a long march through the institutions and then take their ideology

00:38:49.500 anti-democratically in an extra parliamentary manner and force it on people through HR programs,

00:38:56.980 through K-12 curricula, through university faculty hiring and et cetera. Because they know that

00:39:02.760 when voters are asked, do you believe in the principles of CRT, DEI, trans ideology, they wholeheartedly

00:39:12.120 and in a strong majority reject them. So what they've done is they've hijacked all of the transmission

00:39:17.460 belts within the systems of power, within the institutions where they can force it on you

00:39:22.960 because they know that their ideology can never win consent of the public, the consent of the

00:39:27.780 government. So what they've done is a very sneaky, very subversive and really, frankly, very anti-democratic

00:39:34.300 method for forcing you to repeat the words, for forcing you to use the pronouns, for forcing your

00:39:39.900 kids to line up according to their racial privilege. I mean, so the fight against this from

00:39:44.920 conservatives, you know, the left says conservatives are anti-democratic, they're fascists, they're

00:39:50.300 authoritarians. The opposite is true. We need to revitalize the democratic structures to restrain

00:39:57.420 our institutions, our public institutions, in the best interests of the citizens themselves,

00:40:03.620 consonant with the values of the people who pay for these institutions, who are the fundamental

00:40:10.200 stakeholders in these institutions. And so the solution to this anti-democratic measure

00:40:16.180 is not to try to fight them on their own terms, but actually to go over their heads and to say,

00:40:22.800 we need to restore democratic governance of our institutions. And if the ideology is opposed by

00:40:28.560 70 or 80 percent of the people, it shouldn't be in the K through 12 classroom. That's not how public

00:40:34.260 institutions work. That's not how our republic works. So how do we do that? And I know you

00:40:39.920 you were the one who convinced Donald Trump to write an executive order, getting rid of

00:40:44.940 CRT in our federal agencies, which, of course, then Biden changed. But you've been working with

00:40:50.480 Ron DeSantis in Florida to try to de-wokify Florida and its institutions. That's been very successful.

00:40:56.840 But how do we do that? Because I think of things like the teachers union,

00:41:00.140 and I feel overwhelmed there. They just they've completely captured the Democrat Party. They do

00:41:06.400 whatever the teachers union wants. And what and what they both want is to indoctrinate our children

00:41:12.720 in both of the lanes that you just referred to. Yeah, well, there's actually really good news.

00:41:18.800 And the final chapter, the conclusion of my book talks about how conservatives can combat America's

00:41:24.980 cultural revolution with their own counter revolution. And it requires some big thinking.

00:41:30.140 It requires big confidence and courage. And it requires moving pieces of legislation through

00:41:36.280 state legislatures. And hopefully one day power shifts through the Congress and to the president's

00:41:41.760 desk for signature. But in Florida, for example, we've been making tremendous progress that can serve

00:41:48.080 as a prototype or a model for other states. You know, legislators banned critical race theory in K

00:41:54.040 through 12. Legislators banned gender surgeries for minors and banned gender ideology in the K

00:42:00.300 through 12 school system. Legislators recently banned the DEI system, have reformed faculty hiring

00:42:06.760 and public universities. The governor appointed me to actually be part of this new board majority to

00:42:12.480 take over one of Florida's public universities, transform it into a institute of classical liberal

00:42:17.660 education. And then finally, and I think really, in some ways, most importantly, legislators have

00:42:22.480 instituted a universal school choice program so that any family in the state of Florida that is

00:42:27.500 anxious or nervous or in opposition to what's being taught in the public school system can take

00:42:33.840 those taxpayer dollars and take them to any institution of their choice. Private school,

00:42:39.300 religious school, homeschool, micro school. Yes, yes, yes. Anywhere that they want to go.

00:42:43.260 But can I ask some of those things that's how you got by the courts, Chris? Some of those things have

00:42:48.160 been struck down by the courts. And the problem is, you know, and I'm all for eliminating these

00:42:54.000 agendas from public and private schools, for that matter. But you got to do it within the bounds of

00:42:58.720 the law because we can't have an authoritarian government on the right that tries to tell everybody

00:43:04.600 what they can and cannot say any more than we want it on the left telling us what we can and cannot say.

00:43:09.640 So, I mean, there's some nuance there, though. So, I mean, look, speak to the legal losses,

00:43:16.220 speak to the legal losses, because I understand what you're pushing.

00:43:19.260 There's been one minor legal setback. There's been there's been really no losing in courts.

00:43:24.360 There's one specific aspect of one of the bills where the district courts have ruled against the

00:43:30.240 state of Florida. But I think I'm confident I talk with the legal team that will prevail.

00:43:35.040 But that's very specific. It's only Chris, there's been multiple losses. And I'm on your

00:43:39.540 side. OK, I like the agenda, but I want this to come forward in a way that can be sustained legally,

00:43:45.440 that the Woke Act was ruled against. And that was upheld, I believe, by the 11th Circuit,

00:43:50.560 the preliminary injunction against the act. So was the act banning the medicalization of

00:43:55.900 or the for minors in schools or for minors in the medical community. There's been a multiple sort of

00:44:01.740 attack by Ron DeSantis, which I like, but it's losing in the courts.

00:44:06.360 For sure. But but but you have a what I think is going to be a minor setback applied to a very

00:44:11.800 specific part of the Stop Woke Act, specifically in higher education. That's where the case is

00:44:16.920 probably weakest for the state of Florida. But the attorneys feel confident that they can win

00:44:22.700 it on appeal. They'll eventually prevail. And I think that it's important to make this distinction

00:44:27.160 in K through 12. You know, public school teachers are agents of the government. They have compulsory

00:44:34.840 power over kids. And as you know, from the Supreme Court precedent on Ceballos versus Garcetti,

00:44:40.660 their speech is not protected by the First Amendment when they're in the classroom.

00:44:45.160 So we have an absolute authority as citizens to say to public school teachers with compulsory power over

00:44:53.080 our kids. You can't promote this. You can't promote that. You have to promote this. You have to promote

00:44:58.740 that. We set the curriculum. We set the standards and we set reasonable restrictions. Those are none of

00:45:05.200 that will be will be overturned in the courts. There is a specific question. Let me jump in, please.

00:45:10.160 I think that's why the other lane that DeSantis has been legislating it like the the stopping this

00:45:17.720 discussion of inappropriate sexual matters of gender ideology. First, he said K through third

00:45:23.820 grade. Now it's been expanded to high school, but not beyond. That's that's fine. That hasn't

00:45:29.580 been struck down because of exactly what you're saying. Right. It's like their free speech rights

00:45:35.960 are have always been recognized as somewhat limited in the grade schools and the lower schools,

00:45:40.720 especially if it can be unless it can be deemed obstructive or some somehow, you know, obstructive of

00:45:47.720 instruction. So in any event, I think that one's working and I understand why it's working. I just

00:45:52.860 I'm looking for something that we can be that we can repeat, you know, in in state after state

00:45:58.140 that's going to withstand constitutional scrutiny. And I think that the strongest argument and look,

00:46:03.860 I'll be straightforward about it. What I've actually proposed, the model legislation that I worked on

00:46:08.000 with Manhattan Institute was for higher education. There's a slightly perhaps, although the jurisprudence on

00:46:15.220 this is still up in the air, there's perhaps more latitude for public university professors in their

00:46:20.420 classroom speech. I personally think that that's probably better in legislation in other states

00:46:25.600 to carve out an exemption to say, hey, look, if you're a university professor, you should have more

00:46:30.800 latitude in the classroom. These are adults. This is an environment that should have more openness of

00:46:38.180 inquiry than, for example, in the kindergarten class. So I would actually recommend and I think that

00:46:43.140 protecting against lawsuits, it would be very successful, writing an exemption, but really

00:46:48.920 hammering down on the speech of university administrators, not faculty, but actual administrative

00:46:54.720 employees, DEI bureaucrats and others, because there is no question that those fall very much under the

00:47:01.000 Ceballo versus Garcetti precedent. Those are those are not academics. Those are not professors.

00:47:05.940 They're not engaged in in the inquiry process. They're engaged in administering the university.

00:47:11.020 They're bureaucrats. And they're subject to really complete oversight to the public that pays their

00:47:17.640 salaries, that that that charters their institutions. And so if they wanted to be more careful and

00:47:23.040 cautious, I understand why the DeSantis team and the legislators in Florida said, hey, we're going to

00:47:26.540 push the precedent. We're going to see how far we can get. If we don't get there, we'll go back and

00:47:30.680 we'll amend the legislation. I think that is, you know, in some ways, actually quite useful to test

00:47:35.840 the boundaries. But if if conservative legislators wanted to be very certain, what they would do is

00:47:40.780 they'd say, hey, look, we can do K through 12. No problem regulating the curriculum in K through 12

00:47:47.800 that that's that's untouchable. And in public university bureaucracy, we have again, we can

00:47:53.220 regulate it. We can reform it. We can restrict it in the best interest of the people with with with

00:47:58.460 the very low risk of legal challenge. So in the minimalist case, we can do that in the maximalist

00:48:04.900 case. We'll find out. Yeah. OK, got it. Got it. Chris, he stays with us for another block and we'll

00:48:12.720 be right back. This is relevant on so many levels, Chris. Virtually every story we do somehow touches

00:48:21.760 on this problem. And today the story I want to ask you about involves our former president. So Barack

00:48:27.840 Obama felt the need to weigh in on the alleged book bans that the left is talking about. And this

00:48:35.340 happened in my own child's class. He goes to a non woke school by design. We selected it for that

00:48:40.740 reason. But there was this one woke teacher who sneaked in and was there for a while. And he said to

00:48:48.140 my son's class, oh, the right is banning books in schools across America, LGBTQ books. And it's

00:48:54.100 terrifying. And of course, we set our son straight. But this is in a non woke school. I mean, imagine

00:48:59.220 what the messaging is is to kids. And my son was in seventh grade last year in the in the regular

00:49:04.460 schools. And now Barack Obama weighs in. He writes a public letter to America's librarians, the hardworking

00:49:13.480 librarians of America, and says it's about book bans, quote unquote. They're not banned. They're they're

00:49:19.380 kicked out of elementary school, young education centers. But you can get them, sadly, at the public

00:49:25.900 library. You can get them on Amazon if you want to show your kid another a little boy giving a blowjob

00:49:32.480 to a man. Sure, you can find that. Go ahead and find that. You could find it in genderqueer if you

00:49:37.960 want to go to any library. And that's the book that apparently Barack Obama really wants in our

00:49:42.780 in our young children's classrooms. Here's what he writes today. Some of the books that shaped my life.

00:49:48.020 Really? Were you a big fan of genderqueer when you were growing up and the lives of so many others

00:49:53.580 are being challenged by people who disagree with certain ideas or perspectives? It's no coincidence

00:49:57.780 that these banned books are often written by or feature people of color, indigenous people and

00:50:04.380 members of the LGBTQ community. What a lie. Look at he's got it right. We're all racists and transphobes.

00:50:12.040 If we don't want books about little boy blowjobs in our children's elementary schools. This is

00:50:18.880 so dishonest. He goes on to link to something involving an organization, Unite Against Book

00:50:28.560 Bans. And that's an organization spearheaded by the American Library Association. Now, Barack Obama,

00:50:34.060 in his letter, speaks to these sweet, dear old librarians. I'm sure they have absolutely no

00:50:39.680 political agenda. Here's what he says to them. Librarians, you're on the front lines fighting

00:50:44.840 every day to make the wildest, the widest public. Sorry, my eyes. You're on the front lines fighting

00:50:51.600 every day to make the widest possible range of viewpoints, opinions and ideas available to everyone.

00:50:57.100 Your dedication and professional expertise allow us to freely read and consider information and ideas

00:51:03.760 and decide for ourselves which ones we agree with. Hold on one second here, Chris, because

00:51:09.760 a week ago was I think it was the last Friday or two Fridays ago I had on Kirk Cameron. Kirk Cameron

00:51:16.360 has a book about core values and faith that he would like America's school children to read. It's fine.

00:51:23.600 That's well within the possible realm of books you could see in a school library. And it's it's he's

00:51:29.700 having real trouble promoting it, including at public libraries. So he and his publisher organized a

00:51:35.700 it's a like national read day, read aloud day at libraries. I think it's August 5th. You don't have

00:51:40.860 to read his book. They're just encouraging you to go there and have any sort of a reading circle

00:51:44.900 with a book about, you know, core American values and family values and possibly religious values.

00:51:51.300 And he a whistleblower, somebody released to him or he said it was actually out in the open.

00:51:57.660 They just didn't realize. I guess it was being taped. The director of the American Library

00:52:01.580 Association talking about how to sabotage that book event so he couldn't he and his publisher

00:52:08.700 and those supporting them could not even get into the public libraries to have this alternative offering.

00:52:14.620 Listen to the soundbite. We're seeing groups that seek or seek to censor LGBTQA materials

00:52:21.820 or disparage or silence LGBTQA library users exploit the open nature of a public library to advance their agendas.

00:52:32.300 For example, right now, Brave Books and Kirk Cameron are conducting a campaign to take over libraries on August 5th.

00:52:41.500 The First Amendment does not require the library to even offer meeting room spaces.

00:52:45.440 So this in regard to the Kirk Cameron thing, you are not obligated to offer public meeting room spaces

00:52:52.560 or invite the public in to use the library. You can have a make a priority for library sponsored programs.

00:52:58.240 And what if your library decided to offer a whole host of programs in its meeting room on August 5th,

00:53:04.240 making it unavailable for the public? That's another option for you.

00:53:11.880 Great. This is what we're up against.

00:53:15.440 Yeah, that's absolutely right. And the American Library Association,

00:53:18.800 but like so many other professional organizations and societies,

00:53:22.480 have been absolutely hijacked by left wing activists and ideologues.

00:53:26.400 And you can say right there, she's saying that we're so open, we're so tolerant,

00:53:30.240 but then scheming to subvert the intention of the First Amendment,

00:53:33.680 which requires libraries to offer a viewpoint neutral meeting spaces and other facilities,

00:53:40.000 doesn't have to have the library's endorsement, but it has to provide it in equal access.

00:53:44.160 And so this is how they do it. It's all underhanded. It's all done with an intention to manipulate and conceal.

00:53:51.680 And it's really ridiculous on its face to say that it is somehow illegitimate for parents and public school administrators and public school boards who are elected in a democratic process

00:54:06.000 are not allowed to restrict pornography in a kindergarten classroom flies in the face, not just of common sense,

00:54:14.800 also makes you wonder why are they so intent on putting pornography to the kindergarten classrooms full of other people's kids,

00:54:21.440 but also flies in the real true meaning of the First Amendment, which was designed to protect, protect, uh,

00:54:29.120 substantive speech and debate about public issues, not to protect the, the publicly funded activists from jamming pseudoscience and race scapegoating into your child's curriculum.

00:54:42.080 And so, um, it's so false. It's so phony. And what I found to be the best, uh, method of fighting back against this narrative is to be very specific,

00:54:51.200 to, to show the books, to show the pages, to show the illustrations and make them not defend this rosy abstraction,

00:54:59.040 but make them defend the specific content that is being pushed on kids.

00:55:03.440 All of a sudden, uh, you get people, uh, even like former president Barack Obama would be very uncomfortable if you showed him, uh,

00:55:10.640 the pornographic material, the material of racial scapegoating and pin him and say, do you want your kids learning this? Do you want other kids to learn this?

00:55:19.760 Why are you forcing this on families that disagree? Um, that's always a really fun strategy and I find it quite delightful, uh, to watch them squirm.

00:55:27.760 Um, it's absolutely disgusting. I mean, I'm just looking at gender queer right here, which is the book that quote gets banned. Um, it's not a ban. It's a removal from an inappropriate spot for young children.

00:55:39.120 And it's absolutely, it's filthy. It's filthy. It's got erotic scenes of men having sex, illustrations of minors performing oral sex, a drawing of a man masturbating a young boy's penis,

00:55:53.300 a man masturbating a young boy's penis, shots of blood all over thighs from a period and like graphic descriptions of all this is disgusting.

00:56:06.160 And it's why gays against groomers, we just had them on the other day. They put out a statement in response to Barack Obama's saying these books are not LGBTQ plus.

00:56:16.260 They are pornographic filth being pushed on children using our community as a shield and a scapegoat to do so shameful that you have come out in support of them, but we're not surprised.

00:56:27.620 It's just absolutely alarming that somebody like the president of the United States former would feel the need to defend this.

00:56:35.000 And I don't know that he didn't do his homework or what either way, it's inexcusable.

00:56:38.820 Then you've got the disappointment of Charles Barkley. Charles Barkley is like the one person in America who doesn't seem like a hard lefty who is defending Bud Light.

00:56:51.520 I don't know what came over him. Maybe he hasn't done his research on why everyone is so mad at Bud Light.

00:56:58.400 He thinks, you'll see in this clip, it has to do with we don't support trans people.

00:57:02.780 That's not it, Charles. That's not it. Dylan Mulvaney in particular is extremely controversial and has been very offensive to women.

00:57:12.380 The stereotypes that he perpetuates about us as bimbos acting and dressing as a little girl showing his underwear, showing up in women's spaces, running around with tampons that he makes a mockery of that actually do prevent a lot of us from having embarrassing moments.

00:57:30.020 It's something Dylan wouldn't know anything about to what Dylan and the partnership represented, which was Bud Light endorsing a very controversial trans person.

00:57:39.620 At the very moment, they are transing children with absolutely harmful medical procedures, shoving this ideology on our children in school, something you've documented at length.

00:57:50.160 He doesn't get it, but here's what he said.

00:57:52.520 I'm going to buy some drinks for y'all, and I'm going to buy Bud Light.

00:58:02.400 Hey, and let me tell you something.

00:58:04.800 All you rednecks or assholes who don't want to break Bud Light, fuck y'all.

00:58:10.880 I ain't worried about getting canceled.

00:58:13.120 Because let me tell you something.

00:58:14.060 If y'all fire me and give me all that money, I'm going to be playing golf every fucking day.

00:58:18.340 If you're gay, God bless you.

00:58:21.980 If you're trans, God bless you.

00:58:24.820 And if you have a problem with them, fuck you.

00:58:29.560 Do your homework, Charles.

00:58:31.160 Put a little effort into educating yourself before you make dumbass statements like that.

00:58:36.140 Go ahead, Chris.

00:58:37.680 Yeah, I mean, it's just absurd.

00:58:40.280 It's a ridiculous statement.

00:58:42.180 It's a ridiculous position to hold, and Charles Barkley should also clean up his language, quite foul language on his part.

00:58:50.600 I can't criticize him.

00:58:51.540 Look, I mean, here's the idea.

00:58:53.080 I mean, they're trying to enforce an orthodoxy that you have to celebrate everyone who is suffering from gender dysphoria

00:59:00.920 and then identifies in this heroic posture as a member of the opposite sex.

00:59:06.460 And I think that the opposition to this is not just that it's a mockery of women or against notions of real womanhood,

00:59:14.440 but it's actually a mockery of basic reality that we all share.

00:59:19.660 And so the position that is strongest against this is to say, I'm sorry, Dylan Mulvaney is a man.

00:59:27.140 He will always be a man.

00:59:28.340 He always was a man.

00:59:29.740 This is a farce.

00:59:31.060 This is something that is not a well-ordered part of the soul that is going to extreme lengths in order to present as something that he is not.

00:59:42.560 You should respect his dignity as an individual human being, as we do everyone,

00:59:46.800 but we should not indulge his fantasies, delusions, and as you mentioned, dressing up as a little girl, his obvious perversions.

00:59:55.960 Let's call it what it is.

00:59:57.040 And this is not the civil rights issue of our time.

01:00:00.760 You know, Dylan Mulvaney is not the new Rosa Parks.

01:00:03.060 Let's get over ourselves.

01:00:04.680 Let's live in reality of sex, of creation, of man and woman.

01:00:10.300 Let's also live in the reality of our time.

01:00:12.040 We have equal protection under the law.

01:00:13.860 We've had it for generations in this country, now dating back more than 50, 60 years.

01:00:19.540 And let's all move forward as individuals, not indulge these fantasies or be bullied into somehow celebrating them by people as ignorant on this issue as Charles Barkley.

01:00:30.700 That's exactly right.

01:00:32.160 So Disney is one of the biggest problems in the woke-ification of America.

01:00:36.740 It's a complete betrayal by a company that a lot of parents for decades trusted implicitly.

01:00:42.660 They've decided to go another way.

01:00:44.940 And the latest example is the DEI forces have descended on the seven dwarfs around Snow White in Disney's latest offering.

01:00:57.660 Now there's only one dwarf and, like, a bunch of DEI boxes checked behind the one dwarf because they don't want to offend little people, so they had to eliminate their jobs, I guess.

01:01:10.960 And Snow White herself is not white, so everybody's been racialized to check every box they can except for all the dwarf boxes because they're offensive.

01:01:21.960 I guess you can only have the one dwarf, that's not offensive, but the six more would have been.

01:01:28.000 What do you make of it?

01:01:29.100 Because when this picture first emerged, Disney tried to tell the Daily Mail it was fake, and now they've been forced to admit it's 100% real, it's just not an official photo.

01:01:40.180 So they lied.

01:01:41.320 They lied and said it was fake.

01:01:42.660 Like, we weren't going to find out when we saw the movie that they got rid of six out of the seven dwarfs.

01:01:46.920 Yeah, and, you know, I kind of stared at that image, and I actually thought it was fake at first because I said, no, they didn't.

01:01:54.820 This isn't real.

01:01:55.480 And then I really studied it, and I started to untangle it.

01:01:58.260 And I think it's a perfect symbol of how intersectionality, the idea that you can categorize and slice and dice people according to all of their characteristics of race, height, sex, body shape, sexuality, and others,

01:02:11.940 and then create a new hierarchy and apportion these things, it's like the logic of it is so internally incoherent.

01:02:19.520 It's almost impossible to explain the logic of the image.

01:02:22.800 It's like, wait, no, but dwarfs are an oppressed category, so you're removing the dwarfs and redistributing them towards taller people who are higher on the hierarchy,

01:02:32.840 but then you have some kind of gender hair, you know, kind of gender people, you have, you know, a composition of racial minority.

01:02:42.200 It's like, what is the formula?

01:02:44.520 You know, the formula keeps changing.

01:02:45.800 It's impossible to make sense of.

01:02:47.560 And then what it does, it's like it's distracting from the story.

01:02:50.700 And if you look at a lot of these stories, they're actually rooted in many cases in specific folklore of specific traditions of ethnicities, of ethnic heritage.

01:03:01.860 And so it's like, tell the story as it is to be told, as to not be distracting.

01:03:06.700 Some stories, it doesn't really matter.

01:03:08.280 You can have people interchangeable based on races and perhaps sexuality.

01:03:12.780 But for some stories, I think it really foregrounds the politics in a way that detracts from the narrative and the aesthetic sense of those stories.

01:03:21.780 And so this one is just like a farce.

01:03:23.900 It's like a spoof almost.

01:03:25.520 And I find it, you know, to the point where it's like, come on, guys, really?

01:03:30.500 This is where we're going, you know, with these movies.

01:03:32.860 They're spending tons of money on this.

01:03:34.460 But it's Disney, so they can't resist.

01:03:36.560 They have to kowtow to the loudest activists.

01:03:38.920 And and look, I feel bad for all the, you know, the all the small statured actors out there who are hoping for their shot.

01:03:46.860 The seven dwarves, they got six of them removed, you know.

01:03:50.540 Well, that's the thing.

01:03:51.220 So Peter Dinklage, probably the most famous little person in the world, had come out and called this a backwards effing backwards story last year.

01:04:01.860 And that's when Disney announced that they were going to replace the dwarves.

01:04:06.740 So great job, Peter.

01:04:08.840 You made all your money.

01:04:10.620 You became the most famous dwarf in America.

01:04:12.700 And then you ruined the acting roles that were available for six other dwarves who just want to work as paid actors like you did.

01:04:20.260 And now Disney announced that these are magical creatures.

01:04:25.160 They're magical creatures.

01:04:26.280 You see, that's more sensitive than dwarf.

01:04:28.380 There'll be a mix of genders, ethnicities and, of course, heights because they felt that, quote, the story needed refreshing, including getting rid of, I guess, the offensive white skin of Snow White, who is traditionally a fair German princess with, quote, skin as white as snow.

01:04:50.520 But you see, even that is offensive.

01:04:53.380 It's fine to say that the white skin is offensive.

01:04:56.760 No one can take offense at that statement.

01:05:00.340 Replacing a white woman in one of this classic, you know, roles that's supposed to be a white person with a person of color.

01:05:06.580 No problem.

01:05:07.460 But if you even have a white person voice the part of an ethnic cartoon, you will be canceled.

01:05:17.280 I mean, you know, I'll tell you what, on Disney, I'm at the point where I say acceleration.

01:05:22.460 Let's let them go all the way.

01:05:24.840 Let's let them reach new heights of absurdity so people can really see what's driving the company ideologically and then they can make better decisions.

01:05:32.800 And if their stock price, if some of their recent mass layoffs, if some of the recent comments from the CEO admitting that he shouldn't have waded into this fight with Governor DeSantis, if those are any evidence, they're taking a hit from all these decisions.

01:05:48.220 And so if they want to have, you know, magic or magical gender, people replace the beloved dwarves, you know, at this point, let them do it.

01:05:57.120 You know, I know my family canceled Disney Plus many months ago and my kids haven't missed it one bit.

01:06:03.560 There's plenty of good content out there.

01:06:05.920 You know, let's they should go all the way.

01:06:08.620 They should go all the way.

01:06:09.520 You know, the reason Disney strikes such a chord is, of course, because it's children and they like coming for the children is one thing.

01:06:16.260 You know, I hear the disgusting stories about what they do to grown adults who want to change their gender.

01:06:23.060 Right.

01:06:23.620 Quote unquote.

01:06:24.440 And I'm horrified.

01:06:25.920 I am horrified.

01:06:27.120 Like they messing with your stomach with, you know, everything down south is in jeopardy.

01:06:33.360 It's going to get poked, prod, prodded, you know, stabbed.

01:06:37.560 I mean, it's just a lifetime of horrors that comes after these procedures.

01:06:41.540 You want to do that to yourself as an adult.

01:06:43.620 OK.

01:06:44.520 All right.

01:06:44.980 But they're doing it to the kids.

01:06:47.720 And this is one of the reasons why you're such an important figure in America is because people talk to you from the beginning.

01:06:53.840 That's how you sort of made your name.

01:06:55.020 We talked about that the first time you came on the show.

01:06:56.680 People started releasing documents to you.

01:06:58.560 You were you were in Oregon and it was like your your stories coming out of leftist Central America.

01:07:05.320 Right.

01:07:05.780 The central part of America that's leftist were stunning.

01:07:08.840 But parents had had it.

01:07:10.240 They were they were hurting.

01:07:11.120 And now you've turned your sights in part to this, to what's being done with our children and the radical ideology.

01:07:18.280 I believe you are the one who called our attention to Blair Peters.

01:07:22.440 Right.

01:07:22.880 This surgeon.

01:07:24.140 Was that you?

01:07:26.060 Yeah.

01:07:26.560 I mean, he'd been circulating around.

01:07:27.940 I don't think I had the full scoop on that.

01:07:29.780 But I certainly went a bit deeper in a recent short documentary I produced and directed digging into what he's doing.

01:07:35.940 And I discovered that he actually this is a doctor at the publicly funded Oregon Health and Science University who actually has deployed a robot to castrate male patients and then turn their penile tissue into a an artificial vagina.

01:07:52.380 And I found documentation and evidence that is is incontrovertible.

01:07:57.860 I mean, it's actually from his own mouth to recording of him saying that he has deployed this castration robot on children, on minors, castrating them and creating this open wound that he calls a art of a neo vagina.

01:08:14.380 And I mean, it's it's so shocking, it's so disturbing, it's so disgusting.

01:08:22.480 It's it's it's it's hard to imagine that it's real.

01:08:26.120 And then when you find out that it's real, you really you reach a new sense of horror because we have we have a little bit of it from you.

01:08:33.500 In our society.

01:08:34.480 Let me play it.

01:08:35.480 Let me play a little bit of that soundbite courtesy of you.

01:08:38.140 Yeah.

01:08:38.640 And then you can pick it up on the back end.

01:08:40.380 Here's this self-described queer surgeon, Blair Peters.

01:08:44.380 One thing that is very new is genital surgery in someone that has underwent pubertal suppression, a much bigger issue for an individual that's undergoing a penile inversion vaginoplasty because we use all of that tissue to basically create the vulva as well as line the internal vaginal canal.

01:09:02.840 And as a specialty, those of us that do a fairly high volume of genital gender affirming surgery, you know, we've maybe done a couple, a handful of pubertally suppressed adolescents as a field and no one's published on it yet.

01:09:17.220 But you don't have enough tissue to line the vaginal canal.

01:09:20.440 So you either have to take a skin graft or take skin from elsewhere or use artificial products.

01:09:26.780 The way that we're dealing with it is by using a robot.

01:09:29.880 And we're basically performing intra-abdominal components of the surgery.

01:09:34.440 So we're using peritoneum, which is the inner lining of the abdomen to line most of the vaginal canal.

01:09:41.280 This is so sad.

01:09:43.140 I mean, it's horrifying.

01:09:44.660 He admits right there that he's done it to adolescents.

01:09:48.360 And I don't I'm going to give a trigger warning for the first time ever.

01:09:51.920 I know I don't believe in trigger warnings, but this is so graphic.

01:09:54.200 Like I'm about to say something very graphic about the procedure.

01:09:58.020 It they cut off the head of the boy's penis and they splice the penis right down the middle to try to create a vagina.

01:10:06.220 You want to do that to yourself as a grown man?

01:10:08.700 God help you.

01:10:09.560 I mean, I will pray for you.

01:10:11.400 You do that to a minor.

01:10:13.240 It should be a crime.

01:10:15.980 It should be a crime.

01:10:17.840 And honestly, Chris, this is why I look at DeSantis and what you're doing down there.

01:10:21.340 And I say, OK, so he's losing some of these battles in court.

01:10:24.200 He's fighting.

01:10:25.500 He's trying.

01:10:27.020 Then you've got people like Asa Hutchinson are sitting back saying, well, I didn't sign that bill because, you know, not everybody.

01:10:31.940 I just thought some of this stuff was kind of.

01:10:33.240 Well, no.

01:10:34.000 Do you understand what's happening?

01:10:37.060 They're using robots to cut the penises off of healthy children.

01:10:42.760 I mean, I don't know how else to say it.

01:10:44.020 That is what's happening.

01:10:45.220 And if you're a conservative politician and you can't draw a line there, how can we trust you on anything?

01:10:52.200 It's such a moral abomination.

01:10:55.400 I mean, and a surgeon like Blair Peters, you can just see him.

01:10:59.460 He takes a great pleasure in doing this.

01:11:01.740 I mean, it's extremely disturbing.

01:11:04.240 It should be totally illegal.

01:11:06.220 And I would actually step up the ante even more.

01:11:08.420 There's no medical necessity or reason to be doing this on on a child or an adult.

01:11:16.020 I think that the first duty of doctors and I've interviewed a lot of doctors that are starting to dissent from these kind of procedures is to do no harm and to assess a patient's mental, psychological, even spiritual well-being.

01:11:29.860 And I just don't see any use case in which a voluntary castration of an adult should be performed by a doctor.

01:11:40.880 I think it's in all cases correlated with someone that is deeply unwell.

01:11:46.840 And you see that in the research.

01:11:48.320 You see that in the medical literature.

01:11:49.480 You see that in the notes.

01:11:50.240 You see that when you talk to surgeons whose colleagues are starting to do these procedures.

01:11:56.420 Doctors as a class, as a profession, they've been intimidated from speaking out.

01:12:02.360 But that's starting to change.

01:12:03.620 And I think when that changes, you're going to start to see some of the lawsuits and the legal challenges to these bills go a different way.

01:12:11.160 But we really need them to stand up.

01:12:13.120 So if you're a doctor, if you have knowledge of this stuff, if you have a medical opinion about this, these types of procedures, you have to start speaking out now because they're not just doing it to, you know, 50-year-old, you know, adult male perverts that take a pleasure in castration, self-castration.

01:12:35.960 They're actually now deploying this on the most vulnerable kids in our society.

01:12:39.800 And it's got to stop.

01:12:40.640 That is.

01:12:41.160 It's a five alarm fire.

01:12:42.900 This is why, you know, DeSantis got a lot of crap from people for that ad.

01:12:47.640 He didn't put it out, but his campaign room retweeted it.

01:12:51.980 This is why I see it in a different light.

01:12:54.840 I have to say, like he's trying to say in this ad his supporters and then he by retweeting it.

01:13:01.040 That's what I stand against.

01:13:02.540 I don't think DeSantis has anything against gays.

01:13:04.600 I really don't.

01:13:05.320 I think it's about the T portion of the LGBTQ.

01:13:08.640 That's the fight he's been fighting.

01:13:10.280 And that like he they just had this this moment.

01:13:16.920 The headline I read online was something like DeSantis kicks out person with gay flag, with pride flag, as if like he can't even be around a gay person.

01:13:28.200 That's not what happened.

01:13:29.520 Here's a bit of an interaction he had with an activist in South Carolina.

01:13:34.340 Watch this.

01:13:35.940 He's sitting here talking about all of our children.

01:13:39.720 I have something to say to him.

01:13:43.260 Why don't you focus on spending more time with your granddaughter in Arkansas or at least acknowledge she exists before you worry about our children?

01:13:56.320 And they shouldn't be worrying about our children either.

01:13:59.940 We don't want you indoctrinating our children.

01:14:03.420 Leave our kids alone.

01:14:05.840 You're going to have to.

01:14:06.460 That was that was a great that was a great right.

01:14:09.320 I mean, like, that's exactly what he's trying to say.

01:14:12.140 And that's why people are, you know, they're not flocking to DeSantis in the way they are Trump.

01:14:15.960 But that's why he's a solid second in this race.

01:14:18.540 Yeah, that's right.

01:14:19.120 And I think the ad was, you know, ill conceived in the sense that I don't think it struck the right tone.

01:14:25.060 But I think if you look at the substance of his record on these issues, it's it's positive.

01:14:30.680 It's it honors parents wishes and values that it, I think, strikes the right balance between between all of these issues.

01:14:38.320 And the bottom line is this.

01:14:40.760 It's the state has enormous power over people's kids.

01:14:44.280 And if so, if we're not shaping the curriculum, if we're not shaping the classroom experience, if we're not shaping the bureaucracies, some people with bad intentions can get in and really do some damage to these kids, leading, of course, to the ultimate consequence.

01:14:59.760 Like these gruesome procedures that we just highlighted in Oregon.

01:15:04.280 And so I love what the governor is doing.

01:15:06.760 I support him 100 percent.

01:15:08.280 I hope he gets the message out there and can connect with voters, because what he's done in Florida is truly remarkable.

01:15:14.200 I'm honored to have been a part of it.

01:15:15.780 And, you know, what I try to do with the book is really to tell the story of how we got here, explain to people what is happening with the institutions,

01:15:24.600 and then provide a blueprint for recapturing them, reorienting them and bringing them back to sanity.

01:15:30.860 That's why I think it's resonating at number one on the charts.

01:15:33.880 And that's why I think people of all political persuasions left, right and center can find something valuable with it.

01:15:40.180 Yes.

01:15:41.120 One thing you say about Chris Ruffo, he does his homework, unlike Charles Barkley.

01:15:45.640 The book is called America's Cultural Revolution.

01:15:49.040 It's available right now.

01:15:50.080 Please support Chris.

01:15:51.200 Go out there and get it.

01:15:52.120 You won't be sorry you did.

01:15:53.000 All the best to you, Chris Ruffo.

01:15:54.000 Thanks for coming on.

01:15:55.780 Thank you.

01:15:57.280 Up next, you know how all these politicians get in office and get rich like Nancy Pelosi?

01:16:03.980 Wait until you hear just how rich she got while she was representing the people.

01:16:09.300 We've got the guy with that story next.

01:16:14.260 Do you ever notice how people get elected to Congress and then, despite their relatively modest salaries,

01:16:20.160 end up getting incredibly rich while in office?

01:16:24.000 They turn into multi-multi-millionaires while humbly serving you, the public.

01:16:30.260 Joining me now is Matt Lewis.

01:16:32.060 He took a hard look at this and what he found was so shocking.

01:16:34.740 He wrote a whole book about it.

01:16:36.100 He's a senior columnist at the Daily Beast and the author of the brand new book,

01:16:39.560 Filthy Rich Politicians, The Swamp Creatures, Latte Liberals, and Ruling Class Elites cashing in on America, which is out today.

01:16:50.200 Well, Matt, welcome to the show.

01:16:51.560 This is distressing, but eye-opening.

01:16:54.720 And it is something I confess I've never really looked into.

01:16:58.340 I know they do it and that it's shockingly legal for them to do all these trades with inside information that you or I would be prosecuted for having and acting on.

01:17:09.300 But they can do it somehow.

01:17:10.660 It's how so many of them got rich.

01:17:12.300 But just outline the problem from the top.

01:17:16.420 Like your chapter one talks about the Facebook post you saw that first garnered your interest in this.

01:17:22.460 Yeah, so there was a Facebook post that said, how is it possible that the average member of Congress is a millionaire, but only like 1% of Americans are millionaires?

01:17:34.520 And the truth is they got it a little bit wrong.

01:17:38.000 It is true that more than half of members of Congress are millionaires.

01:17:41.780 It's actually something like 7% of normal Americans are millionaires.

01:17:46.820 But still, you can see there's a huge disparity.

01:17:49.020 So the average member of Congress is something like 12 times richer than the average American household.

01:17:56.880 And this is something that is actually, the chasm has widened greatly in recent decades.

01:18:04.140 And one of the things I started looking into was, does this matter?

01:18:08.460 And I started finding things like a Pew Research Center survey from 2015 that showed that three quarters of Americans felt like our members of Congress, our elected officials, are more interested in their own well-being than in we the people.

01:18:27.320 And in fact, 72% described members of Congress as quote unquote selfish.

01:18:32.340 So probably no surprise that one year later, Donald Trump runs for president and he talks about draining the swamp and he talks about, you know, the game being rigged.

01:18:43.340 And even though he's a billionaire, I think that message really resonated because I actually think that this sense that not only are our politicians richer than everybody else, but that the game is rigged, that they're cashing in on their jobs.

01:18:58.460 I really think it's eroding trust in our public officials and in democracy itself.

01:19:04.660 You write in the book about how this was never the vision for those who represent the public.

01:19:10.860 So talk about how the founders wanted it to be and then how it was all the way up to you write in the book around 1970, 75.

01:19:18.360 It was still like it lasted a long time the way the founders envisioned.

01:19:21.880 It did. I mean, and obviously our founders were very rich elites, many of them.

01:19:27.900 George Washington was an incredibly rich man.

01:19:30.440 The difference is that he also pledged his life and his honor for this country.

01:19:38.140 And if the revolution had failed, he would have probably been hanged as a traitor.

01:19:42.700 And I just don't think that our current elected officials probably have that same loyalty and dedication to the country.

01:19:49.860 So I think that's part of the problem. It's not just that they're rich.

01:19:53.140 It's a sense that they're in it for themselves and that they're more interested in advancing their own financial interests than they are in serving our country.

01:20:01.540 But our founders were very worried about this type of problem.

01:20:06.040 They look to Greece, they look to Rome, and they realize that when these nations fall apart, these empires collapse, oftentimes it is because elites are cashing in.

01:20:21.160 And so they took corruption very seriously.

01:20:24.020 There's things like the emoluments clause, things like that, that are built in to tamp down on corruption.

01:20:29.420 And, you know, Madison specifically felt like the House of Representatives, the lower chamber, should be very much simpatico with the American people.

01:20:40.640 It should be a house of the people that has sympathy with the American people.

01:20:45.420 I think it's very hard to believe that that's the case when the average member of the House is 12 times richer than the average American household today.

01:20:54.020 Yeah, you're right that it used to be like barbers, pipe fitters, you know, working class people.

01:21:03.320 And now it's it's not that at all, which explains a lot of the legislation that we see and a lot of the way that they spend their time and a lot of the public messaging that they do.

01:21:12.220 And so the question is, what's happening?

01:21:14.820 Is it both rich people are running for Congress or that working and middle class people run for Congress, get in and then get rich on while supposedly working for the taxpayers?

01:21:26.720 Yeah.

01:21:27.100 So first, you're right.

01:21:28.560 This has happened in the last three or four decades that things have really dramatically changed.

01:21:34.780 In those years, the net worth of a member of Congress has doubled, while for the rest of us, we've basically been either treading water or actually going backwards.

01:21:45.280 I'm talking about in terms of our inflation adjusted purchasing power.

01:21:50.720 So this is something that is is relatively new.

01:21:56.560 But, you know, the question is, does it does it matter?

01:22:00.560 And I think, look, a lot of politicians are obviously rich business insider.

01:22:06.860 And I put this in the back of my book, Filthy Rich Politicians.

01:22:09.880 Right in the back, there's an appendix where they rank the richest 25 members of Congress.

01:22:16.060 More than half.

01:22:16.820 I went through and did a diagnosis of each of each one.

01:22:20.760 More than half of them, 13 out of 25, got their money either through inheritance or through marriage.

01:22:28.780 So, yes, rich people are more likely not just to run, much more likely to run and more likely to win than the rest of us.

01:22:37.040 And I think that is somewhat troubling.

01:22:39.380 But much more troubling is the sense that once people get elected, they always get richer.

01:22:45.820 That, I think, is much, much more corrosive to trust in the process.

01:22:50.780 Hmm. So how are they doing it?

01:22:53.800 I mean, is it what I said, that they can make what would be an illegal trade for you or for me?

01:22:59.740 But they, because of their rules for themselves, don't have to worry about that kind of insider trade?

01:23:04.900 Like, how are they getting rich?

01:23:07.120 Yeah, well, let me just give you a couple examples here.

01:23:10.760 One example is Nancy Pelosi.

01:23:13.420 Nancy Pelosi, she makes something like less than $200,000 a year as a salary.

01:23:21.680 She would have to work 500 years based on her salary to get her current net worth, which is over $100 million.

01:23:31.100 Where does it come from?

01:23:32.620 Well, it turns out her husband, Paul, is incredibly gifted when it comes to things like stock trading.

01:23:40.160 And let me just give you one example.

01:23:41.720 So in 2021, Paul Pelosi exercised call options for $10 million on Microsoft stock.

01:23:52.300 Within two weeks, the U.S. Army announced that they had a deal with Microsoft to produce these augmented reality headsets.

01:24:02.300 This deal could be worth tens of billions of dollars over the next decade or so.

01:24:07.860 And that's just one of many examples.

01:24:10.940 Yes.

01:24:11.220 That's just disgusting.

01:24:12.160 How is how how are they able to do that?

01:24:15.580 You know, because all the people who worked at Microsoft who knew that was going to happen, if they went home and told their spouses and then they bought stock, they'd get arrested.

01:24:23.300 Well, it is up until 2012, it wasn't even illegal members of it's only been illegal for members of Congress to engage in insider trading since 2012 when they passed the Stock Act.

01:24:37.580 But right now, it's really difficult.

01:24:39.140 But right now, it's really difficult to police.

01:24:42.060 And I could tell you chapter and verse on other Nancy Pelosi stories.

01:24:46.240 It's, by the way, it's by the way, a bipartisan phenomenon.

01:24:48.860 There's a story about Richard Burr, who was chair of the Intel Committee, who really profited during the COVID-19 pandemic.

01:24:57.540 And again, I mean, I have no evidence except everything about it looks swampy.

01:25:02.880 Everything about it looks entirely sketchy.

01:25:05.340 And if you or I did it, we would probably be in orange jumpsuits right now.

01:25:10.380 But I think the answer, regardless of why they get away with it, is to just simply ban stock trading in Congress of individual stocks.

01:25:21.300 Look, I think they should be allowed to own mutual funds.

01:25:23.540 That's fine.

01:25:24.480 But if you don't have to be in Congress, nobody's forcing you to serve in Congress.

01:25:28.340 But if you want to serve in Congress, I don't think it's asking too much to, while you're here, while you're there, give up betting on the stock market.

01:25:37.160 I think that's an amazing, an amazing idea.

01:25:40.700 And you're right about the mutual funds where you don't control the individual investment decisions.

01:25:44.500 So it it takes the sort of insider trading aspect of it out of it entirely.

01:25:50.740 You know, Nancy Pelosi has gotten away with this.

01:25:52.740 I don't know why, because, you know, she rose to a very prominent position, obviously, in the House.

01:25:58.500 And it made news.

01:26:00.320 I think maybe people don't they don't realize how rich these politicians are getting.

01:26:04.180 But remember, it made news, the the the ice cream freezer that she did or hit in front of.

01:26:10.760 I think it was during COVID.

01:26:11.600 It was 20.

01:26:12.140 It was April 2020.

01:26:13.480 I'll run the soundbite just to refresh people's memory of Nancy in front of her ice cream empire in her freezer.

01:26:21.220 Chocolate candy.

01:26:23.880 Oh, wow.

01:26:25.460 And.

01:26:27.560 This is this is something you can get through the mail.

01:26:32.300 OK.

01:26:32.640 Run out.

01:26:35.280 Oh, my.

01:26:37.000 Wow.

01:26:37.680 Other people in our family go for some other flavors, but chocolate.

01:26:41.700 And then we have some other chocolate here.

01:26:43.940 We just got to restock the ice cream right for Easter Sunday because we were, shall we say, enjoying.

01:26:51.040 I don't know what I would have done if ice cream were not invented.

01:26:54.000 It's just in the middle.

01:26:57.860 Yeah, so this is people were struggling financially.

01:27:00.940 And there she is.

01:27:02.040 So out of touch.

01:27:02.700 Go ahead, Matt.

01:27:03.600 Oh, it's exactly that.

01:27:04.840 Right.

01:27:04.980 It's COVID-19.

01:27:05.940 A lot of people are out of work struggling because of the shutdown.

01:27:09.640 She's got these like two stainless steel freezers and gourmet ice cream.

01:27:15.480 And it is so out of touch.

01:27:17.060 And I think that's part of the story.

01:27:18.420 It's not just that they're wealthier than the rest of us.

01:27:21.920 It's not just that they're cashing in on their position, but they are also now flaunting it as well.

01:27:29.320 And I think that really is contributing to this sense that the game is rigged and that they're out for themselves.

01:27:36.820 So now it's not just the the sort of insider trading that now is not OK.

01:27:41.480 It's taking advantage of the crises that hit the country.

01:27:46.200 So who got rich off of COVID-19 and how did they manage that?

01:27:50.080 Let me give you one story.

01:27:53.000 I alluded to it earlier, but Senator Richard Burr, who was then chairman of the Intelligence Committee.

01:28:01.280 So obviously, if you're chairman of the Intelligence Committee, you are privy to lots of classified information, classified briefings and documents that normal people don't see.

01:28:12.440 So think back to early 2020, when the COVID pandemic is just starting, but most Americans don't realize how bad it actually is.

01:28:23.360 Remember, one minute it'll just be gone.

01:28:26.540 It's going to disappear or two weeks to stop the spread or whatever.

01:28:30.960 Most people don't fully appreciate how bad this is going to be.

01:28:34.460 Anyway, Richard Burr, again, chair of the Intel Committee, dumps hundreds of thousands of dollars of stock and things like Wyndham Hotels, right?

01:28:45.200 The kinds of investments that probably aren't going to fare great during a shutdown in a global pandemic.

01:28:51.700 But what makes it even worse is, then he picks up the phone, and you can read all about this in Filthy Rich Politicians.

01:28:59.300 Burr picks up the phone and calls his brother-in-law.

01:29:02.640 Within one minute of hanging up the phone with Burr, his brother-in-law calls his broker and dumps all of his stock.

01:29:11.060 And so the thing about insider trading, I think a lot of people think insider trading is about making money.

01:29:17.560 And, of course, it's possible, right?

01:29:19.300 I think the Pelosi's have clearly made money from things that certainly look like insider trading.

01:29:24.400 But the key to insider trading is actually not the money you make.

01:29:28.600 It's the money you don't lose.

01:29:30.740 And I think what's really corrosive and toxic about this is that it is during times of change and crisis, especially the COVID-19 pandemic, when members of Congress have information we don't have, instead of telling us, instead of sounding the alarm, their first call is to their broker to dump stuff.

01:29:54.180 So he didn't he called his brother and his broker, but didn't go on the news to say, I want to tell all of you, if you have hotel stocks, you might want to sell them or just FYI, you can do what you want.

01:30:05.460 But this is what we're seriously considering doing that could affect you in a number of ways.

01:30:09.240 It's so upsetting.

01:30:10.820 It's such a betrayal.

01:30:12.040 And the book also gets into what you call latte liberals, rich and privileged with influence, talking about how there are other ways of being wealthy, of being rich.

01:30:23.740 And that brings us to the squad.

01:30:26.120 Now, how is the squad rich and what are they doing?

01:30:29.940 Well, first, I think they're on their way to being rich, just like their heroes, Bernie Sanders, a socialist who, by the way, is a millionaire.

01:30:41.520 And, you know, Maxine Waters, who lives in a mansion outside of her district and pays her family tens of thousands of dollars.

01:30:50.240 I think the squad, they're on their way to that status.

01:30:53.580 But right now, I think it's more about not the economy, but the attention economy, right?

01:31:00.240 They're very rich in terms of the attention economy.

01:31:03.400 But certainly, there are things that I write about in the book that members of the squad are guilty of.

01:31:10.000 I mean, I think clearly they're guilty of hypocrisy.

01:31:12.780 Think of AOC's fancy text, The Rich Dress, going to this very high-end dinner at the Met, the Metropolitan Opera House dinner.

01:31:24.380 And then there's the spreading the wealth around to their family, right?

01:31:28.500 That's one of the things I talk about in Filthy Rich Politicians.

01:31:31.160 It's not just that the politicians are getting rich.

01:31:33.920 It's that they're spreading it to their friends and family.

01:31:38.100 Ilhan Omar, for example, directed millions of dollars of her campaign dollars to her husband's consultant firm, which obviously is very questionable.

01:31:50.620 So I think that keep your eyes on them.

01:31:54.400 They're not at the Nancy Pelosi level of wealth yet, but I think they're punching above their weight.

01:31:59.520 Well, you talked about housing hypocrisy, right?

01:32:02.140 Some of these squad members who are talking about how we need more housing construction and we need more, we need a relief on rent and so on.

01:32:11.620 They're actually acting as landlords.

01:32:14.980 They're reaping tons of income from rental properties.

01:32:18.100 Not really part of their stump speech, Matt.

01:32:20.740 Yes, it is interesting, right?

01:32:23.740 And there were things that they've done, for example, back during the COVID-19 lockdown time era, which it was so tragic and horrific.

01:32:34.300 A lot of us have tried to block it out.

01:32:36.660 But during that time, you may recall there was a call to, quote unquote, cancel rent.

01:32:42.280 They wanted a moratorium on evictions.

01:32:45.260 And so people on the left, like the squad, wanted to cancel rent.

01:32:49.460 But what's interesting about it, and I think a little bit out of character, was that they also wanted to reimburse landlords for the money that they were going to lose by virtue of this left-wing policy.

01:33:03.520 Now, I actually think if you're going to, if you're not going to let landlords evict people, it's a good idea to reimburse them.

01:33:11.540 But that seems a little out of character for the squad.

01:33:14.720 And then, as you noted, Megan, I think it may have something to do with the fact that two of the four squad members are landlords and earn quite a bit of money by renting out property.

01:33:26.920 Oh, it's such a good book.

01:33:28.900 It's so, I think the last poll I looked at was that congressional approval ratings are lower than that of a cockroach.

01:33:37.060 People would rather be with a cockroach.

01:33:37.820 Yes, I think colonoscopies are more popular than members of Congress now.

01:33:41.540 So, I mean, this is part of the reason why.

01:33:45.820 Is there any getting back to the citizen, you know, representative, to the farmer, to the, you know, just the regular Joe who goes and serves for one term and then goes home and doesn't get rich off of us?

01:33:58.620 Was that right in the book?

01:33:59.620 When you look at the age of members of Congress these days and our politicians, they'd rather, you know, buy the farm than go back to the farm.

01:34:07.980 So, I don't know that the founder's vision of people going back to the farm is going to happen.

01:34:11.980 But I do think some of the reforms that I call for in filthy rich politicians, you know, banning stock trading, a moratorium on lobbying where you can't just walk out of Congress and become a lobbyist the next day.

01:34:25.440 You have to wait like 10 years, term limits, book deals, curbing the ability to get rich on book deals the way Bernie Sanders actually became a millionaire.

01:34:36.120 They've got a whole bunch of these ideas.

01:34:37.940 But I don't think we're going to solve this problem overnight.

01:34:40.700 We didn't get into this mess overnight, but I think we can begin to reform the system and certainly mitigate some of the real bad problems.

01:34:50.720 Such a great offering.

01:34:51.660 We needed this book.

01:34:52.900 Matt Lewis, thank you.

01:34:54.040 The book, again, is Filthy Rich Politicians.

01:34:56.840 Filthy Rich Politicians.

01:34:58.360 It's a great name and it's easy to remember.

01:35:00.060 And it's out today if you want to educate yourself.

01:35:02.720 Thank you.

01:35:03.420 See you soon.

01:35:04.100 I want to tell you that tomorrow we have Helen Joyce on the show for the first time.

01:35:08.600 She's such an important voice in our culture on the gender issue.

01:35:11.960 I mean, she is like the godmother.

01:35:14.120 If you haven't read her book, Trans, or listened to Helen Joyce, you need to tomorrow.

01:35:19.160 And if you have listened or read Helen Joyce, then this is still a gift to you.

01:35:24.020 She is always worth spending time with.

01:35:26.240 I absolutely love what she says.

01:35:28.120 She's really insightful.

01:35:29.380 So don't miss tomorrow.

01:35:31.460 We'll talk to you then.

01:35:35.060 Thanks for listening to The Megyn Kelly Show.

01:35:37.060 No BS, no agenda, and no fear.

The Megyn Kelly Show - July 18, 2023

Another Trump Arrest Coming？ Plus, Rich and Woke Politicians, with Chris Rufo, Matt Lewis, Dave Aronberg, and Mike Davis ｜ Ep. 589

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