The Megyn Kelly Show - Biden Begins, with Ben Domenech, Krystal Ball, Saagar Enjeti, and Ryan Grim ｜ Ep. 53

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

00:00:07.560 Joe Biden inaugurated as the 46th President of the United States today.

00:00:12.360 How are we feeling about that? And what now?

00:00:15.400 Ben Domenech, Crystal Ball, Sagar Anjeti, and Ryan Grimm all join me to discuss the angles.

00:00:26.660 Hey everyone, I'm Megyn Kelly. Welcome to The Megyn Kelly Show.

00:00:29.500 We've got a jam-packed program for you today.

00:00:31.600 We're going to cover the inauguration and what to expect and Joe Biden's 10-day blitz.

00:00:36.760 He's about to go on, basically undoing as much as he can of the Trump administration policies.

00:00:41.380 What exactly should we expect? We've got all angles covered for you.

00:00:44.640 But before we get to our first guest, I want to talk to you about a new company that we're talking about here at The Megyn Kelly Show called Bambi.com.

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00:02:16.940 And offload this headache to someone who cares.

00:02:21.200 Joining me now, my friend, Ben Dominich, who is the co-founder of The Federalist and also the publisher.

00:02:30.120 Ben, so good to have you here.

00:02:31.300 How are you?

00:02:32.040 I'm doing well, Megan.

00:02:33.100 And it's great to be with you.

00:02:34.820 And congratulations on all your success in this new world of podcasts,

00:02:39.440 which the Associated Press informed me yesterday could be a ripe, growing place for villainous conspiracies and misinformation.

00:02:48.900 Oh, good.

00:02:49.560 So we have our agenda.

00:02:51.200 Exactly.

00:02:52.900 Well, I mean, we've talked about this, but I really have admired what you've done in sort of creating an independent media lane.

00:02:59.340 And it's been very successful because there's an appetite for it.

00:03:02.520 And of course, the events of the past couple of weeks, not to mention four years, have underscored why, you know, now more than ever, independent media is going to come under attack.

00:03:12.600 Anything that's not, quote, mainstream, which is code for leftist, is going to come under attack.

00:03:19.180 And you've been living this.

00:03:20.740 I mean, this is not like what people are saying now.

00:03:22.880 Ben is like, look, it's just Trump's Twitter feed.

00:03:26.600 Calm down.

00:03:27.840 Parler had a lot of extremist rhetoric on it.

00:03:31.340 Calm down.

00:03:31.960 This is not going to expand beyond them.

00:03:35.740 You are living proof in the federalist days over the past few years.

00:03:38.960 That's not true.

00:03:39.780 It's already been happening.

00:03:41.600 Yeah, it's absolutely been happening.

00:03:43.560 And I appreciate your kind words.

00:03:45.060 I mean, one of the things that I really felt was absent when we started the Federalist Now seven years ago is we felt that there was less of a focus happening within the broader center-right media landscape on culture, pop culture, tech issues, things that were kind of outside the normal wonky policy discussions or horse race politics discussions that happened within that world.

00:04:13.560 And I think that everything that's happened since then has sent more and more of those stories to the top of America's mindset.

00:04:22.220 I mean, I remember a few years ago getting into an argument with a prominent conservative commentator who was saying that all this talk about big tech, it doesn't really relate to a normal person.

00:04:33.180 And I said, no, it's becoming a kitchen table issue.

00:04:36.560 It's becoming something people talk about because it's not just touching the media moguls.

00:04:43.600 It's not just touching the people who are in the business.

00:04:47.200 It's reaching down to touch people in ways that can affect their small businesses, in ways that can lead to real destruction for them and their families.

00:04:58.100 And that makes this issue something that I think is only going to become more prominent in the coming years, sadly.

00:05:06.060 I think in that way, the suppression of the Hunter Biden story by Twitter and Facebook, the New York Post Hunter Biden story on his corruption helped because I think most people became aware that they were doing that.

00:05:18.560 And anybody who was open minded politically, you know, not already dug in on Joe Biden must win. 0.96

00:05:24.620 Trump is the devil. Wanted to know why they couldn't access that.

00:05:28.100 Why was it so hard? Why were these corporate giants, these tech giants deciding we didn't get to hear that one, which, of course, wound up verified later without an apology from those from that suppression.

00:05:38.660 But the but the other thing I think that's really underscored all of this is covid and the suppression of anybody challenging the, quote, conventional wisdom on face masks and how effective they are on the number of deaths being attributed to covid on the contagion rate on the shutdowns.

00:05:59.720 Now we're seeing the same thing on vaccines. If they don't like what you're saying, they shut you down.

00:06:04.520 Just ask somebody like Alex Berenson, who's been very heterodox on this, and he he had a ban of his book on Amazon.

00:06:14.440 I mean, one of the things that I think we saw very early on is that this is kind of revealing of the weaknesses of the arguments of the tech giants when it comes to their decision making processes.

00:06:27.860 It's all Calvin ball. There are no permanent rules. Terms of service can be changed.

00:06:33.100 And it's a situation where, you know, they can turn around and say, oh, well, you know, we're shutting down this Hunter Biden story, even an inability to send it via direct message because we say it's hacked material.

00:06:48.340 But we're not saying it's our it's our fact checking team, but the fact checking team itself was actually very upset at this because none of them had fact checked the story yet.

00:06:57.460 But that's not the way fact checking works, even in a situation where fact checking is so often used to crush opposing views.

00:07:05.060 I mean, imagine a situation where you are reporting on or trying to report on the source of this virus.

00:07:13.560 You know, one of the things that the State Department came out with in terms of their own report, you know, talking about how much earlier there was proof that this potentially walked out of a lab in some way, shape or form.

00:07:25.260 That was something that was deemed to be misinformation, disinformation that, you know, the China focused people who are very pro China were crushing it as being a racist idea.

00:07:37.620 And they continue to do so. And then lo and behold, as we dig into this and you find more and more reporting, there's more and more indications that certainly something like that could be true.

00:07:47.800 And that's the way that we learn about the world that we're in, treating the news as if it's it's just a situation where having this opinion is itself dangerous.

00:07:59.180 Having this discussion is dangerous. It puts so much distrust in the viewer, in the consumer of news, in the American people to be intelligent and to make decisions for themselves.

00:08:10.600 It makes people more conspiratorial because, you know, it's like the old Woody Allen.

00:08:14.940 You're not paranoid if they really are out to get you. Yeah, it's like it's confirming there were suspicions that big government is part of a cabal meant to stifle any resistance or opposing thought.

00:08:27.720 Much better to let it let it out there, let people make up their own minds.

00:08:32.220 And if you if you could be in any way objective in covering the news, hello, mainstream, that would help, too.

00:08:37.940 Right. So that they wouldn't have reason every time they turn on the television to once again have confirmation bias that they hate me.

00:08:44.200 I can't trust them. I have to go to the Internet for information.

00:08:47.260 Oh, wait, all my favorite sites have been blocked out or stories are being censored or have some warning on them from Twitter when the other side's information never gets any warnings.

00:08:58.600 And I know you guys didn't you didn't you have a story about the Black Lives Matter riots?

00:09:05.040 Something happened with the Federalists. What happened? I remember you got like comments shut down.

00:09:08.920 Yes, we've tangled with them on a number of different issues.

00:09:12.840 We actually tangled with, you know, this this whole situation with Google demonetization, which was purportedly about comments on our site, the Discus comment section,

00:09:24.540 which other than slapping a sort of a filter on language on it, you know, we don't moderate.

00:09:31.340 And basically the the powers that be at Google had that flagged to them by a tiny British, quote unquote, anti hate group that targeted Zero Hedge and a couple of other sites.

00:09:46.600 But I really do believe this. The powers that be in D.C. in for Google, who have a greater awareness of the Federalists and what we're about,

00:09:56.720 were clearly surprised by this, didn't realize this was going to happen, didn't realize that there was even a threat of it.

00:10:02.740 We hadn't been informed of any threat of it from them.

00:10:06.040 We have worked through for months since then to try to bring our comments back and we are going to bring them back,

00:10:12.760 but they're going to end up having to be paywalled so that there's and sectioned off so that no ads can appear there.

00:10:18.780 But just put as many as many hurdles as possible between.

00:10:22.040 Well, and obviously that's not the way that they apply it to other sites all across the Internet.

00:10:26.280 I mean, heck, look at YouTube comment sections.

00:10:28.820 You know, there's there's, you know, some crazy stuff in there.

00:10:31.760 But, you know, I think one thing that you bring up there is really interesting, which is are the what's the reason behind what we're seeing?

00:10:40.280 And to me, it's a question of are these institutions doing this because they're brittle or because they're strong?

00:10:48.420 And when I look at Washington, D.C., you know, with twenty five thousand plus troops in it, National Guard troops,

00:10:57.180 and the kind of reaction we've seen there, you know, barriers thrown up willy nilly.

00:11:02.400 I think that the answer to this is kind of both that the political scene with these octogenarian leaders like like Biden and Pelosi

00:11:12.300 and and all of these teams that are full of people who've been around for so long, they're white knuckling it.

00:11:19.780 They seem brittle. They seem frail.

00:11:21.640 And and on the flip side, I think that these big tech corporate oligarchs, they're doing what they're doing because they feel completely empowered by this,

00:11:32.240 that the weakness of our political scene has made them feel like, you know, they've inherited the godhead

00:11:39.660 and that it's their job to try to make this world, make this country look the way they believe it ought to be.

00:11:45.860 And that's very concerning to me, given that that's not historically been the model for for success at America.

00:11:54.520 Well, they're definitely looking at at D.C. right now as well as the Democrats take power.

00:11:59.700 And it's no accident that every time they they really start a crackdown on free speech on the Internet,

00:12:04.920 it's right before the Democrats have hearings or right before the Democrats assume power.

00:12:09.600 And they know what their masters want, their their masters.

00:12:14.200 The Democratic masters want a shutdown or, you know, purging of conservative thought right now.

00:12:21.160 It may be may or may not be the more sort of controversial opinions, but it spreads as all these things do.

00:12:29.100 And I mean, I remember.

00:12:30.120 There was Sean Davis, who's the he's he's with you.

00:12:34.640 Yes.

00:12:35.200 Is he your co-founder, right?

00:12:36.500 Yes, he is.

00:12:37.020 At the Federalist.

00:12:37.800 He got a totally true tweet slapped with a warning label about the Pennsylvania Supreme Court ruling on when one could vote, when one could submit a ballot.

00:12:48.700 It was 100 percent accurate.

00:12:50.580 There was nothing even controversial about it.

00:12:52.180 And old Jack decided it needed a warning label for its potential errors or danger.

00:12:58.260 There's never any accountability, Ben.

00:13:00.340 It's just like.

00:13:01.980 They'll decide whether you're dangerous.

00:13:04.700 Well, the other thing, too, with the way that Twitter does these things is it's completely haphazard.

00:13:11.500 You can have I mean, there was that whole conversation.

00:13:14.040 And I obviously listened to your interview with the founder of Parler the other day, and there was that whole conversation about the degree to which it was used to foment violence or something along those lines.

00:13:27.700 There are things that you can find.

00:13:30.220 I mean, if you just search for kill cops on Twitter today, you will get you will find a depth of people calling for things like that that are completely allowed to stand up.

00:13:41.340 And yet they the standard is different because they don't they have the relationships and because they view Jack as being an ally in this.

00:13:51.100 And to me, I think that a lot of this, though, is has been the shiny object of talking about social media and what we're allowed to post is going to turn much more into the functional nature of a capitalist system in which a lot of the dominant forces are very much against the views of their consumers politically.

00:14:13.240 And one of the big things I think, you know, we see right now, for instance, is the question about whether banks are going to stop letting particular conservative groups or people with conservative affiliations use their services.

00:14:26.600 I mean, this is something that a lot of wants to see it.

00:14:29.480 Part of me wants to see it.

00:14:30.740 Do it. 0.92

00:14:31.720 Do be as gross in your overreach as possible so that the people who are still blind will see. 0.90

00:14:38.280 You know, I mean, there's not going to be a rising up.

00:14:41.500 I speak, obviously, of nonviolent rising up, but there's not going to be a political rising up and reckoning until the country gets it.

00:14:50.320 You know, I mean, I do I do think it's one of those things like, well, they're not coming for me.

00:14:55.240 So how how concerned am I?

00:14:57.000 Right.

00:14:57.240 And it's like, oh, no, they're going to come for you.

00:14:59.220 It starts with the stuff somebody considers most controversial.

00:15:03.220 But it always expands beyond that.

00:15:05.600 And it's it happens in large and obvious and also small and less obvious ways.

00:15:10.100 I here's one of my irritations.

00:15:13.460 I read The Federalist all the time.

00:15:15.340 I listen to your podcast, which I love, as you know, I I have a very good gauge for what's in the mainstream, what's not in the mainstream on conservative thought.

00:15:25.520 You are as mainstream conservative as they come.

00:15:28.480 Interesting, fun, provocative to read.

00:15:30.980 You're not boring.

00:15:31.560 Um, every time I read like whatever some let's say USA Today write about The Federalist far right, far, far right.

00:15:42.380 According to whom?

00:15:44.140 Right.

00:15:44.460 Rachel Maddow.

00:15:45.360 Who's coming up with these descriptions?

00:15:47.220 And it's just a way of delegitimizing.

00:15:49.460 So it happens, you know, in even even I see when I want people write about me controversial.

00:15:55.220 Well, what is that?

00:15:56.760 Why?

00:15:57.320 Because some far left group of people decided to dislike me.

00:16:00.420 That doesn't make me controversial.

00:16:02.160 You know, I'm well within the mainstream of political thought.

00:16:04.620 But this is this is how they do it.

00:16:06.860 Small nicks, you know, death by a thousand cuts.

00:16:09.340 And then the big machete every once in a while, like parlor's gone.

00:16:12.400 Yeah, I think that one of the things that we have to keep in mind, too, about this is that it's going to it expands in the same way outside of the world of media now.

00:16:24.080 Because we have nationalized so many of these discussions in if you had an experience through most of American history where we had more of diversity in terms of communities, then you had these binding institutions that prevented you from hating the people around you to the same degree.

00:16:45.860 In other words, if you have to sit in the same pew as somebody or if you're in the same local group or you're doing things as a community with your kids and in school and things like that, it can make it more difficult to hate the person who just has a different political side and there you are.

00:17:02.420 And I think that, unfortunately, now, as those institutions have been completely wrecked and they were many of them, you know, hurting already before coronavirus came along and shut down their ability to be at the center of our lives, we get completely disaggregated.

00:17:20.100 We're atomized.

00:17:20.840 You know, we have a closer relationship with the person who delivers Amazon boxes than we do with, you know, the person who runs the small business, the restaurant, the diner or the bodega around the corner.

00:17:33.480 And that's awful for us as an American community.

00:17:37.660 I mean, it's really something that has far-reaching consequences.

00:17:42.300 And I don't think we've fully grasped yet how much damage this has done to the American psyche and to the ability of people to have faith in the American dream.

00:17:54.720 That's a really dangerous thing.

00:17:58.080 It's true.

00:17:58.480 It's one of the reasons I actually, I like living in New York.

00:18:01.900 We're going to leave New York because of the schools, not because we don't like New York.

00:18:05.020 But what I like living about in New York is I'm surrounded by liberals.

00:18:11.500 I'm not a liberal, but I like the fact that all my best friends are, for the most part, liberals.

00:18:17.660 You know, they're lovely.

00:18:19.160 And politics are not front and center in our relationship, nor do they have to be.

00:18:23.000 Sometimes we'll talk about politics, but it's good to remind yourself that, you know, the constant demonization of the other side may not be true.

00:18:30.200 It may not be good for the country.

00:18:31.500 You know, I have one of my friends who's a diehard.

00:18:34.200 She hates Trump.

00:18:35.800 She works so hard to get Biden elected.

00:18:37.620 I was happy for her that she won on Election Day.

00:18:40.520 You know, I mean, I respect that she's in a different place politically from probably most of my audience and me to some extent as well.

00:18:49.240 We are definitely getting away from that.

00:18:51.680 And as I leave New York, I certainly hope I don't leave that political diversity or actual diversity.

00:18:58.140 I love the fact that my kids go to school and it's not even majority white.

00:19:03.180 You know, it's it's the melting pot, which is good for them.

00:19:06.360 That's how I think you actually learn to be an anti-racist, a true anti-racist.

00:19:10.680 Surround yourself with people of color and different backgrounds and see how awesome they are just organically without having race and ethnicity shoved down your throat at every turn and division.

00:19:20.840 OK, but I want to move on to something else.

00:19:23.160 Let's talk about the Biden blitz and what we're about to get, because I'd love to get your thoughts on this 10 day blitz.

00:19:29.740 He's going to roll out dozens of executive orders in the first 10 days, a big stimulus plan, one point nine trillion.

00:19:35.120 And the thing that I don't hear being discussed a lot, Ben, is amnesty.

00:19:41.520 I mean, hasn't been that long that I left Fox News where if if any if any president came out and said, I'm going to enroll amnesty, I'm going to create the pathway to citizenship for the 11 million people who are in the country unlawfully.

00:19:55.360 I'm going to put more foreign aid to Central American economies.

00:20:00.080 There's not going to be a single carrot for the Republicans in my proposed immigration bill.

00:20:04.180 Not nothing about border security. 0.98

00:20:05.740 Screw you, Republicans. 0.99

00:20:06.800 I don't care about your concerns. 0.98

00:20:09.520 I'm I'm going to put a place, a moratorium on deportations by ICE.

00:20:15.640 The right half of the country would have been freaking out right now.

00:20:19.180 I don't hear that much about it.

00:20:20.440 You know, the funny thing, I this was a recurring question that I had during the election about how little this was being discussed, even by President Trump himself.

00:20:32.420 I mean, if you think back to what made a difference for him the first time he ran, it was putting this issue and others that were attended to it front and center in the party that had often wanted to kind of mute them for fear of being called racist or demonized or something like that.

00:20:49.280 And yet it ended up being such a minor part of the conversation that, you know, really the only thing people remember about it is the confusion among journalists who didn't know what a coyote was when Trump mentioned it in the debate.

00:21:03.840 It's it's it's it's it's actually a truly extreme agenda.

00:21:08.840 And our political editor at the Federalist, John Davidson, who's gone and covered the border for the past several years for us, who has taken regular trips into Mexico and the like.

00:21:19.480 He's been predicting for months now that we were going to see a spike of resurgent migrants at the border driven by a number of factors, including covid.

00:21:32.120 But but but but that it's going to basically turn into a real war zone, a point of conflict that we haven't seen really in the past several years.

00:21:41.340 And that's because Biden's policies are inviting this.

00:21:44.900 You know, when you hear no deportations in the first hundred days, it makes you a lot more likely to make a run for the border.

00:21:50.860 And that's what we are seeing happen right now. And I think it's going to continue to happen.

00:21:54.500 And so if you wanted to get back to that kind of clash from the Obama years, if you had some some nostalgia for that, get ready.

00:22:03.420 Well, and it's like, don't aren't they paying attention?

00:22:06.700 You know, the the white working class that went for Trump and not just the white working class, the Latino working class that went for Trump.

00:22:13.040 This was one of their issues. You know, I think the Democrats wrongly assumed that Latinos in the country would somehow be against Trump's border security program.

00:22:21.420 And I don't think the facts bore that out. You know, if you saw the these communities down in Texas go 100 percent Trump that are mostly Latino.

00:22:29.280 And and as we speak, according to Fox News, they reported on Saturday, there's a migrant caravan from Honduras moving to the United States with up to a thousand migrants demanding that the Biden administration administration, quote, honor its commitments to migrants.

00:22:43.020 Then they had on the acting acting custom and border protection protection commissioner saying that caravan could include actually more than five thousand migrants coming to America.

00:22:53.200 This is Biden's pledging to end this thing called the migrant protection protocols, which keep migrants in Mexico as they await their hearings here in the United States.

00:23:03.100 Now they're going to be in the United States. Thousands are coming moratorium on deportations as Biden pushes for amnesty for the 11 million plus people in the country so they can get citizenship.

00:23:13.960 I just like a as a political matter, I don't see this helping the Democrats.

00:23:19.180 I mean, I guess if they become voters, if they become voters, it will be.

00:23:23.840 I just don't I don't understand why more Republicans aren't standing up like six, eight years ago.

00:23:31.260 This would have been dominating every show in conservative media. 0.54

00:23:35.220 Yeah, I completely agree. And I think that this is, again, an area where national Republicans in Washington, D.C., very much have a tendency to forget the lessons politically that they find inconvenient.

00:23:52.320 And a lot of them, I think, want to revert to sort of a pre-Trump GOP frame.

00:23:57.360 And that's just not possible. You can't unring this bell. And that, to me, is is one of the reasons why, you know, you're correct, as you say, why you saw such a diverse working class support for the president this cycle, support that ultimately translated to a ton of these House seats that very few, if any, commentators expected Republicans to win.

00:24:19.400 And they want to hold on to that coalition. And I think holding on to it requires them to highlight a lot of these issues that, you know, really were not the bread and butter of the Chamber of Commerce Republican, you know, back 15 years ago.

00:24:33.300 OK, so let's talk about the Chamber of Commerce Republican, because I I thought your column on Liz Cheney was really interesting, basically saying her GOP is not the future GOP.

00:24:44.220 And I you made me think about it in a different way, because when I when I first saw that Jim Jordan, who, again, with his sketchy, weird history at Ohio State, I got I got issues with him. 0.97

00:24:55.240 But when I first saw he was pushing to bounce her out of leadership because she voted to impeach only 10 Republicans did in the House, I was like, oh, that's bullshit. 0.96

00:25:04.260 And like, calm down. She voted her conscience. That's it. She doesn't deserve to be booted out of leadership. 1.00

00:25:09.460 But I did start to think about it a little differently after I read your column and you talked about how she wanted a stampede to follow her.

00:25:18.440 And I quote, but the buffalo saw that cliff and they didn't like the look of it.

00:25:25.520 Can you talk about what what your point was and that her GOP is not the future GOP?

00:25:31.020 So let me first say that Liz Cheney has long running issues within the conference that a lot of people have ignored.

00:25:37.740 You may recall that she twice gave donations to to in support of candidates, primarying current members of her conference, including Thomas Massey,

00:25:51.720 the Republican who's quite anti-war and had is, you know, someone who she has some animus for something that you're not supposed to do when you're in leadership.

00:26:01.440 And that led to kind of a whole blow up for her internally.

00:26:05.400 It was a situation that I think kind of indicated that she's not exactly, you know, the kind of person to maybe lead the party in the future, just on that political ground.

00:26:15.280 To me, there's also, of course, the element of what she represents.

00:26:18.720 And I think that for a lot of Republicans, they've failed to wrestle with the fact that the Bush years, particularly his second term, was a massive failure of policy and politics.

00:26:32.440 There were some exceptions to that.

00:26:34.640 But for the most part, it really was.

00:26:36.540 I mean, there's not even a comparison, really, in terms of the math on where the GOP is today with Trump leaving office versus where they were when Bush was leaving office.

00:26:46.500 And I think that, unfortunately, very few people have really ever wrestled with that.

00:26:50.560 And I would include Liz Cheney in their number, that you have to learn lessons from the political ramifications of making the argument that Donald Trump did against George W. Bush, against, by extension, Dick Cheney, and against the Iraq War.

00:27:07.180 Something that certainly, I think, a large number of Americans have really tired of.

00:27:12.400 Though, I think that, overall, Liz Cheney is someone who represents a very small sliver of a big tent Republican coalition.

00:27:23.160 Someone who very much represents an old Republican Party that has passed away.

00:27:29.060 But what's going to replace it, we're not entirely sure yet.

00:27:32.300 And the variety of leaders who could really make a big impact in determining that is quite wide.

00:27:39.700 It's across the country.

00:27:41.100 And it's going to include, I think, some people who we don't even really know yet out of this new incoming freshman congressional class.

00:27:48.900 That's interesting that, you know, because we often talk about the factions within the Republican Party, you know, sort of the MAGA wing, the more establishment chamber of commerce wing.

00:27:58.800 And then I don't know what you'd call sort of McConnell.

00:28:03.420 And I'm not exactly sure where he is now.

00:28:06.260 But but I like that idea that maybe maybe this collection gives birth to a new kind of baby that we don't yet know about yet, that we haven't yet seen.

00:28:16.080 That's got a little MAGA sprinkled in, a little establishment sprinkled in.

00:28:19.280 Somebody who's more forward looking and has the finger on the pulse.

00:28:24.580 I don't know.

00:28:25.260 I've been I've been pushing for Daniel Cameron, the AG of Kentucky, because I just think he's I do think he's the Barack Obama of the right.

00:28:33.620 I just think he's exciting.

00:28:34.880 He's young.

00:28:36.140 You know, he's not that seasoned, but neither was Obama.

00:28:38.280 He can do it.

00:28:39.860 We just need new blood in there.

00:28:41.460 You know, when people talk about Trump running again at 78.

00:28:44.180 And I realize he's still leading.

00:28:45.880 I mean, the latest morning consult poll said, you know, who would you see is the who do you want is the Republican nominee right now?

00:28:53.240 This is January 13th post riot.

00:28:56.300 He was far and away the leader.

00:28:58.060 Forty two percent want Trump.

00:28:59.180 The next closest was Mike.

00:29:00.760 Mike Pence at, I think, 12.

00:29:02.580 But really, we're going to we're going to go there again.

00:29:05.480 Do you think the country is going to do that?

00:29:07.060 The problem that we really face at this moment is we learned a lot about voters from 2016 and what they represented within the Republican coalition in this electoral college friendly way of winning the presidency.

00:29:22.880 But I think right now, here we are four years later, and the only person that a lot of these voters still listen to and still trust is Trump.

00:29:32.100 And that's a failure of leadership on the part of a lot of people who, you know, tried to run and tried to beat Trump in 2016 and have still not figured it out this many years later, necessarily the way to go to those people and be trusted by them.

00:29:48.640 You mentioned new blood.

00:29:50.580 We really have to appreciate how much of a warping effect the boomers have had on American politics. 0.98

00:29:58.780 You know, to have three presidents in Bill Clinton, George W. Bush and Donald Trump all born in the same year.

00:30:06.380 I mean, that's crazy.

00:30:07.700 And now we've just gone older, the silent generation in Joe Biden, you know, with the oldest president taking office here.

00:30:16.220 That's something that, to me, just is a huge missed opportunity.

00:30:20.560 And we may end up in a situation where, I mean, wouldn't it be kind of Gen X to be like, I'm not interested in the presidency? 0.77

00:30:27.320 Maybe you don't get a Gen Xer, but you have new politicians rising up who I think need to seize this moment and need to be able to figure out how to have the language to speak to those Trump voters, but also to do so in a way that does not have you have all of the defects of the way that Trump approached politics.

00:30:51.140 There has to be a way to be confrontational without being a bully.

00:30:56.920 And I think that that's something that a lot of people are going to have to figure out.

00:31:00.840 Yeah.

00:31:01.340 Tell it to your wife's co-hosts on The View. 1.00

00:31:03.480 I don't, I think that they, I think they're beyond listening to, listening to my advice.

00:31:12.700 Oh my God, I feel, I feel for her.

00:31:14.380 If our audience doesn't know, Ben's married to Meghan McCain, but I, I, I don't really watch The View.

00:31:19.380 I see the highlights, but I feel for her.

00:31:21.520 She is fighting a one woman war over there and she is not dealing with people who are acting in good faith. 0.96

00:31:26.980 They're just so mean.

00:31:27.820 I can't imagine being that nasty to my co-hosts.

00:31:31.240 Can you imagine me beating up on poor Hammer like that?

00:31:34.780 I, I think that, you know, I wouldn't have as much of a problem with the way that TV, you know, not just The View, but TV along those lines worked.

00:31:47.360 If, if it was WWE, if it was, okay, we're going to go out, we're going to have a fight.

00:31:53.340 At the end of it, we both work for the same company.

00:31:55.780 We're not going to go and, you know, it's, there's none of that off air nastiness.

00:32:02.040 And to me, it's the, it's the off, it's off air nastiness and, and sort of, you know, the people who really do really have, I think, unfortunately lost it.

00:32:12.660 But, you know, I, I used to be on Chris Hayes show all the time.

00:32:17.360 And I feel like, unfortunately, now it's, it's unrecognizable to me the way that he talks about conservatives and just, he'll, he'll pick someone to go after and accuse them of being, you know, the cause of millions of people dying.

00:32:30.920 And it's just, it's not something that I think helps our discourse at all, because it leads to a point where you can't even talk to each other.

00:32:39.500 Um, and, and, and totally oblivious.

00:32:42.340 I mean, our, our executive producer, Steve Krakauer, he writes a newsletter.

00:32:46.840 It's called fourth watch that takes a look at the media every week.

00:32:49.480 And it's, it's well worth your time.

00:32:50.840 I love it.

00:32:51.680 I find new stories that I hadn't seen.

00:32:53.220 And I, I would have said that before I hired him.

00:32:55.760 Um, but one of the things he was pointing out this week was Politico had a meltdown because they had Ben Dominic.

00:33:01.260 I'm sorry, not Ben Dominic, uh, Ben Shapiro, my other Ben, um, as like guest editor, basically, he writes an article and then provides links.

00:33:10.180 There was a meltdown.

00:33:11.340 200 tears were cried by the liberals inside Politico that they would, that they would let Ben Shapiro have the pen of Politico as if it's this, you know, world renowned, you know, respected brand.

00:33:21.840 It's fine, but please don't lose yourself.

00:33:24.080 And then the, and then Chris Hayes did it and people were like, oh, that's fine.

00:33:30.460 You know, he's legitimate.

00:33:31.660 He's, you know, he's not partisan.

00:33:33.300 He's, you know, he's saying what's true.

00:33:35.040 And Chris Hayes was like, I, I don't wish to have any role in this debate as if like, I'm above this.

00:33:40.320 Don't compare me to Ben Shapiro.

00:33:41.920 I'm not the Ben Shapiro of the left that he can't even understand.

00:33:45.020 He thinks he's just like this truth teller and Shapiro's a nutcase.

00:33:48.840 And if you don't see that, there's a problem with you.

00:33:50.940 So, and, you know, he actually, in addition to Chris Hayes, they had Don Lemon do it as well.

00:33:58.400 And, and so it's, it's just like, these, these are the news people you see.

00:34:04.400 And then Ben Shapiro over here with his enormously successful podcast and media business and books and everything else.

00:34:11.140 He is, he is the fringe character.

00:34:13.020 It's, it's a total failure to wrestle with the world as it is.

00:34:19.480 And it's, it's trying to imagine a reality in which they can just Thanos style snap their fingers and have half the country disappear.

00:34:29.780 And my attitude towards that is, is that's, that's even more dangerous.

00:34:35.880 And just, I want to circle back and say Steve Krakauer's newsletter is excellent.

00:34:40.460 I recommend it to everyone.

00:34:41.840 It is absolutely something that will give you insight and some good perspective on what's happening within the world of media without being the kind of sycophant, compromised type of coverage that you get from a lot of DC based sources.

00:35:00.040 Exactly right.

00:35:01.560 And we should stay for the record.

00:35:02.940 Neither of us has any financial stake in this.

00:35:05.280 We just, and, and, and we don't even really like Steve that much.

00:35:07.960 It's not about, it's about, no, no, we do.

00:35:12.380 All right.

00:35:13.280 Now I want to pick up on your Thanos reference since I do have three children under the age of 12.

00:35:17.780 I know this reference and I, I've seen the movie, but I actually was thinking that like that what happened on the Capitol, that riot is being, it's like the fifth ring, you know, the fifth stone.

00:35:28.700 He got it.

00:35:29.520 It's like the Democrats, that was what they needed for all encompassing power.

00:35:33.820 The ability to silence Republicans forever to say, we told you, so you were wrong. 0.99

00:35:37.380 You're terrible. 0.99

00:35:38.100 Trump was terrible. 0.99

00:35:39.140 And that's how it was feeling the first week or two. 0.83

00:35:41.560 I actually think there's been a shift now.

00:35:43.400 I think already they overreacted with the big tech crackdown.

00:35:46.600 I think people are calming down and getting some more perspective that the Capitol Hill riot, as awful as it was, is one of many, many riots we have seen in this country over the past, not just year.

00:35:58.620 But 10 years.

00:36:00.040 And you've been talking about that.

00:36:00.880 You've been covering a lot of these riots.

00:36:02.340 And I thought you were pretty brave early on to say, not yawn.

00:36:07.520 You weren't saying yawn about the Capitol Hill riot, but you were saying, get some perspective.

00:36:12.240 Because whenever, at the infrequent times it's the right, we always get told, like, these are the Nazis, the right are all Nazis.

00:36:20.400 And every time we see permissive, glowing coverage of protests on the left.

00:36:25.860 And people need to remember that as they consume the news coverage about this event.

00:36:30.060 I think that's absolutely true.

00:36:31.960 I also have the perspective on this, the one that I know that I share with you about the situation when it comes to the use of crises by Democrats.

00:36:43.400 And Rahm Emanuel's reminder, as you referenced the other day, to never let them go to waste.

00:36:48.680 This was a Damoclean sword that was hanging over the head of the center-right in America.

00:36:55.880 And the rioters effectively gave Democrats and big tech a ladder and a pair of scissors to just go up and cut that rope.

00:37:04.760 And to me, this was inevitably going to happen, but I didn't anticipate this being the spark.

00:37:12.580 I thought that it would come in a slightly different way, I guess.

00:37:15.980 But now that it has happened, I think you are right.

00:37:20.740 People are much more aware of it.

00:37:23.260 And frankly, I mean, I think he's been a better commentator than almost anybody on MSNBC or CNN.

00:37:31.260 Bill Maher making the point again the other day that you can't use these people to say that that represents 75 million Trump supporters.

00:37:41.680 And to me, that's something that most Americans realize.

00:37:46.960 It's the media and a small, very loud cadre of Americans who have the opposite view.

00:37:55.040 I hate to do the Tom Friedman thing of talking about your taxi driver or your Uber driver.

00:38:01.260 I had a back-to-back experience last week where I had an Uber driver who was an Iranian refugee who was freaking out about what the big tech was doing

00:38:14.060 and talked about how he didn't want us to lose free speech and that he was worried about it,

00:38:21.620 that his parents had come here to bring him away so that he would have free speech.

00:38:25.060 And then I had a very nice Belgian gentleman who said,

00:38:30.820 well, I think that they should just take everybody who was at the Capitol and put them on an island without masks until they die.

00:38:37.960 So finding a way for those two people to share a country is the critical demand for our leadership today.

00:38:46.920 And that's something that doesn't just mean political leadership.

00:38:50.760 It means leadership in communities.

00:38:52.500 It means people across the country.

00:38:54.740 It means small business owners and pillars of community that still exist.

00:39:00.680 They're going to have to do the work that our politicians are clearly incapable of doing and would never be able to do even if they tried.

00:39:08.300 All right. Last line of inquiry.

00:39:12.380 How are you feeling about Joe Biden being the next president of the United States, Democrat control, the House and the Senate,

00:39:19.100 and what the next four years are likely to bring?

00:39:23.900 Well, I have to be honest, I'm very nervous about this presidency.

00:39:29.060 I worry about Joe Biden's capacity to navigate this moment.

00:39:33.800 I think he had a missed opportunity when it came to impeachment, actually, to sound a true note of unity.

00:39:39.720 I think if he had come out against it and said, look, you know, we're moving on from this.

00:39:44.720 If you want to censor him, fine.

00:39:47.000 But, you know, impeaching him after he's out of office, you know, it's not the way to go.

00:39:51.280 I think that that would have really boosted him among a lot of Republicans.

00:39:55.660 Instead, I think that this is going to be Obama 3.0, but people forget that Obama 2.0 was a lot more left than Obama 1.0.

00:40:06.240 And so I think that this is going to be an administration that unfortunately really goes down a lot of radical roads because they feel the political allowance to do so.

00:40:17.380 Now, those are going to be areas that are determined by how much they can actually get away with in a very weird time, given the pandemic.

00:40:27.300 But, you know, the note I would like to hear from President Biden is we cannot be enemies but friends.

00:40:35.500 We must not be enemies.

00:40:36.520 And I would like that to actually be something that is true in terms of the way that he approaches his administration.

00:40:45.280 But if it doesn't look like that, if it looks more like what Kamala Harris did in California, going after people like David Daleiden, going after journalism that she didn't like, you know, really being kind of a left authoritarian in a lot of ways,

00:40:59.980 then I expect that the culture war is only going to get hotter in this country.

00:41:05.400 And that concerns me greatly because I think, if anything, what we need is to lower that temperature to prevent a real crack up in our culture.

00:41:16.660 Yeah. I mean, if he took it one step further and said, stop making lists of people who supported Trump, you know, that's that's not American.

00:41:25.900 That's not what we do. We won this election.

00:41:27.820 We're going to go forward. We're going to try to remember who we are as Americans, something to to regenerate some love of country and belief in who we are fundamentally as Americans.

00:41:38.580 You know, it's it'd be great to hear even Trump was terrible at that.

00:41:43.340 Good God, was he a bad spokesman for the country?

00:41:45.740 I mean, he just was. That was a very valid criticism.

00:41:48.340 I used to hear of him from the people at like National Review who are Republicans and conservatives, but they didn't like Trump.

00:41:54.000 But they were right that he he just couldn't articulate what's special about this place in a way that would ever make you want to stand up and cheer or really believe it, you know.

00:42:03.640 And I I do think Joe Biden is a patriot.

00:42:06.900 I think, you know, when you hear him talking about the divisiveness in the country and so on, that's he's being pulled by people.

00:42:13.980 I think he loves the country.

00:42:15.140 And I'd love to hear more rationale for that love being espoused by the leader of the free world.

00:42:21.380 I'll give you the last word.

00:42:23.600 I think that one of the reasons that Joe Biden won the nomination as a Democrat is because unlike a lot of the other people on stage,

00:42:32.340 he really wasn't one dedicated to talking down the United States of America, to viewing it as something that was, you know, thoroughly corrupted by by racism and by all of these other elements that people bring forward.

00:42:47.060 I think that's one of the reasons that he won, because he was that old school Democrat in his approach.

00:42:53.480 But his policies, that's a different question.

00:42:56.000 And I think that it remains to be seen what those actually look like, the impacts that they have and how much to circle back.

00:43:04.240 You know, Democrats are planning to not let this crisis go to waste if they continue down the road that a lot of their governors have gone on trying to use this moment to cement certain areas of policy they want to achieve,

00:43:18.160 whether it be within education, health care, or, you know, as you mentioned earlier on immigration policy, I think that that's going to have a real toxic effect and lead to a political backlash that is along the lines of what we saw from the Tea Party back in the day.

00:43:35.640 That's the big question, and we won't know it until we've had a real sight at this new presidency.

00:43:43.480 Ben, always great talking to you. So thoughtful. Really appreciate it.

00:43:46.960 Great to be with you. Thank you.

00:43:51.580 So Crystal and Sager will be here in one second.

00:43:53.740 But first, let's talk about Legacy Box.

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00:44:08.580 And she has all these cute little slides, which I've never seen.

00:44:11.840 Enter Legacy Box.

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00:44:37.520 Neither were slides.

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00:44:51.640 I was saying the other day, one of the things that we did with our Legacy Box was sent in these old, like, training tapes I had to do when I was becoming a lawyer to learn how to argue, to be on my feet.

00:45:01.000 And we had a lot of fun with my kids watching the very young MK, the pre-foxified MK, learning how to be a lawyer. 0.51

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00:45:58.380 And now, without further ado, Crystal Ball and Sagar and Jetty, the co-hosts of Rising on the Hill.com.

00:46:06.720 HillTV.com.

00:46:07.700 Hi, guys.

00:46:08.680 Hey, Megan.

00:46:09.220 How's it going?

00:46:09.780 Hey.

00:46:10.180 Hey, Megan.

00:46:10.780 It's going great.

00:46:12.360 Big week.

00:46:12.880 I'll start with you, Sagar, since you're more right-leaning.

00:46:15.600 How are you feeling this week and about the next four years?

00:46:19.900 That's a strange timing.

00:46:20.940 I mean, right now, D.C. is literally a fortress, like, occupied with 26,000 troops.

00:46:25.800 Crystal and I are actually coming to you remotely because our crew can't get to the downtown studio.

00:46:31.520 And it's interesting.

00:46:32.740 I've been trying to reflect just broadly about this entire administration and more.

00:46:37.580 And I tweeted this basically on the day of the election, which is that all of it being said, I think Trump's greatest victory was breaking the policy consensus in D.C.

00:46:48.140 I don't think he did very much in terms of following through on that, largely abandoned many of the promises that he made in 2016.

00:46:56.420 But you can't put back in the bag that millions of people, 65 million in 2016, 75 million, were willing to raise a middle finger to the establishment.

00:47:06.300 In Washington, I don't think it has allowed for enough introspection here.

00:47:10.340 I don't think Biden is necessarily the person who's going to be asking those questions, but that was really heartening to me.

00:47:15.880 It made it so that I was like, you know what?

00:47:17.520 I don't have to listen to the tastemakers or others.

00:47:20.220 It turns out that there are a lot of people in this country who agree that what is going on right now in this country is not acceptable.

00:47:27.040 And so I think to the extent that he had a victory, that's what it was.

00:47:30.060 I don't think to the extent that he had a failure is that he didn't really follow through on much of it and in many ways drived up our partisan chaos to 11 or 12.

00:47:37.940 So it's a mixed bag, but it's an interesting kind of reflective time, given everything that's happening right now.

00:47:43.760 Mm hmm.

00:47:44.480 It is reflective.

00:47:45.540 What have you been feeling, Crystal?

00:47:48.320 You know, Megan, there was a new poll out this weekend, last end of last week, and it asked people what they thought the greatest threat to their way of life was.

00:47:59.120 And a majority of Americans said that their fellow citizen, not a foreign threat, not COVID, not financial elites, their fellow citizens, I think 56% said that was the greatest threat to their life, to their life, their way of life.

00:48:18.740 And I think that's probably the most devastating statistic and the most telling one about the moment that we find ourselves in great McConnell's going to church with Biden.

00:48:28.600 Do I think that that's going to lead to any sort of like amicable situation in Washington?

00:48:33.660 No.

00:48:34.700 And part of why is because, you know, frankly, the business that that you and I both were part of in cable news and mainstream media, they have a business model around making people feel like their fellow citizen is not just has a different point of view or goes about their lives differently or has different priorities, but is an actual existential threat to their lives.

00:48:59.320 And I'm not talking about, you know, political media elites, I'm not talking about them being the threat, people turning against each other as like, this is the thing that I'm most terrified of.

00:49:10.120 So that's, to me, the scariest stat that you can consider giving, given, you know, where we are, given what we saw with people being so deluded that they thought that they could storm the Capitol and overturn the election and thought that there was some massive fraud of which there was no evidence.

00:49:26.560 Political violence that we've seen throughout the year, we also, in that same poll, had a majority of people saying that political violence is likely to only get worse.

00:49:36.340 I don't think that's a statement on Joe Biden.

00:49:38.380 I think that's a statement on how ugly and how divided this country is.

00:49:42.120 And people like Trump and many others have basically used that division for their own profit and power.

00:49:48.120 So to me, that is the biggest sort of existential threat that is facing the country is the way that people are viewing one another as enemies.

00:49:57.980 And I hope that in the Biden era, maybe we can turn that temperature down and do some things that have broad-based support.

00:50:04.040 You know, the $2,000 checks, one thing that has broad bipartisan support.

00:50:08.600 Obviously, everybody wants to get a vaccine out and be able to get back to some kind of normal life.

00:50:14.160 I hope that those sort of shared goals help to heal some of those wounds.

00:50:19.440 But frankly, as long as people profit off of dividing people and making them hate each other, I'm pretty pessimistic.

00:50:26.980 I know it seems easy to lose the fact that the people who stormed that Capitol, not all of them, you know, I mean, but some, sure, I bet some were white supremacists.

00:50:38.940 Um, and who have just gotten themselves into such a tizzy about this country, we're going to take it back.

00:50:46.280 And then on the other side, you know, what we call the leftists, which is not to be confused with liberals who are normal.

00:50:54.580 Leftists have an agenda of just shutting down speech and changing America and crapping on America at every turn.

00:50:59.520 Like they're, they're in a different group.

00:51:01.380 They don't represent the vast majority of us.

00:51:04.420 The vast majority of us are the 80% in the middle.

00:51:06.660 Maybe it's smaller now, maybe it's 60% in the middle.

00:51:08.900 I don't know, but they get the most airtime.

00:51:11.680 They, they gather the most attention and they make people feel really pessimistic.

00:51:17.580 But I talk to you guys and I know, I know in my soul that most Americans are where we are.

00:51:24.600 All three of us don't share the exact same politics, but can talk to each other, like each other, respect each other, listen to each other, learn from each other.

00:51:32.540 That I really think is where the country truly is in its heart.

00:51:36.660 Either one of you can take that one.

00:51:38.460 Yeah.

00:51:38.720 I mean, I don't disagree with you, Megan.

00:51:40.220 The problem is, like you said, is that the structures, the power structures that we have, which even enable this type of discussion, they're already coming at us.

00:51:48.360 We talked about this today on our show.

00:51:50.620 There's a former Facebook executive who was on Brian Stelter's show on CNN over the weekend.

00:51:55.300 And he was talking about how he was like, there are people on YouTube who have larger audiences than daytime CNN and implying that that's a bad thing.

00:52:04.200 And it's funny because Crystal and I do have a larger audience than daytime CNN and we're on YouTube.

00:52:09.580 And I think that the reason is people are craving this type of discussion and they recognize it now as a threat because it is, I think, in the long run, an existential threat to their business model and to so much of what they've brought upon this country.

00:52:24.680 But I think it's vitally important that we stand up for the ability of free expression, not just online, on podcasting.

00:52:32.160 That's another thing that they're coming after.

00:52:33.720 They're like calling it a loophole that podcasting is an open protocol.

00:52:37.920 I've never really been more afraid of kind of the censorship regime and how far it's going than we are in right now.

00:52:44.380 And Glenn Greenwald rightfully has been warning.

00:52:46.280 He's like, this is just like the post 9-11 moment, except just to Crystal's point, which is now the threat is not foreign.

00:52:54.740 It's each other and using the apparatuses of the state in order to look at, demonize and investigate each other, which I just think is so, so dangerous in the long run.

00:53:04.260 You know, it also just smacks of such elitism, you know, that guy like the internet, YouTube.

00:53:12.220 It's like he doesn't realize that the old system is crumbling down around him.

00:53:18.840 People have figured out how to find information in new ways.

00:53:22.960 They're not beholden to the big NBCs or, God forbid, CNNs of the world anymore.

00:53:28.720 And the response to that is not to shame them and say, like, old school media needs to just try to force the other competitors out of business so that they can reclaim their monopoly.

00:53:42.040 They need to reevaluate their information delivery and their connection.

00:53:47.040 I always say Trump is untethered to the facts.

00:53:49.720 He doesn't have an adult relationship with the facts.

00:53:51.840 Neither does CNN.

00:53:54.240 That's the truth.

00:53:55.360 Only there's no navel gazing about that one, you know. 0.69

00:53:58.740 Yeah, well, Trump was a very convenient excuse because he was so terrible and outrageous and, like, lied all the time and, you know, incited people and all of that.

00:54:07.000 So you could easily just point at him and be like, well, he's the problem.

00:54:10.200 He's the reason.

00:54:11.020 He's the reason that things are bad.

00:54:12.740 Like, anything bad that happens, it could be his fault. 0.99

00:54:15.800 And so that was an easy excuse for Democrats who didn't want to look at, like, hey, how did we lose to this clown? 0.98

00:54:22.080 Like, how did that happen? 0.83

00:54:23.300 Maybe there's something we did wrong over these years that people were also rejecting in picking this person.

00:54:30.260 And it's certainly for, you know, for media outlets.

00:54:33.100 Trump was a meal ticket and kept them from having to look at the fact that audiences were increasingly abandoning them before he stepped into the limelight.

00:54:42.020 So they never had to assess and they've never spent a minute thinking about, like, oh, hey, I wonder how and why that trust with our audience was broken.

00:54:51.980 I wonder if it had anything to do with our reporting leading up to the Iraq war.

00:54:56.460 Hey, I wonder if it had anything to do with us completely failing to see the financial collapse happening.

00:55:02.060 Hey, I wonder if it had to do with, like, blowing up this Russiagate conspiracy way out of line with anything that was ever backed up by the facts.

00:55:13.200 I wonder if any of those things led to people feeling like they needed to find alternative sources.

00:55:18.660 And I don't want to I don't want to quibble with what you said about liberals versus leftists, but I consider myself to be a leftist.

00:55:26.020 And what I actually think is so troubling is that it's the mainstream liberal perspective within the Democratic Party and within the media that is the most authoritarian.

00:55:34.800 They're the ones who are cheering on censorship, who are saying, you know, who are like going to Twitter and saying, please ban all of these people and begging for more big tech censorship.

00:55:45.400 They're the ones who are saying, hey, we need to get in there with a new domestic terrorism law because we don't have a large enough national security state and police state.

00:55:53.780 I think there are you know, there's a lot of varieties and flavors of leftists, but a lot of people on the left see the ultimate goal of a multiracial working class movement.

00:56:06.500 And that means that you have to actually like not hate people who are in the white working class and may have been Trump supporters and not just dismiss them out of hand or want to censor them and just get them out of the public square altogether.

00:56:21.160 So the very fact that it actually is the quote unquote liberals who have become such sort of knee jerk authoritarians is what I find so troubling.

00:56:31.280 That's an interesting point. I mean, I always sort of think about it in terms of my liberal friends, you know, which is redundant because I live in the Upper West Side.

00:56:38.300 All my friends are liberal. I think I have one who's a Trump voter and she's ashamed.

00:56:43.240 She doesn't want people to know. She's not ashamed. She doesn't want people to know.

00:56:45.520 But anyway, what I think about when I think about them is they're kind of like you.

00:56:51.000 I don't think they're Bernie supporters. They're more Biden supporters, but they're they just don't buy into this crazy thing that's happening on the left of like shaming speech and de-platforming somebody who disagrees with you.

00:57:03.680 I'm thinking of my friends now like they're like, for lack of a better term, normal liberals.

00:57:09.160 Yeah, they're normal. I don't know how that's what that's called. They're just normal.

00:57:12.000 Yeah. And I just feel like I know a lot of liberals and I don't I maybe I know one who's on board that woke train and, you know, that that's just not going to fly in my life.

00:57:22.860 But I just I'm not sure how they have such a huge microphone and how they've rested control of the magazines and online data and sports and just the messaging we're getting from so many corners seems to be in their control and not in the control of the crystal balls of the world.

00:57:42.000 Well, I think it's because they benefit from that regime of censorship because it does basically quash their competitors.

00:57:49.800 I mean, that dude on CNN who was the Facebook executive saying like, oh, my God, these people have audiences larger than CNN.

00:57:56.720 How can that that gives up a game?

00:58:00.160 I mean, it's you know, it's basically like classic anti classic anti-competitive behavior.

00:58:05.400 If they can really narrow the confines of what you're allowed to say and where you're allowed to say it and who's allowed to say it, then it creates less competition for themselves.

00:58:15.700 Now, to your point, no one's learned any lessons.

00:58:18.580 You won't be surprised to learn.

00:58:20.040 No one's learned a single thing.

00:58:21.660 And we're already seeing the media, a huge part of the problem.

00:58:24.920 And they represent, you know, it's not just them.

00:58:26.800 It's the Democrats, too, on on, you know, on on media.

00:58:31.760 Doubling down on the on the condemnation of Trump supporters as a group that they are literally the Don Lemon said you're part of the Klan, that you are supporting the man who the Klan supports if you voted for Trump.

00:58:45.340 And here's just a little mashup that Gravian put together.

00:58:48.200 These are great mashups that Gravian does of some examples.

00:58:51.360 The only I think the voices will be will be obvious, except for the one who's like unity, uni is Claire McCaskill.

00:58:56.600 But take a listen.

00:58:57.420 I wonder if you have thought through kind of how Republicans begin what someone on my team earlier today called debathification.

00:59:05.860 Look, I think the challenge is that the rot is from the grassroots all the way to the presidency.

00:59:12.880 So the rot is at every layer.

00:59:15.340 There are millions of Americans, almost all white, almost all Republicans, who somehow need to be deprogrammed. 0.78

00:59:25.360 They can't even open their mouths about unity. 0.99

00:59:27.980 Shut up about unity. 0.93

00:59:29.880 The way that we in the media speak about this is so important. 0.99

00:59:33.580 Twitter and Facebook aren't banning you because you're a conservative. 1.00

00:59:36.360 They're banning you because you suck. 1.00

00:59:38.120 They're banning you because you say evil shit. 1.00

00:59:40.080 I covered wars abroad. 1.00

00:59:42.140 I've seen ugly things that this country now resembles.

00:59:44.780 But I've never seen this country more in doubt about safety at home than right now.

00:59:50.020 And the enemy is us.

00:59:53.200 Oh, boy.

00:59:55.000 Yeah.

00:59:56.040 Sager. 0.96

00:59:56.880 I mean, the rat. 0.93

00:59:58.800 Yeah.

00:59:58.940 The one that really got me was debathification.

01:00:04.160 Does anyone want to tell Joy Reid what debathification, how that all worked out in Iraq?

01:00:09.300 It was a total disaster and led to the collapse of the state.

01:00:12.680 And this is exactly what I was alluding to earlier, which is that, look, you start demonizing each other to the point.

01:00:20.340 Like I was I said this earlier, which was that if you think about the war in Iraq, it took about, what, nine months in order to beat the war drum and get cable on board and the media failures.

01:00:29.780 We've now had 20 years of demonization of each other.

01:00:33.860 So the ground is laid and all they needed to do was flip the switch.

01:00:37.260 You can hear that from Chris Cuomo, from Joy Reid and others.

01:00:40.700 And you turn the organs of propaganda and then now of the state against one another.

01:00:46.300 And you are going to lead yourself to a deeply, deeply troubling situation.

01:00:50.860 And all I want in this world is to see less violence here in the U.S. and less type of tension, less incidents like we saw at the Capitol.

01:00:59.780 And I know having seen, you know, I'll pull this card to having having covered a lot of these things abroad, ISIS, Iraq, Afghanistan, the collapse of regimes.

01:01:10.100 This is one of the central ways that authoritarian dictatorships ramp up domestic turmoil and lead to big political explosions.

01:01:17.140 So that reel that you just played is just so, so troubling.

01:01:21.060 But unfortunately, like you said, they haven't learned anything.

01:01:24.420 Well, I have a scarier one to play for you.

01:01:26.680 I really wanted to discuss this with you, too, which is, again, learning nothing.

01:01:33.240 Take a listen to Hillary Clinton, which she has a podcast.

01:01:38.560 I'm just going to just throw that out there.

01:01:40.380 She's got a podcast because people want to hear from Hillary Clinton. 1.00

01:01:43.700 Apparently they do because this one's got a lot of views.

01:01:45.660 She had on Nancy Pelosi. 0.75

01:01:48.080 And this is their plan for the upcoming foreseeable future.

01:01:53.740 Maybe they're going to get started right away.

01:01:55.160 I don't know.

01:01:55.620 Nancy Pelosi is still House Speaker.

01:01:57.640 Listen to their agenda item going forward under Biden.

01:02:01.040 We now know that not just him, but his enablers, his accomplices, his cult members have the same disregard for democracy.

01:02:12.440 Do you think we need a 9-11 type commission to investigate and report everything that they can pull together and explain what happened?

01:02:22.140 I do.

01:02:22.820 Let me, again, to your point of who is he beholden to, as I've said over and over, as I said to him in that picture with my blue suit.

01:02:30.900 Right.

01:02:31.320 As I was leaving, what I was saying to him as I was pointing rudely at him, with you, Mr. President, all roads lead to Putin.

01:02:39.580 Oh, my God.

01:02:41.220 Oh, my God.

01:02:42.900 It will never end, Megan.

01:02:45.020 It will never end.

01:02:46.120 I mean, I just want you to take a step back and think about the fact.

01:02:50.220 Here we are with thousands of people dying every day in a pandemic.

01:02:53.840 Economic collapse.

01:02:54.860 People facing eviction.

01:02:56.380 Homelessness.

01:02:57.480 All of these problems that the country is facing.

01:02:59.880 And you want to waste time and energy and money going back over Russiagate.

01:03:07.040 What was the Mueller report?

01:03:08.760 Haven't we already spent years on this thing?

01:03:12.180 But again, why does Hillary Clinton, why does Nancy Pelosi, but especially Hillary Clinton, why does she want to fixate on Russia? 1.00

01:03:20.960 Because it saves her from getting blamed for losing the easiest election of all time.

01:03:27.380 She is the most proximate cause. 0.61

01:03:29.440 If you hate Trump, she's the most proximate cause of why he's there.

01:03:32.740 But she doesn't want people to talk about that. 0.98

01:03:34.460 So it's got to be all roads lead to Vladimir Putin now and apparently forever.

01:03:39.940 Can I just ask you a follow up on that?

01:03:41.740 When you have to describe your own behavior by like, I pointed rudely in my blue suit.

01:03:48.780 I mean, I'm having secondhand embarrassment.

01:03:52.320 But it's all about that theater.

01:03:54.200 They have to have the theatrical flourishes on because they don't actually do anything.

01:03:57.940 So it's all going to be about the, you know, tearing up the speech and all of this like theatrical resistance that has become so prominent in the Democratic Party in this era.

01:04:06.160 And again, to go back to the point of like, if you're really afraid of authoritarianism, like if you really want to take a stand up against authoritarianism, this type of commission is only again going to lead to this place of justifying more intrusive national security state apparatus.

01:04:27.080 We've already had the lionizing of all these like spooks and national security state ghouls within the Democratic Party.

01:04:35.000 Apparently, they just are totally committed to continuing in that direction.

01:04:39.280 And but they're going to be they're going to point rudely at anybody who feels differently about it than they do.

01:04:44.760 To me, I love it because this is like that piece that I mean, the headline obviously is that they want another Russia investigation, even though the first one proved nothing, came up with nothing.

01:04:53.900 But the second piece of it is that the sadness of like trying to seem tough and project toughness.

01:05:00.320 I mean, four years of Trump running around calling everybody the P word has brought Nancy Pelosi to the point where she's celebrating her pointing rudely. 0.99

01:05:08.460 She did a little thing with ripping up the the State of the Union speech. 1.00

01:05:12.840 She wore the same suit on impeachment both times.

01:05:15.880 And I just think, can we find better leaders?

01:05:18.760 Can't we like anybody better than them run, Sagar?

01:05:22.040 Anybody?

01:05:22.320 Yeah, I know. It's amazing.

01:05:24.100 You know, whenever I thought that Mitch McConnell was going to be the Senate majority leader, I was like, oh, so the president's going to be seventy nine.

01:05:30.580 He will actually be younger than Pelosi and McConnell.

01:05:33.920 So Schumer.

01:05:34.840 Congratulations, Chuck Schumer.

01:05:35.960 He's a spry young man in his 70s.

01:05:38.380 He will now be the youngest person who is one of the most important actors in Washington.

01:05:42.580 But yeah, look, a sad commentary.

01:05:44.500 You got a 70 what, 78 year old president.

01:05:46.440 You've got a 70 something Senate majority leader and an 80 year old speaker of the House.

01:05:51.080 And there's nobody really in the wings to save us.

01:05:54.220 So maybe we get what we deserve.

01:05:56.080 No.

01:05:56.640 And but and by the way, I should mention that that those soundbites were part of our feature that we call sound up here at the show where we digest various soundbites.

01:06:04.640 And those were so good. I mean, the other thing I wanted to mention on the subject of just the way folks are looking at the Trump voters right now and how incredibly unhelpful it is.

01:06:17.180 There was an op ed in The Washington Post by a woman named Christina Beltran, who's at NYU.

01:06:21.720 And her conclusion, this is this is the sort of the new 30,000 foot view of all the Latinos who voted for Trump and the black people who voted for Trump, that they're they're not really Latino and they're not really black. 0.51

01:06:35.400 They are what she calls and they quote multiracial whites.

01:06:40.500 And here's a quote from her piece.

01:06:43.540 Multiracial whites. 0.96

01:06:44.620 OK, rather than offer his non-white voters recognition, Trump has offered them multiracial whiteness rooted in America's ugly history of white supremacy, indigenous dispossession and anti-blackness. 0.69

01:06:58.980 Multiracial whiteness is an ideology invested in the unequal distribution of land, wealth, power and privilege, a form of hierarchy in which the standing of one section of the population is premised on the debasement of others is the last part. 0.98

01:07:10.940 It allows citizens of every background to call Muslims terrorists, to demand that undocumented immigrants be rounded up and deported, to deride BLM as a movement of thugs and criminals and to accuse Democrats of being blood drinking pedophiles. 0.98

01:07:27.240 If you are a Latino or a black person who voted for Trump, sorry to break it to you, but you're no longer Latino or black. 1.00

01:07:34.640 You became white. 0.98

01:07:35.640 That was Joe Biden's line, right? 0.95

01:07:37.100 You ain't black. 0.98

01:07:38.000 Yeah. 0.98

01:07:38.180 It starts with him.

01:07:39.340 I mean, listen, anytime we start painting any particular group, especially demographic groups with a broad brush, like, isn't that kind of the definition of racism?

01:07:51.620 I mean, I just get really uncomfortable anytime we say, OK, here's this group of people and I'm going to say that this particular attribute describes all of them and this is their real motivations and this is how they're really thinking about things.

01:08:06.060 And ultimately, if your goal is actually to win elections for Democrats or build a progressive movement or any of that, you're ultimately just ostracizing the very people who you might be able to win into your coalition or win back into your coalition.

01:08:22.000 And that's really the thing with this.

01:08:24.280 I think a lot of this response, the instinct to label people, to push them out of the public square, to, like, paint all Trump voters as uniquely evil.

01:08:35.060 It's not actually about winning a political argument.

01:08:38.620 It's about individuals benefiting personally from displaying their, like, you know, their moral superiority online or on their shows or wherever they're doing it because they get a they get a bump from that.

01:08:51.560 They get either profit or clout or whatever from that display.

01:08:55.680 It's not actually about accomplishing the goals that they claim to be trying to accomplish. 0.96

01:09:00.540 Well, and think about how racist that statement is, right, that that Christina Beltran thinks that there's a group of Latinos and black people thinking, how can I get away with calling BLM thugs and criminals and calling Democrats blood drinking pedophiles? 0.94

01:09:17.380 How can I do it? 0.97

01:09:18.640 I know I will vote for Trump and thereby convert to multiracial white like that. 0.97

01:09:25.980 This is the purpose of voting for him is that now I can call a Muslim a terrorist with impunity. 1.00

01:09:30.940 It's like I saw a headline the other day, Sagar, from TheRoot.com that that read straight black men are the white people of black people. 0.97

01:09:40.920 Yeah, I see this.

01:09:42.120 I'm very familiar, by the way, with white people like Christina trying to tell me exactly who is Indian.

01:09:47.260 And not.

01:09:47.860 So this one always drives me particularly crazy. 0.90

01:09:49.880 You too are a multiracial white. 0.93

01:09:51.460 Oh, I've heard it for a long time.

01:09:53.620 I've even been called a white supremacist, which is always enjoyable. 1.00

01:09:56.860 I think it's it. 0.97

01:09:57.580 Look, again, it's fun to dunk on these people.

01:10:00.820 It's ultimately they are leaning on the only lens that they know.

01:10:04.420 And that is what is actually destructive, which is that when you think all of our problems in America are about race and that's the analytical framework, which you're going to bring to all of our problems,

01:10:14.140 then you are not going to be able to understand the class divide that we have in this country.

01:10:18.800 You can't talk about economic inequality.

01:10:21.420 You can't look at trade policy, anything, any of the myriad different things and reasons why people voted for Trump, why people supported Bernie Sanders in the Democratic primary.

01:10:32.760 So I think that it is largely a product of that more than anything.

01:10:37.600 So let's talk about it.

01:10:39.780 I won't I won't say it's the last day we're going to talk about Trump because the man has a way of collecting airtime, even when he's not president, as he's done his whole life.

01:10:48.260 But let's talk. Let's just spend a moment on whether Trump is going to be the kingmaker most of us predicted upon leaving office.

01:10:56.780 Right. His his approval ratings on leaving office, 38 percent, 60 percent of the public disapproves.

01:11:02.860 He's going to Mar-a-Lago.

01:11:04.340 They say he's going to be building a fiefdom aimed at maintaining his influence over the Republican Party.

01:11:08.880 He's raised 200 million bucks to support or oppose candidates under this Save America PAC and is already saying he's going to use a lot of it to oppose candidates who voted to impeach him.

01:11:19.840 And I wonder how you think his ability like what is his ability to be a kingmaker now, given everything that's happened over the past two weeks, Sagar?

01:11:29.060 Yeah, it's a great question.

01:11:30.640 I think he's still just as much of a kingmaker as before.

01:11:33.340 And the problem that people like Liz Cheney and others who want to go back to Paul Ryan ism is that the only thing more unpopular than Trump is Paul Ryan and his tax cuts.

01:11:44.880 So it's like good luck. Right.

01:11:47.120 And ultimately, look, Trump, I think the latest poll I saw in NBC News got an 87 percent approval rating within the Republican Party.

01:11:54.460 And this is look, this is going to be a huge problem for the party in the future and why I'm actually very bearish on the GOP in the Biden era, which is that you've got two irreconcilable wings.

01:12:05.420 In my view, you kind of have the elites which are embodied in Liz Cheney and with Mitt Romney and others.

01:12:12.340 They are not a majority of the Republican Party.

01:12:15.260 But let's say it's 15 to 20 percent.

01:12:18.560 Ergo, you know, the type of suburban voter in Georgia who decided to vote for Biden but then voted for David Perdue and Kelly Loeffler.

01:12:25.620 But then you've got, you know, a sizable chunk, 60, 65 percent and more who are Trump people.

01:12:32.200 And of those, maybe one third who are just hardcore like Trump, the personality, QAnon and more.

01:12:39.520 Those are irreconcilability is going to be hard.

01:12:42.440 But as I see it, the people who are going to hang on, which are the 65 percent I talked about who are very Trumpy and the QAnon folks in particular, they are going to follow Trump's lead more than anything.

01:12:54.340 So I think in the future you could see a bleeding of the Cheney and Romney types into the Democratic Party, something that already happened in the last election with Joe Biden.

01:13:02.800 And you're going to see Trump become even more of a kingmaker.

01:13:06.680 But that being said, that kingmaking faction is going to be like 35, maybe 40 percent of the U.S. population.

01:13:13.180 So overall, it's still not a good place to be.

01:13:15.560 So it's a complicated situation.

01:13:17.740 Yeah, it's not a big enough kingdom, Crystal.

01:13:19.780 Yes.

01:13:21.000 Kingmaker over a diminished kingdom is the problem.

01:13:23.980 I mean, look, I think that it depends a lot on whether he's actually banned from running for president again, which I think is unlikely to happen.

01:13:32.140 But, you know, clearly he wanted to play this game for four years, do the reality show.

01:13:36.880 Will he or won't he run?

01:13:38.380 Guess that gives him a lot of power.

01:13:39.920 And that basically freezes the GOP in place because he is so popular ultimately with the base.

01:13:46.660 But the elites who supported and enabled and in some cases bankrolled him have really completely withdrawn their support.

01:13:53.380 And I think that's likely to persist because they got everything that they wanted out of his administration.

01:13:58.060 That's a major problem for him.

01:13:59.560 That's a major problem for him financially.

01:14:01.480 It's a major problem for him potentially legally.

01:14:04.180 You would know a lot more about that, Megan, though, than I would.

01:14:06.700 And I think it's a problem for him politically.

01:14:08.840 Look, he's also lazy.

01:14:10.220 And frankly, his name and him like endorsing in primaries hasn't been as powerful as he wants to believe.

01:14:17.160 He's a unique and singular figure.

01:14:18.920 Just him saying, you know, this candidate's my candidate hasn't always worked out for him in the past.

01:14:23.440 And so in terms of making picks and primaries and, you know, really using that to drive an agenda, he's never shown an appetite or a desire to do that.

01:14:34.200 But if he maintains the ability to run for president next time around, then, yeah, I think he keeps a pretty strong hold on the Republican Party and essentially freezes everything into place.

01:14:44.400 But Sagar's absolutely right.

01:14:45.940 Will the base remain loyal to him?

01:14:47.660 Yes.

01:14:47.960 Without that sort of upper crust, elite establishment support that has long been with the GOP, if they completely withdraw, then I think they're going to have a lot of problems in terms of national elections and also in a lot of statewide elections.

01:15:03.720 Is there anyone here who thinks Ivanka Trump is the answer to that problem?

01:15:09.800 You're talking to the perfect people.

01:15:11.740 We covered it today.

01:15:12.840 No, absolutely not.

01:15:14.200 I mean, no, I don't think so.

01:15:16.100 I don't think that, I mean, she's essentially somebody who adopted, you know, she tried to bring mainstream liberalism into the Republican Party, worked within the White House in order to combat a lot, her and her husband in particular, to combat many of the more populous things that Trump was even trying to do in the initial days of his presidency.

01:15:37.380 And flat out, I just don't think she's very particularly talented on the baseline level.

01:15:42.280 So I don't see that as somebody who could bring any sort of factions of the GOP together.

01:15:48.400 I don't think it is possible currently.

01:15:50.380 I have not seen a figure that might be able to do it.

01:15:53.280 The only one who I've got my eye on is actually Ron DeSantis down in Florida.

01:15:59.940 Anyone with the Trump name is going to be toxic to elite America. 0.87

01:16:04.720 And, you know, the fact of the matter is in this country right now, if you don't have some segment of elites on your side, you're pretty screwed.

01:16:11.320 I mean, you see, you know, like what they did to Parler.

01:16:13.860 Apple pulled them from the from the App Store.

01:16:17.200 Google pulled them and then Amazon cuts the legs out from under them with their web servers.

01:16:21.500 Like you literally can't operate in America without the sanctioning and support of some segment of elites.

01:16:27.900 And if the Republican Party doesn't have that, they're in big trouble.

01:16:31.440 And no, I don't think Ivanka I don't think elites will go along with Ivanka Trump because just simply because of the last name.

01:16:37.740 And she doesn't have quite the juice with the base that daddy has.

01:16:40.920 So, no, I don't think that's any kind of real answer for them.

01:16:45.240 Yeah. And she just she doesn't have she's not dynamic. 0.90

01:16:48.180 She's just not a dynamic, compelling personality.

01:16:51.000 You know, she never takes risks.

01:16:53.580 And the entire four years of this presidency, you could see her fingerprints all over her good press. 0.51

01:16:58.100 She clearly has a good relationship with Drudge.

01:16:59.840 Like he put you do a post on her.

01:17:02.120 And within two minutes, there'd be some glamour shot replacing it.

01:17:05.040 Right. She called. She emailed.

01:17:06.140 I mean, it's obvious to those of us in the media how she, you know, manipulates her own image. 1.00

01:17:10.960 And now they're saying she wants to run potentially for Marco Rubio's seat in the U.S. Senate down in Florida where she and Jared and the others.

01:17:17.960 That's not to say that they haven't done good.

01:17:19.420 I'm just saying I think people get drunk on their own wine.

01:17:22.100 Trump's power is not her power.

01:17:23.700 Trump's ability to connect with a crowd is not hers.

01:17:26.680 And the same is true of John Jr.

01:17:27.980 I think he's closer. But, you know, there's only one Trump for better or for worse.

01:17:33.100 There's only one Trump. OK.

01:17:34.300 I still have the last word. All right. Last last line of inquiry.

01:17:37.740 Here we go. Biden. Right.

01:17:39.860 This is it. He's he's 46th president of the United States, at least until Kamala Harris can get to his food.

01:17:46.380 What? No, I didn't say that.

01:17:47.680 But everybody's wondering, you know, whether whether he'll make it four years and what the Democrats next plan would be after him.

01:17:56.900 I know, Crystal, you're more, you know, to the left, you're more of a Bernie person politically.

01:18:01.020 But are you seeing any signs that encourage you right now with respect to Joe Biden's administration or the opposite?

01:18:07.080 Or do you feel discouraged based on what you've seen so far?

01:18:09.460 So let me it's a mixed bag. I would say I think the relief package that he's put forward is fairly ambitious and has a lot of things in it that that would do a lot of good.

01:18:20.340 I mean, I think it was weird that he backed off from two thousand dollar checks to fourteen hundred dollar checks, but that would still be a good thing.

01:18:27.300 Fifteen dollar minimum wage, hugely popular, refundable child tax credit, something that has both Democratic and Republican support, you know, obviously money for vaccine distribution.

01:18:38.840 Like these things are really good, really important.

01:18:41.340 What I'm probably more dismayed by is kind of his he still has this fantasy that Republicans are going to work with him on any of this and they're just not.

01:18:52.060 So, you know, it seems like he's committed to wasting a lot of time on bills that are likely not going to go anywhere rather than using some of the tools at his disposal to actually deliver.

01:19:02.940 Ultimately, American people care about one thing.

01:19:05.380 What did you do for me? Not how many Republican votes did you get?

01:19:09.180 Not, you know, was it passed by regular order or through budget reconciliation?

01:19:15.060 They care that it gets done and that it ultimately benefits them.

01:19:18.680 So I guess on the one hand, I see some positive promises and directions with the relief bill and the vaccination plan in particular.

01:19:27.400 On the other hand, I'm not sure I see like the willingness to actually fight to get it done,

01:19:31.340 because if there's one thing that Democrats are really good at, it's making excuses for why they can't govern versus actually governing.

01:19:38.220 Right. The pieces I'm reading from the left right now, Sagar, are, you know, get some sharp elbows, for God's sake.

01:19:45.180 Go in there, flip some tables over. Don't be so accommodating. Don't be conciliatory.

01:19:49.520 Like we have a very short time to govern and govern the way we want. Like, get it on.

01:19:53.960 And I think some of the Republicans who crossed over to vote for him are like, be quiet. We'd like to work together.

01:20:01.160 Well, it's interesting because to your point, I think, look, politics is all about triangulation and what Biden, if I were Biden, which is I just got this historic election.

01:20:12.360 I had a lot of Republicans actually vote for me, mostly because they didn't like Trump and because they didn't like the handling of the vaccine and generally of the economy.

01:20:20.700 So that's the number one thing I would triangulate. And I would focus on two thousand dollar checks, seventy five percent issues.

01:20:27.800 I mean, you saw Florida voted for a fifteen dollar minimum wage on the same day that they voted historically for Trump.

01:20:33.820 There's another crossover issue. These are the things that I would hammer home and divide the country or political lines on.

01:20:40.640 But I have to say, which is I think he's making a big mistake.

01:20:43.800 He's introducing immigration as is for on the very first day of his presidency.

01:20:48.500 And I can't think of an issue which led more to Trump's election and could lead to more political polarization and culture war than introducing immigration, particularly if there's another 2014, 2015 era border crisis.

01:21:04.700 It's over. And we're right back to 2015 politics in the United States of America.

01:21:10.120 And you just killed any chance of making your seem, making yourself seem like a politician who is going to transcend that.

01:21:18.200 I legitimately think he does have a. Can I can I ask to that? Can I can I add to that?

01:21:21.900 So the other the other executive orders per Ron Klain, his incoming chief of staff, are just to name a few.

01:21:27.260 He's going to rescind the travel ban on several predominantly Muslim countries.

01:21:31.000 He's going to rejoin the Paris climate change accord. He's going to issue a mask mandate for anybody on federal property or engaging in interstate travel.

01:21:40.300 And I I do wonder, as I look at that, just I mean, listen, I spent a lot of years at Fox News.

01:21:44.780 If you wanted to rile up the Republican base, that would be the list you'd make.

01:21:49.080 Yeah, no, you're exactly right. I mean, I look and I think the immigration one, though, is orders of magnitude even more than that, because those 100 percent amnesty for 11 million.

01:21:58.000 Exactly. I mean, I tell you guys, yeah, passes checks, if he gets checks in people's accounts and he does a good job with the vaccine, man, that is going to go a long way.

01:22:09.800 And I am not a Joe Biden fan, not at all.

01:22:13.440 But I will tell you, you know, the bar has been set so low by Trump that if he just does a competent job of getting people vaccinated and the economy recovers, I think that he's going to have very high favorability rating.

01:22:29.000 And Democrats are going to be very difficult to beat in the midterm elections, even though that's, you know, historically outside of the norm.

01:22:34.940 I think Crystal's 100 percent right. Are you guys hearing a lot of maybe it's my circles?

01:22:41.240 I don't know, but I'm hearing a lot of people who don't want to take that vaccine.

01:22:44.660 You guys hearing that? Not in my circles, but I'm seeing the polling on it.

01:22:49.540 And there are a lot of people who are who are uncomfortable.

01:22:52.920 I hope that changed. I know that Biden people are planning actually a public education campaign around like people who are nervous, trying to give them some comfort and support.

01:23:01.420 I don't know that that's going to ultimately be effective, but it is worrisome.

01:23:06.060 Look, you have look, you have a very conspiratorial public.

01:23:09.200 They don't trust anybody in some cases for really good reason.

01:23:12.600 So that makes it extraordinarily hard to instill trust, trust the experts, trust the process.

01:23:19.900 They've heard that before. And it's it's bitten them.

01:23:22.560 Now, in this case, like I don't want to sow any doubt of all the indications are the vaccine is safe.

01:23:27.660 We've seen people taking it in public.

01:23:29.320 It works. We all want to get back to life.

01:23:31.780 But, yeah, it's it's a bad place that we're in with so many people, so mistrustful of literally everyone.

01:23:38.520 Yeah, I can just say personally, my parents both got the vaccine.

01:23:41.520 They're both completely fine, had no, you know, side effects.

01:23:44.560 I can't wait to get the vaccine. That's all I can you know, I can really say on that matter.

01:23:48.860 I said before that I'm definitely taking the vaccine.

01:23:51.840 I would take it sooner rather than later.

01:23:53.120 And I actually just saw for whatever it's worth, my primary care physician who happens to specialize in infectious disease.

01:23:58.800 So he knows about this stuff. And he said, number one, if you've had covid, the latest research is showing you do not definitely do not need the vaccine.

01:24:07.800 And in fact, you might have a worse reaction if you get it. So if you've had covid, you don't need the vaccine.

01:24:12.420 And he loves the vaccines. He loves Pfizer. He loves Moderna in particular, although either one is fine.

01:24:18.860 And he thinks it'll take through December for us all to get vaccinated and achieve herd immunity.

01:24:24.020 And he thinks we're going to have these masks on until then.

01:24:28.840 Depends on where you live, I guess. But here in New York, it's been it's been madness.

01:24:33.060 I mean, it's like I think we're all so pissed off about the fact that these poor restaurateurs can only do outside business.

01:24:39.460 Even like you could limit it. You could limit the capacity of these restaurants.

01:24:42.820 There's a, you know, one point four percent spread rate.

01:24:45.600 But, you know, government overreach is everywhere.

01:24:47.960 And the truth is, at least here in New York and elsewhere, our leaders don't know what they're doing.

01:24:53.120 I mean, anybody who thinks that Mayor de Blasio and really this is Cuomo know what they're doing, hasn't been paying attention.

01:24:59.720 So, OK, I won't I won't require you to rate weigh in on that.

01:25:02.620 I'll steal the last word, but it's always a pleasure. And I thank you both for being here.

01:25:06.840 Thanks, Megan. Great to talk to you.

01:25:10.480 We're going to get to our next guest, Ryan Grimm, in just one second.

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01:26:39.420 And now I'm joined by The Intercept's Ryan Grimm.

01:26:43.720 Ryan, I'm so excited to talk to you because you are the man who, in my mind, broke the Tara Reid story.

01:26:53.300 You'd been paying attention to her Twitter feed.

01:26:55.840 You saw her situation where she was basically refused by Time's Up, allegedly because she was accusing a politician. 0.99

01:27:05.780 But, I mean, I call bullshit on that. 0.92

01:27:08.080 And you started tweeting about it. 0.97

01:27:10.260 And then as a result of you shining some light on this accusation, you became the scorn of some Biden supporters who thought you owed some obligation to bury that news.

01:27:20.840 Do I have it about right?

01:27:21.780 Yeah, more or less.

01:27:23.440 Right.

01:27:23.720 Yeah.

01:27:23.900 My, my, the first, and the first article, I wrote two pieces on that.

01:27:27.580 The first one I wrote on that was about the thing you pointed out that this organization, Time's Up, which was, you know, built out of the Me Too movement.

01:27:36.300 And it was, I think to this day is maybe except for that, that like scam wall funding GoFundMe.

01:27:44.340 It was the biggest GoFundMe in the site's history.

01:27:46.720 And so, you know, tens of millions of dollars go to this or create this organization, Time's Up, that is then going to represent women who have claims against powerful men, you know, across industries.

01:28:01.020 And when she came to them, they said, well, we're a 501c3, so we can't take your case because Joe Biden is running for president.

01:28:09.180 It's like, well, you know, if you can't take on a political candidate, that, that cleaves off a, a huge portion of the powerful sexual harassers in this, in this country.

01:28:20.360 And so just that alone, I thought was, was newsworthy.

01:28:23.880 And you're right, just, just, just for reporting that fact, I was a persona non grata for a while.

01:28:30.280 Right.

01:28:30.860 Because there is sort of this understanding that, you know, keep it quiet if it's bad for the Democrat in some circles.

01:28:36.380 And, and frankly, you know, at other places, if it's bad for the Republican, if you're in certain sections of conservative media.

01:28:43.520 But I, I tip my hat to you for, for reporting on it.

01:28:46.520 And I, I do.

01:28:47.340 And of course I interviewed Tara Reid myself and I want to get back to that because I think there's more to talk about on, on that front.

01:28:54.000 But before we do, let's talk about the inauguration and where we go from here.

01:28:59.180 I mean, I, I think the Trump haters are saying today, our long national nightmare is over and the Biden supporters are saying, yay, 46 president.

01:29:09.540 But I think there's, you know, a considerable faction on the Democratic side.

01:29:13.000 You tell me if I'm right or wrong.

01:29:14.580 That's like, eh, it's better than Trump, but eh, it's finding hard to get truly excited.

01:29:22.340 Yeah, it's, it's interesting.

01:29:25.280 You, you, you definitely have a big, a big section of the left that has, you know, you know, that, that hasn't really believed that Trump was as dangerous or awful or, or, or vicious or, or anything else as, as a lot of the kind of liberals were.

01:29:43.180 Yet at the same time, you did have a kind of unanimity almost that Biden would be better than Trump.

01:29:50.540 You know, back in 2016, you had, you know, some prominent ish figures on the left saying, you know what, maybe it actually is better for the world and for the country in the long run.

01:30:01.920 If Hillary Clinton doesn't win, if, and if, and if Trump won, wins instead.

01:30:06.060 And you, and they had a bunch of different rationales for why, why that might be.

01:30:09.660 But very interestingly, and I think this is what did Trump in, in 2020, you didn't really have that.

01:30:15.380 Even the, the kind of furthest left people were like, well, you know what, I don't really hate Biden as much as I hated Hillary Clinton.

01:30:24.280 And so while they, they might not have voted for him, they, they didn't kind of sow the, the level of toxicity and animosity that, that really, you know, drove Hillary into the ground.

01:30:37.260 Her, you know, her unfavorables were, were higher than Trump's.

01:30:40.920 And, and that was, and, and that was what decided that election, you know, 2020, 2016 was an election where most voters said they didn't like either candidate, but they have to pick somebody.

01:30:52.480 In 2020, most voters didn't necessarily like either candidate, but they disliked Biden less.

01:31:00.100 That's kind of the pitiful state where our, our politics has gotten to that.

01:31:03.540 If you're just not that dislikable, then of the, of the two viable candidates, you're going to win.

01:31:09.780 What do you think is going to happen now to, you know, Trump's been a great foil for some Democrats and certainly for the media.

01:31:17.560 I mean, he's, he's a revived, single-handedly revived MSNBC and CNN.

01:31:21.600 What do you think they're going to do now?

01:31:23.080 It's like the Richard Nixon, you won't have me to kick around anymore.

01:31:25.660 You know, now that they can't blame everything on Trump, what do you see happening there?

01:31:30.760 Well, I do think the media, the cable media and, and some other subscription media might be in, might be in serious trouble because Trump isn't wrong.

01:31:41.460 When he said, you know, CNN is going to be screwed without me, you know, you know, CNN and MSNBC had really become, you know, pretty much Trump coverage all the time and, and pretty hostile coverage towards Trump all the time.

01:31:56.700 I mean, it, it was fantastic.

01:31:59.260 It was fantastic for ratings.

01:32:02.080 You know, the, the middle of the Obama years, when you had Republicans controlling the house and you, and you still had, you know, then you still had Obama and Biden in the, in the white house.

01:32:15.520 The MSNBC ratings were absolutely in the tank.

01:32:19.160 I mean, you were getting, you know, 10, 15,000 people for like, you know, watching like midday MSNBC.

01:32:26.000 Because what are you, what are you watching for?

01:32:29.220 You know, John Boehner didn't make that great of a bill and Mitch McConnell didn't even run the Senate yet.

01:32:35.060 There wasn't a whole lot to root for if you were a Democrat, because there was no Obama agenda that was going to get through a Republican Congress.

01:32:43.080 It was, it was, it was utter doldrums.

01:32:46.440 Now, I think that this first year of a Biden administration, they'll, they'll hang on to a significant amount of viewership because there's, they're going to be, there are going to be interesting things to cover.

01:32:57.080 You know, first you've got this impeachment drama, but then you've also got, you know, you know, what, what, what can Democrats do with United, United government?

01:33:07.400 And so they'll, they'll cling to some viewership through, through that.

01:33:11.300 But I think a lot of people are going to, you know, want to check out, you know, a lot of people were quite explicit in saying that one of the things that they disliked most about Trump was that he always had them on edge.

01:33:23.520 And they, and anytime they would get some CNN alert on their phone, be like, oh God, what did he do now?

01:33:29.540 And they want to get to a place where they don't have to worry about what the president is.

01:33:34.040 So, you know, a lot of Democrats, you know, ran explicitly on, on that motto that when I'm president, you won't have to worry about me.

01:33:41.280 And so when they're kind of explicitly demobilizing their, their people, that's bad news for cable, which, you know, which, which thrives on people being, being angry.

01:33:53.520 And, and, and tuning in for the latest outrage.

01:33:56.620 Those are very interesting points because, I mean, having anchored at Fox news for a long time, including in the prime time for four years.

01:34:03.980 Um, I, I'll tell you when I was there, I got the, I got the prime time seat in 2013.

01:34:10.440 I left in 17.

01:34:12.440 Um, so it's Obama's second term.

01:34:14.900 Um, I would open up my ratings, you get them every day at four 17 in the afternoon.

01:34:19.460 And I never even looked at CNN or MSNBC combined.

01:34:22.700 They would not even touch me.

01:34:24.420 I only looked at O'Reilly and Hannity and, you know, Greta or whoever was there in the prime time with me.

01:34:29.000 It was only an internal race to see, you know, who would win, but they were totally irrelevant.

01:34:34.100 Even combined, they were irrelevant.

01:34:35.840 There was one month where Rachel Maddow gave me a little run for my money. 0.99

01:34:39.160 And it was during Bridgegate with Chris Christie, uh, and that brought Democrats to her show, but I still beat her. 0.88

01:34:45.500 Um, but it's an interesting point because Republicans tend to have an appetite.

01:34:49.200 I think for, for cable news, they're into the culture wars too, in a way the Democrats didn't, they, they just didn't back then.

01:34:55.840 I don't know whether they do now.

01:34:57.360 And now that Trump's going to go and he's not going to go away entirely.

01:34:59.880 You know, the man, his oxygen is attention.

01:35:02.620 So I don't think that, notwithstanding what happened to the Capitol, notwithstanding any of this, Donald Trump is going to be making news.

01:35:07.840 Um, so they'll have that, right?

01:35:11.120 CNN will have that and MSNBC, but it's not going to be the same.

01:35:14.500 I think the Republicans will come back to Fox.

01:35:16.520 There's been a lot of news about Fox's dismal ratings right now.

01:35:20.060 And they're losing to both CNN and MSNBC that their ratings were in the crapper back, uh, when Obama won his second term to bad, bad rates.

01:35:27.840 Now they're worse now, but the Republicans came back.

01:35:31.160 I think they have a, I don't know, maybe they're more prone to follow news or to consume news or the culture wars, what have you.

01:35:37.840 I don't know.

01:35:38.580 I look at those guys and I think, enjoy it while you can.

01:35:41.060 Joy Reid, Nicole Wallace and Rachel Maddow, because you've been in CNN, even worse, right?

01:35:46.400 CNN's he, they can't quit Trump.

01:35:49.380 How could they possibly quit Trump, Ryan?

01:35:51.820 Right.

01:35:52.700 Right.

01:35:53.100 And, you know, Fox, I think is in, you know, decent shape for the next year or two, because, because you have unified democratic control in Washington.

01:36:02.240 So, you know, it's, it's very easy to just constantly be critical.

01:36:05.900 You don't have to, uh, and, and, you know, I was at the Huffington Post, um, you know, throughout most of, actually, I guess throughout, you know, Obama's entire term.

01:36:16.580 And, you know, we were one of the few outlets that was, that was kind of critical from the left of, of Obama, but the, but the presidential campaigns, because they're kind of zero sum are, are kind of tougher for outlets.

01:36:30.540 With, with, with that, with that angle, because our kind of normal posture would be investigating the, the, the, the Democrat, but then you, but then if you're, if all you're doing is, is looking into the, you know, what the Democrats up to Hillary Clinton in this case, or, or Obama in 2012, it is this zero sum game.

01:36:50.880 Cause you have, cause you have two candidates and it, but when you're in a situation where it's just unified control, like Fox has now with the democratic Washington, they're just going to go all out, call them socialists, call them communists.

01:37:02.940 You know, they can do AOC, you know, you know, three blocks of AOC and then one on Cori Bush and, um, and, and, and then they can keep people excited that way.

01:37:14.040 Once they get back to divided government, that's going to be a little bit more of a challenge for them.

01:37:19.020 But yeah, I, I'm curious to see what, what CNN, what CNN does without, without Trump anymore.

01:37:25.960 You, you use that term excited very loosely.

01:37:28.240 I don't know.

01:37:29.840 I, it's funny cause I, I have these, I have weird feelings about AOC in that she's this young woman.

01:37:34.980 She pulled herself up by the bootstraps, made it.

01:37:37.840 She doesn't have some poor background as some people first said about her.

01:37:40.480 She comes from Yorktown Heights, which is a nice, you know, upper middle class suburb in Westchester.

01:37:45.120 Um, but nonetheless, she, she got herself, you know, into government and got, managed to find a way to get a lot of attention. 0.94

01:37:52.580 I thought, okay, she said a lot of stupid things about the constitution and the way things work, but I thought she's young, right? 0.93

01:37:57.340 She'll get there. 1.00

01:37:57.840 She'll learn.

01:37:59.260 Now she's kind of transitioning for me to like a Kardashian, you know, she's, it's all about her little selfies, her assembling her furniture, her looking into the camera, her being holier than thou, her condemning everybody on the left and the right.

01:38:10.780 It doesn't agree perfectly with her.

01:38:12.400 I, I'm not a big Nancy Pelosi fan, but I've been, I've been a little irritated by how disrespectful she is of the, you know, the most accomplished woman in her party. 0.99

01:38:21.280 Um, I think I'm short of Hillary Clinton.

01:38:24.300 I don't know.

01:38:24.540 You could, you could make the case either way, but I don't know.

01:38:27.940 Is she, is she the future?

01:38:29.500 Cause right now we're being told by Joe Biden, it's an America United.

01:38:33.420 That's the theme of the day of his inauguration, America United.

01:38:36.680 And I think you don't even have a party that's united.

01:38:40.780 I mean, I think it kind of depends on where the, where the democratic party in the country kind of end up going, whether or not, whether or not her kind of, uh, you know, political trajectory merges with, with where the country's going.

01:38:54.100 I don't think it's happening on a national level any, anytime soon, but I think the more, the more that she can bring people from outside the process, outside the political process into it.

01:39:07.340 And kind of speak to their, their economic, um, anxieties about the future of this, of this country, then, then the better she's going to do.

01:39:15.920 And so I think some of, some of what you see is, is toward that end is, you know, she'll go on Twitch and, you know, there'll be 400,000, you know, 19 year olds tuning in to watch her play video games with, with other, other folk, other members of Congress on, on Twitch.

01:39:32.500 And she'll be kind of splicing in some political talking points here and there, um, trying, you know, trying to reach this, this eight, this apolitical set.

01:39:43.320 I think the more she leans into kind of the, the culture wars, then the more that, then the more that is kind of going to limit the, the reach that she's able to, that she's able to have in the future. 0.72

01:39:55.380 And so I think she's, she tries, I think, to walk a pretty fine line on that, but it's, but it's not easy to do because the, the country is so divided and anytime you, you kind of slip, you get murdered for it.

01:40:08.320 Right. Well, what do you make of that? Cause I did think as somebody who's been critical of Joe Biden, when he, I guess it was his acceptance speech, um, after winning, you know, he gave a speech about America United.

01:40:21.720 And he's been using the sort of past tense, a nation healed, a nation united. Um, anyway, I, I've been very questioning about this long before the Capitol Hill riots, cause it's just, you know, whoever wins wants unity, right?

01:40:35.260 They want everybody to get behind their agenda. Me and all the Republicans are like, screw you and your unity. No, we're going to, we're going to oppose you with everything we have. But I do wonder, I think like a greater calm could potentially come less incendiary rhetoric.

01:40:48.660 Um, but I don't think you're getting rid of those hardcore Trump supporters who stormed the Capitol, you know, people who feel as they do, or who are as angry as they are anytime soon, not getting rid of the far left wokesters who are scolding everybody at every turn for a misstep.

01:41:05.480 And, um, I, I just don't see either side as being in the mood for handshaking and hugging. And I don't know, something closer to what we had 40 years ago.

01:41:18.660 Well, you know, it's not even safe to handshake and hug right now. And I, and I think that's actually part of it. Like I, I, I do think that the, the, a lot, that some of the protests we've, we've seen, you know, are, are not just an expression of the, of the social justice values that are, uh, that underpin them, but, but also just a, a, a bubbling rage that has been, uh, you know, heated up by,

01:41:48.640 all of the isolation that people are facing and the isolation, you know, overlaid with the question of how you're going to pay your back rent, not just forget your rent, your, your back rent, um, you know, and, and whether or not you're going to be able to get back to work.

01:42:04.020 And when, when, and if you do get back to work, if it's even going to be safe for you, are you, are you putting your life at risk for, you know, for, for minimum ways, just so that you can, you know, keep falling deeper and deeper into debt.

01:42:17.780 And so all, all of these things, you know, bubble up in this, in this stew that kind of bursts out, um, every now and then.

01:42:25.900 So the answer to whether or not Biden can be somewhat successful in this, I think depends on getting the vaccine distribution, um, and administration, correct.

01:42:36.980 As simple as that, like get, get that thing in everybody's arms, let people, uh, let people go back to work, let people go back to restaurants, go back to living their normal lives.

01:42:47.580 Um, and you'll, you could see an economic boom that, that, that coasts into the next midterms.

01:42:55.900 And so there, I think there's a potential, uh, that people that could have some of this, this anger eased if they can get back to their former lives.

01:43:05.600 And they might not have been totally happy in their former lives, but compared to what we've gone through the last, last year, I think a lot of people would, would be, would be excited for that.

01:43:16.240 Mm-hmm. Oh, absolutely. I mean, he, he's definitely going to benefit from the fact that we have a vaccine as, as anybody would have.

01:43:23.680 And, but the rollout, as we've now seen, isn't as easy as they predicted.

01:43:28.300 And I mean, Fauci's been, he says he can, Biden can deliver on the hundred million vaccines within, uh, vaccinations within the first hundred days.

01:43:37.020 We'll see. Fauci, Fauci has misled us before.

01:43:40.280 Um, let's talk about, let's talk about the administration because I wonder your take on, I read an article, um,

01:43:46.000 by somebody who is kind of like you, a Bernie supporter.

01:43:48.780 And they said, this is a quote from, for the Bernie Sanders wing of the democratic party,

01:43:53.100 the Joe Biden presidential transition is what losing looks like.

01:43:56.540 And they, they weren't too keen on names like Neera Tanden, um, Brian Deese,

01:44:02.900 and some others who are moving into the, the Biden cabinet in various roles.

01:44:07.280 Anita Dunn, who we talked about at the top, who was with, um, or we should have,

01:44:10.420 who's with times up the group that rejected, uh, Tara Reade's case, by the way, as she was advising Joe Biden.

01:44:17.260 What a shock. Um, she's moving into the administration as an advisor for at least the time being. 0.99

01:44:22.220 So what do you make of his, his cabinet?

01:44:24.700 It is what losing looks like, but in a weird way, it's also what progress looks like compared

01:44:31.040 to the Obama transition. That transition was literally kind of launched out of a city group.

01:44:37.920 You know, the trend, the head of the transition used his, used his city group email to kind of kick

01:44:43.620 off, um, the, the, the, the throwing around of names for who would be in the transition. And that

01:44:49.620 original email, which is in, which thanks to Julian Assange is, we is, has been published. Um,

01:44:56.520 it was remarkably pression. Um, it, it, it nailed like almost every cabinet and deputy,

01:45:02.400 you know, deputy cabinet position. And, you know, in case after case, uh, Obama, and he talks about

01:45:10.040 this in his, in his memoir, you know, he wanted people from wall street because he kind of felt

01:45:16.160 out of his depth when it came to confronting this, this financial crisis that, that, that he,

01:45:22.560 that everybody was afraid was going to, um, lead to the, to a second great depression. And so he

01:45:28.680 leaned on a lot of the people who were around and responsible for a lot of decisions that led to

01:45:35.280 getting into that, uh, that financial crisis. And so if you compare, you know, position to position,

01:45:42.560 you know, Barack Obama to Joe Biden on almost every, um, almost every case, uh, Biden has picked

01:45:50.720 a kind of a more progressive or more populist person, even though very few of them come from

01:45:56.260 the actual Sanders wing. So it's all kind of incremental movement in one direction, but even

01:46:00.540 like Brian Deese, for instance, you know, his counterpart in, in the Obama years, uh, was Larry

01:46:06.400 Summers. So, you know, that's clearly no matter who you've got in that, that's, that's clearly an

01:46:10.800 improvement, uh, for, for Biden. Ron Klain, you know, swapped in for, for Rahm Emanuel, for instance,

01:46:17.240 and just, you know, on, on down the line, you, you're seeing this small amount of progress and

01:46:22.400 you're also seeing that Biden does seem to have learned that what really cost Obama. And, and this

01:46:30.720 has set in now, finally, as, as conventional wisdom, whether it's right or wrong, I think it's

01:46:35.220 right, has set in as conventional wisdom that Obama got, got hammered in 2010 because unemployment

01:46:41.660 was still at 10% in November, 2010, and that he would, he, he insufficiently responded to the

01:46:48.740 financial crisis that he, that he didn't, that he didn't meet the moment that the, that the stimulus

01:46:54.100 that, that he passed in early 2009 was just simply, uh, too small and too poorly designed for the,

01:47:00.560 for the scale of the crisis. And because you had this, you know, all six years of stagnation that,

01:47:06.400 that contributed by 2014 to, to losing the Senate as well. And so Joe Biden is determined not to,

01:47:15.540 not to suffer for the, for the same reason. You know, he's, maybe he's fighting the wrong war by

01:47:21.240 fighting the last war, but the lesson that he's taken is that the government needs to step in,

01:47:26.440 spend a lot of money, uh, grow the economy. And that's the way you're going to overcome

01:47:31.060 the, the traditional, uh, the traditional reaction that, uh, that presidents get in the

01:47:38.280 first midterm. I mean, I think even for budget hawks, it's, it's very hard to look at an American

01:47:45.140 populace who you've told cannot work, that they may not work. You've destroyed their businesses.

01:47:50.760 You've destroyed their ability to work. And yet you haven't destroyed their rent bills. As you

01:47:55.380 point out, there may be, there may be a delay, but they're still adding up. It's not abatement.

01:48:01.340 It's just postponement. Uh, and then say, and you're not going to get a lot of help from the

01:48:06.680 government. So it's like, are there some people gaming the system? Of course. Are there some

01:48:11.280 people who are going to get these checks who shouldn't get them? Yes. But it's really tough

01:48:14.940 to look at the Americans who are genuinely suffering through no fault of their own and say,

01:48:20.060 you're out of luck. And, and I think news people, once again, need to be conscious of that because

01:48:25.840 it's always somebody with a job sitting behind the microphone telling you no, no. So let me,

01:48:31.600 let me close out with Richard by returning to Tara read, because I interviewed her and spent a lot of

01:48:37.180 time with her. And I don't know whether Tara's allegations are true or not. I do know she's been

01:48:43.400 telling the same story for almost 30 years. I mean, she told it right away within a week to a

01:48:49.520 longtime friend who I spoke with personally, who seemed very, very credible to me. Two years later,

01:48:54.680 told the exact same story to somebody else a year after that, somebody else, you know, you, you're the

01:48:59.200 one who found the mother, the soundbite on Larry King calling in and saying she had a harassment

01:49:03.660 problem, um, suggesting that there had been harassing, harassing problem with the center she'd been 0.97

01:49:08.140 working for and so on. Um, but I think Tara's enduring legacy will have been putting the lie 0.59

01:49:16.500 to the quote, believe all women trope that we were being fed by, by some on the left, right? Like we

01:49:24.580 heard that during Christine Blasey Ford left and right. And then suddenly it was complete abandonment

01:49:29.320 of the principle, which, which is right to do, by the way, I didn't believe in the principle. I don't,

01:49:33.760 but that it's a nonsensical principle. Right. Women are, um, and so I think thankfully she killed 1.00

01:49:38.500 it. Right. I mean, it's, it's ridiculous. You can't believe all women, depending on whether they're 1.00

01:49:42.700 a Republican or a Democrat. That's right. And it doesn't make sense to say something different. Right.

01:49:47.620 Yeah. Right. Exactly. We don't get a truth telling gene with our ovaries. Um, but how do you

01:49:53.660 see her story now? Cause she, God, did the media go after her? I mean, they just had a thirst for 0.98

01:49:58.860 unearthing anything she'd ever done in her life, allegedly, or in fact. Right. There,

01:50:03.440 there was a really kind of, uh, overzealous interrogation of, of her background, which I

01:50:08.380 think, um, you know, which I, which I think is going to, uh, prove to have, uh, been, if

01:50:15.740 not the defamatory quite, quite close to it, you know, the, it, the worm really turned when

01:50:23.080 she was accused of having, uh, fabricated her college degree. And so I, I actually recently

01:50:31.480 was, was looking pretty closely into this and got a lot of documents, um, you know, from

01:50:37.900 her law school and from her, um, from her, her college and, and, and the documents, you

01:50:44.860 know, back up what, what Tara Reid had been saying that she was in this, uh, kind of protected

01:50:52.200 program for domestic violence, um, domestic domestic violence victims that made it so that

01:50:58.880 she couldn't link her credits with her to like four different community colleges that

01:51:05.260 and, and other colleges that she had gone to before this one. And, and that there was

01:51:11.700 a, an arrangement made between the, uh, Dean of the college that she went to and the Dean

01:51:17.640 of the law school. That's, that's what she had always said. Uh, and the documents, the documents

01:51:22.160 bear that out. And, and, and yet after that, it was reported that she didn't have this, uh,

01:51:29.240 college degree, then Monterey County district attorney said, well, now we're gonna, uh, you

01:51:35.720 know, we're gonna investigate her for perjury, for claiming that she had a college degree. 0.98

01:51:40.600 And, and once, and once that happened, it was like, oh, you know, she's a, she's a perjurer.

01:51:46.160 Uh, you know, she's, she's a fabulous, you know, nothing she has ever said could, could

01:51:52.200 possibly be true. But, you know, it, it turns out that a closer examination of, of that situation,

01:51:57.600 while it's quite complicated with like most of thing, the thing, most of Tara Reade's life,

01:52:03.660 um, it, it actually maps pretty closely with, with what she had been saying about her degree

01:52:10.360 the whole time. And I think that, and that's, you know, and then you, you had the, the situation

01:52:14.500 where they interviewed, you know, previous, uh, landlords of hers who were, who were, who

01:52:20.320 were disgruntled. And, you know, a lot of, a lot of people were coming out of the woodwork. Um,

01:52:25.100 but at the same time that brought other people out who said, oh, Tara, Tara told me this story

01:52:30.100 at this time. I remember her telling me this. So like going through, if you want to go through

01:52:34.580 the landlords of anybody who's poor, it's not going to end well for the poor person, you know? And

01:52:40.460 when you don't have money, you're not so good about paying your bills. Believe it or not,

01:52:44.220 I have been that person. I had no money. I wasn't, I was in the position to make future money,

01:52:49.900 but when I was putting myself through law school, I was in debt, um, a lot of debt. And I was trying

01:52:55.440 to teach aerobics to pay my bills and I didn't have a lot of money and I didn't pay my bills

01:53:00.420 on time or at all in some cases. And it took me years to dig myself out of that hole, even then

01:53:06.200 earning the good salary that came my way when I finished school. But it's embarrassing. It's awful.

01:53:11.600 It does bring a lot of conflict into your life. You feel terrible. You just, it's the worst version

01:53:16.620 of yourself. And so, you know, the, of course, if, if this were somebody accusing Brett Kavanaugh,

01:53:23.320 they probably would have factored all that into the disputes with the landlords, but because

01:53:27.100 the name being accused was Joe Biden presidential nominee, it was very different. I just, it left me

01:53:33.560 with such a bad taste in my mouth for this whole thing. And I'll tell you my, my takeaway,

01:53:37.240 and then I'll give you the last word is I'm glad believe all women is done. And I think 1.00

01:53:43.480 where, where I landed on this is, and my experiences with Tara have been nothing but kind and she's been

01:53:49.760 incredibly sweet and wonderful character references that I've spoken to about her. Um, but it is up to

01:53:56.240 the individual to decide whether they believe or they don't. And there shouldn't be any shaming.

01:54:00.160 You don't believe Tara read that. No problem. You don't have to, you don't believe Christine

01:54:04.060 Blasey Ford. No problem. You don't have to, and there shouldn't be shaming or accusations of

01:54:09.100 misogyny or sexism and so on, depending on whatever side you, you, you land on. I'll give

01:54:15.200 you the last word. Right. I think it's really hard to know, um, what, what happened. Cause you can,

01:54:20.240 you can make a persuasive case that she has all of these different corroborating folks that she's

01:54:25.340 spoken to. And you can, and you can make a persuasive case, um, that, that she, that she's not

01:54:30.480 telling the truth. You know, you, I, I think somebody could come down on either side of it.

01:54:35.520 I think one thing that Biden has in, in his favor is that, you know, if, you know, if this were a

01:54:42.340 pattern, you, you probably would have seen more coming out. Now there, there's, there's, there is

01:54:47.900 the obvious pattern that we've all seen on video of him being kind of creepy. Um, but that's different.

01:54:53.820 That's, that's different than, than what, than what she was describing. Right. So I think that

01:54:59.780 the fact that that didn't come out, lends some credence to, to Biden's case. And so if people

01:55:05.760 want to believe Biden in that case, you know, I, I, I think that that's okay. But I also think

01:55:11.060 that it's indisputable that, that Tara, you know, has the right, uh, to, to tell her story and that,

01:55:18.060 you know, journalists have, have the obligation to, you know, you know, look into that

01:55:23.800 uh, look, look into that story and, and, you know, treat it responsibly and take it seriously.

01:55:30.380 Absolutely. And I think you did the nation of service by first drawing attention to it. And I

01:55:35.240 think Anita Dunn should be ashamed of herself for not allowing times up an organization that, 0.99

01:55:40.340 you know, bills itself as standing for women, all women, um, pulled out of that representation 0.99

01:55:46.140 from a woman who didn't have two nickels to rub together. And the whole case would have been less 1.00

01:55:49.820 Yeah. The whole situation would have been less messy that way because you'd, you'd have, you know,

01:55:55.900 professional people who know how to, um, you know, who, who know how to kind of, uh, you know,

01:56:03.600 deal with the media. Um, you know, just, you know, just somebody, you know, just a very normal person

01:56:09.320 just out on their own. Uh, it's going to be a mess for them. Yeah. When I was reading up in preparation

01:56:16.980 for our interview, I read that there was one prominent Biden supporter that called for the

01:56:21.320 FBI to investigate you and other journalists for their role in reporting the Tara Reid story. I mean,

01:56:27.520 that's, that's the insanity of our world, Ryan, but I got you back and, uh, I appreciate your boldness

01:56:35.200 and your fearlessness and hope you'll come back. Well, sure thing. Happy to. Well, that was

01:56:40.380 interesting. I mean, the Tara Reid thing, I feel for her because boy, oh boy, it's like the media never

01:56:45.060 sticks around for the after effects of what they do. And I know she continues to struggle as you

01:56:50.300 know, the man, she says sexually assaulted her. He denies it a hundred percent denies it, uh, is now

01:56:55.880 elevated to the presidency. And you know, there's a lot of Trump supporters who I spoke to as well,

01:57:00.500 who felt the same as he, as he took office. We're going to have to do better world. We're going to

01:57:05.080 have to do better. So before we go, I want to tell you that today's episode was brought to you in part

01:57:09.480 by Bambi human resources crafted for businesses of all sizes. Go to B-A-M-B-E-E.com slash MK now to

01:57:19.760 offload this hideous practice. It's just such a hard, hard thing to manage. It's an important thing,

01:57:26.440 but it's hard to manage. And somebody is willing to do it for you like 99 bucks a month. So go to

01:57:31.480 B-A-M-B-E-E.com slash MK now for more. Um, before we go, Barry Weiss is coming on the program on

01:57:40.800 Friday. You are going to love her. She is the woman who I see her like Daenerys Targaryen lighting fire

01:57:51.580 to that hut and walking out with all the people who tried to kill her. Um, powerful shoulders back

01:57:58.480 as she left the New York times saying, I'm not going to play this damn game one day longer. 0.96

01:58:04.000 Going to report the truth without agenda. If you don't like it, you're not the place for me. 0.92

01:58:09.260 And she's got a new thing going on. She had a beautiful, beautiful opening, uh, piece on

01:58:13.480 Substack where you can find her. Uh, and I know, trust me, you're going to love Barry Weiss. So

01:58:18.240 that's Friday. Go ahead and subscribe. So you don't miss it. Rate, review, five stars, the whole bit.

01:58:22.500 And we'll talk to you then. Thanks for listening to the Megan Kelly show. No BS, 0.98

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01:58:33.540 in collaboration with Red Seed Ventures.

The Megyn Kelly Show - January 20, 2021

Biden Begins, with Ben Domenech, Krystal Ball, Saagar Enjeti, and Ryan Grim ｜ Ep. 53

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