Anti-Israel Snowflakes in Biden Administration, and GOP Megadonors Back Haley, with The Fifth Column Hosts | Ep. 676
Episode Stats
Length
1 hour and 36 minutes
Words per Minute
177.77777
Summary
5th Column's Camille Foster, Michael Moynihan, and Matt Welsh join me to discuss the latest in the Biden vs. Haley vs. DeSantis race, the latest on the Israel-Hamas conflict, and much, much more.
Transcript
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Welcome to The Megyn Kelly Show, live on Sirius XM channel 111 every weekday at New East.
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Hey everyone, I'm Megyn Kelly. Welcome to The Megyn Kelly Show. Oh look, it's Christmas inside
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the studio. So excited about my fake trees with their sparkly white lights. Yeah, we're getting
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ready for the holiday spirit. I mean, it's time. It's past Thanksgiving. It's time. This is the
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time of year where I incessantly play Christmas carols all over Sirius XM. You can find them on
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many channels. And two out of my three children roll their eyes saying, enough, enough. And I say,
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it's never enough. Never. We will have them on 24-7 all the way through the end of the 25th.
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Maybe you're like me. In the news today, President Biden has some new spin about the economy and
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Bidenomics. Why doesn't he stop with this? Stop. It's truly the definition of insanity. Stop it.
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It's not working. They hate it. It's your worst issue. You're going to have to find something
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else. He's got a year, but he needs to do something else. His latest claim is that this
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year's Thanksgiving was one of the cheapest on record. Really? No, not really. And we'll get
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into some fact checking on that. This is we learn more about how the Israel Hamas war has caused a war
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inside the White House. Wait until you hear how they're trying to appease the little snowflakes in
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there who don't like the president's messaging on Israel. Plus, we're a week away now from the next
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GOP debate, co-moderated by yours truly. Where do things stand with Nikki Haley and Ron DeSantis
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competing to be the chief alternative to Donald Trump, competing to draw the inside straight and
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take over as frontrunner past Donald Trump? Joining me here to discuss it all and much,
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much more, our friends from the fifth column, Camille Foster, Michael Moynihan, and Matt
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Welsh. You can find all of their content on Substack at wethefifth.substack.com.
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Good to see you. Yes. Thank you. Thank you. I'm in the spirit. It's exciting. Makes me feel
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Everything post-Thanksgiving is cool. Even I don't go pre-Thanksgiving usually,
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though I did this year. Okay. Anyway, it's a long story. I think the most interesting thing
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happening right now is Nikki Haley appears to be coalescing support as the non-Trump alternative.
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And it really is one of those things where it's like, boy, you want to break late in these contests,
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and that's what she's doing. There's just a report out today that the Koch brothers and
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their influential network is backing Nikki Haley. It's the first time they've ever backed
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a GOP primary contestant, and they've chosen her. They say the election's too important to sit this
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one out. They've already been running ads that are anti-Trump in various swing states, just trying
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to get the message out. It can't be him. I'll give you a sample of some of that. Here's just a bit.
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Ask yourself, is it worth the risk? America is struggling because of Joe Biden's policies.
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But with Donald Trump, Republicans lost the House, lost the White House and the Senate.
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And we've lost our chance to capitalize on Biden's devastating record. If Donald Trump is the GOP
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nominee, we could lose everything. The House, the Senate, the White House. It's time to look to a
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new leader. Unless we're willing to risk it all. But they didn't say who that new leader was.
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And the decision is sort of like, well, we'll see. Hasn't worked out so well for people looking
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for a non-Trump alternative because the field remains divided. This is how he got the nomination
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in 1516. So now the Koch brothers, in addition to many others, there's Stan Druckenmiller,
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a billionaire who was mentioned, I think, in a New York Times report yesterday. A couple of others who
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are publicly saying it's Haley for them. They're getting behind her. She's the one. So do we think
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this will matter in the big contest? What do you think, guys? I think it's a test case of how much
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money matters in GOP primary politics. I think it matters in the sense that you can spend a lot of
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money in Iowa in particular and move the needle most every year that someone has gone all in on
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Iowa and punched above their weight. They usually do that at the expense of New Hampshire, and then
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it becomes a bit of a problem. So Haley can use that. The Koch brother, because David Koch left us a few
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years ago, but the Koch network, which is more important than any of that, can give her some money to
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create that separation. But I think there's a thing that ad seemed to me directionally correct. It is in
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many ways the best arguments to make to Republican Trump voters. Not necessarily that Trump is a crazy
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erratic person, which is something that I might say as a non-Republican, but that he's going to lose or that
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he's the only one who threatens to lose running against this very, very old man who's incredibly
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vulnerable to the extent that RFK Jr. is pulling at 15 and 20 percent in the three-way matchup. My God.
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So that is the correct thing. The question just is, can you, can they have Nikki Haley elbow out Ron
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DeSantis ahead of time and convince, you know, the Chris Christie's the world that whatever he's doing is
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not working? And I, you know, that that gap is just too large. It's hard to imagine it having a huge
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impact. She just clearly has performed the best of all of the non-Trumps in this, in this race so
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far. Vivek had his first little bump and then he's annoyed everybody ever since. And, and she's just
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run really well. And I say that as someone who disagrees with her about a bunch of stuff, but she has run a
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great campaign so far. So maybe she'll be, you know, in a head-to-head race between her and Trump
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that will never happen. Uh, probably sadly, um, she would have a puncher's chance, um, in a divided
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field. It's going to be really hard. I mean, she's the best talk about her guys. Uh, they would talk
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about her surge and she is surging and she's almost giving Ron DeSantis a run for his money. Not all she
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is in Iowa now. Yeah. And she looks favored to win in New Hampshire. And she's a South Carolina
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hometowner. So, but when, and you know, possible win in New Hampshire, possible, we mean second,
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we mean second, you know, Trump is 50 points ahead, 30 points ahead. Take your pick scores of
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points ahead of everyone who's running second in any of these States. So yeah, I mean, this is the,
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the question is the real question as I see it. And you tell me Moynihan is whether this can kill
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DeSantis. Can this kill DeSantis? Because if they want Nikki, they got to get rid of him.
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Yeah. I mean, DeSantis, who I think, um, I thought was a very strong candidate. I mean,
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he's particularly strong in Florida. When you come to local governance, I think he's done a
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good job despite disagreeing with him on some things. I mean, his response to, to crisis there
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and his response to COVID is fantastic. But I mean, I think people have forgotten about COVID. If COVID
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had a real surge again, um, it would be the best thing that ever happened to Ron DeSantis because he
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could, he could actually run on that, which is something that, um, I appreciate Nikki Haley,
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as you said, look, I mean, it's all in some ways, a waste of breath because she is the best person to
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come in second. And the Koch brother or the Koch network, which is fairly interesting by the way,
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that they're supporting her shows you how much they loathe Donald Trump because she's essentially
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a neoconservative and they're a bunch of libertarians. And they're not necessarily fans of,
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of Nikki Haley's, uh, type of policy, but they see her obviously as, as the best person to make
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a run at Trump, which is probably true. And again, Matt, Matt is correct. I mean, on a head to head
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matchup. Yeah. I think that'd be very, very interesting, but you know, 20, 30 points behind,
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you know, and he's not going to show up at the debates. I mean, it's, you're, you're running for
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second place. It doesn't make a difference at all. But if you look, I was actually just looking at
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these numbers, just looking at these numbers the other day, uh, on these early state polls,
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and we're still in the place where even though Trump is crushing all the rest,
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if you add up the numbers of the rest, it's split 50, 50. Yeah. That's true. The Republican
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party is split. And so it's still is true that if the party coalesces, that other 50% coalesces behind
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one candidate, Trump would be vulnerable. Camille. I mean, it, it would not necessarily be a runaway.
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Yeah. And it's, it's not impossible to imagine. Um, although folks would have to exit the race
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pretty quickly for it to actually make a difference, I think. Um, and I don't know,
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um, if there are already conversations happening along those lines, but I don't think Vivek or Ron
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are likely to drop out of the race, um, on their own. Um, I think Vivek kind of knows what his
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prospects are, uh, despite what he said publicly, my suspicion is that he would very happily accept,
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uh, VP nod from Donald Trump and run on that ticket.
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Well, perhaps any, perhaps any cabinet nod. I do think that he and, um, uh, Nikki Haley
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actually hate each other. Like it seems genuine. So it's very hard to imagine them getting together
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on the same ticket. Uh, but, but it is very interesting. I think Moynihan highlights the
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right thing with respect to the Kochs actually having pretty severe and profound disagreements
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with Nikki on policy and still being willing to make that particular choice. Um, and to what
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Matt was saying earlier, it's not just the test of what matters with respect to money.
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I mean, the, the Koch network has tremendous resources with respect to just their campaign
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operation and their ground game. They have a lot of great intelligence tools that they
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can bring to bear. It'll be an interesting test to see if those things matter at all anymore.
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Um, so Ken, Ken actually latching all of that on to Nikki's campaign, which has been pretty
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good so far, but it's just a couple of weeks ago, I think that she wanted to ban all anonymous,
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That was not a, not a great call on her part. Um, so it is all very interesting to watch play
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out. It's not a little bit depressing. Um, but certainly makes things interesting.
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So here's just a little bit of numbers for you from the CNN report on the Koch network
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backing Nikki Haley. They say the effort will begin with a multimillion dollar ad campaign
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in support of Haley launching this week in all early States and also several super Tuesday States,
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which of course that happens in March, March 4th, uh, I think. And, um, that while they did not
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disclose a budget on behalf of Haley, the network has spent hundreds of millions in previous
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election cycles rivaling the financial bite might of a Republican national committee,
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which is actually quite little right now. There was a report on today about how little the RNC has
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in its coffers. I think it was like 10 million. And they, at this time in other cycles, they had
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60 million. It was just dreadful. So they're not tough to beat, but the Koch network has more money
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than God. I went down there. I interviewed Charles Koch, who I really respect. I have to say he's
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brilliant. And I think he's a very patriotic American, um, and got a chance to sort of, um,
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see how things operate down there. And it's just like a well-oiled machine. I mean, my God,
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they're responsible for so many American jobs. They have very clear, as you point out, libertarian ideals
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and, um, to get this guy behind you, like it's a D it's an unlimited deep pocket, which could really
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help her with ads, with organization, with even get out the vote efforts in these early States.
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But none of these deep pocketed billionaires was really behind Trump in 2015 and 16. And he got it
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anyway, thanks to his big middle finger. Yeah. It didn't matter at all. What one thing that's, uh,
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I think that should Jeb spend Jeb. I didn't hear the explanation points.
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I think my last, he spent $40 billion in ways that we're not fully wrapping our brains around
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with this news. The next 10 days, 130 million. Steve Krakauer looked it up. 130 million was high.
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Wow. The next 10 days, I think are the, uh, are the maker break moment for Ron DeSantis. And you
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always hesitate to say things like this before the first caucus and whatnot, but this news,
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the coconut work is coming in for Haley, which is big news. And what is, uh, DeSantis doing this
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week? He is doing the Moynihan, uh, which is a dance, uh, and a sexual position. No, he's arguing
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about his state policies on Sean Hannity. The insanity in the Hannity is, uh, it's, uh, DeSantis
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versus Gavin Newsom. It's red state versus blue state, California versus Florida, and a very huge
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COVID response, you know, education policy, uh, compare and contrast. These are where Ron DeSantis
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is strong. This is why he was polling within 10 percentage points of Donald Trump in January.
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It's hard to remember now because he's just been taking a nosedive ever since. So there's this,
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and then there's the debate with you, Megan, and I'm looking forward to your selection of questions,
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uh, and your approach should be great. Um, as, uh, your, uh, performances have always been on
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debates and I'm not just saying that to butter you up, which is true. We're on the show. You
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don't have to say that. Um, no, but he's got to make a difference. He's got to comment
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at Nikki Haley, uh, and she, and, and, and like remind people of why he was interesting to begin
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with because he's been doing a whole lot of not reminding them of that, or at least, um, the stuff
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that he thought that people would be interested in are not what is going to drive the selection
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in this primary campaign. I will say that I think the message of the Coke ad, that sort of vague
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message is the right one primarily because it's not attacking the kind of change in the Republican
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party's politics and their ideology, which is something that I think the Coke network attacks
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pretty vigorously behind the scenes. I think it's a very good argument. I mean, as simple as you can
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make it is that Donald Trump is a loser. And I mean that in a very, um, sort of definitional way,
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he loses elections and he's been losing them. And, you know, look, I, when I was out talking to
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people about this in 2021 and it was a really difficult conversation to have with people
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because I'd say, look, do you want to back this guy? He lost the white house. I mean,
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he's George HW Bush here. This is crazy. He lost the white house. And they'd be like, well,
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he didn't actually lose. And so that was kind of a difficult thing was that when the majority
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Republicans believe that. Correct. And that's why it's hard in that for, for the kind of base,
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uh, in a primary, but just broadly, when you talk to people who are vaguely conservative,
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their issue with Donald Trump has gone way beyond, well, I don't like his tweets. I don't like his
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disposition because everyone's kind of adjusted to that. They just don't like the fact that he loses
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in the candidates in the midterms that were Trump candidates. Good Lord, did they lose? They didn't
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lose by a bit either. Herschel Walker. I mean, can't believe you remember these people. Mehmet Oz,
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what a disaster the Republicans made for themselves. Well, what do you make of these
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polls though? Because if you, if you look at, you know, Trump versus Biden, we've been covering this
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on this show for a month now, there's been a rash of polling showing Trump beating Biden now,
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not just at the national level, which is a new thing. He did it here or there, uh, six months ago,
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but it wasn't a steady thing at all. Biden was beating him by a couple of points, not by a lot
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more times than not. Now it's the reverse and not just in the national polls, which are interesting
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to look at, but not, they don't really tell you much because we don't have a national election.
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We don't use the popular vote. What matters is the swing States. Those are, those are the ones that
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are going to decide the election. And now Trump's beating Biden in virtually all of them. And not just
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by a point for the most part by several points, but Camille, I look at these and I remember
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back in 16, those same polls telling me Hillary was going to crush Trump in every single one of
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these. Right. So it's, you know, the polls have been so hard to read for the past eight years, but
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I don't know. Is there reason to doubt these polls now, given how controversial Trump is
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that he hasn't yet gone through the four criminal trials, but we'll have, or at least be in the midst
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of some of them at the time we actually vote. And are these actual Trump fans who are filling up
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these numbers showing him beat beating Joe Biden, or are they just kind of pissed off right now at
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Biden disgusted over his age and incoherence and trying to send him the middle finger?
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I think it's impossible, impossible to put too much faith in the polls right now. There's just so much
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time and so much that could happen. I think the foreign policy questions that you alluded to
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earlier when you were opening the show up are hugely important and consequential and things
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could move in any direction there. And certainly it seems like that's a liability for Biden
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in the general, the sort of thing that could dampen enthusiasm for him amongst Democrats and
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independents. But similarly, I suppose that could be an issue for Nikki Haley as well. And Donald Trump
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will likely be calibrating in some sort of way that perhaps makes him a little more appealing. And
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as someone mentioned, there may be a third party spoiler this race as well, which could hugely
00:17:35.400
complicate things. So it is very, very difficult to say what things will look like several months
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from now, even in January of next year, once we finally start to look at these primaries taking
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place, it'll be very hard to predict exactly how this is going to play out.
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The New York Times is giving Nikki Haley some of its expected treatment. There's a piece out
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today, right? Is today the 27th? No, it's 28th. So it came out yesterday, Paul Krugman.
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Nikki Haley is coming for your retirement. And most sane people understand that Social Security and
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Medicare are in some financial trouble, one could say. And something's going to have to be done about
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them. And the Democrats just want to keep raising taxes on everybody. And the Republicans, the serious
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ones are actually looking at how to actually handle this. Do we raise the retirement age?
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You know, what do we do? Do we do means testing for those who are going to receive it? You know,
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there was a line at the last debate, I think it was Chris Christie saying, I certainly hope Warren
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Buffett is not collecting his Social Security check. In any event, so this piece goes after her saying,
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I'll give you the setup. He points out she's receiving a late surge in big money support
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and says, but look, you know, Trump's the odds on favorite, but there's a chance still that he could
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manage to crash and burn. So it seems worth looking at what Haley stands for. From a political point of
00:19:02.680
view, one answer might be nothing. And then he hits her for flip-flopping, which he says doesn't
00:19:12.320
really convey the sheer cynicism with which she has shifted her rhetoric. I mean, that's not
00:19:17.400
entirely wrong, but it's like, okay, find me a politician who hasn't done it, but okay, that's
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fine. Then they say the one thing that she's been, he says that she's been pretty consistent on
00:19:29.860
is economics and fiscal policy. And on this issue, she's an extremist. She's calling for an increase
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in age at which Americans become eligible for Social Security, a bad idea that seems to be
00:19:44.420
experiencing a revival, and then goes on to say, Social Security is fine. It's fine. The actual numbers
00:19:52.720
don't justify the apocalyptic rhetoric that we're hearing. Like, we're going to be good. And by the
00:19:58.840
way, if we're not good, we're just going to tax people. That's the way forward. And continues to rip
00:20:05.960
on her policies about suggesting that you can't tie life expectancy into this. This is something
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Ron DeSantis hit her on too, because the people, while richer Americans are living longer,
00:20:24.420
poorer Americans aren't. So he's basically saying she hates the poor. If you want to tie Social
00:20:28.080
Security benefits to life expectancy and raise the retirement age from 65 to 70, like she's suggested,
00:20:34.140
you're going to hurt the poor because the poor don't live longer, like all the rich people.
00:20:39.940
Anyway, this is what's going to happen now that she's emerged as the latest darling,
00:20:45.900
right, of the GOP. You're going to get more and more hit pieces on her. And you know what?
00:20:50.280
That stuff works. It tends to drive your poll numbers down. So what do you make of the early
00:20:54.140
shots? I mean, it's pretty, it's pretty limp stuff, honestly, like Democrats and the media,
00:21:00.420
and I'm sorry to be redundant. Back in January, February, there was a rash of DeSantis is actually
00:21:07.480
worse than Trump, right? Because this is the card that they have, right? It's supposed to be about
00:21:11.380
the stakes and not the odds. Stakes of this election are that we'll never have democracy again. And it's
00:21:16.180
over, right? It's over, et cetera. And so Trump is this clarifying thing for this crowd of scaring
00:21:22.620
them with Trump is the way to get democratic turnout. So they had worked themselves up into a Ron DeSantis
00:21:28.560
is actually worse because he's smart, because he's Harvard, Yale, because he knows what he's doing.
00:21:33.100
And he's not just a bumbling idiot. And he can actually like have a point, really good people,
00:21:37.820
and it's really going to be evil and bad. It's not really working that well so far for Paul Krugman.
00:21:43.900
I get that he's threatening me with a good time on social security stuff. I presume that his lack of
00:21:50.580
interest in actuarial tables must apply to himself since beginning, what, in 10 years,
00:21:56.640
less than 10 years now, we're scheduled to have an across the board haircut of all social security
00:22:01.540
recipients if we don't change things. To put it gently.
00:22:05.440
It's like 20%, I think. And so maybe he thinks he's going to be out in a little pasture in the sky
00:22:12.820
or something, but then it's not going to concern him in any way. This is old timey, we're going to
00:22:18.480
scare people into line. You saw a similar thing happen before the midterm elections. There were two
00:22:25.080
lines of attack. One is that these are Trump people and MAGA is terrible. And that kind of
00:22:30.500
worked. And they had, as Moynihan was alluding to before, a lot of characters that they could run
00:22:35.280
against showing that. There was that. And then there was this weird thing of like, oh, watch out
00:22:40.340
for ultra MAGA. Ultra MAGA is actually out here trying to sunset social security in five years.
00:22:48.740
Go back and look at it. No, it sounds crazy. But that was where the rhetoric was at just 12 months
00:22:53.540
ago. And it was nonsense. It was all based on Rick Scott having one report, one sentence in one
00:22:58.680
report of a white paper that nobody otherwise read like 11 years ago said X. And so somehow we're
00:23:05.000
going to sunset social security. The fact is, and you are right, Megan, is that grownups,
00:23:10.920
including the Simpsons Bowles commission, that was a bipartisan organization, the Simpsons and Bowles,
00:23:16.700
not in the same party, the whole thing, you know, approved by 11 of the 18 people on that commission
00:23:21.880
and mentioned in 17 consecutive State of the Union addresses that you can't just keep kicking the
00:23:27.640
can down the road, as Barack Obama himself said, as he went into office. That was a normal Democratic
00:23:32.240
position. And I dare say it was a normal Paul Krugman position back when he occasionally pretended to be
00:23:37.100
a sane economist. If this is the worst that can come up with Nikki Haley, I don't think it's going
00:23:41.920
to stick. And I think they're going to move on to that. She is a knuckle dragging warmonger,
00:23:46.740
which, you know, there'll be more evidence for. I mean, the thing about Krugman is he is in some
00:23:53.080
sense when it comes to social security endorsing Donald Trump. Yes. And Donald Trump has said the
00:23:57.880
same thing. Donald Trump has run against Ron DeSantis on this issue. And, you know, it's one
00:24:03.420
of the reasons that that Trump makes my skin crawl a little bit because he knows that I mean, remember,
00:24:09.680
and I bring this up quite a bit, that when his version of health care came back to the White House
00:24:15.620
from Republicans when they were trying to overturn Obamacare, his response was, it's too mean.
00:24:21.500
He said it's too mean. He is a man who likes government. He likes government spending. And
00:24:27.420
he has defended social security and said, Ron DeSantis, all you old people should come out and
00:24:32.260
vote for me because Ron DeSantis is going to take away your social security. Now, Paul Krugman is not
00:24:37.020
somebody that one can really trust him on a lot of things. I mean, recall that quote of his when he said
00:24:41.420
the Internet is not going to be a big thing. Do you remember that? He was like the fax machine.
00:24:45.280
It'll go away. But he won. He won a Nobel Prize. Yeah, I think all of these attacks don't make any
00:24:52.540
sense and don't resonate with people when you I mean, look, Republicans have been getting voters
00:24:58.200
in that age cohort for many years saying we are not going to take away your money. We are. But it's
00:25:04.740
going to bankrupt itself. This is a very, very easy thing for people to understand. And I don't think,
00:25:09.700
you know, running in that direction against Nikki Haley is going to make much of a difference. And also
00:25:14.520
I know. And especially when you hear the candidates, they say over and over, even those who are talking
00:25:18.860
about raising the retirement age, not for the current retirees, not even for people who are
00:25:22.940
now in their 40s. They're talking about for people who are in their 20s or 30s. That's at least what
00:25:27.280
they're saying on paper and openly that that those are the only people they would do this to. So you'd
00:25:31.920
have a long runway to understand you have to work five more years before you can get your social
00:25:35.920
security. But they treat it like it's a wipeout, like they were going to take out the eraser
00:25:39.920
and the accounts are gone. I've got to pivot to this because you mentioned the old quote
00:25:44.260
about from from Krugman. And it's that I've got to get this in. I wasn't sure where we'd get to it.
00:25:52.140
But Secretary of Education, Miguel Cardona, you guys, I know you've seen it. I don't know if the
00:25:59.420
audience. Yeah. But he was giving testimony and was trying to discuss his department's priorities
00:26:06.840
and workforce development efforts and during this governor's association's meeting. And he was
00:26:14.420
talking about, you know, what the government has done and so on and tried to quote Ronald Reagan.
00:26:19.880
But as all of you know, and as the audience is about to hear, didn't quite understand that there
00:26:24.620
was more to the quote. Listen. You know, we're going to set up follow up calls with every governor
00:26:30.860
we met with to make sure we're available. As I think it was President Reagan said, we're from
00:26:36.460
the government. We're here to help. No, he doesn't even know. He did say that. He did. But there was
00:26:43.900
another clause in that sentence. Which we have. Which we have. Here it is. Here's the real Ronald Reagan
00:26:50.020
soundbite. I think you all know that I've always felt the nine most terrifying words in the English
00:26:57.860
language are. I'm from the government and I'm here to help. Yeah. Unbelievable. Oh my God. That is
00:27:06.960
great. I do love it. It's like, I'm not, I'm pretty sure it was Ronald Reagan, a big fan of big
00:27:12.540
government. It's like, he also looks like he should be a high school principal. Am I wrong in thinking
00:27:17.680
that? Yeah. But somebody was saying online, I think it was Dave Marcus, Camille. He was saying,
00:27:24.800
imagine having so little connection to half the country, conservative America, that you are not
00:27:31.980
familiar with that quote, which is absolutely famous. I mean, across parties it's famous,
00:27:38.140
but if you're a Republican, if you're ever voted Republican or a libertarian, you love this quote
00:27:43.040
for a reason. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. No, that has exactly the opposite of what you were hoping that the
00:27:49.460
intended impact would be. But I do feel obliged and I hate that I'm forced to do it to qualify
00:27:56.420
something. The Krugman, the Krugman quote, he was responding to a prompt in which he was invited
00:28:02.480
to offer an opinion that was likely to be wrong. It was, it was something along those lines.
00:28:10.760
Yeah. It was like a weird BS is that Camille? I'm just saying, I don't want to defend the guy,
00:28:16.600
but he knew that it was likely to be wrong. Well, now that you've beaten down your colleagues,
00:28:23.280
I will build them back up by telling you that Miguel Cardona was a principal. He was a principal.
00:28:28.760
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. No, he should have stayed there. Because I know that if you wanted, I could be like,
00:28:35.300
you know, here's a quote from Hitler. And it's like, yeah, but you left, it sounds philo-semitic,
00:28:39.620
but the next clause is about the bad things that are about to happen. You can do that with anyone.
00:28:44.980
I don't know what, he's a principal of the worst school in New York, right? Tell me the ranking
00:28:48.760
of that school. You have it in front of you, Megan, I'm sure you do. It can't be worse than
00:28:53.640
all Hillcrest, which is in the news. Hundreds of students mobbing the poor Jewish teacher who
00:29:00.620
showed up at a rally saying, what did she say? Was it horrible? Was it kill all the Palestinians? Was it,
00:29:05.620
I hate Palestinian children? It was, I stand with Israel. Kill! Kill! Get her! Get her!
00:29:12.760
Nice. That school is 540 out of New York's 571. And this is the shit they're worrying about.
00:29:17.900
Is that right? Oh my God. I'm so proud of them for moving up 20 spaces.
00:29:22.020
The chancellor of the New York City school system yesterday, David Banks, had just an appalling
00:29:29.500
press conference and Twitter thread about this, saying, among other things, that what's really
00:29:37.740
needed right now is de-escalation. And we have-
00:29:43.300
We have shared our words about tolerance. It's like, dude. And he also, he also described
00:29:49.020
the 400 students that were rioting as just a fraction of the population.
00:29:54.780
Which, as I pointed out before, the fraction was nine times.
00:30:03.000
It shows like, and Megan, I know that you know the New York City school system more than
00:30:09.520
you would like to, as I do as well. And it just shows what a rot this was. You know, like
00:30:15.140
October 7th was a margin call on a lot of different things. It sort of showed things about
00:30:19.520
our society and our schools and everything else and our institutions that maybe we didn't
00:30:24.760
really want to know. And one of them is that they've lost control of the schools. Like they're
00:30:28.660
using, you know, various sort of de-escalation techniques rather than, oh, if you beat up the
00:30:35.960
cop, you're expelled. It's not hard just to expel the student or just, you know, you have
00:30:45.760
Maybe to jail? That's a good place to put people when they beat up cops.
00:30:49.760
Try not to throw everybody in jail. But no, there has to be repercussions from it. And this
00:30:53.800
is true, not just of students, but it's true of protesters who are absolutely screwing up all
00:30:59.800
of New York City as we speak. They're just like, oh, there's a Macy's parade? Let's cement or glue
00:31:05.020
ourselves to the cement in the parade. I was driving home from a very nice holiday weekend
00:31:11.680
and traffic was great and it was awesome. And I was turning to go on the Manhattan Bridge
00:31:16.660
and suddenly I was stuck in 45 minutes of traffic. And there's these five little snot-nosed kids
00:31:24.180
wearing yellow vests and kind of like dancing around. They looked like they could be knocked
00:31:28.620
over with a feather and they had yellow taped themselves in front of the entrance that I was
00:31:32.860
supposed to go in. And there was a van full of cops and a phalanx of cops. We're just like,
00:31:38.700
all right, you know, five losers can shut down the Manhattan Bridge on the busiest travel day of
00:31:44.500
Yeah. Can I say something that's really awful? I'm going to say something that's awful.
00:31:48.200
I'm just going to knock away. I'm going to admit something that was on our text chain.
00:31:55.600
It's private for a reason because it's really appalling.
00:31:57.560
And the one when they glued themselves to the ground at the Thanksgiving Day parade,
00:32:04.860
the Mason Day parade, I said to Matt and Camille, if they're gluing their hands to the ground,
00:32:11.560
why don't we just go and pepper spray them? Because they can't cover their eyes and just
00:32:15.400
keep pepper spraying them until they say, OK, get the get the like the solution to get the
00:32:20.980
rubber of cement off of me and just keep pepper spraying them.
00:32:24.300
I mean, guess what? They're not going to do it again because I'm going to be there every time
00:32:30.780
I'm going to spray you in the eyes with bear spray.
00:32:33.020
Do you know how many people they arrested for shutting down the Manhattan Bridge for three
00:32:41.840
Our pal Nancy Rollin, who lives a block away, went down there and she asked a cop,
00:32:52.980
So who's Christy did this and it cost him his presidential hopes.
00:32:56.580
How are these people getting away with a slap on the taped wrist?
00:32:59.680
If I'm not mistaken, Eric Adams won the election to be the mayor of New York City as a backlash
00:33:06.400
candidate for perceived disorder, particularly as it pertains to law.
00:33:13.500
They elected a cop to maybe, I don't know, enforce the law or increase the enforcement of
00:33:19.460
the law at a time when there's been absolutely noticeable slippage all around you.
00:33:24.060
And now you're letting these snot nosed kids who don't know anything when you ask them a
00:33:29.560
single question about, like, stop the occupation in Gaza.
00:33:32.700
If you ask them about what was happening on October 6th, just blank faces.
00:33:38.760
They're going to they're having a protest in front of the Christmas tree lighting in
00:33:48.740
Which is a reference to Al-Aqsa flood, which was the name of the Hamas operation, which
00:33:55.820
They've been calling their, you know, the White House flood of this flood.
00:33:57.960
But it has certainly been pointed out to them that the word flood, they know what they're
00:34:03.600
We're going to do a flood at the Christmas tree lighting.
00:34:06.000
It's an advertisement for, hey, look, if you're a parent and you live in New York, God,
00:34:11.400
You know, you would normally want to maybe take your kid to the Macy's parade, take your
00:34:16.380
Well, maybe if they're going to do an Alaska flood at the tree lighting, I'm not going to
00:34:21.180
Hey, Matt, did you hear my plan about pepper spraying people?
00:34:27.160
By the way, I do want to say situations that can't that can't use, they cannot handle any
00:34:33.920
The Christmas tree lighting at Rockefeller Center is one of them.
00:34:36.660
My God, if you know anything about this, you know, to stay the hell home that night.
00:34:47.380
Just seeing the little bulbs go on is not such a big thrill.
00:34:53.720
I do want to clarify something that if people were gluing themselves to the street to lower
00:35:06.720
And there's enough of them in New York right now.
00:35:12.660
I also have to say, like, I, if you're really going to, if you really want me to take you
00:35:16.340
seriously, glue something more important to the street.
00:35:24.780
I'm just saying, go down south in Rio or I'd even take a face.
00:35:34.800
Then your pepper spray plan would really work, Moynihan, if their faces were done.
00:35:39.200
That would, that'd probably be, it's probably pretty painful.
00:35:43.540
I think I learned my way out of the text chain.
00:35:49.920
So speaking of weird partners for the fifth column, you're not going to believe what happened
00:35:59.120
So we, of course, knew that you were coming on.
00:36:03.280
Steve Krakauer, our executive producer, sends a note to all of us.
00:36:57.220
And the reactions from everybody are hilarious.
00:37:08.280
I'm going to give you his announcement about it.
00:37:10.520
And you tell me how you feel about him possibly even joining you guys on Substack.
00:37:16.560
And then realize that why aren't I giving the people that I care about in the project
00:37:41.640
And I am old enough, damaged enough, and okay enough to say I really am not great at life.
00:37:57.960
And that takes us to the biggest aperture of life is your own mind.
00:38:06.240
And I remember being fascinated early on in my love of hip hop, which then was just called
00:38:13.940
Wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait.
00:38:15.260
How many times, and I'm going to ask listeners this, and you don't have to acknowledge it
00:38:19.900
to anybody who's in the car with you or anything, but how many times have you smoked weed with
00:38:23.900
that guy in college who was like, you know, my brain and the aperture, and I'm so bad at
00:38:30.800
To go, like, why are you talking about, is it about Substack?
00:38:35.740
But it's the Stuart Smalley, like, daily affirmation thing that is so great.
00:38:46.200
Any time somebody says that, it's like, oh my God, you killed the man, didn't you?
00:38:49.760
He makes us go to the teeth whitening specialist every day.
00:38:56.760
There's one of two things that happen when we come on the Megyn Kelly show.
00:39:00.480
One is, I have to talk about The View and Joy Behar, who, by the way, had a conversation
00:39:07.500
with people the other day, people you thought were Jewish who aren't, Joy Behar, and Weird
00:39:15.400
This is a conversation with a Jewish friend, by the way.
00:39:20.480
And I think it was like, you heard him playing, somebody was playing Chris Cuomo in their
00:39:34.520
And the guy next to him, I think in a convertible, was playing the Chris Cuomo podcast, like,
00:39:48.160
I'm not sure he knows what hip-hop music is, to be totally honest.
00:39:52.000
I've never heard him talk about this at any other point.
00:39:57.740
Can we send him back into his basement in East Hampton?
00:40:08.560
Get one that talks to you the way mine does, which is very frank man.
00:40:19.400
He said to me one time, and it was perfectly suited,
00:40:23.460
you know, Megan, you don't always have to take the path of most resistance.
00:40:38.120
So he's got, like, just the lovely little, like, a little hint of an accent left.
00:40:43.360
Just a little bit, like, you're, like, British, just have to make him sort of sound smarter
00:41:03.660
So, um, this is a short block, so we want to get to a good story that won't take 30 minutes,
00:41:09.500
and I think we found it in the Deadspin attack attempt to ruin the life of a young boy who
00:41:17.720
wore to a football game starring the Kansas City Chiefs, um, half of his face black, half
00:41:25.780
of his face red, and with a Native American, like, headdress on, and the Deadspin writer,
00:41:33.520
Karen, C-A-R-R-O-N-J Phillips, described as a black male senior writer for Deadspin,
00:41:40.640
lost his ever-loving mind on this kid and on the NFL.
00:41:46.220
Just a couple of samples, because all Karen saw in the original picture was the black half
00:41:58.580
It takes a lot to disrespect two groups of people at once, but on Sunday afternoon in
00:42:03.220
Las Vegas, a Kansas City Chiefs fan, neglecting to point out at this point so far that it's
00:42:07.880
a young child, found a way to hate black people and the Native Americans at the same time.
00:42:13.680
The images of a Chiefs fan in blackface wearing a Native headdress during a road game leads
00:42:21.540
Why did the camera person give this fan the attention?
00:42:26.640
Why did the producer allow that camera angle to be aired at all?
00:42:31.880
Is that fan a kid slash teenager or a young adult?
00:42:36.280
Despite their age, who taught that person what they were wearing was appropriate?
00:42:39.440
The answers to all these questions lead back to the NFL.
00:42:42.040
While it isn't the league's responsibility to stop racism and hate from being taught in the
00:42:45.360
home, they're a league that has relentlessly participated in prejudice.
00:42:48.600
If the NFL had outlawed the chop at Chiefs games and had been more aggressive in changing
00:42:56.100
There is no place for a franchise to be called the Chiefs in a league that's already eradicated
00:43:00.900
This is what happens when you ban books, stand against critical race theory, and try to erase
00:43:06.440
You give future generations the ammo they need to evolve and recreate racism better than before.
00:43:14.580
And by the way, I don't know how this fits in, but he adds, it's also cruel to expect the
00:43:20.200
oppressed to assist their oppressors in the termination of their own oppression.
00:43:25.580
So when it came out, tired, I know when it came out that it was a kid wearing, I don't know,
00:43:36.520
I think I'm not sure how the black plays in, but half black, half red face, like we see at a lot
00:43:40.760
of these sporting events, half black, whatever, half black, half red.
00:43:46.040
He doubled down for the idiots in my mentions who are treating this as some harmless act because
00:43:51.980
I could make the argument that that makes it even worse.
00:43:54.860
Y'all are the ones who hate Mexicans, but wear sombreros on Cinco.
00:44:06.300
Y'all are the ones who hate Mexicans, but wear sombreros on Cinco.
00:44:16.080
I'll have you know that Camille Foster wore a sombrero on Cinco de Mayo on air.
00:44:25.940
I think I was also eating guacamole, if I'm not mistaken.
00:44:34.420
So what about the attempt to ruin this young boy's life?
00:44:43.400
Because after Covington, we just haven't had enough recently.
00:44:47.840
I do want to say that as somebody, Megan, you can sympathize with this, who has had to
00:44:53.460
experience this for a very long time as an Irish-American and having to see Notre Dame
00:45:00.320
fighting Irish make our people look like drunken street brawlers that we definitely are not,
00:45:07.160
which I've never seen an Irish person get into a fight.
00:45:09.440
They're usually doing mathematics or winning Nobel Prizes and definitely not getting wasted
00:45:16.940
But I think as an Irish-American who has gone through this with a football team with a picture,
00:45:22.900
The Boston Celtics is an Irishman with a pipe in his mouth and his fists up, ready to fight.
00:45:28.060
Every time you pick up a box of Lucky Charms, those wounds don't heal.
00:45:35.400
And if you want to eat racism for breakfast, I'm sure you're feeding it to your kids.
00:45:42.220
You know, my culture is not Megyn Kelly's costume, okay?
00:45:51.100
Do you know you get those stories where you don't even know what to say anymore?
00:45:53.540
You're like, I just can't even believe they're real.
00:45:55.840
Don't sound racist, but you know this kid's life is ruined right now.
00:45:58.180
You know this kid, he's a real kid, he's going to school, and his teachers are looking
00:46:02.220
at him and his classmates are like, oh, you know, and the kid's like, oh my God, I'm all over the
00:46:08.380
I hate Blacks, and I hate Native Americans, I guess.
00:46:10.900
And somehow some raras on Cinco come into a race and mix.
00:46:16.740
Maybe the silver lining in this is that it's Deadspin.
00:46:22.160
And if you even call that alive, that terrible, terrible writing, maybe we've moved on from
00:46:28.740
Maybe we finally were taking the Camille-ist route of this.
00:46:32.180
And he says that as a Redskins hater from way back, but not necessarily the name.
00:46:39.280
If you ask an average normal American of whether this kid should be crucified, they'd be like,
00:46:45.140
And when is Deadspin really going to go bankrupt this time?
00:46:52.920
But yeah, this is the same guy, by the way, this writer, Karen, C-A-R-R-O-N, courtesy of
00:47:01.260
lives of TikTok that unearthed this old 2016 tweet.
00:47:06.760
I'm from Saginaw, spent a lot of time in Flint.
00:47:10.440
I've never seen this many white people in Flint in my life.
00:47:17.160
He's concerned about all the whites he saw in Flint, Michigan.
00:47:21.340
Because he really cares about racial sensitivity, I guess.
00:47:29.560
I have no idea what to make of someone who is disconcerted when they see people of a different
00:47:36.700
I think we used to have a word for that sort of thing.
00:47:43.840
I don't like seeing people who don't look like me in my area, my general vicinity.
00:48:08.160
They try to play themselves off like they're a little fruit.
00:48:18.820
Much, much more with the fifth column, including President Trump now addressing the beating
00:48:24.300
he's been taking for repeatedly referring to President Biden as President Obama.
00:48:30.060
We'll tell you the excuse he's offering, and you will tell us whether you buy it.
00:48:39.120
So picking back up on our politics conversation, where we left some goodness on the floor regarding
00:48:44.380
Trump, regarding Biden and the internal flutterings at the White House over how he's handling the
00:48:52.320
Before I get to that, I do want to do the Trump thing, because we left off kind of with GOP
00:48:57.780
So one of the things that's been coming at Trump, both from Biden, I think, but definitely
00:49:04.360
from Team DeSantis, has been attacks on whether he's still got it, right?
00:49:09.060
Whether he's also suffering from some of the same age-related deterioration that President
00:49:17.300
And one of the things that he's been doing is he continues to refer to President Biden
00:49:29.280
And DeSantis has been making a thing out of this.
00:49:32.300
And now Trump has responded by saying it was intentional.
00:49:39.360
He's saying that it was done, quote, sarcastically.
00:49:44.140
Well, I'm going to find you exactly how he defended it.
00:49:48.440
Because this is, you know, this is a problem for him, potentially.
00:49:52.360
Because if the GOP doesn't want to lose this card to play against Biden, they certainly
00:49:57.080
don't want their nominee to have the same issue.
00:50:08.120
Whenever I sarcastically insert the name Obama for Biden as an indication that others may
00:50:14.840
actually be having a very big influence in running our country, Ron DeSantis and his failing
00:50:20.120
campaign apparatus, together with the Democrats' radical left disinformation machine, go wild,
00:50:26.140
saying that Trump doesn't know the name of our president.
00:50:36.840
And I know that they are destroying our country.
00:50:39.420
Then he goes on to say he just took a cognitive test and aced it.
00:50:52.300
So let's take a look at a montage of Trump saying President Obama, where he clearly meant
00:51:05.320
We won an election that everyone said couldn't be won.
00:51:10.080
Even the Obama administration says it in their stats.
00:51:19.580
He doesn't even mention them in his statements.
00:51:25.060
Fauci became big in the Bush administration in the and it's almost the same thing in the
00:51:34.980
They thought Bush because Bush supposedly was a military person.
00:51:38.940
He got us into the he got us into the Middle East.
00:52:01.580
Sarcasm requires a hint to the audience that you're being sarcastic.
00:52:08.120
And like, look, the point is, is that there's, you know, he's an old guy and this happens
00:52:18.480
I don't I don't even know what show I'm on right now.
00:52:21.100
And I just I just want to thank you for having us on the Glenn Beck show.
00:52:28.220
The Biden one is pretty serious, though, number one, because he's president.
00:52:31.500
And number two, because it's the physical impairment, too, that kind of makes it seem
00:52:36.240
so much more acute when he's like, you know, what is the the Shane Gillis who says he's
00:52:42.280
like a Roomba vacuum when he tries to get off the stage?
00:52:44.940
He's just like trying to find Biden is or Obama.
00:52:54.160
I mean, it's a matter of like I've seen the guy speak in the past, been there for a Trump
00:53:04.400
And he was funny and he was doing his bit and you're going to screw up.
00:53:09.720
But, you know, it's not nearly as bad as what's happening to Biden.
00:53:16.060
So why would you remind people that Obama is part of what you're running against?
00:53:23.280
Michelle Obama, for whatever reason, is one of the most popular figures in modern American
00:53:29.080
life, very bestselling author and whatnot, even no matter how many times Barack Obama
00:53:35.140
posts, you know, selfies with Bruce Springsteen online, he's still popular.
00:53:40.660
But Biden is the one who's unpopular and he's the one who's is wearing the both the
00:53:48.200
international unquiet or disquiet and the weird economy in a way that Obama couldn't
00:53:55.420
I mean, that's that that is a thing, you know, we were talking about Trump's poll
00:54:00.320
One of the reasons why I think that Trump is is beating Biden is that he's less in the
00:54:04.900
news and through not necessarily any fault of his own.
00:54:08.280
But when you skip all the debates and when there's gigantic international news and your
00:54:13.320
trials haven't started yet, you're going to be a little bit less in the news.
00:54:16.580
And so people forget how much they're irritated by him one way or the other.
00:54:21.160
It's amazing how he's been able to completely skate under the radar this time.
00:54:26.040
Like, at least when it comes to debating or having his ideas challenged, you know, he
00:54:29.500
sat for an interview with me, which I really appreciated and thought was spicy, one with
00:54:35.700
But we could actually have a presidential election in which there have been absolutely no debates
00:54:43.760
And then Biden, I do not think Biden will debate Trump.
00:54:46.720
I think he'll say I'm not standing next to an insurrectionist.
00:54:49.060
Never mind a four times indicted potential felon or could even be a convicted felon by
00:54:57.160
That's not till August, till fall, October of the election year.
00:55:03.660
Um, so we could actually have a presidential election in which neither one of the candidates
00:55:07.960
has debated, uh, either in the primaries or in the actual general, which is not good
00:55:22.500
I want to talk about Biden because what's happening to him politically and within his own White
00:55:30.440
Um, you know, you mentioned possible third parties that won't be the only thing pulling
00:55:35.520
This growing Palestinian constituency or supporters, uh, of Palestine is getting more and more vocal
00:55:44.280
and the White House is trying to find a way to deal with them, even though Biden seems
00:55:48.280
pro-Israel and, and he's been pretty good in his comments about Israel, not uniformly,
00:55:55.180
So there's a deep dive in the Washington post this week saying White House grapples with internal
00:56:02.440
Earlier this month, a group of about 20 distressed White House staffers requested a meeting with
00:56:08.080
President Biden's top advisors, his White House chief of staff, his senior advisor, and
00:56:16.720
They wanted to know the administration's strategy for curbing the number of civilian deaths,
00:56:20.660
the message it plans to send on the conflict and its post-war vision for the region.
00:56:25.100
Now there's no suggestion that these are people who are responsible for messaging or policy.
00:56:31.520
It's just 20 distressed White House staffers who are demanding answers from the president
00:56:40.200
Um, some participants felt that these officials fell back on familiar talking points.
00:56:46.220
Um, they go on to say this story is based on interviews with 27 White House officials,
00:56:51.560
senior administration officials, and outside advisors.
00:56:53.920
And they say that, uh, okay, the division inside the White House is to some degree between Biden's
00:57:02.400
senior long-time aides and an array of younger staffers of diverse backgrounds.
00:57:08.740
These are the Wokies who are in there saying, protect, protect the people who look like me,
00:57:16.360
Uh, then Biden met with five prominent Muslim Americans the day after he said he should be
00:57:22.760
skeptical of the death toll numbers coming out of the gap, the Gaza health ministry.
00:57:26.520
And the next day he met with these five prominent Muslim Americans and apologized.
00:57:31.940
According to the Washington Post, he said, I'm sorry.
00:57:39.840
Should not trust numbers coming out of Hamas, the group that puts babies in ovens.
00:57:45.720
They are not our friend when it comes to anything.
00:57:49.100
Uh, and now since Hamas has launched his attack, the administration officials have had regular
00:57:53.940
discussions with staffers, political appointees, and outside groups to reassure them and to gauge
00:58:02.780
So the White House having to do still more handholding.
00:58:05.960
We know it was Kamala Harris who put that line about Islamophobia in Biden's initial address
00:58:18.040
And this actually has serious political consequences potentially for this president in an election
00:58:23.940
What do you guys make of what we're seeing there, the appeasement and how this unfolds over
00:58:30.260
I mean, talk about the least surprising news story.
00:58:33.700
I mean, when you see unnamed congressional staffers signing a letter or petition of some sort
00:58:42.980
about Israel and Gaza, when you see the ACLU being lost to a younger generation of people
00:58:49.540
who don't want to stick up for civil liberties, of bad people anymore, and has been completely
00:58:54.460
taken over by, you know, a totally different agenda.
00:58:57.040
And I mean, you know, Barry Weiss, my friend and a very close friend of the Fifth Column
00:59:02.220
podcast, you know, was like ridiculed at the New York Times for saying that there is
00:59:07.380
a division, a fissure that is open between young, the younger staffers and the older staffers.
00:59:14.200
And that was considered to be some sort of sacrilegious thing to say.
00:59:31.040
Going to go public and, you know, put the Biden administration as always having, already
00:59:35.380
having a very tough time with its poll numbers on this policy in even worse position.
00:59:41.980
The best thing to do is to ignore people like this.
00:59:44.320
The comments that Biden made to the five Muslim leaders about the death toll figures is very
00:59:54.620
You know, you have to stand up and you would hope that these Muslim leaders would also
01:00:00.560
themselves not trust and not want to be associated with Hamas and not think that they're honest
01:00:07.420
I imagine one would hope that that was the case.
01:00:09.780
But I want to remind everybody of something, something that has really been forgotten about,
01:00:13.360
because we do actually have a test case about these numbers, right?
01:00:19.740
The numbers are going to be high because it's war and it's deeply, deeply unfortunate.
01:00:28.360
But let's remember the Israeli rocket attack on the hospital that turned out not to be an
01:00:37.560
Recall that the Gaza Health Ministry immediately said that 300 people died.
01:00:41.580
And European intelligence said, well, I think they said 500 went down to 300, trying to
01:00:51.480
And then, you know, people in various European intelligence said, well, it wasn't.
01:00:59.720
And the numbers could be anywhere from five to six to maybe 30.
01:01:03.580
So we have an example of them inflating, I mean, you know, 20, 30, 50x on one thing that
01:01:14.480
It's hard to find out that these things aren't true.
01:01:17.040
It's very rarely are you provided an opportunity like that to see them lying in action.
01:01:21.640
And they have very precise numbers very quickly.
01:01:24.320
The Israelis took them about what they're still counting the number of people who died on
01:01:28.720
They tell you 372, some exact number of children died.
01:01:34.640
They really will adjust downward on the Israeli side.
01:01:38.720
And then they came out and said it was actually 1,200.
01:01:42.280
They understand that their reputation, their international reputation, is one that is savaged
01:01:51.540
I mean, Bashar al-Assad doesn't get, you know, these things in front of the United Nations,
01:01:59.380
So they know they have to be careful about this stuff.
01:02:01.440
So saying that the Gaza health ministry is untrustworthy, not even saying that those numbers
01:02:08.440
are totally wrong, saying that one has to be skeptical of this and the fact that people
01:02:13.580
are being, you know, shown into the White House to tongue lash the president for saying
01:02:18.740
something that is transparently true is a bit troubling to me.
01:02:22.420
And dozens of your staffers, dozens of your staffers giving comment on an article like this,
01:02:27.440
making it clear that you are saying things publicly, that you are then disparaging in
01:02:32.540
And this is not a good look for the Biden administration.
01:02:35.720
It suggests that the entirety of this administration is kind of in disarray.
01:02:39.920
And one can only expect things to get substantially worse for them where this conflict is concerned,
01:02:47.580
The reality is that just to add to that, oh, sorry, go ahead.
01:02:51.720
Just that the median position that a kind of public service facing young democratic person,
01:03:00.080
especially if they're going to be focusing on international relations, their median position
01:03:05.340
is going to be kind of the root of the problem in most of international relations.
01:03:10.440
And certainly the Muslim world is Israel's occupation of the West Bank and the failure
01:03:16.060
of the resolution of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
01:03:22.260
And then there's just an American-wide societal and very distressing belief that I'm sure you've
01:03:27.600
The Harvard-Harris poll that came out that something close to 50 percent of 18 to 24-year-olds
01:03:32.880
said that Hamas was at least somewhat justified in using violence on October 7th.
01:03:43.880
And so maybe it's a little bit lessened, but it is a political reality of, of, uh, the
01:03:50.320
Uh, going forward, my, uh, you know, question for them is, will they suddenly think that,
01:03:55.880
well, therefore I must vote for Donald Trump or the Republican party?
01:03:59.680
Like, what do you think is going to be different here?
01:04:01.900
But I'm not really sure they're thinking more than one or two times ahead or stay at home.
01:04:06.180
Um, uh, it's, so that's what they're saying that in this article, they say, um, that one
01:04:11.320
of the Palestinian immediate, uh, Americans in one of the meetings with the white house
01:04:14.800
aides said the participants left with more resolve than ever to organize their communities,
01:04:21.360
The person said Arabs and Muslims would also not vote for former president Trump.
01:04:28.040
Joe Biden has always been, um, uh, I make one good metaphor a year.
01:04:32.080
And one I made a few years back was that he's a rusty weather vane, like wherever the
01:04:35.700
democratic winds are blowing, he's going to kind of get there creakily.
01:04:39.620
And that's part of the reason why you vote for him.
01:04:41.120
If you're a conservative Democrat is that he's not going to go full Elizabeth Warren on
01:04:45.020
you and just completely lose his mind and start like making, you know, monopoly, monopolist
01:04:49.300
investigations into subway sandwiches, but he's going to get there slowly.
01:04:52.540
If the, if the democratic base is absolutely split on this, and I think it is, um, he's going
01:04:58.340
to have to try to address those concerns and it's going to be unseen.
01:05:01.680
This is a thing that Democrats really have to worry about, um, because they're worrying
01:05:06.800
about it, um, a little bit, but not very much because the Republican party is such a mess.
01:05:11.400
And, you know, these are the own goals that, that Republicans consistently give Democrats.
01:05:15.580
Uh, you know, you have young people, you have, you know, Arab Americans, Muslim Americans,
01:05:21.220
Palestinian Americans saying we'll stay at home and some more radical, uh, young people
01:05:26.120
that will stay at home and, you know, these are people that consistently vote for Democrats.
01:05:29.980
A couple of weeks ago, I spoke to Rui Teixeira and John Judas, uh, John Judas is a socialist.
01:05:36.120
Rui Teixeira is a Democrat and they wrote a book called the Emerging Democratic Majority.
01:05:40.900
And they've just come out with a new book trying to figure out where that went wrong
01:05:46.160
Um, and their answer is, you know, the Democrats, if they want to win future elections have to move
01:05:52.980
away from radical cultural politics on transgender issues, on race issues, and all these things that,
01:05:59.700
you know, we talk about so much in the fifth column and come back to normal centrist working
01:06:09.220
Those are the people that are on the quote unquote right of the democratic party, the sort of
01:06:12.320
blue dogs, yellow dogs of, of, of yesterday year.
01:06:15.140
And imagine that if these people are going away and saying, and, and, you know, Teixeira and
01:06:19.960
Judas have a lot of poll numbers suggesting that's true.
01:06:22.480
Now you're going to have people on the left of the party saying, we don't like what you're
01:06:31.600
I mean, this party is going to fracture in a thousand different places.
01:06:34.820
And this is a great opportunity for Republicans to stop their silliness and actually get a party
01:06:42.300
in the future that has a coherent ideology that is very different from the democratic ideology,
01:06:48.020
which sometimes I think is, has gotten a little too close to where they are, particularly
01:06:52.720
But where these foreign policy engagements are concerned, I mean, I think what you are
01:06:56.940
ultimately going to see, and this seems to be almost necessarily true, is the merger of
01:07:01.660
the cynicism, the skepticism, and the exhaustion of everyone else with respect to the entanglements
01:07:08.200
in Ukraine and in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
01:07:11.500
I just don't know that there is going to be, even amongst people who are very concerned
01:07:16.220
about this, who generally stand with Israel, that they're going to be very excited about
01:07:21.660
being engaged in these conflicts in a protracted way many, many months from now.
01:07:26.720
It's already the case that we've seen a lot of that with respect to Ukraine.
01:07:30.480
I have to imagine that that would be on an accelerated, happening on an accelerated clip
01:07:34.260
with respect to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
01:07:37.020
So if that rusty weather vane is going to be moving, well, it should better move pretty
01:07:40.360
quickly if it's going to have any chance of helping Joe Biden in this race.
01:07:47.220
They report, again, this is the same Washington Post report, that on October 7th, the date
01:07:52.680
of the massacre, many in the White House responded viscerally to the brutal nature of the atrocities.
01:07:58.040
The chief of staff emailed staffers expressing empathy with Jewish staffers and those with
01:08:05.860
Many Jewish staffers appreciated the note, but some Arab and Muslim officials felt it was tone-deaf
01:08:13.780
This is the day of the massacre, given that Israeli officials were vowing to carry out
01:08:21.900
So you've got Muslim and Arab officials inside the White House pissed off that a note of empathy
01:08:28.160
went out from the chief of staff as the Jews were being beheaded, murdered, raped in Israel
01:08:35.980
Muslim appointees in the administration began raising alarm bells about this email and what
01:08:43.600
they believed was one-sided rhetoric by the administration, according to a senior administration
01:08:51.260
They go on to say that the chief of staff and Anita Dunn, who runs Strategy for Biden, have
01:08:56.820
conducted regular meetings and listening sessions with the staffers.
01:09:01.940
This, in particular, after this six-year-old Palestinian-American boy was fatally stabbed
01:09:08.460
You guys remember chief of staff writing in an October 17th email, I wanted to take a moment
01:09:12.300
to acknowledge how difficult it's been for our Palestinian, Arab, and Muslim-American
01:09:19.240
Is any business getting done inside the White House?
01:09:22.860
I mean, like, the number of meetings, Muslim-Americans, Arab-Americans, we're sorry, we take it back,
01:09:28.100
We're so sorry, sorry about the email, we'll do better on this, more listening sessions.
01:09:33.280
My God, this is our future, based on the woke-ification of America and the influx of all these little
01:09:41.520
snowflake petals, whatever, flower petals, snowflakes, into the administration, the White House,
01:09:47.660
Now, having their way, there's no grown-up to say, grow up, it's not my job to coddle you.
01:09:55.200
You didn't think that when you went to a university 10 years ago, 12 years ago, and saw the kind of
01:10:01.880
claptrap that was, you know, passing as intellectual debate, that that wasn't going to have, you know,
01:10:09.560
kind of an infectious quality in every, you know, thing that we do, right?
01:10:14.160
And particularly people who leave college and want to go into politics, people who leave college these
01:10:19.660
days, I mean, you're obviously seeing the logical endpoint of people talking about identity ad infinitum,
01:10:29.700
As of that, what is the right strategy for peace in the Middle East, for supporting our ally in the
01:10:37.000
Middle East, Israel, and doing it in a way that is humane, something like that?
01:10:41.600
If that's the conversation you want to have, number one, you're too junior to have it, so please
01:10:46.500
The second thing is, if you're going to have that conversation, please don't have it about,
01:10:51.500
well, as of this, I am a Muslim American, something very bad happened in Chicago, which it
01:10:57.520
absolutely did, and something very bad happened in Vermont the other day, too, but I don't
01:11:02.780
understand what that has to do with what America should do in response to its oldest ally in
01:11:10.220
the Middle East, its only ally, that's a true ally in that sense, and from 1948 on, I mean,
01:11:15.100
this is madness, because it's just this same BS talking points about identity pushed into
01:11:23.260
an administration that has made some missteps, and we just talked about one of them, but
01:11:28.760
has been generally pretty good, and I want to acknowledge they've been generally pretty
01:11:33.620
They haven't been perfect, but, you know, let's not make the perfect of the enemy of the
01:11:39.600
Megan, as a manager of people, I know I don't have to tell you, don't listen to your staffers.
01:11:55.400
They would never come work here if they were otherwise.
01:11:58.400
There's a weird overlap with the story that we were talking about before in the New York
01:12:01.480
school where we saw a riot and, like, cops beaten and a teacher barricaded inside of
01:12:11.800
And the apologia for the chancellor, David Banks, said, well, you have to understand that
01:12:18.180
these kids see videos on TikTok of Palestinian babies getting blown up, and so they therefore
01:12:28.460
interpret standing with Israel or saying that you stand with Israel as being in favor of
01:12:34.700
that, which is an interesting bit of apologia, and it suggests the next step, which is tell
01:12:46.480
Like, just even cognitively, let alone, like, I'm going to act on this stupid response by
01:12:51.840
doing a huge riot on the third floor and to chase a Jewish teacher with anti-Semitic remarks
01:12:59.220
and make her scared and barricaded in the classroom.
01:13:02.120
You don't, like, you don't humor that, actually.
01:13:05.500
Could you imagine a racist event in which they weren't chasing a Jew through the hall?
01:13:14.240
Saying, like, anti-Semitic things as the person has to barricade themselves.
01:13:20.380
We had endless conversations about things that were one one hundredth of that, whether it's,
01:13:26.180
you know, the Covington Catholic kid looking rather kind of blasé about somebody.
01:13:35.800
Smiling in the speaking of a Native American man who was beating a drum in his face.
01:13:39.880
Jewish through the school in New York City is not something that you should ever make excuses
01:13:46.400
And I suspect if there was a bunch of lacrosse-playing white kids in Greenwich, Connecticut,
01:13:52.180
that chased the one black teacher because they were mad about something that they stupidly
01:13:57.240
associated with all black people, which is what you're supposed to do in anti-racist,
01:14:02.400
real anti-racist education, is not to blame an entire group for the actions of somebody
01:14:07.640
or something that's similar or that you don't like.
01:14:14.080
The response to be like, well, we have to talk to them.
01:14:16.600
Do you think that these kids running through, attacking a teacher, need a talking to?
01:14:30.300
So do you guys see the home of the leader of AIPAC, you know, this pro-Israel group popular
01:14:38.120
with conservatives, got targeted out in L.A., and we've got some video from it and a soundbite
01:14:46.240
of what happened there as these pro-Palestinian protesters stormed the guy's neighborhood,
01:14:54.980
But the people around him, his neighbors had to come out.
01:15:22.220
So I believe the girl saying, Papa, please don't do that, is the daughter of the neighbor
01:15:33.880
I'm going out there and talking to these losers.
01:15:36.840
So the neighbor stood up for the guy who was under attack.
01:15:39.660
Some of the neighbors actually spoke out to NBC Los Angeles.
01:15:43.320
When I realized that they were attacking the property, the private property of my neighbor,
01:15:54.920
I believe in the First Amendment, but when you pass and you go through a private property
01:16:00.440
and you terrorize people, that's the end for me.
01:16:05.100
Somebody told me she knew where I live now, so I'm a little bit...
01:16:13.320
Well, I mean, imagine, to your point, imagine if this were, and by the way, we'll show you
01:16:19.220
the video here, fake blood, fake bodies on the driveway, some sign with F your holiday,
01:16:27.180
This is what this man had to deal with outside of his home, thanks to this group protesting
01:16:32.980
on behalf of the Palestinians, Hamas, you tell me.
01:16:36.960
And imagine, to your point, if this were Patrice Cullors at the height of the Black Lives
01:16:42.760
Matter movement, and this was a bunch of MAGA hat-wearing people outside of her home, throwing
01:16:48.920
smoke bombs, F you, you killer, and mock-ups of dead bodies covered in blood all over.
01:17:00.980
Most people probably haven't even heard this happened.
01:17:02.820
Remember that most, these people do not think that the means are the problem.
01:17:11.280
That's what they pretend to think, to pretend to believe, and they tell you that, but that's
01:17:18.240
I mean, they do believe any means necessary, and you will have a very muted response from
01:17:27.040
The means aren't a problem when you agree with the goal.
01:17:32.780
That sort of stuff is unacceptable, regardless of what your message is.
01:17:38.820
I don't, this is totally unacceptable if I agree with your message, and I would be ashamed
01:17:42.700
if I was on that side, as it were, and people representing this side that I believed in were
01:17:49.700
gluing themselves to things, screwing up traffic, throwing fake blood on private homes.
01:17:54.940
This is, you know, one of many, many things that we've seen recently, because, you know,
01:18:00.340
and also never be on the side of any cause that has a hey, hey, ho, ho chant.
01:18:14.920
God knows it's happening in New York constantly.
01:18:22.000
Big cities, big, you know, overwhelmingly dominant progressive, left progressive cities.
01:18:28.940
Where is the support for Israel super rock solid?
01:18:35.500
And in fact, in these cities as well, if you like pull the actual majority of people who
01:18:39.680
are not trying to block the Manhattan Bridge when I'm trying to cross over it.
01:18:42.660
So it's an interesting dynamic, because where is the idiotic Democratic Party holding its
01:18:57.740
It's going to be an advertisement for all this kind of off-putting dysfunction.
01:19:02.800
I mean, this stuff to the extent of which any halfway normal person interacts with an idiot
01:19:08.140
getting pepper sprayed by Michael Moynihan on the Macy's Day parade, they are going to hate
01:19:12.460
everything associated with that person for inconveniencing them.
01:19:17.320
If this is going to be the way the Democrats are kind of self-identifying, presenting themselves
01:19:21.940
to the world, it's going to make a doddering incumbent president all the less popular.
01:19:27.940
And it's just remarkable pursuant to everything we've talked about today.
01:19:32.140
It seems like the only person who could possibly lose to Joe Biden is Donald Trump and vice
01:19:40.100
Well, you know, it's because we've talked, you know, the four of us many times about what
01:19:45.260
a cancer wokeism is and all this dividing us between each other based on race, et cetera.
01:19:50.600
And the group we've been looking for to join in these protestations are classical liberals
01:20:00.040
It's like the old left and not these woke progressives who are on the new left who are annoying
01:20:04.980
and the ones who have taken over the college campuses and portions of the White House.
01:20:09.760
And they started to get it, I think, a bit over the past year plus.
01:20:15.040
I mean, I've talked many times about my friends in New York, most of whom are Democrats, who
01:20:18.900
got a little red pilled or in some cases entirely red pilled during COVID.
01:20:23.160
But more and more, this particular conflict is bringing it out.
01:20:27.320
And now even some of the left are noticing it and writing about it.
01:20:31.700
I thought this was an interesting Twitter thread by Nate Silver, the pollster who came
01:20:36.420
out on 1126 and wrote, I guess this is obvious, but some of the subtext behind the divide between
01:20:43.460
left slash progressives and liberal slash centrists over Israel is that these teams were already
01:20:51.940
rolling their eyes at one another over wokeness slash cancel culture and COVID.
01:21:01.340
And he goes on to say there's more correlation than there probably should be on these issues.
01:21:05.180
Like, I'd guess pro-Palestine folks score quite a bit higher on COVID hawkishness, even though you
01:21:13.000
really have to stretch to come up with a theory for why these positions should be related.
01:21:21.780
But I love seeing somebody like Nate Silver start to get it, that the people who are,
01:21:27.280
in his words, liberal slash centrists, have really been on our side all the time on wokeness.
01:21:34.020
And it's their lunatic fringe who needs to be brought to heel for the preservation of the
01:21:41.980
Yeah, there's something about the derangement that occurred during that summer of 2020 when
01:21:47.440
we were seeing all of the insane political violence, the constant persistent disruptions
01:21:53.320
of your life while you're sitting on a sidewalk trying to get something to eat and someone comes
01:21:57.240
and starts screaming in your face, insisting that you agree with them on whatever radical
01:22:01.760
proposition they were suggesting, like abolishing the police, for example.
01:22:08.120
All sorts of euphemisms were invented, like mostly peaceful to describe what were obviously
01:22:13.420
odious demonstrations that had way too much violence.
01:22:17.640
For you to say mostly peaceful suggests that there's probably something wrong there that's
01:22:23.120
And I don't know how they managed to still win an election after that, having defended
01:22:29.960
But again, maybe fielding a bad candidate is part of it.
01:22:32.720
But it'll be interesting to see if we see a repeat of that.
01:22:35.360
If these demonstrations continue in this way and continue to alienate people, which I think
01:22:40.880
is genuinely true, it'll be interesting to see if they can manage to pull this out again.
01:22:46.640
That suggests that this weird financial situation the RNC finds themselves in, it would probably
01:22:52.180
make sense for them to go bankrupt because they would have no reason to continue to exist
01:22:57.820
if they can consistently lose to people who engage in this kind of preposterous, disruptive
01:23:05.100
The sclerosis that you were describing earlier in that post about the Biden administration doing
01:23:11.260
I mean, imagine you're elected president of the United States and you're supposed to be
01:23:15.640
designing the policy and crafting it and your staff is out there executing for you.
01:23:19.840
Instead, they are managing an internal insurrection, a massive schism between the people within the
01:23:27.140
administration just to find a way for them to navigate through this situation that they
01:23:34.860
find themselves in. It's hideous on so many levels, but it's not at all obvious that this is going to be
01:23:42.580
enough to disrupt them because of just how dysfunctional our politics are right now.
01:23:47.100
You know, watching the right self-immolate after Trump with the never-Trumpers and the MAGA people and
01:23:54.540
people saying, you know, Fox isn't conservative enough and I'm only going to watch Newsmax, etc.
01:24:00.680
really made liberals happy. And a lot of people that I talked to there, they were like, it's so
01:24:05.600
fun to watch you guys shooting within, you know, inside the tent and having everybody have to kind
01:24:12.340
of stake out their position to, if they're a real conservative. Watching this on the left now when
01:24:17.500
it comes to Israel is really fascinating too, because as you said, Megan, it's, you know, there's
01:24:23.080
classical liberal types, but there's also liberal, liberal types. You know, people that are actually on
01:24:28.320
the left. I mean, you had Maurice Iserman, one of the founders of the DSA, writing in the Nation
01:24:34.140
magazine, pretty radical place, saying, I'm leaving the DSA over Israel. John Judas, who I mentioned
01:24:42.000
before, was an original guy in DSA. And he was horrified by a lot of this response to Israel,
01:24:48.740
because the difference is very, very simple. The past in these cleavages about Israel have existed,
01:24:55.020
right? I mean, Israel is kind of founded as a left-wing country. Labor Zionism, the kibbutzim
01:25:00.720
are like, it's a form of like labor collectivism. It's a socialist kind of place. Matt and I were at
01:25:06.800
one of the kibbutzes that was attacked last year, and it was hilarious to listen to these people. It's
01:25:12.380
like, I'm at, you know, a Marxist training camp in the middle of Israel. But it's funny how that
01:25:17.780
happens. But I think the real difference now is it used to be labor Zionism. It used to be kind of
01:25:23.300
like, well, the way that they're handling post-1967 after the Six-Day War and the occupation
01:25:29.640
of, at that point, Gaza and the West Bank is wrong. And we're like B'Tselem, this kind of left-wing
01:25:36.760
organization in Israel. Haaretz, a left-wing newspaper. The thing that these people in Israel
01:25:41.560
can't understand, now look this up. I tell listeners to go and look this up. The Israeli left
01:25:48.800
has been writing these open letters to their friends on the American left. Artists. There's
01:25:53.380
a big one among Israeli artists saying, you know, hey, we're left-wing too, but what the hell is wrong
01:25:57.840
with you guys? Because it's become from the river to the sea. It's become, you know, this kind of
01:26:03.660
exterminationist ideology. And I mean extermination for the state of Israel, that it shouldn't exist.
01:26:08.860
The number of people I've asked at these protests, do you think Israel should exist? No.
01:26:12.940
Where do they go? Back to where they came from. I literally had somebody say that to me. And I was
01:26:22.300
Well, Iraq, who had a huge Jewish population in Baghdad and now has four Jews left. And that's
01:26:27.360
actually true. I think there were four Jews in Baghdad. But it is a wild thing that the
01:26:31.500
transformation has not been that the left has always been this way. The transformation is within
01:26:37.000
the left of people who went from a kind of left-wing vision of what Israel should be to the default
01:26:43.940
position on the left, the actual left, not the sort of liberal kind of Democrat, that Israel is a
01:26:51.720
problem for even existing. And if we could go back to 1948 and eliminate the only Jewish state, which was
01:26:57.860
a refuge from people who survived the Holocaust, they would pull that rug out from under them.
01:27:02.560
Just to bring it full circle, Charles Koch, he describes himself as a classical liberal,
01:27:08.360
which is not the same as a, quote, just liberal. Classical liberals are much more focused on just
01:27:14.960
getting the government out of our business, kind of like you guys, libertarians, and don't really
01:27:19.920
want a lot of social engineering and don't want a lot of taxes. And that's Charles Koch, too,
01:27:24.160
and believes in the free market, doesn't want a lot of intervention on, quote, fair trade as
01:27:29.200
opposed to free trade. And then liberals are the people we all grew up surrounded by.
01:27:33.240
Like liberals, they used to be, you know, pro-choice and pro-gay marriage and pro-protecting
01:27:39.840
the environment, but they weren't insane. They weren't trying to divide us by skin color and
01:27:45.000
pretending men can be women and saying the earth is going to be over in two years unless we
01:27:50.660
stop eating cows. I mean, it's maybe some of them did, but that's a little radical for them,
01:27:55.540
too. And I do think there's still some normie liberals out there who listen to this show.
01:28:00.420
I think I have a fair amount of these people who listen to us. We're tolerable to them.
01:28:03.980
And they are looking for a place to land. They're politically homeless because,
01:28:07.900
like Nate Silver is saying, they see nothing. They have nothing in common with these
01:28:12.880
woke leftist progressives who are now getting a seat at the table inside the White House.
01:28:18.720
All right, I take a quick break and we come back. I've been dying to get you guys to react.
01:28:21.980
This is a week old now, but I really wanted to get you to react to what happened in San Francisco
01:28:26.120
with these CEOs giving a standing O to President Xi. And we have a little background on some of
01:28:31.940
these CEOs for you that you might find interesting. So stand by for that.
01:28:51.980
Because if you want to be the leader of the free world, you better be ready to give America the answers
01:28:58.080
they're looking for. Live from the University of Alabama, the NewsNation Republican primary debate
01:29:03.880
moderated by SiriusXM's Megan Kelly and NewsNation's Elizabeth Vargas. December 6th, 8 p.m. Eastern.
01:29:10.500
Watch it on NewsNation, America's fastest growing cable news network. Find NewsNation on your screen
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01:29:24.120
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01:29:29.300
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01:29:34.860
Guys, I'm sure you saw this. Our American company leaders went out to San Francisco when President
01:29:47.260
Xi Jinping from China was here and gave him a standing ovation. They look like good little
01:29:55.680
communists as they stood and clapped for the man now committing a genocide against Muslims in China.
01:30:04.860
Watch this. Oh, my God. Didn't anyone stop to think to themselves, not a good look, not a good
01:30:21.740
look. You know, the forced sterilization of Muslims in China. I'm really not going to stand and applaud
01:30:28.220
the guy who's doing that. But among others, we had Tim Cook of Apple, Pfizer CEO, FedEx CEO,
01:30:34.440
Salesforce CEO. And then there was the BlackRock CEO. Now, all of these corporate leaders, all of
01:30:40.500
them were very vocal after George Floyd about what a racist country America is, how disgusting America
01:30:47.560
is because of our inherent racism, including, of course, most especially the BlackRock CEO, Larry
01:30:53.880
Fink, who he sent out a message, the murders of Ahmaud Arbery and George Floyd. Ready for it?
01:31:01.600
And the incident in Central Park. Hello, Camille. Camille Foster is the one who broke the real,
01:31:07.260
the true story of Central Park, Karen, which is not a nice name, but that's how people know her.
01:31:12.540
Show how much work we have to do to build a stronger, more equal and safer society.
01:31:16.380
These events are symptoms of a deep and longstanding problem in our society and must be addressed
01:31:20.700
on both a personal and systemic level. We're the problem. That guy, he was in the middle doing this.
01:31:26.380
For the guy committing the genocide of Muslims, these CEOs are disgusting hypocrites. I never
01:31:34.460
want to hear their lectures about the United States again.
01:31:49.180
I certainly had my commute disrupted. I was not there. I wouldn't have been standing and applauding.
01:31:54.800
I find it, I mean, there's so many reasons to dislike Xi, but for these people in particular,
01:32:01.600
I mean, they've been moaning about the fact that the Chinese have been breaking into their companies,
01:32:07.820
stealing their trade secrets, ripping off their technology for months and months. It was just
01:32:12.420
this past October that the Five Eyes were getting together. And the sole thing that they were
01:32:17.700
talking about publicly was Chinese misconduct in the kind of corporate espionage that's taking
01:32:23.740
place, this theft that is happening at an unmitigated pace. And it is amazing to see these
01:32:29.720
technology companies that have in many instances been directly affected by this stuff still having
01:32:35.220
to applaud for this man in that context, because they're so worried about their own bottom line,
01:32:41.420
that particular lucrative market in China, which they all hope to get a piece of.
01:32:46.480
But imagine doing that. Imagine building factories and investing with the expectation
01:32:50.720
that this is going to work out well for you. It probably won't in the long run.
01:32:55.640
So it is interesting the way corporate courage works, where you can speak out boldly
01:32:59.880
on social issues domestically, when it's completely safe for you. But when there's actually some
01:33:05.300
risk associated with it, and when there are some real stakes, it's unquestionably. You're
01:33:12.040
unwilling to say anything. You stand and applaud.
01:33:14.860
It's not even a one-way street. People tend to think, oh, they don't want to lose out
01:33:18.800
on their market share. And I don't. I think it was Milton Friedman who said the greatest enemy of
01:33:23.900
capitalism are capitalists, because they want to disrupt markets for their own benefit.
01:33:29.560
But I would say this, that the Chinese actually need these companies, too. It's not as if you
01:33:36.500
don't have any leverage in these matters. And we talk endlessly, and these corporate CEOs talk
01:33:42.120
endlessly about, as you point out, Megan, historic racism of the United States. It is a single-party
01:33:49.300
rule in China. And that is this very same party who gave us the Great Leap Forward in the Cultural
01:33:56.540
Revolution, where over 100 million people died. So if you want to look at a country's horrible past,
01:34:02.580
not even their present, which is incredibly horrible, too. And to say that, well, you know,
01:34:07.920
this is fine. There have been a number of books that came out. I'm actually reading one right now.
01:34:11.300
So it actually is why I'm bringing this up about Hollywood.
01:34:15.700
I'm reading a book by a really interesting historian named Thomas Doherty. And it's called
01:34:20.700
Hitler in Hollywood. And it's about how all the studios basically had, I mean, they're all owned
01:34:26.460
and run by Jewish guys, like the Warners and the Mayors, Louis B. Mayer, et cetera. But they had to
01:34:31.500
compromise in certain ways, because Germany was a big market. And like, they wanted to sell their films
01:34:37.180
in Germany. And there was big debate about whether we should do films that even attack Adolf Hitler.
01:34:43.660
So this is like an old problem. But we see that and we look back on it and say, oh, my God,
01:34:49.360
what's coming back? But right in our midst, you have all of these CEOs clapping like demented
01:34:59.600
I'm going to tell you right now, I don't care what event I'm at. Yes, sit down. I could never,
01:35:03.680
would never be on my feet cheering for that man. It's an absurdity. They embarrass themselves
01:35:09.200
and their companies and their country. I just want to point out for the record, however,
01:35:14.540
I am not reading anything quite that highbrow, but I am enjoying my current book, which is
01:35:18.200
the autobiography of Barbra Streisand. Oh, wow. Okay. She reads it herself. I'm listening to the audio.
01:35:26.800
And like, it's one of those situations, guys, where, you know, I know that her politics and
01:35:30.160
mine are very, very different. She said she's going to leave the country if Trump gets reelected,
01:35:33.360
all that stuff. Right. But she's so I don't care. I admire her and I respect what she's achieved.
01:35:40.280
And she's one of those people. She's got like the EGOT, you know, the Emmy, the Grammy, the Oscar
01:35:45.200
and the Tony and just her life. Do you know that for most of her childhood, she had no idea she could
01:35:50.100
sing. She just wanted to be an actress. That's all. And it wasn't until sort of late into her teens
01:35:55.220
that she realized, oh, people seem to enjoy my singing. Maybe I could do some of that.
01:35:58.520
Anyway, it's fascinating so far. And I like the way she reads it to all sorts of interesting
01:36:03.740
stories about people like Dustin Hoffman and Warren Beatty and Marlon Brando. Anyway,
01:36:08.400
that's my recommendation, guys. A pleasure. See you over on Substack. And thanks to all of you for
01:36:14.060
listening. I'll be back on Thursday. Day off tomorrow. Thanks for listening to the Megan Kelly