The Megyn Kelly Show - Biden Attacks Half the Country, and Legacy Media Decline, with Michael Knowles and Chris Stirewalt

00:00:00.500 Welcome to The Megyn Kelly Show, your home for open, honest, and provocative conversations.

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

00:00:15.280 We have a lot of news to get to today as President Biden prepares a primetime address tonight.

00:00:20.600 He's staying up past Matlock on, quote, the continued battle for the soul of the nation.

00:00:26.860 Mm hmm. This is Biden's promised push for unity.

00:00:30.580 Remember that? When he entered office is looking increasingly absurd.

00:00:34.340 He recently debuted the term semi-fascists.

00:00:38.000 What is that? Can he be a semi-fascist to attack his political opponents?

00:00:43.080 And his administration has declared half the country, quote, extreme MAGA Republicans who are a threat to democracy.

00:00:50.400 In just a bit, we're going to be joined by my old pal Chris Stierwalt,

00:00:54.360 who will talk about Biden's speech, the state of the 2022 midterm races and his new book.

00:01:00.480 I'm looking forward to that. He he will tell us what's what on these midterms in a way you can't trust most people to tell you about.

00:01:08.040 Right. He's not going to spin you. He's going to tell you how it's going to go.

00:01:10.560 So if you're wondering just how tight it's getting now, he's the guy to ask.

00:01:14.480 So he'll be up in just a bit. But we are joined first by Michael Knowles of The Daily Wire.

00:01:19.920 It was reported today that Knowles, he's in trouble again.

00:01:23.080 Every time you come on this show, Michael, you're in trouble.

00:01:25.220 He had one of the accounts permanently banned by TikTok, which is news that just broke,

00:01:30.240 without any option to appeal the ruling before being reinstated months later.

00:01:35.060 So what was his supposed crime?

00:01:36.920 We're going to ask him.

00:01:37.760 Michael, welcome back to the show.

00:01:43.880 Wonderful to be with you, Megan. Thank you for having me.

00:01:46.740 What'd you do? What did you do?

00:01:48.960 I'm always in trouble. I'm always I'm glad that I can still appear on this platform.

00:01:55.300 Megan, I'm grateful for that. I guess I have more trouble, you know,

00:01:58.820 appearing on Chinese spy apps that are mostly watched by 15 year old girls.

00:02:04.560 So that audience is gone. OK, that's the way things go.

00:02:07.760 What I did to get myself banned before I was permanently banned before I was permanently

00:02:13.860 unbanned or something like that was I made fun of Dr. Fauci.

00:02:19.420 I made fun of the public health establishment.

00:02:21.940 I questioned some of the bizarre practices of American domestic and foreign policy.

00:02:27.120 It was a kind of wide ranging little TikTok video.

00:02:31.140 But there was nothing defamatory. There was nothing cruel.

00:02:35.140 There was nothing that that was not factual.

00:02:37.760 And we know that this is par for the course.

00:02:40.780 We know especially over the last two and a half, three years now,

00:02:43.860 you can be booted off of social media apps, not just TikTok for saying perfectly true things

00:02:50.980 because there are new censorship guidelines and there's really no way to appeal it.

00:02:57.580 You know, this is just run by a group of oligarchic censors.

00:03:01.300 And it's particularly worrisome because in a self-governing republic, the way that we speak to one another is how we govern ourselves.

00:03:10.140 And so if a small group of people control the public square and they say you're not allowed to say true things and you got to toe the party line,

00:03:17.100 well, then your ability to govern yourself is is very much in jeopardy.

00:03:20.760 Yeah, then we are China. So wait a minute.

00:03:23.400 They what I read was there are 11 accounts, pro free speech accounts that have been banned since January 2019 on TikTok.

00:03:32.200 Yours is one of them. But did they then reinstate you?

00:03:35.720 I mean, the permanent ban was in place, but it wasn't really permanent.

00:03:38.580 It's a little unclear, actually, Megan, if you I logged into my TikTok app and it says, you know, you're out, you're banned, you're this, you're that.

00:03:48.360 I appealed it. I said, well, what was what was wrong with that?

00:03:51.620 And then they said, OK, you're back on. But then they kicked me off again.

00:03:55.340 But then they put it back on. And so I hand I said, I must be doing something wrong.

00:03:58.920 I handed this over to the TikTok team at Daily Wire.

00:04:02.140 Is there something going on here that I'm missing? And they said, no, that basically what's going on is that TikTok is arbitrary and capricious in its suspension and banning policies.

00:04:13.540 And there's really no rhyme or reason to it. They don't really have to give you any explanation.

00:04:18.660 And if they want to permanently ban you, they can. And if they want to permanently unban you, they can.

00:04:23.540 And I'm not joking, Megan. I legitimately don't know what the current status of my of my account is right now.

00:04:30.920 Same. Yeah, I don't know either. But I do know that everybody on this list is a conservative or leans right.

00:04:36.480 You got Lieutenant Colonel Allen West, Judicial Watch President Tom Fitton, Live Action, Media Research Center TV or MRC TV, Prager U, Students for Life, Babylon B, U, Tim Kass, Tim Pool, Young American Foundation.

00:04:53.060 I mean, these are all so like what's going on, because the Chinese, it's not exactly like they want to help Democrats in all instances politically.

00:05:02.280 They don't like criticism of covid's origins or questions about lab leaks and things like that.

00:05:09.480 That'll definitely get you censored on TikTok.

00:05:12.200 Yeah. But do you think I mean, like I can't imagine I don't know.

00:05:15.240 I feel like students for life, they probably don't spend a lot of time on covid origins.

00:05:19.800 So I'm a little confused. I think they also do recognize that the Democrats go softer on China.

00:05:26.760 So while they might not be 100 percent for the Democratic Party, I think they recognize that the Republicans are running for office.

00:05:35.020 The last Republican president we had went a lot tougher on China, on China's trade policies, on China's intellectual property theft, on China's currency manipulation.

00:05:43.160 And they recognize that Democrats, including Joe Biden, have been big proponents of a rising China.

00:05:49.620 Joe Biden was on camera 10 years ago saying that a rising China is good for all nations and we ought to encourage China to have a larger role in the global economy.

00:05:59.940 And so I think right now, if they have to choose between the Republicans and the Democrats, they see the Republicans as being led by Trump, who was pretty tough on China, Democrats being led by Biden, who's soft on them.

00:06:10.480 It's no surprise that they're going to attack the right wingers.

00:06:14.020 There is the principled reason, which is that the right wingers are the most anti-communist.

00:06:18.820 They're the most opposed to the Chinese system.

00:06:20.840 I think a lot of Democrats probably want to institute something similar to a Chinese system in the U.S., but also just as a practical matter.

00:06:27.040 Right now, the Dems are going to go softer on them.

00:06:28.820 I wonder why you. What about Ben? Why didn't they get Matt Walsh swept up in this web?

00:06:32.840 What about Andrew Klavan? How come only Michael Knowles gets it at The Daily Wire?

00:06:36.260 I'm just so shocked. Me, me whom everybody loves so. Somehow I keep getting booted off of these.

00:06:42.340 It's a wonderful question, Megan. I'm sure there will be Ph.D. theses written about this. It's bizarre.

00:06:47.660 Well, now that I'm sort of talking it out with you, you know, the Students for Life and you, definitely outspoken on the issue of abortion.

00:06:56.960 I mean, so has Ben. But I'm just thinking that's an issue on which China is very, very much on the other side, to put it mildly.

00:07:04.540 And so any critiques of their forced sterilization of the Uyghurs, perhaps I could see how that might upset them.

00:07:11.740 But they'd have to cast a much wider net if they wanted to get all the people criticizing China when it comes to those policies.

00:07:18.540 I don't know. To me, it's just it's suspect. It's odd.

00:07:21.500 And it's yet another reason not to trust TikTok. I mean, we recently launched on it because there are a lot of young people who are on it.

00:07:27.300 But it's scary because you don't know how they're using that app to get at you or your information or the information of your children.

00:07:34.800 Well, and you've hit the nail on the head with the problem, which is that we know that these social media apps pose grave risks.

00:07:43.300 They pose risks to people's mental health. They pose spiritual risks, I think.

00:07:48.480 And they certainly pose political risks because you're allowing a small group of people to control speech.

00:07:53.440 And in the case of TikTok, you're allowing the Chinese Communist Party to have a disproportionate influence on American political discourse.

00:08:00.000 So that's a problem. But then on the other hand, the social media apps are where the people are.

00:08:04.640 So if you want to be able to talk to people, you've got to be on them in some way.

00:08:09.240 And so what's the solution here? Do we just go along with it and throw our hands in the air?

00:08:13.660 No, I think that the solution has to be political.

00:08:17.180 For a long time, it was the right wingers, especially the libertarians on the right, who said, you know, we can't ever regulate Google or Twitter.

00:08:26.180 Or now I'm sure they would say it with TikTok. This is the free market.

00:08:30.020 If you don't like it, build your own TikTok, build your own Twitter.

00:08:32.800 And that is absurd. These platforms have gained market share in many cases through fraud and exploiting legal loopholes.

00:08:40.980 And so, no, I don't think that we need to let Google and Facebook and Twitter and especially TikTok control American speech.

00:08:48.420 I think we have the political right here as Americans to say, no, we're going to put some limits on what these people can do.

00:08:57.080 And we're going to put some limits on what they can censor and how they're going to control the public square.

00:09:02.540 That's a big shift on the right away from a kind of laissez-faire approach to wielding the institutions of government a little more effectively.

00:09:11.300 You've seen Ron DeSantis in particular lean into a little bit more of a muscular use of the government down there in Florida.

00:09:18.860 And I think that TikTok aside, social media aside, I think that is the future of the right in America.

00:09:24.760 The candidates who are doing pretty well, Blake Masters right now running for Senate in Arizona, J.D. Vance in Ohio, running on these kinds of themes.

00:09:32.420 I think conservatives are sick and tired of being pushed around and we're not going to just voluntarily concede the whole culture to the left.

00:09:40.360 We're going to get a little bit more intentional and aggressive in our use of the state.

00:09:45.440 Well, we definitely need to, you know, push back on big tech's censorship of one side only.

00:09:50.960 I had this discussion with Glenn Beck not long ago saying, even though I like a lot of what DeSantis is doing and I'm not woke even a little,

00:09:59.180 I didn't think some of what he was doing down there was going to survive a First Amendment challenge because, you know, the government censoring speech,

00:10:05.640 even if it's speech we don't like, is not OK.

00:10:08.740 And it was actually kind of funny because Glenn said, you should read my book.

00:10:11.780 And I said, I don't need to read your book to know the law.

00:10:13.760 And later that day I was proven right because DeSantis' effort got struck down on First Amendment grounds.

00:10:19.260 So we have to be careful because, you know, you might like DeSantis and what he's doing.

00:10:23.580 But then, you know, you get the next guy in there.

00:10:25.480 What if Charlie Crist wins?

00:10:26.940 And the next thing you know, he's trying to censor it the other way.

00:10:29.720 And I realize that's what's been happening.

00:10:32.340 That's why you have a DeSantis trying to push back.

00:10:35.160 So we have to think of smart tactics to stop our speech from being silenced.

00:10:38.760 But I just I don't I don't know exactly what it is.

00:10:41.280 Hopefully just having the better argument and getting it as many places we can before we all are censored to death.

00:10:46.660 And that brings me to point two, which is remember when we all felt so joyful that Twitter was going to become a more open place where we could actually, you know, have differences of opinion and not be banned for not recognizing that somebody who says on Tuesday she's a boy when she was a girl on Monday, you know, challenging that I'll get you banned.

00:11:07.620 Twitter and Elon still in a massive fight.

00:11:10.260 Elon fighting filing yet another new claim against them yesterday to dissolve the deal.

00:11:14.180 There was a whistleblower who came out of Twitter saying they're lying about all sorts of things and they cannot be trusted.

00:11:22.020 And they misstated the facts about their company and their public filings.

00:11:25.500 And while he didn't know about this when he tried to break up the deal, he's using it.

00:11:29.780 So, I mean, my takeaway on this for our viewers is there's just no way he's not buying Twitter.

00:11:34.720 It's not happening and there will be absolutely no big social media platform at any point in the near future that is controlled by somebody who's even in the middle, never mind somebody who's on the right.

00:11:47.620 I feared that this would happen.

00:11:50.460 I know conservatives, we all wanted to believe Elon, he's so funny, he hits the left pretty frequently.

00:11:56.660 Here he is, our billionaire savior.

00:11:59.460 The billionaires are not going to bail you out.

00:12:02.880 There is not going to be just one knight in shining armor.

00:12:06.340 Even Elon Musk, terrific as the guy is, that's not going to happen.

00:12:10.360 It's going to have to be a political solution and it's going to have to require us.

00:12:15.400 I mean, exactly to your point, Megan, on the First Amendment, we're going to have to really rethink how we've been making these arguments because we are arguing for a kind of neutrality or have been arguing for a kind of neutrality that just doesn't exist.

00:12:31.280 You bring up the classic example now of the pronouns.

00:12:34.420 Either the man is a he or the man is a she, or I guess there is this other category now you call them they, them, zur, zim, zam, or whatever, but you have to make a decision.

00:12:45.840 There's no neutral decision here.

00:12:48.080 Whichever thing you are going to call the person or be permitted to call the person is going to determine, or it's going to stem from a kind of moral and philosophical view.

00:12:57.640 I mean, it's the same thing in education.

00:12:59.380 You know, you bring up the hypothetical, what if the left institutes its own speech codes in schools, and then you point out, well, they've already done that.

00:13:07.860 It's not a hypothetical.

00:13:08.440 They're doing it.

00:13:08.760 That's what they keep doing.

00:13:10.060 And the problem in the Libs defense, actually, on education is that education can't be neutral.

00:13:16.480 You're going to teach kids something.

00:13:18.000 You're going to teach them something about history and what history means and something about literature and what that means and the human person and how to behave.

00:13:25.400 And that's what education is.

00:13:26.940 So you can't be neutral about it.

00:13:28.680 You've got to teach something.

00:13:31.480 And right now, I think because we've been aiming for a kind of neutrality, we've just let the Libs completely take over and push their own agenda, whether it's in the classrooms or it's on social media or it's through corporate messaging or it's through the institutions of government.

00:13:46.140 I mean, now you've got the Biden administration openly endorsing transgender surgery for little kids.

00:13:52.960 And, you know, we might want to pretend that there is some kind of neutral playing ground there.

00:13:58.760 There is not.

00:13:59.600 One point of view is going to win over the other.

00:14:02.220 We've got to agree on some basic stuff.

00:14:04.540 And so I think that's where a lot of the new right, you know, the rising Republicans are at right now.

00:14:10.700 And to your point, it's a little bit of a perilous journey because some of these things are going to be struck down in courts and we're going to have to adjust some of our tactics depending on the location and even the level of the government.

00:14:21.260 But that's clearly the direction we're going at, because otherwise we're all going to be totally silenced.

00:14:26.340 Well, and some of what DeSantis has been trying has been working.

00:14:29.780 So he hasn't lost on every front.

00:14:31.580 And you're right.

00:14:32.180 He's almost like a guinea pig because he's casting a wide net and some of it's getting shot down and some of it isn't.

00:14:37.080 But in education, there's a lot more leeway, right?

00:14:39.840 The free speech rights of students are not exactly what they are for adults roaming the free world.

00:14:45.600 And so when it comes to what's in an educational curriculum, the government does have more power.

00:14:50.520 And so far, it's been used at the federal level and elsewhere to shove radical wokeness down their throats.

00:14:55.780 So we need more people like DeSantis saying you will not discuss your sex life with my six year old and you can F right off if you don't like that.

00:15:02.780 I mean, truly, that's basically what his law says.

00:15:04.820 And most of us are like, yes, right.

00:15:06.780 That makes perfect sense.

00:15:08.900 Even in Connecticut, I moved to Connecticut last September.

00:15:11.800 There was a vice principal who I think was just suspended because he was saying he'll he just will never hire a white person or a man or anybody who's not in one of these sort of favored.

00:15:22.620 Well, that's illegal, sir.

00:15:24.640 News to you.

00:15:25.480 This is a public school.

00:15:26.660 That's illegal.

00:15:27.500 So, yes, I mean, some of the laws are in place already to protect all of us and some of them need to be tweaked by a guy like DeSantis.

00:15:35.280 There was an amazing bit in that video, Megan.

00:15:37.960 I don't know if you saw it where he focused specifically on the Catholics in this undercover video from Project Veritas.

00:15:43.200 And he said, I don't hire Catholics because if you've got a really solid Catholic education, we're not going to be able to get you.

00:15:51.240 You're not going to turn woke.

00:15:52.440 And so that's a problem.

00:15:53.640 And but he said they're very clever about the way that they do it, the way they avoid hiring conservatives or Christians or whoever is they'll ask a question about transgenderism.

00:16:03.120 And I think this partially explains why the left is so hyper focused on what seems to be a very narrow fringe issue of transgenderism is because it tells you pretty much everything you need to know.

00:16:16.200 Some of my friends and colleagues, they'll say if someone has their pronouns in the bio, I can tell exactly everything about your politics, because if you believe a boy can really become a girl, you're a leftist.

00:16:28.160 That's it.

00:16:28.840 That's just the way it goes.

00:16:30.060 I have to say, if I see that in somebody's bio, I'm like thinking about having to work at my house or whatever.

00:16:35.860 I'm like, OK, I get it.

00:16:37.880 You know, I know.

00:16:39.080 And I assume they don't like me, you know, and I'm not as right on this issue as you are or my friends at The Daily Wire are.

00:16:44.720 But unless you're 100 percent on board their bizarre team, you're the enemy.

00:16:49.180 So it's like, well, why would I invite such a person into my house and have them do work for me when this could go south quickly because I don't buy into their dogma?

00:16:57.380 Right.

00:16:57.980 Right.

00:16:58.260 It's just a sort of self-preservation at that point, because you can tell it's a it's a really easy rule of thumb.

00:17:04.800 And so the left is clearly looking at politics in a an us versus them kind of perspective.

00:17:11.860 And I don't really like that all that much.

00:17:14.200 I wish we could be a little more civil, maybe even a little bit more tolerant.

00:17:18.000 But the one thing I can promise you is that we're not going to win back any of the ground we've lost in the politics and the culture by burying our heads in the sand and refusing to to admit the way that they're playing the game.

00:17:30.100 These guys are playing for keeps.

00:17:32.660 Well, and the difference is, I mean, somebody let's say somebody's in believes the whole trans ideology and you can change your gender tomorrow and all that stuff.

00:17:40.140 If I were around that person, I would treat them with respect.

00:17:43.500 I would be kind to them.

00:17:44.780 I actually do use preferred preferred pronouns, but I don't have to believe it.

00:17:48.760 I don't have to actually believe that they've in fact changed their gender.

00:17:52.600 They would think I'm a bad person if I don't believe it.

00:17:55.080 Right.

00:17:55.220 Like, I just feel like the one side that has questions about this isn't saying you're bad and you're evil to people who are going through it.

00:18:03.820 The doctors who cut them different story, but they're the ones looking at us saying you're evil.

00:18:10.720 You're a bigot.

00:18:11.440 You're a transphobe.

00:18:12.700 If you don't see the world exactly as I do, which is what makes me suspicious of them.

00:18:16.520 Can we talk about the doctors?

00:18:18.260 Because this has been all over the news over the past week or so.

00:18:22.280 And more and more, you know, we're looking at you guys at the Daily Wire, Libs of TikTok, other news organizations on the right are trying to take a harder look at hospitals that are actually performing these radical surgeries on minors.

00:18:38.340 All right.

00:18:38.660 That's you're an adult.

00:18:39.980 Do whatever the hell you want.

00:18:41.360 You want to make your ass look like, you know, the Hoover Dam.

00:18:45.080 Go for it, Kim.

00:18:46.520 Um, but my point is we stay out of it when you're an adult, you can do weird things to yourself when you're a child.

00:18:54.040 It's a different story.

00:18:55.100 It's a very different story.

00:18:56.540 And there's been pushback.

00:18:58.620 Okay.

00:18:59.460 The one hospital says, no, we didn't actually do that.

00:19:01.440 No, we don't actually do it on minors.

00:19:03.100 But there's this one hospital in San Francisco.

00:19:06.080 I feel like you, you did some reporting on this.

00:19:08.520 Um, Dr.

00:19:09.360 Robert Mosser is the founder of the gender confirmation center, gender confirmation.

00:19:14.240 That's how they refer to it because they didn't like transition, uh, in San Francisco, part of a presentation at the Philadelphia trans wellness conference.

00:19:23.180 So this is not ambiguous and it took place a year ago, July of 2021.

00:19:27.480 And here's a clip of the presentation where he talks about on whom he will do a sex change or sex change like operations.

00:19:35.360 I do not have a minimum age of any sort in my practice.

00:19:40.340 There's no chronological age that says you don't get surgery.

00:19:43.560 Now, having said that, I don't think I've ever done a consult on a 12 year old yet, but we would if one came our way.

00:19:50.500 We just haven't had reason to.

00:19:52.800 Um, and then we've done a number of 13 year olds who are, who did consults on.

00:19:56.600 I think I've done one or two, 13 year old surgeries for the most part, it's 14 and up that by the time everything comes together, plus insurance approval, plus everything that surgery actually gets completed.

00:20:09.160 That's horrifying.

00:20:10.620 It's horrifying.

00:20:11.460 If, if a child walked into a doctor's office and said, doc, I want you to cut my fingers off, the doc would say, you've got some problems, kid.

00:20:19.740 We need to refer you to a psychiatrist.

00:20:21.780 If the same child walks into that doctor's office and says, doc, I want you to cut my uterus out.

00:20:26.540 The doctor would say that doctor would say, oh, well, you're a wonderful, brave, uh, person.

00:20:32.600 You're so right.

00:20:33.500 We do need to cut your uterus out as soon as possible.

00:20:36.360 Let's get this young lady over to the operating room.

00:20:39.440 Something has gone seriously, seriously wrong.

00:20:42.460 And by the way, he says that he's performed these surgeries on 13 year olds.

00:20:46.600 He hasn't yet on a 12 year old, but he would.

00:20:49.360 He said there's no lower limit.

00:20:51.240 He said there is no age limit whatsoever.

00:20:54.780 And so it's no surprise.

00:20:56.360 Some of us stodgy old social conservatives have been talking about the slippery slope for a long time.

00:21:01.280 Not only do we continue to slip down it, we're actually accelerating how quickly we are going down the slippery slope.

00:21:07.220 And part of it is because this is the logical conclusion, I think, of the premise of transgenderism.

00:21:15.040 If, if you really believe in transgenderism, the idea that a man, guy who looks like a man really can be a woman and vice versa.

00:21:24.140 And they have to have these mutilations to make themselves look more like the opposite sex.

00:21:29.280 If you really believe that that is an ontologically true statement, then it makes perfect sense that you would begin these kinds of mutilations before puberty.

00:21:38.160 Because once puberty sets in, it's much harder to make these changes and your bones will harden and you'll have much more suffering later in life, according to this premise.

00:21:48.320 So, of course, there's going to be no lower limit.

00:21:51.380 The problem here, I think, is not so much are they going to do it on a 13-year-old or a 16-year-old.

00:21:56.200 The issue, I think, is that premise.

00:21:59.180 And so the left, the pro-transgender crowd, they're asserting a view of the world and of human nature that men can really be women.

00:22:07.200 And the right, we're really unwilling to do that.

00:22:10.360 I mean, we usually retreat more toward the live your own life.

00:22:14.460 We don't really want to run people's lives for them.

00:22:18.040 We're generally somewhat content in our own families and communities, and we just don't want to think about it too much.

00:22:24.000 But there's really, I think, no way to avoid it.

00:22:26.640 I think we need to articulate a clearer view of the world.

00:22:29.320 We have to enforce it.

00:22:30.480 We have to put it into law.

00:22:31.900 And we need pervert, quack, shaman doctors like this witch doctor in San Francisco.

00:22:37.640 We need them to be basically imprisoned if they violate the law.

00:22:42.140 This guy should lose his medical license.

00:22:44.140 Yes, 100%.

00:22:44.960 That's exactly right.

00:22:46.840 You said it perfectly.

00:22:48.100 This guy should not be practicing medicine.

00:22:49.940 He should be nowhere near a 10-year-old.

00:22:52.100 Oh, parental consent would let him do a hysterectomy on a 10-year-old girl.

00:22:57.520 You're right.

00:22:57.960 He should go to prison if he's done that.

00:23:00.120 And if he's done it on 12-year-olds or 13-year-olds, as he says.

00:23:03.460 What if you have some lunatic parent?

00:23:05.380 I can't, as a lunatic parent, go in there and say,

00:23:08.160 I want you to take out my child's appendix.

00:23:10.320 I want it gone.

00:23:10.960 And the doctor says, it's not doing him any harm.

00:23:13.400 And I say, I want it out right now.

00:23:15.620 That's, they wouldn't do it.

00:23:17.100 It would not be considered medically sound.

00:23:19.260 But I can say, I want her uterus out because this week she says she's actually a boy.

00:23:25.700 And they'll do, that's insane.

00:23:27.540 And let me just give you one story as I'm thinking about 10.

00:23:29.720 So I have an 11-year-old daughter.

00:23:31.780 I have three kids and one is an 11-year-old daughter.

00:23:33.860 Last year, as she was going from 9 to 10, we had a conversation about anorexia.

00:23:39.660 She had heard that term.

00:23:41.260 And she said, what is it?

00:23:42.860 And I said, well, it's hard to explain, right, to a kid.

00:23:46.360 I said, it's as if somebody looks in the mirror and they see a chicken.

00:23:53.180 And they're like, I'm a chicken.

00:23:54.880 And everybody around them is like, no, you're not a chicken.

00:23:58.380 You're not a, you're a, you're a human.

00:24:00.120 You're, you're a girl.

00:24:01.700 And she's like, I know I'm a chicken, you know, and I'm going to start eating like a

00:24:05.100 chicken and behaving like a chicken.

00:24:06.480 Everybody's telling you you're not a chicken, but you just can't believe them.

00:24:10.540 And whenever you look in that mirror, despite the fact that there's a girl looking back

00:24:13.360 at you, you see a chicken.

00:24:14.940 I'm like, that's what it's like for an anorexic.

00:24:16.980 Only it's with fat.

00:24:18.080 They look at themselves in the mirror and they see themselves as fat, even though they

00:24:21.460 can be bone thin, they can be skin and bones, but all they can see is fat.

00:24:25.340 And so it's like an illusion of what you're seeing in the, in the mirror.

00:24:29.200 So I was like, this is actually a pretty, I was kind of proud of myself.

00:24:31.960 I'm like, I think I nailed this.

00:24:33.340 And my daughter who's smart, she, she goes, so, so is she a chicken?

00:24:43.460 That's a question.

00:24:44.160 If she, if she asked her teacher, her teacher would probably have to say, yes.

00:24:48.080 But Michael, in this bizarre, in this abusive surgeon's world, that 10-year-old has the

00:24:54.500 mental capacity to say, I want my uterus removed and I want my, I want a double mastectomy.

00:25:01.860 And presumably, since he says nothing's off limits, I want the phallus constructed where

00:25:06.800 they basically cut off your forearm, leaving only the two bones so they can get all the

00:25:13.580 proper skin and tissue they need to construct a phallus.

00:25:16.840 OK, so this sick effort is going to do that on a 10-year-old like mine, who's from, you

00:25:23.060 know, a nice family where she's got engaged parents and she's at a good school and she

00:25:26.160 still can misunderstand that story to think the girl might actually be a chicken.

00:25:29.840 OK, you see my point?

00:25:31.060 It's sick.

00:25:31.680 It's messed up.

00:25:33.140 Well, it's a, and we're talking about people who are minors.

00:25:36.840 When we talk about minors, we think of the age of consent.

00:25:40.460 Why is there an age of consent?

00:25:41.820 Because young people don't have all of their faculties developed yet and they can't make

00:25:45.840 decisions for themselves.

00:25:47.260 The age of consent laws in, I think most states at least, are such that if you are 17 years

00:25:52.320 old, 16 years old, certainly, you cannot consent to a one night stand to have sexual activity

00:25:59.040 with someone who's 17 or 18 years old, you know, in your high school, let's say.

00:26:03.880 You cannot consent to that.

00:26:05.200 Certainly, you can't consent to it with someone who's 21, 22, 23 years old because you have

00:26:10.580 not developed enough.

00:26:12.900 This is a good point.

00:26:13.620 Yet we are told that that very person, actually someone who's 10 years younger, a six-year-old

00:26:17.860 could consent not to one night of sexual activity, but to a lifelong, permanent, irrevocable

00:26:24.700 sexual decision that will affect your life and damage your health in so many other ways.

00:26:30.240 It's obviously incoherent, but the problem is that the left has adopted this view of

00:26:37.480 human nature and they're just going to push it.

00:26:40.180 And it's going to be a total view.

00:26:41.880 There's not going to be any Megyn Kelly, middle ground, let's come to a reconciliation, maybe

00:26:47.640 at a certain age or something.

00:26:48.900 These guys, as I mentioned earlier, they are playing for keeps and their view of the world

00:26:53.140 is a totalizing, totalitarian view of the world.

00:26:56.660 And if that means transing the two-year-olds, Megyn, I'm going to be back on your show in

00:27:00.800 six months.

00:27:01.600 We're not going to be talking about 13-year-olds anymore.

00:27:04.380 We're going to be talking about six-year-olds and younger.

00:27:06.640 There's going to be no end to that slippery slope.

00:27:09.840 And it's even if you don't go as far as surgery, we had doctors on the program not long ago talking

00:27:14.580 about how some of the kids who go directly on the puberty blockers and then the cross-gender

00:27:19.580 hormones, A, can be rendered sterile for life, and then B, can never achieve orgasm.

00:27:27.640 So you're condemning your child to this life.

00:27:31.560 It reminds me of the genital mutilation that the radical Islamists subject the young girls

00:27:37.600 to, right?

00:27:38.480 Like, we all condemn that as barbarism, but we're allowing it to be done to our young

00:27:43.780 children here under the auspices of being supportive of our, you know, gender affirming

00:27:49.160 of our young, confused children.

00:27:51.580 And in California, not only do they have this guy, Dr. Rossum in San Francisco, of course,

00:27:57.160 but California just this week was either pushing or passed a law that says if you're a doctor,

00:28:06.060 you could lose your medical license for spreading disinformation.

00:28:10.900 And what they deem disinformation is in the eye of the beholder.

00:28:15.160 It's going to be who's running the government over there.

00:28:17.300 This was inspired by COVID, and they didn't want people out there talking about ivermectin

00:28:22.240 or, you know, whatever hydroxychloroquine.

00:28:26.140 But this could be used against doctors who are not gender affirming, who want to stop and

00:28:31.720 say, you might not be trans.

00:28:33.600 I mean, truly, we're going to be at that point very soon in California where you could

00:28:36.940 lose your medical license for pushing back on somebody who says, I'm the opposite gender.

00:28:41.220 Certainly.

00:28:41.420 And it's an important lesson for all of us, even to zoom out a little bit from this kind

00:28:46.020 of crazy gender issue, to remember that in every age, in every generation, there are

00:28:53.020 all sorts of crazy, kooky, bizarre medical scientific interventions.

00:28:57.660 Now we're chopping the skin off of, we're chopping off people's forearms and legs to construct

00:29:03.560 fake genitals on little kids.

00:29:05.220 That's pretty insane.

00:29:06.640 60 years ago, we performed lobotomies.

00:29:09.100 We'd put little pics into people's brains and swirl their brains around to treat certain

00:29:13.480 mental illnesses.

00:29:14.380 Before that, we would treat certain diseases by bleeding you or putting leeches on your body.

00:29:19.740 Before, there have been all sorts of crazy sort of interventions.

00:29:24.160 And I think, especially if the experience of the last two and a half years, where the

00:29:28.420 so-called medical scientific authorities have been wrong about pretty much every single

00:29:33.580 thing regarding the global pandemic we all just lived through, from the origin, to the

00:29:39.020 masks, to the treatments, to the vaccine efficacy, to the list goes on and on and on.

00:29:44.280 They've been wrong about everything.

00:29:45.700 It should give us all a healthy skepticism.

00:29:48.360 Bring those experts down a little peg.

00:29:50.620 Give them maybe some humility.

00:29:53.520 Maybe give us a little more confidence in our gut instincts and our traditions and the

00:29:58.420 way that we've lived for a long, long time.

00:30:00.700 And recognize that these geniuses, these self-appointed geniuses in the lab coats and the political

00:30:06.500 bullies who defend them and who silence all the opposition, these guys are in many ways

00:30:13.080 no more advanced than some kind of tribal witch doctor.

00:30:16.900 I mean, frankly, at this point, Megan, if you told me, Michael, you've got to go see

00:30:21.020 a doctor, you can either go see that doctor in California or you can go see an African

00:30:26.040 shaman who's cooking up magic potions in a cauldron, I would totally go to the shaman.

00:30:31.940 I trust his medical advice much more than the lunatic in California.

00:30:35.820 So it's interesting because we we end this half an hour as we began it with censorship

00:30:42.060 of viewpoints that are deemed heterodox by someone who purports to know better, whether

00:30:49.040 it's big tech and tick tock or the California government over people who have medical degrees

00:30:56.840 and went to Stanford and Yale and so on, but don't want to go along with the party lines.

00:31:01.660 Either way, it's dangerous.

00:31:04.040 And by the way, your reference to the the like the maggots of what you were talking to.

00:31:10.620 Have you been watching House of the Dragon?

00:31:13.440 I have not, actually.

00:31:14.720 Should I watch that?

00:31:15.860 It's the Game of Thrones prequel.

00:31:18.140 And we're two episodes into it.

00:31:20.300 And they did have the guy like he was they I think it was maggots.

00:31:23.880 He had to put his hand into like a bowl of maggots to eat off his dying flesh.

00:31:27.580 Anyway, I realize it's not real, but I'm just saying to your point, they have a credibility

00:31:32.240 than Fauci as far as I'm concerned.

00:31:37.440 All right, Michael Knowles and I have a lot to discuss right after this, including President

00:31:42.560 Biden suggesting you don't really need your gun.

00:31:45.340 If you're going to fight the federal government, you better get an F-15.

00:31:48.120 What?

00:31:49.220 I don't feel better.

00:31:50.680 Stand by.

00:31:51.260 So President Biden goes to Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania, and this is on August 30th and makes a speech.

00:32:05.180 Of course, Pennsylvania's got some hot political races before this midterm that we're all watching,

00:32:08.960 including Dr. Oz.

00:32:10.820 And he makes a couple of bizarre remarks and it kind of reminds you why they don't let him

00:32:15.720 come out, you know, and talk too much, despite his primetime address tonight on the soul of

00:32:20.240 the nation.

00:32:22.180 He decides to make a comment about guns.

00:32:24.920 And he's, of course, ripping on the right for being pro Second Amendment.

00:32:29.580 It's right there in the Constitution.

00:32:31.020 Take it up with the founders.

00:32:32.460 And he says the following, which seems to mean like because the people say like, hey, we have

00:32:37.340 a right to protect ourselves from criminals and to form a militia and to prevent our government

00:32:42.980 from overreaching.

00:32:44.180 And here was his response.

00:32:46.240 Right now, you can't go out and buy an automatic weapon.

00:32:48.840 You can't go out and buy a cannon.

00:32:51.720 And for those brave right wing Americans who say it's all about keeping America, keeping

00:32:58.900 America's independent and safe.

00:33:00.880 If you want to fight against the country, you need an F-15.

00:33:04.120 You need something a little more than a gun.

00:33:07.600 No, I'm not joking.

00:33:08.840 Think about this.

00:33:09.700 Think about the rationale we use that's used to provide this.

00:33:13.740 And who are they shooting at?

00:33:15.660 Shooting at these guys behind me.

00:33:19.880 So at which point would all Republicans started to Google how to make a nuke?

00:33:24.860 I mean, what is he saying?

00:33:26.540 You know, Megan, I'm going to see if I can get this right.

00:33:29.960 What we're being told is conservatives have absolutely no power.

00:33:36.740 Our AR-15s, they don't mean anything.

00:33:39.440 There is no way to oppose the government.

00:33:42.020 You would need a squadron of F-15s.

00:33:45.040 If you wanted to even have a fighting chance against the government, you'd still certainly

00:33:48.340 lose, by the way.

00:33:49.540 Also, a band of unarmed people, one of whom was wearing a horn hat, almost overthrew the

00:33:56.880 republic on January 6th.

00:33:58.860 So I don't quite...

00:34:00.120 Did the horn hat guy have an F-15?

00:34:02.280 I don't...

00:34:02.760 Hold on.

00:34:03.480 I was told that you need a squadron of fighter jets.

00:34:07.060 And yet I was also told we have to take away the AR-15, the most popular rifle in America,

00:34:11.840 because it's a weapon of war.

00:34:13.800 So which is it?

00:34:14.680 I'm not sure.

00:34:15.040 Furthermore, I was told that the American people, if the government ever, God forbid,

00:34:21.420 turned so tyrannical that they're, you know, strafing the middle of the country, dropping

00:34:26.640 bombs on Oklahoma or something, that we would have no way to defend ourselves.

00:34:31.120 And yet I seem to recall that a band of basically illiterate goat herders with black rifle, black

00:34:41.280 powder rifle guns in Afghanistan, successfully fended off the United States for about 20 years.

00:34:47.780 Afghanistan is the size of Texas.

00:34:50.120 So please forgive me if I'm a little skeptical of some of Joe Biden's claims.

00:34:56.100 What he's...

00:34:56.620 He's speaking from a point of desperation, which is that desperate regimes always try to disarm

00:35:03.000 the citizens.

00:35:03.880 And they don't disarm the citizens because the arms aren't significant.

00:35:07.960 They disarm the citizens because they know that an armed populace is going to be much,

00:35:12.820 much harder to put the foot on the back of their necks.

00:35:16.500 Hmm.

00:35:17.260 Yeah.

00:35:17.500 Again, well said.

00:35:19.420 Then he made yet another racist comment.

00:35:22.340 I mean, it's like if the media would actually take, you know, keep track of Joe Biden's racist

00:35:27.880 comments, they would see like his...

00:35:30.740 He dwarfs Trump.

00:35:32.240 Dwarfs Trump.

00:35:33.500 Trump made some comment at a rally.

00:35:35.280 He was like, my black American, my, you know, like that, which they blew up into a front

00:35:39.840 page story for days, right?

00:35:41.660 For days.

00:35:42.820 And Biden gets passed on all of it.

00:35:45.040 You ain't black if you don't vote Democrat.

00:35:48.120 All the stuff that he has said over the years.

00:35:49.940 And we could go down the list.

00:35:51.060 And the latest was about how you know where to find the best basketball in the state.

00:35:58.400 If you know what I'm saying, listen here.

00:36:02.020 If I can just interject for a moment, my deceased son, Bo, he was the attorney general of the

00:36:07.660 state of Delaware.

00:36:08.840 And what he used to do is go down in the east side, what's called the bucket, highest crime

00:36:14.320 rate in the country.

00:36:15.460 There's a place where I used to, I was the only white guy that worked as a lifeguard down

00:36:19.240 in that area to the east side.

00:36:20.780 And you know where the, you can always tell where the best basketball in the state is

00:36:24.760 and the best basketball in the city is.

00:36:26.620 It's where everybody shows up.

00:36:29.240 Oh boy.

00:36:30.340 Just as a refresher, here are a couple of others.

00:36:33.480 You cannot go into a 7-Eleven or a Dunkin' Donuts unless you have a slight Indian accent.

00:36:38.040 I'm not joking.

00:36:39.440 Obama, when you really, when you hear this quote again, it's stunning.

00:36:43.760 He became the guy's vice president.

00:36:45.000 Obama is the first mainstream African-American who is articulate and bright and clean and

00:36:53.140 a nice looking guy.

00:36:54.440 What the F?

00:36:56.060 He said that poor kids are just as bright and talented as white kids.

00:37:02.000 Oh my God.

00:37:04.200 And now this.

00:37:05.580 So, you know, you got to keep it in context as he's got a long history of these things.

00:37:10.240 Collective yawn by the media.

00:37:12.080 They don't care.

00:37:12.520 I'm starting to think that Corn Pop was the good guy.

00:37:15.980 I think when Biden was that lifeguard, he didn't tell that story right.

00:37:19.420 Corn Pop, I think, was the good guy.

00:37:21.100 Of course he gets a pass.

00:37:22.160 It doesn't matter because no one actually cares about racism.

00:37:25.400 Racism has basically lost all of its meaning.

00:37:28.620 All it is, is a cudgel to attack Republicans.

00:37:32.880 When Joe Biden comes out and he says, these Republicans are all racist.

00:37:36.360 Most recently he said, these Republicans, they're fascists.

00:37:38.960 I promise you, I would bet my life savings.

00:37:42.420 Joe Biden not only has never read the doctrine of fascism by Mussolini, he has never even heard

00:37:47.460 of the doctrine of fascism.

00:37:48.480 He has no idea what it means.

00:37:49.780 All fascism means, and George Orwell made this point, today is something that I don't

00:37:55.720 like.

00:37:56.300 All racism means is bad.

00:37:58.960 You're a bad person.

00:38:00.140 And so it doesn't matter.

00:38:01.060 They'll never hold Biden or any of the Democrats to this standard.

00:38:03.520 has nothing to do with race, has nothing to do with 20th century Italian political movements.

00:38:07.980 What they're saying is, you Republicans are bad, and we are going to boot you out of the

00:38:12.800 public square.

00:38:14.480 So yes, President Unity did refer to half the country as semi-fascists.

00:38:19.720 And just in case we didn't fully understand what he meant, his right-hand woman, Corrine

00:38:24.960 Jean-Pierre, takes to the White House podium lectern to explain as follows.

00:38:30.280 Listen to how she put it.

00:38:31.100 The President thinks that there is an extremist threat to our democracy.

00:38:36.840 The President has been clear, as he can be, on that particular piece when we talk about

00:38:42.480 a democracy, when we talk about our freedoms.

00:38:45.020 The way that he sees is the MAGA Republicans are the most energized part of the Republican

00:38:50.300 Party.

00:38:51.840 That extreme, this is an extreme threat to our democracy, to our freedom, to our rights.

00:38:57.640 They just don't respect the rule of law.

00:39:00.140 You've heard that from the President.

00:39:02.920 And, you know, they are pursuing an agenda that takes away people's rights.

00:39:08.640 So, which is what the President said last week on Thursday.

00:39:11.480 You all heard him.

00:39:12.120 This is what the President said yesterday.

00:39:13.920 And that's what he's going to continue to say.

00:39:16.140 She's reading.

00:39:18.760 She prepared that.

00:39:20.880 It came out exactly as she wanted it to.

00:39:23.700 That MAGA Republicans are an extreme threat to our democracy, etc.

00:39:29.960 That's the key.

00:39:32.380 The key is that this was not a gaffe that she might be prone to, that Joe Biden is certainly

00:39:37.060 prone to.

00:39:37.780 This was written out.

00:39:39.480 This was agreed upon in the White House.

00:39:41.880 She repeated it.

00:39:42.840 And she's calling the Republicans terrorists who pose an existential threat.

00:39:48.020 You'll notice that the left doesn't refer to terrorists as terrorists.

00:39:52.040 They refer to the leader of ISIS as the austere religious scholar.

00:39:56.980 That's right.

00:39:57.440 They're really...

00:39:58.100 It was in the New York Times.

00:40:00.000 That's right.

00:40:00.900 But the Republicans are the terrorists.

00:40:03.860 And there's such an irony, too.

00:40:05.060 Because, you know, if you call someone an extreme threat to our democracy, you're saying this

00:40:11.460 is an...

00:40:11.900 Their very existence is the threat.

00:40:13.980 It's existential.

00:40:15.660 And so the only implied solution here would be to get rid of half the country.

00:40:21.380 They're saying the only way that we can protect government of the people, by the people, and

00:40:25.600 for the people is to get rid of half the people.

00:40:28.560 And that's incoherent from the standpoint of democracy.

00:40:31.820 But it does start to make sense when you realize, and the Harvard law professor Adrian

00:40:36.480 Vermeule has made this point, when the left refers to democracy, they don't mean democracy.

00:40:42.100 They mean liberalism.

00:40:43.260 They mean leftism.

00:40:44.180 They mean progressivism.

00:40:45.320 That's the only way it makes sense that when the people elect Donald Trump, it's a threat

00:40:50.160 to democracy.

00:40:50.660 When the people elect Bolsonaro in Brazil, they elect Orban in Hungary.

00:40:55.000 It could even be an overwhelming majority of people who elect these leaders.

00:40:58.760 But if the leaders are right wing, then somehow it's a threat to democracy, even if the demos,

00:41:03.840 the people, is the one electing them.

00:41:05.520 Because for the left, democracy means absolutely nothing.

00:41:08.300 It's all just to protect liberalism.

00:41:10.820 Well, that's why he's giving this speech tonight about the soul of the nation.

00:41:16.140 It's going to be us versus them.

00:41:18.020 President Unity will once again be in an us versus them mode, where he's talking about,

00:41:23.120 one presumes, the semi-fascists, the extreme threat to democracy and OK, the MAGA Republicans.

00:41:30.460 I mean, who is that?

00:41:31.620 Because like half the country voted for President Trump, who had a MAGA agenda.

00:41:38.040 The MAGA agenda lives on even and is supported by many people who weren't diehard Trump fans,

00:41:45.420 but they liked sort of his general policy and general approach.

00:41:48.400 So MAGA Republicans, it's like, that's everyone.

00:41:51.500 That's everyone in the right half of the country.

00:41:53.920 Well, this is the rhetorical key, because he's trying to distinguish between the mainstream

00:41:58.300 Republicans who totally oppose Trump and the MAGA Republicans.

00:42:02.560 He's saying that's the fringe.

00:42:03.940 But the Never Trump movement, such as it is, I think all it comprises at this point is Bill

00:42:09.780 Kristol and the five friends he has over for tea so that they can complain about the Donald.

00:42:14.560 It just statistically doesn't exist.

00:42:18.220 The MAGA Republicans are the Republican Party.

00:42:21.440 It's the whole Republican Party.

00:42:23.300 And so what, but that's always been the point is he wants it to seem in his rhetoric like

00:42:29.520 he's leaving it out for reasonable discussion, but he's really not.

00:42:32.860 I mean, he's really saying half the country is evil, awful, poses an existential threat to

00:42:37.620 the democracy and their very existence is a major problem.

00:42:40.820 And then you get the media on cue picking up with that message, running with it, allowing

00:42:46.400 their guests to run with it, unchallenged, including Kurt Bardella, who used to be on the

00:42:52.060 right.

00:42:52.500 And then Trump sort of gave him the Trump derangement syndrome situation.

00:42:56.160 And now he's on the left.

00:42:58.280 He I think he ran like the Republican congressional.

00:43:01.360 I can't remember, but he got fired from that position.

00:43:03.360 In any event, here he was on MSNBC and listen to how he described Republicans.

00:43:08.180 We are watching right now a very radical and extreme Republican Party mirror what we have

00:43:14.840 seen in other places like Nazi Germany, like other places like the Bolsheviks.

00:43:18.740 We have seen this playbook before.

00:43:20.340 We have seen a ruling party try to use things like propaganda, try to silence the free press,

00:43:27.260 try to restrict what women can do.

00:43:29.020 We have seen this playbook before, and it always ends disastrously for the majority of

00:43:33.080 people that are subjected to that.

00:43:34.760 That's what the warning signs are that we're seeing from the president right now.

00:43:37.340 He is ringing the bell that we need to check in, pay attention, because this is a very

00:43:42.140 dangerous line that the Republican Party is under full embrace of autocratic ways and

00:43:47.000 means is nothing but disastrous.

00:43:51.260 Silence the free press is a great one to include in there.

00:43:53.800 The Republicans are trying to do that.

00:43:55.340 Go ahead.

00:43:56.180 I think we need a free press before we can silence a free press.

00:43:59.460 So that doesn't exactly exist in America, where every institution, you know, the Washington

00:44:05.520 Post and the New York Times would make Pravda blush at the height of the Soviet Union.

00:44:09.820 But even beyond that, I agree with one thing that he said, which is the ruling class.

00:44:15.460 He's accusing the ruling class of all of these things.

00:44:18.160 What's the ruling class?

00:44:19.020 The Republicans have, at this moment, practically speaking, zero institutional power, not anywhere.

00:44:27.440 You can maybe make an argument that the Republicans have power on the Supreme Court, though it's

00:44:32.060 a razor-thin majority, but even that, and the Supreme Court is at least officially not a

00:44:37.740 partisan institution, but all the rest of it.

00:44:40.300 We don't have the Congress.

00:44:41.200 We don't have the Senate.

00:44:41.820 We don't have the executive.

00:44:42.680 We don't have the bureaucracy.

00:44:43.680 We don't have the media.

00:44:44.920 We don't have the corporations.

00:44:46.380 We don't have the financial institutions.

00:44:47.940 We don't have big tech.

00:44:48.960 We don't have anything, okay?

00:44:50.140 We don't have a single piece of institutional power here.

00:44:53.540 We have a few carve-outs on talk radio and a few other places to maybe get our voices

00:44:58.080 heard before we all get kicked off of TikTok or wherever else.

00:45:01.700 And so, as always, the Democrat accusations here are really confessions.

00:45:07.360 What it is is a sort of projection, and you hear all of the hysterical rhetoric, you know,

00:45:13.160 everyone I disagree with is Hitler.

00:45:14.580 That's the kind of level of sophistication that we're getting from the left now, but it

00:45:19.160 has a purpose.

00:45:19.940 I mean, the reason that they're calling us terrorists and they're calling us Nazis and

00:45:23.280 they're calling us fascists and racists and all the worst things you can possibly be called

00:45:27.400 is to discredit a group of people that, while it might be half of the country, institutionally

00:45:36.280 has virtually no power and they want to ostracize us or worse, even more than they already are.

00:45:43.640 I can't end without asking you about these tweets.

00:45:47.880 Every time the pumpkin spice latte comes back around, I immediately identify as a 16-year-old

00:45:54.900 white girl in Uggs and in North Face.

00:45:56.700 You love the pumpkin spice latte.

00:46:00.500 Is it true?

00:46:01.620 I would ask that you respect my identity, Megan.

00:46:04.720 And it is true.

00:46:05.600 It's probably the most controversial thing we've talked about today.

00:46:08.560 I will never forgive Joe Biden, who through his inflation has caused the price of the PSL

00:46:13.440 to rise 4%.

00:46:15.160 But listen, I make no apologies.

00:46:17.340 Is Starbucks a woke corporation?

00:46:19.100 Probably.

00:46:19.860 Is the PSL girly and sugary and not fit for a grown adult man?

00:46:23.940 Possibly.

00:46:24.340 I don't care, Megan.

00:46:25.360 I contain multitudes.

00:46:26.840 I love my nostalgic autumnal treat and I will not give up.

00:46:31.600 Autumnal.

00:46:32.340 I've never had one.

00:46:33.640 Should I try it?

00:46:34.740 Today might be pumpkin spice latte day, according to my team.

00:46:38.300 Megan, next time you're in town, on me.

00:46:41.080 You're so generous.

00:46:42.560 Thank you so much, Michael Knowles, for all the insights and all the laughs.

00:46:46.320 It's always great to talk to you.

00:46:47.700 Great to be with you as always.

00:46:48.720 Thanks for having me.

00:46:49.760 And don't forget to check out the Michael Knowles show, which you will absolutely love,

00:46:53.260 as I do.

00:46:55.020 Don't forget here, Chris Steierwalt joins us next and he's got some predictions on the

00:46:58.640 midterms that you're going to want to hear.

00:47:00.220 And don't forget that you can find the Megan Kelly show live on Sirius XM Triumph channel

00:47:03.860 111 every weekday at noon east and the full video show and clips by subscribing to our

00:47:09.760 YouTube channel, youtube.com slash Megan Kelly.

00:47:12.560 And thanks to all of you.

00:47:14.240 We did it.

00:47:15.280 We hit our goal of 500,000 subscribers last night.

00:47:20.240 We want to do it by the end of August because we launched one year ago on YouTube and I feel

00:47:26.360 pretty good about that.

00:47:27.100 I feel like 500,000 is a lot of subscribers for a year in the YouTube business and I owe

00:47:32.380 it all to you guys.

00:47:33.240 So I thank you very much.

00:47:35.240 And now we have one year to get to a million.

00:47:37.960 I wonder if you grow faster when you have a bigger base.

00:47:40.360 Um, help me find that out.

00:47:42.480 Spread the good word and go on over there and subscribe if you haven't already and see

00:47:46.320 what all the fun is about.

00:47:50.660 The unofficial end of summer means the race to control Washington is really heating up.

00:47:56.540 President Biden, former President Trump and House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy all

00:48:00.020 making stops in Pennsylvania this week.

00:48:02.920 Overnight, another key race appeared to have been decided in Alaska where Sarah Palin lost

00:48:09.080 out to her Democratic opponent in a special House election.

00:48:13.460 The legacy media is so excited about this.

00:48:16.240 They say it spells trouble for Republicans come November.

00:48:20.280 But does it?

00:48:21.320 There's like about four people who show up for these like special elections.

00:48:25.360 Can we really put all this stock in how they vote?

00:48:28.520 There's no one better to ask than my next guest.

00:48:31.860 There are few people who know the ins and outs of Washington and elections as well as this

00:48:36.740 person. And we go way, way back.

00:48:39.620 Chris Steyerwalt has a brand new book out and it's called, I love the title, Broken News.

00:48:45.620 Get it? News that's been broken.

00:48:47.520 Like the news itself is broken by a very good, that's a good, clever.

00:48:50.560 I like it.

00:48:51.580 Why the media rage machine divides America and how to fight back.

00:48:56.200 Oh, it does.

00:48:57.020 It does indeed divide America.

00:48:58.620 Chris is also co-host of the podcast Ink Stained Wretches with another friend of the show,

00:49:03.760 Eliana Johnson, who was here on Monday.

00:49:05.300 Hey, Chris, welcome back.

00:49:06.480 Great to have you.

00:49:07.640 What a treat to be here.

00:49:08.960 Happy Thursday.

00:49:10.400 Is this Thursday?

00:49:11.680 Happy pumpkin spice latte day.

00:49:14.060 I'm already getting all sorts of incoming people saying, don't do it.

00:49:17.600 It's still summer.

00:49:18.740 This is bullshit.

00:49:19.760 And other people saying, you've never had one.

00:49:21.500 Are you insane?

00:49:22.300 How could you not have had a pumpkin spice latte yet?

00:49:24.980 Wait, do we get to cuss on here?

00:49:26.680 Is that right?

00:49:27.360 We do.

00:49:27.840 Yes.

00:49:29.620 That's hot.

00:49:30.580 That's going to be good.

00:49:31.540 I like that.

00:49:32.200 We'll see what happens now.

00:49:33.300 Well, the boy from West Virginia, the worst swear you ever said on the Kelly file was

00:49:36.980 bacon, bacon.

00:49:41.020 All right.

00:49:41.640 So let's talk politics because I really do want to know.

00:49:43.980 Let's start with Sarah Palin went down.

00:49:46.020 And then this this Republican in New York's 19th went down when he'd been leading that plus

00:49:52.840 a couple of others have, you know, the prognosticators at virtually every media outlet saying

00:49:57.160 the Republicans are losing and they're going to lose in November or at least are a lot more

00:50:03.900 likely to than we thought.

00:50:05.300 What do you make of it?

00:50:05.960 So the Palin race is explicable easily because the Republicans were very bitterly divided.

00:50:13.740 This was just an so this is they have a new kind of voting system up there, ranked choice

00:50:19.820 voting, where in this case, the son of the Democratic former senator, Mark Begich, his he

00:50:28.640 was running in the Republican primary.

00:50:30.240 He was running as a Republican.

00:50:31.920 The Republican vote split between Begich and Palin.

00:50:35.320 And under the rule, your second choice, the voter's second choice, the vote rolls over

00:50:42.180 to that person next.

00:50:43.620 And not surprisingly, the son of a famous Democratic statewide politician in a bitterly divided

00:50:52.640 Republican Party.

00:50:53.380 And Sarah Palin has a lot made a lot of enemies while she was in Republican politics at Alaska,

00:50:59.320 some for good reasons, some for not.

00:51:01.080 So those votes tended to go more toward the Democrat than they did toward the Republican.

00:51:07.940 So I think I think we have to be careful about reading too much into Alaska because of the

00:51:12.100 personalities involved in the voting system.

00:51:14.000 But it is definitely true.

00:51:15.700 It is 100 million percent true that the Republican Party is not in as good a position today as it

00:51:22.920 was on Memorial Day, going into Labor Day.

00:51:25.120 If you look at the generic ballot, if you look at the Senate races, if you look at all that stuff.

00:51:29.420 But guess what happens?

00:51:30.680 And this is the best part is Democrats think that they did that.

00:51:35.960 Right.

00:51:36.260 Democrats think they did that.

00:51:37.660 They don't understand that.

00:51:38.900 Yes, improving some improving economic indicators definitely have helped.

00:51:43.060 But most of the problem for Republicans has been Republicans, right, fighting amongst

00:51:49.120 themselves, the long shadow of Donald Trump, turning off persuadable voters, all of that

00:51:55.780 stuff.

00:51:56.300 Now Biden is coming back out and he's really on the attack and he's doing this big speech

00:52:00.420 night and the student loan debt forgiveness stuff.

00:52:02.780 It's all it's a mistake.

00:52:04.600 This is an election where Biden should prefer to have Donald Trump be front and center in the

00:52:09.780 election, not try to steal the show.

00:52:11.600 He's stealing the show and he won't like the he won't like the reviews.

00:52:15.200 That's a good point.

00:52:16.160 I mean, I listen to a lot of politics coverage from the left and the right.

00:52:20.200 And the one thing they seem to be agreeing on is that Dobbs is is driving a lot of this.

00:52:26.260 I don't know, hobbling of the Republican poll numbers.

00:52:28.980 I got to tell you, Chris, I got my doubts.

00:52:31.400 I think it's playing a role, but I just don't think there's a ton of voters out there who are

00:52:35.700 driven by abortion.

00:52:37.200 Um, I really believe you tell me you're smarter than I am on this stuff.

00:52:42.360 Donald Trump dominating the last month of the news cycle has been very bad for Republicans.

00:52:48.600 For sure.

00:52:49.360 Whether you love him or you hate him, you should not want him to be dominating the news right

00:52:53.740 now.

00:52:54.100 If you are right leaning American.

00:52:56.080 I think I think that is more of what's going on.

00:53:00.400 The just a one word on the Dobbs decision.

00:53:02.980 We don't know what the consequences are.

00:53:04.540 And obviously, Democrats are overstating them already.

00:53:07.060 Uh, it is, uh, I was taken aback by the results in Kansas, uh, and the referendum they had

00:53:13.120 there, not because, uh, that they won.

00:53:15.620 I expected that the anti or I don't know the, the, the pro row faction would carry the

00:53:21.280 day, but I did not see coming that more than 200,000 extra voters showed up who were not

00:53:27.620 participate.

00:53:28.280 We're not participating in either primary.

00:53:30.340 So this is a third of the electorate in the Kansas primary shows up just to vote on this

00:53:34.640 and nothing else.

00:53:35.300 It's a driver.

00:53:36.480 We don't know how much of a driver it's going to be.

00:53:38.180 And we don't know how long it's going to be, what the intensity level will be like over

00:53:42.120 time and how Democrats, how, how agitated Democrats are able to keep voters on this

00:53:47.640 question.

00:53:48.000 Uh, but on your, on the other point, which is if you interrupt the natural cycle of life,

00:53:55.120 here's natural cycle of political life, uh, you win the presidency and then immediately

00:53:59.940 people are like, I'm not crazy about this guy.

00:54:01.960 I'm a little disappointed what he's doing.

00:54:03.100 And the, and the American, the American preference for divided government tells us that in every

00:54:09.320 first presidential midterm election, except for 2002 in the wake of nine 11, that the party

00:54:16.120 in power loses seats.

00:54:17.300 It just is.

00:54:18.340 It's just, it's that way.

00:54:20.160 Average since Ronald Reagan in 1982 is 28 seats.

00:54:24.000 Uh, so what you want, if you're the out party is for all of the attention to be on the party

00:54:29.920 and power and the president and the white house.

00:54:31.300 And that's what Republicans were getting all through the spring inflation, inflation, inflation,

00:54:35.840 still, uh, the, uh, Afghanistan debacle, all of that stuff.

00:54:40.460 The focus is on Biden.

00:54:42.180 Yep.

00:54:42.420 Border focuses on Biden and competency, Biden and the economy, Biden, Biden, Biden, Biden.

00:54:47.520 And then thanks in part to the January 6th committee hearings, but also now, as you

00:54:52.040 said, cause of the Mar-a-Lago surge and all of this other stuff.

00:54:54.320 And plus what was the biggest political story of the late, of the, of the late winter and

00:54:59.080 the spring into the summer was Republican feuds in Pennsylvania, in Ohio, across the

00:55:06.560 country in these awful, expensive, brutal primaries that were substantially litigated

00:55:11.680 around the question of the former president.

00:55:13.340 So instead of this year being a referendum on the, on the current president, we have a,

00:55:18.000 we have competing referenda and Biden is definitely trying to lean into that.

00:55:22.520 I think he's making a mistake, but he's, he, at least, at least you can say for Biden that

00:55:27.440 he knows what his, uh, where he should want the electorate to go.

00:55:31.800 He just doesn't understand that he can't lead them there.

00:55:34.600 Right.

00:55:35.160 Go back to your basement.

00:55:36.240 That's your best policy.

00:55:37.140 Let Trump dominate the headlines talking about Mar-a-Lago and the, and the boxes and so on.

00:55:41.460 You know, the thing you just mentioned about the Republican infighting is interesting

00:55:44.340 because I had a conversation with Rich Lowry a couple months ago after Dobbs.

00:55:47.880 And I was saying, I do think it'll be a, it'll play a role.

00:55:50.600 Um, I don't know how I, I still have skepticism as he heard about how big, but I think the

00:55:55.360 media I said to him at the time is going to play up every story of a woman who can't get

00:55:59.320 an abortion.

00:56:00.220 And we have seen that a hundred percent and some of them have played out and some of them

00:56:04.460 have not played out as true, but that doesn't stop the media from, you know, highlighting

00:56:08.700 it and saying, Oh my God, look what they're doing.

00:56:10.640 So that doesn't help the GOP.

00:56:12.000 But I also think I told, and I recognize that there are some questions about some of

00:56:18.800 these Trump backed candidates and some of these Senate races, but I look at like Carrie

00:56:24.320 Leak and I understand she said some provocative things.

00:56:26.500 It's kind of interesting when you have a female candidate for Senate running out there talking

00:56:29.960 about Trump's big dick energy.

00:56:32.140 Forgive me, but that's what she said.

00:56:34.100 Yeah.

00:56:34.540 Did not, did not have that on my bingo card today, but there, that is so, that is true.

00:56:39.160 That is the thing someone said.

00:56:40.280 It happened, but I have to tell you, like, she's interesting to me.

00:56:44.720 Like she says all the things on paper that I think I'd want if I were an Arizona Republican

00:56:48.620 and she's unconventional and she's provocative, but we, I think we kind of pretend that if we

00:56:57.660 just put like the straight laced Mitt Romney types in there, we're going to get good government,

00:57:02.040 you know, because they're like serious and they're, they're like smart and they've done,

00:57:05.960 whereas then you meet these people in, in real life, as you know, Chris, and like nine times

00:57:11.740 out of 10, you're like, oh, they're never that impressive.

00:57:16.340 So is there really that big a delta between, you know, a Carrie Lake and a Mitt Romney when

00:57:21.780 it comes to seriousness, once they're in the office and capacity to perform, or do you really

00:57:25.920 just want to choose the best candidate who's aligned with your positions?

00:57:29.200 Well, uh, you have to, you know, there's a balancing test.

00:57:32.860 You have to balance character, uh, and ideology basically.

00:57:36.820 And you, there's a cumulative score for as a primary voter in either party and making

00:57:41.240 a choice about who is the person and how closely do they align with my views.

00:57:45.600 And you steal from column A and column B people go back and forth to make up their minds about

00:57:50.240 why they want this person versus that person.

00:57:52.920 And, uh, competency and character closely correlated, uh, people who have a good work ethic, who

00:57:59.200 are good at getting along with other people who are doing, you know, you can be very conservative

00:58:02.760 or you can be very liberal, uh, and still get a lot accomplished in Congress or certainly

00:58:07.820 as a governor.

00:58:08.880 Uh, but it depends on how good you are at working with other people.

00:58:11.540 So that's like a, that that's a, uh, everybody has to make that question, answer that question

00:58:15.820 for themselves, uh, in their own party.

00:58:17.380 But I can tell you this, when it's a good electoral climate for your party, like it is

00:58:22.960 for the Republicans still, uh, in 2022, when the climate is, when the wind is blowing in

00:58:29.140 your direction, you know what you want to do?

00:58:31.520 You want to keep it simple.

00:58:33.020 You want to just keep it simple.

00:58:35.280 Mitt Romney is not simple.

00:58:36.720 Mitt Romney is complicated.

00:58:38.280 He is a complicated, he's a complicated political figure.

00:58:41.140 You want a person who people go, what was the name of that gal who I don't remember?

00:58:45.820 I'm voting for the Republican.

00:58:46.940 You want like a Glenn Youngkin, right in 2010, 2014, the way that Republicans had big smash

00:58:54.820 hit, uh, victories in their primary or in their midterm, uh, elections was not by saying

00:59:01.940 here is the bold difference that we offer.

00:59:05.080 What they said was we're just some guys and gals in suits, uh, who think that the Obama

00:59:10.280 administration stinks and we don't like Obamacare and we think that the economy is not strong

00:59:15.560 enough and guess what the persuadable vote, think about it this way in a, we had the single

00:59:22.800 largest turnout in the previous quadrennial presidential election.

00:59:27.300 We had more than 60%, 60.8, I think percent, we had massive, massive turnout across the country

00:59:34.600 in 2018.

00:59:35.460 We had massive turnout in the midterms, but it was only 50% midterm electorates are smaller

00:59:42.260 than quadrennial electorates.

00:59:44.600 Therefore, a lot of this has to do with yes.

00:59:47.480 First base motivation.

00:59:48.460 You got to get your voters to the polls, but who you're counting on are high propensity

00:59:53.560 voters.

00:59:53.960 You mentioned Glenn Youngkin, and this is a perfect example.

00:59:56.960 The people who are voting in Virginia in 2021 in an off off year election, uh, for governor

01:00:03.640 in their state are the highest kind of propensity voters.

01:00:07.220 And there were a lot of them.

01:00:08.800 As a matter of fact, the difference makers in that election were people who had voted for

01:00:12.460 Joe Biden, mostly men who had voted for Joe Biden in 2020, and then turned around and

01:00:16.980 voted for Youngkin, those are the targets that you have.

01:00:19.560 And you need a candidate that won't weird them out there.

01:00:23.700 Like, this is where the Republicans are going wrong.

01:00:26.400 Like, if I were running for office and I actually was just asked recently, like, would you ever

01:00:30.380 consider running?

01:00:30.960 I'm like, I don't even know what I would run as.

01:00:32.920 Where would I like?

01:00:34.000 I would be there for it.

01:00:35.180 I tell you what, I would I would be there for it just for the debates.

01:00:39.080 I would be there.

01:00:40.080 I would sign up.

01:00:42.320 I've been a registered dem.

01:00:43.600 I've been a registered Republican.

01:00:44.900 I'm now a registered independent.

01:00:46.060 I have been for 20 years.

01:00:47.080 I lean right.

01:00:48.280 But I would never put on the Republican jersey just because there's like, I'm just not going

01:00:52.600 to I'm just not going to be in the same party as like Matt Gaetz and don't even get restarted

01:00:57.880 on the other side.

01:00:58.500 Like, I just I'm just not going to do this.

01:00:59.860 It's not.

01:01:00.200 No, that's never happening.

01:01:02.020 It's not to say they've never had positions that are reasonable.

01:01:04.320 Just no.

01:01:04.920 I'm like, I'm not on the same team.

01:01:06.380 But I also just feel like like picking picking reasonable candidates doesn't help the Republicans

01:01:15.400 because the media will demonize them the same as there as if there is controversial as a

01:01:19.920 Trump.

01:01:20.320 Right.

01:01:20.700 But you and I went through the Romney presidential election together.

01:01:24.080 They made him out to be a raging misogynist because he had the turn of phrase.

01:01:31.540 I had binders full of women when he was trying to say that he asked his staff for female resumes.

01:01:36.620 Anyways, they like it if they had chosen, like, look at Arizona.

01:01:41.200 Forgive me.

01:01:41.560 I can't remember the name of the woman who Carrie Lake was running against, even though

01:01:44.300 I had her on my show.

01:01:45.900 But they would have turned her into a Carrie Lee because they hate Republicans.

01:01:49.240 And the media does that to anybody who's got a chance against a down.

01:01:53.580 Well, I think let me tell you the story of the 1980 presidential election very quickly,

01:01:59.820 which is Jimmy Carter, the incumbent, was way ahead and not for any reason that people

01:02:06.040 were particularly satisfied with the state of the nation in 1980.

01:02:12.180 But because Ronald Reagan, a former movie actor, was declared to be and by the consensus of

01:02:19.860 the if you go back and read the papers, if you read the coverage from that election cycle,

01:02:26.140 Reagan is a dummy.

01:02:27.680 Reagan is radical.

01:02:29.020 Reagan is dangerous.

01:02:30.260 Reagan is bigoted.

01:02:31.380 Reagan is bad news.

01:02:32.420 This guy is bad news.

01:02:33.460 And the Republicans have done it again, just like they did in 64 with Goldwater.

01:02:36.740 They've done it again and all this stuff.

01:02:39.040 Carter would only agree to one debate with Ronald Reagan.

01:02:42.400 And it happened shortly before the election.

01:02:44.540 And guess what?

01:02:45.480 As soon as the public saw that Ronald Reagan wasn't the person who had been described, they

01:02:50.960 said, OK, this guy's probably OK.

01:02:52.980 The same thing happened for Donald Trump, by the way.

01:02:55.500 He had been so vilified, so like how awful, awful, awful this person is, how terrible, terrible

01:03:01.980 this person is, that by the time he made his national debut as a candidate, right, people

01:03:07.100 were like, well, he's mean.

01:03:08.680 He's he's not a nice person, but he's kind of funny and he's a fighter.

01:03:14.840 Yeah.

01:03:15.320 And he's not what they said he was.

01:03:17.040 And the whole thing for candidates in both parties is that you have to remember it isn't

01:03:21.940 who you are.

01:03:22.940 It's who you are compared to who they say you are.

01:03:26.340 It isn't who you are.

01:03:27.640 Right.

01:03:27.780 So every Democrat that's running in 2022, what are they what are the Republicans running

01:03:32.720 against and say liberal, liberal, liberal love Joe Biden.

01:03:36.700 They're the worst.

01:03:37.800 They're a rubber stamp for Joe Biden.

01:03:39.240 They're all of these things.

01:03:40.140 So then they have to figure out a way how to to bounce that back and show the differentiation.

01:03:45.960 Right.

01:03:46.120 They have to say why they disagree with this.

01:03:47.860 You talk about the Arizona race.

01:03:49.720 Mark Kelly has had to find a way to not be a Biden Democrat without fully enraging the

01:03:56.000 Democratic base in Arizona.

01:03:58.060 And that's always the tension.

01:03:59.700 And you and successful candidates.

01:04:01.480 Mitt Romney lived up to or down to, depending on how you want to put it, what Obama was saying

01:04:07.360 about him.

01:04:07.780 Right.

01:04:08.040 He was Mitt Romney's gaffes.

01:04:10.460 It's true.

01:04:11.220 And also Mitt Romney didn't.

01:04:13.140 He was not relatable.

01:04:14.280 Right.

01:04:14.460 He was not.

01:04:15.360 People did not say because, as you know,

01:04:17.860 the most important question that we ask voters about determining who, how they're going to

01:04:24.400 vote in the end, it ends up being some version of this, what, which is cares about people

01:04:30.280 like me, cares about people like me.

01:04:33.240 That's the powerful one.

01:04:34.340 And we always have to remember, this is the hard part.

01:04:36.660 About a third of Americans will never vote for a Republican.

01:04:38.880 About a third of Americans have never vote for a Democrat.

01:04:40.940 But what I call the governing third in between, they will vote for a very liberal person.

01:04:45.000 They'll vote for a very conservative person.

01:04:46.580 But they're always voting for a person.

01:04:48.080 They're always voting for a person that they trust or trust more than the other guy.

01:04:52.180 And we saw it with George Bush versus John Kerry.

01:04:54.940 We saw it with Obama twice.

01:04:56.740 We saw it with Trump against Clinton.

01:04:58.560 And we saw it with Biden against Trump, which is voters who aren't ideological.

01:05:03.380 Right.

01:05:03.700 Who say, I don't care about all of this stuff that much.

01:05:07.120 Yeah.

01:05:07.420 But I have to go vote.

01:05:08.460 I feel like I have a duty as a citizen that I have to go vote and participate here.

01:05:12.760 So I'm going to go do it.

01:05:13.880 When they come in, they're voting for a person.

01:05:15.600 They're not voting for a party.

01:05:17.500 And what Republicans need to do for this cycle is talk less about people.

01:05:22.980 Right.

01:05:23.640 The fight over Herschel Walker or Dr. Oz or whatever else that's going on.

01:05:29.380 It's too much focus on these individuals and not enough on Joe Biden and not enough on

01:05:34.060 the Democratic side.

01:05:34.960 Well, and so that brings me to the second half of the point I started to make when I

01:05:38.780 was talking about my own party affiliations in my life.

01:05:42.060 So I was going to say, but if I were advising the Republicans, I would say.

01:05:47.620 Why?

01:05:48.240 Why don't you ever freaking mention COVID?

01:05:50.600 Why?

01:05:51.680 Virtually every liberal friend I have is now ready to vote for a Republican because of

01:05:56.480 COVID.

01:05:57.300 They the Democrats abandoned that seeing what was coming their way last May when they finally

01:06:02.860 let us take the masks off of our kids and so on because they knew they knew this was

01:06:06.980 coming.

01:06:07.820 And the Republicans have let them get away with that and the overreaches that they did

01:06:12.900 in the vaccine mandates that are still out there.

01:06:14.860 They're not reminding us of that every day, not to mention back to Youngkin, the critical

01:06:20.200 race theory or whatever term you want to use for what's happening to our children in

01:06:23.440 the schools.

01:06:24.260 Like, is it a culture war thing?

01:06:26.340 Is it that they have short attention spans?

01:06:28.980 Why would they, too, run gleefully to let's talk about the boxes at Mar-a-Lago if I'm I'm

01:06:36.160 a media person, so I'll talk about that.

01:06:37.840 I'll talk about what's in the news.

01:06:39.020 But if I'm running for office as a Republican, I'm like COVID Fauci CRT trans shit inflation

01:06:47.780 crime border.

01:06:50.120 Boom.

01:06:51.840 And how and yes, I would point you to Ron DeSantis's success in Florida.

01:06:59.040 Ron DeSantis barely won election to the governorship of Florida.

01:07:02.740 He, you know, he bumped his bottom going over the door jam.

01:07:06.020 Uh, but he is, uh, looks quite secure right now, uh, for reelection, um, because of one

01:07:15.260 issue more than any other is that on COVID, he took an aggressive stance and made it stick.

01:07:21.820 Right.

01:07:22.340 And eventually even his toughest critics who are trying to be fair-minded would say that

01:07:28.820 the criticisms of him were out of hand and that the death rate in Florida was not that

01:07:33.840 much high, it didn't differ from States that had much more restrictive lockdown policies.

01:07:38.380 And this is with a very elderly population.

01:07:40.380 So Ron DeSantis is running on COVID in his own way.

01:07:43.260 Right.

01:07:43.500 And Ron DeSantis is running on the culture war stuff that you mentioned about the schools

01:07:47.280 and about the Disney stuff.

01:07:49.280 That's all part of his package.

01:07:50.680 And for successful Republicans, uh, that is part of the package, the hard part.

01:07:55.000 So on these governors races, I think that's where you can see this stuff.

01:08:00.480 The Senate gets tricky, right?

01:08:02.280 The Senate is the Senate and the house races are a little trickier, but certainly in gubernatorial

01:08:06.720 races, that's where you can talk about this stuff.

01:08:09.040 Because again, people don't care.

01:08:11.260 And Pennsylvania is a great example of this.

01:08:13.880 The Republicans picked just a absolute, it was an absolutely reckless choice for their

01:08:18.880 gubernatorial candidate.

01:08:20.160 Oh, okay.

01:08:20.700 Gubernatorial.

01:08:21.100 Yeah.

01:08:21.620 Yeah.

01:08:21.840 There's just no, there's, there's no, no, no reason that you would need Doug Mastriano

01:08:26.760 to be your nominee.

01:08:28.700 He just too much baggage and it's a lot.

01:08:30.280 Um, but he's competitive in that race for number one, it's the good climate year, but

01:08:36.600 number two, the sitting attorney general Shapiro, who's running for the democratic nomination

01:08:41.540 is being badly damaged, has been badly damaged for the way that the state dealt with coronavirus

01:08:47.600 because Pennsylvania was like the anti-Florida, right?

01:08:50.940 They went all the way the other way.

01:08:52.920 So that is a long shadow hanging over Shapiro.

01:08:56.580 I have friends who have a child in public school in Pennsylvania who all the way through

01:09:01.940 June, I haven't asked them what's happening now as we resume, but through June, their five

01:09:07.980 year old had to be no shit, double masked outside to the very hand to God to through the very

01:09:17.960 last day of school.

01:09:19.920 That is the kind of thing I would punish a politician for forevermore.

01:09:24.240 I would follow him around when he ran for dog catcher and I would give speeches about how

01:09:27.880 this person should be nowhere near power.

01:09:29.560 Like that's Pennsylvania went nuts.

01:09:33.240 Pennsylvania, Pennsylvania went nuts.

01:09:35.140 And part of the knock on Youngkin, I'm not saying that the discussion of CRT was not helpful

01:09:42.380 to Youngkin.

01:09:43.240 And there's a whole Pally M set here that we can peel back if you want and talk about

01:09:48.080 what really happened versus what people said happened.

01:09:51.080 But much of the effort from Democrats was to say, well, see, Youngkin won because of frightened,

01:09:56.800 bigoted white people.

01:09:57.560 Uh, but education was an issue of such salience in Virginia because of the failure of the state's

01:10:05.620 Democratic Party to be able to deal with the teachers union, its biggest supporter, right?

01:10:11.200 The most important public employee unions on, on this, every state party, every state Democratic

01:10:16.140 party relies on, uh, government worker unions for not just lots of contribution, but lots of

01:10:22.380 feet, right?

01:10:23.000 Lots of door knocking, lots of troops.

01:10:25.000 And the inability of the Democratic Party in Florida of, under the, uh, previous Republic,

01:10:32.400 uh, previous Democratic governor and McAuliffe, who's, uh, Terry McAuliffe was closely as a

01:10:36.520 former governor himself, closely wed to this.

01:10:38.540 He brought in Randy Weingarten, the head of the teachers union for his closing argument.

01:10:43.100 While parents in Virginia, families in Virginia had had two years of remote learning for their

01:10:48.560 children and they had gone through this.

01:10:50.280 So the, the cheap shot about Youngkin as well, it was because of race.

01:10:54.580 How about it was because of the systemic, massive failure of the public schools in the Commonwealth

01:10:59.980 of Virginia.

01:11:00.740 The same thing is helping, uh, Mastriano in Pennsylvania.

01:11:04.200 And the same thing will help in Wisconsin for Republicans.

01:11:07.720 And the same thing will happen in other statewide races across the country because parents who saw

01:11:13.920 it and lived it and had their lives disrupted by it, they had to go back to work, but their

01:11:18.000 kids couldn't go to school and on and on and on.

01:11:20.280 Uh, Democrats will continue to pay a price for that in this cycle.

01:11:23.540 That's right.

01:11:23.880 And the, the thing that's not going to work for Democrats is the midterm elections come in

01:11:28.160 during the school year.

01:11:29.700 You know, we've been off for a couple of months.

01:11:32.240 It's like, you forget your kids are happy.

01:11:34.280 They're at summer camp.

01:11:35.180 You're with them.

01:11:36.140 Then you go back to school.

01:11:37.620 And at my schools right now, we have vaccine mandate in place.

01:11:41.480 If you hit 16, it's insane.

01:11:43.920 It's ridiculous.

01:11:45.040 And now I'm sure they're going to update it to say, you've got to get this new one on

01:11:48.000 Omicron, uh, that, you know, the new vax that's got like the, the anti Omicron, uh,

01:11:52.400 formula in it.

01:11:54.320 Meanwhile, no one's going to tell you like Vinay Prasad has been tweeting about.

01:11:57.180 It was tested on eight mice, eight mice, but our schools are going to look at us and say

01:12:02.700 the science, but now more and more parents are getting engaged.

01:12:05.520 And I do think it's, it works to the Republicans advantage to have the kids back at school facing

01:12:09.400 mandates.

01:12:10.340 You know, these places are going to bring back masks.

01:12:12.960 The far lefties are going to bring back masks.

01:12:15.320 I speak this as a woman who grew up in New York state who spent 17 years in New York city

01:12:19.100 and now has moved to the blue state of Connecticut.

01:12:21.240 They don't care.

01:12:22.180 The hardcore folks don't care about the elections.

01:12:24.160 They're like, masks help, they work.

01:12:27.860 And so do vaccine mandates.

01:12:29.620 All right, wait, let me ask you quickly.

01:12:31.120 Let's just go through your, your predictions.

01:12:33.240 Okay.

01:12:33.520 Because people want to know who's going to win the house and who's going to win the Senate.

01:12:37.220 Uh, I had, I was just doing the numbers actually before, uh, for my note at the dispatch.

01:12:44.640 Um, I would say right now I'm, I would forecast if, if I had to forecast now, I'd say the Republicans

01:12:50.880 probably pick up something like 15 seats in the house.

01:12:53.920 Uh, which would be, which would be, that would be good for them.

01:12:57.620 Based on the projections that they've seen.

01:13:00.040 It would be good, but it would be, so if they're in the 12 to 15 range, the problem then is you

01:13:05.720 have a small majority.

01:13:07.220 So the Republican majority at the end of the Obama era was 30 seats.

01:13:10.900 And when you have 30 seats, you got wiggle room for kooks, right?

01:13:13.940 You can let, and you can also have wiggle room to let people who are in competitive districts

01:13:18.500 off.

01:13:19.120 So you don't have to make them walk the plank again and again.

01:13:21.840 And again, Nancy Pelosi makes people who are in swing districts now because her majority is

01:13:26.380 so small, she makes people in swing districts, walk the plank a lot to say, yeah, we're going

01:13:32.360 to have to have your vote on this.

01:13:33.480 How many does she have?

01:13:34.020 Abigail Spanberger.

01:13:34.940 What's her majority?

01:13:35.940 Well, we, after the Palin, so after the, uh, Alaska seats in, we will still have Jackie

01:13:42.020 Malorski seat out, but Democrat, let's say it's a five seat, a functionally a five seat majority,

01:13:47.320 let's say.

01:13:48.600 And that's really tight.

01:13:50.440 And so if Republicans, so they need six plus how many more do you need?

01:13:55.800 So that Matt Gaetz does not get to wake up every morning and say, you know, I think

01:14:00.880 today I'm not going to vote to pass the, uh, continuing resolution to keep the government

01:14:05.880 open until whatever, right?

01:14:09.260 Until they sell hair gel in larger portions.

01:14:11.240 So the, the, the, the size of the, uh, majority matters a great deal.

01:14:16.140 But right now I would say Republicans win small majority, uh, Democrats keep the house.

01:14:21.700 That's today question for us is, are we, do we have one turn of the worm left or two?

01:14:27.720 Because I think the Republicans position will improve for the reasons that I laid out because

01:14:32.300 Biden coming out and doing the speech, doing the student loan forgiveness thing.

01:14:37.560 When I, when I tell you that this is electorally incompetent, when I say that this is political

01:14:42.500 malpractice, I don't know who around Joe Biden told him that it would be smart to make low

01:14:50.260 propensity voters, young people happy and infuriate high propensity voters, people with

01:14:56.620 college degrees who are over 50.

01:14:58.640 Those people are going to go vote no matter what they'll, they would swim.

01:15:03.300 They would swim across, uh, the Mississippi river to go vote.

01:15:06.580 So whoever told him that infuriating all of these people, and by the way, I'm sorry to

01:15:11.580 rant about it, but this is a program that was designed for veterans.

01:15:15.440 This was a program that was designed for, as we are always told America's heroes.

01:15:20.280 And we're like, actually it's for everybody.

01:15:21.920 Just take it and go.

01:15:23.640 So that more rich people, the rich people, I say, exactly.

01:15:27.080 Rich privileged people.

01:15:28.640 That's right.

01:15:29.120 Wait, um, just, just to go over.

01:15:30.240 Cause you said, I think you misspoke there because you're saying that the Republicans

01:15:33.560 will take over the house.

01:15:34.400 And you said that, that, um, uh, on the Senate, you're saying the Democrats will keep the Senate

01:15:39.380 right now.

01:15:40.400 I think the D's hold, uh, Senate races, we have to remember.

01:15:44.660 So house races are, are pretty easy to index.

01:15:47.120 Uh, there's 435 seats.

01:15:49.660 And right now Democrats, uh, lead the generic ballot by about two points on average, which I

01:15:56.380 know this, I don't want to make it excessively complicated.

01:15:58.640 Please pardon me, counselor.

01:16:00.160 But it goes like this because of where, uh, Republicans live and because of where Democrats

01:16:05.340 live, uh, five of the seven States, for example, that have, uh, just one representative

01:16:10.600 in the house, uh, are, are strong traditional Republican States.

01:16:14.900 So for a variety of reasons, Democrats, if the, if the generic ballots tied, that's an

01:16:20.880 edge for Republicans.

01:16:21.880 Republicans have the edge there.

01:16:23.480 Uh, but we can tell in the house, roughly speaking, based on the generic ballot, how

01:16:28.480 it looks within, let's say five, six seats or whatever.

01:16:32.380 Senate is very tough because candidate quality matters so much more.

01:16:37.000 Joe Manchin from my home state of West Virginia is a great example.

01:16:40.580 There's no math by which, uh, and Susan Collins in Maine as a example from the other side, there's

01:16:45.980 no math by which West Virginia has a democratic U S Senator.

01:16:50.580 It just, it can't, it cannot be true by the laws of politics because it's the second most,

01:16:56.200 it's the second Trumpiest state in 2020.

01:16:58.680 Uh, there's no way that can be true, nor can it be true that Maine has a Republican Senator,

01:17:02.640 but candidate qualities matter a lot more in Senate races.

01:17:06.500 Uh, it doesn't have the same institutional, uh, pressures that the governorships do in other

01:17:12.900 statewide races.

01:17:14.100 Uh, and it, and it doesn't have the same connection to partisanship, uh, as the house.

01:17:18.820 So it ends, it ends up being weird.

01:17:20.280 And now we get to find out, do they have a bait, a basement to put Herschel Walker in?

01:17:24.800 Can Joe, Joe Biden now out of his basement, can Herschel Walker borrow the basement and be

01:17:29.080 in there?

01:17:29.700 What, what about John?

01:17:31.260 What about John Fetterman and his stroke?

01:17:33.660 How, you know, he's not ready to debate.

01:17:35.680 And Oz is razzing him.

01:17:37.160 How will that play up?

01:17:38.240 How about JD Vance?

01:17:39.220 Is he coming back to Ohio to run?

01:17:41.240 You know, we don't know.

01:17:42.320 And there's all of this, the, the, we're, we are right now in the, in the finding out

01:17:45.740 phase.

01:17:46.220 And when I say the worm could turn once or twice, I think there's enough time for this

01:17:50.380 to turn back into a strong Republican year instead of a Republican year.

01:17:54.480 Uh, but there also may be time to screw that one up too.

01:17:57.120 Two months.

01:17:57.960 I mean, come on, what we could do it all.

01:18:00.400 That's an eternity.

01:18:01.240 Exactly.

01:18:01.700 It can turn.

01:18:02.180 It could turn again.

01:18:03.380 Uh, and speaking of turning, we are turning some pages.

01:18:05.680 From Chris's new book, broken news.

01:18:09.240 Right after this, there's a bunch of good stuff in there.

01:18:11.560 Um, of course the mainstream only wants to talk about like the two lines he has about

01:18:14.420 Fox, but most of it is focused on the news at large and how messed up it is.

01:18:19.580 And he knows of what he speaks.

01:18:21.820 We'll pick it up there right after this quick break.

01:18:23.980 Are you with news nation?

01:18:28.960 I know you joined the dispatch, but are you also joining?

01:18:31.520 Okay.

01:18:31.860 Okay.

01:18:32.180 Yeah.

01:18:32.660 Did not know that.

01:18:33.480 That's, that's great.

01:18:34.320 Good for you.

01:18:35.020 I'm, I'm very pleased and it's very fun.

01:18:37.460 Uh, it reminds me a lot of, uh, early days at Fox.

01:18:41.260 Uh, there's good startup energy and a lot of nice people and the great Sherry Gretsch.

01:18:45.960 So I'm cool.

01:18:47.040 It's cool.

01:18:48.020 She's, I mean, she's amazing.

01:18:49.920 Uh, I love Sherry and I miss her.

01:18:51.400 She's like the best of the best.

01:18:53.000 Uh, she helped run our politics unit and we spent many, many hours on, on the road together.

01:18:57.880 And it was very funny stories for another time.

01:19:00.920 Um, here's something funny.

01:19:02.880 I read about your book from the Huffington post.

01:19:07.880 This made me laugh out loud.

01:19:10.160 Xbox news staffer, Chris Steyrwalt makes most shocking claim yet about old employer in book.

01:19:16.740 I'm like, Oh, what, what is it?

01:19:18.200 What is it?

01:19:19.040 What, what is it?

01:19:19.780 Uh, Steyrwalt says the network's motive for pushing a far right agenda isn't to help the

01:19:27.020 conservative cause and elect Republicans.

01:19:29.440 It's about profits.

01:19:31.780 It's about ratings.

01:19:34.140 I mean, like, are they dumb?

01:19:36.060 Are they stupid?

01:19:36.920 Like having lived in the cable news universe for 17 plus years, hell yes.

01:19:41.700 It's about profit.

01:19:42.720 I mean, anybody who's still deluding themselves that any of these news organizations are about

01:19:46.720 the public service is exactly that delusional.

01:19:49.940 Mm hmm.

01:19:50.960 And we as news consumers know that, right?

01:19:54.680 If you're a smart news consumer, you know that in the same way that it is in, uh, Taco

01:19:59.720 Bell's interest, uh, to get you to buy as many cheesy gordita crunch wrap Supremes as

01:20:04.880 possible.

01:20:05.580 Uh, it is in a news outlet.

01:20:08.740 Uh, it is in their interest to keep you watching or keep you clicking.

01:20:12.100 The Huffington post interest is to keep you clicking, right?

01:20:15.280 Is to keep you right there, like a rat in a Skinner box on the, on the lever for the

01:20:21.000 cocaine tablet, just clicking your way through because that's how they make money.

01:20:25.480 And the idea, you know, one of the accusations that I heard about Fox when I was there and

01:20:32.060 since I was there and all of that stuff was, well, it's just a branch of the Republican

01:20:36.900 party.

01:20:37.200 It's just another branch of the Republican party.

01:20:38.840 And I would remind people that their interests are not coterminous, right?

01:20:44.720 Fox, uh, does better when they're covering a democratic president, right?

01:20:49.740 When there's a democratic president power, it gets everybody riled up and do that.

01:20:53.920 Just like, uh, MSNBC and CNN didn't like having to, don't like having to cover Democrats in

01:20:59.500 the same way that they like to cover Republicans because it's easier for their audiences to take,

01:21:03.680 right?

01:21:03.840 It's easier for their journalists to be aspirationally fair or seemingly fair when

01:21:10.140 they're being tough on the person in power, when it's of the other side, if it's from the

01:21:15.100 same side and you're tough on the person in power.

01:21:17.540 And this is why, you know, of, of all of the great admiration that I have for you is you

01:21:23.160 always took that job seriously.

01:21:24.840 You always, you continue to take that job seriously, which is just because you're in accord with

01:21:30.080 someone on some views or on some points does not mean that you just say, oh, well, I guess

01:21:35.640 we'll just ignore what you're doing.

01:21:37.340 We'll ignore the things that you're doing and just talk about the bad people on the other side.

01:21:41.480 No, I remember when I launched the Kelly file, which you were on every night, um, my very

01:21:46.540 first guest was Ted Cruz, Senator Ted Cruz.

01:21:48.940 And my very first question to him was, what's it like to be the most hated person in America?

01:21:53.220 Yes, exactly.

01:21:54.820 To his credit, he, he took it well.

01:21:56.900 He took it, he took it, uh, he, he, he took it, but, uh, you know, look, the people on

01:22:04.640 the left want my book to be about Fox news.

01:22:07.300 Yes.

01:22:07.800 Uh, and that's okay.

01:22:10.000 Uh, because I hope they buy it.

01:22:12.100 Uh, I hope they buy it.

01:22:13.180 And there's some, there's some stuff about Fox news in there.

01:22:15.600 And by the way, people on the right want it to be about Fox news too.

01:22:20.480 Some people on the right want it to be about Fox news because they're like, oh, the sour grapes

01:22:24.000 he's come back, oh, this terrible person, he's come back to do it.

01:22:28.220 And what neither of those groups, no people are not neither.

01:22:32.060 And neither of those groups know is I am so happy with my life.

01:22:36.920 And so had like professional, I've never been more professionally happy than I am right

01:22:41.820 now.

01:22:42.020 I've never been more myself than I am right now.

01:22:44.180 And I am grateful for the years and opportunities, many, maybe most of which you were involved

01:22:50.760 in, and you were a great part of making that all possible for me.

01:22:54.540 So I'm very grateful for all of that time.

01:22:57.140 And this isn't a book about Fox news.

01:22:59.220 This is when you get down to it, this is a book about Americanism.

01:23:03.740 This is about us as journalists, what we owe the constitution and what we owe the United

01:23:09.100 States of America, including the million men and women who died, uh, to preserve, protect

01:23:13.160 and defend it, but also what we as news consumers owe.

01:23:16.040 I'm sick and tired of people infantilizing Americans and news consumers as if they have

01:23:20.840 no agency.

01:23:21.660 They just can't, they, they, they can't help themselves.

01:23:24.560 Well, we've got to do better.

01:23:25.760 We owe each other a debt as, as good citizens to be well-informed, to, to have a variety of

01:23:32.300 sources in front of us, to know what is, uh, partisan BS and to know what isn't.

01:23:38.440 And that's part of our job.

01:23:39.600 I, I love everything you said and I, and I agree with all of it.

01:23:43.480 And I remember when I left Fox, I left because I, I really wanted to raise my own children.

01:23:48.080 You know, that was my, my main reason for leaving Fox was that, but I also was so up

01:23:52.460 to here with the outrage, you know, and it's not just Fox, it's cable news, cable news in

01:23:56.940 general, you know?

01:23:57.700 And I said, honestly, that I really wanted my audience to feel something other than outrage.

01:24:04.440 There are days for outrage.

01:24:06.080 You know, there are things that are outrageous that need to be covered, but not every day,

01:24:10.740 all day.

01:24:11.460 You cannot subsist on this world on just red meat alone.

01:24:15.400 You know, you, you've got to have a little glass of champagne.

01:24:18.340 You got to have a salad.

01:24:19.420 You got to have some veggies.

01:24:21.060 Um, you, you know, you got to have the cake.

01:24:23.440 You got to have it all.

01:24:24.660 And the cable news, red meat all the time.

01:24:27.400 Outrage diet is not sustainable and it's not good for you.

01:24:31.780 That's absolutely right.

01:24:32.820 And the other thing is, if I may, if I may one more, um, what you just described is an

01:24:40.440 act of confidence, right?

01:24:42.380 A confident person says, I'm willing to take a chance.

01:24:46.080 I'm willing to do a segment.

01:24:47.240 I'm willing to talk to somebody about something that isn't ripped right off the front page of

01:24:52.580 the most clicked items on memorandum.com today.

01:24:55.520 I'm willing to, I'm willing to look beyond what Twitter tells me to program on my show

01:25:01.700 today.

01:25:02.120 You have courage.

01:25:03.760 You have, uh, and you have confidence that says I can do the stuff that I want to do.

01:25:08.120 By the way, I wouldn't want to be in this business if I couldn't do the stuff and talk

01:25:12.960 about the stuff that I wanted to, right?

01:25:14.760 That's not, that wouldn't make this very fun, but let me tell you this, your confidence,

01:25:19.660 and this is really one of the things I love most about you as a journalist, your confidence

01:25:26.140 includes asking questions in ways that get real responses, right?

01:25:31.280 You don't tee them up, right?

01:25:32.960 One of the things I always admired in you and what made you such a good debate moderator,

01:25:37.120 particularly was you were not afraid to go into the question and say, I don't know, why

01:25:41.800 don't you explain it to me?

01:25:43.140 And very often you get your best responses when you're just saying, okay, walk me through

01:25:47.640 this, I need my Nana to understand how this works.

01:25:50.480 So walk me through the beginning here and tell me why you feel that way and what you

01:25:54.140 think.

01:25:54.320 And just by letting them talk much more is revealed than if it is performative, right?

01:26:00.180 Uh, anchors that go on and are like either you and I both agree very much and we're going

01:26:04.040 to talk about this, it's all scripted, or now that you're here, let me pour out vituperation

01:26:09.840 and hatred on you and tell everybody that I am good and you are bad.

01:26:13.240 You have confidence lady and it shows.

01:26:15.760 Oh, thank you.

01:26:16.760 I didn't expect this to turn into a compliment of me, but I'll take it.

01:26:19.820 Um, I'm not above hearing it.

01:26:21.820 Um, we made a great team.

01:26:23.780 We really did at Fox and I, and there was a reason when I hosted the Kelly file, it was

01:26:27.820 the number one show in the demo in cable news.

01:26:29.820 And you were, you are a lead guest every night.

01:26:31.860 I mean, literally most nights, five nights a week.

01:26:34.700 And there's a reason, right?

01:26:35.940 Because even back then, which was 13 to 17 that I was in that post, things were a little

01:26:41.660 less partisan than they are right now.

01:26:43.800 Like they've only gotten super charged in partisan, um, in their partisan nature since

01:26:49.800 then in a way that's only made me say, oh, thank God I got out when I did not never like,

01:26:54.400 oh, I wish I could go back and do more of that.

01:26:56.240 Now I feel like I'm in the right, exactly the right places.

01:26:58.240 I think this audience will come with me on a journey to talk about wellbeing and health

01:27:03.740 there or Alzheimer's or, you know, history or, you know, it could Willy Wonka.

01:27:07.820 We did a show.

01:27:08.300 You could never get away with that in cable.

01:27:11.320 So there is a lot more joy in having a well-rounded diet.

01:27:14.020 But what do you, cause I know you prescribe prescriptions in here.

01:27:17.380 You have prescriptions in here, but before we get to those, you also know everything

01:27:20.900 about history.

01:27:21.540 You know a lot about American history.

01:27:23.720 And one of the things that was comforting in the book is you kind of say, we've been,

01:27:28.500 we've been divided like this.

01:27:30.140 Our media has been divided like this.

01:27:31.740 Like this is not new and there is a way forward and it's not just hopeless.

01:27:36.520 So can you spend some time on that?

01:27:38.840 Quite, quite the opposite.

01:27:39.880 Look, I think the best analog to our current situation, the book, the book takes you through

01:27:45.560 the story about how the media monoliths formed after the second world war.

01:27:51.320 And, uh, we grew up and were born into a world that had three major national television networks,

01:27:59.200 uh, two big national newspapers, two or three big national newspapers, a couple of wire services.

01:28:05.360 But the dominant part of, uh, the whole news ecosystem was what your local newspaper, your

01:28:12.200 local newspaper was the number one source that you had for news because that's, that's how it

01:28:17.820 was.

01:28:18.080 And the newspaper industry was really profitable.

01:28:20.460 Uh, and it was sort of the glue that held it all together from 2005 till 2000.

01:28:27.480 Dan, let's say 10, they lost about 90% of their revenue.

01:28:30.600 Uh, it collapsed, uh, the, the loss of classified ads, the loss of subscriptions, the loss of all

01:28:36.940 that stuff, it hollowed it out.

01:28:38.400 And it really left a scary vacant space here.

01:28:42.000 And it came about at the same time that we started carrying these hand computers around with

01:28:46.100 us everywhere we go.

01:28:47.120 So yeah, in the world.

01:28:48.300 And so we, we got our, our eggs scrambled here.

01:28:52.180 I point out that the disruption caused by the arrival of radio, which was totally different

01:29:00.520 than anything that had been like it in all of human experience, right?

01:29:04.900 Until the 19, really 1930s, but until the middle of the 1920s, it was not possible for ordinary

01:29:12.420 people to hear the voices of the politicians who they voted for, right?

01:29:15.920 Most people had never heard Abraham Lincoln speak, right?

01:29:20.240 Most people had never heard the people before the 1920s talk.

01:29:24.560 And how did radio work out when it arrived?

01:29:28.480 Uh, biggest winner, Adolf Hitler, uh, killing it.

01:29:31.880 No pun intended with the radio, really having a lot of success because he's this passionate,

01:29:37.860 charismatic lunatic, right?

01:29:39.680 And he's good radio.

01:29:41.540 And what happens in the United States is that people like Charles Coughlin, the bigoted,

01:29:46.420 anti-Semitic, lunatic priest from Michigan, or Huey Long, the emperor, the, the utterly

01:29:51.960 corrupt, uh, authoritarian ruler of Louisiana.

01:29:54.840 These folks had millions and millions and millions of rapt listeners as they were talking about

01:30:01.380 what was basically the fall of the United States that we were done in the summer of 1935.

01:30:05.940 We got pretty close to the edge because we had not for, we had a lot of problems, but

01:30:10.160 one of them was we had not yet gotten good at consuming electronic media.

01:30:15.040 We had not yet figured out, remember, war of the worlds was 15 years after when Orson

01:30:20.440 Wells put on HG Wells, uh, uh, stage drama, war of the world is a radio show.

01:30:25.580 All the people who thought it was real and were stuffing damp, uh, towels under their

01:30:29.860 door jams to keep the Martian nerve gas out.

01:30:32.560 We still weren't very sophisticated users of radio by then.

01:30:36.000 That was almost, it was almost time for the second world war.

01:30:38.800 So we have to remember these hand computers that we carry around have only been with us since

01:30:43.140 2007 or 2008, pretty early in this process.

01:30:46.380 And the only way that it gets better is the same way that it got better before, which is

01:30:51.120 we have to become more sophisticated users and we have to demand the kind of patriotic decency

01:30:56.920 out of the news sources that we support with our eyeballs, but also our subscriptions, uh,

01:31:03.640 that we demand the same of them too.

01:31:06.040 I mean, this sounds good, but I mean, look, there's little signs of hope.

01:31:12.800 Brian Stelter getting fired is one of them.

01:31:15.380 I'm sure you're going to miss him.

01:31:16.720 I'm sure you're going to miss him a lot.

01:31:17.900 Yeah.

01:31:18.200 Sorry.

01:31:18.500 I'm sorry.

01:31:18.820 I don't get to go there on the book tour.

01:31:20.040 It really tears me up.

01:31:22.560 Um, but I don't, I personally don't think CNN can be resurrected.

01:31:25.660 I just think they've done too much damage to themselves.

01:31:27.920 I hope I'm wrong.

01:31:29.040 I think it would be great to have a CNN like we had when I first started in news when

01:31:32.240 I watched them, watch them all the time.

01:31:33.780 Yeah.

01:31:33.800 Um, but I don't, I don't have a lot of hope.

01:31:36.720 I feel like it, what's going to happen is these organizations are probably going to die

01:31:39.640 and new ones are getting developed as we speak and they'll be the future.

01:31:43.620 I think, I think, I think it's a, both of those things are true, right?

01:31:47.380 They'll always be a Fox news.

01:31:49.640 They'll always be a CNN.

01:31:51.620 I don't know what's going to happen, but those brands are valuable on air or off air and they'll

01:31:57.460 stick around and there'll be in different.

01:31:59.040 Jeff Bezos didn't buy the Washington post because he liked, uh, the, uh, the beetle

01:32:04.060 Bailey comic.

01:32:05.080 He bought the Washington post because it's, if you, if you say what newspaper do you most

01:32:10.720 closely associate with political dues?

01:32:12.580 Well, the Washington post probably would have to be number one, even if you don't like it.

01:32:16.000 So these brands will persist, but consumer habits are changing dramatically.

01:32:20.700 Uh, we have lots of evidence to talk about changing consumer habits.

01:32:23.820 And by the way, one of them is that young news consumers are stepping up the pace,

01:32:28.800 right?

01:32:29.320 We're starting to see them get into the groove that they're supposed to be, which is look,

01:32:34.180 if you're 25 and you're having a wonderful life and having fun, I'm not going to tell you

01:32:39.280 that you have to subscribe to my newsletter so that we can break down the inside of the

01:32:44.260 midterm election forecast.

01:32:45.720 I got it.

01:32:46.440 That's good.

01:32:47.040 Go have fun and be beautiful.

01:32:48.700 But when you get a little older and you've got kids and you're paying taxes and you're

01:32:53.120 doing all that stuff, your need for news goes up and we're seeing that that's kicking

01:32:57.180 in and that we're seeing that stuff.

01:32:58.660 I am most, the trend that concerns me most of all, in all of this is that according to

01:33:03.980 the Pew research that 10 years ago, there were only 3% of Americans who said they consume

01:33:09.860 no news in the previous week.

01:33:11.740 Now that is 15%.

01:33:13.580 And we have, and I don't blame them for dropping out.

01:33:16.020 I would too.

01:33:17.240 I, I, I can, I can see why I sympathize.

01:33:20.060 But what we have observed is that more and more people are just opting out and idiocracy

01:33:25.180 ignoramuses who are just exiting.

01:33:27.500 They're just exiting the, the information superhighway.

01:33:30.600 And we need people, we need an informed citizenry to vote.

01:33:34.480 We need them to be there and do it with love for your country.

01:33:38.100 Yeah.

01:33:38.680 Hopefully those people exit and then don't vote.

01:33:42.020 But yeah, I understand that as a self-protection mechanism.

01:33:45.240 You know, I was talking to Melissa Francis who she left Fox and obviously I did as well.

01:33:49.440 And there was a long period where I didn't want to touch the news and she didn't want

01:33:52.680 to touch the news.

01:33:53.420 And it can be very healing to just stay away from the news for a while.

01:33:56.320 But I think the way back in is to find somebody like one thing I love about you, Chris, is

01:34:00.420 you're always optimistic.

01:34:01.720 You know, the news can be dark, which you always have a pot, not a positive spin that

01:34:05.620 makes it sound too Pollyanna-ish, but just you, you always find a way to laugh.

01:34:09.640 And, and same, right?

01:34:11.100 Like same, that's what gets me through it.

01:34:12.400 And that's what I know a lot about my audience is I love the fact that, you know, you always find

01:34:16.460 a way to laugh and I never feel bad after I've listened to the show.

01:34:19.640 There's a way of doing it, right?

01:34:21.100 And, and they, and I would recommend people stay away from the people whose show makes

01:34:24.540 you feel bad all the time.

01:34:26.180 Like that's a business model.

01:34:28.120 That's not reflective of what's actually in the news and you have to be protective of

01:34:31.840 your beautiful mind because there are people looking to corrupt it.

01:34:35.780 Chris Steyerwalt, what a pleasure, my friend.

01:34:37.880 I hope I see you again soon.

01:34:39.760 A real treat to be with you.

01:34:40.900 Thank you for having me.

01:34:42.740 Thanks to all of you for joining us today and this week and for putting us over 500,000 on

01:34:46.720 YouTube.

01:34:47.220 Really do appreciate that.

01:34:48.320 We're going to take a little break, my team and I for Labor Day and hope you are as well.

01:34:52.960 We will be back on Tuesday, however, with our friends from the fifth column, love them.

01:34:57.820 And we have the funniest Hillary Clinton clip that we've been saving for those guys.

01:35:03.060 We'll see you then.

01:35:03.820 Enjoy your holiday.

01:35:04.340 Thanks for listening to The Megyn Kelly Show.

01:35:08.060 No BS, no agenda, and no fear.

The Megyn Kelly Show - September 01, 2022

Biden Attacks Half the Country, and Legacy Media Decline, with Michael Knowles and Chris Stirewalt ｜ Ep. 384

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