The Megyn Kelly Show - Biased Moderators, Bizarre Rules - Previewing Trump vs. Biden, and Memorable Debate Moments, with The Fifth Column ｜ Ep. 824

00:00:00.420 Welcome to The Megyn Kelly Show, live on Sirius XM Channel 111 every weekday at New East.

00:00:11.140 Hey everyone, I'm Megyn Kelly. Welcome to The Megyn Kelly Show.

00:00:14.560 Well, it's happening.

00:00:16.580 Debate night in America in June.

00:00:19.500 The first and possibly only of the rematch presidential debates takes place tonight

00:00:24.300 between President Joe Biden and former President Donald Trump.

00:00:27.680 It happens on CNN, and yes, I've got thoughts.

00:00:31.940 I'm sure you do, too.

00:00:33.160 I'll be watching, and we will be bringing you instant analysis and reaction right after the debate.

00:00:38.140 It's supposed to end at 1040 at youtube.com forward slash Megyn Kelly. 0.99

00:00:43.500 So be sure to tune in, and you will get our full analysis on what you just saw and watched.

00:00:49.820 And we'll have some of our favorites to react as well, like Emily Jashinsky, Dave Rubin, Eric Bolling,

00:00:55.600 all live with us on Sirius XM Triumph Channel 111, as well as on our YouTube channel.

00:01:01.380 Okay, again, that's youtube.com slash Megyn Kelly. 0.59

00:01:03.740 The debate, again, starts at 9 p.m. Eastern, expected to end at 1040 Eastern.

00:01:08.740 That's when we'll go live.

00:01:10.240 And by the way, big day on our YouTube channel.

00:01:12.860 As of this morning, we hit the 2 million subscriber mark.

00:01:17.040 Thank you to all of you for your support.

00:01:19.120 You are what makes the show possible, and it's a privilege to bring in the news each day.

00:01:24.060 Join me tonight for what promises to be a whole lot of fun.

00:01:27.320 Maybe not for the guys inside the CNN building, but for all of us.

00:01:31.700 So let's talk about what's at stake and more.

00:01:34.420 Joining me now are pals from The Fifth Column, Michael Moynihan, Matt Welsh, and Camille Foster.

00:01:39.820 You can find their work at wethefifth.substack.com.

00:01:44.280 Good morning for having us.

00:01:48.720 Great to see you.

00:01:49.760 So, all right, as I see it, the challenges are for Joe Biden not to have a senior moment 0.99

00:01:57.280 and for Donald Trump not to be a jerk, all right, to put it nicely. 0.98

00:02:03.180 And I don't just mean, like, being tough is fine. 1.00

00:02:06.020 Being a douchebag, okay, I went not nice, is something else entirely, right? 0.98

00:02:10.840 So he needs to not be a douchebag. 0.99

00:02:12.600 And the one guy needs to not be a douchebag, and the other guy needs to not die. 0.98

00:02:16.920 Those are all kind of, you know, succinctly put, the stakes, the challenges of the evening. 0.60

00:02:24.720 How do you guys see it?

00:02:26.080 Moynihan, how about you?

00:02:28.860 The odds of both of those things happening are very, very high.

00:02:33.120 And you said die.

00:02:34.280 I'm thinking maybe stroke on stage.

00:02:36.280 A series of cascading mini strokes in which America cringes their way through it.

00:02:41.560 No, Donald Trump, see, the thing about it is...

00:02:44.440 Camille's laughing. Camille's covering his eyes and laughing.

00:02:47.840 Being a douchebag is kind of what Donald Trump does. 0.97

00:02:52.000 And it's quite effective. 0.97

00:02:53.440 Yeah, it's a superpower and it's effective sometimes.

00:02:55.240 And we were talking about this on the show last night, is it reminded me of that time

00:02:59.560 when the late night shows, including people like Bill Maher,

00:03:02.880 were doing their monologues outside in their house during COVID because they could have no audiences.

00:03:07.580 And then you realized how difficult comedy was when there was no audience, when there's no one to react to.

00:03:13.560 And Donald Trump is very good at playing at the audience.

00:03:16.640 And I've been watching old debates and it's like, you know, you have the moderators saying,

00:03:21.140 you know, no applause, no nothing.

00:03:23.260 And people are laughing.

00:03:24.720 And it just amps him up.

00:03:26.720 You see him doubling down on these jokes, particularly the second Hillary Clinton debate, 0.84

00:03:31.060 which I watched this morning, which I recommend people watch it, not just losers and nerds like me.

00:03:36.040 It is amazingly entertaining.

00:03:38.320 But the audience is an integral part of that.

00:03:41.140 So, you know, Donald Trump is obviously relying upon Joe Biden keeling over on stage.

00:03:46.540 And he just looks over at his slumped body and says, see, he's old and he might even be dead right now.

00:03:51.920 But, you know, for them, it's like in a silent audience, when he is, if Joe Biden is cognizant and Donald Trump is already kind of foreseeing that he might be insane,

00:04:03.840 you know, he's juiced up on Adderall and the rest of it, which might be true.

00:04:07.580 And there's nothing wrong with that.

00:04:09.320 And the thing is, is that if Donald Trump is doing this and it's to nothing, it might just to me, it doesn't work as well.

00:04:17.240 That's how he's so good on stage.

00:04:18.980 He was, I mean, when he walks behind Hillary Clinton in that second debate, like he's stalking her.

00:04:24.600 Absolutely brilliant.

00:04:25.520 And then he says, you'd be in jail.

00:04:27.720 It's one of the greatest moments.

00:04:28.960 We have that.

00:04:29.560 Here, let's watch it.

00:04:30.580 It's so good.

00:04:32.540 Let's play it.

00:04:33.380 Here's SOT 11.

00:04:35.740 And after getting the subpoena, you delete 33,000 emails and then you acid wash them or bleach them, as you would say.

00:04:43.460 You ought to be ashamed of yourself.

00:04:44.720 Everything he just said is absolutely false, but I'm not surprised.

00:04:48.620 You know, it is just awfully good that someone with the temperament of Donald Trump is not in charge of the law in our country.

00:04:57.860 Because you'd be in jail.

00:04:59.340 Secretary Clinton.

00:05:03.440 It's so funny.

00:05:04.720 It's terrible.

00:05:05.260 It's like the response of the Apollo.

00:05:07.680 It's like, oh, no, you didn't.

00:05:09.220 It's great.

00:05:10.180 It's so good.

00:05:10.820 It works as a political moment.

00:05:12.460 You're right.

00:05:13.020 The audience is better for Trump.

00:05:13.900 You take that away.

00:05:14.960 He's going to do it with or without the audience.

00:05:16.360 It's good for him.

00:05:17.020 So good.

00:05:17.600 He knows the audience at home is going to be listening and enjoying and all of it.

00:05:21.600 Go ahead.

00:05:23.040 I think that he's taking an interesting gamble by agreeing to all these kind of rules that take away those natural advantages.

00:05:31.180 But part of his gamble, I would imagine, is that he wants this to be unfair against him.

00:05:37.960 One of the things that binds his coalition together that bound Republicans together long before Donald Trump showed up, but it's really part of it now, is a sense of aggrievedness towards the media, that the media creates unfair rules.

00:05:53.100 And one of the things that you do that you notice when you go back and look at other debates in the past, and I was looking a lot at the first debate last time around between Biden and Trump with Chris Wallace moderating.

00:06:03.640 Sometimes it can be pretty loaded against certainly Donald Trump and and also Republicans in a way that that screams out as being kind of unfair.

00:06:13.100 There's a lot of CNN and Jake Tapper, who I have a ton of respect for, but CNN nonetheless has been spending the last, what, eight years adding the, you know, without evidence.

00:06:23.940 Anytime someone who is either Trump or Trump like talks, they sometimes boot people off air if they are seen to be, you know, January 6th election denialist or however they might term it.

00:06:36.140 And so I think one of the great challenges for Tapper in particular is to not fall into the, sir, we're fact checking you now and that's just not so kind of thing.

00:06:45.560 I predict that that's going to happen.

00:06:48.020 And if and when it does, it'll be perceived by the political class as a Trump losing situation.

00:06:55.140 But I think it'll be perceived by the audience, what audience that is there.

00:06:58.920 And it's not clear that there's going to be a ton of people tuning into this, but it's going to be perceived as yet another example of why the deck is stacked against, you know, 46 percent of the country.

00:07:10.380 There will be a ton of people tuning in for this.

00:07:12.260 This is like there's nothing going on in the news right now.

00:07:14.620 It's a relatively quiet week.

00:07:15.860 A couple of Supreme Court opinions.

00:07:17.580 There's not a lot of other news outside of it.

00:07:19.860 It's a slow summer period, but we're not peak summer.

00:07:23.500 It's not Fourth of July.

00:07:24.480 So I people are going to watch this.

00:07:26.640 It's the presidency.

00:07:27.300 It's the most consequential election in recent history.

00:07:30.900 And this is probably the only time they're going to be together.

00:07:33.300 Certainly only a time that's guaranteed because they may bail before the September one with ABC.

00:07:38.200 The Politico had an article out today saying 70 percent of American voters say they plan to tune in.

00:07:43.360 These will be ratings unlike CNN has ever seen in its history, if that is true.

00:07:48.040 I mean, they pulled in big ratings when Trump was a participant in GOP primary debates.

00:07:52.460 But to have a general election debate primarily, you know, anchored by CNN and on the other channels as well.

00:07:59.160 To CNN's credit, it allowed everybody to have access to it, to air it on their own feeds.

00:08:03.980 What's normally done when they do a debate through the Commission on Presidential Debates.

00:08:08.940 But CNN got this thing.

00:08:10.060 It was an exclusive.

00:08:10.840 They didn't have to do that.

00:08:11.900 It's good that they did.

00:08:13.520 Everyone's going to tune in.

00:08:14.460 They are going to want to see these two go head to head for the reasons we kicked it off with.

00:08:19.740 Right.

00:08:19.940 Like, can Biden do it?

00:08:21.260 That's one of the questions.

00:08:22.000 Can he do it?

00:08:22.600 Can he make it 90 minutes?

00:08:23.780 And to see Trump, like what version of him are we going to get?

00:08:27.120 Are we going to get magnanimous Trump or are we going to get feisty Trump?

00:08:30.760 Are we going to get the one who took out Jeb Bush and was, you know, lowbrow and sort of a great way with Hillary Clinton?

00:08:36.440 Or are we going to get the one who sometimes tries to be presidential and charming and smiles a lot and is trying to appeal to those women and independent voters that would really help him? 0.87

00:08:46.780 Camille, CNN does have a lot at stake tonight.

00:08:49.380 But the truth is, you know, for once, we really do have the two candidates with everything to win or lose.

00:08:55.520 The latest polls show that only 83 percent of the voters have made up their minds at this point.

00:09:02.560 Only 83 that that leaves 17 percent potentially still up for grabs.

00:09:09.320 Some have put it as as many as one in four.

00:09:12.580 So it could be up to 25 percent undecided.

00:09:15.680 And so this may be their one and only chance to decide which one of these guys they prefer.

00:09:21.600 And, you know, Camille, it's not like they don't understand what's at issue.

00:09:24.740 They have their partisan stripes.

00:09:25.940 These are obviously non hard partisans who are still in the I don't know camp.

00:09:30.060 But they're looking at these guys thinking Biden is too old and Trump has terrible temperament and they're wanting to see which problem is worse in these 90 minutes.

00:09:42.160 Yeah, it's hard to know, though, if this debate is actually a great crucible for trying to determine what's going on in this particular contest.

00:09:49.460 That you've got you've got this cavernous studio that both men are going to be standing next to each other and all these bizarre rules.

00:09:56.600 You'll you'll kind of sort of hear Trump trying to butt in.

00:10:00.020 And I expect at some moment you'll see Biden and old stammering trying to get his thoughts together in some distant voice, just kind of whispering horrible expletives.

00:10:11.460 And Biden almost reacting and responding to them in real time, would you stop?

00:10:16.260 Would you shut up? 0.98

00:10:17.220 It's going to be it could turn out to be completely nuts.

00:10:20.540 And all of that will be CNN's fault in some respect.

00:10:24.240 And rather than getting the like excellent television that Moynihan alluded to earlier, where he's kind of someone is stalking the stage while their opponent talks.

00:10:32.000 You've got this bizarre experience where someone is moving their mouths on camera and you can't actually hear what they're saying.

00:10:39.320 Yes.

00:10:39.580 And you're straining that out while ignoring what the person who actually has the hot mic is saying.

00:10:44.740 It's this seems like it could be a complete catastrophe for CNN.

00:10:50.100 But maybe it turns out to be great.

00:10:51.300 I do know that they it seems like they've got all sorts of weird terms that the various networks have to obey with respect to how they refer to the debate is like the CNN debate.

00:10:59.020 And they won't permit the various elector election debate coordinators to show up and be in the studio again, a cavernous like bubble debate a la the NBA bubble.

00:11:11.320 Like there were questions about that forever.

00:11:13.080 There will be questions about this forever in much the same way.

00:11:16.300 Again, unless someone keels over and dies, which seems to me like a decent probability for this.

00:11:22.400 Let's hope it's not the moderators.

00:11:24.100 It shouldn't be quite that stressful for them.

00:11:25.700 No, but it is bizarre.

00:11:26.760 They're not letting outside media really into the debate room.

00:11:30.100 So if there is like a moment that happens during a break.

00:11:33.740 I mean, I've been sitting up there as the moderator.

00:11:35.620 People saw this when we did the News Nation Megyn Kelly debate where Chris Christie came over and got in my grill and it made a lot of headlines because there were other reporters and audience members in there who took pictures of it and it went out.

00:11:48.580 And people asked me that they deserve to know that.

00:11:50.900 Why did he come over and get in my grill?

00:11:52.560 And I spoke to that on my show and explained it.

00:11:55.280 Trump came over and yelled at me at one of these debates.

00:11:58.420 He was mad about a question.

00:11:59.400 I asked him about Trump University and came over and started arguing with me.

00:12:03.320 That's dramatic and fun for the audience at home to see.

00:12:08.400 And I want to know what got him upset.

00:12:11.300 Like all of that is additive.

00:12:13.260 None of that will happen because CNN won't let outside reporters in there.

00:12:17.720 They have a tight lid over this whole thing.

00:12:19.640 And if somebody in the room can hear the comments that one candidate is making while his mic is closed, we're totally dependent on CNN to be forthright about reporting it.

00:12:33.280 Right.

00:12:33.600 Like you're not going to have a third party who can say, yep, we all heard it in the press room.

00:12:38.140 It's no one's going to be in there except for the CNN staffers, which, again, is wrong.

00:12:43.260 So that is my most irritating rule that they've set for this debate.

00:12:48.440 And that is the mics get cut as soon as a candidate's turn is over, because you can you can get real gold when the candidate comments off mic.

00:13:00.280 And I know they're doing it because Trump interrupted a lot during the first debate between Trump and Joe Biden last time.

00:13:06.100 That's a mistake by Joe Biden.

00:13:07.820 He was the one who requested the rule.

00:13:09.440 It's a mistake.

00:13:10.680 Trump made himself look bad.

00:13:11.780 Well, you know, what's the old saying when your opponents what it like to like trying to kill himself?

00:13:16.120 Don't get in the way or something like that.

00:13:18.920 So that was a mistake.

00:13:20.800 But it's it's a disservice to the audience at home to not be able to hear those off the cuff, witty retorts that the candidate can just slip in.

00:13:28.660 It was sometimes it takes two seconds.

00:13:30.440 It doesn't have to take a full minute where there's stealing time.

00:13:33.460 And CNN is so psyched up about its rule, which, again, was clearly a bend of the knee to Biden, that they did a whole segment on how it's going to work. 0.82

00:13:47.240 Would you look at this ridiculous thing they put together? 0.86

00:13:51.540 Watch this. 0.99

00:13:52.960 Oh, no.

00:13:53.640 If we go behind the podiums, you can see two green lights when they're on.

00:13:58.680 They signal to the candidate.

00:14:00.000 His microphone is on when the green lights are off.

00:14:02.780 They signal to the candidate.

00:14:04.060 His microphone is off.

00:14:05.460 Now, I want to give you a sense of what it will look like for viewers at home.

00:14:08.700 If a candidate whose microphone is off interrupts a candidate whose microphone is on, he's going to interrupt me as I'm speaking.

00:14:15.280 And this is what it will sound like.

00:14:17.080 My volume remains constant while Phil's interruption can be difficult to understand.

00:14:22.580 Let's try the opposite.

00:14:23.980 My microphone is now on.

00:14:25.420 Victor's microphone is off and he's going to interrupt me.

00:14:29.340 My volume remains constant while Victor's interruption can be difficult to understand.

00:14:34.140 Now, CNN's production team has shared this demonstration with the campaign earlier today, and we're sharing it with you, our viewers, so everyone fully understands how tomorrow night will work.

00:14:44.340 How everyone fully understands.

00:14:47.480 I don't understand.

00:14:49.880 So what you're saying is when you turn the microphone off, you can't hear the microphone?

00:14:54.960 Let's start that again, CNN.

00:14:56.980 I have no idea why you get 40,000 people in the demo at 8 o'clock.

00:15:01.300 You literally have a program of people saying, this is what it sounds like when there's no microphone.

00:15:05.520 You know, I know this is a video and audio podcast, but I'm mouthing it like they were doing on CNN.

00:15:11.140 Lord in heaven, I suspect in some way that CNN thinks that this can actually help them with this sense of bias.

00:15:19.780 I mean, if you look back at the Hillary Clinton debate, as I said, I watched it this morning, Trump is constantly saying, you gave her an extra 40 seconds.

00:15:27.060 Why did you do that?

00:15:27.660 You're not giving that to me.

00:15:28.560 And it's like now, OK, we have hard and fast.

00:15:31.060 Everybody has something to prove here.

00:15:33.260 As you said, Megan, I mean, CNN has to prove that they're not going to be like they were in every other network was in 2016, 2020, which was, as Matt pointed out, the fact checking thing.

00:15:45.780 Because when you fact check one person who, yes, he lies all the time, but everybody lies and it's to different degrees.

00:15:51.880 I mean, remember back in the day, people used to say, you know, you're going to cut Medicare.

00:15:55.560 And well, no, we're actually trying to slow the growth of Medicare.

00:15:58.320 How do you fact check something like that?

00:16:00.280 Is it a cut or are you just slowing the growth?

00:16:02.520 Right.

00:16:02.720 So you get bogged down in these things, in these fact check things.

00:16:05.600 And if CNN was smart about this, they would back up and just allow the people to debate and say, look, we're not thumbing the scale as we've been accused so many times in the past.

00:16:15.880 So, you know, as opposed to just going on TV and creating these ludicrous videos about what it sounds like to talk and when a microphone's not working.

00:16:23.600 But I think, you know, Trump has a million things.

00:16:26.200 Yeah. 0.99

00:16:27.060 And Trump, as you said, Megan, I mean, not being, can I say being a dick on the show? 0.99

00:16:32.520 Because I said it. 0.98

00:16:33.320 So I kind of set you up there. 0.99

00:16:36.920 Not being a dick. 0.97

00:16:37.780 Like, is that everyone knows who he is. 0.98

00:16:41.540 That part of him has been established.

00:16:43.660 Imagine if he is just diplomatic and actually, and I know this is a ludicrous idea for a lot of people, but it's actually not.

00:16:50.800 Because if you watched him on the All In podcast, in which he gave about an hour and 30, hour and 40 minute podcast, he talked, as we discussed in the fifth column, he talked in a substantive way about policy, like pretty serious responses.

00:17:03.000 And it was a friendly audience.

00:17:04.100 But I was like, oh, that's kind of a different Trump.

00:17:06.040 If you have Trump on stage, everybody knows that other side of him.

00:17:10.300 Everybody knows the combative one.

00:17:11.940 When the audience isn't there to respond to him and play back with him, just be serious and try to do it in a serious way.

00:17:18.940 And you have those undecideds that, as you said, 80 percent versus these kind of roughly 17, 18 percent people who are just on the fence about things.

00:17:27.240 Maybe they could say, like, look, maybe he did grow up.

00:17:29.640 Maybe he has learned something in this in this period of four years.

00:17:33.180 I can't do it.

00:17:34.280 That's true.

00:17:34.960 He's a fighter by nature.

00:17:36.380 Of course he can't.

00:17:36.920 He's a New Yorker.

00:17:39.140 He's the celebrity apprentice guy.

00:17:41.180 He's used to being in charge.

00:17:42.500 He doesn't like to be challenged.

00:17:43.960 Yes.

00:17:44.480 Joe Biden's going to be spewing a bunch of lies about his record and him personally.

00:17:50.140 Biden's going to personally insult him by raising the convictions, which will definitely irritate Trump.

00:17:55.440 And so it's going to be a lot.

00:17:57.620 You know, it's going to be like the boiling pot where, you know, the steam is coming up and you can hold it together.

00:18:02.360 And then there's just zero.

00:18:03.800 Oh, I didn't say he could do it.

00:18:04.980 He can't do it.

00:18:06.940 I'm saying theoretically what should be good.

00:18:09.200 I mean, but no, like the second you bring up the convictions, he's going to he's going to lose it.

00:18:12.340 He's a very, very, very itchy or a hair trigger on his temper on these things.

00:18:17.140 That's right.

00:18:17.800 There's an element of of of Biden that I think we're forgetting about, which is that what happens when you repeatedly give him two uninterrupted minutes?

00:18:26.760 Not great things happen.

00:18:28.280 We've seen a lot of clips and they're all selectively edited clips.

00:18:31.980 Now we're hearing cheap fakes or whatever the term of non art is from the White House podium these days.

00:18:37.660 But he has a difficult time keeping his track of thoughts.

00:18:41.160 That's one reason why if you want to play a drinking game game to drink yourself to death tonight, and I think we all kind of do drink every time Joe Biden makes a numbered list.

00:18:51.260 Right. Number one, we're going to fix Medicare.

00:18:53.220 Number two, Donald Trump is a crook and a rapist. 1.00

00:18:55.860 Number three, he's a racist, too. 1.00

00:18:57.120 Like he's just always going to number things, even though there's nothing being numbered. 0.90

00:19:00.740 And they're completely a list of of random ideas that he has in his head.

00:19:05.060 And he's doing that in part because he's that's just the rhetorical trick that he's done his entire life.

00:19:09.760 But it's a crutch, too. He's trying to order his thoughts in a way or make it seem that his thoughts are ordered.

00:19:16.020 They're not. He's pretty scatterbrained person in the best of times back when he had complete control over his faculties.

00:19:22.040 And he just doesn't have complete control over his faculties in the same way.

00:19:26.440 And I know I'm doing the cheap fake now just saying that you're not supposed to say any of that.

00:19:30.900 But it's just sort of self-evidently true.

00:19:33.220 And this format allows us to see that a lot more.

00:19:37.800 Yes, it's you know, you won't be able to have.

00:19:40.540 Does the uninterrupted two minutes actually undermine Joe Biden?

00:19:45.600 You know, it might might he be grateful for an interruption?

00:19:48.800 Stephen Crowder tweeted this out today as his prediction of what it's going to take to get Joe Biden ready for this 90 minutes.

00:19:56.480 Watch.

00:19:56.780 Quaaludes 10 to 15 times a day for my back pain.

00:20:00.940 Adderall to stay focused.

00:20:03.520 Xanax to take the edge off, pot to mellow me out, cocaine to wake me back up again and morphine well.

00:20:09.160 Because it's awesome.

00:20:10.520 Morning, thank you.

00:20:12.120 Yes. I mean, Jordan Belfort made a ton of cash.

00:20:14.360 So there's a lot to be said for that routine.

00:20:16.080 I'm just saying, don't do drugs, kid.

00:20:18.020 But if you're Joe Biden, maybe it's advisable tonight.

00:20:20.480 It's a matter of having the right cocktail.

00:20:22.780 That's a good cocktail.

00:20:23.720 He needs a cocktail.

00:20:24.560 Like, but is it just me or do you wonder?

00:20:26.580 I do wonder what they're going to give Joe.

00:20:28.300 But there's zero chance he's going out there stone cold sober.

00:20:31.840 There's going to be some sort of drug that helps him get his zip going.

00:20:36.040 Just I mean, I'm not saying like he's going to borrow Hunter's cocaine or whoever had it in the White House.

00:20:40.840 But don't you think there's going to be something?

00:20:43.600 Now, I'm not a cocaine person.

00:20:44.740 I don't do drugs.

00:20:45.480 As my audience knows, I've never even tried a drug.

00:20:47.460 But I think the problem with cocaine is based on what I've seen in New York City.

00:20:51.060 You got to go into the bathroom every 15 minutes and take another hit.

00:20:54.240 So that's not a good drug of choice.

00:20:55.700 But there's going to be something.

00:20:56.800 You can start by doing a lot.

00:20:59.820 I don't want to give you a lesson on this.

00:21:01.260 I can't.

00:21:01.460 You've never done a drug, Mike?

00:21:03.060 Never done a drug.

00:21:04.220 Other than alcohol.

00:21:04.980 I feel like you have a journalistic responsibility to at least experience the ecstasy of pure Colombians.

00:21:12.940 So you can talk about it.

00:21:13.760 Just so you know what Joe Biden's going through.

00:21:16.900 You clearly have never done drugs, Megan.

00:21:21.780 I'm sure they grow pot in Colombia, but that's not their major export now.

00:21:25.880 Cocaine.

00:21:26.480 OK, right.

00:21:27.100 I did watch Narcos.

00:21:28.160 But on the Adderall thing, if they.

00:21:31.140 The producer in her ear says, Megan, that's cocaine. 0.96

00:21:34.980 I mean, how do you think I'm doing this show?

00:21:38.240 I have to Adderall, by the way.

00:21:41.180 And if you know anybody that has dementia or early kind of onset dementia, Adderall is not helping.

00:21:45.940 I'm sorry to tell people who think it.

00:21:47.900 I mean, it just makes you very focused on things you don't understand.

00:21:51.880 Because if Adderall could cure dementia, there'd be a lot of people in my life that I'd love to hang out with still.

00:21:57.220 Older people that I'd be like, oh, all of a sudden you're cognizant.

00:21:59.500 But I think he has these things.

00:22:02.120 And I've often mentioned somebody in my sort of family who has this.

00:22:08.620 And there are times when you sit at the dinner table and you're like, oh, my God, he was amazing tonight.

00:22:13.060 Incredible.

00:22:13.660 Like really on it.

00:22:14.760 And then the next day will be totally different.

00:22:17.540 So there's these ups and downs.

00:22:18.640 But, of course, remember the last time we said anything, well, or we didn't, but people in the media who are desperate to find these moments, to call them cheap fakes when he needs help off the stage or is wandering off in Normandy or something.

00:22:32.480 But, you know, they went back to the State of the Union.

00:22:35.820 Everybody was like, aha, that was a slam dunk.

00:22:38.980 You guys, look at you now.

00:22:40.560 And it's like, yeah, he was reading from a prompter.

00:22:42.620 But if you can't read from a prompter, if that is the bar you've set for the president of the United States, then we are in deep trouble.

00:22:50.940 But now this is the first time you're going to have, I mean, because the press, let's be honest, it's not adversarial.

00:22:57.480 He doesn't interact with it very much.

00:22:59.600 And when he does, it's not particularly adversarial.

00:23:01.760 You're going to have the ultimate adversary standing across from you for like an hour and a half, peppering you with insults, questions, challenges to your presidency.

00:23:11.600 And that's, of course, why Donald Trump decided to do this, because the presumption is he's not going to be able to handle it.

00:23:17.460 But look, will he?

00:23:19.460 Is he going to have one of those, you know, halfway decent nights?

00:23:22.460 I doubt it.

00:23:23.560 But, you know, it's possible.

00:23:25.160 It's possible.

00:23:25.800 The State of the Union is such a different environment.

00:23:28.540 I mean, you've got you've got an audience that's 50-50.

00:23:32.080 You've got these built in pauses.

00:23:33.980 You're going to get this unbelievably enthusiastic, completely over the top applause for every single one of the lines that you drop.

00:23:40.740 It's a reading test.

00:23:41.200 And when you get the boeing, it'll be countered.

00:23:43.800 It's a reading test.

00:23:44.840 It's exactly right.

00:23:45.560 It's a reading test.

00:23:46.620 That's it.

00:23:47.600 But can you read it or not?

00:23:48.760 I mean, like sometimes my kids will come into my studio.

00:23:50.880 They love to sit down to the chair and we'll roll copy for an ad.

00:23:54.380 And it's a little reading test.

00:23:55.860 Can you read this ad for Genucel?

00:23:58.180 And they nail it.

00:23:59.180 It's wonderful.

00:23:59.700 But like, that's a totally different skill from being across from another president and being challenged on the intricacies of immigration.

00:24:07.640 Your kids are reading the ads?

00:24:10.400 Genucel will take all of the support it can get.

00:24:12.620 They're thrilled.

00:24:13.420 The kids love the product.

00:24:15.360 So Megan, I will.

00:24:16.400 I would totally send my kids to Megan Kelly broadcast boot camp. 0.99

00:24:20.120 So you tell me, like when the next session starts and you can have me and Cohen and just put them through the record.

00:24:24.920 Kind of creating that kind of creating that we actually auctioned off something in our school.

00:24:28.220 I mean, they asked for something and I said, why don't you auction off?

00:24:30.780 They said, how about auctioning off like time?

00:24:33.480 Like you'll come and you'll give a speech.

00:24:34.560 I'm like, I'm not auctioning off time with myself, but I'll auction off at our school, like the chance to be an MK show intern.

00:24:41.540 And somebody bought it and they gave it to their friend's daughter.

00:24:45.200 And she's going to be like a correspondent for a day, but we're going to work together prior to her big report.

00:24:52.940 Yeah, I actually would love to help young people get into journalism the right way and do it the right way.

00:24:57.040 So that actually is a thing of value.

00:24:59.940 Anyway, Megan, I have a 15 year old daughter who would really like to hang out at your beach house.

00:25:07.460 She's hired.

00:25:08.840 She's hired. 0.99

00:25:09.560 She can help me watch my Strudwick, who's been a fucking nightmare here. 0.98

00:25:13.140 Sorry, just this morning. 0.99

00:25:15.740 Is that your son?

00:25:16.820 There's a turtle.

00:25:17.820 My dog.

00:25:18.740 There's a turtle.

00:25:19.680 There's a turtle that laid eggs in the pool filter and the dog found the turtle.

00:25:25.540 And I mean, let me tell you, that turtle had about two seconds to live before we were all like, Strudwick, no.

00:25:31.180 And he jumped back into the pool.

00:25:32.760 Strudwick got into the pool and they're chasing each other.

00:25:34.880 The turtle's faster when he's swimming.

00:25:37.000 Anyway, we got the dog out of the pool.

00:25:38.320 What is happening?

00:25:38.440 Then he discovered duck eggs.

00:25:40.100 There's duck eggs over in the daisies.

00:25:41.500 He's like, and the duck flies away and Strudwick's like, there's a duck here?

00:25:44.780 Oh my God, so fun.

00:25:46.380 Just running after the duck is like, do I save my own life or my babies and my eggs?

00:25:51.780 It saved itself.

00:25:53.060 It went into the water.

00:25:54.380 Strudwick is like, yes, let me in.

00:25:56.600 The little eggs were exposed.

00:25:57.980 He starts running over to them.

00:25:59.020 We're like, no, no, no.

00:26:02.700 Strudwick's a nightmare.

00:26:05.400 I'm not.

00:26:05.880 It's like the Jack Hanna show.

00:26:08.000 I now don't believe your cocaine story, Megan.

00:26:12.080 I think that's a cheap fake.

00:26:13.380 She is out of her mind doing lines and watching her dog eat other animals for fun.

00:26:20.040 I may have to go there.

00:26:22.000 I think Strudwick's doing it, that's for sure.

00:26:24.200 All right.

00:26:24.420 Speaking of cocaine, Trump's interruptions.

00:26:28.940 Trump doesn't do drugs.

00:26:30.400 He's never had any drug or alcohol.

00:26:32.600 His interruptions were, let's face it, a problem in debate number one.

00:26:37.960 This is going to be the two men's third debate.

00:26:40.340 They're supposed to do three in 2020, but the second moment got canceled because Trump

00:26:43.900 got COVID and everybody had a meltdown.

00:26:46.940 This is the third time they've been across from each other this way.

00:26:49.080 The first debate was the interrupting debate.

00:26:51.760 And I'm going to show you like some highlights of his interruptions and how Biden was to watch

00:26:57.480 soft five.

00:26:58.020 Here's the deal.

00:26:59.820 The fact is that everything he's saying so far is simply a lie.

00:27:03.320 I'm not here to call out his lies. 1.00

00:27:04.820 Everybody knows he's a liar. 0.99

00:27:06.340 Sure. 0.87

00:27:06.680 You ordered last in your class, not first in your class.

00:27:09.760 I want to make sure.

00:27:11.280 Can you let him finish, sir?

00:27:12.480 He doesn't know how to do that.

00:27:13.680 The individual mandate was the most unpopular aspect of Obamacare.

00:27:17.600 I got rid of it.

00:27:18.200 I'd like you to.

00:27:18.700 And we will protect people with pre-existing relations.

00:27:19.580 Mr. President, I'm the moderator of this debate, and I would like you to let me ask my question,

00:27:24.100 and then you can answer your questions.

00:27:25.160 Go ahead.

00:27:25.820 People out there need help.

00:27:27.660 But why didn't you do it over the last 25 years?

00:27:30.260 Because you weren't president screwing things up.

00:27:34.340 You were a senator. 0.89

00:27:35.300 You're the worst president America has ever had.

00:27:38.780 You've already fired most of them because they did a good job. 0.60

00:27:41.680 Some people don't do a good job.

00:27:43.920 Wait a minute.

00:27:45.420 You get the final word. 1.00

00:27:46.340 Well, it's hard to get any word in with this clown. 0.99

00:27:48.660 Excuse me. 0.99

00:27:49.240 Hey, let me just tell you.

00:27:50.400 No, no, no.

00:27:51.000 I'm Mr. President.

00:27:51.820 No, no, no, no.

00:27:54.280 Okay.

00:27:55.040 So here was Chris Wallace.

00:27:56.480 It's a tough assignment, but that's not great.

00:27:58.620 Here is Chris Wallace speaking about that debate just yesterday on CNN.

00:28:03.700 So far.

00:28:04.040 In the immediate aftermath of that debate, I certainly, like a lot of Americans, was very disappointed with Donald Trump's performance.

00:28:11.580 I actually think Donald Trump lost the presidency in that debate by his performance.

00:28:16.440 He dropped about four or five points.

00:28:18.240 He never regained it.

00:28:19.300 And I've talked to a lot of people in the top echelons of his staff.

00:28:22.940 They say he finally understands how badly he did in the 2020 debate.

00:28:28.460 And the two words that are coming out you don't usually hear from the Trump camp are nice and respectful.

00:28:34.980 He intends to be both.

00:28:36.660 We'll see whether that happens.

00:28:38.020 As far as Joe Biden is concerned, I think the key question is, are we going to see the Joe Biden of old or the old Joe Biden?

00:28:44.120 I mean, Trump interrupted Biden 145 times.

00:28:46.940 No, no, he interrupted Biden and me.

00:28:51.020 He only interrupted Biden 79.

00:28:55.560 I was kind of irritating because Chris Wallace is so biased in that debate, but he's not wrong about the interrupting.

00:29:00.280 Go ahead, Matt.

00:29:02.000 He was.

00:29:02.960 I'm very disappointed in the performance of Chris Wallace, having watched that and looked at that.

00:29:08.160 Not just on the, you know, the whining, Mr. President, I'm the moderator here.

00:29:13.020 And I grant, I know it's a very tough assignment and few people do it well.

00:29:17.240 Megan, you've done it well, but it's all you can also like get pear shaped really quick.

00:29:21.580 I understand all of that.

00:29:23.120 However, it's the actual substance which kind of blew me away looking at it in hindsight, because a part of what Chris Wallace was doing was being really, really snide.

00:29:33.200 And hectoring towards Trump about daring to disagree with his scientists about the science on COVID.

00:29:41.620 You're right.

00:29:42.080 And he was saying, you know, sir, are you are you questioning the efficacy of masking?

00:29:46.140 Are you really saying that masking isn't going to save everybody?

00:29:50.340 And Trump's like, look, I'm I got a problem with masking.

00:29:52.840 I'm not really against it.

00:29:53.640 I got a mask right here.

00:29:55.220 But, you know, you don't have to wear it all the time.

00:29:57.380 And Trump was more right about that than Chris Wallace.

00:30:01.440 Wallace was busting his chops of like, sir, do you really believe that the vaccine is going to be available anytime soon?

00:30:07.880 Your experts say it's not going to happen until next summer.

00:30:10.220 And he's like, no, it's going to happen sooner than that. 0.93

00:30:11.760 And they spent like minutes on this, like like shaking their damn heads that Trump would dare to disagree with the director of the CDC, Redfield, at the time, who was saying crazy stuff. 0.81

00:30:22.420 He was saying at that time that masks are just as effective as the vaccine. 0.99

00:30:26.200 That's crazy. Right.

00:30:27.440 Like history will judge that to be the craziest thing that was echoed when Joe Biden, like said, basically it was true at that debate, much more than Donald Trump's interruptions.

00:30:36.800 And it's just odd because all we do by we now sort of mean the journalistic class is that we love to score the style points on all of this.

00:30:45.820 And, you know, that's part of it.

00:30:46.980 It's not wrong to pay attention to it.

00:30:49.020 It speaks to temperaments and a bunch of other things.

00:30:51.020 But occasionally there's policy.

00:30:52.220 And what Joe Biden did and Chris Wallace did in that debate was telegraph the policy and the sort of style of discourse that would be popular among Democrats in the media in 2021 and 2022, which was we are going to pretend we're going to cloak our like total fear factor type of policies about covid, where we're just going to mask two year olds late into 2022.

00:31:15.220 In the state of New York and other places, we're going to cloak that in the science.

00:31:20.240 We're going to shake our heads witheringly at Donald Trump at all opportunities.

00:31:24.420 And we're never going to revise later and say, oh, you know what?

00:31:27.060 We were kind of wrong about that.

00:31:28.480 Never.

00:31:29.120 Trump was saying we should open the schools. 0.97

00:31:31.140 The political class said, my God, what a monster. 1.00

00:31:33.420 He wants to kill kids. 1.00

00:31:34.460 No, he was right. 0.99

00:31:35.220 You were wrong.

00:31:36.080 And that is all out there for you to see in that debate.

00:31:39.260 And Chris Wallace's performance is incredibly lopsided against Trump in that, too.

00:31:43.600 So, yeah, it was disappointing for Trump, but it was disappointing for him as well.

00:31:46.740 Well, the other thing to add to is he missed like sometimes the moderator can fall so in love with his or her own voice and questions that they missed the chance to let the candidates actually debate.

00:31:59.840 I know you've got your two minutes and Joe Biden is supposed to have them to answer.

00:32:05.400 But when the other candidate is saying, let's mix it up, there is gold there.

00:32:10.420 And then our hills, let him do it.

00:32:12.880 Let Trump interrupt him.

00:32:14.780 Let Biden respond.

00:32:16.140 This is exactly what we're here for.

00:32:18.540 It's not an interview.

00:32:20.560 It's not.

00:32:21.360 It's so much more boring when it's like, oh, gee, I get to really hear what's interesting to Jake Tapper.

00:32:28.020 Get get answered by this.

00:32:29.920 I want to see what does Trump think Biden needs to answer for?

00:32:34.440 What does Biden think Trump needs to answer for?

00:32:37.080 Let the what we need is the incredibly shrinking moderator.

00:32:41.800 And I really hope these two remember that tonight. 0.97

00:32:45.640 No one gives a shit about Dana Bash or Jake Tapper with respect to them both. 0.96

00:32:51.920 Yeah. 0.99

00:32:52.080 They don't.

00:32:53.280 They're not showing up to see them.

00:32:55.120 Most Americans have no idea who they are.

00:32:57.040 They want to see the two gorillas go at it. 0.99

00:32:59.780 So let them do it.

00:33:02.060 Stuff.

00:33:02.580 F your rules.

00:33:03.700 Let them do the thing they showed up to do.

00:33:06.940 Debate.

00:33:09.680 Two frail, aging gorillas.

00:33:11.420 No, I think that's right.

00:33:15.540 And, you know, it's for us.

00:33:17.160 It's not for you.

00:33:18.080 That's what journalists forgot when they were covering Donald Trump.

00:33:20.920 And as Matt pointed out before, and I've said this for years in calling it the without evidence factor, which went away, by the way, the second Joe Joe Biden became president, which was a key that was put onto every journalist computer.

00:33:36.460 So Donald Trump would say something and then you'd hit the key without evidence because politicians say things without evidence all the time.

00:33:42.680 But it was something that Donald Trump does, I think, I would say more frequently than than many.

00:33:48.560 But that became the thing.

00:33:50.340 It became performative.

00:33:51.360 I know you discussed the other day, Megan, on the show what CNN did to a Trump spokeswoman who came on.

00:33:59.220 And that is performative nonsense.

00:34:00.700 Right.

00:34:01.120 It's showing constantly.

00:34:02.380 It's the democracy dies in darkness without evidence instinct.

00:34:06.940 And it's everyone showboating to say, you know, we're doing our job as journalists.

00:34:12.400 Your job, to your point, Megan, is to shut up and to back off.

00:34:17.160 If you are, I used to tell people, talk to young people about doing interviews.

00:34:21.040 And I said, you know, here's the thing.

00:34:22.920 Don't have a series of questions because you have your first question to get everything going.

00:34:28.060 Because when you're looking at your card, waiting for the next question, you're allowing all these off ramps, which are really, really interesting.

00:34:33.860 You're just letting them go because you're waiting for the person to finish to get to the second question.

00:34:38.480 And as you point out, the version of that in a debate is this two minute time constraint.

00:34:43.780 Let them go if those two minutes are allowing some fireworks. 0.95

00:34:47.860 Because if it's illuminating to us, the voters, that is the purpose.

00:34:52.460 I am not here to say CNN is doing a great job of fact checking because, again, Twitter is not real life.

00:34:59.560 That has been the instinct in the last, you know, eight or so years is like, oh, we're going to get killed by the media class and media critics and people on Twitter if we don't fact check everything.

00:35:10.240 The American people, by the way, stop condescending to them.

00:35:12.760 They're capable of fact checking a lot of things on their own.

00:35:15.040 And the other candidate is the fact checker on stage.

00:35:18.740 Well, it's going to be hard for them to resist that, Camille, because let's face it, they've spent the past, what, four plus years censoring Donald Trump.

00:35:27.700 Remember, like ever since he started doing the stuff about he didn't lose and all that, they got into a panic about letting him have any portion of their airwaves,

00:35:37.260 cutting away from him at pressers while he was still president of the United States, then his campaign, cutting that down, repeatedly bailing on him, MSNBC, the same thing.

00:35:47.560 Like he can't we can't allow him to speak without us constantly fact checking him.

00:35:52.580 They've got a whole what's that guy's name, Daniel.

00:35:55.380 What's his name, Dale?

00:35:56.060 I can't remember at CNN whose only job is to fact check Trump.

00:36:00.780 He barely ever touches Biden.

00:36:02.320 It's all about Trump.

00:36:02.920 So now what what position are they in when Trump gets up there and says the things that they haven't allowed him to say on their airwaves?

00:36:11.460 And like, do they see it as I'm going to let Joe Biden handle this?

00:36:16.100 Or do they see it as like, here I come to save the day and underdog comes out from the moderator's desk?

00:36:24.380 I mean, look at what has happened.

00:36:26.320 We've spent most of our conversation in this this portion of the of the show here talking about the media and how it might screw things up.

00:36:36.120 Like there are so many ways that Donald Trump could essentially win this debate by default.

00:36:41.460 Like if if CNN's rules just kind of get in the way, if Joe Biden is tripping over himself,

00:36:47.440 if the moderators forget that they're supposed to be facilitating a conversation, not being the stars of the show,

00:36:53.040 like all of those things not just could happen, but in some respects are likely to happen.

00:36:57.760 And all of those things are points in Donald Trump's favor that we can we can critically assess previous debates

00:37:04.580 and the degree to which the moderators got things wrong and Joe Biden perhaps overcorrected, not overcorrected,

00:37:11.800 but was a bit too eager to agree with what seemed to be like official covid guidance at the time

00:37:20.780 and not willing to entertain some of the things that Donald Trump happened to be right about

00:37:25.660 and that time has shown happened to turn out right.

00:37:29.140 Like they haven't done any of that critical analysis or assessment.

00:37:32.400 And it's all an opportunity for Donald Trump to look better than he might have otherwise

00:37:38.360 for all of their attempts to kind of safeguard the democracy against Donald Trump to make certain that no one will take him seriously.

00:37:46.380 They still don't appreciate how much that project has failed, like just how profoundly it's failed.

00:37:52.100 And the fact that it's not a strategy for keeping him out of the White House going forward.

00:37:56.240 You can call him a convicted felon. 0.53

00:37:58.400 You can call him a sexual as someone who's been convicted of sexual assault.

00:38:02.160 That'll be in question one.

00:38:03.180 Again, those things will not keep him from winning the presidency because many people have a different perspective

00:38:09.920 on just what those convictions actually represent.

00:38:12.500 They see it representing a kind of corruption rather than a clear condemnation of Donald Trump,

00:38:18.280 but a kind of judicial corruption, if you will.

00:38:21.700 He agreed to CNN.

00:38:23.440 Joe Biden would never have agreed.

00:38:25.340 Like Trump agreed to sit with Tapper and Dana Bash, who I mean, honestly, it's very clear.

00:38:30.280 They don't like him.

00:38:30.960 And 100 percent, these both of these moderators are voting for Joe Biden and have been very, very harsh on Trump.

00:38:39.700 OK, but he agreed to sit down with him because he knew he had to if he wanted to debate Joe Biden.

00:38:45.380 In no world was Joe Biden going to agree to a debate moderated by Fox News or yours truly.

00:38:51.220 He just he wouldn't.

00:38:52.520 He would never do that.

00:38:53.160 So he's already got the home team advantage.

00:38:55.760 Joe Biden does.

00:38:56.560 Then he gets these rules, which Trump said, I'll agree to anything because he's just trying to get him to debate.

00:39:00.840 I'll agree to, you know, the mics get cut. 1.00

00:39:02.820 I'll agree to no studio audience, both of which would have benefited Trump in some ways, as we discussed.

00:39:07.060 In other ways, maybe the mic thing wouldn't have.

00:39:08.740 So he goes in there with a deck stacked against him.

00:39:12.580 And then what you're going to get, I think, is two moderators who are going to try their level best to sound fair because they know they're under scrutiny.

00:39:20.020 But I think the bias will appear in the story selection, the topic selection in terms of the questions they bring up.

00:39:25.700 They're going to be I'm sure we're going to hear about convicted felon.

00:39:28.760 That's fair game.

00:39:29.500 You should ask him about that.

00:39:30.740 We're going to go back over January 6th, which.

00:39:33.520 All right.

00:39:34.760 We're going to go over whether we're going to get pardons.

00:39:37.400 Right. And what kind of questioning are we going to get on the Biden corruption scandal?

00:39:43.020 I even a single one, because what happened last time is Chris, as Chris Wallace says, he lost that debate.

00:39:49.060 He lost the presidency that night.

00:39:51.220 What he didn't refer back to was his own culpability in shutting down Trump's attempt to raise the corruption issues that were already coming to the surface about Joe Biden.

00:40:02.760 Remember this? Watch.

00:40:03.560 Why is it? Just out of curiosity, the mayor of Moscow's wife gave your son three and a half million dollars.

00:40:11.700 What did he do to deserve it?

00:40:13.300 What did he do with Barista to deserve one hundred eighty three thousand dollars?

00:40:17.800 None of that is true.

00:40:19.180 None of that is true.

00:40:21.340 Oh, really?

00:40:21.680 He didn't get three and a half million dollars?

00:40:22.760 Mr. President, Mr. President, please.

00:40:25.380 Totally discredit it.

00:40:27.000 Totally discredit it.

00:40:28.060 And by the way.

00:40:28.860 Well, wait.

00:40:29.180 He didn't get three and a half million dollars, Joe?

00:40:31.260 Mr. Vice.

00:40:31.900 He got three and a half million dollars. 0.99

00:40:33.540 Shut up, Chris Wallace. 0.99

00:40:34.740 Really? 0.99

00:40:35.140 Mr. President, it's an open discussion, please.

00:40:39.260 It's a fact.

00:40:40.420 It's not.

00:40:40.860 You have raised an issue.

00:40:42.320 Let the vice president answer.

00:40:44.100 Discredit it.

00:40:44.580 Did Barista pay him one hundred and eighty three thousand a month with no experience in energy?

00:40:49.940 Mr. President, my son did nothing wrong at Barista.

00:40:53.180 I think he did.

00:40:54.000 Mr. President.

00:40:54.520 The only guy that did something.

00:40:55.200 Let him answer.

00:40:56.360 You get the final word, Mr. President. 0.99

00:40:57.320 Well, it's hard to get any word in with this clown. 0.99

00:40:59.680 It's a very important question. 0.99

00:41:00.820 No, I.

00:41:01.240 He stood up.

00:41:02.320 No.

00:41:02.860 The answer to the question is no.

00:41:04.880 And he threatened Ukraine.

00:41:05.460 No.

00:41:05.920 Sir.

00:41:06.420 With a billion dollars.

00:41:07.620 Sir, that is absolutely not true.

00:41:10.400 You're going to have.

00:41:11.900 You're not true.

00:41:12.640 Gentlemen.

00:41:13.780 How annoying. 0.97

00:41:17.600 Chris Wallace should have shut up. 0.66

00:41:20.280 Give them 60. 0.97

00:41:21.580 Say you got 60 seconds.

00:41:23.260 You got one twenty.

00:41:25.220 Go back.

00:41:26.520 I would have loved to have heard Joe Biden answer those.

00:41:29.580 Like Trump was asking very short, focused questions.

00:41:33.060 I would have loved to have heard answers.

00:41:34.380 The reason we didn't is because Chris Wallace ran cover for Joe Biden.

00:41:37.220 And now he's out there like he lost the presidency that night.

00:41:40.160 Oh, yeah.

00:41:43.380 Wittingly or not, he did, in fact, end up running cover.

00:41:46.220 And it would have been interesting to see him answer those questions.

00:41:48.500 I think it's also really interesting to to watch that again now.

00:41:52.320 And Joe Biden had to know that that might come up at some point.

00:41:55.860 And the only response was it's been discredited.

00:42:00.820 That is not true.

00:42:02.080 And some of that was explicitly true.

00:42:05.220 And some of that is a matter of interpretation.

00:42:07.000 But Trump's question is actually really well put in the sense that what did he do to earn that money from Burisma?

00:42:14.900 Well, it's it's clear what he did to to earn it.

00:42:17.800 He was born.

00:42:19.060 He happened to be a Biden and his father happened to be the vice president of the United States.

00:42:23.920 Those were his qualifications for earning that money.

00:42:26.260 The Bidens have very low standards for success in life.

00:42:28.440 One has to be born.

00:42:29.820 One has to stay alive.

00:42:31.600 It's very, very simple tasks.

00:42:34.440 Let me let me give you one other.

00:42:35.540 Here is Chris Welker, who moderated the other of the two debates between the two of them of NBC News.

00:42:41.880 And they discussed the laptop from hell.

00:42:44.620 Watch.

00:42:47.420 Respond to them.

00:42:48.260 We're going to have a follow up question.

00:42:48.780 If this stuff is true about Russia, Ukraine, China, other countries, Iraq. 0.77

00:42:53.280 If this is true, then he's a corrupt politician.

00:42:56.320 So don't give me the stuff about how you're this innocent baby. 0.99

00:42:59.940 Laptop from hell.

00:43:01.300 President Trump, we're talking about race right now. 0.64

00:43:03.400 And I do want to stay on the issue of race. 0.88

00:43:05.880 President Trump, please just respond to that.

00:43:07.580 Please.

00:43:07.740 Because look, there are 50 former national intelligence folks who said that what this he's accusing me of is a Russian plant.

00:43:17.020 They have said that this is has all the care for five former heads of the CIA. 0.99

00:43:22.500 Both parties say what he's saying is a bunch of garbage. 0.97

00:43:25.780 Nobody believes it except of his and his good friend, Rudy Gianni. 0.99

00:43:30.720 You mean the laptop is now another Russia, Russia, Russia hoax?

00:43:34.740 That's exactly what this is.

00:43:36.780 Exactly what this is where he's going.

00:43:39.160 The laptop to come back.

00:43:40.760 Gentlemen, I want to stay on the issue of race.

00:43:43.020 You have to be kidding.

00:43:44.280 Here we go again with Russia. 0.96

00:43:46.900 OK, let me just tell you something.

00:43:48.580 Love the way he says Russia.

00:43:49.920 This is how it needs to go down.

00:43:51.260 If I were moderating this debate tonight, that would be my first question.

00:43:55.860 Mr. President, four years ago, you sat on this stage and you told the audience members across America that the laptop was disinformation.

00:44:04.840 You cited intelligence analysts who said as much.

00:44:08.260 You said it was exactly right that the laptop was a product of Russia, Russia, Russia.

00:44:13.780 We now know from your own administration that it was real.

00:44:19.420 They took the stand, the FBI, in your son's criminal trial and testified under oath that at the time you said that, the FBI knew that laptop was real and the information on it was valid.

00:44:33.300 Do you owe the American people an apology tonight for the misleading you did on this stage four years ago?

00:44:40.380 Boom.

00:44:41.700 Fair question.

00:44:43.060 Not only.

00:44:43.800 Yeah, go ahead, Monique. 1.00

00:44:44.640 No, I was saying I wouldn't even go that far into the future.

00:44:47.980 I mean, Joe Biden clearly knew it then.

00:44:50.440 That's that's what one has to presume.

00:44:51.980 It's his son's laptop.

00:44:52.700 Yeah, of course. 1.00

00:44:53.080 If you have a political scandal engulfing your campaign, you call your idiot son, you know, hopefully when he's not on crack and say, is that your laptop, dear lad? 1.00

00:45:04.080 And he would say, yes, dad, it is. 1.00

00:45:06.200 How do we deal with this?

00:45:07.300 Well, we go out and lie about it.

00:45:08.460 And like everything else, we blame it on Russia. 0.65

00:45:10.420 I mean, the questions about Ukraine are more kind of salient now than they were then because we have more information.

00:45:18.560 Stuff has come out since then, the sort of Tony Bobulinski stuff, et cetera.

00:45:21.900 But one one thing I would say about that is when you it's the moderate should have asked that question in 2020, because when people said, well, this is about his son, it's not about him.

00:45:33.380 Think about that for a second.

00:45:34.580 That was Joe Biden's portfolio, Ukraine, after the 2014 annexation of Crimea and the little green men in Luhansk and Donetsk.

00:45:45.820 That was his portfolio. 1.00

00:45:47.500 So who do they go after to say, like, we need somebody of influence in the in the capital, in Washington, D.C., so we'll get his idiot son. 1.00

00:45:57.400 Right. At what point does a father, a good father who says constantly how much he cares and loves his son, why can he not say to him, this is a very bad look? 0.99

00:46:09.180 You're taking one hundred and eighty thousand dollars a month from an energy company without having any experience in the energy sector.

00:46:14.800 Why do you think they're they're targeting you?

00:46:17.680 You have the power.

00:46:19.000 Obviously, he's over 18, but you should have the power as a father, as a vice president to say, son, you cannot do this.

00:46:25.560 And he did not enable that on top of the fact that there's that he enabled it and there's there's dinners and things like that.

00:46:31.980 But that is an important question to ask him.

00:46:34.420 Here's the other point with it.

00:46:35.860 It shows that what Trump is up against when it comes to moderator bias.

00:46:39.600 She got off of that question insistently and quickly because, quote, I want to talk about race, of course.

00:46:48.420 Right. NBC obsessed.

00:46:49.900 No one cares if the if the former vice president soon to be president is corrupt.

00:46:56.340 Right. That's basically what she's saying.

00:46:58.020 No one gives a shit about corruption in the Biden family. 0.99

00:47:01.080 What we care about is skin color back to my pet issue. 0.98

00:47:04.520 That's going to be a challenge for Trump tonight, because the biggest way that that bias shows up in these debates is in story selection, in topic selection.

00:47:15.700 And there's zero chance these moderators are not going to be interested in similar things, whether it comes to race, whether it comes to January 6th.

00:47:23.960 How much time will they spend on the trial?

00:47:26.240 Will we hear the name E. Jean Carroll?

00:47:29.020 Trump's alleged fraud.

00:47:30.860 Right. Those are all things that this moderator panel will control.

00:47:34.600 And we'll see how that waits out.

00:47:37.200 All right. Wait, stand by because I have to do a break.

00:47:38.940 And then there's so much more to get to.

00:47:40.460 We're going to go over some past debate moments, too, with others outside of the last few years.

00:47:44.380 It's going to be fun. Don't go away.

00:47:45.400 I'm Megan Kelly, host of The Megan Kelly Show on Sirius XM.

00:47:51.120 It's your home for open, honest and provocative conversations with the most interesting and important political, legal and cultural figures today.

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00:48:19.620 I do it all the time.

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00:48:37.400 That's SiriusXM.com slash MKShow and get three months free.

00:48:43.780 Offer details apply.

00:48:49.780 I want to give you a programming note that's pretty extraordinary for the show.

00:48:53.220 It happens tomorrow.

00:48:54.700 We will have full post-debate analysis for you.

00:48:57.380 Obviously, we're doing the live show tonight and then tomorrow as well.

00:48:59.960 But we're having someone on the show who I've never spoken to directly before.

00:49:07.540 Certainly not on my show.

00:49:09.720 And it's someone I never, ever thought I would invite on my show.

00:49:14.160 It's Steve Bannon.

00:49:16.660 Steve Bannon and I have gone round and round for the better part of a decade now.

00:49:22.780 All stemming from, speaking of presidential debates, that debate question that I asked

00:49:28.940 President Trump, August 6th, 2015, about how the Dems were going to hit him on women.

00:49:35.460 As you know, that unleashed a firestorm that went on for the better part of a year.

00:49:39.760 And no one fanned those flames more than Steve Bannon while at Breitbart.

00:49:46.340 Frontline, which is a PBS program, which is excellent, I must say.

00:49:50.120 As critical as I am of most media, this is an excellent program.

00:49:55.720 Covered this in detail in, it was either 2018 or 19.

00:50:01.660 And I participated in the program and so did Steve.

00:50:05.220 Here's a little bit of how that looked.

00:50:08.620 We run 20 stories on Megyn Kelly.

00:50:12.600 I get Tony Lee and Matt Boyle, my two hammers.

00:50:16.300 They go right after Megyn Kelly. 1.00

00:50:18.260 We're going to Linsky her, right? 0.99

00:50:19.440 We're going to cut her out from the, call her out from the herd and just hit her nonstop. 1.00

00:50:24.520 That's when all war broke out.

00:50:26.100 That's when, that's when Breitbart, that's when you had to choose sides.

00:50:30.320 In taking on Fox, Bannon and Trump were inciting the kind of conflict Breitbart readers thrived on.

00:50:37.920 She is a low life. 0.99

00:50:38.980 We need to chop her off at the knees. 1.00

00:50:41.860 We look at the comments section. 0.99

00:50:43.860 These things were getting 10,000 and 15,000, 20,000 comments.

00:50:46.820 Megan's a type for a quickie in the men's room. 1.00

00:50:48.800 The whole Trump, all the pepes, all these Trump guys were pounding in here. 0.63

00:50:52.640 Kelly needs to be put in her place fast and hard. 1.00

00:50:55.820 It was scary at times.

00:50:58.200 And Breitbart kept lighting the fire over and over.

00:51:01.140 And, you know, I had and have three young kids, really young kids.

00:51:06.260 And the security threats were escalating.

00:51:09.560 And we were doing everything in our power to convey to them that they needed to stop.

00:51:15.020 It was one debate question, just one debate question.

00:51:18.600 And he handled it fine.

00:51:20.740 You know, he did.

00:51:21.720 So get off of it.

00:51:23.140 And they couldn't have cared less.

00:51:25.080 Ailes calls me up and says, you got to knock off these stories.

00:51:28.160 She's crying.

00:51:28.820 She's all upset.

00:51:29.340 She's getting death threats.

00:51:30.680 That sounds like a personal problem.

00:51:32.620 So we're not backing off.

00:51:33.600 We're going to put more stories up tomorrow.

00:51:37.800 I am really looking forward to this discussion about everything.

00:51:45.220 He's about to go to jail.

00:51:46.560 Well, he's about to go to jail now on this absurd contempt of Congress finding so many

00:51:52.940 of the Merrick Garland is not going to go to jail.

00:51:55.140 You only go to jail for contempt of Congress if you're a Republican, apparently named Steve

00:51:59.400 Bannon in particular.

00:52:00.680 And we've come full circle with one another because.

00:52:05.220 I think we're fighting many, if not most of the same fights these days, and I'm just

00:52:12.860 been really looking forward to actually speaking to him face to face.

00:52:16.560 So anyway, tune in.

00:52:17.980 Wanted to mention today that it's happening tomorrow and we'll get his full reaction on

00:52:21.920 the eve of going to prison and on the day after this presidential debate.

00:52:26.780 Joining me again, my pals from the fifth column.

00:52:30.060 Should be pretty extraordinary.

00:52:31.140 No, guys?

00:52:33.020 Wow.

00:52:33.620 I mean, that's incredible.

00:52:34.940 I can't remember when it was.

00:52:36.980 It was 2020, I suppose, that I sat down with Bannon and it was the first time ever that

00:52:44.580 I had to stop an interview because it went on too long.

00:52:47.840 It went on.

00:52:48.160 We were on four hours or something.

00:52:49.860 The man can talk.

00:52:52.200 And he is a brilliant guy who is wrong about so many things.

00:52:55.500 And I say this from a sort of libertarian perspective.

00:52:57.920 And, you know, if you have the moment to ask him about his unmitigated praise for AOC

00:53:03.540 with me, he was, you know, loved AOC because she understood how to play class politics and

00:53:08.260 she was good at it.

00:53:08.960 The right was wrong for calling her a bartender and all these things.

00:53:12.020 And he was very passionate about it.

00:53:13.680 And I was surprised by it.

00:53:15.600 But he's a very good conversationalist.

00:53:18.560 He's very, very smart.

00:53:19.940 And he is what people think Roger Stone is.

00:53:23.740 Roger Stone is more of a kind of his own media creation.

00:53:26.740 Steve Bannon, if he goes after you, as you showed in that clip, and that frontline documentary

00:53:31.540 is actually very good.

00:53:32.240 And as you point out, Megan, they are, despite being on PBS, consistently good.

00:53:38.200 He's very effective.

00:53:39.780 And I got a lot of pushback from the people that I worked for at the time about platforming.

00:53:45.320 I mean, I'm sure you've heard that verb.

00:53:46.960 He goes, you hate that word.

00:53:48.620 Interviewing.

00:53:49.660 I hate it more than anything.

00:53:51.060 It's like, you know, it's interviewing.

00:53:52.340 And well, you can't platform bad people.

00:53:54.120 How do you know he's a bad person?

00:53:55.140 Well, because other people have interviewed him.

00:53:56.620 And I'm about to revisit that because at the same time, four years prior, he was Trump's

00:54:01.580 campaign manager.

00:54:02.520 And it was a really interesting thing.

00:54:04.560 And he was, you know, he loves the fight and was like, you know, I have the Hunter Biden

00:54:09.600 laptop stuff is right around that time.

00:54:11.880 And he's like, you won't publish it. 0.97

00:54:13.440 You don't have the balls to publish it. 0.99

00:54:15.160 But and it wasn't about me. 0.99

00:54:17.380 It was the institution I worked for.

00:54:18.680 Probably right.

00:54:19.980 But but yeah, I mean, I look forward to it, too, because because he's not someone who shrinks

00:54:23.760 from a fight.

00:54:25.140 Right.

00:54:25.260 One thing, Megan, that I think that that that that exchange highlights.

00:54:29.300 And I don't know if it'll be totally worth exploring with him.

00:54:32.980 But it's interesting for the rest of us Americans to to try to remember, because most people have

00:54:38.560 already forgotten that especially people who are not on the right.

00:54:41.360 They're like, you know, Trump, Murdoch, Fox.

00:54:44.300 It's all the same.

00:54:45.500 Like, no, dude.

00:54:46.320 From 2015 to 2016, arguably the most interesting media story was Trump and the Bannonites taking

00:54:53.520 on Roger Ailes and Trump and Roger Ailes had a preexisting relationship over the years.

00:54:59.100 And Roger thought that he could.

00:55:01.480 And Megan, you will correct me.

00:55:02.540 My mischaracterizations, but that he could sort of contain it, or at least Rupert Murdoch

00:55:07.560 thought through Roger, he could sort of contain the Trump problem.

00:55:10.820 It was really advantageous and ballsy for Trump, regardless of what you think about the individual

00:55:17.300 tactics.

00:55:17.760 And I'm not a fan about the way they treated you or other people.

00:55:21.460 But for Trump to say, no, I'm going against the Republican media establishment as well.

00:55:26.940 I am such an outsider that I'm going to call Fox out.

00:55:29.980 And it wasn't just you.

00:55:31.000 You're the fulcrum at the beginning of it.

00:55:34.000 But they went against Ailes.

00:55:35.160 They went against Fox and they won.

00:55:37.320 And Fox ended up kind of being on their side because Fox has a conservative audience that

00:55:42.660 liked Donald Trump.

00:55:43.820 And so it was the first of many instances where Trump took on existing power centers on

00:55:51.000 the right and more or less won that argument.

00:55:53.540 And it was even at the 2016 Republican National Convention.

00:55:56.860 That's when Ailes finally was defenestrated.

00:55:59.620 It was like on the same night that Donald Trump gave his speech, Roger Ailes was impelled

00:56:04.660 to resign.

00:56:05.860 It's a remarkable story and not very well understood by journalists or people who have sort of a

00:56:11.360 simplistic idea about the right.

00:56:13.320 Matt, I will never forget being at the Republican convention on that very night.

00:56:18.080 And I knew very well behind the scenes what was happening with Roger Ailes and the accusations

00:56:22.540 against him, because now, as the world knows, I was participating with the lawyer's investigation

00:56:28.600 and seeing Howie Kurtz come up on Fox News, my network that I was about to headline the coverage

00:56:34.260 for that night and all of primetime as Trump accepted the nomination with a report about Roger being

00:56:41.500 pushed out and the Me Too allegations against him.

00:56:45.140 And it was all about me that it had broken without my consent.

00:56:48.440 I had not participated in this leaking at all, nor did I expect it to be happening at all.

00:56:53.420 Never mind that night talking about my allegations and suggesting, you know, from Ailes that they

00:56:59.940 were untrue.

00:57:01.560 It was the most jaw dropping moment.

00:57:04.300 I was in the midst of like this crazy convention where the Republicans were already so mad at

00:57:09.400 me over the Trump debate question and then the ensuing onslaught.

00:57:14.360 And then this breaks that I had, you know, partnered with the investigation.

00:57:19.080 I hadn't really backed Ailes and my network has now turned on me openly because Roger was

00:57:24.380 still calling the shots internally, attacking me on the air while I'm about to go out and

00:57:28.700 headline the coverage and then went on the air and I, every single colleague I had turned

00:57:33.500 their back on me.

00:57:34.440 I mean, it was the most frosty, icy professional experience of my life.

00:57:39.980 My close friends later apologized once they realized that there actually was a story behind

00:57:45.960 Ailes, but it was one of the hardest days and professional experiences of my life.

00:57:53.280 So I think back on that and it is a little like trigger, right?

00:57:56.560 All of it.

00:57:57.140 But now with some distance between those events and today, I see at least with Bannon's piece,

00:58:04.560 realize what was going down and how effective he was at fighting.

00:58:10.840 And, you know, if you can, not everyone is great at this and I don't know if I'm great

00:58:14.320 at it either, but if you can remove yourself from the story, right?

00:58:18.340 Like your personal feelings from the story, then you can see objectively this person's skills,

00:58:23.300 you know, and gifts.

00:58:24.920 You can say, I think that's an appropriate word and ask yourself, how can they be deployed

00:58:30.320 in a way that will help the country? 0.98

00:58:31.620 Like, forget Megyn Kelly, who gives a shit whether I had bad coverage and had, yes, there 0.98

00:58:35.860 were some threats that were real, which we managed, right? 0.99

00:58:40.140 But I just think so much time has passed that all of that is irrelevant, at least to me.

00:58:45.220 And I can't wait to have that like a heart to heart about how it went down.

00:58:49.260 I've heard Bannon, I've listened to his show a few times, and I know his theories about why

00:58:53.560 I asked the question I asked and who may have been pulling those strings.

00:58:56.920 And I've got very strong opinions on where he's wrong and I'm happy to tell him.

00:59:02.800 And so that's going to be part of the discussion, right?

00:59:04.760 For once we're going to come clean and I I'll tell him the answers to all of his questions

00:59:09.820 about that moment and that whole saga.

00:59:11.760 And hopefully he'll tell me the answers to mine.

00:59:14.880 So anyway, for me, it's like a big thing.

00:59:16.640 And I love that it's happening the day after the debate, right?

00:59:19.820 Cause like, I'm really going to want to hear from Steve Bannon about what he thinks happened

00:59:24.540 tonight.

00:59:25.160 I really do.

00:59:25.800 I'm not just saying that I don't, I'm not going to get ratings from people watching.

00:59:29.640 I don't care.

00:59:30.180 Like the debate on my YouTube, what I I'm saying genuinely, I think it could be the most important

00:59:36.640 debate we've ever had.

00:59:37.500 I genuinely believe that.

00:59:39.040 I, I, I just think this contest is neck and neck.

00:59:44.520 It truly could go either way.

00:59:46.940 You know, Trump's winning in the swing States, but Hillary Clinton was up 5.6% at this point

00:59:51.540 in the 2016 election and she lost the polls tell us a little, but they don't tell us much

00:59:56.600 to be perfectly honest.

00:59:58.040 This thing could go either way.

01:00:00.620 And tonight is probably going to be the only time these guys face off against one another.

01:00:05.160 And the last chance I think to really stop president Kamala Harris.

01:00:08.540 I mean, that's, that's truly how I see it.

01:00:11.540 I think, and honestly, I heard another thing that I want to ask you guys about, and it was

01:00:16.240 on the question of the Trump veep stakes who he's going to pick.

01:00:19.300 And it was Don jr.

01:00:21.420 Who got me thinking about this.

01:00:22.720 I, I marked it.

01:00:24.540 It was on whether Trump would ever pick Nikki Haley.

01:00:27.340 And he said, Nikki Haley, who served as the puppet of Democrat billionaires and warmongers 0.79

01:00:31.920 would be a wonderful choice.

01:00:33.600 If my dad wants to get impeached within about seven seconds of being sworn in, she's their 0.84

01:00:39.320 last hope.

01:00:40.760 Now, what's so fascinating about that to me, you guys is that's what he's thinking about.

01:00:44.820 What vice presidential candidate for Trump is going to lead to Trump's impeachment?

01:00:52.200 And it's a good question, isn't it?

01:00:54.520 Because if you pick the one that the establishment loves, that the media is OK with, that the lefties

01:01:01.620 would tolerate.

01:01:02.460 And he's right.

01:01:03.240 Nikki Haley is that.

01:01:05.020 Does it increase your father's chances if he gets in of getting impeached a third time?

01:01:10.900 They're obsessed with the Trump impeachments.

01:01:13.000 And if that's what the Trump campaign is thinking, I feel like J.D.

01:01:17.820 Vance's stock just went way up.

01:01:19.900 Right.

01:01:20.500 It went way.

01:01:21.200 I don't know.

01:01:21.380 What do you make of it?

01:01:22.240 One hundred percent.

01:01:24.000 Yeah, I think it's one hundred percent true.

01:01:25.220 I don't think there's anything that's going to diminish the desire of Democrats if he wins

01:01:31.020 another term to impeach him.

01:01:33.400 I think that that's just.

01:01:34.980 But also, I think it's funny that I just said about Steve Bannon talking about how much he

01:01:38.280 loves AOC, if you take that that Don Jr.

01:01:42.160 quote and you gave it to somebody, I don't know, 10, 15 years ago and you said, who is

01:01:47.220 the person talking about corporate billionaires and warmongers?

01:01:51.140 You would assume it was Noam Chomsky.

01:01:52.500 You would assume it was somebody on the left.

01:01:54.540 I mean, this is why people like Bannon and why people like Don Jr.

01:01:59.080 kind of, you know, respect people on the populist left because it's become it's become

01:02:03.120 such an overlap.

01:02:03.920 But somebody like J.D. Vance, who I really strongly disagree with on a lot of issues,

01:02:07.840 the one thing you can't take away from him, if you see him, I've seen him dealing with

01:02:12.380 there was one recent interview he gave to CNN in which they were thought they were going

01:02:18.320 to dunk on him. 0.84

01:02:19.280 Because what happens with journalists when it comes to MAGA types is that you always

01:02:24.240 assume because you are right and they are wrong.

01:02:27.600 This is from the perspective of the journalist.

01:02:29.360 That it'll be easy.

01:02:30.340 Right.

01:02:30.580 Yes.

01:02:30.860 You know, they just lie and they make things up.

01:02:33.040 J.D. Vance is no dummy.

01:02:34.180 I mean, he's very, very skilled at this.

01:02:36.080 And it was the first person I saw in kind of MAGA universe so skillfully and artfully.

01:02:42.040 You can win by, you know, as Steve Bannon says in that clip, having a hammer like Matt

01:02:46.780 Boyle.

01:02:47.160 Hammer is usually the tool that they use.

01:02:49.500 That would be Vance's great advantage.

01:02:53.360 I mean, Ron Howard directed a movie based on his book.

01:02:56.300 Right.

01:02:56.540 I mean, he's changed since then, but he has the ability to live in a lot of different

01:03:01.400 worlds.

01:03:02.160 Yeah.

01:03:02.280 And that's a really, really valuable asset for a vice president.

01:03:06.980 J.D. Vance.

01:03:08.980 Hopefully he's going to be on the show very soon.

01:03:10.920 But I've said to the audience from the day we launched, it was literally one of, if not

01:03:15.800 the most favorite interview I've ever done.

01:03:18.720 It was while I was NBC.

01:03:19.880 It was one of one of the few very good things that came out of that year.

01:03:22.360 That year plus was there.

01:03:24.740 And I encourage you to go back and look at the YouTube of it.

01:03:27.740 It's truly worth your 11 minutes or however long that the piece was.

01:03:30.860 And I don't say this in a sycophantic way.

01:03:33.880 I don't have a girl crush on J.D. Vance.

01:03:35.620 I love only one man.

01:03:36.440 And that's my husband.

01:03:37.400 But J.D. Vance is a beautiful person.

01:03:40.420 That's my biggest takeaway was this is a beautiful man.

01:03:43.340 He has been through a lot and has overcome and has managed to like stay within his own

01:03:51.060 soul, solid, spiritual, connected to his family, very aware of his own failings and

01:03:59.180 the dangers to him, given his upbringing, loves his wife, his family, all of his family,

01:04:05.380 his nuclear family and the children he has, of course, with Usha.

01:04:07.940 And I'm rooting for that guy to succeed.

01:04:11.080 I don't really care if it's as vice president or a senator or just as a human.

01:04:16.380 You just the more you learn about him, I think the more you like him.

01:04:20.260 Now, I don't know.

01:04:22.020 He's certainly more qualified to be vice president than Kamala Harris.

01:04:25.420 Right.

01:04:26.440 And I do think if you think if you're worried about, you know, the impeachment thing, Doug

01:04:34.840 Burgum, that's who Rupert Murdoch is supposedly pushing now.

01:04:38.160 That's not a safe choice.

01:04:39.320 Because everybody would prefer Doug Burgum to Trump haters, to Trump, Marco Rubio.

01:04:46.380 Same.

01:04:47.300 I think the lefties would much rather have Rubio than Trump.

01:04:51.480 And the only other person being mentioned currently, though, we did go back and check

01:04:55.740 the news reports.

01:04:56.860 All the people who are being mentioned as Trump's possible VP back in 16.

01:05:02.140 No one.

01:05:03.140 Mike Pence wasn't a name on the list.

01:05:04.660 So take all of this with a huge grain of salt.

01:05:07.300 Right.

01:05:07.440 It could be a surprise.

01:05:08.880 But anyway, Tim Scott's the only other one.

01:05:10.920 And I think, yeah, same.

01:05:12.100 He doesn't he won't reassure Trump that Trump faces no impeachment threat with him as the

01:05:18.800 number two.

01:05:19.480 Like you need a MAGA disciple in that position if you want to stave off those.

01:05:23.880 And he's absolutely right.

01:05:25.280 There will be a third impeachment if he gets it.

01:05:26.720 Anyway, all of this is fascinating to me.

01:05:28.260 But we're getting the carpet for the horse because he didn't win yet.

01:05:32.080 He still has a debate to go through tonight and a contest.

01:05:35.660 All right.

01:05:35.800 Let me let me shift now.

01:05:37.520 I want to go back through his other debate moments because it's always so fun.

01:05:40.680 That's my favorite part of debate day is to see who's done it great, who's done it poorly

01:05:45.260 and where the lessons are.

01:05:47.040 And I really think like for me, the greatest debate moment you could you could take your

01:05:51.360 pick.

01:05:51.540 But the greatest debate moment ever, speaking of CNN, was when Newt Gingrich got up in the

01:05:57.840 grill of John King, who opened the debate with a question about Gingrich's marriage and

01:06:04.580 whether they had an open marriage or he proposed it with his first wife.

01:06:08.980 Let's watch.

01:06:10.840 Would you like to take some time to respond to that?

01:06:13.240 No, but I will.

01:06:14.640 I think the destructive, vicious, negative nature of much of the news media makes it harder

01:06:29.880 to govern this country, harder to attract decent people to run for public office.

01:06:34.000 And I am appalled that you would begin a presidential debate on a topic like that.

01:06:48.440 Standing ovation.

01:06:49.440 No one's done it better.

01:06:50.320 Camille, am I wrong?

01:06:52.360 No, I mean, that was a sophisticated response.

01:06:55.040 It's also a legitimate question.

01:06:56.640 I mean, people, voters do have concerns about these things and interests, whether or not

01:07:00.700 it's the first question one ought to ask.

01:07:02.660 It's certainly not an illegitimate question to raise, but that is precisely the way to

01:07:06.680 respond to it.

01:07:07.900 And interestingly, I think there's some crossover with what we were just talking about with

01:07:12.640 respect to J.D. Vance.

01:07:14.480 Newt Gingrich similarly has a kind of clear sophistication and ability to deal with media elites

01:07:20.640 who disagree with him, who have this presumption about their superiority.

01:07:24.200 And it's not like having Marjorie Taylor Greene responding to someone who only has at her

01:07:32.120 disposal kind of bravado and perhaps a profanity-laced rebuttal, just quietly dismissing and confidently

01:07:41.620 dismissing someone's question, insisting that it is, in fact, out of line, allowing it to

01:07:47.020 sort of settle, and then having a really well-rehearsed and practiced response, which he clearly did

01:07:52.240 in that moment, is what you want to see out of a candidate.

01:07:54.860 It's what J.D. Vance could give you if he ended up getting tapped and he and Kamala

01:08:00.060 Harris are opposite one another on some debate stage later.

01:08:02.980 It's probably not great odds for the Biden administration.

01:08:06.740 And to do it without anger.

01:08:08.920 Right?

01:08:09.500 He's like a tinge of irritation.

01:08:10.960 That's right.

01:08:11.560 Not opening.

01:08:12.140 Yeah.

01:08:12.680 Yeah.

01:08:12.820 The important word in that response, the most important word, is no.

01:08:19.180 Do you want to respond to that?

01:08:20.600 No. 1.00

01:08:21.280 But I'm going to, because you're an asshole and you're making me do this. 1.00

01:08:24.560 So good. 1.00

01:08:25.320 And going after the media and saying, you guys are clowns. 0.99

01:08:28.740 And you debase the political debate by doing stuff like this. 0.97

01:08:32.060 And by the way, Newt Gingrich has a lot of reason to do that.

01:08:36.320 Yes.

01:08:37.460 Absolutely not a man without flaws.

01:08:38.520 But, I mean, remember, it was Connie Chung who was talking to Newt Gingrich's mother

01:08:44.540 and said, you know, what did he call Hillary Clinton?

01:08:47.700 And then she said, just whisper it to me, just between me and you. 1.00

01:08:51.260 And said he called her a bitch. 1.00

01:08:52.720 And it was on camera. 0.99

01:08:54.560 And it's like, good Lord, the exploitation here is outrageous.

01:08:59.740 So there's a lot of things that would make Newt Gingrich very angry.

01:09:03.360 His was a very pure anger.

01:09:04.600 I don't think it was just a manipulation.

01:09:06.620 Like, let's turn it on the media.

01:09:08.120 That always works.

01:09:09.160 And by the way, just for your listeners, that there is an amazing podcast about Newt Gingrich's rise

01:09:16.200 that was made by none other than MSNBC's Steve Kornacki, which was so fair that they added a separate episode

01:09:23.920 because Newt said no.

01:09:25.380 And then he listened to it and he said, good Lord, this is right down the middle.

01:09:28.800 Absolutely fair journalism.

01:09:29.820 And he came on.

01:09:31.120 And Steve Kornacki is a brilliant down the middle guy.

01:09:34.100 And it's a great podcast about in the media factor and how the media interacted with Newt

01:09:38.600 as part of it.

01:09:39.220 So it's worth listening to.

01:09:40.180 Wow.

01:09:40.540 All right.

01:09:41.000 Well, here's fairness. 0.99

01:09:42.580 Like that coin, that Connie Chung move, you, you, I could see you pulling some shit like that. 0.99

01:09:46.860 Oh, yeah, I would absolutely do that. 0.99

01:09:48.240 Yeah, I would absolutely do that.

01:09:50.360 I would do it with Joe Biden because he's a little older and he might fall for it.

01:09:56.380 Yeah.

01:09:56.760 Come on.

01:09:57.100 Love the whisper.

01:09:57.640 So as great as that moment was, I can see that probably the most effective line, effective,

01:10:05.920 like the thing that will change the trajectory of the race line ever belonged to Ronald Reagan,

01:10:12.740 who asked the smartest question that we've ever heard at a debate and the most relevant

01:10:18.160 question, so good was it, that it became the question that would be asked in every debate thereafter

01:10:24.820 and in every campaign.

01:10:27.740 And here it is from the 1980 debate against Jimmy Carter, sophomore team.

01:10:33.160 Next Tuesday, all of you will go to the polls, will stand there in the polling place and make

01:10:37.940 a decision.

01:10:38.820 I think when you make that decision, it might be well if you would ask yourself, are you

01:10:45.820 better off than you were four years ago?

01:10:50.300 Is it easier for you to go and buy things in the stores than it was four years ago?

01:10:55.580 Is there more or less unemployment in the country than there was four years ago?

01:11:01.220 Is America as respected throughout the world as it was?

01:11:05.500 Do you feel that our security is as safe, that we're as strong as we were four years ago?

01:11:12.800 And if you answer all of those questions, yes, why then I think your choice is very obvious

01:11:17.320 as to who you'll vote for.

01:11:19.940 If you don't agree, if you don't think that this course that we've been on for the last

01:11:25.820 four years is what you would like to see us follow for the next four, then I could suggest

01:11:31.900 another choice that you have.

01:11:33.560 So good.

01:11:37.000 Humble.

01:11:37.680 I'm glad that you played the whole clip, Megan, which I haven't seen in a long time because

01:11:42.240 we boiled it down to, are you better off than you were four years ago?

01:11:45.460 And that's how it is rehearsed and talked about and invoked these days.

01:11:50.220 But that just wasn't it.

01:11:51.680 He was talking about our standing in the world.

01:11:53.820 This is against the backdrop of the hostages being taken in Iran by the revolutionary kids 0.94

01:12:00.240 that became the mullahs that did all kinds of terrible things to this day. 1.00

01:12:03.740 It was a generalized feeling that America was slipping in addition to, yes, the unemployment

01:12:09.800 that Carter at his first debate in 1976 against Gerald Ford had said that he was going to whip

01:12:14.840 inflation and unemployment.

01:12:16.460 And that just didn't really work out.

01:12:18.320 So he was skilled on a lot of levels.

01:12:20.000 And it's also, as you were saying, and sorry to interrupt you, Megan, it was sort of humble.

01:12:23.380 It was in that classic kind of understated Reagan way of like, hey, sure, you have your

01:12:28.420 choice.

01:12:28.740 If you really think that's like that, you can vote for this guy over here.

01:12:31.140 But I might suggest something different.

01:12:32.980 Pretty classic, Reagan.

01:12:34.360 So good.

01:12:35.240 I mean, Reagan, when you said Reagan debate moment, the incredible thing about Reagan,

01:12:39.920 and I said, you know, which of the five that I can think of you're going to choose?

01:12:43.320 One of them is the Walter Mondale, a very famous line, I'm not going to let my opponent's

01:12:47.920 youth and inexperience when the question was about his age.

01:12:51.180 Because by the way, people on the Democratic side used to talk about the candidate's age quite

01:12:55.980 frequently with Reagan, who is much younger than Joe Biden is now.

01:13:00.340 And they used to talk about him having dementia, too.

01:13:03.120 Or Reagan saying, I paid for this microphone, a very famous moment.

01:13:07.360 And, you know, it's also you realize when you think about these things, and, you know,

01:13:11.740 not so much in isolation, that these debates can be very consequential and can give us incredible

01:13:17.760 moments.

01:13:18.180 And hopefully something like that will happen tonight.

01:13:19.580 I mean, Matt mentioned the Ford-Carter debates, and people often think that Gerald Ford lost a

01:13:25.780 lot of ground when he said there is no Soviet control of Eastern Europe to a

01:13:30.000 completely baffled panel of moderators.

01:13:32.940 They're like, what do you mean?

01:13:33.760 There are occupied countries.

01:13:34.940 But those moments when you're unprepared, like that really hurt Gerald Ford in some significant

01:13:39.780 ways.

01:13:40.360 And Reagan, I mean, there's so many of these great moments.

01:13:42.780 Those were obviously very, very tightly scripted.

01:13:45.340 The good thing about Donald Trump, and I will say this just from the perspective of somebody

01:13:49.680 watching his debate performances, is that, you know, you'd be in jail was not scripted.

01:13:54.280 He is very quick off the block.

01:13:56.800 The idea that they're both old and they're both infirm and they're both slipping will

01:14:01.840 will, you know, we'll see it tonight.

01:14:03.780 But the idea that that's happening to Donald Trump, you see in that all in interview, that

01:14:07.660 hour and a half interview, you didn't see any of that.

01:14:09.680 He was sharp as a tack, even if you disagree with him.

01:14:12.200 This is not a political analysis, just a sort of analysis of is the guy capable of being

01:14:16.260 a good, good candidate.

01:14:17.440 And you'll see tonight that that, you know, he's not a guy that goes out with scripted lines.

01:14:21.840 That's probably a bad thing sometimes, but it can also land some pretty, pretty good

01:14:26.480 punches and say, oh, this guy's really on his game.

01:14:28.860 And when you're facing up against Joe Biden, that's a huge advantage.

01:14:32.460 That comment you just made of Ford getting caught reminded me of Gary Johnson, who didn't

01:14:37.620 know what Aleppo was.

01:14:38.660 Remember, he was on MSNBC.

01:14:39.540 What is Aleppo?

01:14:40.640 Yes.

01:14:41.220 What is Aleppo?

01:14:42.380 He thought it was a former girlfriend.

01:14:44.840 He's like, Aleppo, do I, did I know her?

01:14:47.800 Are you familiar at all with Syria?

01:14:49.160 Because it's kind of in the news a lot.

01:14:50.420 At the time, it was a lot.

01:14:52.180 And that was a career ender.

01:14:53.420 I mean, that was a campaign killer.

01:14:54.480 That's the end of that.

01:14:55.200 Right.

01:14:55.400 It's not like people understood fully what was happening in Syria or every day.

01:14:58.600 They're like, well, give me the latest on Syria.

01:15:00.180 But when someone comes across as uninformed about major issues, they can embarrass themselves.

01:15:06.320 And you're definitely looking to avoid that.

01:15:08.460 Not for nothing, but Trump.

01:15:09.740 We know Trump's got at least two ads queued up that he's going to be releasing right during

01:15:15.020 or after the debate.

01:15:16.960 And take a listen to the messaging in this one, because it sounds kind of familiar.

01:15:20.160 SOT 21.

01:15:21.840 No matter what Joe Biden promised in the debate, ask yourself, are you financially better off

01:15:28.760 since he became president?

01:15:30.500 Are you and your family safer since he became president?

01:15:34.420 Is our country more secure since he became president?

01:15:38.340 After four years of failure under Joe Biden, it's time to make America prosperous and strong

01:15:44.080 again.

01:15:44.720 Donald Trump for president again.

01:15:48.760 I'm Donald Trump, and I approve this message.

01:15:51.160 Look at that closing shot of Trump.

01:15:55.580 That image.

01:15:56.200 That's great.

01:15:57.080 That tie.

01:15:57.800 You could almost imagine he's got a six pack under there.

01:16:00.860 Yeah.

01:16:01.200 For the listening audience, it has shots of the Afghanistan situation and the plane when

01:16:06.160 the people were trying to get on that board, that plane, and they wind up hanging off of

01:16:09.200 it.

01:16:09.700 And they and all the immigrants coming into the country. 1.00

01:16:11.860 And then it ends with a close up shot of Trump with his helicopter in the back and his big

01:16:15.820 red tie blowing like almost horizontally off of his neck off to the side.

01:16:20.200 I'm not sure what that's supposed to symbolize.

01:16:22.280 With the Photoshop.

01:16:23.680 Yeah.

01:16:23.900 Yeah.

01:16:24.700 Well, I like it.

01:16:25.740 And I have to say, because it's tapping right into that Reagan message.

01:16:27.680 And it's it's such a rare situation where you got a guy who was president four years

01:16:31.020 ago against a person who's been president for the last four.

01:16:34.820 And it's also like, let's not sleep on the 1978 typewriter typeface to like you're really

01:16:40.600 supposed to remember kind of absence of malice in 1978 and Reagan and and everything else.

01:16:48.020 It's an interesting nostalgia that people are kind of talking about in that, like Trump

01:16:52.860 is associated with everything that happened until February of 2020.

01:16:57.000 And somehow and like, really, when you go back and look at the 2020 debates and the

01:17:01.360 campaign and everything like that, the worst part of it is that you remember 2020.

01:17:04.940 It was such an awful year.

01:17:06.320 It was such a deranging year with COVID, with George Floyd, with protests, with arguing

01:17:12.600 over protests with Portland, which just like burned in human excrement for about 183

01:17:17.640 consecutive days.

01:17:18.500 It's just crazy, like so much happened that was crazy.

01:17:21.600 And I think Trump is playing for nostalgia of the pre-COVID times, although he was there

01:17:25.780 during COVID.

01:17:26.600 He managed it and his management is is up for debate and consideration.

01:17:30.380 And a lot of not most of, but just some percentage of the things that we don't like about the Biden

01:17:37.100 era definitely happened in Trump.

01:17:39.160 Trump added to inflation, too.

01:17:40.740 I think Biden added more to inflation, but they both threw a ton of money out there in

01:17:45.300 the world.

01:17:45.760 They both had no interest in reforming entitlement, the fiscal cliff that we're facing sometime

01:17:52.060 soon.

01:17:53.060 It is an it's an interesting thing.

01:17:54.940 I think that what you're going to see both at the debate and I presume in some ads afterwards.

01:17:59.320 And if you don't see this, it's a terrible missed opportunity.

01:18:02.920 I think Trump is going to say the word, the words, the name Kamala Harris a thousand times.

01:18:08.280 Oh, OK.

01:18:08.700 That's what you have to do.

01:18:09.100 Matt, let me interrupt you.

01:18:10.240 And then you take your take your point up on the back end, because here's the second Trump

01:18:14.100 ad that's about to come out.

01:18:16.120 When you think about the Joe Biden you saw in the debate, ask yourself a question.

01:18:23.820 Do you think the guy who was defeated by the stairs got taken down by his bike, lost a

01:18:30.260 fight with his jacket and regularly gets lost, makes it four more years in the White House?

01:18:35.980 Oh, my God.

01:18:36.680 And you know who's waiting behind him, right?

01:18:39.280 Vote Joe Biden today and Kamala Harris tomorrow. 0.66

01:18:43.000 I'm Donald Trump, and I approve this message.

01:18:48.300 Great idea.

01:18:51.500 I would object slightly to the execution, just because a long time ago I said if Donald Trump

01:18:59.480 wanted to create an effective ad against Joe Biden, rather than hoping there's some stumbles

01:19:05.140 and everything in the debate, is that all you have to do is string together some of these

01:19:10.200 kind of weird non sequiturs that are barely English.

01:19:13.600 And at the end, just put, you know, Trump at the end of it, you know, the Harris thing

01:19:18.120 is also true.

01:19:19.660 You could do the vocal stylings in the speech stylings of Kamala Harris when she's talking

01:19:25.540 about buses and how the wheels go around.

01:19:28.000 She seems to be having a young person stroke during her.

01:19:31.100 I like when she talks about time.

01:19:33.000 Yeah, no time.

01:19:34.020 You know, it's there.

01:19:34.900 But who knows?

01:19:35.800 Who knows what it could be?

01:19:37.040 You know what it could be?

01:19:37.880 It's like, what is this woman talking about? 1.00

01:19:39.860 She's a physicist.

01:19:40.200 Everyone is having a stroke.

01:19:41.540 Yes.

01:19:42.640 Yeah.

01:19:44.300 It's a country and it's full of Ukrainians. 0.99

01:19:47.460 But that stuff, all you need to do is like Joe Biden, you could just say, do an ad that

01:19:52.940 says last week in Joe Biden, just a week, put together stuff from things in these, and

01:19:58.080 it's like, if Trump could get up there and be like, just start naming people like, you

01:20:03.580 know, Dionne Warwick, dead or alive.

01:20:05.840 I mean, that's hard for a lot of us.

01:20:10.200 I might actually fail that one.

01:20:11.920 She was great as a host of Solid Gold, though. 1.00

01:20:14.360 She's definitely alive.

01:20:15.440 Corn pop, explain. 0.84

01:20:16.920 Yeah, yeah.

01:20:17.580 It could be so fun.

01:20:19.540 It's corn pop.

01:20:21.840 All right, wait, pause there.

01:20:23.160 Quick break.

01:20:24.220 Much more to discuss.

01:20:25.500 Hold that thought, Matt.

01:20:26.300 Back to you in one second.

01:20:28.000 All right.

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01:20:55.700 Here's what both candidates, and I speak to Joe Biden in particular, need to avoid.

01:21:03.840 I take you back to 2000 and Al Gore.

01:21:09.600 Watch.

01:21:10.280 Had a record of appointing judges in the state of Texas.

01:21:12.620 That's what a governor gets to do.

01:21:13.780 There's differences.

01:21:15.000 I've had a record of appointing judges in the state of Texas.

01:21:17.720 That's what a governor gets to do.

01:21:18.880 There's differences.

01:21:19.480 And here's part two, okay, because let's not forget, he stalked George Bush on the same.

01:21:27.360 Hillary Clinton says that Donald Trump stalked her.

01:21:30.740 Al Gore stalked George W. Bush, and it led to a wonderful moment for GWB.

01:21:36.260 Watch SOT 17.

01:21:38.320 That's what the question in this campaign is about.

01:21:41.260 It's not only what's your philosophy and what's your position on issues, but can you get things done?

01:21:46.020 And I believe I can.

01:21:50.700 Oh, my God.

01:21:52.820 I'd forgotten.

01:21:53.980 The greatest.

01:21:54.780 Oh, God.

01:21:55.480 The listening audience, George W. Bush was speaking.

01:21:58.740 Al Gore left his lectern, walked over to GWB in the middle of his remarks, and George W. Bush just looks at him and nods his head like, hey, how you doing?

01:22:06.800 And then keeps going.

01:22:07.620 So well.

01:22:08.180 How's it going?

01:22:09.080 Good to see you.

01:22:09.940 But you can't, the eye rolls, the snippiness, and the harrumphing undermine you, not your opponent.

01:22:18.220 Am I wrong?

01:22:19.460 Yeah.

01:22:20.320 Yeah, and it also telegraphs their personalities.

01:22:24.320 You know, sometimes it's sort of weird, unspoken things that give you a sense.

01:22:27.900 I mean, at that actual debate, George W. Bush was in favor of nation, against nation building, and like, we've got too many troops abroad.

01:22:35.880 We need to stop doing foreign wars. 0.59

01:22:37.980 So on the substance, it wasn't necessarily all that accurate.

01:22:41.280 But like, as dudes, that's who they are.

01:22:43.640 Because you can also hear, see in the back of Gore's ear, like somebody named Naomi told him, you need to walk around like a confident animal on stage.

01:22:51.320 And Bush just, and wear brown suits.

01:22:54.420 Wear brown suits.

01:22:55.700 And Bush is just, whatever you say about him.

01:22:58.800 Yeah, that was Naomi Wolf, who's now a wild conspiracy theorist. 1.00

01:23:03.960 Yeah, she had said the, wear earth tones to make you more relatable.

01:23:08.920 And Al Gore, relatable.

01:23:11.860 George W. Bush, say what you will, aside from the fact that he's a great painter.

01:23:16.860 Like, the dude was born comfortable in his own skin.

01:23:19.980 Yeah, he was.

01:23:20.480 And, like, famously so.

01:23:23.360 And that exchange absolutely proves it.

01:23:25.560 The other thing I would point people to, it's very difficult to find.

01:23:28.780 Find the 2000 World Series program, pre-World Series program, because they ask both of those guys the same questions.

01:23:38.180 Like, what do you think about the DH?

01:23:39.820 Or what's your favorite park?

01:23:41.060 And the answers, I can't rehearse them all here, are just so, it's one word answers from Bush saying, like, I don't like AstroTurf.

01:23:49.640 And Al Gore's like, well, with the miracle of AstroTurf, you know, I can see the problem both ways.

01:23:55.160 It's fantastic.

01:23:56.460 Oh, I want to see that.

01:23:58.440 No, that sounds amazing.

01:23:59.640 No, it's great.

01:24:00.060 Well, I mean, it's all been done before.

01:24:02.440 I mean, I would say, like, they've got cautionary tales to look back at and try to do better than.

01:24:07.880 And so do these moderators.

01:24:10.200 I mean, there's no bigger faux pas or a low moment for a debate moderator than what happened with Candy Crowley.

01:24:15.920 It was terrible.

01:24:17.500 She did interject herself and try to, quote, fact check Mitt Romney, who is claiming that Barack Obama had yet to call the Benghazi terrorist attack a terrorist attack.

01:24:28.280 And Obama was saying it's not true.

01:24:31.440 And she tried to fact check it on the spot, siding with Obama. 1.00

01:24:36.460 She was wrong.

01:24:38.300 And it led to the end of her career.

01:24:40.900 Here's that moment.

01:24:41.500 The president, 14 days before he called the attack in Benghazi an act of terror.

01:24:47.480 Get the transfer.

01:24:48.440 He did, in fact, sir.

01:24:50.120 So let me let me call it an act of terror.

01:24:52.200 Can you say that a little louder, Candy?

01:24:54.560 He did call it an act of terror.

01:24:57.080 It did as well take it did as well take two weeks or so for the whole idea of there being a riot out there about this tape to come out.

01:25:07.520 You're correct about that.

01:25:08.500 It's bad.

01:25:10.940 She seems like a nice lady, but not about you.

01:25:13.940 Right.

01:25:14.280 And there are real risks to the moderators siding with one of the candidates and resolving a dispute between the two of them on the stage.

01:25:22.920 She's not the jury.

01:25:24.260 Yeah.

01:25:25.320 Right.

01:25:26.100 That's going to be a temptation tonight for these two.

01:25:29.800 Yep.

01:25:30.360 Megan, you know this very well, doing this over the years.

01:25:33.080 I've done it for a number of years, too, on a couple of TV shows.

01:25:35.860 You sit down with people and you interview them or you have a couple of people that maybe they're debating.

01:25:41.320 I've done debate shows, too.

01:25:42.860 And, you know, everyone has their own built in bias.

01:25:45.960 I know when I sit down with somebody I disagree with that I disagree with them and I love them and agree with them.

01:25:51.140 And that is very easy.

01:25:53.120 I don't know why people have a hard time with this.

01:25:55.120 It's very easy to play the other side with them.

01:25:58.220 And it's also better television.

01:25:59.460 If you sit there and it's an amen chorus, who wants to watch that?

01:26:03.480 That's why these things can be really boring.

01:26:05.880 But when it's a presidential debate, you want to get, you know, up against every candidate and get the best answers out because your job is not to obviously be an advocate.

01:26:14.960 And I've said this at the beginning of the podcast.

01:26:17.040 Your job is to entertain and inform the American people.

01:26:20.820 And the American people want adversarial questions to both of the people that might run the country.

01:26:25.540 Why is this so difficult for people to understand?

01:26:27.600 And they get in the simple answer is, after so many years of this, journalism is a political game and there are political actors in it.

01:26:36.860 And unfortunately, it's become sort of more serious these days than it was when Brent Bozell was complaining about it in the 1980s.

01:26:46.740 What's going to happen with respect to January 6th and the convictions?

01:26:52.760 Both topics are guaranteed to come up.

01:26:55.300 So January 6th, particularly the pardons, we know that because Maggie Haberman in The New York Times, who's a CNN contributor, is saying those are going to be the two most tricky issues for Trump.

01:27:05.760 There's no question she's been consulting with them, in my mind, behind the scenes about how to do this and where to go.

01:27:11.220 And I'm sure that she's right.

01:27:13.880 Those are Democrats' favorite topics.

01:27:15.340 So if you were advising Trump on, in particular, January 6th, I know the Republican MAGA base wants to hear, yeah, pardon political prisoners.

01:27:25.600 And Trump has said that at his rallies.

01:27:27.040 But this is a very, very different audience that feels very differently about January 6th.

01:27:32.700 What what do you do?

01:27:33.660 I mean, Trump is is so used to kind of having particular lines.

01:27:39.960 I think it would actually be challenging and incredibly surprising for me to not hear him refer to them as kind of victims of political persecution.

01:27:50.440 I don't even know that it's out of a sense of kind of loyalty.

01:27:53.260 I suspect it's just a matter of habit.

01:27:55.060 I think he'll probably try to be careful and thread the needle.

01:27:58.800 But I also just cannot imagine a well-rehearsed response to this that has him doing what politicians have traditionally done in the general, which is tack to the middle completely and try and try to make certain you're scooping up those middle of the road people rather than catering to your base's interests.

01:28:17.360 That said, with respect to the criminal prosecutions, you know, my mother is actually my bellwether for this sort of thing.

01:28:22.460 She's not a very sophisticated political analyst.

01:28:25.060 And there are, in fact, plenty of interesting stories I could tell that would make that very clear.

01:28:28.920 And she is a kind of conventional born Democrat who refuses to even consider Republicans.

01:28:36.220 But when she talks about the criminal prosecutions with respect to Trump, she regards them as generally unfair.

01:28:43.620 And she doesn't know the specifics, but that is the conclusion that she's reached.

01:28:47.940 And I don't think she's alone in that.

01:28:49.960 So I suspect there'll probably be a little bit more grace for that than there might be with respect to J.

01:28:55.060 What I would advise him to do.

01:28:58.600 And I think that this is a pretty straightforward one is rather than, you know, responding from the gut, which is what he does in so many of the rallies is that we've talked about this endlessly on our show is that I personally think many of these people should be prosecuted.

01:29:15.860 Some of them should go to jail, not all of them, but that the jail terms seem wildly outsized to me.

01:29:22.720 And so what I would do if I were Donald Trump is say, look, this was a bad day.

01:29:27.960 This should not have happened.

01:29:29.620 People did some very bad things.

01:29:31.160 But on the prosecutions, I will say I will just say this.

01:29:34.620 Get somebody.

01:29:35.440 This is what you would do if you're Donald Trump.

01:29:36.880 Get somebody who got 15 years for some heinous crime.

01:29:40.960 And that happens quite frankly.

01:29:42.340 And say so and so got 15 years.

01:29:44.160 You have a guy, you know, this Enrique Torrio who gets 23 years and he was in Baltimore.

01:29:50.000 They said, stay out of the city.

01:29:51.240 He stayed out of the city.

01:29:52.300 Does that, ladies and gentlemen, feel fair to you?

01:29:55.460 Does that feel like there's not some sort of political influence in these prosecutions?

01:30:00.460 It's not there shouldn't have been prosecutions, but that political influence cannot stand.

01:30:04.740 That is something is a way you can threaten for the needle.

01:30:06.780 I think instead. 0.96

01:30:07.540 And, you know, attack them.

01:30:08.540 And yeah, you're going to hear Nancy Pelosi.

01:30:11.780 That's what you're going to hear.

01:30:12.920 Nancy Pelosi, Nancy Pelosi.

01:30:14.360 And it's a fair point.

01:30:15.320 Nancy Pelosi did get caught on camera. 0.98

01:30:17.540 It was just released saying it's on me.

01:30:20.500 I should have had more security.

01:30:22.200 That's that's on us.

01:30:23.040 It was a failing.

01:30:23.600 So I predict that's what Trump does, is he says the problems of the Capitol that day

01:30:29.660 are on her.

01:30:32.000 It's a good to excellent chance that this is exactly where CNN, Jake Tavern, Donna Bash

01:30:37.460 will not help themselves.

01:30:41.580 They will not get out of their way because they've been marketing this as the big lie for

01:30:46.640 a really, really long time.

01:30:48.380 Right.

01:30:48.760 Saying that you don't accept the results of the 2020 election.

01:30:51.260 And so and let's not forget also that Caitlin Collins led to like something like a week

01:30:58.820 long media discussion, political media discussion after she had the temerity to host a town hall 0.90

01:31:04.580 with Donald Trump last year.

01:31:06.180 Like earlier this year, I forget what exactly when my brain is starting to be scrubbed.

01:31:10.320 But people were outraged that you would platform this.

01:31:15.140 I don't know, former president and like CNN had huge freak outs about this.

01:31:21.820 Like there's people who lost their jobs.

01:31:23.600 There were town halls.

01:31:24.440 There was this.

01:31:24.880 There's that internal dissensions.

01:31:26.880 People went nuts.

01:31:28.380 And so all of that pressure is going to be put to bear on Jake Tapper and Donna Bash about

01:31:32.900 how they ask January 6th and whether and just the election results writ large and whether

01:31:39.800 they're tough enough.

01:31:40.800 So what are they going to do under that pressure?

01:31:42.840 Because if and when they overstep their bounds and they think it's a pretty safe prediction

01:31:46.660 prediction, just like by never letting go of the question and doing a lot of sir,

01:31:51.300 sir type of interruptions.

01:31:53.400 At that moment, Donald Trump gets his wings, I think, because he'll just sort of say, you

01:31:58.580 can't let this go.

01:32:00.600 You're basing your, you know, abysmal ratings on this.

01:32:04.580 Maybe you should get over it.

01:32:06.760 He'll be able to look more like a victim on something that he's not a victim of.

01:32:10.340 I mean, his behavior after the election was abysmal.

01:32:13.060 His behavior on January 6th was abysmal.

01:32:16.480 It should be a loss for him.

01:32:18.520 But the media and Democrats have found a way to try to not, by overemphasizing it,

01:32:23.400 and blotting out the sun with it.

01:32:25.940 They find a way to not make that as much of a disadvantage for him as it should be.

01:32:30.580 Totally agree with that.

01:32:31.880 Here, speaking of the consternation about platforming Trump, take a listen to Joy Reid

01:32:38.620 on MSNBC the other night.

01:32:40.960 Sound three.

01:32:41.800 Do I have to?

01:32:42.960 You do.

01:32:43.280 Are y'all as offended as I am about the fact that it's possible for this person, who is 0.95

01:32:53.000 a felon and an adjudicated sexual assaulter, to stand next to the actual president and give

01:32:58.680 the, and we're supposed to take him seriously like that? 0.95

01:33:00.960 There's something deeply offensive about that?

01:33:02.700 And I think that was Rick Wilson.

01:33:05.640 I'm sure the answer is yes.

01:33:06.940 We're very, just as offended as you are.

01:33:08.840 But that's, the reason I find that interesting is because that is a bit of a window into,

01:33:14.420 I guarantee you, how virtually everyone in the CNN newsroom feels about Donald Trump

01:33:20.060 and the pressure that's going to be on the two moderators about who you're dealing with,

01:33:23.760 a Hitler-esque figure.

01:33:25.360 You know, Tapper's made a reference along those lines in the past.

01:33:29.160 And so think about like, it's a very tricky position for them because I think they actually

01:33:33.860 believe he's a very dangerous figure.

01:33:36.160 And they also probably agree with what Joe, Joy Reed just said.

01:33:39.660 And yet they, they understand what the duty of a journalist is.

01:33:43.160 They're not lunatics like, you know, Jorge Ramos, who's like, abandon all objectivity.

01:33:48.140 Like they still understand what the core mission is.

01:33:50.460 So it's going to be fun to kind of watch them deal with that, right? 0.99

01:33:54.160 Like it's a convicted felon, sexual assaulter.

01:33:57.840 It's basically, you know, Charles Manson up there, you know, repeat felon because of 0.95

01:34:03.800 his 34 documents case convictions.

01:34:06.560 So I don't, I mean, they're, they're in a tough position.

01:34:09.500 Okay.

01:34:10.060 So last question.

01:34:11.620 Yeah, go ahead.

01:34:12.960 No, go, go, go.

01:34:14.000 No, I was saying there's one, there's one thing that's a through line to all the media

01:34:17.040 coverage probably since 2016 is we don't trust the American people.

01:34:21.160 We have to do it either through lawfare.

01:34:23.340 We have to, you know, constantly be banging this drum saying that he's wrong, but if he's lying

01:34:27.080 about this, et cetera, the public cannot adjudicate this stuff on its own.

01:34:31.260 And so why is he even up there in the, I mean, Joy Reid knows that he has a very good

01:34:35.200 chance of winning and that is what offends her, not the fact that he's standing next to

01:34:39.280 the president.

01:34:40.340 All right.

01:34:40.620 So here's a very good chance of winning is picking up demographics.

01:34:43.240 He shouldn't be.

01:34:44.380 Yeah.

01:34:44.500 Does, what does a win look like tonight for Joe Biden?

01:34:50.320 Camille, I'll start with you on that one.

01:34:54.140 Not, not completely ruining this for himself.

01:34:57.400 I mean, he, he and his team have done everything that they can to minimize his appearance in

01:35:02.960 the spotlight without a phalanx of supporters surrounding him without some sort of cheering

01:35:07.280 crowd.

01:35:08.340 This is perhaps the most vulnerable moment of the campaign for Joe Biden.

01:35:13.180 So if he falters here, it could be profoundly devastating for him.

01:35:18.540 So I think the, the goal for him has to just be to survive this.

01:35:22.600 I don't know that you can hope to wound Donald Trump.

01:35:25.220 You can perhaps bait him and he perhaps wounds himself.

01:35:28.680 Um, but Joe Biden has been faltering for a while and I don't know that there is going

01:35:34.220 to be, uh, an, an, an appearance or a performance that's so impressive that the doubts and concerns

01:35:40.980 about his age, et cetera, are going to disappear as a result of the debate.

01:35:45.220 Matt.

01:35:47.100 You can make a calm case against Donald Trump, uh, that is not histrionic.

01:35:51.460 You can, I think Jonah Goldberg did one about two or three weeks ago where he just like

01:35:55.640 issued a paragraph about things related even to the Stormy Daniels trial, which is a trial

01:36:00.700 that I think not a lot of people have a lot of respect for, but you can just list his behavior

01:36:05.380 in a calm way and it can be really damning.

01:36:07.880 The more you work yourself in a lather, the less effective it is and the more likely you're

01:36:12.180 going to start stumbling on yourself.

01:36:14.240 So if he's calm and doesn't seem like a incredibly old and confused man and just lists the things

01:36:20.300 that are actually against Donald Trump, um, that's a win.

01:36:22.700 I don't think, all right, we're going to leave it at that for now, but we'll be back

01:36:25.700 tonight right after the debate guys.

01:36:27.660 Thank you.

01:36:28.240 Thank you all.

01:36:28.920 And we'll be back tomorrow as well with, um, Oh, Steve Bannon.

01:36:33.260 Don't miss that.

01:36:35.060 Thanks for listening to the Megan Kelly show.

01:36:37.040 No BS, no agenda and no fear.

The Megyn Kelly Show - June 27, 2024

Biased Moderators, Bizarre Rules - Previewing Trump vs. Biden, and Memorable Debate Moments, with The Fifth Column ｜ Ep. 824

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