Ben Domenech, Crystal Ball, Sagar Anjeti, and Ryan Grimm join me to discuss the Inauguration and what to expect from Joe Biden s 10-day blitz to undo the Trump administration's policies.
00:00:00.500Welcome to The Megyn Kelly Show, your home for open, honest, and provocative conversations.
00:00:07.560Joe Biden inaugurated as the 46th President of the United States today.
00:00:12.360How are we feeling about that? And what now?
00:00:15.400Ben Domenech, Crystal Ball, Sagar Anjeti, and Ryan Grimm all join me to discuss the angles.
00:00:26.660Hey everyone, I'm Megyn Kelly. Welcome to The Megyn Kelly Show.
00:00:29.500We've got a jam-packed program for you today.
00:00:31.600We're going to cover the inauguration and what to expect and Joe Biden's 10-day blitz.
00:00:36.760He's about to go on, basically undoing as much as he can of the Trump administration policies.
00:00:41.380What exactly should we expect? We've got all angles covered for you.
00:00:44.640But 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.
00:00:53.620Yes, Bambi, a company that does outsourced HR.
00:00:56.080Here's the story. When you're running a business, HR issues can kill you.
00:00:59.700Who the hell wants to deal with HR issues?
00:01:01.980You just want to run a business and not worry about getting sued all the time.
00:02:52.900Well, I mean, we've talked about this, but I really have admired what you've done in sort of creating an independent media lane.
00:02:59.340And it's been very successful because there's an appetite for it.
00:03:02.520And 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.
00:03:12.600Anything that's not, quote, mainstream, which is code for leftist, is going to come under attack.
00:03:45.060I 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.
00:04:13.560And I think that everything that's happened since then has sent more and more of those stories to the top of America's mindset.
00:04:22.220I 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.
00:04:33.180And I said, no, it's becoming a kitchen table issue.
00:04:36.560It's becoming something people talk about because it's not just touching the media moguls.
00:04:43.600It's not just touching the people who are in the business.
00:04:47.200It'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.
00:04:58.100And that makes this issue something that I think is only going to become more prominent in the coming years, sadly.
00:05:06.060I 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.
00:05:18.560And anybody who was open minded politically, you know, not already dug in on Joe Biden must win.
00:05:24.620Trump is the devil. Wanted to know why they couldn't access that.
00:05:28.100Why 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.
00:05:38.660But 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.
00:05:59.720Now we're seeing the same thing on vaccines. If they don't like what you're saying, they shut you down.
00:06:04.520Just ask somebody like Alex Berenson, who's been very heterodox on this, and he he had a ban of his book on Amazon.
00:06:14.440I 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.
00:06:27.860It's all Calvin ball. There are no permanent rules. Terms of service can be changed.
00:06:33.100And 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.
00:06:48.340But 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.
00:06:57.460But that's not the way fact checking works, even in a situation where fact checking is so often used to crush opposing views.
00:07:05.060I mean, imagine a situation where you are reporting on or trying to report on the source of this virus.
00:07:13.560You 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.
00:07:25.260That 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.
00:07:37.620And 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.
00:07:47.800And 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.
00:07:59.180Having 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.
00:08:10.600It makes people more conspiratorial because, you know, it's like the old Woody Allen.
00:08:14.940You'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.
00:08:27.720Much better to let it let it out there, let people make up their own minds.
00:08:32.220And if you if you could be in any way objective in covering the news, hello, mainstream, that would help, too.
00:08:37.940Right. So that they wouldn't have reason every time they turn on the television to once again have confirmation bias that they hate me.
00:08:44.200I can't trust them. I have to go to the Internet for information.
00:08:47.260Oh, 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.
00:08:58.600And I know you guys didn't you didn't you have a story about the Black Lives Matter riots?
00:09:05.040Something happened with the Federalists. What happened? I remember you got like comments shut down.
00:09:08.920Yes, we've tangled with them on a number of different issues.
00:09:12.840We actually tangled with, you know, this this whole situation with Google demonetization, which was purportedly about comments on our site, the Discus comment section,
00:09:24.540which other than slapping a sort of a filter on language on it, you know, we don't moderate.
00:09:31.340And 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.
00:09:46.600But 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,
00:09:56.720were clearly surprised by this, didn't realize this was going to happen, didn't realize that there was even a threat of it.
00:10:02.740We hadn't been informed of any threat of it from them.
00:10:06.040We have worked through for months since then to try to bring our comments back and we are going to bring them back,
00:10:12.760but they're going to end up having to be paywalled so that there's and sectioned off so that no ads can appear there.
00:10:18.780But just put as many as many hurdles as possible between.
00:10:22.040Well, and obviously that's not the way that they apply it to other sites all across the Internet.
00:10:26.280I mean, heck, look at YouTube comment sections.
00:10:28.820You know, there's there's, you know, some crazy stuff in there.
00:10:31.760But, 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?
00:10:40.280And to me, it's a question of are these institutions doing this because they're brittle or because they're strong?
00:10:48.420And when I look at Washington, D.C., you know, with twenty five thousand plus troops in it, National Guard troops,
00:10:57.180and the kind of reaction we've seen there, you know, barriers thrown up willy nilly.
00:11:02.400I think that the answer to this is kind of both that the political scene with these octogenarian leaders like like Biden and Pelosi
00:11:12.300and and all of these teams that are full of people who've been around for so long, they're white knuckling it.
00:11:21.640And 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,
00:11:32.240that the weakness of our political scene has made them feel like, you know, they've inherited the godhead
00:11:39.660and that it's their job to try to make this world, make this country look the way they believe it ought to be.
00:11:45.860And that's very concerning to me, given that that's not historically been the model for for success at America.
00:11:54.520Well, they're definitely looking at at D.C. right now as well as the Democrats take power.
00:11:59.700And it's no accident that every time they they really start a crackdown on free speech on the Internet,
00:12:04.920it's right before the Democrats have hearings or right before the Democrats assume power.
00:12:09.600And they know what their masters want, their their masters.
00:12:14.200The Democratic masters want a shutdown or, you know, purging of conservative thought right now.
00:12:21.160It may be may or may not be the more sort of controversial opinions, but it spreads as all these things do.
00:12:37.800He 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.
00:13:04.700Well, the other thing, too, with the way that Twitter does these things is it's completely haphazard.
00:13:11.500You can have I mean, there was that whole conversation.
00:13:14.040And 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.
00:13:30.220I 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.
00:13:41.340And 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.
00:13:51.100And 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.
00:14:13.240And 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.
00:14:26.600I mean, this is something that a lot of wants to see it.
00:15:15.340I 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.
00:15:25.520You are as mainstream conservative as they come.
00:15:28.480Interesting, fun, provocative to read.
00:16:06.860Small nicks, you know, death by a thousand cuts.
00:16:09.340And then the big machete every once in a while, like parlor's gone.
00:16:12.400Yeah, 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.
00:16:24.080Because 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.
00:16:45.860In 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.
00:17:02.420And 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.
00:17:20.840You 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.
00:17:33.480And that's awful for us as an American community.
00:17:37.660I mean, it's really something that has far-reaching consequences.
00:17:42.300And 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.
00:18:19.160And politics are not front and center in our relationship, nor do they have to be.
00:18:23.000Sometimes 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.
00:18:35.800She works so hard to get Biden elected.
00:18:37.620I was happy for her that she won on Election Day.
00:18:40.520You 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.
00:18:49.240We are definitely getting away from that.
00:18:51.680And as I leave New York, I certainly hope I don't leave that political diversity or actual diversity.
00:18:58.140I love the fact that my kids go to school and it's not even majority white.
00:19:03.180You know, it's it's the melting pot, which is good for them.
00:19:06.360That's how I think you actually learn to be an anti-racist, a true anti-racist.
00:19:10.680Surround 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.
00:19:20.840OK, but I want to move on to something else.
00:19:23.160Let'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.
00:19:29.740He's going to roll out dozens of executive orders in the first 10 days, a big stimulus plan, one point nine trillion.
00:19:35.120And the thing that I don't hear being discussed a lot, Ben, is amnesty.
00:19:41.520I 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.
00:19:55.360I'm going to put more foreign aid to Central American economies.
00:20:00.080There's not going to be a single carrot for the Republicans in my proposed immigration bill.
00:20:20.440You 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.
00:20:32.420I 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.
00:20:49.280And 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.
00:21:03.840It's it's it's it's it's actually a truly extreme agenda.
00:21:08.840And 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.
00:21:19.480He'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.
00:21:32.120But 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.
00:21:41.340And that's because Biden's policies are inviting this.
00:21:44.900You 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.
00:21:50.860And that's what we are seeing happen right now. And I think it's going to continue to happen.
00:21:54.500And 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.
00:22:03.420Well, and it's like, don't aren't they paying attention?
00:22:06.700You 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.
00:22:13.040This 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.
00:22:21.420And 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.
00:22:29.280And 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.
00:22:43.020Then 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.
00:22:53.200This 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.
00:23:03.100Now 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.
00:23:13.960I just like a as a political matter, I don't see this helping the Democrats.
00:23:19.180I mean, I guess if they become voters, if they become voters, it will be.
00:23:23.840I just don't I don't understand why more Republicans aren't standing up like six, eight years ago.
00:23:31.260This would have been dominating every show in conservative media.
00:23:35.220Yeah, 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.
00:23:52.320And a lot of them, I think, want to revert to sort of a pre-Trump GOP frame.
00:23:57.360And 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.
00:24:19.400And 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.
00:24:33.300OK, 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.
00:24:44.220And 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.
00:24:55.240But 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.
00:25:04.260And like, calm down. She voted her conscience. That's it. She doesn't deserve to be booted out of leadership.
00:25:09.460But 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.
00:25:18.440And I quote, but the buffalo saw that cliff and they didn't like the look of it.
00:25:25.520Can you talk about what what your point was and that her GOP is not the future GOP?
00:25:31.020So let me first say that Liz Cheney has long running issues within the conference that a lot of people have ignored.
00:25:37.740You may recall that she twice gave donations to to in support of candidates, primarying current members of her conference, including Thomas Massey,
00:25:51.720the 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.
00:26:01.440And that led to kind of a whole blow up for her internally.
00:26:05.400It 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.
00:26:15.280To me, there's also, of course, the element of what she represents.
00:26:18.720And 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.
00:26:36.540I 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.
00:26:46.500And I think that, unfortunately, very few people have really ever wrestled with that.
00:26:50.560And 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.
00:27:07.180Something that certainly, I think, a large number of Americans have really tired of.
00:27:12.400Though, I think that, overall, Liz Cheney is someone who represents a very small sliver of a big tent Republican coalition.
00:27:23.160Someone who very much represents an old Republican Party that has passed away.
00:27:29.060But what's going to replace it, we're not entirely sure yet.
00:27:32.300And the variety of leaders who could really make a big impact in determining that is quite wide.
00:27:41.100And 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.
00:27:48.900That'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.
00:27:58.800And then I don't know what you'd call sort of McConnell.
00:28:03.420And I'm not exactly sure where he is now.
00:28:06.260But 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.
00:28:16.080That's got a little MAGA sprinkled in, a little establishment sprinkled in.
00:28:19.280Somebody who's more forward looking and has the finger on the pulse.
00:28:25.260I'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.
00:29:02.580But really, we're going to we're going to go there again.
00:29:05.480Do you think the country is going to do that?
00:29:07.060The 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.
00:29:22.880But 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.
00:29:32.100And 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.
00:30:07.700And now we've just gone older, the silent generation in Joe Biden, you know, with the oldest president taking office here.
00:30:16.220That's something that, to me, just is a huge missed opportunity.
00:30:20.560And 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?
00:30:27.320Maybe 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.
00:30:51.140There has to be a way to be confrontational without being a bully.
00:30:56.920And I think that that's something that a lot of people are going to have to figure out.
00:31:27.820I can't imagine being that nasty to my co-hosts.
00:31:31.240Can you imagine me beating up on poor Hammer like that?
00:31:34.780I, 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.
00:31:47.360If, if it was WWE, if it was, okay, we're going to go out, we're going to have a fight.
00:31:53.340At the end of it, we both work for the same company.
00:31:55.780We're not going to go and, you know, it's, there's none of that off air nastiness.
00:32:02.040And 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.
00:32:12.660But, you know, I, I used to be on Chris Hayes show all the time.
00:32:17.360And 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.
00:32:30.920And 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.
00:32:51.680I find new stories that I hadn't seen.
00:32:53.220And I, I would have said that before I hired him.
00:32:55.760Um, but one of the things he was pointing out this week was Politico had a meltdown because they had Ben Dominic.
00:33:01.260I'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.
00:33:11.340200 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.
00:33:21.840It's fine, but please don't lose yourself.
00:33:24.080And then the, and then Chris Hayes did it and people were like, oh, that's fine.
00:34:41.840It 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.
00:35:13.280Now I want to pick up on your Thanos reference since I do have three children under the age of 12.
00:35:17.780I 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.
00:35:39.140And that's how it was feeling the first week or two.
00:35:41.560I actually think there's been a shift now.
00:35:43.400I think already they overreacted with the big tech crackdown.
00:35:46.600I 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.
00:36:31.960I 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.
00:36:43.400And Rahm Emanuel's reminder, as you referenced the other day, to never let them go to waste.
00:36:48.680This was a Damoclean sword that was hanging over the head of the center-right in America.
00:36:55.880And the rioters effectively gave Democrats and big tech a ladder and a pair of scissors to just go up and cut that rope.
00:37:04.760And to me, this was inevitably going to happen, but I didn't anticipate this being the spark.
00:37:12.580I thought that it would come in a slightly different way, I guess.
00:37:15.980But now that it has happened, I think you are right.
00:37:23.260And frankly, I mean, I think he's been a better commentator than almost anybody on MSNBC or CNN.
00:37:31.260Bill Maher making the point again the other day that you can't use these people to say that that represents 75 million Trump supporters.
00:37:41.680And to me, that's something that most Americans realize.
00:37:46.960It's the media and a small, very loud cadre of Americans who have the opposite view.
00:37:55.040I hate to do the Tom Friedman thing of talking about your taxi driver or your Uber driver.
00:38:01.260I 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
00:38:14.060and talked about how he didn't want us to lose free speech and that he was worried about it,
00:38:21.620that his parents had come here to bring him away so that he would have free speech.
00:38:25.060And then I had a very nice Belgian gentleman who said,
00:38:30.820well, I think that they should just take everybody who was at the Capitol and put them on an island without masks until they die.
00:38:37.960So finding a way for those two people to share a country is the critical demand for our leadership today.
00:38:46.920And that's something that doesn't just mean political leadership.
00:39:47.000But, you know, impeaching him after he's out of office, you know, it's not the way to go.
00:39:51.280I think that that would have really boosted him among a lot of Republicans.
00:39:55.660Instead, 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.
00:40:06.240And 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.
00:40:17.380Now, 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.
00:40:27.300But, you know, the note I would like to hear from President Biden is we cannot be enemies but friends.
00:40:36.520And I would like that to actually be something that is true in terms of the way that he approaches his administration.
00:40:45.280But 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,
00:40:59.980then I expect that the culture war is only going to get hotter in this country.
00:41:05.400And 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.
00:41:16.660Yeah. 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.
00:41:25.900That's not what we do. We won this election.
00:41:27.820We'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.
00:41:38.580You know, it's it'd be great to hear even Trump was terrible at that.
00:41:43.340Good God, was he a bad spokesman for the country?
00:41:45.740I mean, he just was. That was a very valid criticism.
00:41:48.340I used to hear of him from the people at like National Review who are Republicans and conservatives, but they didn't like Trump.
00:41:54.000But 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.
00:42:03.640And I I do think Joe Biden is a patriot.
00:42:06.900I 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.
00:42:23.600I 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,
00:42:32.340he 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.
00:42:47.060I think that's one of the reasons that he won, because he was that old school Democrat in his approach.
00:42:53.480But his policies, that's a different question.
00:42:56.000And I think that it remains to be seen what those actually look like, the impacts that they have and how much to circle back.
00:43:04.240You 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,
00:43:18.160whether 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.
00:43:35.640That's the big question, and we won't know it until we've had a real sight at this new presidency.
00:43:43.480Ben, always great talking to you. So thoughtful. Really appreciate it.
00:43:51.580So Crystal and Sager will be here in one second.
00:43:53.740But first, let's talk about Legacy Box.
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00:44:51.640I 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.
00:45:01.000And we had a lot of fun with my kids watching the very young MK, the pre-foxified MK, learning how to be a lawyer.
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00:45:13.500Anyway, the service is shockingly simple.
00:46:32.740I've been trying to reflect just broadly about this entire administration and more.
00:46:37.580And 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.
00:46:48.140I 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.
00:46:56.420But 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.
00:47:06.300In Washington, I don't think it has allowed for enough introspection here.
00:47:10.340I don't think Biden is necessarily the person who's going to be asking those questions, but that was really heartening to me.
00:47:15.880It made it so that I was like, you know what?
00:47:17.520I don't have to listen to the tastemakers or others.
00:47:20.220It 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.
00:47:27.040And so I think to the extent that he had a victory, that's what it was.
00:47:30.060I 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.
00:47:37.940So it's a mixed bag, but it's an interesting kind of reflective time, given everything that's happening right now.
00:47:48.320You 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.
00:47:59.120And 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.
00:48:18.740And 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.
00:48:28.600Do I think that that's going to lead to any sort of like amicable situation in Washington?
00:48:34.700And 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.
00:48:59.320And 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.
00:49:10.120So 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.
00:49:26.560Political 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.
00:49:36.340I don't think that's a statement on Joe Biden.
00:49:38.380I think that's a statement on how ugly and how divided this country is.
00:49:42.120And people like Trump and many others have basically used that division for their own profit and power.
00:49:48.120So 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.
00:49:57.980And I hope that in the Biden era, maybe we can turn that temperature down and do some things that have broad-based support.
00:50:04.040You know, the $2,000 checks, one thing that has broad bipartisan support.
00:50:08.600Obviously, everybody wants to get a vaccine out and be able to get back to some kind of normal life.
00:50:14.160I hope that those sort of shared goals help to heal some of those wounds.
00:50:19.440But frankly, as long as people profit off of dividing people and making them hate each other, I'm pretty pessimistic.
00:50:26.980I 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.
00:50:38.940Um, and who have just gotten themselves into such a tizzy about this country, we're going to take it back.
00:50:46.280And then on the other side, you know, what we call the leftists, which is not to be confused with liberals who are normal.
00:50:54.580Leftists have an agenda of just shutting down speech and changing America and crapping on America at every turn.
00:50:59.520Like they're, they're in a different group.
00:51:01.380They don't represent the vast majority of us.
00:51:04.420The vast majority of us are the 80% in the middle.
00:51:06.660Maybe it's smaller now, maybe it's 60% in the middle.
00:51:08.900I don't know, but they get the most airtime.
00:51:11.680They, they gather the most attention and they make people feel really pessimistic.
00:51:17.580But I talk to you guys and I know, I know in my soul that most Americans are where we are.
00:51:24.600All 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.
00:51:32.540That I really think is where the country truly is in its heart.
00:51:38.720I mean, I don't disagree with you, Megan.
00:51:40.220The 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.
00:51:48.360We talked about this today on our show.
00:51:50.620There's a former Facebook executive who was on Brian Stelter's show on CNN over the weekend.
00:51:55.300And 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.
00:52:04.200And it's funny because Crystal and I do have a larger audience than daytime CNN and we're on YouTube.
00:52:09.580And 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.
00:52:24.680But I think it's vitally important that we stand up for the ability of free expression, not just online, on podcasting.
00:52:32.160That's another thing that they're coming after.
00:52:33.720They're like calling it a loophole that podcasting is an open protocol.
00:52:37.920I've never really been more afraid of kind of the censorship regime and how far it's going than we are in right now.
00:52:44.380And Glenn Greenwald rightfully has been warning.
00:52:46.280He'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.
00:52:54.740It'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.
00:53:04.260You know, it also just smacks of such elitism, you know, that guy like the internet, YouTube.
00:53:12.220It's like he doesn't realize that the old system is crumbling down around him.
00:53:18.840People have figured out how to find information in new ways.
00:53:22.960They're not beholden to the big NBCs or, God forbid, CNNs of the world anymore.
00:53:28.720And 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.
00:53:42.040They need to reevaluate their information delivery and their connection.
00:53:47.040I always say Trump is untethered to the facts.
00:53:49.720He doesn't have an adult relationship with the facts.
00:53:55.360Only there's no navel gazing about that one, you know.
00:53:58.740Yeah, 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.
00:54:07.000So you could easily just point at him and be like, well, he's the problem.
00:54:23.300Maybe there's something we did wrong over these years that people were also rejecting in picking this person.
00:54:30.260And it's certainly for, you know, for media outlets.
00:54:33.100Trump 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.
00:54:42.020So 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.
00:54:51.980I wonder if it had anything to do with our reporting leading up to the Iraq war.
00:54:56.460Hey, I wonder if it had anything to do with us completely failing to see the financial collapse happening.
00:55:02.060Hey, 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.
00:55:13.200I wonder if any of those things led to people feeling like they needed to find alternative sources.
00:55:18.660And 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.
00:55:26.020And 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.
00:55:34.800They'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.
00:55:45.400They'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.
00:55:53.780I 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.
00:56:06.500And 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.
00:56:21.160So 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.
00:56:31.280That'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.
00:56:38.300All my friends are liberal. I think I have one who's a Trump voter and she's ashamed.
00:56:43.240She doesn't want people to know. She's not ashamed. She doesn't want people to know.
00:56:45.520But anyway, what I think about when I think about them is they're kind of like you.
00:56:51.000I 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.
00:57:03.680I'm thinking of my friends now like they're like, for lack of a better term, normal liberals.
00:57:09.160Yeah, they're normal. I don't know how that's what that's called. They're just normal.
00:57:12.000Yeah. 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.
00:57:22.860But 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.
00:57:42.000Well, I think it's because they benefit from that regime of censorship because it does basically quash their competitors.
00:57:49.800I mean, that dude on CNN who was the Facebook executive saying like, oh, my God, these people have audiences larger than CNN.
00:58:00.160I mean, it's you know, it's basically like classic anti classic anti-competitive behavior.
00:58:05.400If 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.
00:58:15.700Now, to your point, no one's learned any lessons.
00:58:21.660And we're already seeing the media, a huge part of the problem.
00:58:24.920And they represent, you know, it's not just them.
00:58:26.800It's the Democrats, too, on on, you know, on on media.
00:58:31.760Doubling 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.
00:58:45.340And here's just a little mashup that Gravian put together.
00:58:48.200These are great mashups that Gravian does of some examples.
00:58:51.360The only I think the voices will be will be obvious, except for the one who's like unity, uni is Claire McCaskill.
00:59:58.940The one that really got me was debathification.
01:00:04.160Does anyone want to tell Joy Reid what debathification, how that all worked out in Iraq?
01:00:09.300It was a total disaster and led to the collapse of the state.
01:00:12.680And this is exactly what I was alluding to earlier, which is that, look, you start demonizing each other to the point.
01:00:20.340Like 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.
01:00:29.780We've now had 20 years of demonization of each other.
01:00:33.860So the ground is laid and all they needed to do was flip the switch.
01:00:37.260You can hear that from Chris Cuomo, from Joy Reid and others.
01:00:40.700And you turn the organs of propaganda and then now of the state against one another.
01:00:46.300And you are going to lead yourself to a deeply, deeply troubling situation.
01:00:50.860And 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.
01:00:59.780And 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.
01:01:10.100This is one of the central ways that authoritarian dictatorships ramp up domestic turmoil and lead to big political explosions.
01:01:17.140So that reel that you just played is just so, so troubling.
01:01:21.060But unfortunately, like you said, they haven't learned anything.
01:01:24.420Well, I have a scarier one to play for you.
01:01:26.680I really wanted to discuss this with you, too, which is, again, learning nothing.
01:01:33.240Take a listen to Hillary Clinton, which she has a podcast.
01:01:38.560I'm just going to just throw that out there.
01:01:40.380She's got a podcast because people want to hear from Hillary Clinton.
01:01:43.700Apparently they do because this one's got a lot of views.
01:03:54.200They have to have the theatrical flourishes on because they don't actually do anything.
01:03:57.940So 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.
01:04:06.160And 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.
01:04:27.080We've already had the lionizing of all these like spooks and national security state ghouls within the Democratic Party.
01:04:35.000Apparently, they just are totally committed to continuing in that direction.
01:04:39.280And but they're going to be they're going to point rudely at anybody who feels differently about it than they do.
01:04:44.760To 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.
01:04:53.900But the second piece of it is that the sadness of like trying to seem tough and project toughness.
01:05:00.320I 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.
01:05:08.460She did a little thing with ripping up the the State of the Union speech.
01:05:12.840She wore the same suit on impeachment both times.
01:05:15.880And I just think, can we find better leaders?
01:05:18.760Can't we like anybody better than them run, Sagar?
01:05:24.100You 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.
01:05:30.580He will actually be younger than Pelosi and McConnell.
01:05:56.640And 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.
01:06:04.640And 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.
01:06:17.180There was an op ed in The Washington Post by a woman named Christina Beltran, who's at NYU.
01:06:21.720And 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.
01:06:35.400They are what she calls and they quote multiracial whites.
01:06:44.620OK, 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.
01:06:58.980Multiracial 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.
01:07:10.940It 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.
01:07:27.240If 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.
01:07:39.340I 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?
01:07:51.620I 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.
01:08:06.060And 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.
01:08:22.000And that's really the thing with this.
01:08:24.280I 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.
01:08:35.060It's not actually about winning a political argument.
01:08:38.620It'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.
01:08:51.560They get either profit or clout or whatever from that display.
01:08:55.680It's not actually about accomplishing the goals that they claim to be trying to accomplish.
01:09:00.540Well, 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?
01:09:57.580Look, again, it's fun to dunk on these people.
01:10:00.820It's ultimately they are leaning on the only lens that they know.
01:10:04.420And 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,
01:10:14.140then you are not going to be able to understand the class divide that we have in this country.
01:10:18.800You can't talk about economic inequality.
01:10:21.420You 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.
01:10:32.760So I think that it is largely a product of that more than anything.
01:10:39.780I 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.
01:10:48.260But 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.
01:10:56.780Right. His his approval ratings on leaving office, 38 percent, 60 percent of the public disapproves.
01:11:04.340They say he's going to be building a fiefdom aimed at maintaining his influence over the Republican Party.
01:11:08.880He'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.
01:11:19.840And 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?
01:11:30.640I think he's still just as much of a kingmaker as before.
01:11:33.340And 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.
01:11:47.120And ultimately, look, Trump, I think the latest poll I saw in NBC News got an 87 percent approval rating within the Republican Party.
01:11:54.460And 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.
01:12:05.420In my view, you kind of have the elites which are embodied in Liz Cheney and with Mitt Romney and others.
01:12:12.340They are not a majority of the Republican Party.
01:12:18.560Ergo, you know, the type of suburban voter in Georgia who decided to vote for Biden but then voted for David Perdue and Kelly Loeffler.
01:12:25.620But then you've got, you know, a sizable chunk, 60, 65 percent and more who are Trump people.
01:12:32.200And of those, maybe one third who are just hardcore like Trump, the personality, QAnon and more.
01:12:39.520Those are irreconcilability is going to be hard.
01:12:42.440But 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.
01:12:54.340So 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.
01:13:02.800And you're going to see Trump become even more of a kingmaker.
01:13:06.680But that being said, that kingmaking faction is going to be like 35, maybe 40 percent of the U.S. population.
01:13:13.180So overall, it's still not a good place to be.
01:13:21.000Kingmaker over a diminished kingdom is the problem.
01:13:23.980I 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.
01:13:32.140But, you know, clearly he wanted to play this game for four years, do the reality show.
01:14:18.920Just him saying, you know, this candidate's my candidate hasn't always worked out for him in the past.
01:14:23.440And 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.
01:14:34.200But 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.
01:14:47.960Without 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.
01:15:03.720Is there anyone here who thinks Ivanka Trump is the answer to that problem?
01:15:16.100I 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.
01:15:37.380And flat out, I just don't think she's very particularly talented on the baseline level.
01:15:42.280So I don't see that as somebody who could bring any sort of factions of the GOP together.
01:15:48.400I don't think it is possible currently.
01:15:50.380I have not seen a figure that might be able to do it.
01:15:53.280The only one who I've got my eye on is actually Ron DeSantis down in Florida.
01:15:59.940Anyone with the Trump name is going to be toxic to elite America.
01:16:04.720And, 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.
01:16:11.320I mean, you see, you know, like what they did to Parler.
01:16:13.860Apple pulled them from the from the App Store.
01:16:17.200Google pulled them and then Amazon cuts the legs out from under them with their web servers.
01:16:21.500Like you literally can't operate in America without the sanctioning and support of some segment of elites.
01:16:27.900And if the Republican Party doesn't have that, they're in big trouble.
01:16:31.440And 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.
01:16:37.740And she doesn't have quite the juice with the base that daddy has.
01:16:40.920So, no, I don't think that's any kind of real answer for them.
01:16:45.240Yeah. And she just she doesn't have she's not dynamic.
01:16:48.180She's just not a dynamic, compelling personality.
01:17:06.140I mean, it's obvious to those of us in the media how she, you know, manipulates her own image.
01:17:10.960And 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.
01:17:17.960That's not to say that they haven't done good.
01:17:19.420I'm just saying I think people get drunk on their own wine.
01:17:47.680But everybody's wondering, you know, whether whether he'll make it four years and what the Democrats next plan would be after him.
01:17:56.900I know, Crystal, you're more, you know, to the left, you're more of a Bernie person politically.
01:18:01.020But are you seeing any signs that encourage you right now with respect to Joe Biden's administration or the opposite?
01:18:07.080Or do you feel discouraged based on what you've seen so far?
01:18:09.460So 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.
01:18:20.340I 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.
01:18:27.300Fifteen dollar minimum wage, hugely popular, refundable child tax credit, something that has both Democratic and Republican support, you know, obviously money for vaccine distribution.
01:18:38.840Like these things are really good, really important.
01:18:41.340What 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.
01:18:52.060So, 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.
01:19:02.940Ultimately, American people care about one thing.
01:19:05.380What did you do for me? Not how many Republican votes did you get?
01:19:09.180Not, you know, was it passed by regular order or through budget reconciliation?
01:19:15.060They care that it gets done and that it ultimately benefits them.
01:19:18.680So I guess on the one hand, I see some positive promises and directions with the relief bill and the vaccination plan in particular.
01:19:27.400On the other hand, I'm not sure I see like the willingness to actually fight to get it done,
01:19:31.340because if there's one thing that Democrats are really good at, it's making excuses for why they can't govern versus actually governing.
01:19:38.220Right. The pieces I'm reading from the left right now, Sagar, are, you know, get some sharp elbows, for God's sake.
01:19:45.180Go in there, flip some tables over. Don't be so accommodating. Don't be conciliatory.
01:19:49.520Like we have a very short time to govern and govern the way we want. Like, get it on.
01:19:53.960And I think some of the Republicans who crossed over to vote for him are like, be quiet. We'd like to work together.
01:20:01.160Well, 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.
01:20:12.360I 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.
01:20:20.700So that's the number one thing I would triangulate. And I would focus on two thousand dollar checks, seventy five percent issues.
01:20:27.800I mean, you saw Florida voted for a fifteen dollar minimum wage on the same day that they voted historically for Trump.
01:20:33.820There's another crossover issue. These are the things that I would hammer home and divide the country or political lines on.
01:20:40.640But I have to say, which is I think he's making a big mistake.
01:20:43.800He's introducing immigration as is for on the very first day of his presidency.
01:20:48.500And 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.
01:21:04.700It's over. And we're right back to 2015 politics in the United States of America.
01:21:10.120And you just killed any chance of making your seem, making yourself seem like a politician who is going to transcend that.
01:21:18.200I legitimately think he does have a. Can I can I ask to that? Can I can I add to that?
01:21:21.900So the other the other executive orders per Ron Klain, his incoming chief of staff, are just to name a few.
01:21:27.260He's going to rescind the travel ban on several predominantly Muslim countries.
01:21:31.000He'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.
01:21:40.300And I I do wonder, as I look at that, just I mean, listen, I spent a lot of years at Fox News.
01:21:44.780If you wanted to rile up the Republican base, that would be the list you'd make.
01:21:49.080Yeah, 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.
01:21:58.000Exactly. 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.
01:22:09.800And I am not a Joe Biden fan, not at all.
01:22:13.440But 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.
01:22:29.000And Democrats are going to be very difficult to beat in the midterm elections, even though that's, you know, historically outside of the norm.
01:22:34.940I think Crystal's 100 percent right. Are you guys hearing a lot of maybe it's my circles?
01:22:41.240I don't know, but I'm hearing a lot of people who don't want to take that vaccine.
01:22:44.660You guys hearing that? Not in my circles, but I'm seeing the polling on it.
01:22:49.540And there are a lot of people who are who are uncomfortable.
01:22:52.920I 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.
01:23:01.420I don't know that that's going to ultimately be effective, but it is worrisome.
01:23:06.060Look, you have look, you have a very conspiratorial public.
01:23:09.200They don't trust anybody in some cases for really good reason.
01:23:12.600So that makes it extraordinarily hard to instill trust, trust the experts, trust the process.
01:23:19.900They've heard that before. And it's it's bitten them.
01:23:22.560Now, in this case, like I don't want to sow any doubt of all the indications are the vaccine is safe.
01:23:27.660We've seen people taking it in public.
01:23:29.320It works. We all want to get back to life.
01:23:31.780But, yeah, it's it's a bad place that we're in with so many people, so mistrustful of literally everyone.
01:23:38.520Yeah, I can just say personally, my parents both got the vaccine.
01:23:41.520They're both completely fine, had no, you know, side effects.
01:23:44.560I can't wait to get the vaccine. That's all I can you know, I can really say on that matter.
01:23:48.860I said before that I'm definitely taking the vaccine.
01:23:51.840I would take it sooner rather than later.
01:23:53.120And I actually just saw for whatever it's worth, my primary care physician who happens to specialize in infectious disease.
01:23:58.800So 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.
01:24:07.800And in fact, you might have a worse reaction if you get it. So if you've had covid, you don't need the vaccine.
01:24:12.420And he loves the vaccines. He loves Pfizer. He loves Moderna in particular, although either one is fine.
01:24:18.860And he thinks it'll take through December for us all to get vaccinated and achieve herd immunity.
01:24:24.020And he thinks we're going to have these masks on until then.
01:24:28.840Depends on where you live, I guess. But here in New York, it's been it's been madness.
01:24:33.060I mean, it's like I think we're all so pissed off about the fact that these poor restaurateurs can only do outside business.
01:24:39.460Even like you could limit it. You could limit the capacity of these restaurants.
01:24:42.820There's a, you know, one point four percent spread rate.
01:24:45.600But, you know, government overreach is everywhere.
01:24:47.960And the truth is, at least here in New York and elsewhere, our leaders don't know what they're doing.
01:24:53.120I mean, anybody who thinks that Mayor de Blasio and really this is Cuomo know what they're doing, hasn't been paying attention.
01:24:59.720So, OK, I won't I won't require you to rate weigh in on that.
01:25:02.620I'll steal the last word, but it's always a pleasure. And I thank you both for being here.
01:25:10.480We're going to get to our next guest, Ryan Grimm, in just one second.
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01:27:10.260And 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.
01:27:23.900My, my, the first, and the first article, I wrote two pieces on that.
01:27:27.580The 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.
01:27:36.300And it was, I think to this day is maybe except for that, that like scam wall funding GoFundMe.
01:27:44.340It was the biggest GoFundMe in the site's history.
01:27:46.720And 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.
01:28:01.020And 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.
01:28:09.180It'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.
01:28:20.360And so just that alone, I thought was, was newsworthy.
01:28:23.880And you're right, just, just, just for reporting that fact, I was a persona non grata for a while.
01:28:47.340And 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.
01:28:54.000But before we do, let's talk about the inauguration and where we go from here.
01:28:59.180I 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.
01:29:09.540But I think there's, you know, a considerable faction on the Democratic side.
01:29:25.280You, 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.
01:29:43.180Yet at the same time, you did have a kind of unanimity almost that Biden would be better than Trump.
01:29:50.540You 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.
01:30:01.920If Hillary Clinton doesn't win, if, and if, and if Trump won, wins instead.
01:30:06.060And you, and they had a bunch of different rationales for why, why that might be.
01:30:09.660But very interestingly, and I think this is what did Trump in, in 2020, you didn't really have that.
01:30:15.380Even 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.
01:30:24.280And 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.
01:30:37.260Her, you know, her unfavorables were, were higher than Trump's.
01:30:40.920And, 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.
01:30:52.480In 2020, most voters didn't necessarily like either candidate, but they disliked Biden less.
01:31:00.100That's kind of the pitiful state where our, our politics has gotten to that.
01:31:03.540If you're just not that dislikable, then of the, of the two viable candidates, you're going to win.
01:31:09.780What 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.
01:31:17.560I mean, he's, he's a revived, single-handedly revived MSNBC and CNN.
01:31:21.600What do you think they're going to do now?
01:31:23.080It's like the Richard Nixon, you won't have me to kick around anymore.
01:31:25.660You know, now that they can't blame everything on Trump, what do you see happening there?
01:31:30.760Well, 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.
01:31:41.460When 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.
01:32:02.080You 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.
01:32:15.520The MSNBC ratings were absolutely in the tank.
01:32:19.160I mean, you were getting, you know, 10, 15,000 people for like, you know, watching like midday MSNBC.
01:32:26.000Because what are you, what are you watching for?
01:32:29.220You know, John Boehner didn't make that great of a bill and Mitch McConnell didn't even run the Senate yet.
01:32:35.060There 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.
01:32:43.080It was, it was, it was utter doldrums.
01:32:46.440Now, 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.
01:32:57.080You 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?
01:33:07.400And so they'll, they'll cling to some viewership through, through that.
01:33:11.300But 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.
01:33:23.520And they, and anytime they would get some CNN alert on their phone, be like, oh God, what did he do now?
01:33:29.540And they want to get to a place where they don't have to worry about what the president is.
01:33:34.040So, 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.
01:33:41.280And 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.
01:33:53.520And, and, and tuning in for the latest outrage.
01:33:56.620Those are very interesting points because, I mean, having anchored at Fox news for a long time, including in the prime time for four years.
01:34:03.980Um, I, I'll tell you when I was there, I got the, I got the prime time seat in 2013.
01:35:11.120CNN will have that and MSNBC, but it's not going to be the same.
01:35:14.500I think the Republicans will come back to Fox.
01:35:16.520There's been a lot of news about Fox's dismal ratings right now.
01:35:20.060And 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.
01:35:27.840Now they're worse now, but the Republicans came back.
01:35:31.160I 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.
01:35:53.100And, 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.
01:36:02.240So, you know, it's, it's very easy to just constantly be critical.
01:36:05.900You 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.
01:36:16.580And, 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.
01:36:30.540With, 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.
01:36:50.880Cause 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.
01:37:02.940You 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.
01:37:14.040Once they get back to divided government, that's going to be a little bit more of a challenge for them.
01:37:19.020But yeah, I, I'm curious to see what, what CNN, what CNN does without, without Trump anymore.
01:37:25.960You, you use that term excited very loosely.
01:37:59.260Now 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.
01:38:12.400I, 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.
01:38:21.280Um, I think I'm short of Hillary Clinton.
01:38:29.500Cause right now we're being told by Joe Biden, it's an America United.
01:38:33.420That's the theme of the day of his inauguration, America United.
01:38:36.680And I think you don't even have a party that's united.
01:38:40.780I 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.
01:38:54.100I 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.
01:39:07.340And 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.
01:39:15.920And 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.
01:39:32.500And 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.
01:39:43.320I 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.
01:39:55.380And 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.
01:40:08.320Right. 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.
01:40:21.720And 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?
01:40:35.260They 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.
01:40:48.660Um, 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.
01:41:05.480And, 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.
01:41:18.660Well, 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,
01:41:48.640all 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.
01:42:04.020And 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.
01:42:17.780And 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.
01:42:25.900So 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.
01:42:36.980As 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.
01:42:47.580Um, and you'll, you could see an economic boom that, that, that coasts into the next midterms.
01:42:55.900And 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.
01:43:05.600And 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.
01:43:16.240Mm-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.
01:43:23.680And, but the rollout, as we've now seen, isn't as easy as they predicted.
01:43:28.300And 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.
01:43:37.020We'll see. Fauci, Fauci has misled us before.
01:43:40.280Um, let's talk about, let's talk about the administration because I wonder your take on, I read an article, um,
01:43:46.000by somebody who is kind of like you, a Bernie supporter.
01:43:48.780And they said, this is a quote from, for the Bernie Sanders wing of the democratic party,
01:43:53.100the Joe Biden presidential transition is what losing looks like.
01:43:56.540And they, they weren't too keen on names like Neera Tanden, um, Brian Deese,
01:44:02.900and some others who are moving into the, the Biden cabinet in various roles.
01:44:07.280Anita Dunn, who we talked about at the top, who was with, um, or we should have,
01:44:10.420who's with times up the group that rejected, uh, Tara Reade's case, by the way, as she was advising Joe Biden.
01:44:17.260What a shock. Um, she's moving into the administration as an advisor for at least the time being.
01:44:22.220So what do you make of his, his cabinet?
01:44:24.700It is what losing looks like, but in a weird way, it's also what progress looks like compared
01:44:31.040to the Obama transition. That transition was literally kind of launched out of a city group.
01:44:37.920You know, the trend, the head of the transition used his, used his city group email to kind of kick
01:44:43.620off, um, the, the, the, the throwing around of names for who would be in the transition. And that
01:44:49.620original email, which is in, which thanks to Julian Assange is, we is, has been published. Um,
01:44:56.520it was remarkably pression. Um, it, it, it nailed like almost every cabinet and deputy,
01:45:02.400you know, deputy cabinet position. And, you know, in case after case, uh, Obama, and he talks about
01:45:10.040this in his, in his memoir, you know, he wanted people from wall street because he kind of felt
01:45:16.160out of his depth when it came to confronting this, this financial crisis that, that, that he,
01:45:22.560that everybody was afraid was going to, um, lead to the, to a second great depression. And so he
01:45:28.680leaned on a lot of the people who were around and responsible for a lot of decisions that led to
01:45:35.280getting into that, uh, that financial crisis. And so if you compare, you know, position to position,
01:45:42.560you know, Barack Obama to Joe Biden on almost every, um, almost every case, uh, Biden has picked
01:45:50.720a kind of a more progressive or more populist person, even though very few of them come from
01:45:56.260the actual Sanders wing. So it's all kind of incremental movement in one direction, but even
01:46:00.540like Brian Deese, for instance, you know, his counterpart in, in the Obama years, uh, was Larry
01:46:06.400Summers. So, you know, that's clearly no matter who you've got in that, that's, that's clearly an
01:46:10.800improvement, uh, for, for Biden. Ron Klain, you know, swapped in for, for Rahm Emanuel, for instance,
01:46:17.240and just, you know, on, on down the line, you, you're seeing this small amount of progress and
01:46:22.400you're also seeing that Biden does seem to have learned that what really cost Obama. And, and this
01:46:30.720has set in now, finally, as, as conventional wisdom, whether it's right or wrong, I think it's
01:46:35.220right, has set in as conventional wisdom that Obama got, got hammered in 2010 because unemployment
01:46:41.660was still at 10% in November, 2010, and that he would, he, he insufficiently responded to the
01:46:48.740financial crisis that he, that he didn't, that he didn't meet the moment that the, that the stimulus
01:46:54.100that, that he passed in early 2009 was just simply, uh, too small and too poorly designed for the,
01:47:00.560for the scale of the crisis. And because you had this, you know, all six years of stagnation that,
01:47:06.400that contributed by 2014 to, to losing the Senate as well. And so Joe Biden is determined not to,
01:47:15.540not to suffer for the, for the same reason. You know, he's, maybe he's fighting the wrong war by
01:47:21.240fighting the last war, but the lesson that he's taken is that the government needs to step in,
01:47:26.440spend a lot of money, uh, grow the economy. And that's the way you're going to overcome
01:47:31.060the, the traditional, uh, the traditional reaction that, uh, that presidents get in the
01:47:38.280first midterm. I mean, I think even for budget hawks, it's, it's very hard to look at an American
01:47:45.140populace who you've told cannot work, that they may not work. You've destroyed their businesses.
01:47:50.760You've destroyed their ability to work. And yet you haven't destroyed their rent bills. As you
01:47:55.380point out, there may be, there may be a delay, but they're still adding up. It's not abatement.
01:48:01.340It's just postponement. Uh, and then say, and you're not going to get a lot of help from the
01:48:06.680government. So it's like, are there some people gaming the system? Of course. Are there some
01:48:11.280people who are going to get these checks who shouldn't get them? Yes. But it's really tough
01:48:14.940to look at the Americans who are genuinely suffering through no fault of their own and say,
01:48:20.060you're out of luck. And, and I think news people, once again, need to be conscious of that because
01:48:25.840it's always somebody with a job sitting behind the microphone telling you no, no. So let me,
01:48:31.600let me close out with Richard by returning to Tara read, because I interviewed her and spent a lot of
01:48:37.180time with her. And I don't know whether Tara's allegations are true or not. I do know she's been
01:48:43.400telling the same story for almost 30 years. I mean, she told it right away within a week to a
01:48:49.520longtime friend who I spoke with personally, who seemed very, very credible to me. Two years later,
01:48:54.680told the exact same story to somebody else a year after that, somebody else, you know, you, you're the
01:48:59.200one who found the mother, the soundbite on Larry King calling in and saying she had a harassment
01:49:03.660problem, um, suggesting that there had been harassing, harassing problem with the center she'd been
01:49:08.140working for and so on. Um, but I think Tara's enduring legacy will have been putting the lie
01:49:16.500to the quote, believe all women trope that we were being fed by, by some on the left, right? Like we
01:49:24.580heard that during Christine Blasey Ford left and right. And then suddenly it was complete abandonment
01:49:29.320of the principle, which, which is right to do, by the way, I didn't believe in the principle. I don't,
01:49:33.760but that it's a nonsensical principle. Right. Women are, um, and so I think thankfully she killed
01:49:38.500it. Right. I mean, it's, it's ridiculous. You can't believe all women, depending on whether they're
01:49:42.700a Republican or a Democrat. That's right. And it doesn't make sense to say something different. Right.
01:49:47.620Yeah. Right. Exactly. We don't get a truth telling gene with our ovaries. Um, but how do you
01:49:53.660see her story now? Cause she, God, did the media go after her? I mean, they just had a thirst for
01:49:58.860unearthing anything she'd ever done in her life, allegedly, or in fact. Right. There,
01:50:03.440there was a really kind of, uh, overzealous interrogation of, of her background, which I
01:50:08.380think, um, you know, which I, which I think is going to, uh, prove to have, uh, been, if
01:50:15.740not the defamatory quite, quite close to it, you know, the, it, the worm really turned when
01:50:23.080she was accused of having, uh, fabricated her college degree. And so I, I actually recently
01:50:31.480was, was looking pretty closely into this and got a lot of documents, um, you know, from
01:50:37.900her law school and from her, um, from her, her college and, and, and the documents, you
01:50:44.860know, back up what, what Tara Reid had been saying that she was in this, uh, kind of protected
01:50:52.200program for domestic violence, um, domestic domestic violence victims that made it so that
01:50:58.880she couldn't link her credits with her to like four different community colleges that
01:51:05.260and, and other colleges that she had gone to before this one. And, and that there was
01:51:11.700a, an arrangement made between the, uh, Dean of the college that she went to and the Dean
01:51:17.640of the law school. That's, that's what she had always said. Uh, and the documents, the documents
01:51:22.160bear that out. And, and, and yet after that, it was reported that she didn't have this, uh,
01:51:29.240college degree, then Monterey County district attorney said, well, now we're gonna, uh, you
01:51:35.720know, we're gonna investigate her for perjury, for claiming that she had a college degree.
01:51:40.600And, and once, and once that happened, it was like, oh, you know, she's a, she's a perjurer.
01:51:46.160Uh, you know, she's, she's a fabulous, you know, nothing she has ever said could, could
01:51:52.200possibly be true. But, you know, it, it turns out that a closer examination of, of that situation,
01:51:57.600while it's quite complicated with like most of thing, the thing, most of Tara Reade's life,
01:52:03.660um, it, it actually maps pretty closely with, with what she had been saying about her degree
01:52:10.360the whole time. And I think that, and that's, you know, and then you, you had the, the situation
01:52:14.500where they interviewed, you know, previous, uh, landlords of hers who were, who were, who
01:52:20.320were disgruntled. And, you know, a lot of, a lot of people were coming out of the woodwork. Um,
01:52:25.100but at the same time that brought other people out who said, oh, Tara, Tara told me this story
01:52:30.100at this time. I remember her telling me this. So like going through, if you want to go through
01:52:34.580the landlords of anybody who's poor, it's not going to end well for the poor person, you know? And
01:52:40.460when you don't have money, you're not so good about paying your bills. Believe it or not,
01:52:44.220I have been that person. I had no money. I wasn't, I was in the position to make future money,
01:52:49.900but when I was putting myself through law school, I was in debt, um, a lot of debt. And I was trying
01:52:55.440to teach aerobics to pay my bills and I didn't have a lot of money and I didn't pay my bills
01:53:00.420on time or at all in some cases. And it took me years to dig myself out of that hole, even then
01:53:06.200earning the good salary that came my way when I finished school. But it's embarrassing. It's awful.
01:53:11.600It does bring a lot of conflict into your life. You feel terrible. You just, it's the worst version
01:53:16.620of yourself. And so, you know, the, of course, if, if this were somebody accusing Brett Kavanaugh,
01:53:23.320they probably would have factored all that into the disputes with the landlords, but because
01:53:27.100the name being accused was Joe Biden presidential nominee, it was very different. I just, it left me
01:53:33.560with such a bad taste in my mouth for this whole thing. And I'll tell you my, my takeaway,
01:53:37.240and then I'll give you the last word is I'm glad believe all women is done. And I think
01:53:43.480where, where I landed on this is, and my experiences with Tara have been nothing but kind and she's been
01:53:49.760incredibly sweet and wonderful character references that I've spoken to about her. Um, but it is up to
01:53:56.240the individual to decide whether they believe or they don't. And there shouldn't be any shaming.
01:54:00.160You don't believe Tara read that. No problem. You don't have to, you don't believe Christine
01:54:04.060Blasey Ford. No problem. You don't have to, and there shouldn't be shaming or accusations of
01:54:09.100misogyny or sexism and so on, depending on whatever side you, you, you land on. I'll give
01:54:15.200you the last word. Right. I think it's really hard to know, um, what, what happened. Cause you can,
01:54:20.240you can make a persuasive case that she has all of these different corroborating folks that she's
01:54:25.340spoken to. And you can, and you can make a persuasive case, um, that, that she, that she's not
01:54:30.480telling the truth. You know, you, I, I think somebody could come down on either side of it.
01:54:35.520I think one thing that Biden has in, in his favor is that, you know, if, you know, if this were a
01:54:42.340pattern, you, you probably would have seen more coming out. Now there, there's, there's, there is
01:54:47.900the obvious pattern that we've all seen on video of him being kind of creepy. Um, but that's different.
01:54:53.820That's, that's different than, than what, than what she was describing. Right. So I think that
01:54:59.780the fact that that didn't come out, lends some credence to, to Biden's case. And so if people
01:55:05.760want to believe Biden in that case, you know, I, I, I think that that's okay. But I also think
01:55:11.060that it's indisputable that, that Tara, you know, has the right, uh, to, to tell her story and that,
01:55:18.060you know, journalists have, have the obligation to, you know, you know, look into that
01:55:23.800uh, look, look into that story and, and, you know, treat it responsibly and take it seriously.
01:55:30.380Absolutely. And I think you did the nation of service by first drawing attention to it. And I
01:55:35.240think Anita Dunn should be ashamed of herself for not allowing times up an organization that,
01:55:40.340you know, bills itself as standing for women, all women, um, pulled out of that representation
01:55:46.140from a woman who didn't have two nickels to rub together. And the whole case would have been less
01:55:49.820Yeah. The whole situation would have been less messy that way because you'd, you'd have, you know,
01:55:55.900professional people who know how to, um, you know, who, who know how to kind of, uh, you know,
01:56:03.600deal with the media. Um, you know, just, you know, just somebody, you know, just a very normal person
01:56:09.320just out on their own. Uh, it's going to be a mess for them. Yeah. When I was reading up in preparation
01:56:16.980for our interview, I read that there was one prominent Biden supporter that called for the
01:56:21.320FBI to investigate you and other journalists for their role in reporting the Tara Reid story. I mean,
01:56:27.520that's, that's the insanity of our world, Ryan, but I got you back and, uh, I appreciate your boldness
01:56:35.200and your fearlessness and hope you'll come back. Well, sure thing. Happy to. Well, that was
01:56:40.380interesting. I mean, the Tara Reid thing, I feel for her because boy, oh boy, it's like the media never
01:56:45.060sticks around for the after effects of what they do. And I know she continues to struggle as you
01:56:50.300know, the man, she says sexually assaulted her. He denies it a hundred percent denies it, uh, is now
01:56:55.880elevated to the presidency. And you know, there's a lot of Trump supporters who I spoke to as well,
01:57:00.500who felt the same as he, as he took office. We're going to have to do better world. We're going to
01:57:05.080have to do better. So before we go, I want to tell you that today's episode was brought to you in part
01:57:09.480by Bambi human resources crafted for businesses of all sizes. Go to B-A-M-B-E-E.com slash MK now to
01:57:19.760offload this hideous practice. It's just such a hard, hard thing to manage. It's an important thing,
01:57:26.440but it's hard to manage. And somebody is willing to do it for you like 99 bucks a month. So go to
01:57:31.480B-A-M-B-E-E.com slash MK now for more. Um, before we go, Barry Weiss is coming on the program on
01:57:40.800Friday. You are going to love her. She is the woman who I see her like Daenerys Targaryen lighting fire
01:57:51.580to that hut and walking out with all the people who tried to kill her. Um, powerful shoulders back
01:57:58.480as she left the New York times saying, I'm not going to play this damn game one day longer.
01:58:04.000Going to report the truth without agenda. If you don't like it, you're not the place for me.
01:58:09.260And she's got a new thing going on. She had a beautiful, beautiful opening, uh, piece on
01:58:13.480Substack where you can find her. Uh, and I know, trust me, you're going to love Barry Weiss. So
01:58:18.240that's Friday. Go ahead and subscribe. So you don't miss it. Rate, review, five stars, the whole bit.
01:58:22.500And we'll talk to you then. Thanks for listening to the Megan Kelly show. No BS,
01:58:27.520no agenda and no fear. The Megan Kelly show is a devil may care media production
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