The Megyn Kelly Show - Biden's Alarming Fall, DeSantis Fires at Trump, and Not Using ＂Preferred Pronouns,＂ with Rich Lowry and Jim Geraghty

00:00:00.480 Welcome to The Megyn Kelly Show, your home for open, honest, and provocative conversations.

00:00:11.840 Hey everyone, I'm Megyn Kelly. Welcome to The Megyn Kelly Show.

00:00:15.300 It is June 2nd, and that means it is officially Pride Month,

00:00:19.300 where we will be subjected to nonstop celebrations of a group, gays and lesbians,

00:00:23.700 that has had equal rights and political power in the United States for quite some time now.

00:00:28.560 Okay. As author and gay rights activist Bruce Bauer writes in Thursday's New York Post,

00:00:34.820 quote, we've won equality. Why should gays continue to be singled out,

00:00:39.220 even for the purpose of being celebrated? Being gay is an attribute, not an accomplishment.

00:00:45.860 Nonetheless, American corporations must show the citizenry how progressive they are, and so

00:00:50.500 taste the rainbow. We also have a month of this kind of imagery coming our way,

00:00:55.720 boldly celebrating the TQ portion of the LGBTQ crowd. Look at this. Look at this. A pregnant woman

00:01:05.800 who purports to call herself a man, complete with facial hair, on the cover of Glamour UK.

00:01:13.980 She says giving birth made her very dysphoric. That will happen when you're calling yourself a man

00:01:20.620 by giving birth to a baby to the point where she demanded a C-section. I, for one, will not be

00:01:28.320 celebrating this dishonesty. In fact, I'm in a very different place when it comes to this entire

00:01:33.900 issue. And that is the subject of today's opening. Why I'm done with preferred pronouns.

00:01:40.080 I was an early proponent of using preferred pronouns as far back as the early 2000s, of saying

00:01:46.780 she, when I knew the truth was he. It seemed harmless and I had no wish to cause offense.

00:01:52.740 Trans people were tortured enough, it seemed to me, by nature of their dysphoria and society's

00:01:57.520 disdain for them in general. So I complied. I went along with it. I didn't see the harm.

00:02:03.400 By 2016, we were debating bills to stop trans access to certain bathrooms, which I covered

00:02:09.880 from the news desk, siding with the trans community. How does it affect our lives as women if here or

00:02:15.720 there a trans person uses a stall in our bathroom? These people aren't bothering anyone. Why wouldn't

00:02:20.920 we accommodate them? I didn't see the harm. In 2018, while at NBC, I hosted shows on trans people,

00:02:29.060 one of which had a segment on trans kids. I led the audience in cheering for them,

00:02:35.120 encouraging them to own who they are. I used approved terms like gender affirming care

00:02:39.800 for medicinal gender manipulations, cis to refer to natural born women and men,

00:02:45.420 assigned male at birth instead of born male. I smiled and listened politely as a guest told me,

00:02:52.180 gender is just a social construct. I wanted to be supportive of those who were suffering.

00:02:57.060 I would use this more evolved language. I didn't see the harm.

00:03:02.720 By the time we began the Megyn Kelly Show podcast in September 2020, the warning signs were everywhere.

00:03:09.840 Abigail Schreier had written her beautiful and immensely important book, Irreversible Damage,

00:03:15.780 documenting the social contagion, sweeping teenage and adolescent girls, a group that traditionally

00:03:22.160 had very few members claiming gender dysphoria, but was quickly on its way to having more

00:03:27.020 than any other. Teenage girls in Connecticut were losing on the track to males. Runners who had

00:03:33.900 raced as boys the year before then simply declared themselves female and dominated their new

00:03:38.720 competitors. I had the female runners on the show, along with a trans medical physicist who was also a

00:03:45.960 former athlete to explain the advantages to trans athletes, especially post-puberty.

00:03:50.800 When I slipped and said the trans girls were biological males, this person told me that was

00:03:57.880 offensive. I explained that it was an attempt at clarity, but began to rethink the language policing.

00:04:05.640 Why did I have to deny reality in order to be polite? What I said was true and not offered to

00:04:11.820 offend. But I wanted to be respectful. Was there any harm? The Connecticut girls sued and went on to

00:04:20.940 lose their case. It's now on appeal. And girl after girl across this country soon faced the same

00:04:26.680 problem. Competing against boys who claimed they were trans was dejecting and often near impossible.

00:04:32.900 They were too strong, too big, too fast, too agile. From wingspan to femur length to lung capacity,

00:04:41.420 heart size, and musculature, they had serious advantages, even with testosterone adjustment,

00:04:47.140 which few competitions required in the first place. American schools, including our own in New York City,

00:04:53.780 began pushing the idea on children that gender is as malleable as a dinner menu order.

00:04:59.080 Our son and his third grade classmates were regularly asked if they were sure they were still boys.

00:05:07.140 Later, this and other schools moved away from the terms boys and girls altogether. Now parents pick up

00:05:13.120 their students at day's end, not their sons or daughters. Kids telling teachers they were

00:05:19.960 uncomfortable in their bodies were immediately affirmed as trans, despite the fact that upwards of

00:05:26.320 90% of kids will grow out of these feelings if only they are allowed to do so. Schools work to

00:05:33.560 facilitate children's transition in the classroom, complete with name and wardrobe changes while

00:05:40.180 implementing policies to keep it secret from the parents. The children had to be protected from those

00:05:47.320 who loved them most. We pulled our children out, fleeing the woke ideology on gender and race that

00:05:54.300 seemed closer to abuse than academics. We moved to Connecticut in 2021, and that was the year the

00:06:00.940 floodgates really opened. Hardly a day went by over the next two years without another story in the news

00:06:06.660 of the trans madness sweeping the nation. Female inmates being raped by male sex offenders who had

00:06:14.020 conveniently declared themselves trans right before heading to prison. Female cyclists losing titles to

00:06:21.520 grown men who declared themselves trans and absconded with the prize money. Professional psychiatric

00:06:28.060 associations adopting gender confirming care as the only acceptable option for children suffering any hint

00:06:35.520 of gender confusion. A boy in a dress sexually assaulting a girl in a Virginia school bathroom while

00:06:43.240 administrators covered it up. A teenage volleyball player severely injured by a trans player who spiked the

00:06:51.060 ball so hard, the girl suffered permanent damage. Hospitals bragging about how much cash they were

00:06:58.180 making on cross-gender procedures, including on teenagers. Pictures online of young women's gutted

00:07:04.480 forearms where flesh was harvested to build a grotesque, phony phallus that no one would ever mistake for an

00:07:11.320 actual male sex organ. High schoolers celebrating top surgery in which their breasts were amputated before their

00:07:19.420 16th birthday, forever eliminating their ability to breastfeed. Kids pumped full of puberty blockers and

00:07:26.940 then cross-sex hormones rendered sterile and incapable of ever reaching sexual climax, all while their parents

00:07:35.000 and doctors maintained this was all by informed consent. One by one, we met the detransitioners, those brave enough

00:07:44.540 to admit their gender changes had been a mistake. Kids who were just unhappy, anxious, or perhaps on the autism

00:07:51.420 spectrum had been rushed to transition by a system that seemed more about a political agenda than about

00:07:58.460 addressing the patient's mental health. These voices were promptly ignored or shamed by the very same community

00:08:05.000 that had love-bombed them to begin with, earlier touting surgery, hormones, and the trans lifestyle as a kind of

00:08:11.360 panacea. And then came Leah Thomas, an obvious male towering over his female competitors, crushing them in the pool

00:08:21.640 by several body lengths. The spectacle of this swimmer, ranked in the mid-500s as a male, annihilating women in race

00:08:30.140 after race, heading to the NCAA finals, where he emerged a champion, was for many of us the last straw.

00:08:37.400 The University of Pennsylvania female teammates, who quietly objected, were told they should seek

00:08:44.120 therapy. Forced to share a locker room with an intact male whose social media posts, according to

00:08:50.300 The Daily Wire, suggest he becomes sexually aroused by dressing like a woman, a common fetish among male

00:08:57.280 to female trans people, the female swimmers were told, deal with it. Every instinctual alarm that went off

00:09:04.460 about the dangers of sharing this vulnerable space with a man was stifled and rejected as bigoted by

00:09:10.420 administrators who would never have to face these circumstances themselves. A few of the co-eds spoke

00:09:16.720 anonymously in the press, revealing their distress over these events, but saying they feared losing future

00:09:23.620 employment if they failed to keep their mouths shut.

00:09:26.500 Riley Gaines stayed silent, too, at first. Gaines, who, like all female swimmers, had a lifetime of

00:09:36.440 training as a girl. The swims when your breasts are developing and changing the way your arms and

00:09:43.220 torso move. Your hips are expanding and affecting your balance and speed. Your first period is coming,

00:09:49.960 but you don't know when, and you worry about an embarrassing moment in the pool. The moments when

00:09:54.400 you're so bloated, you look and feel 10 pounds heavier in your lower abdomen and dealing with

00:09:58.440 menstrual cramps that no medication can assuage, but you dive in anyway and give it a go.

00:10:05.700 Gaines undoubtedly had all of those moments, while the six-foot-one Leah Thomas, who one year earlier

00:10:12.860 was swimming as Will, had none, having lived his 20 years as a man. Now that man was a woman's team

00:10:22.240 champion, regularly in the press, bragging about how much it meant to him to crush his female

00:10:27.900 competitors. When Gaines tied Thomas for fifth place at the NCAA championships, she said nothing

00:10:35.680 publicly. When officials wanted Thomas, not Gaines, to hold the trophy for the picture, Gaines smiled for

00:10:42.920 the cameras. But something was shifting under the pool that afternoon because Riley Gaines would not

00:10:48.920 stay silent for long. A few weeks later, she found her voice, speaking out respectfully about the

00:10:56.680 unfairness of it all. And when she did, she was attacked, physically assaulted by a trans activist

00:11:03.300 on a college campus, threatened and shouted down, mocked for her tears, and forced by an angry mob

00:11:10.820 into a back room after speaking to students, security too intimidated by the vicious mob to stand up to

00:11:16.580 them. And she was not the only one. Kelly J. Keene, a five-foot-one English mother of four and devoted

00:11:24.700 advocate for women's rights, who came on this show recently and spoke truth so plainly, it moved me

00:11:31.420 profoundly, has been repeatedly targeted. In March, she was doused in tomato juice as a mob moved in,

00:11:39.640 yelling, F-U, you C-word. Prepared to cause her physical harm rather than let her speak in New

00:11:47.380 Zealand. Had she not been rushed out by police, she clearly would have been brutalized. And there I

00:11:54.240 was, along with millions of others, watching and learning and finally seeing it. There is the harm.

00:12:02.280 There is the harm. There is the harm.

00:12:10.760 It is beyond time to stand up to the trans lobby that means to deprive women of their spaces and rights.

00:12:18.040 To the men who pose as trans women to gain access to places like sorority houses, only to exploit the

00:12:24.060 women who'd been strong-armed into welcoming them. To the men who grow their hair long, throw on a dress,

00:12:30.680 pop on their TikTok filter, and then threaten to kill us if we object to them coming into our

00:12:36.520 private spaces. To the mutilation of our children by money-driven doctors, and the rape of our

00:12:41.980 imprisoned sisters, and the theft of our medals and opportunities to win. How can we stand up to

00:12:48.840 any of this if we are complicit? How can we fight for facts if we participate in this fiction that a man

00:12:57.320 can become a woman, that transitioning is possible? And then we try to say, no, she cannot come into our

00:13:06.800 locker rooms or bathrooms or swimming lanes or sororities. We try to say, no, Target, she can buy

00:13:14.120 her bathing suit with the extra fabric to hide her penis in some other store. It doesn't make sense

00:13:22.320 because it isn't true. And we know it's not true. And to pretend that it is true is to foster a lie

00:13:29.520 that is hurting too many people, almost all of them girls, women and girls.

00:13:37.360 They say pronouns are a gateway drug. They open the door to these lies that lead to real harm to real

00:13:44.040 females. They are a clever rhetorical trick that forces you to seed the argument about women's spaces

00:13:50.660 before you've ever even spoken one word of substance. People with genuine gender dysphoria

00:13:57.640 can lobby to create their own spaces. I will support them to create open categories in sport.

00:14:04.300 I will support them. The answer in the interim is not women lose. Girls get hurt. Females learn to

00:14:14.260 turn off their innate sense of danger, of fairness, of the joy of spending time with only women.

00:14:20.660 Kids too can grow to adulthood and do what they want with their bodies. I will have empathy for

00:14:25.680 them. I would never bully them. But children should not be subjected to these dangerous

00:14:30.600 interventions in school or at the hands of so-called medical professionals. The facilities

00:14:36.700 that allow it must be stopped or shut down. For these reasons, I have resolved to base my conversations

00:14:44.160 around gender on the same tenets that already govern my life, truth and reality. I will not use preferred

00:14:51.560 pronouns. A decision motivated by a growing alarm over women's rights and the safety of children.

00:14:58.660 I will speak to a trans person kindly and with empathy. In their presence, I will likely try to

00:15:04.080 avoid pronouns altogether as I have no wish to intentionally provoke or upset anyone.

00:15:09.540 But I will not take this gateway drug anymore. Because I have a daughter. Because I am a woman,

00:15:18.700 an adult human female. Because for far too long, I failed to see the harm and therefore helped cause

00:15:26.460 it. To the women and men who helped open my eyes, thank you. And I will single out one in particular.

00:15:34.480 Ireland's brand dove, who at 14 years old, wrote the poem, I am not a dress, which perfectly captures

00:15:43.880 what so many of us are feeling. I am not a dress to be worn on a whim. A man in a dress is nonetheless

00:15:53.580 a hymn. Women are not simply what we wear. If this offends you, I do not care. I am not an idea in any

00:16:01.980 man's mind. And my purpose in life is not to be kind. So while my rights are trampled every day of

00:16:09.380 the week, I will not stand by being docile and meek. We are women. We are warriors of steel. Woman is

00:16:18.820 something no man will ever feel. Woman is not a skill that any man can hone. Woman is our word. And it is

00:16:28.420 ours alone. After the break, I'll be joined by my pals from National Review, Rich Lowry and Jim Garrity.

00:16:42.240 It is National Review Day today here at our show. And joining me now, Editor-in-Chief Rich Lowry

00:16:47.940 and Senior Political Correspondent Jim Garrity. You can find their work on National Review or through

00:16:53.740 an NR Plus membership, which I highly recommend. Rich, Jim, thanks for being here.

00:17:00.360 Thanks for having us. Hopefully on an episode where we're just inevitably going to be anticlimactic

00:17:05.060 compared to that opening monologue. Holy cow. Powerful.

00:17:09.380 Thank you, Rich. Thank you. You know, that was from the heart. I've been thinking about it for a long

00:17:13.060 time, a long time, because I, like most people, have been in the category of just it's just good

00:17:19.300 manners. You know, like there's no reason to provoke or offend people like just, you know, it's a small

00:17:24.220 just the more I thought about it, the more I realized it actually is a big deal. You really

00:17:29.420 are seeding the argument right up front with this language. And it's just led to so much, not that

00:17:35.760 specific thing, but it's part of what's led to just so much damage, so much damage all around us.

00:17:42.080 And I don't know that, you know, any one thing is going to stop it. I feel like it's an

00:17:46.300 all hands on deck situation and we got to do everything we can to stop it. Not the existence

00:17:50.980 of trans people, but the incursion, you know, incursion into our spaces and so on and the

00:17:56.980 dangers that I was just outlining. Yeah, I just had this experience the other day. I was writing

00:18:01.680 about the Bud Light boycott and I wrote of Dylan Mulvaney. I said, he's a gay man who's decided he's a

00:18:06.960 woman and prances around like a teenager. And the person editing this column went to,

00:18:11.800 I guess what's AP style and just changed it all to trans woman. I was like, no, that's,

00:18:16.560 that's not what I said. And that's not just a mere style change. There's, there's substantive content

00:18:20.940 to that. The he's a kind of a woman, if you're saying that, which I don't, he's a gay man.

00:18:24.740 That's what he is. He's a gay man. Yeah, that's right. Even that word trans woman is somewhat

00:18:30.180 problematic. Like there is no, there's no other version of woman. There's woman period. You can't,

00:18:34.940 you cannot trans your way into it. You can't fake your way into it. You know, I, and I'm

00:18:40.000 still wrestling with exactly how to phrase it, but I, I think it's biological man who poses as a woman

00:18:44.920 or says he identifies more as one. I'll have to work on that one. I haven't figured it out,

00:18:50.220 but the language does matter. We've had this debate internally because well, meaningly people say

00:18:55.560 to try to be specific and get to the point you're getting at biological, he's a biological man,

00:19:01.340 but what's a biological man, right? Or what's a bio, it's just a man or a woman. So even that

00:19:06.500 is kind of conceding something. It's true. No, it's true. And it's like, I don't like to be

00:19:11.900 referred to as a biological woman. Like I'm a woman. Hello. It's obvious. Um, so I don't like

00:19:18.200 that either. I usually use that term biological when we get into this trans situation where clarity

00:19:22.620 is required. Like, what the hell are we looking at? What are we, what, you know, which brings me to the

00:19:27.100 UK glamor cover? Let's look at it. What the hell are we looking at? What is this? It is,

00:19:34.560 this is a woman. This is a woman for the listening audience. The person's dressed in a man's business

00:19:41.800 suit with an enormous pregnant belly. The person's head looks like the head of a man, a man's haircut,

00:19:48.040 some facial hair. It looks, looks like a man, but it is very clearly a woman because there's an

00:19:54.000 enormous pregnant belly. It says trans pregnant proud. And here's more pictures. I, I got to tell

00:20:01.560 you, I'm deeply offended by this whole thing. I am disgusted by what I'm seeing and I'm sorry,

00:20:07.700 sorry to use that term, but that is how I'm feeling. This is horrifying to me that this baby

00:20:12.980 is going to be born to this mother who is posing as a man who's married guys to, according to the

00:20:22.660 piece, somebody who is a non-binary drag performer. And the person giving birth is writing books like

00:20:32.640 my daddy's belly talking about, um, how this book is going to be totally accessible to children of all

00:20:40.640 ages and easy to understand, uh, giving basic facts about how transgender dads give birth and

00:20:48.100 celebrate the miracle of life. I know, no hard pass. Only women give birth. Only women are pregnant.

00:20:54.460 The only reason that person's on the cover of glamor is because that's a woman. That's a woman who

00:20:58.760 looks very different than most women, but that's a woman. You know, if you said to me, we'd be spending

00:21:05.440 Friday afternoon talking about the cover of glamor magazine, I would have been very surprised

00:21:10.180 because I would have figured, you know, I'm guessing this is not a regular topic, uh, perhaps

00:21:14.880 never discussed on the Megyn Kelly program. This is one of the ways that you guarantee that people

00:21:20.360 will talk about it and the transgender community will say, Oh, look at this. Isn't this wonderful?

00:21:26.040 We've finally proved to conservatives that men can get pregnant. And of course, there are plenty of

00:21:30.700 people on the right who will be outraged over this. And of course, in the process, we'll denounce it

00:21:34.740 on social media or writing about it. And this of course makes more attention. And of course,

00:21:38.580 everyone who hears about this is like, well, wait, let me see. I got to see, let me click on that link

00:21:42.420 to get through to glamor. Uh, my suspicion is that this will probably be the most read, most discussed,

00:21:49.320 most trafficked, uh, most debated cover of glamor. If they put some, you know, ordinary supermodel on

00:21:56.060 the cover, nobody would have noticed. Um, so it's one of those things, right? I don't begrudge any

00:22:01.660 conservative coming out and saying, this is ridiculous. This is absurd. This is a, you know, this,

00:22:06.060 you're, you're insisting two plus two equals five. This is not true, but in the process of

00:22:10.560 denouncing it, we're kind of doing them a favor. And I don't know about you guys. I have yet to

00:22:15.080 figure out how to, how to square that circle, how to, uh, how to not re how to say, no, I think this

00:22:22.440 is not true. You are wrong in this and not do it in a way that does them the favor of giving them

00:22:28.060 the tension that they deeply seek in the first place. I, I just like, I don't, I, people say this

00:22:32.560 about Dylan Mulvaney too, and I'm just not there. I don't care if they get more attention as a result

00:22:36.700 of our discussing it. I want to fight this, you know, that I just think it's more important to

00:22:40.620 call it out, correct their language. They want to correct our language. I want to correct their

00:22:44.560 language. That is there. There's no such thing as a dad who gives birth. That is not a thing.

00:22:51.400 And so I don't really care if glamor sells a few more articles as a result of it. I care about the

00:22:56.640 actual fight and the language that keeps appearing elsewhere. This person, Rich, here's, uh,

00:23:01.220 the person's name is Logan Brown. Again, this is a woman. Um, and this is, they gave an interview

00:23:06.620 in, in, I guess, is it on the gossip gaze podcast? This interview, Lauren, is that where we're pulling

00:23:11.960 this from? Yeah. Some, some podcast called the gossip gaze talking about, um, well, you listen here.

00:23:19.900 It almost feels like it's for me, like the most feminine thing that I could possibly do to be

00:23:24.320 honest. So like when I found out it kind of like in that split moment, it kind of felt like

00:23:28.240 all my manlihood that I've been like working towards for ages was just taken away from me

00:23:33.360 straight away. Like it was really, really weird. I don't feel feminine. I actually feel like a

00:23:37.700 pregnant man. My God. They went on to say, uh, Rich, this, this Logan that you'll be shocked to hear

00:23:47.080 Logan had really bad mental health growing up. Logan was quote, constantly in therapy. Logan took a

00:23:53.240 pregnancy test and it was positive. Logan had been off testosterone for a while, which Logan needs

00:23:58.420 because Logan's a woman, uh, trying to pose as a man, uh, for a while due to some health issues.

00:24:04.220 And then it was like my whole world just stopped that everything, all my manly hood that I've worked

00:24:10.360 hard for for so long, just completely felt like it was erased. Okay. Right. Because there is no

00:24:18.200 manlihood because again, that's a woman rich. Right. You know, our friend Ben Shapiro, who is

00:24:25.240 prescient and has been so stalwart on this issue. He was pointing out a Washington post article a

00:24:30.540 little while ago about Megan Fox. And she, she was, um, I think she's in the swimsuit issue sports.

00:24:35.420 I wouldn't know. But, um, you know, she talks about her body dysphoria, right? So you look at Megan

00:24:42.800 Fox and you're like, why would she feel bad badly about her body? Dysphoria is not a rational thing,

00:24:47.560 right? But she's treated for this, not by saying, Oh, Megan, you're right. You're, you're, uh, uh,

00:24:52.540 you're a fat slob or you're a stick figure that has no sex appeal. It's like, why do you feel this

00:24:57.340 way? Let's get to the bottom of your feelings and try to get you more attuned with what the reality

00:25:01.940 is about your body. That's a rational approach, right? Instead, we have every instrument in our

00:25:07.680 culture and even the medical establishment now saying if, if a kid has, or someone else has these

00:25:14.160 irrational ideas that can be quite destructive about themselves, you affirm the destructive ideas,

00:25:19.300 you affirm, affirm the lies and the irrationality. And that just makes no, no sense, but we've carved

00:25:26.040 out this one dysphoria that we're going to affirm. And this is where, um, with all due respect with Jim,

00:25:32.300 you know, the, the, that cover is, is about getting attention partly, but it's also about pushing an

00:25:37.320 agenda, right? It's not just mere clickbait and mere attention seeking. And that's why I think it's

00:25:43.580 right to discuss it. You have to discuss it in order to push back against it. Yeah. And the other

00:25:49.220 thing is Jim, the absolute nerve of this person, because if you read the article is Logan goes on

00:25:53.940 to say how difficult it was on Logan to go into the maternity ward to give birth because of Logan's

00:26:02.260 unique circumstances, I've been misgendered by staff. Oh really? The nurses and the doctors were

00:26:10.020 confused and called you she, as you were giving birth to a baby. And now you want to call them out

00:26:16.460 as insensitive. I've been misgendered and no one's actually turned around to me and said, are you okay?

00:26:23.400 No one's asked what it feels like to be a trans pregnant man. I can't, I can't.

00:26:31.600 You know, I've been present for two births. I got to hold a leg and look, I'm a man. I'm never,

00:26:37.580 I'm not going to pretend. I know what it feels like to go through childbirth. But from what I

00:26:42.740 could tell from that upfront seat, it looked pretty darn painful to me. So painful that you'd

00:26:48.740 actually, while you're feeling the contractions and you are feeling the human life come out of your

00:26:54.100 body, a head is appearing where you really never expect to see a face. And while that's happening,

00:27:00.540 oh, I was misgendered. That really hurt my feelings. I really have a hard time believing,

00:27:06.520 you know, I have a hard time. The other little bit in that snippet that you commented, there's the

00:27:11.420 emphasis, the, the certainty that this person felt like a pregnant man, not a woman.

00:27:17.720 Has this person felt both? How do you, how do you distinguish between those two? How do you like,

00:27:24.620 it's kind of fascinating. Well, it just felt a certain way. And I'm certain it was one way and

00:27:28.860 not another. This is like remarkably nebulous language that basically is just an affirmation

00:27:35.220 of what the person wanted to believe. Yeah. You got to keep the lie alive.

00:27:38.700 This way. I feel this way. Therefore I am this way as to pose to whatever you actually are.

00:27:46.040 Then. Okay. Just a little bit more color for you, Rich. Uh, Logan goes on to say,

00:27:50.300 it would just be nice. No, no. Back to you, sir. Cause on to say, it's just too, it's just too

00:27:57.280 amazing, but it would just be nice for us as LGBTQIA plus people to be more involved. And for me not to

00:28:04.880 be referred to as a woman, I remember being in the C-section because I'll get to that part. Uh,

00:28:10.760 because one of the, and one of the doctors referred to me as she and someone else corrected them and

00:28:15.700 said, he, I did get called she a few times though. Uh, then goes on to say when I was in labor,

00:28:21.800 labor, and there was so much attention being paid to what was going on down there. Logan means

00:28:27.440 attention to her vag where the baby was emerging. It did get to the point where I burst out crying.

00:28:34.700 Not from the pain gentlemen, uh, but crying. And I said, I need a C-section as it was too

00:28:41.460 overwhelming and dysphoric. It was really trigger triggering Logan's recognition that she's a woman

00:28:50.360 when she had a human emerge from her vagina, because as it turns out on the list of things

00:28:56.480 the men can do, that's not on there. So did she have a C-section or, or she has one in one.

00:29:03.180 Yeah. Then she claims, then she claims she won, she wound up needing one anyway. And she was super

00:29:10.620 glad. She was super glad about that. Glamour for its part says we are celebrating the allyship

00:29:16.680 that exists between women, cisgender or not, and transgender people. No, no, no, no, not in this

00:29:23.980 way. Sorry, Glamour. We will not. Yeah. This is, I think one of the underlying causes to the,

00:29:29.380 the backlash we've seen against various pride month, uh, excesses, so-called pride month

00:29:34.480 excesses is the, the L and the G and the B, they basically won, right? They, they won their,

00:29:40.780 their cultural war. So now there's been an emphasis on the T in recent years. And the T

00:29:45.540 just goes too far for people. It's, it's insane, uh, as, as this article and many other examples

00:29:52.100 demonstrate. And there's been an effort, as you said, in your monologue to push it on kids.

00:29:57.160 So you get the T plus our kids. That does not work for, for a lot of people. It's no longer just a,

00:30:02.880 a flag that might be a little annoying because everyone's doing it. And, you know, it's,

00:30:06.960 it's rainbow washing, whatever they call it. This is something different. It's, it's more threatening.

00:30:11.440 It's more destructive. And, um, people, you know, I don't know whether we'll succeed,

00:30:16.300 but it's right to say, stop the, uh, in the intro doctors. Yeah, go ahead. Uh,

00:30:23.400 both during both of the births of both of my children, the moment you go into the hospital,

00:30:27.560 everyone's calling me dad, which by the way, when you have not actually yet become a dad,

00:30:30.960 all of a sudden somebody calling you that is this, you know, particular power to it.

00:30:34.880 But anyway, like they're calling you dad because nobody knows it's Mr. Garrity or Jim or anything.

00:30:38.960 Nobody cares. They're there for a job. There is a small person waiting to get into this world.

00:30:44.640 Uh, I thankfully everything ran smoothly, but things can go wrong. This is the sort that we

00:30:49.200 are doing this in a hospital for a reason. We have all this medical technology, all this stuff

00:30:53.860 you're, if God forbid, it ends up being necessary. So if a doctor misgendered the patient, but so the

00:31:00.100 reason they're calling the dad is because the, the guy who's there very often is dad. And the person

00:31:05.000 who's giving birth almost every, you know, 99.99999% of cases prefers to be called mom, right? Because

00:31:11.920 they're either a mother or they're about to become a mother. So I think we can cut this doctor a little

00:31:16.840 bit of slack because this was literally and physically had his hands full performing a

00:31:22.640 cesarean section. That seems like a big deal. That does, that's not chopping carrots on your,

00:31:28.200 on your, uh, on your kitchen counter at that point. It's kind of busy at that moment. So

00:31:32.380 just be a little easygoing, a little more forgiving because they are delivering your child,

00:31:37.660 which is kind of an important job. You know that I mentioned Kelly J Keene, she recommended to me an

00:31:43.360 article that got banned over and over. It's not, it's not that controversial. You should Google it

00:31:47.460 and read it. It's called, um, pronouns are real hypnol. And it talks about how, when you use these

00:31:51.960 preferred preferred pronouns, it has a way of dulling your senses and has a way of like sort of putting

00:31:57.100 you into this confused state because you look at that and you say, she, she gave birth. She's having

00:32:01.940 a baby. She is a new mom. And this person saying, no, stop that. It's he it's dad. Dad gave birth.

00:32:08.480 Dad's having a new no. And this demonstrates the premise of that article so perfectly, which is

00:32:15.080 if you have to stop and stutter on the language over and over, you're tricking your brain. You're

00:32:20.660 training your brain to get past what is basic reality. And there are real dangers to doing that

00:32:27.900 might even go beyond this issue, but it certainly comes back to haunt us in the locker rooms and the

00:32:33.600 bathrooms and the sports and the other spaces where we've already tricked our brains to seed the

00:32:39.460 argument, rich. Yeah, absolutely. Words are really important. Um, they, they define reality. Uh, what

00:32:47.820 things are called is, is really important is one reason there are, um, many, many biblical injunctions

00:32:54.380 about watching your tongue. It's one thing to think something really harsh about someone. There's

00:32:59.220 another thing to say it and, and things you say that are harsh can be remembered forever and change

00:33:03.620 relationships forever. That's the power of words. And that's why there's an enormous battle over words

00:33:09.380 as we were talking about. We use trans woman or we, we use man who, who says or pretends he's a woman. That

00:33:15.060 is a huge difference, which prevails, defines who wins the debate. And they've been very focused on

00:33:21.540 this very focused on this. And a big part of it, again, as you pointed out in your monologue is

00:33:26.300 pushing back and not accepting their terms. You got, um, you got people like here in Connecticut

00:33:32.640 where I live now, not my town, but in Connecticut, um, in Darian, there was an equinox that just hit

00:33:38.880 the news gym because a bunch of women were in the locker room at the equinox, including a 17 year old

00:33:44.520 girl and a man walked in who said he was a trans person. So he had a right to be there. And

00:33:51.140 they went, the women felt unsafe. And they said, of course, like we've seen in so many of these

00:33:55.220 situations, he started behaving strangely. They felt like they were being stared at gawked at that

00:34:02.020 he was enjoying his time in the locker room a little too much in the same way you guys don't,

00:34:07.020 it's not appropriate to look at the other guy when he's peeing next to you at the urinal.

00:34:10.000 You don't freaking look at the women's naked bodies in the locker room at all. You know, it's like,

00:34:15.480 that's not a thing where we're leering at one another as we take off our clothes. Most women are like

00:34:20.540 towel down, bra on, panties on, get out of here. You know, like you're, you feel uncomfortable.

00:34:24.940 Um, so yeah, it's a red, it's a red alarm to see somebody in there leering. They went to the front

00:34:30.140 desk and the equinox person was like, no, of course that's our policy. That's equinox. Welcome. You

00:34:35.020 know, that's, that's what we stand for. And at this point, the horses left the barn, both in company

00:34:40.060 policy and in state law in so many places, it feels overwhelming. Like, how are we ever going to

00:34:47.060 reverse this? How are we going to get this changed? Yeah. As I say, different parts of the country

00:34:50.960 will have different experiences, but I live in Northern Virginia, uh, travel generally, you know,

00:34:55.740 generally operate in the DC area. And I would say, if not the overwhelming majority of establishments,

00:35:01.460 then a large majority of establishments now have gender neutral bathrooms. Um, and it's,

00:35:06.920 it didn't quite happen overnight, but it happened surprisingly quickly. That was their way of

00:35:12.140 negotiating this controversy of saying, you know what? We don't have men's rooms. We don't have

00:35:16.680 ladies rooms. Everybody can use any bathroom. They're single stall. There's only one person

00:35:20.520 who can use them at a time. I do wonder if the day is going to come when you start to see three

00:35:26.160 locker rooms. In fact, the gym I'm in and a whole bunch of gyms that I know, uh, have a men's locker

00:35:31.040 room, a ladies locker room, and then a family locker room. Uh, in the cases where you have a,

00:35:36.040 you know, parent with a child of the different gender, uh, generally people are okay with a,

00:35:41.040 you know, baby being a baby boy being in the, uh, women's locker room, but at a certain age,

00:35:45.340 they want the person to use the appropriate one. So the family restroom was the, uh, one. And they

00:35:51.020 also, by the way, the gym I'm at is pretty good about saying, look, you should only be using it

00:35:54.340 if you're a parent with a small child. They don't want just any old person coming in and using the

00:35:58.880 family restroom. Maybe we should invest in gym construction companies because they will probably,

00:36:04.480 the day will come when they may see this most easiest option is to have four locker rooms. Uh,

00:36:09.360 you know, men's, women's family, and those who identify as transgender or something in the middle

00:36:13.200 and avoid these kinds of controversies because at some point people will start saying,

00:36:17.200 I don't want to go into that gym because I don't like the number of locker rooms they have.

00:36:21.180 I like, I feel like that's the only solution is to have a third locker room. Maybe it is four,

00:36:26.820 but another space because right now the default is, as I said in my opening, women lose,

00:36:32.400 women lose, girls lose, suck it up. Too bad. They're going in years. And it's never the other way

00:36:36.860 around. I haven't heard one story about men saying a woman who says she's male popped up in their

00:36:46.460 locker room and was behaving inappropriately. It doesn't happen the other way around. Look what

00:36:51.860 the prisons are filled with male sexual offenders, not female sexual offenders. It's all coming our

00:36:57.220 way. And all we hear is a be quiet. You bigot. And now the law supports be quiet. You bigot where,

00:37:04.940 you know, you've got to use those pronouns and you've got to let them into your spaces.

00:37:08.900 And, you know, they don't adjust the law based on the number of sexual assaults and the number of

00:37:13.360 these really difficult incidents, Rich. Yeah. And this is a really disturbing thing. So Equinox is a

00:37:19.360 high end gym, right? It caters to a high end clientele. So, so, um, you know, might, might,

00:37:25.100 might have some fancy pretensions, but the disturbing thing is like Equinox is not,

00:37:29.900 do they really care about trans issues? Why do they care about trans issues? And you get this

00:37:35.620 with the power of the other side has the cultural power. There is some professor of women's studies

00:37:40.840 somewhere 40 years ago, who was writing about how gender is a fiction or whatever, or maybe it was

00:37:45.740 Michael Foucault. I don't know, but that, that grain of a crazy radical idea can just take over the

00:37:52.680 culture and ends up being pushed by everyone. So someone, the manager at Equinox is probably not a

00:37:58.140 conservative or big progressive or whatever. It's just going to go with that tie. So that's,

00:38:03.800 that's the challenge. And that's what's so, um, disturbing to conservatives right now and why they're

00:38:09.460 so invested in these, these cultural fights is how to stop that is huge, huge question.

00:38:17.240 And I, Garrity, I read this on the show yesterday because I thought it was so good. Your piece on NR,

00:38:21.620 everybody join NR plus. And, um, you were, you were saying this is so good because now you had an

00:38:27.700 update on Bud Light. And by the way, the latest today, this is as of June 2nd, New York post,

00:38:32.500 Bud Light parent company, Transheiser Bush, Michael Knowles, love it. Get it clever. Their stock

00:38:39.840 has lost over $27 billion since the one can was sent to Dylan Mulvaney. Since the one can was sent to

00:38:51.920 Dylan Mulvaney, 27 billion, not to mention the drop in actual sales, which range any place from

00:38:58.640 20 to, um, 29% down. Um, but you had this piece the other day that reads, imagine a beer company that

00:39:06.780 just wanted to make good beer and sell it to you. Imagine if that company wanted to sell beer

00:39:10.900 to everyone, but didn't feel that its job was to make you more accepting of transgender individuals

00:39:15.520 any more than it felt its job was to warn you about the national debt.

00:39:19.940 Went on from there. Exactly. We used to have that kind of beer company.

00:39:24.680 For a while, you did see in the era of, you know, when Ben and Jerry's was hot,

00:39:28.820 this idea which companies would kind of associate themselves with some sort of noble cause.

00:39:32.800 Newman's own was always helping homelessness and kids. And, you know, eventually you realized you

00:39:37.740 reached the point where you're like, I never drink any coffee that is less than fully committed to

00:39:41.860 eliminating the federal debt. You know, that kind of idea that for some reason, every consumer product

00:39:47.020 had to adopt some sort of political cause and associate it with self. By golly, that's, you know,

00:39:52.280 in the case of this one, it's kind of, it is fascinating because, uh, first of all, I wonder if the

00:39:57.780 Mulvaney can would have had the same effect if it had not had the Bud Light chief marketing executive

00:40:04.220 making those comments in the interview, dismissing the brand's old image as kind of fratty and out of touch

00:40:10.040 and outdated. Um, that spread, you know, cause I, I wrote about it. I think almost every, you know,

00:40:14.780 conservative columnist who wrote about the Bud Light issue found those comments, spotlighted it.

00:40:19.440 And it wasn't just a, it makes it harder to believe this was an innocent misjudgment of the tastes of

00:40:26.020 the existing Bud Light consumer market. That comment suggested a certain amount of contempt for

00:40:30.940 the existing Bud Light consumer market. And the first thing I wrote about this was this question of,

00:40:35.980 um, you can be a marketing executive and have whatever political views you want, whatever

00:40:40.200 cultural views you want. But if you're going to market to people who are very different than you,

00:40:44.940 the first thing is you have to like, ideally you'd like them. Ideally you would like feel warm

00:40:49.320 and fuzzy towards these people. Even if you don't like them, you have to want to understand them.

00:40:53.980 And I kind of wonder if that was the case in this, the case of this particular executive.

00:40:57.920 And you also kind of wonder when we see almost every company engaging in marketing that is woke

00:41:04.680 or progressive left, or, you know, just something that is almost like combatively culturally controversial

00:41:11.320 for brands that used to be noticed to appealing to the broadest possible market and the lowest common

00:41:16.280 denominator. All of a sudden it's like they're coming from, uh, you know, Benetton used to be

00:41:21.940 one of the, you know, the ones that was associated with diversity and things like that. Like that,

00:41:25.200 that all of a sudden everybody's, every brand sounds like Ben and Jerry. Suddenly every brand

00:41:28.680 is eager to associate how much of their corporate values perfectly aligned with the most recent, uh,

00:41:34.520 platform of the democratic party. Right. And you put that out there. And what is interesting is I

00:41:39.120 don't know how many marketers really care about marketing to red States anymore, even if they are

00:41:44.540 half the country and, or in some cases, probably more than half of their customer base. Um, you

00:41:50.320 know, it has to basically, in other words, did the Bud Light marketers decide we're bored with being

00:41:54.700 the beer of middle America. We, we travel, we associate, we have peers who are progressive leftists

00:42:01.100 and we want to be the beer of progressive leftists. And I got to tell you, Bud Light is basically what

00:42:06.560 you drink at the barbecue when everything else is gone, right? This was never going to be the

00:42:11.260 world's favorite beer and the biggest premium. So the idea that you were going to get sophisticated

00:42:16.340 urbanites who, who are, you know, check every box in the woke philosophy, the odds of getting them to,

00:42:22.120 uh, purchase, you know, make Bud Light their beer of choice. We're always going to be challenging

00:42:27.280 because your product is pretty crappy and there are a million other light beers out there.

00:42:32.320 And I think what makes this boycott probably a little bit different from a bunch of others,

00:42:36.280 although we're seeing maybe some others gaining some speed against target and some other companies

00:42:40.520 like that. But the idea is that, you know, Bud Light, Coors Light, Miller Light, like most light

00:42:45.740 beers are pretty interchangeable. There's the, maybe there's some people out there, but I think Bud Light

00:42:50.140 believed that it had, you know, a whole bunch of people who fell in love with the brand in the days

00:42:54.500 of Spuds McKenzie or, uh, the what's up guys or something like that. And that they'd always stay with

00:43:00.200 them. And what happened, the answer, the big chunk of the market said, no, we don't like what you're

00:43:05.120 doing here. And we're going to go out and we're going to try Coors Light.

00:43:07.520 Well, as you point out your piece, it's, it's worse than that because you point out your piece

00:43:11.800 that this is worse than a boycott because they actually changed their brand. Their brand means

00:43:17.320 something entirely different to the consumer today than it did five weeks ago. Like you're,

00:43:23.380 it's embarrassing now for, for a lot of people to hold a Bud Light.

00:43:27.480 And in the first couple of weeks, you saw a lot of observers as an, ah, you know,

00:43:30.440 this is a social media. This is, uh, you know, right wingers on Twitter causing this,

00:43:35.800 this isn't going to, well, now it's been five weeks and six weeks and the numbers are,

00:43:39.580 you know, 25%. Uh, some chain stores have said they've seen, you know, 50%. They're returning

00:43:45.560 unsold, uh, Bud Light, uh, uh, because it's spoiled. They've run into really major problems

00:43:51.800 like this. They're planning a whole new campaign. They've had to give it away in some cases, giving

00:43:55.540 people rebates. Like this is a self-inflicted catastrophic damage to this brand. I don't

00:44:01.400 know if it'll ever recover. I think at some point, maybe Bud Light will change, change Bud Light and

00:44:06.000 create, you know, diet Bud or something. They will completely rename it to get away from this

00:44:11.340 all because of one decision to send this can. And then to, you know, to, on top of it,

00:44:16.120 to kind of sneer that the old image of the brand was fratty and out of touch.

00:44:20.080 Yes. Catastrophic, Rich. That's the, that's the word.

00:44:22.600 Yeah. It's, it's more than a boycott though. It became a national joke. And I, I've, I do some,

00:44:28.800 some little, you know, silly Instagram videos and I've needed Bud Light cans to do, do some

00:44:33.400 commentary on Bud Light. So I, I, uh, went and bought a six pack of Bud Light, you know, at the

00:44:39.100 local liquor store. And I was embarrassed holding it, you know, taking it out of the store a little

00:44:43.520 bit, an establishment that at the height of the pandemic, that would have a mask requirement.

00:44:48.600 So you had to wear a mask and then your hands would be full coming out and you'd be wearing a

00:44:52.480 mask on the sidewalk. You're like, really? Am I one of those people? So I'm going to see me

00:44:55.860 randomly and think I'm one of those people. So I think that's the way people feel about Bud Light.

00:45:00.240 And Jim is absolutely right. This is a brand that was uniquely vulnerable because the old brand was

00:45:05.400 straight down the middle, middle America. Now they changed their brand into kind of ineptitude.

00:45:11.220 And there's something in the freezer right next to it that is just as good or probably better.

00:45:17.320 So Target, you know, I think that the Target drop, we'll see what the sales look like,

00:45:22.220 but the stock drop is just based on the fact that in a low margin business, any consumer

00:45:27.000 turbulence is, is bad news, but I'd be kind of surprised if Target is, is experiencing,

00:45:31.660 you know, this kind of consumer drop off. But you would think the lesson from Bud Light to every

00:45:36.500 other company, big company in America, just play it down the middle. Don't, don't do the culture war

00:45:41.060 one way or the other. Now it's hard because you have the other side pushing you and rating you based on

00:45:45.640 how much you're into the, the culture war. And no one really seems to have learned this lesson.

00:45:49.540 I mean, have the LA Dodgers, like a major league baseball team welcoming after having the good

00:45:54.440 sense, not to want them to come be part of their pride celebration. The, this anti-Catholic gay

00:45:59.860 activist group, sisters of perpetual indulgence, you know, a month after the Bud Light thing.

00:46:04.240 So this is going to be, this is going to be a long struggle, but the future Bud Light is more

00:46:09.800 about more than Bud Light. It's about whether you can send a message to other companies not to do this

00:46:14.520 in the future. The, the human rights campaign needs to get an alternate. There needs to be

00:46:19.760 another brand out there saying, we'll give you a rating. We'll give you actually a fair, like,

00:46:23.600 let's go with like log cabin Republicans, somebody who like a gay rights group that actually is about

00:46:29.020 gay rights. That's fair and actually would keep companies in line if they cross outside the lines

00:46:34.060 of, you know, genuine discrimination. But human rights campaign has just become a trans activist

00:46:39.120 group that doesn't give a damn about the LGB. And you can read that piece I referenced in the New York

00:46:43.720 post from yesterday. If you doubt me on it. All right. Stand by. Very happy. These guys are with

00:46:48.000 us for the entire show today. A lot to get to. We'll do politics next. Trump, um, and a growing

00:46:53.480 2020 for GOP field, plus an incredible profile about CNN just hit. We've got the highlights. You

00:47:00.440 will not believe what's happening inside the building there. Remember folks, you can find the

00:47:04.360 Megan Kelly show live on Sirius XM triumph channel one 11 every weekday at noon East, the full video show

00:47:09.280 eclipse by subscribing to our YouTube channel, youtube.com slash Megan Kelly, and go now to

00:47:13.500 Megan Kelly.com to sign up for my Friday newsletter to you. It's always great. It's got the news in 60

00:47:19.780 seconds or less. Let's talk about presidential politics because it's getting interesting.

00:47:27.060 It's getting interesting for a long time there. DeSantis would not hit Trump. You know, it was the,

00:47:32.600 um, I don't know if it was the Ronald Reagan thou shalt not criticize a fellow Republican,

00:47:36.840 or if it was just smart strategy before he had declared, um, to stay away from the 800 pound

00:47:43.300 gorilla, but the gloves are off guys, right? He's, he's officially taking shots back at Trump. Now.

00:47:49.860 Um, there is one example I'll give you here where, all right, just to set it up, Trump is hitting

00:47:56.500 DeSantis on not knowing how to pronounce his name. Trump says DeSantis doesn't know how to pronounce

00:48:02.780 Trump calls him Rob, Rob DeSantis instead of Ron, and also says even DeSantis doesn't know how to

00:48:09.540 pronounce his name. And there is a discrepancy in how Ron DeSantis has pronounced his name over the

00:48:16.560 years. And even recently it goes in between DeSantis and DeSantis. Now I have sympathy for Ron DeSantis

00:48:23.820 DeSantis on this because I don't know how to pronounce my name either. I, sometimes I say

00:48:28.440 Megan, sometimes I say Megan, which is kind of close in, was more in between Megan and it's not,

00:48:34.240 it's not Megan. It's like, I don't know. Sometimes I hedge it. I don't know. I too am around his age

00:48:40.360 and can't pronounce my own name. So it's becoming a thing. And before I get to the, the, the, the battle,

00:48:46.140 I'll just give you an example. Cause here's a bit of Ron DeSantis and his wife, Casey DeSantis,

00:48:50.760 diverging in how they pronounce their now shared last name.

00:48:53.820 I'm Ron DeSantis. I'm Ron DeSantis. Everyone knows my husband, Ron DeSantis. I'm Ron DeSantis.

00:49:01.160 I'm Ron DeSantis. At RonDeSantis.com. At RonDeSantis.com. I, Ron DeSantis. I, Ron DeSantis.

00:49:09.160 I don't, I don't know. I, it's unclear. So, um, by the way, they're like, they actually went,

00:49:15.280 one of these, uh, companies was at Politico and got commentary. Uh, no, it was Axios got commentary from

00:49:23.380 an Italian history professor on how you're supposed to pronounce it. He points out that

00:49:28.680 the proper Italian pronunciation would be DeSantis, DeSantis, Ron DeSantis. But a lot of Italians make

00:49:36.500 it a little bit more Americanized and might just go with DeSantis. No one really knows how he's got

00:49:40.980 to DeSantis, whatever. Um, Trump mocked it and DeSantis was asked about it on Thursday by our radio

00:49:49.740 host, Jack Heath on WTSN. Here's what he said. Foreign president Trump yesterday, uh, was, uh,

00:49:56.400 criticizing your name, whether it's DeSantis, DeSantis, DeSantis, he's, he keeps coming at you.

00:50:02.240 I think it's so petty. I think it's so juvenile. I don't think that's what voters want. And honestly,

00:50:07.060 I think that, that his conduct, uh, which he's been doing for years now, uh, I think that's one of

00:50:13.000 the reasons he's not in the white house now. Don't shots fired. What do you make of it rich?

00:50:19.700 Yeah. So we've heard Republicans say what, what Trump's doing is juvenile. What I was surprised

00:50:25.440 by and what has real import is the second part of that where he's saying what, you know, Jim and I

00:50:31.100 and others in national review have said all along that Trump's conduct had a lot to do with his loss,

00:50:35.340 but it's forbidden. People would say that in private, but a Republican who wants a future in

00:50:40.920 the party saying that out loud, that's kind of amazing. And I've been surprised at how aggressive

00:50:46.520 DeSantis has been. It's not just that he's counter punched, which is absolutely necessary.

00:50:50.640 He's taken affirmative shots on some things and it just shows he's not afraid. And that's just key

00:50:56.980 because one of the, the metrics in Republican politics now is strength and Trump, um, that's

00:51:03.280 something he brought to the table in 16. No one can match him. Not clear. Anyone, including DeSantis is

00:51:08.160 going to match him this time around. But as, as someone associated with DeSantis, I was talking

00:51:12.300 to yesterday about these very strategic considerations, just said, you can't be a

00:51:16.200 pussy. You can't be a pussy. And you got it right there. Just put it out there. Rich Lowry.

00:51:21.780 Yep. There you go. This is not the editors. Look at him. This is the new Rich Lowry.

00:51:27.580 That's very rarely get elected. You know, there's a very long, Oh, that, okay. Uh, Megan or Megan,

00:51:34.540 whichever you prefer. Um, that's not on the list. Megan is not on the list. Megan's not. It's between

00:51:41.840 Megan, which is what my family calls me. And like a mix of Megan and Megan, like Megan, Megan. I don't

00:51:50.160 know. Um, you mentioned the Axios, uh, article about the controversy between DeSantis and DeSantis.

00:51:57.860 I happen to notice that that section in their morning newsletter ran ahead of the coverage of

00:52:02.540 the debt ceiling deal. Smart brevity for those who have no attention span. Um, of all the things

00:52:10.100 that Ron DeSantis has done is doing or ever will do the idea that he doesn't pronounce his name

00:52:17.280 consistently is just about the dumbest line of criticism that anybody could possibly throw up

00:52:23.220 against this guy. It has nothing to do with public policy. That's nothing to do with anything he's done

00:52:27.540 as governor. It has nothing to do with anything he's going to do in the white house. This is a

00:52:31.840 stupid argument. And Ron DeSantis came right up to the line of saying, Mr. President, that is a stupid

00:52:38.280 argument because you are a stupid man. And if you were not a stupid man, you'd still be president of

00:52:43.320 the United States right now because you tend to step on your own. You know what, every five minutes,

00:52:48.100 your mouth gets you in trouble and the country has really serious problems we need to address right now.

00:52:52.940 But you, for some reason, keep thinking about how a good D or the die and how to pronounce it to say

00:52:57.260 it. Um, so I'm a little fired up about this. You have a good point. Although I will say the debt

00:53:03.260 ceiling, I also find it a little boring. I don't know. We, we move ahead in like these little inches

00:53:07.460 and then everybody declares it a victory, whatever they struck a deal and it's better than the GOP would

00:53:12.300 have gotten had they not won the house. That's for sure. Um, so I, Debbie Murphy, who I listened to on

00:53:18.880 all soundbites, Canadian Debbie says that we've got to listen to how DeSantis landed the messaging

00:53:24.520 on this whole thing a bit later in the day yesterday in an interview on Fox. Clearly he

00:53:29.300 worked on it. Listen. Confusion over your last name and the pronunciation. And I'm just wondering

00:53:34.300 to correct the record. What is it? Oh, it's ridiculous. These stupid things. Listen,

00:53:38.160 the way to pronounce my last name winner. Oh,

00:53:42.200 the only flaw in that argument is that there's an NSA spy who also had that surname and things

00:53:51.260 didn't turn out so well for her, but, uh, yes, I think that's right. Well, the other thing is they

00:53:56.280 say, you remember how Malcolm Gladwell informed us that if you name your child winner, they're going

00:53:59.660 to grow up to be a loser and vice versa. So really, I don't know. Like be careful because you know,

00:54:03.840 that doesn't always end that well. Um, DeSantis is getting a little bit more fiery. He's clearly not

00:54:09.240 afraid of attacking Trump. And of course, Trump's been lobbying and attacks on him.

00:54:12.640 Non-stop. I mean, non-stop. Um, he got a little ornery with the press corps yesterday. He was

00:54:17.720 at an event. He was glad handing. He did speak one-on-one informally with a lot of fans who

00:54:22.780 had shown up, but he didn't take like official questions from the audience, you know, like a,

00:54:28.400 like town hall style. And somebody from the AP gotten his grill about it. Here's what happened.

00:54:35.200 Governor, how come you're not taking questions from voters?

00:54:37.440 No, stop coming up to me. Talk to me. What are you talking about? I'm not here working with people.

00:54:41.180 Are you, are you blind? Are you blind? Okay. So people are coming up to me, talking to me,

00:54:46.820 whatever they want to talk to me about. Are you blind? He's clearly a little annoyed, Rich. I'm

00:54:51.980 going to get, he's annoyed. And so is that a, is that a problem? It's fine being annoyed with a

00:54:58.160 reporter. You can be more than annoyed with a, with a reporter. The thing is he, he lacks a light

00:55:04.700 touch, obviously that the advantage to DeSantis. He's knowledgeable, he's cogent, he's determined,

00:55:10.660 he's hardworking. He's got a great message, great record in, in Florida. The disadvantages is,

00:55:16.520 is not very inspiring. He has no sense of humor that anyone's aware of, or that he's ever shown

00:55:22.300 in public. And he doesn't have natural people skills. Now politicians can get over having natural,

00:55:27.720 not having natural people skills. You know, Barack Obama is an example. Barack Obama was an introvert,

00:55:31.860 but he also had a thousand watt smile and this, you know, off the charts charisma, which DeSantis

00:55:36.680 doesn't have. So he's never going to pass the, the, the, have a, have a beer with them test. The,

00:55:43.060 the, um, the potential downside though, is if he shows that kind of irritation that he showed with

00:55:48.300 that reporter to a voter or the wrong kind of voter, and this is what the process does. It wears you

00:55:53.940 down. It exposes you. It gets you in the dead of night, you know, of, uh, January in Iowa when at your

00:56:01.280 fourth event, when you're tired, you may be running a little bit of fever, you feeling like

00:56:05.000 crap and you're real feeling show about having to suffer all of these fools gladly. And you talk to

00:56:11.200 that, like to, to a nice old lady or something who's, who's annoyed you. That's, that's what he

00:56:15.640 has to avoid at all costs. Yeah. And I mean, you can also, you know, this is the way it works. You

00:56:21.000 could take the questions like this face to face, two inches apart, or you could do it 20 feet apart.

00:56:25.320 You know, I started chose option a cause it's more intimate. Thank you for playing Mr. AP reporter.

00:56:30.300 Um, it doesn't, you know, like you can put them in their place without snapping, but it's, I'm sure

00:56:35.400 it is annoying to deal with those questions all the time. And some of them are inane. Um, let's

00:56:40.540 switch gears because before we get to Biden though, um, to talk presidential debates, the hatred of the

00:56:46.180 media, and you say it's okay to criticize them. It's gone and it's gone to the next level now to where

00:56:50.120 there's reportedly a debate about whether there will be any debates. Trump has been saying he's

00:56:55.420 not sure he'll appear on Fox news, even for this first scheduled debate, which is in August,

00:56:59.200 um, because he doesn't think Fox news is going to treat him fairly because they've been very

00:57:03.840 pro DeSantis. Let's face it to Fox has turned on Trump. Uh, and so he's not sure what he's going to

00:57:08.920 get. Then you got DeSantis who all along has said, I'm not going to deal with these mainstream media

00:57:14.720 people who hate me and hate Republicans. And how does it help our side? If we keep lining the

00:57:21.380 pockets of NBC and CNN, and those are the two who are begging him to participate in a GOP debate hosted

00:57:29.200 by them. And so now Axios is reporting, you know, there may be sort of a standoff now, and there's

00:57:34.120 an uncertainty about whether we will have any, whether there will be any GOP primary debates.

00:57:40.080 Also, there's the factor that Trump thinks, what do I need to debate for? I'm ahead with like 40

00:57:45.080 points, but it's only going to help the other guys. So Garrity, what do you make of it?

00:57:49.580 I'm glad I'm not in the shoes of the Republican national committee right now, because ideally

00:57:54.140 the RNC would be on good terms with all the presidential campaigns, not dependent upon or

00:58:00.060 subservient to any of them and try to get decisions that are best for the party and for the electorate

00:58:06.560 as a whole, without favoring one candidate or another. It looks like Trump is probably the

00:58:11.640 only one who really has an objection to Fox News. So I'd be shocked if by the end of this process,

00:58:15.860 you know, Fox News did not have one, at least one, and probably maybe two or three, you know,

00:58:20.000 debates during, but we're all all said and done. And whether as for Trump will skip, will skip one

00:58:25.660 of them. People forget he did skip one back in the 2016. Yeah. So like, yeah, I did the weird little

00:58:32.000 veterans fundraising telethon. I don't think any of the money ever actually got out there.

00:58:36.680 Huckabee and Santorum showed up because they ducked. Anyway, it was a little weird,

00:58:40.580 but he's done it before. It wasn't that consequential in the grand story of the 2016

00:58:45.120 election. So I wouldn't put it past him. I do think after a while, Trump would just,

00:58:50.360 you know, to quote Eminem, it would feel so empty without me. He would feel like, you know,

00:58:55.900 how can they have a debate and not invite me and not have me up on that stage? It's boring without me.

00:59:00.620 Well, I was talking about this in my other podcast today. So I don't know if you watch

00:59:05.920 Monday Night Football, but ESPN has what they call the Manning cast, where in addition, you got

00:59:10.520 Peyton Manning and Eli Manning and usually a couple of celebrity guests, and you basically watch them

00:59:15.660 watch the game and they joke around. Sometimes they talk about the game, sometimes they don't.

00:59:19.640 Could you imagine some network saying, we're going to do the Trump cast of the debate that he's not

00:59:23.920 participating in. We will show you live televised Trump reacting to the debate that he's not in.

00:59:29.840 And I'm sure a lot of people would find that absolutely fascinating television.

00:59:33.140 I'll do it. I'll co-host it with Tucker.

00:59:35.580 Yeah. You know, throw that idea out there. I could see somebody, I could see a huge audience for

00:59:40.540 that. As for CNN and NBC and the other big, you know, regular television networks. Look,

00:59:47.580 there are very few things on television, particularly in this era of streaming that are must see.

00:59:51.840 But that first debate that's going to feature Donald Trump and Ron DeSantis is going to be

00:59:56.420 must see television. It may be the moment that decides the course of the 2024 Republican

01:00:02.660 presidential denomination. It could be the end of the Trump era, or it could be Trump coming out

01:00:08.700 there and clobbering him and demonstrating this is still his party. So everybody's going to watch it.

01:00:14.280 That's going to be huge ratings. Every network, no matter how mean they've been to Republicans,

01:00:18.740 no matter how unfairly they trash Republicans, would love to have that on their network because the ad

01:00:24.320 rates would be huge. And that I suspect is what it's at work here. The other question is if you're

01:00:29.100 the RNC, okay, you don't like CNN, you don't like, you certainly don't like MSNBC, maybe you're a

01:00:34.280 little less upset with NBC news. You know, is it worth it to not reach those audiences? Or is there

01:00:41.300 a value in reaching out to the people, the people who'd be viewing on those networks? Again,

01:00:46.060 the RNC wants it. Yeah, the RNC wants it. But you know, if you can't make Trump do what he

01:00:50.340 doesn't want to do. And I don't think you can make DeSantis do what he doesn't want to do either.

01:00:55.400 But what a lost opportunity. We're talking about what, how did it affect Trump if he didn't show

01:00:59.420 up to the Fox News debate and all the other guys were there. Rich, what if, what if NBC gets a debate

01:01:04.480 and Trump and the others show up and DeSantis doesn't? I mean, that would just be foolhardy by

01:01:12.300 DeSantis. Yeah, I, I, it's hard to see him, him doing that. He needs the opportunity. You know,

01:01:19.760 he's, he's not as well known as, as Trump. He needs the opportunity to get, get the word out

01:01:24.480 any way possible. And this would be a huge, if you were to do that, a huge missed opportunity.

01:01:29.400 Wouldn't surprise me if Trump skips the first debate or two, but I don't think you can skip

01:01:33.440 them all. You know, when, when you get right down to it, there's always a debate like a week or two

01:01:38.500 before Iowa, you know, it's the local public, uh, um, uh, uh, PBS station or whatever. And if you

01:01:46.880 don't show up, people are going to skip that, that was the one he skipped last time with Fox

01:01:53.320 didn't hurt him at all. Yeah, but it's, it's people, I think it did hurt him a little bit.

01:01:59.300 I think that was, well, he didn't win Iowa, right? Didn't Ted Cruz win Iowa after all of a sudden,

01:02:03.400 but I'm just saying, you know, he did go on to become president. Yeah, no, that's true. But

01:02:07.260 they'll, they'll be there. There there'll, there'll be debates. I don't know why to get around kind of

01:02:12.080 the mainstream media question. The RNC has access to massive donors. You know, these are expensive

01:02:16.920 events to put on, as you know, that's, that's why you just can't go to an alter, you know, some

01:02:20.620 alternative, uh, conservative site and say, do it. Cause it's, you know, cost millions of dollars,

01:02:24.900 but why can't the RNC just raise money from donors and, and host its own debates and say,

01:02:29.920 any network that wants to, to carry them can carry them. And we'll have fair, um, moderators

01:02:35.800 that are coming, coming at these guys, you know, from a conservative perspective, which is oftentimes

01:02:40.220 missing and the, uh, you know, an NBC debate or whatever that, that would seem make a lot of

01:02:45.220 sense to me, but debates are a public service. It would be a shame if there are no debates.

01:02:50.040 And if we revert to the world in which, you know, Trump just keeps sitting with Hannity

01:02:54.480 and DeSantis just keeps sitting with his fans, you know, like it's going to be a bore and we're

01:03:00.620 not going to learn very much. And then we'll get to the point where we're in a general election.

01:03:04.980 And, you know, presumably these guys are going to be forced to debate the Dem. I mean, like he can't

01:03:09.640 stay underground forever. Uh, and then, you know, we learned at that point that they can't debate or

01:03:15.680 they can't articulate their positions. It's not good. That's not good for anybody. All right.

01:03:19.080 While we're on the subject of media, um, well, no, before I get to that before, cause I want to talk

01:03:23.660 about CNN, but we've got to talk about Joe Biden because we're on the subject of politics. So we'll

01:03:26.860 stay there for a second. Oh, did you see the fall? Oh, Abby doesn't like it. I know. I don't

01:03:33.340 like it either. It is sad. It's sad. I had the same thing. I watched it with Doug. We both felt bad

01:03:38.340 for him. You know, in the same way you feel like my mom, she came to visit me this past weekend.

01:03:42.840 She's going to be 82 in July. She fell. I'm like, Oh my God, I screen mom. She was fine. But you know,

01:03:48.040 it's scary when you have an elderly person. Oh God, it went down kind of hard. Um, I know he says

01:03:56.360 he tripped on a sandbag. Very possible. They use them sometimes to tamp down cords and lights and

01:04:00.740 things like that on stages. I don't guys, to me, this is about one thing, two words, Kamala Harris.

01:04:09.580 That's really my biggest takeaway from watching the whole thing. What do you think? Rich?

01:04:13.180 Yeah. We talked about this. You were ahead of the curve, kind of being willing to talk about

01:04:18.360 Biden's age. And I tweeted, you know, we've all seen this. If you've had an elderly parent in

01:04:24.900 decline, you're used to this way of talking, of walking, you're used to holding your breath.

01:04:29.780 And once the fall start, they, they, they don't stop. And I just fear that that's the state that

01:04:34.820 Biden is in. Even prior to this, this trip and fall, he was, he was being led around at that event.

01:04:40.620 Like, you know, everyone's shoving him when the music starts to go this way and pointing and

01:04:46.060 pointing out obstacles. It's, it literally could be unsafe for him to be out and about in a year or

01:04:52.100 so. It's not crazy to think that. And when I tweeted this yesterday, John Harwood of, I guess, CNN now

01:04:58.040 and some others, like, well, anyone could trip, you know, Jerry Ford trip when he was 62. That's true.

01:05:02.320 We all could trip, but this is something different. You're fooling yourself if you don't think there's

01:05:07.480 something different going on here. And this isn't a symptom of decline. And, and this has to be

01:05:13.620 factored into his electability. Democrats figure, you know, he's better than Kamala Harris, right?

01:05:17.820 It would be a disaster. So he's the most electable against Trump. But if you factor in that some

01:05:22.200 horrible health event, some terrible fall could happen at any time, including, you know, October,

01:05:27.900 2024, that would throw the election to a Republican, including Trump, that makes him not seem

01:05:33.160 so electable. And so I have doubts whether he's going to make it to the starting line,

01:05:38.760 but let alone the finish line. That is the thing is it's like you.

01:05:45.100 You're right. It happens once. It's going to happen more than once. We've already seen him fall.

01:05:48.980 You know, we've, he fell up the stairs and he stumbled a few times. They do lead him around

01:05:52.800 like he's a blind man, you know, like he can't see independently. And no one wants anything bad to

01:05:58.880 happen to Joe Biden. You know, even if you don't disagree with the guy's politics,

01:06:01.840 he served the country honorably for many, many years in public service.

01:06:05.400 Not to say we agree with all of his behaviors or his ethical choices. I'm just saying you don't

01:06:09.180 want anything bad to happen to him. But you really don't want anything bad to happen to him when you

01:06:13.580 see who's in the number two position, Jim. You look at the opinion polls on her. This is just from

01:06:20.100 between 421 and 531 favorable, 39 percent unfavorable, 53. Now, if you were start to break it down by

01:06:28.600 party, it collapses amongst, independents can't stand her. Republicans multiply that by a thousand,

01:06:35.340 but she has zero support. And if the Democrats were stuck with her, they'd lose. They'd lose

01:06:41.400 against anybody. Trump, DeSantis, Chris Christie, you name it. Am I wrong?

01:06:46.700 Megan, we know that the overwhelming majority of Democrats do not have faith that Kamala Harris

01:06:53.140 could win the 2024 presidential election against either Donald Trump or Ron DeSantis or, you know,

01:06:58.600 let's say some scenario where Nikki Haley or Tim Scott or somebody else is the nominee.

01:07:03.020 We know this is the case because if they believe she would win, we would be seeing the column saying

01:07:08.380 it's time for Biden to hold to a one-term pledge and pass the reins to Kamala Harris.

01:07:13.380 He's 80. He just fell off a stage, right? He's not getting any younger. He's going to be 81 when

01:07:18.900 he's running for reelection. He turns 82 right after election day 2024. Nothing's getting better

01:07:24.160 from here on out. Those bones are not getting any more flexible or they're brittle, right? This is

01:07:28.820 why we're frightened. Yes, any one of us could fall. If I fall down, I'm going to get up and I'm

01:07:32.700 going to moan and I'm going to groan and I'm going to keep on walking with Biden. And also my

01:07:36.300 responsibilities compared to the presidency are pretty mild. What we see here with this, look,

01:07:41.940 there was that comment, ironically, also in Axios. I cite them a lot for making fun of them.

01:07:46.840 Axios noted that it's very hard to schedule an event with the president before 10 a.m. in the

01:07:51.220 morning or after 4 p.m. in the evening. And it's only five days a week because the president goes

01:07:55.560 back to either Delaware or Camp David every weekend. All right. Now, here's the thing. We know

01:08:00.500 that if the president could get out there more, he would get out there more. No president strategically

01:08:05.640 chooses to minimize their appearances to one a day between 10 and four, five days a week.

01:08:11.940 The reason President Biden isn't doing these sorts of events is because he can't,

01:08:15.720 which means early in the mornings and late in the afternoon and in the evenings,

01:08:19.540 he's in rough shape and he's in no shape to make a public appearance.

01:08:22.700 We already have a part time president. What do you think it's going to be a year from now?

01:08:27.300 What do you think it's going to be in fall of 2024? None of this is any good. It's kind

01:08:31.220 of baffling is that we can all kind of see this. And yet we're constantly being gaslit. We're being

01:08:35.680 told how great he is. He's fine. Karine Jean-Pierre claimed that President Biden has so much

01:08:40.360 energy. She can't keep up with him. The other thing is, Jim, he's a natural retail politician.

01:08:48.680 He likes being out there, right? So it's not as though he's an introvert and doesn't want to do

01:08:54.580 it. It's just that he can't anymore. And you hear stories, Republican senators say they never hear

01:09:01.200 from him. And he's a garrulous guy. He used to talk to everyone. And apparently, I don't have

01:09:06.460 democratic sources, but they say their democratic colleagues say they never hear from him.

01:09:11.440 You know, then he got up. This was even sadder. It was even sadder. He got up. He got caught on

01:09:17.460 cameras back. I think this is back at the White House after the fall. The fall was on Thursday at

01:09:23.480 the U.S. Air Force Academy in Colorado. And then later he was on cam and tried to do the, you know,

01:09:29.900 look at me. I'm like Dick Van Dyke, you know, clicking my heels together. Watch.

01:09:37.260 I got sandbagged, he said.

01:09:46.360 That also is sad. That also, right? It's like, oh God, he needs to overcompensate now and like

01:09:52.360 do a little heel kick to show us he's still limber. And he isn't, you know, he's not fooling

01:09:59.060 anybody. You just kind of want to give him a hug and escort him over to his Matlock and just let

01:10:04.860 that be the end. You know, sail out to the sunset in some sort of dignified way. This is not the way.

01:10:12.200 The sandbag thing is kind of funny. I thought that was kind of funny, you know, light,

01:10:15.820 little self-deprecating. But the thing is, an elderly person in this condition, there's always

01:10:20.340 a reason they fall. It's never, you know, they just collapse, you know, out of nowhere on the floor.

01:10:25.640 It's always something they trip over and they blame that thing. You're like, mom, you got to be

01:10:28.880 more careful next time. I'm really worried about you. No, no, Richie, the rug corner was curled up.

01:10:34.780 But whatever it is, there's always some reason. But the right thing to do for Biden, step aside now,

01:10:40.460 right thing to do for the party, have them step aside now. You're worried about Kamala Harris,

01:10:44.860 have her have to win a nomination in primaries and caucuses. It's probably not going to happen.

01:10:50.000 And then you've solved your problem and you get someone who's not going to fall down in October 24,

01:10:55.240 who's probably not Kamala Harris. But but this I understand this is a path of least resistance.

01:11:00.880 Biden himself is one of this entire adult life. He's not going to just walk off stiffly into the

01:11:07.600 sunset. Dumble off for them and for the country. Jack Dorsey, founder of Twitter, actually tweeted

01:11:14.620 out the following. Open the Democrat primaries and debates. This isn't fair to anyone. Wow.

01:11:20.760 Wow. I find that fascinating. He's getting more political. I didn't know. I didn't think he was

01:11:26.260 like a far left guy. I wasn't sure what his politics were, to be honest with you. But that's

01:11:29.980 interesting. He he wants the primaries open. That's a pretty big voice. I don't know if this

01:11:35.140 is going to lead to more calls. Will it, Jim? Do you think we're going to start to like if there's

01:11:39.560 one more fall, are we going to hear more Democrats say that's it? We got to.

01:11:43.360 So last fall, or I really even throughout most of 2022, you saw, you know, folks like Illinois

01:11:50.220 Governor J.B. Pritzker just coincidentally doing events for the Iowa Democrats and New Hampshire

01:11:55.580 Democrats. Gavin Newsom was starting to was taking on Ron DeSantis all the time. Something a little

01:12:01.920 unusual for the governor of California to spend all this time critiquing the record of the governor

01:12:05.800 of Florida. Phil Murphy up in New Jersey. And all of these Democratic governors who, you know,

01:12:11.480 pretty clearly have presidential ambitions for someday, who insisted they were not running for

01:12:15.780 the presidency. But you could tell they were hanging around. If God forbid something happened

01:12:20.180 to Joe Biden and the party didn't want to have Kamala Harris, they were just going to be in position.

01:12:25.040 They were going to have that name ID. They're going to have that fundraising network. They were that

01:12:28.840 quarterback, that backup quarterback warming up on the sideline, just kind of saying, hey,

01:12:32.480 I'm just loose and I'm ready just in case. You never know. And I have the sneaking suspicion

01:12:37.460 that all of these governors are looking at Biden when he takes these falls. And they've got a red

01:12:43.280 button that says, you know, go 2024 or something like that. And they're ready to go because there's

01:12:48.820 a poll that has Biden at 60 percent against Robert Kennedy Jr. and Marianne Williamson, right? That is

01:12:54.740 not the, you know, for to continue my football metaphors, that's not the 85 Bears defense, right?

01:12:59.520 These are not, you know, giant monstrous, you know, candidates. They're a bunch of tomato

01:13:05.180 RFK Jr. is this vaccine conspiracy theorist. And Marianne Williamson is holding seances on stage

01:13:12.140 and getting out a Ouija board, right? And Biden's at 60 percent.

01:13:15.960 I'll defend RFK, Jay. I will defend him. He's much more interesting and thoughtful than you make

01:13:20.840 him sound. But I see your point. I mean, he's not exactly the front runner in an open contest,

01:13:25.100 but he's he's coming for Joe Biden. We aren't even touching on the other piece like, OK, falling.

01:13:30.920 That's one thing. But mental competency is what we should really be concerned with. And there isn't

01:13:35.860 a speech where he doesn't flub something, forget something, think somebody who's dead is alive,

01:13:41.040 think somebody who's alive is dead. There was a bit of that yesterday at the Air Force speech as well,

01:13:45.400 just a small one. But here it is. And so it's 16. I think is it 16? You know what it is, Debbie, 13.

01:13:51.180 By the way, I met with who those guys that fly over shortly. You heard of them, haven't you?

01:14:00.900 Three of them are women.

01:14:07.920 So don't screw around, guys.

01:14:13.080 They had then, Megan, they had him sort of doing a cute kind of press availability with kids

01:14:18.320 two weeks ago. And when they caught this, the kids were asking him questions. And he'd just

01:14:22.440 gotten back from being, I don't know, in Ireland for a week. And one of the kids was like, what

01:14:26.160 country, foreign country he visited most recently? And I said, oh, that's a great question. I'm not

01:14:30.940 sure. And one of the kids yells out, Ireland. He's like, oh, yeah, yeah, Ireland. Another kid

01:14:35.400 asked, what movie, good movie have you seen recently? He's like, the one with the fast planes,

01:14:40.600 the fast planes, you know, another kid's like, Top Gun. He's like, yeah, yeah, yeah, Top Gun.

01:14:44.380 So again, none of this is going to get better. It's all a progressive condition. Even if it's

01:14:50.800 just aging, it's a progressive condition.

01:14:52.480 No, I know. I talked about it with my mom. My mom's open about it. She's like,

01:14:55.180 my mom jokes that she does her word search and she's like, I can't think of the word. You tell

01:14:59.780 me the word. What's the word? It's the thing that does this. And she finds the other words. It's

01:15:02.680 like somebody who's speaking a second language, you know, like where you, I remember when I was

01:15:06.400 learning Italian, I studied over abroad when I was in college and I couldn't think of the word for

01:15:11.020 onion. And so I was able to say in Italian, the food that makes you cry. And they got it. That's

01:15:15.520 the way my mom communicates now. God love her. But she's not president. So I see exactly what's

01:15:23.520 happening and it's not leading in a good place. And you say, what's it going to be like in 2024?

01:15:26.920 What's it going to be like four years from 2024 if he wins? That's the real question. Six years from now.

01:15:34.080 January, 20, 20, uh, nine, right. That, that would be the end of his second term.

01:15:39.500 Oh my God. I mean, that's, and that, and that leads me back to my Kamala Harris. One thought,

01:15:44.260 two words, Kamala Harris. That's what you really need to be thinking about going forward. I'll say

01:15:47.840 this as well. Remember when Trump walked slowly down the ramp when he was president and people

01:15:52.240 are like, what's wrong with him? Why is he walking like that? And he said it was icy. Biden's comments

01:15:55.880 at the time, this is June of 2020. Look how he steps look out and look how I step. Watch how I run

01:16:01.840 up ramps and he stumbles down ramps. Okay. Come on. That was Biden's reaction to the slow walk by

01:16:08.860 Trump. Not good. You know, those are the kinds of comments that are going to come back to haunt him,

01:16:12.860 Jim. In the grand scheme of things, it's not going to matter that much if Joe Biden can't remember the

01:16:17.980 name of the blue angels during a speech at the name of the, uh, Air Force Academy or something like

01:16:22.100 that. However, I think one of the most frightening and most, you know, eyeopening example of this kind

01:16:27.480 of memory lapse or something like that to me in his infamous interview with George

01:16:31.020 Stephanopoulos during the disastrous withdrawal from Afghanistan. This is the one where Biden

01:16:35.320 said, that was four or five days ago, man. Um, at one point, Stephanopoulos asked him,

01:16:40.180 did anybody tell you, did anybody recommend to you to keep Bagram air base open to have a second

01:16:45.900 place to evacuate Americans? And Biden said, no, absolutely. I don't remember anyone saying that

01:16:50.800 to me. Now later, Milley and several Pentagon officials testified under oath before Congress that

01:16:56.120 they had specifically recommended keeping Bagram air base. Now, when Joe Biden says something like

01:17:01.420 that, there are two explanations. One is that he's lying. And I suppose that's, you know, there's

01:17:05.620 plenty of good evidence to believe that yes, Joe Biden is just denying that anybody had made that

01:17:09.280 recommendation to him. But I think the more frightening one possibility is that he's telling

01:17:14.040 the truth that Joe Biden does not remember what he was briefed. And you sit there and think about how

01:17:19.080 every single day the president gets the presidential daily briefing from the intelligence community.

01:17:22.740 And it's got all of our secrets, the hottest, you know, the hottest information we know about what's

01:17:27.380 going on all around the world, every threat facing the country. How much does Joe Biden remember from

01:17:32.240 day to day? How much of that does he absorb? How much of that stays in his brain? I think it's very

01:17:37.280 fair to ask you how much he remembers. And so that when he says, oh, I don't remember being briefed that

01:17:41.380 I believe him. And now we have an interesting question in which the president cannot be updated.

01:17:46.780 He cannot get new information because his mind cannot process and retain new information.

01:17:50.980 And God knows how that affects presidential decision making.

01:17:54.180 You know, I remember in the lead up to the last election, listening to you guys on the itters and

01:17:59.280 one of Charlie's or just one of the one of the many things he doesn't like about Trump,

01:18:03.320 who was then still president, was how he's just not able to inspire by speaking knowledgeably about

01:18:10.900 much, especially American history. You know, he just doesn't have the depth of knowledge,

01:18:15.800 the reading or the rhetorical abilities that somebody like Charlie and frankly, I would like

01:18:21.320 in a president who's got this in-depth knowledge of U.S. history and can bring it up in context and

01:18:26.360 use it to inspire. I don't know that Joe Biden's got that either, but I think we can all agree

01:18:32.940 that old K.H. in the number two position swinging the bat, you know, in the warm up position,

01:18:39.780 as you say, Garrity, although you did football, I'm doing baseball.

01:18:42.000 Well, she doesn't have it at all. We've been talking about how she keeps talking about this

01:18:46.560 unburdened, unburdened, unburdened. You'll be unburdened by your past, by your present circumstances.

01:18:50.800 I don't know how she puts it. She says it every day. It's in every speech. She can't think of

01:18:55.380 anything else. She really thinks this is moving. It isn't. Here's yet another example. When she spoke

01:19:00.160 to the West Point grads, first time a woman, I guess, ever addressed the West Point grads.

01:19:04.900 She blew it. Here she is.

01:19:06.320 Your generation grew up online. Technology that might be intimidating or unfamiliar to other

01:19:16.160 generations, to you is exciting and intuitive. You see what can be unburdened by what has been.

01:19:26.680 Oh, she loves that line. I can't. She talks to them like they're too rich.

01:19:34.540 Yeah, that's just the way the way she talks. I never thought I'd grow to hate the word unburdened

01:19:39.740 of all the words I thought I would hate. That wasn't high on the list, but now I do. And she

01:19:44.860 just has this quality. This is the advantage to Biden politically is you don't look at him and think

01:19:50.600 radical, right? Even though he's, with some exceptions, pushed as far left as he plausibly

01:19:57.060 could and placated his left as much as he possibly can, because he's been around forever and he's

01:20:03.900 this doddering old man, whereas it's going to stick to Kamala Harris, who would stick to Gavin Newsom,

01:20:08.200 stick to Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders. So there just hasn't been, you know, Bill Clinton,

01:20:15.780 Barack Obama, Republicans hated them for various reasons. Biden doesn't inspire that emotion. It's

01:20:24.800 pity, which is something different and isn't as motivating as hatred. So that's one thing he has

01:20:31.280 going for him is everyone feels sorry for him. These are important questions because over on the GOP

01:20:38.180 side, the guy who's leading the race by high double digits could be under maybe four indictments,

01:20:45.240 four criminal cases. By the time this election actually happens, he did Trump. That is a town

01:20:50.720 hall with Sean Hannity last night. He's the guy he does like on Fox. He doesn't want to do Fox

01:20:55.460 as an entity, but he likes Sean. And he commented on at least one of those criminal cases and some

01:21:02.520 news that broke in it yesterday. We're going to pick it up there and then get into the debacle that is

01:21:07.100 CNN, according to this huge Atlantic piece. My God, look at this. My team printed it out for me.

01:21:12.580 This is the printed article. Look at this thing. It goes on and on and on and on. We've read it.

01:21:18.960 We'll talk about CNN, Chris Licht, the president's thoughts on Don Lemon and what's happening

01:21:25.120 internally there and how Jeff Zucker may be sabotaging him right after this.

01:21:32.000 News broke yesterday that there might be a tape recording that quote, where you acknowledge that

01:21:37.360 you understood that these were classified documents. Do you know anything? No, I don't

01:21:41.740 know anything about it. All I know is this. Everything I did was right. We have the Presidential

01:21:46.260 Records Act, which I abided by 100 percent.

01:21:50.660 So there it is. Trump weighing in on that news yesterday that CNN and so many others breathlessly

01:21:55.220 reported that there is allegedly a tape that reporters haven't heard, but they say someone

01:21:59.420 tells them he's on tape in connection with a book that they were discussing from former chief of

01:22:05.340 staff Mark Meadows saying some of the effect of I've got this document. It relates to Millie and I

01:22:11.880 think war plans against Iran. And I can't show it to you because it's classified and I'm limited

01:22:16.800 in what I can declassify post-presidency. So CNN smoking gun. This is it. I don't know. We haven't

01:22:24.340 heard it. We don't know. But there he is on camera with a classic Trump like it was a perfect phone

01:22:29.400 call. It was perfect. Perfect. Do we think this is going to come back to haunt him? Not necessarily

01:22:34.760 this piece, but the four criminal investigations. Rich? I think they're all going to be in the bucket

01:22:41.560 for the overwhelming majority of Republican voters as politicized attempts to get Trump.

01:22:47.640 And that wouldn't be happening if his last name wasn't Trump. And this one is probably the most

01:22:53.380 serious. Legally, I mean, every indication is he's kind of dead rights on this one. But the case

01:22:58.560 is going to be the counterargument will be, well, Hillary, she was dead rights to the emails. Was

01:23:03.000 she prosecuted? You know, Joe Biden did a version of the same thing. Is he going to be prosecuted?

01:23:07.980 No, of course not. But I think the only way these can hurt him is just sort of cumulatively

01:23:13.460 at the end. If voters are kind of making an electability type judgment, you know, the night

01:23:19.540 they're caucusing or voting in New Hampshire, they speak, you know, there's just there is too much

01:23:24.180 baggage. There's just too much material for the other side to work with. We love Trump. We like

01:23:29.780 what he did, but it's too big a risk. That's that's possible. I wouldn't necessarily bet on it.

01:23:36.520 I said yesterday on the show, we talked about this. We don't know where this document came from.

01:23:41.280 We don't know whether it was in the, you know, boxes that are at issue in that whole Mar-a-Lago FBI

01:23:47.320 raid. We don't we don't know anything right now. We don't know whether Trump actually had and

01:23:51.580 believed he had the ability to show them the document, but just didn't want to. So lied,

01:23:55.740 you know, like, hey, this one's class. We have no idea. But just seeing this breaking right now

01:24:00.480 from CNN, they say CNN exclusive Trump attorneys have not found classified document former president

01:24:06.700 referred to on tape following subpoena. Attorneys for Donald Trump turned over material in mid-March

01:24:11.380 in response to a federal subpoena related to classified U.S. military document described by the former

01:24:16.440 president on tape in twenty twenty one. But we're unable to find the document itself. Two sources

01:24:20.680 tell CNN. Why? Because Trump had it and he was keeping in his back pocket and he was pulling it

01:24:25.440 out at meetings about Mark Meadows book. I have no idea, but it just underscores the challenge

01:24:30.340 these prosecutors are facing. Garrity, here's what I really want to know.

01:24:35.380 What is the thinking? Like, what is the thinking that like I got the impeachment if he gets impeached

01:24:40.880 and convicted? He can't run again. So I totally understood why they wanted to do that.

01:24:46.260 You know, Trump's numbers went up exponentially when he got the Alvin Bragg indictment, as I said

01:24:51.660 at the National Review Forum with you guys, what would happen and that Trump should beg for it.

01:24:56.080 And sure enough, he's crushing DeSantis now in a way he wasn't prior to that indictment

01:24:59.280 because of what Rich just said. So what's the thinking that they're good? It's just no man is

01:25:04.320 above the law. Are they like, is that really the Jack Smith thing and the Fannie Willis thing in

01:25:08.080 Georgia and the Alvin Bragg thing in New York? Like, forgive me, but I'm having trouble believing

01:25:14.220 that. Yeah. First of all, like in Alvin Bragg, it really does look like they stretched and exaggerated

01:25:20.420 the statute beyond all recognition to justify a felony indictment. I'm not I have a hard time believing

01:25:27.400 that, you know, in the end, the highs and lows of Donald Trump were all brought down by boxes of

01:25:33.900 documents as he was. I don't believe that's how the Trump story ends. I don't think that most

01:25:38.760 Americans are that bad. And, you know, he'll be able to point to Joe Biden's garage. In fact,

01:25:43.300 I believe it was just yesterday, the Department of Justice said that there will be no criminal charges

01:25:47.140 against Vice President Mike Pence for any. I think there were three documents that were classified

01:25:53.540 or sensitive that were in his, he got mixed in with his personal papers. Sounds like everybody

01:25:58.000 did it. And it does not sound like it was always resulting in criminal charges. Maybe Trump was

01:26:01.900 more egregious or shameless about it, but it's going to be very tough, I suspect, to sustain a

01:26:06.600 conviction on that, or at least in the court of law, maybe they'll sustain a conviction. I think in the

01:26:11.980 court of public opinion, it'll be very tough. The two you mentioned, Jack Smith, you know, stuff related

01:26:17.580 to January 6th. I think that is the most consequential and most probably are pretty

01:26:22.220 clearly the worst thing Trump has done in his time as presidency. The clearest case in which his

01:26:27.240 actions had terrible, dire consequences. And if you're going to put Trump on trial for anything,

01:26:31.420 that would seemingly be the one. And that's the one we still don't know.

01:26:35.440 And then the second down in Georgia, the phone call down to that, I think, you know,

01:26:40.120 there's a, the question is, can you say that this was a deliberate effort to suborn

01:26:43.300 uh, uh, we've analyzed the cases, but my question is politically, what is the Democrats

01:26:50.080 thinking? Cause some believe this is going to help him and the Democrats know it and they want his

01:26:56.180 poll numbers to be driven up because they want him to be the nominee. Others think, no, they're,

01:27:01.800 they just hate him and they fear him and they want him to be actually locked up and ineligible to

01:27:05.700 actually take office because he's sitting in a prison. I don't know what the truth is.

01:27:09.860 I think if you ask the prosecutors, they'd say it's, Oh, it's no man is above the law.

01:27:12.800 I think of the general democratic party circles. It's probably a mix of both.

01:27:17.100 And, or the more time we're talking about Trump in these cases against him, we're not talking about

01:27:21.540 the border. We're not talking about, uh, massive spending and the state of the economy. We're not

01:27:27.100 talking about Joe Biden rambling and being 80 years old. Uh, we're not talking about like,

01:27:32.440 there's all kinds of issues that are not good for this earned media for Trump, good or bad. I mean,

01:27:36.520 all the time we spent on the access Hollywood tape and all that, it all wound up helping him. So,

01:27:40.900 you know, they, they need to be careful. I've got to shift gears because if I don't get to this

01:27:43.920 today, I'm going to cry in my bed tonight. The Atlantic, Tim Alberta, in-depth piece on Chris

01:27:49.220 Licht, the new head of CNN following Jeff Zucker. It's unbelievable. I mean, Twitter's on fire right

01:27:54.520 now with people not understanding how he gave this reporter this much access when he's still in the

01:27:59.060 job. He's still in the ongoing role. I'm just going to give you a couple of highlights.

01:28:02.680 Don Lemon. They talk about his thoughts on, he clearly did not like Don Lemon and was watching the

01:28:08.380 rehearsals for that dreadful morning show that he got fired from just realizing it was a time bomb.

01:28:13.560 He knew this was not going to work. Um, some quotes, I'm going to tell Don the biggest mistake

01:28:18.160 is commenting after every single story for the sake of commenting after every single story. Uh,

01:28:23.780 he says, uh, let's see, don't tell me, Oh, that's horrible. We know it's horrible. If you've got a

01:28:29.660 specific insight into something, if you can add something, tell us, but don't comment on every

01:28:34.080 single fucking story. He thought partnering with lemon or lemon with the opinionated gay blacks

01:28:39.820 Southerner with a pair of hard hitting female news reporters could be the fun viewers needed,

01:28:45.900 but licked. I sensed writes Alberta was not having fun. He saw a rehearsal for the first show.

01:28:52.060 Apparently they looked up and Don Lemon had changed during the rehearsal into a white jacket,

01:28:57.420 the collar made of fur with a turtleneck underneath. What the fuck is he wearing? Chris,

01:29:02.400 Chris licked, blurted out. Nervous chuckles echoed around us. A little while later,

01:29:06.860 the younger producer spoken to lemon's earpiece, Don, uh, we're not too crazy about the jacket in

01:29:12.560 here. Lemon looked miffed. Licked fought back a smirk. Why are you guys so mean to Don? He said,

01:29:18.320 he asked the joke wasn't lost on anyone. Clearly licked had dwindling patience for lemon,

01:29:22.440 his outfits, his ad-libbing, his opinions. None of this should have come as a surprise.

01:29:26.880 As the show emerged for another break, lemon sans jacket took his place in front of the display.

01:29:30.700 He was going to do some bit on how Kanye West got canceled over anti-Semitic comments,

01:29:35.680 but no one cared about comments that were offensive to the black community.

01:29:39.320 Don saw in and, um, licked, looked skeptical. Where exactly would you envision this running?

01:29:47.700 In our morning show. Yes, Don, uh, the EP of the show, probably in the back half.

01:29:53.380 Do you think if I'm on my way to work at seven 40 in the morning, I have time to absorb this.

01:29:57.200 Just then the segment began and lemon straightaway butchered the opening line.

01:30:01.260 Paul, the EP then let out an exasperated grunt. How does that happen? Lick grimaced.

01:30:06.180 Read the fucking prompter. He said,

01:30:07.900 it goes on and on with licks saying the whole thing was way too long. It's fucking morning time

01:30:14.300 motioning towards the screen, which had a display, uh, with a graphic image of a tortured slave next

01:30:19.900 to lemon during his monologue. This is morning television.

01:30:26.020 Got off on the wrong foot. Stayed there ever after. Um, I'm not sure exactly what this says

01:30:31.640 about what Chris Lick is doing, but it certainly shows CNN is having a massive identity crisis,

01:30:37.360 rich. Yeah. So why do you give a report of this kind of access? It's pure arrogance and ego,

01:30:42.740 right? You think, you think, uh, you're, you're the greatest thing since sliced bread and the,

01:30:47.180 the, uh, the profile is going to show it. And then the more, more access you, you provide,

01:30:51.560 the more it's going to show it. So CNN has a couple of problems, big ones. One is they think

01:30:57.300 their brand is news, but their, their brand had changed over time. Uh, certainly during the Trump

01:31:02.120 years into a, they were an opinion network. And now they're trying to be, uh, not an opinion

01:31:08.300 network or less of an opinion network. And they're shedding audience because they were an opinion

01:31:13.040 network. And then a real big fundamental problem, lack of talent, you know, who are the big primetime

01:31:19.800 stars on, on CNN, who, who are the stars on the horizon? You know, Caitlin Collins, I think is a,

01:31:26.300 is a good, good journalist, maybe a promising young woman, but is she really, she's going to hold

01:31:31.180 down where they put her eight, 9 PM, uh, that big primetime slot. I'm, I'm really doubtful. So, um,

01:31:38.080 this profile, it could be the, the, uh, uh, the beginning of the end of Chris Ligt.

01:31:44.040 They, they, they, some of the color on him, the reporter followed him around for his morning

01:31:48.160 workout. He lost a bunch of weight. He quotes Ligt. Um, he's no, no more breakfast, no more

01:31:53.140 drinking during the week, no more carbs or sweets. I'm a fucking machine. Ligt told me one day when I

01:31:57.660 asked why he was skipping a meal. Oh boy, a cringy cringy. Then he says, um, he squatted down to grab a

01:32:03.980 metal pole lying flat on the ground as he was working out. Zucker couldn't do this shit.

01:32:08.080 Ligt said, I know guys through his clenched teeth, hoisting up the pole with a grunt.

01:32:14.740 Um, then Ligt told friends he was convinced Zucker whose legacy he was undermining daily with

01:32:19.440 rhetorical recriminations about past damage to CNN's brand was retaliating by pushing hit pieces

01:32:24.200 on him. I mean, the, the, the palace guards, everybody's pointing fingers at everybody,

01:32:28.860 Garrity. But the best is what happened after the Nikki Haley prime comments by Don Lemon.

01:32:34.980 Apparently, according to Tim Alberta for months, Lemon had been making the control room cringe with

01:32:40.580 half-baked opinions, irritating his co-host by forcing his way into every segment and angering

01:32:44.720 Ligt by adding the very sort of superfluous commentary. The boss had explicitly warned

01:32:48.520 against. Then he made his prime remark and Ligt was already confronting the reality. His morning

01:32:52.700 show might be a bust. Top executives urged Ligt to fire him. Lemon pitched an attempt at damage

01:32:58.020 control of primetime special on misogyny. Lemon wanted to host. As one of the network's preeminent

01:33:05.640 experts on misogyny, I felt best qualified to host this discussion. And then Lemon began telling

01:33:12.180 allies Al Sharpton, Ben Crump, and other black leaders would rally to his defense if he were fired,

01:33:18.140 making his dismissal a referendum on CNN's whiteness. It's, it's wonderful. It's got everything.

01:33:24.880 It checks every box that we already knew about Don Lemon and CNN, Jim.

01:33:29.240 I think last time I was on your program was when we were discussing the insanity of that.

01:33:34.100 No, I came away from that article feeling real sympathy for Chris Ligt. Maybe he has an

01:33:37.820 appropriate surname considering the challenge ahead of him. But it's like he's trying to make an organ

01:33:43.400 transplant to CNN. And during the Trump years, it became hashtag resistance. And now it's rejecting

01:33:48.860 the transplant, that there's too different a network. He can't go back to the original identity that

01:33:54.040 Ligt's trying to bring back. That is so well said. Yeah, they don't know what to do. And he,

01:33:59.220 his, I agree with his mission. He is trying to make it, you know, he's trying to sort of after,

01:34:03.200 what, 10 years as Colbert's executive producer, turn himself into Roger Ailes.

01:34:09.140 The problem is there's only one Roger Ailes and either that's who you are and it comes to you

01:34:13.640 naturally or not. And even Roger Ailes couldn't have turned CNN into Fox News. So you can see what's

01:34:20.380 happening there. The whole piece is well worth a read. Take, take a glass of wine or a big cup

01:34:24.600 of coffee this weekend and dig in. The Atlantic's got a lot to say. Guys, thank you so much for coming

01:34:29.440 on. Appreciate your thoughtful, funny commentary as always. Awesome. Great weekend. Great pleasure.

01:34:35.500 Don't forget to check out National Review and NR Plus. On Monday, we have a different kind of show for

01:34:39.620 you. We're looking forward to this. We're going to have one of our Megyn Kelly show debates where we

01:34:43.520 have both sides represented about the HPV vaccine. The HPV vaccine, should you or shouldn't you? We'll go

01:34:51.240 there. Thanks for listening to The Megyn Kelly Show. No BS, no agenda, and no fear.

The Megyn Kelly Show - June 02, 2023

Biden's Alarming Fall, DeSantis Fires at Trump, and Not Using ＂Preferred Pronouns,＂ with Rich Lowry and Jim Geraghty ｜ Ep. 564

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