The Megyn Kelly Show - Biden Panders to Anti-Israel Crowd, and Free Speech vs. Cancel Culture, with Tom Bevan, Josh Holmes, and Greg Lukianoff

00:00:00.440 Welcome to The Megyn Kelly Show, live on Sirius XM Channel 111 every weekday at New East.

00:00:11.760 Hey everyone, I'm Megyn Kelly. Welcome to The Megyn Kelly Show, a potential major development

00:00:16.940 just revealed by House Oversight Committee Chairman James Comer. For years, the president,

00:00:23.480 Democrats, and even some Republicans have claimed there's no direct evidence showing Joe Biden

00:00:28.060 himself ever benefiting from his son's overseas business deals, right? We've heard that so many

00:00:34.100 times. There's no smoking gun. There's no direct evidence tying him. Where's the money? Where's

00:00:39.140 the money? But Chairman Comer, using subpoenaed bank records, has for the first time clearly laid out

00:00:45.620 exactly how money from a Chinese company Hunter was doing business with was moved from bank account

00:00:52.800 to bank account, in other words, laundered to eventually end up in the personal account

00:00:58.360 of Joe Biden in 2017. Now the money was apparently, they said, a loan repayment. That's probably not

00:01:08.140 true, but it also is irrelevant. Comer saying it doesn't matter because the point is Chinese money

00:01:15.020 went directly, well, indirectly, but into Joe Biden's account. And while the family members

00:01:20.920 could say, oh, I swear I was just repaying my brother for a loan, it doesn't matter. I mean,

00:01:25.900 honestly, this is why people are asking, why didn't he crack down on the weird balloons flying

00:01:31.360 over the United States? Why has he been such a cow tower to China? Is it because they have something

00:01:38.300 on the guy? It's a fair question to ask. Not accusing the president yet, but I'm concerned about

00:01:43.940 what I just saw on this money trail. And we're going to get to it in a minute. At the same time,

00:01:49.360 President Biden making major headlines with statements he made last night is a rambling

00:01:53.120 like slew of statements regarding Israel's response to the Hamas terror attacks. No one

00:01:59.500 seeming to understand exactly what the hell he meant by any of what he said. Just perfect,

00:02:05.460 perfect during an international crisis. I'm actually surprised they haven't had any clarifying

00:02:09.260 statements on it yet. They probably will soon. It happened last night during a fundraising event

00:02:14.760 in Minneapolis. A protester stood up in the middle of his remarks and interrupted him. Watch.

00:02:23.760 Mr. President, if you care about Jewish people as a rabbi, I need you to call for a ceasefire

00:02:29.300 right now. Okay. So that was not just any old protester. That was, quote, Rabbi Jessica Rosenberg.

00:02:46.240 Jessica is a man pretending to be a woman. And I don't know if she's pretending to be a rabbi too,

00:02:53.500 but she barely tries to hide the fact that she's a man. She sports a beard. She's a bearded,

00:02:59.260 she's a bearded lady, lady, reconstructionist rabbi. That's a thing, right? Reconstructionist to my

00:03:06.320 Jewish friends. I'm sorry. We need to laugh. We have to, right? Can you imagine showing up at your

00:03:13.700 synagogue and seeing that? The bearded lady up there? Instead of telling Jessica to sit down and shut up

00:03:22.540 like the rest of the audience appropriately did, the president decided to answer. So Jessica wound up

00:03:27.620 making news. According to pool reports, the president said he thinks there needs to be a pause

00:03:34.680 to get the, quote, prisoners out. Okay. So they're hostages. There is a difference. Prisoners implies

00:03:42.740 they did something wrong and said, quote, I'm the guy that convinced BB to call for a ceasefire.

00:03:48.960 Wait, what? Words have meaning, especially when they come from a president. What did he mean exactly

00:03:54.600 by using the word ceasefire? To most people, a ceasefire means an end to the fighting. And in this

00:04:00.040 case, a win for Hamas. It's what Rashida Tlaib has been demanding. What did that actually happen? When

00:04:05.220 what happened? Just this week, a leader of Hamas said in an interview, the terror group will repeat

00:04:12.380 the October 7th attack over and over and over until Israel is annihilated. Now, this is very important.

00:04:20.400 This is an important soundbite we're about to play for you. You may have heard it elsewhere yesterday

00:04:24.340 when it hit, because so many people who want to ceasefire like to ignore that this is Hamas's plan.

00:04:30.420 So many people who are blaming Israel right now and demanding, you know, live in peace. How'd that

00:04:36.700 work out? They lived in peace on October 6th. Um, live in peace, two state solution. You know,

00:04:42.240 we've got to get together. How have they considered what Hamas says its own plans are? We voiced over

00:04:51.100 his comments so you can actually hear them in English. Israel is a country that has no place on

00:04:58.220 our land. We must remove that country because it constitutes a security, military and political

00:05:03.320 catastrophe. To the Arab and Islamic nation, and it must be finished. We are not ashamed to say

00:05:08.860 this with full force. We must teach Israel a lesson, and we will do this again and again.

00:05:13.520 The Al-Aqsa flood is the first time, and there will be a second, a third, a fourth, because we have

00:05:18.040 the determination, the resolve, and the capabilities to fight. Will we have to pay a price? Yes, and we

00:05:23.480 are ready to pay it. We are called a nation of martyrs, and we are proud to sacrifice martyrs.

00:05:28.100 The occupation must come to an end. Occupation where? In the Gaza Strip?

00:05:31.780 No, I'm talking about all the Palestinian lands.

00:05:34.380 Does that mean the annihilation of Israel?

00:05:36.080 Yes, of course. On October 7th, October 10th, October, one million everything we do is justified.

00:05:44.140 Okay, so maybe we should just sit and chat at the negotiation table and we can come up with

00:05:48.660 a lovely two-state solution in which, wait, who are they kidding? Who are they kidding?

00:05:55.540 It's not a ceasefire for Hamas, and it never will be. The president's comments come at a time when

00:06:01.260 he's facing growing pressure from progressives within the Democratic Party. When he was in

00:06:06.220 Minneapolis last night at that event, we just showed you, anti-Israel protesters took to the

00:06:10.140 streets with signs like Genocide Joe and Abandon Biden. No more votes. Cease fire now.

00:06:16.500 They also chanted for the, quote, occupation to end.

00:06:22.340 Occupation!

00:06:22.940 Sonny Tom!

00:06:23.920 Bombing civilians!

00:06:25.160 Sonny Tom!

00:06:26.120 Bombing civilians!

00:06:27.380 Sonny Tom!

00:06:28.300 Sonny Tom!

00:06:29.380 Genocide!

00:06:30.480 Sonny Tom!

00:06:31.560 Genocide!

00:06:32.700 Sonny Tom!

00:06:33.880 No peace, I'm so glad!

00:06:35.660 Joining me now, Tom Bevan. He's the co-founder and president of one of my very favorite sites

00:06:43.920 on the internet since I got into news, Real Clear Politics. Go there every morning, realclearpolitics.com

00:06:50.820 to check my news. I recommend it to you as well. And Josh Holmes of the Ruthless Podcast.

00:06:57.660 Gentlemen, great to have you here today. So I don't know what happened in that blurb of words

00:07:04.680 that came out of the president of the United States mouth last night while he was talking to

00:07:09.420 Jessica, the bearded lady rabbi. She made news. He made news. I don't know what Jessica,

00:07:17.720 Jessica confuses me. And you tell me, I'll start with you on this, Holmes, whether somebody from

00:07:23.660 the White House should come out and clarify whether we have demanded a ceasefire and we learned it from

00:07:29.700 Jessica, the bearded rabbi. Is that U.S. policy now? Maybe a clarification is in order.

00:07:36.380 Yeah, I mean, look, the bearded lady got herself in or himself or whomever the bearded lady is in

00:07:41.600 the news on this one. You know, look, he's so imprecise with his words. It's anybody's guess what

00:07:48.520 it is that he's talking about. My sense is what he's probably referring to was that lag between

00:07:54.740 the October 7 attack and ultimately when Israeli Israel started the offensive in Gaza. I assume

00:08:02.380 that's what it is, but that's certainly not what he said there. And like, again, this is part of the

00:08:06.780 problem that you have with Joe Biden and this entire administration is that they can't actually

00:08:10.560 articulate what they're doing, what their goals are, what they're trying to do.

00:08:15.700 And it just fuels all this speculation. It fuels all kinds of doubt. And the message it sends to

00:08:22.000 the international community has got to be horrifying to some of our allies. What does he mean? I don't

00:08:28.080 know. It doesn't the most the busiest person at the White House, honestly, is what we call in the

00:08:33.720 Ruthless Variety program bracket man. Bracket man is the person who has to go back through all of the

00:08:39.120 transcripts when you're typing up what it is that the president is saying on a day to day basis. And they go

00:08:43.940 back and put brackets around what he really meant rather than what he actually said. Bracket man is

00:08:49.240 just like overtime right now. Most secure job you can get at the White House right now. Absolutely.

00:08:54.500 Most secure. You're never, ever getting fired. You know, Tom, he went on to say,

00:08:58.900 I'm the guy that talked to CC LCC of Egypt to convince him to open the door. Is the door open in

00:09:09.660 Egypt? Because as far as I know, all they've taken is like a couple severely wounded people.

00:09:15.740 And that's about it. The door's not open. It's been a national news story since October 7th that

00:09:20.480 they will not open the door. So when did that happen? I'm just not sure we can put any stock

00:09:26.040 in what the president United States is saying. And that's a problem. Yeah, I agree. And I agree

00:09:32.040 with Josh. I mean, look what what the administration is facing right now is is they are getting intense

00:09:39.460 pressure from their left wing on all this. You played the clips of the protesters. Right. And

00:09:44.480 so what does the administration do there? They're trying to thread the needle here. You know, Biden

00:09:48.140 has been standing strong with Israel initially, but sort of, you know, what did they do yesterday?

00:09:52.900 They put out Kamala Harris announces the first ever White House strategic initiative to combat

00:09:59.520 Islamophobia. Yeah. Interesting timing for that. Why would they be doing that now?

00:10:05.180 Um, if not to try and placate those folks on the left. I want to let you finish it,

00:10:10.780 but I want to show the audience what you're talking about. It was unbelievable. They dropped

00:10:13.080 this late last night. Here she is. And today we take another important step forward in our fight

00:10:20.040 against hate. For years, Muslims in America and those perceived to be Muslim have endured a

00:10:27.080 disproportionate number of hate fueled attacks. As a result of the Hamas terrorist attack in Israel

00:10:33.700 and the humanitarian crisis in Gaza, we have seen an uptick in anti-Palestinian, anti-Arab,

00:10:41.020 anti-Semitic, and Islamophobic incidents across America, including the brutal attack of a Palestinian

00:10:48.180 American woman who is Muslim and the killing of her six-year-old son. Go ahead, Tom.

00:10:56.580 I mean, look, you've got Jewish students that are getting chased all over campuses,

00:11:00.740 having to lock themselves in libraries. I mean, it's crazy what's going on. And the administration

00:11:06.080 chooses to highlight Islamophobia and hate crimes against Muslims. The attack that she mentioned

00:11:15.140 happened here in Chicago. It was a completely deranged lunatic, a singular event. And yet that's

00:11:22.800 what she's highlighting here. I mean, it just, look, again, I think it speaks to the political pressure

00:11:27.920 that they're under, particularly, and there were a couple of stories on this today, which we posted

00:11:31.660 RealClearPolitics, that the administration and his political advisors are deathly afraid that they

00:11:37.180 have put Michigan in play and that Muslims, particularly in the Detroit suburbs, right,

00:11:42.960 Dearborn, that they, if they don't turn out, that state is going to be close enough that could

00:11:48.260 actually tip the balance.

00:11:49.200 Wow. Hey, Trump, we were talking about this the other day. Trump won Michigan in 16.

00:11:54.640 He won Michigan in 16. So it's gettable. And not to presume that it's going to be Trump,

00:11:59.960 but certainly looking at it, we'll get to that in a minute.

00:12:02.140 Megan, can I pause you on that? Just imagine for a second, as a part of your constituency,

00:12:06.340 you're talking about a population that's out chanting from the river to the sea. They're talking

00:12:10.760 about the elimination of Jewish people. They're talking about the elimination of Israel.

00:12:16.340 To be politically sensitive to that is wild to me. I mean, in any other context about a population

00:12:25.680 of people, whether it's racial or religious or what have you, there would be an outcry across

00:12:32.900 this country. But yet somehow we watch all of these protests and what they're calling for. Let's be

00:12:36.860 clear. This is not like two state solution, two state solution. They're calling for the elimination

00:12:42.780 of the state of Israel and the eradication, as they say, of Jews. I mean, it is this is not a

00:12:50.600 constituency that has to be appealed to. This is a extremely radical, totally inappropriate

00:12:57.220 bunch of folks that we should not have as a part of the political system at this point.

00:13:03.640 Well, and just not to put too fine a point on it. I mean, Joe Biden is the one who declared his

00:13:07.960 candidacy. He was running to save the soul of America after Charlottesville. You had a couple

00:13:12.480 of, you know, a couple hundred neo-Nazis show up there and that that was the rationale for his

00:13:16.520 entire campaign. And now he's running for reelection, but can't, you know, can't seem to

00:13:22.300 denounce what's going on. I mean, it's just it is it's crazy.

00:13:25.640 Oh, remember the nonstop news stories about Trump? Do you do you denounce? Do you do you

00:13:30.560 denounce David Duke? Right. He was forced to say it like whatever. He's like, I denounce.

00:13:36.340 Okay, I denounce just because this one KKK, whatever white nationalist decided Trump was

00:13:41.840 his guy. That was a news story for a week and beyond. It kept going. But now you've got all

00:13:47.600 these people who don't want to vote for Joe Biden in Michigan because he's defending our closest ally

00:13:52.700 in the Middle East who just was subjected to the worst terror attack since the Holocaust.

00:13:56.940 It killed more Americans, the worst since September 11th. And and that's a problem. But nobody has

00:14:03.200 he doesn't have to denounce anybody. By the way, they're now saying that

00:14:06.340 neo-Nazis are showing up at some of these free Palestine rallies because they all have the same

00:14:11.080 cause. Yes. Just like the Hamas guy said. So eliminate Israel. Yes. Right on. Double thumbs

00:14:16.180 up. You got it. We're on the right path. They say it explicitly. Here's check this out. It was a

00:14:22.300 free Palestine rally. We think it was outside of New York and sat six.

00:14:26.460 I'm a Jew going undercover at a free Palestine rally to see what they really have. How would

00:14:32.040 you describe a Jew? They're devils. Who's at fault? The Jews. The Jews. Always been a

00:14:36.780 problem. So if they do take Palestine, where do the 12 million Jews go? Go to hell. That's

00:14:42.240 the literal slogan. We free Palestine. We free Palestine. We free Palestine. Okay. If we

00:14:46.780 free Palestine, where do the Jews go? Hey, go back to Brooklyn. Bitch. Shout out to

00:14:51.880 Kanye. He was right. Good look. I'm not a Jew. How do I know that you are. That I'm not a Jew.

00:14:57.920 Get the fuck out of my face. Get out of my fucking face. The Hamas group, the action they've taken,

00:15:02.520 it's not a terrorist attack. I am queer for Palestine. Yes. You think about the argument when people are

00:15:07.020 saying in Gaza they kill gay people. It's very unsafe to be queer here too. If you. But they're not actually

00:15:11.680 killing gay people for being gay by law, right? The way it is in Gaza. But why do we keep going

00:15:16.460 back to like Gaza? Why is there such a basis for them to have a homeland? Nobody else has a homeland.

00:15:21.940 Where are you from? If you don't mind me asking. My family is from Afghanistan.

00:15:24.760 In Afghanistan, by the way. So that's a Muslim country, right? Predominantly, yes.

00:15:28.740 So would you consider that your homeland? Yes. So I guess I do have a claim over that,

00:15:32.360 but you can't claim Israel. Yeah, that makes sense. Yeah, that makes sense. Okay. Now,

00:15:37.380 just FYI, I want to give credit where it's due. That's from the account, I think, on social media

00:15:40.900 from a guy named F. Jerry. He spells out the F word, however, how today I'm trying not to swear.

00:15:46.120 Oh, look at you. F. Jerry. I know. Well, it's only 15 after the hour, Holmes. Anything could happen in

00:15:51.840 the next two hours. So in any event, you see, like, where's the denounce, denounce, denounce? Of

00:15:56.900 course not. And that, Tom, to your point is, those people, their support for Joe Biden is likely

00:16:02.060 dwindling right now. Yeah. I mean, look, it is the fact that they have to devise a plan to try and

00:16:13.540 keep folks like that from staying home and not voting for him. Again, in a swing state like Michigan,

00:16:22.740 the fact that they're actively trying to placate those folks with talking about Islamophobia in

00:16:29.140 this kind of environment, look, it's not great. It's not great for the Democratic Party. And it's

00:16:36.960 not great for Biden himself. And we've seen him try and, again, he did stand strong with Israel. I

00:16:42.520 think he deserves credit for that in the moments after October 7th, but has been, particularly over

00:16:50.800 the last few days, trying to sort of walk things back and thread a needle that he really shouldn't

00:16:58.640 be trying to thread. If he truly was concerned about, you know, hate in this country and saving

00:17:04.420 the soul of the country and all that stuff that he said, that's why, you know, the rationale for his

00:17:07.880 running. Holmes, the immediate shift to Islamophobia is infuriating. It's infuriating. It's so false.

00:17:16.080 And for her to do what the president did last week, which is to, you know, both sides hit, you know,

00:17:20.500 like worst, worst terrorist attack on Israel since the Holocaust, 1400 people dead, children tortured

00:17:25.700 in front of their families and so on. And then there was that one child in Chicago. That was terrible.

00:17:30.920 But yeah, that's not the same deranged lunatic in Chicago does something awful versus the planned

00:17:38.080 intentional massacre of 1400 Israelis, not to mention the thousands injured. They keep doing this. And now

00:17:44.920 this whole White House task force, and I don't know how she's describing it on Islamophobia. It's like our

00:17:50.180 friend Gad said, put it out yesterday. According to the FBI director who just testified this week,

00:17:55.120 Jews make up 2.4 percent of the U.S. population, but are the targets of 60 percent of the hate

00:18:01.300 crimes, which, by the way, Christopher Wray said is is rising, a number rising at a stunning rate.

00:18:07.500 He goes on, that's why it's apparently important to fight Islamophobia. What?

00:18:15.600 You know, first of all, there's not two sides to this argument. There's just not. There is nobody

00:18:20.080 who is calling for the eradication of the Palestinian people. There is a call to try to take Hamas out

00:18:27.160 entirely, absolutely and entirely. And if you want to get sophisticated about it, that goes for probably

00:18:32.860 Hezbollah and Iranian actors as well. But the thing that has been the most unsettling to me about all

00:18:40.360 of this, Megan, is that the latent anti-Semitism that has been taking root in this country, not to mention across the

00:18:49.320 world, that you just don't know about until moments like this. And can you imagine just for a moment that we had

00:19:00.240 rallies and protests by the thousand in cities across this country of white supremacists that

00:19:08.460 were calling for the death of, you know, African-Americans, for example. We would have a task

00:19:15.660 force in this federal government, the likes of which nobody's ever seen, to try to figure out how to reverse

00:19:21.480 that immediately, nip it in the bud and make a societal change. Not only is that not happening here,

00:19:28.640 they're trying to actively figure out how to placate to this constituency. How is it that we can ensure that we can

00:19:37.580 keep them as a part of the Democratic Party? What an unbelievable outrage. I don't have any words to express how

00:19:45.860 out of body that makes your average American feel when everybody that I know of post George Floyd in 2020 was trying

00:19:54.200 to figure out, do we really are we really a racist country? And people did a lot of introspection about

00:19:59.860 that. And I think, if anything, that whole episode proved that, in fact, we are not a racist country.

00:20:04.800 What I didn't know, but now know now, is it that we there's a huge amount of anti-Semitism in this

00:20:11.500 country that is not only discouraged, it seems to be placated. And that makes me sick to my stomach.

00:20:17.800 Tom, remember, it wasn't so long ago that Charlie Crist, when he was running for governor down in

00:20:23.040 Florida, and definitely Andrew Cuomo, and I think maybe also Kathy Hochul, who succeeded him,

00:20:28.960 both said comments, all three said comments to the effect of, if you're a Republican, I don't want your

00:20:33.940 vote. Go home. If you don't stand with me on things like gun rights, get out of here. I don't want your

00:20:40.440 vote. So those Democrats could come up with that sort of ire for people who are just Republican.

00:20:45.500 But for these people, F Israel, kill the Jews. Israel has no right to exist. It's fine. You

00:20:53.920 know, as long as you show up, if you live in a swing state, we don't really care if you're in

00:20:58.480 Alabama, but we definitely care if you live in Michigan. I mean, it's so cynical, but he's going,

00:21:04.140 you're right. Like the moderation in his tone and his language, it's got to be politically driven.

00:21:11.100 Well, I think there's no question it is. I mean, look at the numbers and we'll talk about those in a

00:21:14.920 minute. I mean, his approval rating and where he stands vis-a-vis Donald Trump in a general election

00:21:20.560 setting, Michigan is going to be a critical state for the Democrats to hold on to. And so, yeah,

00:21:28.780 I think there's no question that it's politically driven. Now, the White House would say, of course,

00:21:32.640 you know, Kareem Jean-Pierre will say from the podium, of course, we condemn hate in all of its

00:21:36.360 forms. And then, you know, an hour later, they're releasing a task force to combat Islamophobia. I mean,

00:21:42.280 so they're trying to sort of have it both ways, I think, when they should be, I think,

00:21:49.720 a little bit more forceful in terms of denouncing these folks. But that obviously comes at a political

00:21:56.060 cost. And right now, and you're right, look, it is cynical, but politics is a cynical game. I mean,

00:22:01.420 it is a numbers game. And the Biden folks are looking at the numbers right now. And it's that close

00:22:07.340 that they they can't afford to to do without even, you know, tens of thousands of voters in

00:22:14.820 Michigan. That's right. They need him. So a couple points. It's amazing. You look at Harris's speech

00:22:20.200 again. She says for years, Muslims in America and those perceived to be Muslim have endured a

00:22:24.660 disproportionate number of hate fueled attacks. No, in fact, Jews, it's Jews who have suffered that

00:22:29.760 2.4 percent of the population, 60 percent of the religiously motivated hate crimes. We've seen an

00:22:35.240 uptick since October 7th in anti-Palestinian, anti-Arab, anti-Semitic and Islamophobic incidents.

00:22:41.260 She stuffs anti-Semitic in there in the midst of four words that speak to Muslim bigotry against

00:22:47.420 Muslims. And then as her evidence, she adds the brutal slaying of this six year old Palestinian

00:22:53.120 American boy in Chicago. So she's got three words to describe Muslim Americans. She's got one

00:22:58.700 incident to support the bigotry allegedly being shown against them, not pointing out the lunacy of the

00:23:03.580 old 70 year old deranged guy involved in that case. And she sticks his anti-Semitism buried in the

00:23:09.360 middle there without talking about never mind the 1400 dead in Israel. But what we've seen on college

00:23:14.620 campuses and on the streets of New York and America since October 7th in this country, totally ignored.

00:23:19.960 It shows you everything you need to know about how they actually feel. So now their plan is to aim to

00:23:25.180 protect Muslims and those perceived to be Muslim from hate, bigotry and violence. So what does that

00:23:32.280 mean? What are they going to do? They're going to they're going to have some sort of task force

00:23:36.140 that's going to first ever U.S. national strategy to counter Islamophobia. We'll see what that looks

00:23:42.460 like. The Jews, they got a task force that looked like a roundtable at one university. That's what they

00:23:48.340 said they were going to do yesterday. And some coordination on actual criminal threats. Well,

00:23:52.200 hello, that's your job. That's not new. You're required to do the latter under the law. So this whole

00:23:57.000 thing is just absurd. And to your point on the numbers, Tom, here they are. Gallup

00:24:00.640 a couple of months ago. All right. This is more than a couple. This is March 2023. Okay. Before

00:24:07.160 this terrorist attack, for the first time, they reported Democrat sympathies shift to Palestinians.

00:24:13.820 And they pointed out that in 2001, the feelings among Democrats on Israelis versus Palestinians and their

00:24:23.020 respective causes were 51 percent of Dems favored Palestinians, 16 percent. Sorry, 51 favored

00:24:29.900 Israelis, 16 favored Palestinians. And the rest, I guess, didn't know. So overwhelming support for

00:24:36.420 Israel among Democrats in 2001. As of 2022, it had risen to 38 percent supported Palestinians from 16.

00:24:47.940 So more than doubled. You can see the growing support among Democrats for Palestinians instead

00:24:53.380 of Israel. And then in 2023, a massive 11 point jump again in favor of Palestinians within the Dem

00:25:01.860 Party. And now, as of 2023, before October 7th, the support was now 38 percent of Dems support Israel,

00:25:10.160 49 percent support Palestinians, a 33 point swing since 2001. And that's what he's dealing with now,

00:25:20.720 Tom. He he knows, even though I do believe Biden's heart is with the Israelis. I mean,

00:25:26.680 he's just come of age at a time when the entire United States was, for the most part. He's got to

00:25:32.440 deal especially with the young people in his party who have factored this in as part of their race

00:25:37.860 essentialism and just see this as oppressor, oppressed skin color brown versus perceived

00:25:44.460 white end of game. Right. And it's look, this is not some, you know, fringe operation here. I mean,

00:25:51.540 think about it. You've got the members of the squad, Rashida Tlaib, Ilhan Omar, AOC. They are pushing

00:25:56.980 this Cori Bush. I mean, they are pushing this stuff in Congress. Right. Demanding ceasefire to talking

00:26:03.300 about Israel bombing in the hospital, you know, pushing that lie. So this is this is not just some

00:26:09.780 sort of fringe element in the Democratic Party. It is a growing part of the of the progressive left

00:26:16.780 that includes representation in Congress. And it's it's so it's something that Biden has to deal with.

00:26:21.900 I would also point out, Megan, you mentioned this task force. I mean, the Biden administration rolled

00:26:27.200 out a few months ago, this anti-Semitism task force. And they did that because they thought

00:26:33.680 politically, you know, the talk at the time was and their spin on it was that, you know, this was

00:26:39.760 the combat rising anti-Semitic attacks, implying that it was from, you know, Republicans that were

00:26:44.860 doing this right. The Tree of Life synagogue and the like. And it turns out that actually a lot of

00:26:51.340 anti-Semitism is on the left. And oh, by the way, you know, if if they've been working on that task

00:26:56.600 force for six or eight months. And and here we are with a massive rise in anti-Semitism in the

00:27:02.080 country, maybe they should spend a little more time trying to figure out what they what they didn't

00:27:05.940 do on that anti-Semitism task force, because it clearly didn't work. Yeah. And they got some work

00:27:11.300 to do. I just want to give you one footnote, Holmes, here. This woman, the the. I don't I don't know.

00:27:17.700 It's the it's the bearded lady. Bearded lady. Yeah. The bearded lady rabbi. She he I don't know

00:27:23.840 what it is. I'm still confused. I don't understand what's happening there. But this person. I don't

00:27:30.140 even understand that that this is a real rabbi, but this person has worked in a national organization

00:27:35.680 as as a national organizer at Bend the Ark, which was launched by the son of George Soros,

00:27:43.200 his whose name is Alexander Soros, of course. And this is what this person has written in the past.

00:27:49.460 All right. This biological man posing as a woman. He has posted. This is his concern as a rabbi.

00:27:58.200 Real instances of anti-Semitism. Now, you're going to think this would end with are terrible

00:28:03.100 and should be condemned. It's a rabbi. No, can distract us from the pervasiveness of anti-black

00:28:09.200 racism. That's so telling like that. And by the way, all the problems we just discussed

00:28:22.340 entirely. And it's I mean, the bearded lady, perfect encapsulation of where the modern left

00:28:30.260 is. And it's it's this Marxist hold that's all interconnected in the domestic stuff we've got

00:28:36.300 going on here, too. It's BLM. It's it's sort of this Marxist view that guys like Chris Russo,

00:28:43.320 who you've had on the show, a lot have been talking about in our education system that unfortunately

00:28:48.120 is starting now in elementary schools. This is a real problem. And it's not it.

00:28:52.780 This isn't just a today problem. This is a going forward problem. This isn't an ideology

00:28:58.920 that's insane. And as America, if you can't figure out how to counter that in any serious way,

00:29:06.300 if you try to placate it, it's only going to make it a lot worse. And I'm disgusted that this is a part

00:29:11.820 of the constituency of the Democratic Party. I am I am glad that is now open and evident for people to

00:29:19.160 see some of us have been talking about this for a while, but it's really hard to ignore now if you're

00:29:24.300 a Jewish voter anywhere in this country. Boy, I mean, what is today's Democratic Party have for you?

00:29:31.740 Not a lot. Good luck at the national convention. You don't know who you're going to be standing next

00:29:37.240 to. All right. Stand by. Quick break. We're going to come back. We're going to talk about

00:29:40.580 the Biden crime family. And we've got to get to the issue of Ron DeSantis's boots. I'm sorry.

00:29:46.420 It seemed petty to me at first, but now I'm very into it and I've got to get you into it to stand

00:29:50.560 by. We've got to talk about Joe Biden all along. Everybody's been saying, where's the proof?

00:30:00.800 Where's the proof? Where's the proof of, you know, that he got paid other than Hunter? It's the loser

00:30:04.900 son. You can't pin that on the dad. This is post his time in the vice presidency. That's important,

00:30:09.760 but it's also still relevant because it was pre his time in the presidency and, you know,

00:30:15.560 could potentially be affecting the way he affects policy and so on. And this is one of the things

00:30:20.040 the House is investigating. So now I'm going to walk you through what Comer just put out.

00:30:25.360 He released it on Wednesday, just yesterday. Twelve pages. Latest discovery from subpoenaed bank

00:30:30.260 records. It's a four forty thousand forty thousand dollar check from his brother, James and James's

00:30:38.480 wife, Sarah. Sarah and James Biden's personal checking account written to Joe Biden dated September

00:30:45.100 3, 2017. Comer says the money chain shows this originated with the Chinese, with Hunter's

00:30:51.860 Chinese business partners, whom Hunter had threatened like a month earlier in that now

00:30:59.940 infamous WhatsApp message where he was like, I'm sitting right here with my dad. I can't

00:31:04.060 understand why you haven't responded. Why hasn't the commitment been fulfilled? Tell the director,

00:31:10.000 I would like to resolve this now before it gets out of hand. And now means tonight. Remember,

00:31:14.120 he was threatening the CEFC, this Chinese energy guy. And then sure enough, that payments started

00:31:18.940 coming to Hunter. But so far, they've been saying that's to Hunter. Hunter's a loser, but he set up

00:31:23.380 these deals doesn't affect Joe. Well, listen to this. So October, August 3rd, 2017, and the threat to

00:31:31.280 the CEFC was July 30th, August 3rd, money begins flowing. Hunter opens a bank account in the name

00:31:38.300 of Hudson West the third, which is a joint venture between Hunter and the Chinese. Okay. Hudson West

00:31:44.780 the third, August 8th, a five million dollar wire from the CEFC connected business Northern

00:31:51.040 International Capital. We knew about that. Hunter transferred four hundred thousand dollars

00:31:56.080 out of Hudson West the third and into his corporation, Owosco. So there's $400,000 that

00:32:02.120 he got from the Chinese that he transfers. August 14th, Hunter wires 150,000 from Hudson West

00:32:07.900 into Lion Hall Group. That's owned by James and Sarah Biden. So 100,000, 150,000 of the Chinese money

00:32:14.600 goes to Joe Biden's brother and Joe Biden's sister-in-law. Two weeks later, Sarah Biden,

00:32:20.700 Joe's sister-in-law signed a withdrawal ticket for 50 grand from that Lion Hall group bank account.

00:32:26.080 This is how laundering is done. If I want to pay off Josh Holmes, I don't just send him a check

00:32:31.100 directly. We set up four different companies that the money has to go through. So it's a lot harder

00:32:34.500 to trace. So Sarah Biden withdraws 50 grand from this Lion Hall group bank account. And on the same

00:32:41.140 day deposits that 50,000 into hers and her husband's joint personal checking account. All right. So she's

00:32:46.880 gotten the money from Hunter directly who got it from the Chinese. It goes into her personal account.

00:32:51.140 And guess what happens? September 3rd, 2017, she signs $40,000 of that 50,000 payable to Joe Biden,

00:33:00.760 claiming it was a loan repayment. But that 40 grand clearly came out of the 50 grand. We know that

00:33:07.240 because after she made the transfer, her account only had $46 left. She must have spent the 10 grand

00:33:12.380 on herself and she gave 40 grand to Joe. Um, it's pretty explicit. And actually, if you look closely,

00:33:19.400 that 40 grand Joe got was exactly 10% of the 400,000 Hunter Biden got from the CFC exactly 10%.

00:33:27.100 The Hunter Biden laptop, which we were told is disinformation has Hunter complaining. He has to,

00:33:31.660 he gets 10%. Oh, he has to give like half of his money, but he gives 10% to the big guy,

00:33:36.500 right. That he talked with Tony Bobulinski about got to reserve 10% for the big guy.

00:33:40.840 And that's never explicitly been said to be Joe Biden, but witnesses involved say it was.

00:33:44.960 So this is clear, you guys. I mean, I hope you followed it because I didn't put a graphic on the

00:33:48.560 board, but it's a clear money trail, Josh, from the Chinese to Hunter to Joe Biden's brother and

00:33:56.240 sister-in-law to Joe Biden. It's amazing how all of these things that we were reliably told by Joe Biden

00:34:02.360 and his friends in the corporate media that were absolutely not issues. And of course never

00:34:08.900 happened, uh, are all happening and have all happened. And what's so fascinating about this

00:34:15.380 is that the collective lack of interest in pursuing any of this beyond, thank God,

00:34:22.180 a house Republican majority and Jamie Comer who have uncovered it. And like, this stuff is not,

00:34:27.540 as you just suggested, it's not particularly impossible to figure out. And you'd think if

00:34:32.840 you had some journalists out there that spent a fraction of the time looking at this, that they

00:34:37.380 did at Russiagate, for example, this would have all been evident prior to the 2020 election, let alone

00:34:43.200 three years later. So here we are now with, uh, by the way, what they did with the house majority did

00:34:49.260 by setting up the impeachment inquiry, sort of allowed for a greater emphasis to get these subpoenas

00:34:55.020 out and obtain this information. I mean, we talked to Jamie Comer when they first started getting

00:34:59.520 into it. And what he said is, you know, we've got a lot of smoke here, but I need what we're looking

00:35:04.380 for ultimately is these bank records that would actually show a payment to Joe Biden. Well, lo and

00:35:08.260 behold, here it is. It's amazing time. And again, how all of the things that were suspected and

00:35:14.800 discussed by Tony Bobulinski prior to the 2020 election are true. They're true. And I mean,

00:35:21.180 unless I've missed it, it's still there. I don't seen a lot of front page stories about this. It's

00:35:25.520 like a press release from Jamie Comer and everybody's like, oh yeah, yeah, that's great.

00:35:29.880 Anyway, let's talk more about, uh, the Muslim brotherhood and what they have to say.

00:35:34.120 Yeah. Yes. Yes. Let's talk about more about combating Islamophobia. That's really where we're,

00:35:38.800 we know we're over the mark, Tom. I mean, this is unbelievable. He Holmes raised a good point.

00:35:43.260 Can you imagine if they had anything like this on Trump and the Russians, anything like this,

00:35:47.940 it would be dominating every news cycle in America? Uh, of course. I mean, if it was Don

00:35:53.200 Jr. or Eric Trump, if it was his laptop, if there were emails there that implicated, uh, Donald Trump,

00:36:00.360 of course, I mean, and every single, you know, outlet, the New York times, Washington post would

00:36:05.700 have seven reporters working on it around the clock, digging through all of this stuff. And, and it's,

00:36:11.500 you know, it goes to show and it's worth it. John worse than Josh says. I mean, it's not just,

00:36:16.100 I mean, yes, the conservative media reports on, on what the, uh, you know, house oversight is

00:36:20.860 finding, but you know, the other outlets, the New York times, Washington post, they don't,

00:36:26.980 it's like it never existed. They don't write anything about it. I mean, and they completely

00:36:31.720 ignore it. And, and it just shows that, you know, there's, there's a level of corruption

00:36:37.120 in the media, um, that has become very clear over the last few years. And we've seen, you know,

00:36:44.120 working in concert with the government and other entities to really, uh, you know, censor, suppress,

00:36:51.320 stifle information that is unhelpful to, um, you know, to Joe Biden or, or the Democrats in general.

00:36:59.360 And this is just another example of it. I mean, this kind of evidence produced against,

00:37:03.800 uh, not just Donald Trump, but any Republican. I mean, if Ron DeSantis happens to win the

00:37:08.900 presidential race next year and something like this were to happen to him, absolutely.

00:37:13.840 The media would be making, it would be a, it would be a nonstop feeding frenzy until questions

00:37:18.300 were answered. And right now, Joe Biden's not, he's not getting asked any of these questions at all.

00:37:22.460 It just gets waved away.

00:37:23.260 No. He, and let's not forget what he said in the 2020 debate, when this came up, Trump v. Biden,

00:37:30.100 what he said, listen,

00:37:30.960 I have not taken a penny from any foreign source ever in my life. I have not taken a single penny

00:37:38.380 from any country whatsoever, ever. So that's just a weaselly way of getting out of the fact that

00:37:46.740 you, you definitely appear to have taken the money. You just made it go through four different,

00:37:51.580 you know, different hoops before it got to you, but that's unbelievable.

00:37:55.860 Yeah. Right. It's different. I said, by the time it got to me, it was squeaky clean.

00:38:02.000 I didn't see any Chinese money involved there. It was, it was all dollars. It's really absurd.

00:38:08.080 All right. Let me shift gears and talk Republican politics because interesting things are happening

00:38:12.620 in the GOP race. Um, I realized that it's all sort of, you know, second tier right now,

00:38:17.600 because Trump is dominating in all these polls. They're calling it the undercard,

00:38:20.960 the undercard race. Um, but the undercard race is getting interesting. Nikki Haley is definitely

00:38:27.400 having a surge, uh, of sorts. She's now number two, according to real clear politics is average.

00:38:35.120 Uh, she is in the number two spot behind Trump. He's got 31 points on her. He's at 46.5,

00:38:41.120 but now she's in the number two spot, 14.8 DeSantis in third at 10 in Iowa. You guys have got, uh,

00:38:50.040 Trump on, this is the average of all polls. Trump's at 48. DeSantis is at 17. Haley's at 11. So she's

00:38:57.080 third in Iowa, though there was recently an Iowa poll that had better news for her. And, um,

00:39:05.200 then you've got South Carolina, South Carolina, Trump's still at 49. He's up 30 over his next

00:39:09.620 competitor, but she's in second in South Carolina at 18.8. DeSantis is in third at 10.

00:39:15.800 And South Carolinians basically said they can't stand Ramaswamy and do not want to see him again.

00:39:22.620 So, um, those are the main players now DeSantis and Haley vying for chief undercard person and Trump

00:39:30.400 walloping everybody. Tom, where does that leave us? Well, I mean, it, it leaves us with, I think what

00:39:38.120 we've known for a long time, uh, you know, absent some, some additional significant surges by either

00:39:44.520 of those candidates. Uh, Donald Trump is in a really strong position to win the Iowa caucuses

00:39:49.560 in what, 74 days or something. Um, and, and New Hampshire after that. And if he wins both of those

00:39:56.080 states, I think he's going to have the nomination locked up. Now there was this, uh, you know, this

00:40:01.520 Des Moines register poll that came out earlier in the week that had Haley at 16. She was up 10 points

00:40:06.440 and, and, and had Trump at what, um, I don't know exactly what it was. I think in the forties,

00:40:11.380 but suggested that, you know, yeah, but suggested that there were folks who were supporting Trump

00:40:17.220 that were, were still open to voting for someone else. So it suggested there might be a little bit

00:40:20.980 of fluidity in that race and, and potential surprises. But, but again, we really haven't seen

00:40:27.320 that, um, manifest itself in, in the data and a, in a consistent, significant way it'll have to

00:40:35.160 happen soon. And again, there, there have been late moves in Iowa. Um, you know, Rick Santorum

00:40:39.100 was at 1% around Christmas time, ended up winning a couple of weeks later. So I, that was a different

00:40:45.040 race though, where you didn't have a dominant front runner the entire time. But, uh, that isn't

00:40:50.320 to say that, that Trump might still not come out on top. I mean, the odds are very much that,

00:40:54.600 that he will at this point, but, um, yeah. And, and then, you know, Nikki, Nikki Haley and

00:40:59.820 Ron DeSantis are effectively running for second place and, and, you know, in politics that gets

00:41:04.540 you nothing. Yeah. That's the thing. It's like, it's interesting homes. If you forget that Trump

00:41:09.480 is up there, right. It's like getting to be a horse race amongst the undercard. No, it's right.

00:41:15.700 I mean, look, Nikki Haley has been running the best presidential campaign in the field and has been

00:41:20.060 since moment one. Um, and I think that's reflected out in, in these rising poll numbers, her moments

00:41:26.680 sort of happened in Milwaukee and she's built on top of that every week since, and is now, as you just

00:41:31.880 suggested in second place. But, you know, in addition to what Tom said, which I very much

00:41:36.400 agree with the only other piece of this puzzle is the consolidation of the rest of the field.

00:41:41.140 Right. And we saw Mike Pence get out last weekend at the, uh, RJC event. Uh, there's going to be

00:41:47.000 others, right? I mean, you mentioned Ramaswamy. It sounds like he's going to do a big spend at this

00:41:51.460 point. If that doesn't move his numbers, what's his decision look like? Tim Scott is another one who

00:41:57.040 he was on the program a couple of weeks ago and he said, they're going all in on Iowa. Uh, if that

00:42:02.660 comes up short and, you know, he's not in a, in a striking distance or not second or third, does he

00:42:08.160 decide that now is not the time for his candidacy? All of those things, you know, you look at the

00:42:15.020 New Hampshire polls and the South Carolina polls where you have Trump under 50%. If he's under 50%

00:42:20.700 and you get some consolidation, you can make things interesting. But at right now,

00:42:24.340 there's not a lot of interesting, Megan. I mean, he's got these massive leads and it's very,

00:42:30.300 very difficult to see what would dislodge that. I mean, look, if the news of the last six months

00:42:34.340 doesn't change that, I don't know what the hell is out there that could possibly change that. So I

00:42:40.420 think he looks pretty comfortable at this point. Well, I mean, the only, right. So if the field could

00:42:46.220 consolidate, and I don't think somebody like Vivek has any reason to drop out because there's a lot of

00:42:50.720 speculation about whether he's in there just to get a job in the Trump administration.

00:42:53.480 So why would he drop out? You know, he's not going to respond to any, do your duty as a Republican,

00:42:59.440 help the field consolidate. So there's a two person race. He may be there solely as a spoiler

00:43:04.800 for Trump, who he may be trying to please. This is a theory that gets bandied about, you know,

00:43:10.200 he says it's not true. He says he's genuinely running, um, thinking he could win. But what the

00:43:16.540 reports are, Tom, that DeSantis is super PAC has said, we're not going to spend any more right now.

00:43:22.360 We're not saying never, but we're not spending on you anymore for the foreseeable future.

00:43:27.640 And Nikki Haley is on a bit of a role, you know, and if you look at sort of history,

00:43:32.320 her trajectory is hitting at a nice time and her role could keep going up. And if you had a Republican

00:43:37.460 party that really wanted someone other than Trump and there, there is, it's split. If you look at the,

00:43:43.000 that latest poll in Des Moines registers split kind of right down the middle, there are,

00:43:45.760 it's 50, 50 Trump versus non-Trump. You could get one candidate to win. You could get the support

00:43:52.040 of the Republican party behind somebody other than Trump. They're not averse to a non-Trump

00:43:56.360 Republican that the voters they're not, but it's like Trump's being treated like the incumbent and

00:44:02.020 they're just kind of going with the guy who's looks like the winner. Everybody likes to back a

00:44:05.760 winner. Um, and so what are the odds now? Cause Nikki Haley's people, supporters looking at

00:44:10.740 DeSantis saying you tried, you lost, you have no momentum soon. You'll have no money. And it's

00:44:17.620 time for you to step aside and let Nikki be the non-Trump alternative. Yeah. I mean, listen,

00:44:24.160 there are tough choices to add for these candidates. And I've, I've said exactly what Josh said,

00:44:27.480 which is, you know, all along, it didn't matter how many people got in this race. It matters when

00:44:31.240 they get out of the race and whether they're able to consolidate around an anti-Trump, non-Trump

00:44:36.140 candidate alternative, uh, prior to, you know, Iowa or New Hampshire. Cause if it doesn't happen

00:44:42.340 in those two States, I mean, he's off to the races and it's going to be really, really hard

00:44:46.000 to stop him at that point. Could you get somebody who finishes, you know, if Nikki Haley finishes

00:44:50.220 a close second in Iowa and she can parlay that into something in New Hampshire and then get to

00:44:54.420 South Carolina. Sure. Possible. But, um, but if people stay in this race, it's, it's not going to

00:45:01.900 happen. And you're right. I mean, the thing for DeSantis, I mean, he's been going down the

00:45:05.740 entire time. If you look at his national numbers, I mean, he's just, he's had every opportunity.

00:45:10.040 He's had all of the, uh, you know, resources that he would have needed to have made this a race.

00:45:16.120 He's just run a terrible campaign. I mean, his strategy has just been horrendous from the

00:45:19.980 beginning. And the idea that he was going to win over these, these, you know, Trump leaning voters,

00:45:26.100 people who liked Trump, but were open to voting someone else by attacking Donald Trump from the

00:45:30.880 right on immigration and, you know, transgender stuff. I mean, it was just, it, you know,

00:45:35.800 hindsight's 2020, but this, you didn't even need hindsight for this. I mean, this was a terrible

00:45:39.240 strategy from the beginning. And so he's really squandered, I think his, his chance. And now you've

00:45:44.620 got again, Nikki Haley rising Tim Scott, I think Scott swandered his chance as well. We saw Vivek had his

00:45:50.820 moment and, and he's been on a downward slide ever since then. So it is really, it's Nikki Haley's,

00:45:56.840 you know, moment to, to become that alternative. And, but will a guy like, like Ron DeSantis,

00:46:03.900 I mean, how, how tough of a decision is that going to be for him to, to pull the plug on his

00:46:08.980 campaign? I mean, probably better to do it now than wait and finish, you know, fifth in Iowa or

00:46:14.060 third in Iowa by, you know, 30 points or something. Um, because that would be even more humiliating

00:46:19.100 for, but yeah, tough choices ahead in the, in the very new future for a lot of these candidates,

00:46:22.800 if they want to stop Trump. How do you see these numbers homes? Because,

00:46:26.380 um, on the, on the general election matches that again, RCP averages, Trump's up 0.7 over Biden.

00:46:34.080 Biden beats DeSantis by 1.1 percentage point. Haley beats Biden by 1.6 percentage point. So

00:46:41.480 Haley's got more than double the percentage points in terms of polling to beat Biden than Trump does,

00:46:47.680 but that none of that factors in the celebrity factor, that sort of incumbency factor that Trump

00:46:53.760 will have, but also his motivation to the left. So how do you, I mean, how do you see the most

00:46:58.220 likely candidate to beat Joe Biden?

00:47:00.800 Well, honestly, I, Trump is such a known commodity here that you don't have to do a lot of guesswork.

00:47:06.740 I mean, it concerns me a lot as a Republican voter to know that in all of these polls, when they ask

00:47:11.840 the question of, would you never vote for somebody? Trump's are consistently the highest

00:47:16.840 amongst the general election. I mean, we're talking well past the 50% marker, which tells

00:47:21.440 you that that remaining undecided may be open for business, but they're not open for Donald Trump.

00:47:26.040 That concerns me. It also concerns me. If you look at Joe Biden's ballot question,

00:47:30.800 where he's lagging the most amongst who he's lagging the most. We just had a segment about that

00:47:35.560 young, very progressive people who aren't totally satisfied about where he is taking his administration.

00:47:41.960 Do you think they're going to vote for Donald Trump? I don't think so. Like the best you could possibly do

00:47:47.140 is that they don't show up in the context of a presidential election against Donald Trump.

00:47:52.700 We've got now, what, six years of evidence that they, in fact, do show up and they can't wait to show up.

00:47:58.260 So I think, look, Nikki's got a huge draw. I think any of the other candidates, it's very unknown

00:48:03.100 what their ultimate ceiling is. There's no question in my mind that Donald Trump's ceiling is lower.

00:48:08.440 It doesn't mean he can't win, but it's a real thin margin there.

00:48:12.920 Yeah. Everyone's got their minds made up about Trump. I mean, this current conflict in the

00:48:17.140 Middle East may do him some good politically too, since he can basically say, it was the

00:48:22.020 Middle East on fire when I was there. I did the Abraham Accords. I moved the embassy to Jerusalem.

00:48:26.580 Nothing happened. Look what happened once this guy took over. All right, stand by. If you guys can

00:48:30.060 stick with me 10 more minutes, we've got to get to the DeSantis boots issue. We'll pick it up

00:48:35.140 right after this break. Don't go away.

00:48:40.940 Quickly, before we get to boot gate, debate gate is up first. Next week, there is the next

00:48:47.200 Republican presidential debate. Again, we don't think Trump will be there. One never knows,

00:48:51.700 but we don't think so. It's going to be on November 8th. It's going to be hosted

00:48:55.760 by NBC News, Tom. Lester Holt, Kristen Welker, and then they'll have Hugh Hewitt of Salem Media

00:49:05.200 also partnering on the debate. And there are many people who think this was not the best decision

00:49:12.820 to allow NBC to host a Republican debate. What do you think?

00:49:17.240 I mean, it's crazy that Republicans continue to do this and to have people moderate their debates

00:49:27.560 who are, you know, Lester Holt has moderated debates before. We know kind of his political

00:49:36.600 leanings. And so again, this is a primary debate. I'm not talking about a general election debate.

00:49:41.280 Okay. This is a primary debate. The Democrats would never allow, you know, some right-wing folks to,

00:49:49.860 yeah, you, to moderate their debates. And yet Republicans continue to do this. I mean,

00:49:56.720 even when Fox News did it and Fox Business, it wasn't fantastic. I mean, and that's partly a

00:50:02.120 function of the field and Donald Trump not being there and all these other atmospherics. But

00:50:07.000 in general, you know, people, I think, reacted negatively to the news that, you know, I mean,

00:50:14.420 again, this is Ronna McDaniels. She's the one who's in charge of selecting the outlets and,

00:50:18.740 and, you know, I think has some say in who those outlets select as their moderators. And so,

00:50:26.220 yeah, it's, it's just the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again,

00:50:31.120 expecting a different result. I doubt they're going to get a different result this time.

00:50:34.380 You know, Josh, it's interesting. Like I, I would, of course, moderate a democratic primary,

00:50:39.680 primary, you know, presidential debate, but I, I don't think I'm the right person for that. I could

00:50:44.180 absolutely, I think I could be better than anybody on a general election debate. I really do. I'm a

00:50:48.860 registered independent. I would never, I of course have a preference for Republican candidates given

00:50:54.100 my own personal politics, but you would never see it. If I were to moderate a general election

00:50:58.760 debate, you would not see it. I would make sure. Um, so that's all we can ask. Everybody goes into it

00:51:03.400 with our own personal politics. And what we ask as the viewers is I don't want to see it. I don't

00:51:07.760 want to know from your questions where you stand, but to think that Lester and Kristen Welker have a

00:51:15.220 deep inherent understanding of what Republican voters care about is to be a fool. And that,

00:51:21.840 that is why, and Hugh Hewitt with respect to Hugh Hewitt, he can't make up for what's going to be

00:51:26.120 happening to him two seats and one seat away, you know? So it really does make more sense to

00:51:31.720 pick people who understand Republican politics at this stage of the game. Yeah. I mean, look, I'm,

00:51:37.980 I'm glad Hugh is on that stage. I think he always does a good job with it. I mean, look,

00:51:42.860 the dilemma of hosting debates in the Republican party is that you, A, you got to have media partners

00:51:48.020 that are not only willing to do it, but have the distribution power of reaching millions of people.

00:51:52.540 Right. And look, you could do it, Megan, no question about it. And I'm sure there are different ways

00:51:56.920 to handle it. But if you look at like NBCs or the CNNs, I mean, there's a look, there's a reason

00:52:01.600 why Donald Trump, Ron DeSantis and Nikki Haley and all of them have done CNN town halls. Nobody thinks

00:52:07.480 the ruthless variety program has more viewers than CNN. You know it. I know it. And the American

00:52:14.200 people need to know it. Thank you. Thank you, Megan. I appreciate that little plug. And you're quite

00:52:20.500 right. And you're quite right. But I, but I think, look, part of what they're trying to do

00:52:25.420 is reach different demographics. And we've, we've got to choose your news culture right now. We're

00:52:30.220 unfortunately, there's an awful lot of candidates out there. And some of them have been doing a

00:52:34.340 better job at this. They basically only go back to the same three or four wells over and over and

00:52:40.140 over again. Not only does that not give them an opportunity to make a mistake, which is why they're

00:52:44.760 doing it, but it limits your potential voter base in a very significant way. And I think if you are

00:52:51.480 a Republican and you're looking at what happened in 2020, and you're, you're thinking about a redux

00:52:56.720 here, um, that concerns you. The idea that you're not reaching anybody in the center right of the

00:53:02.980 electorate or somebody that doesn't tune in to, to Hannity every night is alarming. You've got to

00:53:07.940 figure out how to reach those people. And so far there's been very few, uh, campaigns that have done

00:53:12.260 that on their own. So I, it is a little bit of a dilemma. I love if there was a really off the

00:53:17.360 shelf solution to it. I mean, look, I got plenty of space here in the Ruthless Variety program and

00:53:20.940 Megan, you are welcome to come interrogate. I've seen what you do to these candidates. There is

00:53:27.300 absolutely no stone unturned. Uh, I would love to see. I'm not on their side.

00:53:32.740 You're not on anybody's side. No, what's there on that debate stage? I am not on their side at all.

00:53:37.540 I may wind up voting for them, but I'm definitely not going to be on their side in the actual

00:53:41.060 questioning and debate. Hell no. It's me for the viewers, me against them. I have me testing them

00:53:46.360 to make sure they're worthy of the people watching behind me. Okay. Let's talk about boot gate. Cause

00:53:50.620 it's actually a really fun story and we need it. We need this after the dark news coverage of the

00:53:55.080 past few weeks, boot gate involves Ron DeSantis. And when I first saw him like, this is so petty,

00:54:01.040 this is so stupid. I'm completely into it now. Okay. So here's what happened. Um, originally there

00:54:07.280 was a Tik TOK video that kicked off the questioning about whether DeSantis is artificially inflating

00:54:12.820 his height in with these boots. Look at this. So they are an odd looking boot. Like the front of

00:54:21.720 them kind of turns up and I don't know why the front of them turns up, but the theory is because

00:54:26.840 there are lifts secretly inside of them. So then Patrick Beck, David gets DeSantis. Look,

00:54:32.840 see the way they all turned up at the end. Anyway, Patrick Beck, David has DeSantis on his show

00:54:38.380 last week and had the following exchange. I'm sure your marketing team points out how they're

00:54:46.060 trying to troll you in the marketplace. Play this clip. This on Tik TOK went viral. It doesn't have

00:54:51.060 a million views. It doesn't have, you know, 10 million views. This thing's got 1.2 million likes

00:54:56.160 and, and some people are wondering, what are they? I don't even, I haven't seen that. What

00:55:01.280 there's, they've not shown this to you. Okay. What they're trying to say with this is that in

00:55:05.320 your boots, you have heels. No, no, no. That's what they're trying to say. Those are just standard

00:55:10.120 off the rack. Um, Lucchese, um, how tall are you? How tall are you governor? How tall are you? 5'11.

00:55:15.600 5'11. Okay. Why don't you wear tennis shoes and dress shoes? Uh, I do wear tennis shoes when I work

00:55:22.040 out. Yeah. You do. Okay. I got a gift for you. I'd love for you to wear. Okay. I shop at Fergamo. Okay. Oh my God.

00:55:30.280 Oh my God. I don't accept gifts. I can't accept it. I totally get it. I'm sorry.

00:55:38.800 So Patrick, bet David tried to get him to put on the boots and obviously he was going to see how

00:55:46.160 tall he really is. And he said, no, it gets so awkward, cringy, cringy, but kind of interesting

00:55:52.260 to Trump puts out a statement on it through his spokesperson, uh, referring to, and I'll get to

00:55:58.940 this a scathing new article from Politico about wrong. Ron DeSanctimonious is high heeled shoes.

00:56:05.780 It goes on to say in another moment of insanity, cause he definitely believes that these are

00:56:10.340 lifts inside the boots. Ron offered up the laughable claim that he is 5'11. Instead of telling

00:56:16.460 the truth and just being comfortable in his own skin, he resorts to borderline psychotic behavior

00:56:21.700 by lying to the American people. Is this what the country wants in a president with a closeup

00:56:28.140 of the, of Ron DeSantis's shoes here? Um, okay. So here is my own. Oh, no, that you're political.

00:56:36.980 We got to get to this before I show you my own personal evidence. Members of the jury

00:56:39.900 Politico on Tuesday publishes an in-depth piece on boot gate. Okay. First look at this video. This

00:56:48.660 is Debbie Murphy's concerned by this video. It's, it's, it's not, it's sort of odd the way the walk,

00:56:55.440 I can see why people think maybe there are lifts inside these boots. Politico gets three expert

00:57:02.260 shoemakers to analyze pictures of DeSantis and his boots, walking, sitting, standing, what have you.

00:57:08.940 They get, I guess, a guest columnist to actually write the piece. Who's, um, a menswear writer.

00:57:14.820 He's written for the Washington post financial times and so on. So they, they put it in the hands

00:57:19.140 of an expert who then interviews three expert shoemakers and they all have concluded he is

00:57:25.840 wearing lifts. There is no doubt the things, three things stick out to me, said one of them,

00:57:32.080 Graham Ebner, the Austin based cowboy bootmaker, uh, the instep. That's where you normally would tie

00:57:38.400 your sneakers. Like where this, the ties of a sneaker normally are the instep, the toe spring

00:57:42.760 and where the ball of his foot is sitting in the boots. In almost every photo of DeSantis,

00:57:48.260 you see an unusually high instep that angles nearly 60 degrees. They've estimated the degrees. My

00:57:53.740 friends angled nearly 60 degrees, pushing the leather outward and making, making it unusually

00:57:59.740 taut. Unusually taut. I say, um, another guy says, yep, he's, um, basically standing on his

00:58:08.340 tippy toes. You can see it. His shins look unusually long for his proportions and estimated

00:58:15.000 that the lifts inside of his shoes. That's an addition to the heel. You can see are about 1.5

00:58:21.600 inches. DeSantis denies it, says the governor does not pad his boots, but if he ever needed anything

00:58:29.280 to line a, what is it like trash can, he'll use that political article. So, all right. Thoughts

00:58:38.300 on boot gate. It's so fun. I, I don't know. Do you guys wear boots? You hated a taut instep. That's,

00:58:46.460 that's as rough as it gets. Taut's normally kind of hot. Who doesn't want to be taut?

00:58:51.600 But I guess it's bad if it's in your instep. I don't know. They say tall people are more likely

00:58:56.880 to win elections. So Tom Bevin, it could matter. I, you know, I guess it could. I mean, listen,

00:59:03.640 I was talking to Josh during the break. I'm five nine. So I'm all for lifts. I mean,

00:59:07.780 I think Ron DeSantis should just lean into it and go for like those, you know, Gene Simmons kiss,

00:59:11.680 like platform shoes, just the bigger, the better, you know, whatever. Uh, that's what I do if I was in

00:59:17.700 his circumstance, but, um, there, there is a thing about not wanting to seem small on stage,

00:59:24.980 especially when you're standing next to a guy like Donald Trump, who's what six, two,

00:59:27.960 um, and some of the other candidates. Um, so maybe he's doing it. Maybe he's not,

00:59:33.900 I'm not sure it's affecting his campaign, but it certainly is the story of the moment.

00:59:39.440 Holmes, I'm going to give you another piece of evidence to consider. Okay.

00:59:42.760 I went and I interviewed DeSantis. Yeah. All right. So there's another piece of evidence for

00:59:46.720 the jury. I interviewed DeSantis and we first, we sat together. I don't know if we have the picture

00:59:51.780 of the two of us sitting together and I definitely was wearing high heels. Well, this is the two of

00:59:55.680 us stand. All right. Just hold this here. Hold this picture. Okay. So I, I had probably two and a

01:00:00.280 half inch heels on and he had boots on like those. He had those very boots that we've been showing

01:00:05.060 those black boots and they were, I'd say at least a two inch heels. So that kind of strikes us as even.

01:00:11.120 So we should actually right here, be looking our actual height difference because we both had

01:00:16.600 probably the same amount of lift in our heel. This is excluding the possibility that he had an

01:00:21.440 additional lift inside. Now I am five, six without my heels. And he says he's five 11. So

01:00:27.900 there's about a fire. Could you, is that, does that look like a five inch difference to you?

01:00:33.900 To me, I can buy it. I can buy that that's a five inch. Yeah. That that could be a five inch

01:00:39.380 difference between us. But what the allegation is that that is in fact, if he didn't have the

01:00:44.520 secret lift inside the boot, there would only be about a three inch difference between us. And he

01:00:49.740 would be a lot lower in this picture. Members of the jury homes. I don't know what to say.

01:00:56.480 Oh, you know, like just from a substantive standpoint, um, campaigns are totally brutal and

01:01:02.980 having run a lot of, when you, when you're, when you're like real sort of in the soup,

01:01:08.360 it's not just about like debating the issues and trying to get to right or left of something

01:01:12.280 or center of the electorate. Sometimes you just have this toolbox full of stuff

01:01:16.860 that you want to throw out there and try to get people talking about, because it's just sort of a

01:01:22.300 one, you know, it makes somebody look bad, but two, it also just throws your opponent off

01:01:28.460 entirely. And Trump has been really, really good at doing this, right? Their campaign,

01:01:33.140 remember the putting fingers thing and now this thing. And one of the reasons I've been sort of

01:01:38.580 bearish on where DeSantis' campaign is with an awful lot of this stuff is that they have some

01:01:43.420 sensitivity to doing that back, certainly to Donald Trump. And we have one side that is willing to

01:01:49.760 deploy every tactic in the book and get the national conversation about whether he's wearing lifts

01:01:57.040 and you're not willing to say like, I'm going to take my lift and shove it up your fat ass.

01:02:02.140 Like it's, it's a one-sided discussion. Like you can never get out of it. And you're like,

01:02:09.200 well, another thing about the border wall. Well, that's not where the people, like you got to be

01:02:12.980 entertaining too. And I think that he's consistently, and it's not trying to be a pun,

01:02:19.740 but he's had him on his heels. Right. Right. I don't know. I think if I were a guy in his

01:02:25.920 position and I did not have lifts inside the boot, I might actually take off the boot and show it to

01:02:30.580 Patrick, that David, I might, I might, you know, like, go ahead, take a look at my boot. I know

01:02:35.480 what you're doing. You're ridiculous here. Look inside the boot right now. I mean, it's a little

01:02:40.200 beneath the dignity, but it would have put it to rest once and for all. Or another route could be

01:02:45.420 like what Tom just did. I do wear them. I I've always been kind of sensitive about the fact

01:02:50.840 that I'm not a little taller and you caught me in my insecurity. Maybe other guys out there can

01:02:55.360 relate. I don't know, but I do love these boots and you can get them from this manufacturer and

01:02:58.800 they'll give you an extra two inches. And unless you run for president, no one will ever be the

01:03:02.280 wiser. Or you can come out of the next debate stage on stilts or something, you know, I mean,

01:03:09.220 just make a whole, the whole thing, a clown show out of it. I'm sure people would love that.

01:03:12.880 Listen, I got bad news for governor DeSantis. He's what I think, uh,

01:03:16.840 four or five years, a few years younger than I am. And, uh, it only goes one direction from this

01:03:21.820 point forward. My friend, I got it. I just got to own it. Cause as you get older and start going

01:03:26.460 down, down, down, down, down. My mom always says, that's not the only thing. I don't believe that.

01:03:32.600 I'm telling you. My mother, she tells me, I, she talks about a certain other region of her body

01:03:38.100 saying she used to be at 38 double D and now she's a 42 long. Somebody tell the bearded lady,

01:03:47.840 he's going to be very upset. And on that note, thank you guys. Thanks so much for being here.

01:03:54.180 Thank you. Thanks Megan. All right. Now audience don't go away because up next,

01:03:58.280 we're going to have a great deep dive into free speech with the man, you know, we've been

01:04:02.180 referencing fire that he's been on before, but this is the main guy who's been trying to hold

01:04:07.600 all these universities responsible for their abandonment of free speech principles, firing

01:04:12.420 professors, chastising student groups, getting speakers thrown off campus over the past few

01:04:17.860 years, definitely posts George Floyd. But even, even before that they were doing this,

01:04:23.000 how does he feel about their newfound commitment to free speech now that it's Hamas supporters out

01:04:29.140 there? We'll talk about it next. Right now, get the Sirius XM app for free for three months.

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01:05:34.040 Some of the nation's top law firms are now putting the nation's top law schools on notice,

01:05:39.560 writing in a letter telling the deans they are alarmed by the rampant antisemitism they are

01:05:44.540 witnessing on campuses and saying in no uncertain terms, quote, as employers who recruit from each

01:05:50.220 of your law schools, we look to you to ensure your students who hope to join our firms after

01:05:54.440 graduation are prepared to be an active part of workplace communities that have zero tolerance

01:05:59.900 policies for any form of discrimination or harassment. This comes as we learn new details

01:06:06.660 about a disgusting display at Harvard targeting Jews. Here's a quick reminder.

01:06:30.340 Well, one of the groups that's been doing the hard work to uncover exactly who these people are

01:06:35.520 made an alarming discovery. The group that's doing the investigating is called the Canary Mission.

01:06:40.800 And they say one of the men taunting the Jews on the Harvard campus is a Harvard student and an

01:06:46.860 editor of the Harvard Law Review. They say his name is Ibrahim Barmal. And here he is.

01:06:53.940 Maybe he's our next Supreme Court justice. Already there are calls to kick him out of Harvard and get

01:07:22.220 this. The Washington Free Beacon reports the same guy, Ibrahim, attended Stanford and in 2018 won an

01:07:27.900 award for outstanding service. Joining me now, co-author of the new book, The Canceling of the

01:07:35.380 American Mind. Cancel culture undermines trust and threatens us all. But there is a solution.

01:07:42.700 He wrote this along with our former intern here on the MK Show, Ricky Schlott.

01:07:46.640 Greg Lukianoff is president and CEO of the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression,

01:07:53.620 or FIRE for short. Greg, welcome back to the show. Great to have you. You've been a busy man lately.

01:08:00.180 It has not been dull in the free speech world.

01:08:03.060 No, no, it hasn't. All right. So we'll get to individual cancellations and all that in a minute.

01:08:06.640 But first, let's just start with you're the number one person whose reaction I wanted when I saw these

01:08:12.260 universities come out college after college to say, we believe in free speech. We would never

01:08:18.980 interfere. You know, these pro-Palestinian students on the campuses chanting from the river to the sea.

01:08:24.300 We don't get involved in that because we're a place for learning, not really for judging.

01:08:29.660 It's such a lie, Greg.

01:08:30.920 Yeah. No, I've been doing this for 22 years. And to watch universities suddenly discover free speech

01:08:38.180 and even talk about institutional neutrality when it relates to, you know, Hamas's horrifying attacks

01:08:44.760 is almost comedic. Now, if they really mean it this time that they believe in free speech and

01:08:53.580 neutrality from this point on, swell. But you have to forgive me for being super cynical and skeptical

01:08:59.120 because just like at 9-11, when they saw the threats is coming from off campus, they suddenly

01:09:04.440 discover free speech and academic freedom. When the threat comes from on campus, which is most of the

01:09:10.020 time, it's activist students, administrators play a huge role and sometimes embarrassingly enough,

01:09:15.940 professors themselves, they always cave. So I think this newfound commitment to free speech is probably

01:09:21.260 going to last like three weeks. Yeah, it's two minutes. But I'm looking forward to holding them

01:09:26.620 to it. You know, I mean, when Claudine Gay, the president of Harvard, came out on her third try

01:09:30.640 after she'd been shamed by the previous dean, Lauren Summers, and finally said, OK, no, we're

01:09:37.440 really committed to free speech. I said, you know, a bullshit. And I cited your organization

01:09:41.380 because I know they were last. Harvard was dead last in our campus free speech ranking. And boy,

01:09:46.900 did they earn that ranking. People were like, no, that's a stunt. I'm like, no, it's based on 13

01:09:51.220 factors. The largest study of student free free speech opinion ever conducted and for massive

01:09:56.680 databases. My God. So OK, so that was my first point. My second point was, but you know what?

01:10:01.840 Let's go with it. Let's take her out of word. Terrific. Welcome to the party, Claudine. Great

01:10:06.160 to have you here. Looking forward to you enforcing this when the women's rights activists want to

01:10:11.340 march on Harvard saying a man can't become a woman. There's only one thing that's a woman and it

01:10:15.460 doesn't involve a man. Right. Or the people who want to push back on the BLM radicals and so on.

01:10:21.000 Like, I can't wait to see her commitment then. Well, and, you know, of course, people say she

01:10:26.500 just started. So, you know, you should give her a chance. But I'm pretty sure she was one of the

01:10:31.600 people involved in the prosecution of Roland Fryer, who was one of the people who showed evidence that

01:10:36.740 the the racial disparity in shooting is not actually what most people think. And then just like

01:10:42.640 cancel culture work, suddenly he's he's being investigated for something unrelated, which is

01:10:47.460 not a coincidence. And meanwhile, it was just I think last year where Carol Hoeven, who is in our

01:10:53.060 book, Carol Hoeven is a brilliant person. She's a lovely person. She was on Fox News to talk about

01:10:58.520 her book, Testosterone. She went on and she gave a stirring talk about being compassionate towards

01:11:04.640 trans people, using their pronouns, all of this kind of stuff. But then she said biological sex is real.

01:11:09.880 And we do do our students to disservice. And we do science to disservice if we pretend this isn't

01:11:14.900 true. And immediately, of course, a DEI administrator started calling her out. And then

01:11:20.320 you started having student petitions, oftentimes encouraged by administrators. Her friends abandoned

01:11:25.740 her, not all of them, but some of them. And only people like Steve Pinker came out, who's an author and

01:11:32.320 one of our advisory committee people who really believes in freedom of speech, came out to defend her.

01:11:36.620 But a healthy university, everybody would have come out to defend her, especially the university

01:11:42.000 president. So Harvard, to say the least, it will take years to convince me that Harvard has really

01:11:48.800 changed its ways. And they're not going to get off the hook just because they said the right thing in

01:11:53.180 a bad circumstance once.

01:11:55.380 Well, you mentioned DEI. And, you know, technically, this these people who we've spent so much money on

01:12:01.680 at all these universities, never mind corporations, should be the people to be cracking down on this.

01:12:06.740 Aren't they there to protect minority voices and make sure that people aren't harmed by violent

01:12:13.000 rhetoric? We've been hearing all this stuff. Well, Jews are the minority. They are a minority. They're

01:12:17.340 only two percent of America. So they're going to be a minority on any college campus. And yet we're not

01:12:23.620 seeing even the Biden administration as it creates like its little task force say, you know what,

01:12:27.900 we're going to put this through the DEI administrators at Harvard and Brown and Penn and Stanford. No,

01:12:32.860 they know very well the DEI administrators won't help this particular minority.

01:12:39.620 Well, yeah. And that's something that we talk about a lot in our book, because I think because

01:12:43.140 of my first book or my last book, Coddling the American Mind, people think that what Haidt and I

01:12:49.420 are saying is that for most of my career until 2013, like the bad guys were administrators. And then

01:12:56.680 the bad guys, like the censors, and then suddenly 2014, it became the students. That's not really

01:13:02.800 what happened. Now it's the administrators working with the students that has created this absolute

01:13:07.860 disaster for free speech. And I want to be clear here. The last five, six years for academic freedom

01:13:13.820 have been disastrous. And watching people who suddenly think that their jobs might be on the line,

01:13:19.700 suddenly like, oh my God, you know, this is this is accountability culture, but not the kind that I

01:13:24.820 like, but but completely unaware of the fact that this has been going on at a disastrous level for

01:13:30.320 years now. I want every single one of them to be to either purchase themselves or have purchased for

01:13:35.620 them a copy of Cancelling of the American Mind, where we put all the evidence to make the point

01:13:39.720 that in the last 50 years, we have not seen the threat to academic freedom, like of the likes of

01:13:45.760 cancel culture. It's even claimed more professors than McCarthyism did.

01:13:49.380 Mm hmm. We talked a couple of them stand out to me and still really, I find them very chilling

01:13:56.080 because, you know, we can kind of talk about it surface level and breeze past it. But these people's

01:14:00.240 lives get ruined. You know, poor Roland Fryer was a gift to us all. And he's been completely shamed

01:14:04.940 out of a job, basically. I mean, they have him on ice and he's not been able to do his work and his

01:14:09.500 studies. OK. And then there was this guy. This is Canadian, but still, it stuck with me because we did

01:14:13.480 this report over the summer with a free press reporter who came on to talk about this guy up there,

01:14:18.560 a teacher who was making the most mild of mild comments, trying to say I think I think his point

01:14:25.680 was, oh, you know, I used to live in America and they're they're worse than we are. Canada is not

01:14:31.340 as bad as America is when it comes to race and stuff like that. And there was a black woman up

01:14:35.960 there, DEI instructor who went off on him because she thought he was trying to downplay Canadian racism

01:14:42.800 in their school system. And really, he was like, no, no, we're racist, too. Just not quite as racist as

01:14:47.320 America. We have a bit of the soundbite, but listen to it, understanding not only did he have

01:14:52.180 an enormous shitstorm unleashed on this guy, he wound up dying by suicide. The stress of what

01:14:57.980 they did to him was so bad. Here it is. I just want to make a comment about the Canada U.S. thing

01:15:04.700 and a little bit of a challenge of it. I did my student teaching in the U.S. and have spent a lot

01:15:09.340 of time in the U.S. And to say here, honestly, that Canada is not a more just society. The United

01:15:16.020 States is and we talked about facts and figures. I invite everyone here to do some research and you

01:15:23.960 look at. Yeah, absolutely. And look at things like education and look how more you think about a system

01:15:30.680 we have in Ontario where every student is funded equally. You go to the United States, they're funded

01:15:36.180 based on their tax base. We have a public education system where everyone is funded the same way. It's

01:15:42.520 not like that United States. We have a health care system here where everyone has access to health

01:15:47.560 care. It is not the same way in the United States. So to sit here and say all honesty, we're talking

01:15:54.760 about facts and figures, and to walk into the classroom tomorrow and say Canada is just as bad

01:15:59.880 as the United States, I think we're doing an incredible disservice to our learners.

01:16:06.180 No one backed him. And this exact same thing has happened to countless numbers of educators here

01:16:11.520 in the United States, K through 12 and college in particular, though thankfully with not as dire a

01:16:17.000 result. But they piled on him so badly within the school system. Administrators who knew he had bent

01:16:22.960 over backwards to take care of minority students throughout his career. And the pile on was so bad

01:16:28.920 without a single defender over that anodyne comment that he took. Based in data.

01:16:36.680 It's horrific what they've done. I have a whole chapter on my friend, a short chapter on my friend,

01:16:43.760 Mike Adams. He was the rarest of conservatives on campus in that he wasn't a libertarian. He was

01:16:50.260 an evangelical social conservative. And they hired him back when he was a lefty, but he converted.

01:16:56.060 Well, he after he got or right before he got tenure. And he was one of the first professors I defended

01:17:02.300 back in nine. Nine eleven were some of my first cases. And Adams got in trouble because he called out

01:17:09.160 a student who wrote the entire campus community saying America had this coming. It was totally

01:17:14.940 America's fault that we got attacked on nine eleven. And he I think he said something like, well,

01:17:21.460 that's first amendment protected, just as bigoted and foolish speech always is. That was that was the

01:17:25.640 entirety of what he said. And they launched an investigation of him, which was just crazy. And

01:17:30.960 and and and I'd say on the grand scheme of things, like on a 10 point scale, this would end up being

01:17:35.180 like a three or a four on the outrageous scale for the rest of my career. But at the time, I was pretty

01:17:40.940 shocked. Fast forward to 2020. You know, he's made a name for himself as being like a

01:17:46.860 a jokey conservative, you know, on camp. Like he writes for Town Hall. Like he actually said that

01:17:53.220 I inspired him to learn about Lenny Bruce and to have this much more kind of comedic take

01:17:57.440 on his conservative activism. And he made a joke in 2020 on Twitter likening a lockdown slavery.

01:18:05.380 And they came for the student mobs and administrators came for his career. And unfortunately,

01:18:11.100 this was 2020. This was June of 2020, which was a explosion of cases, unlike we have ever seen at

01:18:18.780 fire in our entire lives, much worse than anything you're seeing on campus now in terms of professors

01:18:23.060 and students getting in trouble. And it was all ideological. I thought my friend Mike would be

01:18:27.720 fine, because he always seemed so confident. And so he got a severance package, which also put him in

01:18:34.020 a better position than some of these professors. So I didn't, I was too busy. So I didn't check in

01:18:38.640 on him until mid July of 2020. And he was having a real hard time. And he killed himself the next

01:18:45.280 week. And people were still coming to his house, people like people were still calling him on the

01:18:51.640 phone. He was still a target of the cancelers, even though they had won, they really wanted him gone.

01:18:58.440 It's unforgivable. I just to remind the audience, you can read that story and many others in Greg's

01:19:04.460 latest book, the canceling of the American mind, you wrote the coddling of the American mind, which

01:19:09.040 is a huge bestseller. Everyone loved it learned a lot. And now this is the canceling of the American

01:19:13.940 mind, talking about cancel culture. All right, so let's turn the page and talk about where it gets

01:19:18.960 where it gets sticky now, at least for me. Because as you know, and I know I'm cited in a few places

01:19:23.560 in your book, I am very anti cancel culture. I have very, you got it from both sides. We're actually

01:19:29.500 almost like proud of you for that, that you got canceled by the left. Yeah, I did. I've had both

01:19:34.700 sides come after me. It's a badge of honor. Um, yeah, but, but I, I've said even before this whole

01:19:43.120 thing with Israel, I, I'm not opposed to seeing it used against the people who push it the most,

01:19:48.580 just because the left hasn't learned its lesson. You know, we tried for so long to, to take the high

01:19:53.020 road. They didn't accept our, our peace offering of like, you know, we're going to try to take the

01:19:58.360 high road and talk, talk you out of this nonsense. They just kept canceling us at every turn. So

01:20:03.400 then I get, I got more in the, in the place of, you got to fight fire with fire to steal your

01:20:07.120 organization's term, you know, like let's start canceling people's asses and maybe then they'll

01:20:11.160 have some skin in this game and stop behaving like these morons that they are. Well, that hasn't really

01:20:15.700 been working either. So I don't really have the answer. I just know I hate cancel culture,

01:20:19.580 but then here come, here came the Israel thing. And I, I actually do support what's happening

01:20:27.200 with some of these students, not all of them, but I 100%, for example, Winston and Strawn revoking

01:20:34.480 the offer of Rhino workman, this young woman at NYU law who spearheaded the letter, blaming the entire

01:20:41.280 attack, terrorist attack on Israel and, um, absolutely no empathy for any of the victims.

01:20:47.880 And then she was caught on camera ripping down the hostage posters and Winston and Strawn said,

01:20:53.160 you Rhino are not for us. Uh, no problem. She wasn't deprived of her right to, to speak. She,

01:20:59.720 she's still speaking every day from what I can tell, but I support the outing of these people.

01:21:05.180 She put her own name on it. It wasn't, she wasn't doxxed. She wants to use that term,

01:21:08.580 but she wasn't doxxed. She, she signed the letter on behalf of her group and she keeps going on camera.

01:21:14.640 And so I don't really view it as cancel culture, Greg. I view that as, you know what you put yourself

01:21:20.160 out there. You cancel culture was never a statement that we have zero principles in this country that

01:21:25.920 you can't, that you can put on a KKK hood and go march in the streets saying I hate black people

01:21:31.280 and that every employer still has to employ you. Otherwise it's canceled culture. No,

01:21:35.360 no, there's always going to be bounds of morality and, and just civility and humanity that we play

01:21:41.120 within. And so for me, I make a distinction between the people who couldn't condemn the Hamas terror

01:21:47.120 attack and blamed entirely the victims who are being murdered and defended the murder and slaughter

01:21:51.040 of babies. And the people who now just say it, you know, I'm on the side of Palestine. It's a long

01:21:58.160 struggle. I think Israel's more of an oppression oppressor, but I fully condemn the way Hamas attacked

01:22:04.660 them on October 7th. I think there's a difference between those two, but the former group, I'm all for

01:22:09.680 not hiring them and outing them. What do you make of it?

01:22:12.480 Hmm. So our definition, and I'm glad I have an opportunity to kind of explain that actually our

01:22:17.400 definition of cancel culture, um, uh, introduces more nuance than currently people seem to be

01:22:21.940 getting. Um, so our definition of cancel culture is the uptick of campaigns to get people fired,

01:22:27.660 deplatformed, et cetera, or otherwise punished, um, accelerating around starting around 2014 and

01:22:32.840 accelerating after 2017 for what would otherwise be first amendment protected speech. And we say this in

01:22:39.620 the appendix, we don't want to bog the whole thing down, but what we're getting at is as an analog to

01:22:45.100 public employee law, basically saying if it couldn't get you fired as a public employee, because there

01:22:51.100 are protections for the, uh, the private right of citizens to speak as public employees, then we count

01:22:56.900 that as cancel culture. Um, usually the cases are pretty easy. Um, and so for example, as far as,

01:23:02.740 you know, a, an example that we do think is cancel culture, like unequivocally is the professor who,

01:23:08.660 uh, the, who lost his job at a journal for retweeting, um, something that was a kind of a

01:23:13.640 snarky, um, uh, onion headline talking about, you know, being critical of the, uh, of killing

01:23:20.020 Palestinian kids. And, uh, even though they argued that there were other reasons why it was fired,

01:23:25.800 if the straw that broke the camel's back was merely expression or retweeting, you know,

01:23:30.980 onion headline, we count that as cancel culture. When you get to the situation of, uh, you know,

01:23:36.420 people ripping down posters and that kind of stuff, you know, like that's not protected speech.

01:23:41.040 And, and if I saw that as an employer, I'd be like, wow, I I'm not sure I can hire somebody.

01:23:46.080 Cause that's, that's mob censorship. Like, I don't, I'm not sure I want that person.

01:23:49.800 If you get to the situation where you're just talking about someone's expression of opinion,

01:23:54.760 but like you pointed out when you, when you do the analog public employee law, one thing that is

01:23:59.540 kind of consistent is if people become aware of the fact that the person they're hiring might be a

01:24:03.960 raging racist or anti-Semite, then actually the laws existed in case law that they actually say,

01:24:10.580 no, no, actually that's a situation where you can get rid of somebody. And I think that in a lot of

01:24:14.440 these cases, you're talking about people, you know, trying to work at firms that might actually

01:24:17.820 even have Israeli clients. So we take it on a case by case basis, but we do work a lot of nuance

01:24:23.020 into our definition by incorporating public employee law.

01:24:25.620 I think that's very fair. That's very fair because I realize, you know, it's, it's potentially

01:24:31.480 dangerous ground to say, yes, these outrageous students who are on these campuses calling for

01:24:37.000 one solution and actually saying things like, you know, kill the Jews, get rid of Israel. I mean,

01:24:42.380 I realize condemning that and saying those people should be canceled could potentially open up the

01:24:47.820 door to them saying, well, the same thing with black lives matter. You know, they, they feel their

01:24:52.440 lives are in danger. When you say, um, the, the United States is not a white supremacist country.

01:24:57.080 They don't think you could be sitting next to them at a keyboard, uh, because you're dangerous

01:25:01.900 in the same way that you're saying these Palestinian supporters are dangerous to Jewish students. And I

01:25:08.380 just think, no, there's a clear distinction between openly supporting terrorism against Jews.

01:25:16.460 And then saying, you can come to a corporation that hires Jews as every corporation must. Otherwise

01:25:21.740 they're going to be in big legal trouble and saying, I have a political opinion or a cultural

01:25:27.560 opinion that you may find offensive that no one could, could legitimately argue in dangers anyone.

01:25:35.860 And, and, and two points of clarification that I really want to make, cause I forget to make this

01:25:39.300 point all the time because I take it so much for granted. I'm a first amendment lawyer, but I also

01:25:43.100 argue for a culture of free speech. And we talk a lot about a culture of free speech. I absolutely

01:25:47.720 support freedom of association for, uh, uh, private companies for any, any association. And that means

01:25:54.420 you absolutely have the legal right to hire who you want and to fire who you want. The only thing we're

01:26:00.300 trying to do is to get people to think about what the world was starting to look like in say 2020 and

01:26:05.660 2021, where it seemed like you're every, which you know, every investment firm was also, uh, a, a, a company

01:26:13.000 that had a political identity too, and that you can get fired for basically disagreeing with the

01:26:17.660 opinions of the boss or worse, the HR department or the young employees. And that really seemed to be

01:26:22.760 where we were headed in 2020, uh, 2021. And so all we're arguing for is a thumb on the scale for

01:26:29.180 everyone's entitled to their opinion. Is that going to be enough to prevent someone from, you know,

01:26:34.760 getting, uh, fired for retweeting a joke? Hopefully, um, is it going to get going to be enough for

01:26:40.380 someone who's, you know, shouts into Fada and wants to go work for Goldman Sachs? Probably not.

01:26:45.480 Right. Cause you think about this guy who was at Cornell, who was on camera, this professor saying

01:26:50.200 when he saw Hamas conduct the terror attack on October 7th, that it was exhilarating. It was

01:26:57.060 exciting. And then you're asking yourself as a Cornell administrator, can I really send this guy

01:27:01.720 back into the classroom and, and have Jewish students feel comfortable? I mean, truly that,

01:27:06.760 that word safe space is totally overused and it's, you get the gag reflex on it now,

01:27:11.400 but I genuinely can see how a Jewish student would not feel safe sitting in the classroom of a man who

01:27:17.020 said it was exhilarating to watch Hamas kill all those innocent Israelis. Like I can see it for real.

01:27:22.660 It's, it's about as unsympathetic as I've seen in my career. Um, the, uh, and yeah, and, and I,

01:27:29.120 I think that if they were to, you know, look into whether or not this person's actually engaging

01:27:33.420 discriminatory harassment, you know, um, that wouldn't shock me. I will say that if that's all

01:27:39.060 he did, uh, it, it's protected and, and fired. Absolutely. You know, we, we defend even highly

01:27:44.440 offensive speech. That being said, I've been seeing some extra highly offensive speech in, uh,

01:27:49.500 in, in, in, in the recent past, but take a look at what's happening with Amy Wax at Penn,

01:27:54.100 for example, that was a case where, you know, some of the controversial stuff she said about

01:27:58.620 affirmative action, uh, led the university. Yeah. She said, she said, is she the one who said

01:28:05.740 something like blacks continue to be at the bottom of the class? And I think it's as a result of

01:28:09.960 affirmative action. Yeah. Uh, she, she said that I think on the Golden Glory show and that was one of

01:28:15.620 the main arguments, but she's always been against affirmative action and like this has been

01:28:19.400 that's a, yeah, well, totally. And, and that's, that's been a longstanding position and students

01:28:25.680 argued that, uh, black students argued that they didn't want to have to take a mandatory class with

01:28:30.060 her. Now, if they try to fire Amy Wax, you bet that is a fire case. And we're going to, we're,

01:28:35.260 we're going to fight in that case. Um, the decision to say that, uh, to no longer make her class

01:28:40.500 mandatory, we're like, okay, that, that, that might be more kind of like something that would be hard to

01:28:46.140 argue against. Um, but, uh, yeah, in, in terms of the double standard though, like the fact that

01:28:52.320 they, um, I mean, you would think that students being like, oh yeah, the Hamas attacks were,

01:28:59.920 were exhilarating, um, would basically be getting rid of forever. The idea that these are, you know,

01:29:05.320 super sensitive people who care about microaggressions that all makes that look like

01:29:08.940 a big fat lie. But meanwhile, out in California, you had, I think hundreds of professors sign a letter

01:29:14.700 demanding that the university not refer to the Hamas atrocities as terrorism, because it might

01:29:20.540 be, it might make palace pro Palestinian students feel unsafe. And I'm like, how can you still believe

01:29:26.680 this stuff? Um, it, it's been shown to be completely untrue in other contexts, but none of this seems to

01:29:32.960 get through somehow. This I'm just pulling up, um, this Columbia news. So the Columbia faculties at war,

01:29:41.300 which I take as a good sign because I thought they'd all be on one side. You know, the fact that there

01:29:45.800 are any who are pushing back on the, the radical leftism is a, is a plus. Um, so the headline from

01:29:52.300 the daily mail is Columbia faculties at war over antisemitism. Hundreds of professors signed new

01:29:56.560 letter slamming appalling colleagues who defended students for supporting Hamas. So in other words,

01:30:01.600 there were, I think a hundred who signed a letter that was pro Palestinian slash Hamas 300 signed a

01:30:06.880 letter calling out those professors, but the original letter really is so outrageous. The original letter

01:30:13.880 from those 100 staff at Columbia speaking out in support of the pro Palestine students. Okay. This

01:30:20.140 is a date of October 30th. Um, they refer to what Hamas did on October 7th as a right at that was Hamas

01:30:30.760 exercising. It's quote, right to resist occupation, uh, that it's, that it was mere military action.

01:30:39.000 Okay. The murder of children, the torture of children, mere military action. It was just,

01:30:44.080 they needed to recontextualize the way this was being covered as quote, just a salvo, just one salvo.

01:30:52.020 I'm quoting here in an ongoing war between an occupying state and the people it occupies and goes out.

01:30:58.720 I mean, this is the mentality that you've been dealing with. Like the people behind a letter

01:31:05.640 like that, right. Are the ones who see, they see injustice everywhere except when we have dead

01:31:11.780 Israelis. Yeah. Yeah. I've reached the point particularly like, um, we spent a lot of

01:31:18.920 canceling the American mind talking about potential solutions and I've gotten increasingly sort of,

01:31:23.200 uh, uh, radical in kind of what I suggest. And I think one of the best things that could happen

01:31:27.960 for American higher ed is if donors are like, listen, I don't, I don't care if you can reform

01:31:33.240 if you want. I don't care right now. We're giving all of our money to university of Texas at Austin,

01:31:37.980 you know, and, and, and fires campus free speech rankings to make sure that we know what the good

01:31:44.000 schools are. For example, um, we're pulling our kids out. We're going to, we're going to smaller

01:31:48.960 state schools. I think the time is now to, to really realize that, um, the, I wrote something

01:31:55.500 in Substack today talking about how, if this isn't enough to show, show us that something is really

01:32:00.260 wrong in higher education, the group think has just gone way too far. And the cancel culture has led

01:32:05.140 people to believe that some of these monstrous beliefs are perfectly acceptable. Um, when university

01:32:10.340 presidents are afraid to condemn the Hamas attacks, uh, even though they are very, some of these

01:32:15.820 presidents are very pro-zero themselves, that's cancel culture. And I think we should be thinking

01:32:19.640 big in terms of, you know, both bigger and smaller solutions for better ways to show who the best and

01:32:25.020 brightest are other than these gigantic over-bureaucratized mega corporations.

01:32:31.600 Just, just again, to remind everybody, cause I want them to buy this book,

01:32:34.840 the canceling of the American mind, cancel culture undermines trust and threatens us all.

01:32:40.460 But there is a solution, uh, by Greg Lukianoff and our old pal, Ricky Schlott, who helped him with

01:32:46.840 it. Um, so you say there is a solution. Is this what it is? Is this, is it dollars and cents? Is it,

01:32:53.960 you know, what we're seeing now among some big donors at the universities? Not only are you not

01:32:58.400 getting my money, but I'm giving my money to this organization, to this college, make sure they know

01:33:03.960 that make sure the university knows that you're giving your money or send them a dollar, you know,

01:33:08.140 and say, Hey, I know you gave you 300 million before, but now I'm giving you one and taking

01:33:13.320 my money elsewhere until you figure out what, what on earth you're doing there. Um, that's part of

01:33:18.140 the solution. But in the book, we talk about solutions for parents, for corporations, for K through 12

01:33:23.540 and for higher education. Um, you know, and, and there we're talking about experiment big.

01:33:30.720 What do you mean?

01:33:32.620 You know, like, like I said, like, like university of Texas at Austin, this upstart liberal arts college,

01:33:37.720 the Pano Canales and Joe Lonsdale are doing. We, um, that's great. We don't need just one of those.

01:33:43.120 We need a hundred of those. Uh, we need, uh, ways to, I even talk about figuring out some insanely

01:33:49.880 difficult exam, um, that would allow you to test out of a bachelor's because right now Harvard is not

01:33:55.860 really promising you the best and brightest. They're promising you someone who might be like

01:33:59.420 the kid of a legacy and everyone gets a 3.8. I mean, the average, the average grade point

01:34:04.580 average at Harvard right now is a 3.8. There's a, and you might be ending up hiring a counselor,

01:34:10.240 someone who shows up and is like, you know what, we actually, this whole company has to be from us.

01:34:14.060 And by the way, that genius IT guy who seems to be mildly pro Trump, that guy's got to go too.

01:34:19.460 And so right now they're delivering a product that is increasingly problem, uh, problematic.

01:34:24.580 And I think that there's better ways to actually, there's better ways, cheaper ways,

01:34:28.860 more rigorous ways to show who actually your best employees are going to be.

01:34:32.140 Are there any schools left? You know, I think about it a lot, Greg, cause I have a,

01:34:36.320 like my eldest is now 14. He'll be in high school next year. Is there any school left for somebody

01:34:41.420 who's very bright? He's has a beautiful mind and I would love to see it nurtured in the way it used

01:34:46.140 to be when, you know, back in our day when we went to school, but I would never send him to one of

01:34:50.460 these universities. Is there anything out there? University of Virginia has been doing a good job.

01:34:55.260 They finished in our top 10, uh, university of Chicago has been doing a good job. Um,

01:34:59.440 none of them are perfect, but I think the future in a lot of ways lies in some of these new

01:35:03.440 experiments. Um, you know, for more conservative, uh, students Hillsdale, you know, like, um,

01:35:08.100 that does well in terms of other schools, you know, um, on our ranking. Uh, so there, there is

01:35:14.080 hope. Um, but yeah, actually university, university of Florida actually does pretty well. Um,

01:35:20.140 I always get Florida state and university of Florida confused though. And one does really well.

01:35:23.520 I didn't even realize Ben Sass had left the Senate and was running it now until he put out his great

01:35:27.300 statement. I was like, Oh, I guess I got to pay more attention. I love that. You are such a warrior

01:35:32.500 on this. I, I like, you've done a lot of good. I know you, I know you don't win all the battles,

01:35:36.860 but you get involved and you fight them. And that's, you know, that's what it's all about in

01:35:40.220 today's day and age, Greg and Ricky together writing the canceling of the American mind. Get it now.

01:35:46.120 The canceling of the American mind cancel culture undermines trust and threatens us all,

01:35:49.940 but there is a solution. And just so you know, Greg's book, it was such a talker. Everybody had

01:35:53.920 read it. It was like, you couldn't go to a cocktail party or whatever without somebody mentioning that

01:35:58.340 book to you. So you will be ahead of the curve if you get this book now and you'll be the one

01:36:02.500 regaling your friends with stories about this and showing how smart you are. Greg, all the best to

01:36:07.240 you and to Ricky too. Thank you so much. All right. We'll see you soon. And before we go,

01:36:12.680 I want to tell you that tomorrow we're going to be back. I, I almost had to take the day off tomorrow.

01:36:16.280 And I was like, I can't, I can't, I gotta be there because you know who we have tomorrow.

01:36:19.520 Somebody I absolutely adore Adam Carolla back on the show. Cannot wait. Hope you'll join us.

01:36:27.680 Thanks for listening to the Megan Kelly show. No BS, no agenda and no fear.

The Megyn Kelly Show - November 02, 2023

Biden Panders to Anti-Israel Crowd, and Free Speech vs. Cancel Culture, with Tom Bevan, Josh Holmes, and Greg Lukianoff ｜ Ep. 661

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