The Megyn Kelly Show - Biden's Classified Docs, Free Speech Crackdowns, and Woke Golden Globes, with the Fifth Columns Hosts

00:00:00.420 Welcome to The Megyn Kelly Show, your home for open, honest, and provocative conversations.

00:00:11.920 Hey, everyone, I'm Megyn Kelly. Welcome to The Megyn Kelly Show.

00:00:15.540 Well, classified records, classified, I say, indeed, top secret classified records

00:00:20.680 from Joe Biden's time as vice president are found off campus at a private office in D.C.

00:00:28.400 They've known about it on the Biden team since before the midterm elections, but you didn't

00:00:33.860 get to know about it because, well, why again? Joining me now are friends from The Fifth Column

00:00:40.860 podcast, Michael Moynihan, Matt Welsh and Camille Foster. Lots to get to today, guys. Welcome back

00:00:46.940 to the show. Hi, Megyn. Thank you for having us. Okay. No, it's not exactly the same as the Trump

00:00:53.440 situation, but it's in the same lane. And we were just lectured for the past year about what a hideous,

00:01:03.440 hideous crime it is to take top secret documents out of the White House and store them at an

00:01:10.640 unsecured private facility. There are actually Biden defenders online right now trying to distinguish

00:01:16.580 between the fact that, well, these were at an office because it was Biden's, quote, think tank

00:01:22.720 at the University of Pennsylvania. That's different than being in an office at President Trump's home

00:01:30.800 in Mar-a-Lago. I mean, it's absurd if he had top secret documents at his think tank unprotected,

00:01:39.580 unlike the ones at Mar-a-Lago by any Secret Service, et cetera. Then they've got some splaining to do

00:01:45.200 and we're entitled to an answer as to why they've known it since November 1st. And we only get to

00:01:51.420 know it January 10th. Camille, thoughts on that? I see you're shaking your head.

00:01:56.640 Well, I mean, it strikes me that there's always a bit of kind of partisanship in these controversies,

00:02:02.060 whether it's Hillary Clinton with her damn emails and everyone's saying, oh, it's obviously nothing

00:02:06.080 going on here. Or Donald Trump at Mar-a-Lago. They say, oh, my God, you need a SWAT team to come in

00:02:10.440 and take a look at this. Now it becomes the Republicans' opportunity to insist that we need

00:02:15.660 to do something about this, anything right now. And Democrats' opportunity to say, of course,

00:02:19.280 there's nothing to see here. The only consistency with respect to the handling of classified documents

00:02:24.620 that you're likely to get from anyone is when it is a person who isn't in power and they get stuck

00:02:30.460 or stung for having classified documents or handling them in a way that isn't necessarily

00:02:36.140 consistent with the law. Those people generally don't get any sort of special or preferential

00:02:41.600 treatment. They're generally not subjected to the same sort of opportunity to simply be immune to

00:02:49.420 whatever prohibitions exist on the way that these documents are handled. And ultimately, what I would

00:02:54.660 love to see is it merely some consistency is an appreciation for the fact that we probably over

00:03:00.640 classify things in this country and as a result end up wasting a bunch of time having kind of

00:03:06.120 these ridiculous haphazard sort of scandals where we don't even know what the substance of the

00:03:10.840 documents are, only that, oh no, it's classified material. So a little bit of consistency would be

00:03:17.420 great, but the better thing to do here is to think about what this actually says about classification

00:03:22.140 and overclassification in the US. That's a great point. And by the way, unlike a president,

00:03:26.360 a vice president can't declassify documents. And these were from his vice presidential think tank.

00:03:31.880 No reason to believe he as president went back and declassified them. So they may they appear to be

00:03:36.620 legitimately classified and never declassified. That's why the lawyers found them and handed them

00:03:40.940 in. And I realized that's different than what happened in the Trump case, where it was the

00:03:46.080 National Archivist who figured out we were missing classified documents, went knocking on the door at

00:03:50.480 Mar-a-Lago effectively, and then was kind of told that they were complying. And there are real

00:03:55.740 questions about whether they were in returning the documents. I get it. However, you and I both know

00:04:01.760 there's zero chance next to zero. I'll give it a 2% chance the Biden lawyers would have called any

00:04:07.160 attention to these documents had we not just been through the Trump fiasco. They would have let them

00:04:11.460 sit in these cabinets untouched, just like every other president has done. Because I think in general,

00:04:18.860 there was sort of a he wants his little note from Kim Jong Un, you know, like he's that's,

00:04:26.020 you know, like only with Trump. I think, you know, Jim Jordan's already out saying different

00:04:30.300 rules for Trump versus everybody else. That's in general true. And I think that general motivation

00:04:36.440 is what pisses people off about the Mar-a-Lago raid. And now here's the greatest absurdity to Camille's

00:04:43.180 point about, like, can we just kind of understand in general that we're maybe over classifying stuff?

00:04:49.380 Now, the Department of Justice has opened an investigation. The FBI is also involved.

00:04:58.260 There could be a special counsel appointed, as they did in the case of Donald Trump.

00:05:04.820 Merrick Garland, the attorney general, has assigned the U.S. attorney in Chicago to review the documents.

00:05:09.120 The U.S. attorney in northern Illinois is now looking at this. I'm not sure why it's Illinois,

00:05:15.220 given that this is all this is all happening, I think, at the University of Pennsylvania. But in

00:05:19.540 any event, that's absurd. Like, this to me is crazy now because they overreached in the case of Trump.

00:05:26.620 We got it. Oh, let's go back to every single let's go. Carter's still alive. Let's go see what's in

00:05:30.940 his drawers, so to speak. That is an image, Megan, that I really want to scrub. What's in Jimmy Carter's

00:05:39.660 drawers? I want to classify that. It's like the worst reality show ever.

00:05:45.100 Although, you know what, it speaks to one other thing, just to build on what Camille was saying,

00:05:48.580 is that another problem with presidential papers is that they're supposed to be,

00:05:52.560 at some point, declassified. And they're not being. We had a whole dumb media bubble about a week or two

00:06:00.680 ago about the declassification, or lack thereof, of some of the JFK assassination stuff. And it's like,

00:06:06.660 dude, it's 60 years ago. Like, there is nothing in there that we need to keep secret anymore.

00:06:12.360 It's not going to show something that isn't true. You know, it's not going to prove your theory about it.

00:06:17.760 Um, but it's probably going to show that, you know, some, uh, agency, some three letter agency

00:06:22.380 was trying to cover their ass at some point. Um, let's just go ahead and not over classify all those

00:06:27.180 papers too. I think an important distinction between the three cases that we're talking about

00:06:32.600 here. I think the Hillary Clinton case and the Donald Trump case have way more in common than

00:06:36.780 this one does, which is to say both of them showed by their actions and their descriptions of

00:06:42.340 their actions that they were trying to take, uh, information that didn't necessarily belong to them,

00:06:49.240 trying to minimize it and trying not to cop it back up when asked about it, which is very different

00:06:53.900 than, Oh, look, we found this in the file and we're going to hand it over immediately. Um, I don't

00:06:58.660 know about the motivation. I suspect that you might be right, Megan, but it's, it's speculation

00:07:02.300 of about like, Oh, we better, like, uh, better make this look good because we're giving Trump such a

00:07:07.320 hard time of it. In which case, uh, that's okay. I mean, if you're going to follow the law better

00:07:12.500 than you were otherwise, um, I'm, I'm a D decently happy with that motivation, but I think it's

00:07:17.300 important. And a lot of the Jim Jordan comments and Kevin McCarthy comments are really juvenile,

00:07:21.000 which is not surprising coming from these guys, um, trying to make it seem like exactly the same.

00:07:26.220 It's not exactly the same, just not, you know, the, there was a lot of negotiations and back and

00:07:31.060 forth between the Trump people. There's a lot of lawyers said this, and then that didn't turn out to be

00:07:35.700 true. None of this is apparent in this case. I suspect. Here's why it's a story. Here's why it's

00:07:41.160 a story. Remember Biden on 60 minutes after the Trump Mar-a-Lago story was revealed. Look at this.

00:07:47.260 When you saw the photograph of the top secret documents laid out on the floor of Mar-a-Lago,

00:07:53.840 what did you think to yourself looking at that image? How that could possibly happen? How anyone could

00:08:02.880 be that irresponsible? And I thought what data was in there that may compromise sources and methods

00:08:09.380 by that? I mean, names of people who helped or et cetera. And it's just, uh, totally irresponsible.

00:08:17.400 How could that happen? And by the way, this is a refresher as a refresher. The reason those,

00:08:23.080 that infamous picture of the Trump documents at Mar-a-Lago were fanned out on the floor is because

00:08:27.460 the FBI did that. Trump did not take them out of the boxes. That was the FBI who did that for a good

00:08:32.280 photo. Um, so, and Joe Biden knew that he wasn't referring to the fact that the documents were

00:08:36.900 splayed out. And if he was, he was wrong because it was FBI who did that. But he was referring to

00:08:40.640 the fact that Trump had classified documents down at Mar-a-Lago. What sources and methods could be in

00:08:44.980 there? You know what? He had top secret documents with the sensitive compartmented information

00:08:52.400 designation known as SCI, which is used for highly sensitive information obtained from intelligence

00:08:58.100 sources. So it's a story. I don't really give a damn that they're not exactly the same.

00:09:02.780 He has some explaining to do, and he has effectively compromised himself in his fight against Trump

00:09:10.060 when it comes to what happened at Mar-a-Lago and no amount of window dressing. I'm treating them both

00:09:15.480 the same by Merrick Garland is going to be able to rehabilitate that weakness now. I mean, he's definitely

00:09:22.380 going to come to the conclusion that Joe Biden didn't violate any law. Joe Biden's fine. Joe Biden had

00:09:26.840 no intent. Joe Biden cooperated with the feds. Nothing to see there. And he's going to come to

00:09:31.180 a different conclusion, we think, in the Trump case. But he's been hamstrung as a result of this.

00:09:37.740 This is a public nightmare. It's an embarrassment, a PR nightmare now for Merrick Garland, because

00:09:43.780 Trump at every turn is going to say Joe Biden had top secret information sitting there for how many

00:09:49.080 years now in a place that he's pointing out already has received not the think tank, but the

00:09:53.400 university, 54 million dollars from China, right? Unsecured. There was no secret service agent like

00:09:58.280 spare me. A few things. Well, first of all, I want to point out that I believe it to be deeply unfair

00:10:04.840 for Scott Pelley to ask Joe Biden questions minutes after he just woke him up because I hadn't actually

00:10:09.820 seen that clip. And I was like, is he in bed? I mean, the document. I mean, this is wild. And the other

00:10:17.440 thing, too, to that point, Megan, is am I the only one who didn't know that Joe Biden had a think

00:10:24.020 tank? No, you're not. I didn't get a think tank. You're not. A guy can barely think for five minutes,

00:10:29.600 you know, with one contiguous thought. But he has a think tank. That's that's pretty interesting.

00:10:33.840 But I have to actually agree with both Matt and Camille on this is that, you know, and you in the

00:10:39.060 sense that they aren't the same things. They're material materially different in a lot of very,

00:10:43.300 very significant ways. But that doesn't make it not a story. And when you have things like this,

00:10:47.880 when you have, you know, Joe Biden going out there and saying, oh, I mean, I can't imagine

00:10:52.100 anybody doing this sort of thing. And well, I can imagine you doing something similar, not the same,

00:10:57.560 but similar. And the reaction that you get to this from the media and from people, I mean, look,

00:11:02.580 go back and look at the reactions to what Sandy Berger did. Sandy Bergler went into the National

00:11:09.040 Archives. It wasn't even stuff that wasn't getting to the National Archives. It was stuff in the

00:11:13.280 National Archives that he attempted to remove in his socks and then pleaded guilty to it. I mean,

00:11:18.560 so this is not like without precedent or everything. But I was actually looking at the CNN story on

00:11:24.200 this this morning before I didn't even know we were talking about this. And I actually noted this

00:11:27.980 because there is a very, very funny play. This is how media plays this, is that, you know,

00:11:33.120 acknowledging that there is a problem with the fact that November 1st, they discovered these

00:11:37.880 things. They wait till after the midterms to say it. And, you know, granted, it is, you know,

00:11:41.860 give them credit in some sense, if you want to be generous, to say that they found these things

00:11:46.040 and they turned them in, right? And as you, I think you're right, too, that had it not been for

00:11:50.960 the Trump situation, they would never have done so. But this is how CNN framed this. Critics will

00:11:55.900 also wonder why Biden didn't immediately disclose the discovery, and this is the key point,

00:12:00.980 the discovery of less than a dozen documents last fall. Typically, you frame this as more than X,

00:12:08.080 less than a dozen. But if you think it's a lot, it's less than a dozen. Less than is a very,

00:12:13.580 very subtle media slide of hand there. It's a blip. I know. It's just one more example on how they

00:12:19.380 run cover for Biden. Again, none of this is to excuse or not excuse anything going on in the Trump

00:12:24.120 lane. It's just there is a different, a double standard. Just the mere like on him,

00:12:29.140 like white on rice approach to Trump in these documents is one example of it. Again, did Joe,

00:12:36.200 what did Joe Biden do after the Mar-a-Lago scandal to go satisfy himself that he didn't have

00:12:41.060 those kinds of documents sitting everywhere, right? Like, what did he do? Because the only

00:12:45.600 reason they found these is because they were moving office space. They needed to vacate the

00:12:49.180 office space, probably because there was no thinking going on in the tank and nobody was showing

00:12:53.740 up and they probably, that's why they had nobody knew it existed. It wasn't that a due diligence.

00:12:58.140 Coal mining ancestors, Michael is truck driving days is Amtrak riding days.

00:13:04.140 In any event, it's, we're going to, this is what's going to, I predict, this is how it's going to play

00:13:10.400 out. We're going to get an announcement that that, that investigation is going nowhere because they've

00:13:14.160 been very cooperative. It was just a mere error, just like Hillary Clinton's server was just a mere

00:13:19.420 error. Like they determined with her and the Trump admit, uh, Trump situation at Mar-a-Lago could very

00:13:25.440 well result in charges. In fact, the smart bet right now is that it will. Um, speaking of Biden,

00:13:31.560 the smart money these days says he will run again. There's speculation now that he could be

00:13:36.600 planning an announcement as soon as this spring, which would not be atypical for these kinds of

00:13:42.600 things. And all these Democrats are now appearing in the papers as saying, team Biden. Yes, I wasn't,

00:13:48.600 I wasn't in support of it before, you know, but now, now I am now. I think he can do it,

00:13:55.700 you know, about now because of those midterm results. So, okay, I get it. You think he's

00:14:00.280 got more political strength than you used to. None of this addresses his deterioration of

00:14:06.860 functioning, right? Like we've just decided that no longer matters and somehow that's going to get

00:14:12.440 better as he gets older. I mean, all these Democrats who actually were raising concerns

00:14:18.940 about it beforehand now have just decided to either ignore it or, you know, it's no longer a problem.

00:14:23.480 He gave a speech, um, uh, in, uh, last, uh, December, um, middle of the month to a bunch

00:14:30.820 of veterans, a town hall actually. And at it, he told this really kind of heartwarming story about

00:14:35.960 giving a purple heart to his uncle, Frank Biden, who served in the battle of the bulge. And, uh,

00:14:40.820 and, you know, he gave it to him late in his life and he's presented to him as vice president

00:14:45.440 and, uh, and his, his uncle refused to take it because you know what he lived and his brothers

00:14:51.200 out there died in the field. He just would not take it. And he's talking to this group of veterans

00:14:55.860 like, you know, that's, that's, you know, that's the, that's the ethic that you guys have. And I'll

00:14:59.840 get that. Here's the problem. Um, his, uh, his uncle died in 1999. Um, Joe Biden was not the vice

00:15:06.000 president in 1999. Um, there's also no record that the uncle ever received a purple heart.

00:15:12.200 Um, this kind of stuff happens every month with Joe Biden. And also in the, in the very next sentence

00:15:16.920 that he, that he said is, and he's trying to like relay it to modern, uh, uh, ethic of the

00:15:22.100 warrior ethic. He's like, and that's just like all you guys out there in Vietnam. I mean, I mean,

00:15:25.860 Iraq. Um, so like, this is the functioning of the president. He's a fabulist. Uh, he's maybe not

00:15:31.620 as spectacular as George Santos, but he's got a really long career of making crap up about his life,

00:15:38.240 uh, about his actions. He was just down at the border. He had said, I believe before that he'd been

00:15:43.060 there already as president, which he hadn't been, he's mentioned that he's gone to Iraq and Afghanistan

00:15:47.440 a couple of times during his presidency. Nope. It has not. Um, this is constant. He is talking

00:15:52.440 about things. He said that he, uh, signed the, uh, uh, they got the legislation passed to get, uh,

00:15:58.720 a student loan. I forget. Nope. That's not how that worked. None of it. He constantly talks about

00:16:05.500 stuff that doesn't happen. And he's the president. He's the executive chief executive of kind of an

00:16:10.920 important, uh, organization here and his brain is increasingly cheesy. I suspect that all of the

00:16:17.200 Democrats who are saying, Oh God, yes, Biden 2024 are basically like Gavin Newsom. Like I'm really

00:16:23.820 supporting Joe Biden. I think he's going to keel over it. Let's start this network over in the side.

00:16:31.060 That's what I think is happening. Right. That's exactly right. There's no way that they've had a

00:16:34.960 genuine change of heart when it comes to his competency. There's just no way. And there,

00:16:40.260 it reminded me of this clip that, that made the news, um, this morning actually,

00:16:43.940 that we had a good laugh over because he had yet another, I mean, I guess this one was a gaffe and

00:16:50.120 not a lie. Um, but he was shaking hands with somebody with a guy, a guy from the Salvation Army

00:17:03.660 in El Paso, Texas. When he went to do that border visit on Sunday, he was introduced to a member of the

00:17:09.100 Salvation Army wearing a uniform, which can be confusing for someone in Biden's position. And he

00:17:18.960 seemed for at least a moment, either he confused the guy or he misspoke, uh, confused him for an,

00:17:25.000 a member of the secret service. Oh my God. And then he corrects it at the end. I'll let the viewers

00:17:31.320 decide what happens here. Watch it. Okay. So the listening audience shows Biden being clearly

00:17:56.780 introduced to a member of the Salvation Army. And, uh, did he, did he spend time with the

00:18:04.260 Salvation Army in Poland? Yeah. In, in, in Iraq. Yeah. Shakes his hand and says, I spent some time

00:18:11.520 with the secret service in Poland and Ukraine. And then he continues on to say to either correct

00:18:19.540 himself or realize that he said secret service and changes it to Salvation Army. But can I tell you,

00:18:24.780 I was laughing about this because over Christmas we had a bunch of friends over and we had this

00:18:29.140 tradition of going to the 21 club years ago when it was open, they closed during COVID never reopened.

00:18:34.160 And every year at the seven at the 21 club, they bring in the Salvation Army band and you donate to

00:18:38.680 the Salvation Army and you'd sing Christmas carols. It was super fun. So as a surprise for our friends,

00:18:43.780 we, we got the Salvation Army band, a small portion of them to come to our party and gave them the

00:18:51.040 donation and all that. And my friends were delighted. And here's just a little clip of that. And then I got a

00:18:55.660 comment. Watch.

00:18:59.200 Wow.

00:19:05.540 Now, little did I know that I was standing in the presence of trained killers. We were the most

00:19:10.300 protected people in the state of Connecticut. Thank God. I'm so glad the president let me in.

00:19:15.480 Did you realize that Joe Biden was in your house playing bass? I mean, that was an extra thing for

00:19:23.860 free. But is it what is the I know that he doesn't know who he's talking to, but is the Poland and

00:19:30.620 Ukraine thing something that I'm unfamiliar with? I spent time with the Secret Service of the Salvation

00:19:35.460 Army, either one in Poland or Ukraine. I don't even know if that's true. But we were talking about this on

00:19:41.460 the fifth column that the greatest podcast in America just the other day when during the January

00:19:46.860 6th ceremonies, Biden spoke of a police officer who was killed during not Brian Sicknick, right?

00:19:56.660 Somebody else. And of course, that officer was killed a couple of months after by I believe in

00:20:03.800 April by a Hebrew Israelite or some extremist of that sort. And it really,

00:20:11.460 got no play in the press. None. I mean, he's saying this. He brought the family there. So

00:20:15.760 there's some sort of deliberation there, too. So the thing that we're talking about on the podcast

00:20:20.240 that I realized is that we're trying to figure out if the guy's brain is made of cheese or if

00:20:25.920 he's a fabulist. And neither one is good, right? I mean, it could be both, too. And you go through

00:20:33.500 these things over and over and over again. And there comes just like there was a there was a type of this

00:20:39.700 thing with Trump when he would just kind of, you know, BS about everything. And it was just such a

00:20:45.420 fire hose that people stopped kind of fact checking or caring. But Biden, it strikes me as a different

00:20:51.040 thing. They tried to keep up with Trump. This one, they just kind of ignore. And, you know,

00:20:56.960 they're just like, hey, does this really matter very much? And when you have a guy like Rick Santelli

00:21:01.480 on CNBC, the man who kicked off the Tea Party movement with that big speech saying, hey, these

00:21:06.260 are the best job numbers I've seen in God knows how long. Things like that are resonating with

00:21:10.880 Democrats like, you know, let's just let's just go with him. But no one is thinking of a very,

00:21:16.040 very basic bit of arithmetic here. If this is who Joe Biden is now, who thinks that, you know,

00:21:22.000 the guy from the Salvation Army, you know, is that the head of the NSA or something?

00:21:27.560 What is it going to be like in 2028? I mean, good Lord.

00:21:32.340 Oh, no. Steve Krakauer, my executive producer, had a great line this morning. We were exchanging

00:21:36.880 the video and I was we were laughing about this mistake. And he said, I wonder how many Taliban

00:21:41.020 they killed. I mean, Biden was like one step away from asking that of the poor little guy there.

00:21:49.360 Yeah. So I just I just wanted a donation and to play you a Christmas carol. I didn't understand

00:21:54.880 I was going to be. But yeah, you're absolutely right. These things don't tend to get better

00:21:58.680 as time goes on. And I guess we've just decided to ignore that. But listen, fear not America,

00:22:03.920 because we have the solution to this problem. No, it's not Donald Trump and it's not Ron DeSantis.

00:22:08.920 It's not Glenn Youngkin. It's not Kamala Harris. It is John Bolton. John Bolton is going to run for

00:22:17.560 president. He's made it clear. We know because he announced it on Good Morning America. No, wait.

00:22:23.480 Good Morning Britain. Good Morning Britain, which is a delightful show, but it's in Britain.

00:22:31.580 And so there we go. We have two Republicans now officially running for president. John Bolton's

00:22:36.840 in the race. What do we make of that? Oh, my Lord. Not much.

00:22:45.360 It's the rise of the neocons. The neocons are back. We have a little bit of history,

00:22:49.000 John Bolton and I. We all used to work at the news court building together, actually,

00:22:52.900 for a little bit. And he used to be a frequent guest on our show, The Independence, when we were

00:22:56.820 there. But I have no reason whatsoever to believe that there is any constituency desperate to see

00:23:03.200 John Bolton as the Republican nominee for president of the United States, nor do I suspect,

00:23:08.700 and I don't do political prognostication, that there is any way in hell that he could actually win

00:23:15.840 a national election. I'm sure he knows that as well. So one has to imagine that he has some

00:23:21.640 ulterior motive for suggesting that he will run for office, either that or a head injury.

00:23:26.640 One of the two. Or even a primary. There's no way he's going to win a Republican primary. My God.

00:23:30.480 By the way, he too is 74. We can't. Can we get any young blood running for office? Sorry.

00:23:34.420 No. Can we get anybody under the age of maybe 70? That would be terrific.

00:23:40.220 Yeah. I mean, he's from the now or never caucus. That's what's going on there.

00:23:44.060 But there's one positive thing, and this is good for everybody's shows, whether it's this show or

00:23:48.700 the fifth column, is I would love for him to run because I'd love to see him in a debate.

00:23:54.500 I mean, it's obviously he knows he's not going to win because he announces this on Good Afternoon,

00:23:59.220 Bulgaria, wherever the hell he's going to. But it's like an actual run.

00:24:03.100 It's like, as long as you get him on stage with Trump and they worked in the same room

00:24:08.240 together, they did. I mean, particularly all the tension about North Korea, Venezuela,

00:24:13.540 other foreign policy things. I'd love to see that. But that's just for fireworks.

00:24:17.500 Other than that, you know, yeah, I'd love to. That'd be fun.

00:24:20.660 I think let's give a shout out here. He would normalize, re-normalize the use of mustaches in

00:24:26.620 American presidential politics. It's been a really long time. I mean, you look at the old pictures on

00:24:32.180 the walls of the 19th century. It's it's stash after stash and rightly so. So like bring that

00:24:37.960 back. I prefer it to be more of the Bolton porn stash than the Brooklyn man bun stash that I see

00:24:45.460 all around me. However, that's what we're missing. Matt Walsh, wouldn't you prefer to see

00:24:49.580 John Stossel in that lane as as good libertarians? Isn't he your favorite? Absolutely. But he's not a

00:24:56.180 begging, you know, libertarian. So, you know, there's like sort of the Ron Paul Rand Paul

00:25:01.700 lane there, you know, that you go Republican independently. The Green Party, the Libertarian

00:25:07.060 Party, whatever it is. In any event, we'll see how that plays out. It's just there's going, you

00:25:11.800 know, I've referred to this a few times that like Charles C.W. Coca National Review wrote an

00:25:15.920 interesting piece not long ago saying to these other Republicans who want to run, don't, don't

00:25:19.960 say it this way. But he basically said, if your name's not DeSantis or like you're not one of the top,

00:25:25.200 top two, then don't do it because Trump's going to get the nomination if you if there's 10 other

00:25:29.760 Republicans. Right. He's he's got more Republicans in his corner than most of these other, including

00:25:35.400 right now, according to most polls, DeSantis. So if there's a fractured field over there, if it's just

00:25:39.520 the two of them against each other, that's one thing. But if it's Trump versus a fractured field,

00:25:44.340 the same thing could happen has happened in 1516. And if you think John Bolton's the last guy to do it,

00:25:49.740 you're crazy. All these other guys are going to have too big an ego. They're going to throw their hats in

00:25:53.600 the ring. They want to bolster their own name identity. And a lot of them want shows on cable

00:25:59.560 news. It's so pathetic, but they do. And this is what we're in for the next six months. All right.

00:26:04.900 Let me stand you guys by because when we come back, we're going to talk about what's happening to this

00:26:08.260 professor at this university who, with trigger warnings, with like a two minute warning, with

00:26:14.700 like a countdown clock, told the student, the class that she was going to show a picture of

00:26:20.200 Muhammad. What the university has done to this woman, what the one student who led the charge

00:26:25.980 did to this woman is absolutely disgusting. And wokeness is creeping in. As you know, at every

00:26:31.480 college campus, there's plenty of examples about it. So we'll get into it next. More with the fifth

00:26:34.740 column guys straight ahead. Standby. So guys, Hamlin University is in St. Paul, Minnesota,

00:26:45.580 private university founded in 1854, oldest university in Minnesota. In 2021, it was ranked

00:26:51.500 15th in the Midwest among master's universities, according to U.S. News and World Report. And they

00:26:57.820 have a teacher named Erica Lopez Prater. She's an adjunct professor teaching an online class about

00:27:04.360 Islamic art. And she tackles, as the class suggests, Islamic art. Now, she knew that she

00:27:14.000 was going to show this very famous picture that is shown regularly in art history classes of what

00:27:21.480 Muslims consider to be the Prophet Muhammad. And this is verboten for some Muslims. Other Muslims

00:27:28.080 disagree that this is verboten and think it's fine. But of course, we've had all sorts of history,

00:27:32.720 even in our own country, never mind in France with Charlie Hebdo, where people have been killed

00:27:37.180 for drawing Muhammad. So it gets crazy when you go down this route. Now, we live in a country where

00:27:43.440 you're allowed to do that. You're allowed to show it. You're allowed to talk about it. You're allowed

00:27:46.160 to draw it. It's called the First Amendment. We're allowed to could offend people. OK, we generally bank

00:27:53.760 on the fact no one's going to get killed and certainly not fired for showing something that some may find

00:28:00.000 objectionable. But that is regularly shown in classes at the university level. This woman

00:28:05.540 herself says she was shown this picture when she was a graduate student. So what did she do? Did she

00:28:09.840 just pop it up there at random, you know, where some people could be offended? You could make the

00:28:14.340 case that that's OK, too. But she didn't. In the syllabus, she warned images of holy figures,

00:28:19.340 including the Prophet Muhammad and the Buddha would be shown. She asked students to contact her with any

00:28:23.240 concerns if they had them. No one did in the class. She prepared the students, telling them in a few

00:28:29.620 minutes the painting would be displayed in case anyone wanted to leave. According to Daily Mail,

00:28:34.600 it was a two minute warning. Plenty of time for a grown up to stand up and walk out the door.

00:28:40.180 She told The New York Times she spent a few minutes explaining why she was going to show the image,

00:28:44.640 how different religions have depicted the divine and how standards do change over time.

00:28:49.740 I do not want to present the art of Islam as something that is monolithic, she said.

00:28:54.620 And by the way, in the wake of this controversy, various Muslim groups have proven it's not

00:28:58.460 monolithic. They've they've come out to say we've all view this very differently.

00:29:02.280 What did the university do? OK, at first nothing. But then a senior in the class who was presumably

00:29:08.440 subjected to all of those warnings decided this was a problem. Her name her name is Aram

00:29:15.780 Wadatala, a business major, president of the university's Muslim Student Association. You'd

00:29:20.540 think she'd be paying attention to the trigger warnings in the syllabus, in the classroom,

00:29:24.520 et cetera. Here she is. She claims she was blindsided, blindsided, I tell you, by this image

00:29:30.500 after the class ended. She stuck around to voice her discomfort. And here's what she said in a public

00:29:37.520 forum website. Quote, I'm like, this can't be real as a Muslim and a black person. I don't feel like I

00:29:44.440 belong and I don't think I'll ever belong in a community where they don't value me as a member

00:29:49.320 and they don't show the same respect that I show them. And then she gets a bunch of other students

00:29:57.320 not in the class to join her in saying this was an attack on their religion. Yada, yada, yada. The

00:30:06.080 professors fired. I mean, you could have seen it coming. They say this is about a university starved for

00:30:16.860 tuitions in a heavily Muslim area saying, let me bend the knee so nobody pulls their kid or their tuition,

00:30:23.960 even though not all Muslims feel the same about this again. Right. But they've just bent the knee despite the clear

00:30:31.200 First Amendment implications of that disastrous decision. What do you guys think of it?

00:30:36.500 Beyond the First Amendment, I mean, I'm going to leave the First Amendment out of this, you know,

00:30:39.480 as a private college here. There is a million problems with this and one doesn't even almost

00:30:45.420 know where to begin. I mean, first of all, you said, Megan, this student was given all the warnings

00:30:50.980 and apparently she didn't pay attention or was asleep at the wheel. I disagree. I think she heard all of

00:30:56.440 them. And I think she set this up very deliberately. I mean, her response is exactly what made me think this

00:31:03.820 when she says, I'm like, this can't be real. It can't be real that in an art history class where you've been

00:31:10.440 told you're going to see a 14th century image that includes Muhammad, that you saw one. It can't be real.

00:31:17.660 And then says, as a Muslim, a black person, I don't know what this has to do with race. What does this have to do with

00:31:22.080 being black? So you can tell she's going through the playbook already as a Muslim and as a black

00:31:27.480 person, a black person, you know, who is a Christian would not have any response to a picture of

00:31:32.220 Muhammad. I don't feel like I belong. You're the president of the Muslim Association and the entire

00:31:38.320 administration acceded to your completely lunatic demand. One person. So when all these news stories

00:31:43.700 say Muslim students, plural, there was one in the class. There was one who objected because, you know,

00:31:50.760 it's very easy to make, to make hay out of all this stuff. The one thing I will say that is

00:31:55.040 incredibly positive, there is a very, very positive thing that has come out of this.

00:31:58.900 It is not for the professor who is an adjunct, you know, essentially has no, you know, they didn't

00:32:03.900 renew her contract. Basically they, for all intents and purposes, fired her. The response has been great

00:32:10.080 beyond what the university did, which was disgusting and shameful. One person, by the way, who said that it

00:32:16.780 was undeniably Islamophobic. What happened was somebody at the university and get a load of this

00:32:23.700 person, Dr. David Everett, who's Dr. David Everett. According to New York times, he is the associate

00:32:28.960 vice president of inclusive excellence. What? I mean, this is the type of nonsense bullshit that

00:32:35.980 we're dealing with here. The vice associate vice president. Now imagine in that chain, there's

00:32:40.780 presidents, you know, viceroys of inclusive excellence said that this is Islamophobe. But

00:32:48.160 as you pointed out, the world does not agree, including people in the Muslim world. A number

00:32:52.580 of Muslims have come forward and say, this is actually ridiculous. The idea is a kind of white

00:32:59.640 left-wing academic idea that there's no, there's a full-on prohibition of depictions of Muhammad.

00:33:06.640 That's not true. It's not in the Quran. There's some hadiths that say things about this, but not

00:33:11.040 explicitly. And in certain parts of the Muslim world, particularly in Iran, you see a lot of

00:33:14.920 this stuff. And there was an Iranian professor at Duke who said, I brought, I left during the

00:33:19.640 Iran-Iraq war and I brought an image of Muhammad with me and it's framed in my office. He actually

00:33:24.560 spoke about this. And also the New York times did a very good piece about it. That was clearly

00:33:29.160 saying, this is kind of crazy. So you have a number of people that are saying, pushing back on

00:33:34.440 this stuff. When I think about two or three years ago, no one would have said anything.

00:33:37.740 And I think the pushback here is, is actually, is actually pretty, pretty heartening.

00:33:41.400 Michael, I have to disagree with you though, um, about the Islamophobia. I think this was

00:33:46.160 an example of Islamophobia as have a lot of these, uh, similar, um, uh, uh, examples have been,

00:33:54.000 which is to say it is fear that Muslims are going to blow you up. Sure. That is preventing people

00:34:00.440 from, uh, or like giving them a, a, a, a, a cowardice of dealing with this. Um, and you're

00:34:06.480 right that it's a, the New York times piece was pretty good. What was, what was missing from that

00:34:10.980 New York times piece? Um, well, it was, it was one click in, but it was one click in. They did

00:34:17.780 actually show the image. I did see it somewhere else where the face, I swear to God, the face of

00:34:21.920 Muhammad was pixelated, pixelated as if it was, uh, I found it online. It was on Twitter. So they had to

00:34:28.620 click one in, but they, but they had to click one in. Um, but also on the, on the, in the print

00:34:32.560 edition, cause this is in the Sunday paper, they had five pictures of the online story has six

00:34:37.420 pictures, all of different people, but the New York times itself won't show unadulterated in its

00:34:43.260 pages, uh, any image depictions of Muhammad. They had an article. This is right around the time of

00:34:49.440 the Charlie Hebdo massacre in 2015. They had an article about the history of a statue that stood for a half a

00:34:54.860 century on a courthouse in lower Manhattan. That statue was of Muhammad because we have

00:35:00.020 statuary and representations of Muhammad. It's actually a sign of respect. There's one up in

00:35:04.060 the Supreme court, the United States Supreme court to this day, um, New York times policies that they

00:35:08.120 would not show a statue of that they did. They had an article about this statue and its history

00:35:12.420 and about how, uh, about 50 years ago it was taken down and sent to a warehouse in New Jersey or

00:35:17.700 something. Um, and it was taken down, uh, out of exaggerated sense of like, well, we don't want to

00:35:22.140 offend anybody. Okay. What's an interesting story about local history. They didn't show even a

00:35:27.040 historical archive photo of the statue. Um, a couple of months later, they ran a piece obviously

00:35:32.560 in the art section about, uh, uh, depiction. I think it was Pope Benedict, um, uh, him being

00:35:38.440 displayed, uh, by condoms, right? It was a condom art of the Pope. They could display that without any

00:35:44.040 problems at all. And the reader's representative was invited to, uh, explain the apparent discrepancy.

00:35:49.640 You won't show, uh, an existing statue that was not intended to offend that lived historically in

00:35:55.460 New York city in an article about that, but you will show the Pope Benedict of the condoms as

00:36:00.220 father Guido Sarducci famously said. Um, and, uh, and they said, well, um, uh, you know, that

00:36:05.580 communities, uh, take great offense. And so we have to be, um, we have to be subject to, you know,

00:36:11.980 respectful of their desires. This is the heckler's veto. The New York times has, even though this is a

00:36:18.140 very good article and everyone should go to read it, the New York times has contributed to the

00:36:21.680 atmosphere that we have in this country, which is that in professional media, with the exception of

00:36:26.700 a few explicitly ideological places, there is a taboo against showing depictions of Muhammad,

00:36:33.340 even though Muhammad was a really existing human being. He's not like a person that was invented and

00:36:38.880 did Noah really have an arc kind of situation. No, it's Muhammad. He lived. Uh, and there were actual

00:36:43.900 depictions in an art history context and others. Um, and we are exercising a taboo that the New York

00:36:49.460 times, which is the leading newspaper in this country still, for some reason, um, has been an

00:36:53.760 integral part of, and until we break that taboo, I'm afraid that Charlie Hebdo, which has an amazing

00:36:59.220 cover this week. Um, I look forward to, to Megan showing that one later on. Um, Charlie Hebdo is going

00:37:07.620 to have a huge target, continue to have a huge target on its back because it's one of the only, uh,

00:37:12.360 publications in the broader Western world that has balls anymore. Well, to your point, um, to your

00:37:18.940 point, FY we, we don't gratuitously show things that, you know, are going to be deeply offensive

00:37:24.360 to others on our show either. And I never have, but this is relevant and we will show it. And if

00:37:30.000 people are offended, they don't have to look, but this is the image that she showed in class that

00:37:34.560 again is shown in virtually every art history class. One, one, um, professor of Islamic art at the

00:37:41.140 university of Michigan supported this teacher showing it saying to study Islamic art without

00:37:46.180 this, without the, it's the compendium of Chronicles image would be like not teaching

00:37:51.220 Michelangelo's David, right? Like this is a big one for this particular subject matter. And people like

00:37:58.780 me and people like you and people like the New York times and people like this university can't be

00:38:03.480 shamed out of covering the news properly or teaching our history properly by the heckler.

00:38:11.140 As you point out, no matter how rabid they may be, but they have been. And by the way,

00:38:15.920 care of course is on the wrong side of this as they always are. But there's been this other, uh,

00:38:20.600 Muslim group called the Muslim public affairs council that came out and said to the point you guys were

00:38:25.560 making the, the, the, you know, silver lining, this painting is not Islamophobic. It was commissioned

00:38:31.380 by a 14th century Muslim King in order to honor the prophet depicting the first Quranic revelation

00:38:35.880 from the angel Gabriel and saying, um, that the, okay, as a Muslim organization, we recognize the

00:38:42.940 validity and ubiquity of an Islamic viewpoint that discourages or forbids any depictions of the

00:38:47.700 prophet, especially if done distastefully. However, we also recognize the historical reality that other

00:38:53.000 viewpoints have existed and that there have been some Muslims, including, and especially Shia Muslims

00:38:57.280 who have no qualms in pictorially representing the prophet whatsoever. And they go on from there.

00:39:03.100 So there, it is nice to hear this. They, they came out and said, this professor ought to be thanked

00:39:07.700 for her role in educating students. All these academic freedom defenders are coming out, which

00:39:11.920 really is first amendment freedom. That's what they're talking about. It's not, no, it's not a

00:39:14.680 government issue. It's not state, uh, trying to silence speech here, but it's free speech is a

00:39:19.880 principle we have in this country because we're Americans and it manifests in the crackdown on academic

00:39:25.780 freedom where speech of a certain kind of silenced, usually of the right, usually of the kind deemed

00:39:30.780 offensive. If we're going to start saying offensive speech, even if it's really offensive to a large

00:39:36.240 group of people cannot be used in the classroom. We're done as an American experiment. We're done.

00:39:42.800 I mean, I want to add a little bit here, but you all have spoken passionately and eloquently to,

00:39:49.100 to all of the salient points here. I think the, the, the one thing I want to underscore is just how

00:39:54.080 bizarre it is to read media accounts of scandals like these. And I use scandal in a very, there'd

00:40:00.300 be asterisks seize if I, if I could, if I could put them into my speech. Um, the, the thing that

00:40:07.060 always startles me is how you will never find a specific, um, uh, restatement of the offensive

00:40:13.720 thing that was said. You won't find the picture of the offensive thing that was displayed. It's this

00:40:18.580 amorphous crime, which makes it very obvious to me that the injury, the particular injury real or

00:40:24.180 imagined isn't the point. The particular offense isn't really the point. The censure, the excommunication

00:40:29.580 is the point, the climate, the atmosphere of, of fear and uncertainty is the point. And, and I've been

00:40:37.600 reading recently, um, I've been rereading Emerson, uh, because his essay self-reliance and something

00:40:43.240 occurred to me yesterday, just about the nature of fundamentalism and cowardice and cynical indifference,

00:40:49.920 um, in all of these institutions. And the fact that those three things really are like the mutual

00:40:56.280 enemies of all progress and all intellectual freedom. And the reality is that, that campus

00:41:02.380 environments are awash in this sort of fear and uncertainty about what might get you in trouble.

00:41:08.460 And the most dangerous thing anyone can do who finds themselves in these environments,

00:41:13.920 regardless of their politics, because I think it is, it is, it's conventional to regard this as,

00:41:19.640 Oh, look at wokeness run amok. These are people kind of destroying their fellow travelers. Um,

00:41:25.120 and it is not as though there aren't examples of conservative, politically conservative people

00:41:30.740 investing in the same sort of tactics. Um, but the most dangerous thing that you can do is self-censor,

00:41:37.200 is not say things that, you know, to be true is not be willing to, to look at things that might be

00:41:43.480 potentially offensive in a context like this, to not explore ideas that might be deemed controversial

00:41:50.380 or outside of the mainstream. Like that is, that is literally what the entire project of learning of

00:41:58.700 knowledge creation is all about overturning sacred cows, overturning, uh, old previously held beliefs.

00:42:06.300 Um, essentially committing blasphemy on a pretty regular basis within the scientific and academic

00:42:13.180 establishments. Like it's, it's absolutely vital. And that is what people do not understand, um, about

00:42:19.060 free speech about as, as both the legal, uh, kind of architecture of free speech in terms of the protection

00:42:25.320 from the government, but certainly with respect to free speech as a cultural norm, as an attitude that we all

00:42:31.640 adopt because we have a deep appreciation for how essential this cultural, uh, valence is to protecting

00:42:39.880 any semblance of freedom in the long run. If I could add just a quick, as a point to that, Camille

00:42:45.500 mentioned two words that are really important here. Um, one is fundamentalist and the one is blasphemy.

00:42:51.560 We are, you know, acceding to a fundamentalist view of Islam. If you accede to this demand,

00:42:56.680 this is something that has fundamentalist roots. It's a Wahhabist kind of concept. And as has been

00:43:02.100 pointed out, it's not across the board on these things. And it's not, you know, Shia, uh, Sunni,

00:43:08.000 Sufi, for instance, everyone's looking at this, uh, stuff differently, but what the blasphemy is also

00:43:14.160 important too, because even if it offended everyone, I don't care if it offended a hundred percent of

00:43:20.320 people, a hundred percent of Muslims, it doesn't matter. We professors, other students, people

00:43:26.120 trying to learn people in any environment should not be subjected to the dictates of somebody else's

00:43:33.600 religious blasphemy. I don't have to sit there and say that's blaspheming for me. So therefore you

00:43:39.580 can't hear it. That is a reason why we have these separations of church and state. And, you know,

00:43:44.220 for instance, if I was somebody who said, I am very offended by Robert Mapplethorpe,

00:43:48.900 or I'm very offended by Andre Serrano's piss Christ. And we cannot have this in the classroom.

00:43:55.020 Not only can we not have this, if we do have this, the teacher who did show that for a very sort of

00:44:00.020 banal reason, because they're trying to teach the history of something, not trying to proselytize,

00:44:04.100 that person then gets fired. And then people in the administration pile upon them and say,

00:44:09.280 they are a racist, they're an Islamophobe, or in this case, they're, um, you know, religiously

00:44:14.900 phobic. We don't say Christophobic or anything, Catholic phobic,

00:44:17.500 but that doesn't happen because we don't apply blasphemy laws and blasphemy rules to people

00:44:24.740 who don't adhere to that religion. So your blasphemy laws are your own business. Keep them

00:44:30.720 away from me. So true. But of course there's an element in this case, it may be financial,

00:44:37.040 as I pointed out, because the university wants, this is a heavily Muslim area. Um, but there also

00:44:43.140 may be a fear element, you know, look at what just happened to Salman Rushdie, right? It's not,

00:44:48.240 that wasn't his sin is, you know, depicting an image of the prophet Muhammad, but he wrote that book,

00:44:53.320 um, that obviously has been deemed deeply problematic. And there was a fatwa issued on

00:44:58.860 him and he was just attacked. And the latest news on him was, um, the book was, by the way,

00:45:03.200 was the satanic verses. Um, he's blind in one eye. He has three serious wounds in his neck.

00:45:09.760 One hand is incapacitated because the nerves in his arm were cut and had about 15 more wounds in his

00:45:15.040 chest and torso. So it was a brutal attack. It was attacked by a man who rushed the stage and

00:45:20.100 stabbed him repeatedly, uh, identified as 24 year old Hadi Mattar affair for New Jersey,

00:45:25.860 who's now pleaded not guilty to a second degree attempted murder. But I mean, that this is what

00:45:32.000 people are worried about. I don't have to tell you, but didn't you in one hand go to the,

00:45:34.960 did you go to the draw of the prophet Muhammad day? I can't remember.

00:45:38.140 One of you guys did something. I might've done something like that. Why are you paying attention

00:45:42.900 to this, Megan? This is the Streisand effect, but just saying like the reason I know Pam Geller,

00:45:49.980 she's very controversial and so on, but like, there's a reason people feel the need to do this

00:45:53.700 because it's standing up for a bedrock American principle to offend, to be free to offend.

00:46:00.240 And it's also the Spartacus idea, you know, at the end of Spartacus, everyone says,

00:46:03.780 I am Spartacus when everybody's Spartacus, nobody's Spartacus. And that's what you hope

00:46:07.800 happens in situations like this. If we all say this, if we all come out in defense of Sunday,

00:46:12.960 but if everybody's kind of wavering and, you know, Salman Rushdie isn't dealing with this since

00:46:17.240 1989, Valentine's day, 1989, the fatwa was introduced to the world and they have never

00:46:24.000 retracted it, the Iranians. And so, you know, there's a cash prize for killing him there.

00:46:29.420 You know, he's had security for most of his life. He gave up that security recently saying,

00:46:33.800 you know, I want to live a normal life, but you know, there was a cartoonist that nobody's ever

00:46:37.400 heard of who drew a teacup, a picture of a teacup that said, I am Muhammad. And it was a joke.

00:46:42.960 A woman named Molly Norris, she's disappeared. She changed her name. She disappeared. There was some

00:46:49.040 suggestion that she was under threat. I don't know how true that was. There was, you know, we had,

00:46:53.640 when I was at Reason Magazine, Matt was there too. And we had a visit from law enforcement who said,

00:46:58.280 you know, maybe you don't want to talk about this. Maybe you don't want to do this.

00:47:02.040 I mean, look, the point is, is that it's always going to be, you know, I mean, from Salman Rushdie

00:47:08.520 today, the heckler's veto is kind of the violence veto. It's not even the heckler. And saying,

00:47:14.700 if you keep talking about this, is it worth it? And enough people make that threat and you cut off an

00:47:20.040 entire area of inquiry, you cut off an entire area of discussion and the fanatics win and everybody

00:47:25.800 else loses. And, you know, this is another example of that.

00:47:29.340 It's really disturbing. They, they're not going to reverse the decision. They're talking about their

00:47:33.780 students' safety. They think they made this decision in the name of safety of the students

00:47:38.360 on campus. Of course, it's exactly the opposite because they're talking about the kind of safety

00:47:42.780 this girl is complaining about, how she shouldn't be subjected to any ideas that she finds offensive.

00:47:48.040 Great discussion. The fifth column guys, stay with me. Plenty more to get to. Stand by.

00:47:52.140 The Golden Globes are coming back tonight. Did you know that? We'll get into it. And don't forget,

00:47:55.960 folks, you can find the Megan Kelly show live on Sirius XM Triumph channel 111 every weekday

00:48:02.380 at noon east. The full video show and clips, fun clips by subscribing to our YouTube channel,

00:48:08.620 youtube.com slash Megan Kelly. If you prefer an audio podcast, follow us, download us on Apple,

00:48:14.780 Spotify, Pandora, Stitcher, or wherever you get your podcasts. By the way, I see your notes. It's very

00:48:18.700 annoying for some reason on Apple podcasts. There's like repeats in the show. We don't know

00:48:23.020 why it's happening. We, we submit it to them clean and it apparently is only an Apple thing. So,

00:48:28.160 you know, if you want to avoid it, you can go to Stitcher or whatever. Uh, but yeah,

00:48:32.060 that's annoying. We hear you and we're looking into it guys. So not totally unrelated to our last

00:48:40.340 discussion is what's happening to Jordan Peterson. Um, it's, and of course it's coming to a university

00:48:47.540 or profession or, you know, classroom near you. So if you don't think you're affected or your kids

00:48:54.740 are going to be affected by this nonsense, think again, just as a, as an aside, the university of

00:48:59.360 Michigan just came out of spending $18 million a year on DEI programs, 18 million. They have DEI

00:49:06.620 advisors in the dozens now to, to DEI a fi everything science phys ed, you name it. It's

00:49:15.280 all the entire system now is created not to help your child learn or become a critical thinker,

00:49:21.060 but to think about everything through a racial or a trans or a, you know, wokeified lens. It's

00:49:28.180 deeply problematic. Jordan Peterson, the latest example, this is upsetting just as California passes

00:49:35.560 this regulation that it's doctors out there aren't going to be able to dispense COVID misinformation.

00:49:41.800 Um, if, if a doctor in California now it's sort of says something that's anti what Pfizer would say

00:49:46.220 about the vaccine, he could potentially be in trouble. And Jordan Peterson though, in Canada

00:49:50.220 is going through this in a way that is too familiar. Um, he's of course a famous author, famous

00:49:56.620 podcaster, pundit. Um, he's just sort of become a cultural commentator, but he's also a hero to a lot

00:50:03.640 of young men who feel adrift in a society that spent so much time lifting up women that they,

00:50:09.640 in too many cases have aired in putting down men and left many of them feeling untethered,

00:50:15.940 unhopeful and uncared for. And Jordan speaks to them very effectively. So the Ontario college of

00:50:22.820 psychologists, this is the profession's governing body in Ontario where he is. He is a, he is a

00:50:28.300 psychologist has launched an investigation of Jordan Peterson to examine complaints about his

00:50:34.740 comments on Twitter and on the Joe Rogan podcast. I kid you not. They're investigating this. Okay.

00:50:43.120 What did he say? Did he say, Oh, my patients are dumb asses. You know, something like that,

00:50:47.240 where you'd be like, Oh, that's not good. You shouldn't do that. Right? No, they're mad that

00:50:52.680 he called now Elliot page, Ellen page, the name she went by professionally for her entire acting

00:50:58.520 career. And by which we all know her, nobody knows who Elliot pages called her Ellen. And he called her

00:51:03.820 the pronoun her instead of him. He called Justin Trudeau, the Canadian prime minister, a prick for

00:51:10.720 this. He gets investigated by his professional board. It's incredible. It's incredible. He, um,

00:51:16.700 went on Joe Rogan, as I said, hold on, it goes on. He also called, uh, Justin Trudeau a puppet.

00:51:22.660 They didn't like that. A couple of other examples that are worth mentioning. He objected to a sports

00:51:28.720 illustrated swimsuit cover of a plus size model saying, sorry, not beautiful. And no amount of

00:51:33.920 authoritarian tolerance is going to change that. It's not nice. It's his opinion. He's entitled to it.

00:51:38.980 No, he could lose his license now for saying that. And a couple of other random things they are now

00:51:47.260 demanding. Two things that he makes the following public statement. Imagine how infuriating this would

00:51:54.480 be, right? If your governing board of podcast authority or authorities told you, you must say

00:52:01.720 the following sentence. It's a quote they want him to repeat. I may have lacked professionalism in public

00:52:08.220 statements. And during a January 25th podcast appearance. Number two, they have mandated that

00:52:15.420 he take a remedial course in social media communications with a board issued therapist.

00:52:25.440 Oh my God. We're there. China, Canada's China. It's happening. And he of course has refused giving them

00:52:34.260 the big middle finger, which yay. Good. Please stand firm. But he could lose his license because

00:52:42.660 of this. I'm horrified. What? I mean, canary in the coal mine. Canada is always ahead of us a little

00:52:47.880 bit on the weird wokeness overreach. What do you think? It's not even it's not the first time in

00:52:53.040 Canada's recent history where they came across this. It's actually pursuant to our previous

00:52:57.380 segment. Guy named Ezra Levant, who's a conservative commentator. There used to be the publisher of the

00:53:02.140 Western Standard magazine, got in the crosshairs of the, I believe it's called the Human Rights

00:53:08.540 Commission. Moynihan, you might remember this. That's what it's called. Yeah. They have a Human

00:53:12.600 Rights Commission that will pull you to have a secret hearing. So there's a governmental or quasi

00:53:18.800 governmental body to have a secret hearing about your offense. And his case was related to making

00:53:25.900 comments about Muslims and the Prophet Muhammad. They published the image of the Prophet Muhammad

00:53:30.540 after the cartoon controversy in 2006. He ended up writing a piece. He leaked out what happened in

00:53:37.320 the secret meeting on online. And and it caused enough of an outroar at at the Human Rights Commission

00:53:44.320 that he was able to sidestep the worst possible sanction of it. But, you know, every day you were

00:53:49.960 talking earlier, Megan, about how the First Amendment, damn it, we're America. Absolutely correct.

00:53:55.060 Because we are cousins to the Canadians in so many different ways. They don't have a First Amendment.

00:54:00.580 It shows really badly. It showed during the trucker protests, as did a lot of really kind

00:54:07.400 of authoritarian differences between the country. Sadly, we're we're aping too many of those here

00:54:11.940 in this country as well. The Biden administration is trying to. It's awful. You're imagine that you have

00:54:17.840 a professional licensing board similar to the previous case. That's not one of his patients has

00:54:22.860 complained. He's a clinical psychologist and the best stuff in his books, by the way, have to do with

00:54:28.320 his clinical practice, not necessarily throwing, you know, rhetorical grenades into the tent of

00:54:34.120 wokeness. It's just him making talking, you know, insightfully about what happens and observations that

00:54:40.500 he gleans from talking to people and trying to help them. None of his patients complained. Why is a

00:54:46.140 professional board saying a damn thing? If there's anyone who's supposed to teach a remedial course

00:54:50.840 in Twitter communications, it might be the guy with probably the most Twitter followers of anybody

00:54:56.860 in Canada. I don't know. Like maybe he's got something to say that he goes a little bit overboard

00:55:01.220 sometimes, but he's clearly used social media to create an entire industry there. It's horrifying that

00:55:08.840 they've done this and not surprising. And I'm glad and not surprised that he's telling them to go

00:55:13.780 shove it. But that's the problem. He said to your point, who tell me who, who complained,

00:55:19.780 who specifically, what exactly, who exactly was harmed, how, when, to what degree, and how is that

00:55:26.620 harm measured? And he says, it's difficult to communicate with as many people as I do and to

00:55:31.100 say anything of substance without rubbing at least a few of people, a few people the wrong way now and

00:55:35.920 then, of course. And he says, these criticisms have nothing to do with my work in psychology.

00:55:39.680 They're critiques of my public comments on, on cultural, political, and social topics,

00:55:44.600 all of which you appear to find insufficiently leftist. It's, it's no coincidence, right? They're

00:55:51.280 not pouring over the remarks of somebody who's out there saying the most woke, radical, of course,

00:55:56.860 racist stuff that we hear out of the BLM crowd. That's no problem. That'll get a complete pass.

00:56:01.640 But Jordan Peterson gets targeted. Why? To make an example of, right? To instill fear.

00:56:06.160 I mean, the purpose is, I mean, Matt, Matt just pointed this out, is that he's possibly the most

00:56:12.420 followed Twitter account in Canada. So therein lies the problem. If he had 800 followers, I don't

00:56:18.120 think they'd really, they'd really mind. I mean, it's not as if they have some consistent standard.

00:56:22.960 I mean, if there's standards at all, I mean, the, the psychologists, college or whatever it is,

00:56:28.920 that this governing body that says you cannot practice and you shall not be able to practice,

00:56:33.840 if you have these kinds of opinions that we think are odd or off or not, you know, on our side of

00:56:39.920 the issue. And one of those includes calling the prime minister a prick, whereas it is totally fine

00:56:47.260 for the prime minister to be the prime minister. When every time I open the paper, there's a new

00:56:52.400 picture of him in blackface, but I suppose that's okay. Let's not apply these standards evenly to anyone

00:56:57.540 at all. But, but the ridiculous thing was, I mean, by the way, Jordan Peterson has a right to appeal

00:57:02.360 this. He did not appeal. He, he skipped that and collected his $200 and said, I'm suing you,

00:57:08.280 which is the exact appropriate way of dealing with this. If there is a body that says you can

00:57:13.960 or cannot practice your profession based on these political views. I mean, Matt's point is right.

00:57:19.800 It is, you know, moments like this that you do really appreciate the first amendment. It's,

00:57:25.640 it's, it's moments like this in Canada. It's moments like you often see in the United Kingdom

00:57:29.940 where somebody has an, you know, an errant tweet or not even an errant tweet, just something that

00:57:34.780 somebody finds offensive. They report to the police and the police show up at their door

00:57:38.440 and say, can you step outside? And did you write this on Twitter? There is something totalitarian

00:57:45.660 about that. And then you make it worse. And how do you make it worse and more totalitarian than you

00:57:50.540 could ever imagine? There's a film I just, I just watched from 2018 called The Trial, and it is made up

00:57:55.340 entirely of archival footage from a trial in 1930 in the Soviet Union of, of economists who were accused

00:58:01.060 of, of being wreckers of the Soviet economy. And there is that moment, as you explain, Megan, where

00:58:06.560 to, to free themselves, they have to step up to the microphone and read a statement. And you can see it

00:58:13.200 in their eyes that it's killing them to do so. But it's the only way that they can do so without the,

00:58:18.900 you know, regime killing them. Now, this is obviously not that, but you're killing somebody's career

00:58:23.380 and to make them do that. Who sits down and says, I don't like this guy's views. Let's convene a quorum

00:58:29.260 of people in our society and say, hey, guys, do you guys hate Jordan Peterson too? Let's go after him.

00:58:35.600 Imagine what goes through a sick mind, somebody who needs a psychologist to look at them, I suppose,

00:58:42.020 to go after somebody who they just disagree with. It's repulsive.

00:58:46.520 It kind of reminds me of, by the way, Canadian Debbie. I don't know how you're surviving up there,

00:58:51.220 Canadian Debbie. You're as offensive as Jordan Peterson, my producer. She's correcting me that

00:58:58.060 he didn't call, he didn't call Trudeau a prick. It was his advisor. It was the Trudeau advisor.

00:59:02.660 He called Trudeau a puppet, whatever. The point is, this reminds me of, I do hits in the UK on GB

00:59:09.800 News with my pal, Dan Wooden. And the rules are different over there when it comes to speech and

00:59:14.620 journalism. And they actually do police you. You're like, you have to like, make sure you're

00:59:20.140 offering exactly the right amount of other sideness if you're the anchor over there. Like,

00:59:24.480 who cares? Why can't you have a Fox News and an MSNBC over in Great Britain? Well, you can't.

00:59:29.180 Even on sort of the more right wing channel, you better make sure that you have the left wing

00:59:33.900 voices represented or you're going to be in trouble with the government over. I mean, it's bizarre.

00:59:39.140 And this is why and how one of the ways that Meghan Markle got Piers Morgan basically fired.

00:59:45.300 And it's in the news this week because she went on with Oprah. She said the royal family

00:59:50.740 was essentially racist because they had concerns about the darkness of her potential babies or

00:59:57.300 upcoming baby's skin color. And Piers came out and said, I don't believe you. I think you're

01:00:04.520 a liar. You lied about that. And I don't believe the mental health story that they ignored your

01:00:08.960 concerns. I don't believe any of this.

01:00:10.540 She complained to their government regulators. And then the TV channel said, Piers, you have

01:00:17.740 to apologize for this. You're fired. And he walked out. And he's saying right now, the wake of now,

01:00:23.000 Harry saying we never accused anybody of racism. That's not what we were at, what actually happened.

01:00:27.780 They're not racist. He's like, where do I go to get my job back? But the greater point is just

01:00:32.440 government trying to force you to say something a certain way, right, or get down on bended knee,

01:00:40.520 because you've chosen to say it your way, whether it's Canada or Great Britain. We're not talking

01:00:45.020 about China. We're not talking about Afghanistan, right? This is not Saudi Arabia. These are, as you

01:00:49.540 point out, like our kiss and cousins. It's it's too close to home. And as I say, on the DEI front,

01:00:58.820 now that it's I don't know if it's a majority, but many, many American colleges are requiring

01:01:05.300 students to take these DEI, quote, anti-racism or social justice courses, which reinforce this same

01:01:11.520 kind of thinking and performance art. Just as an example, at Georgetown, all undergraduates must now

01:01:16.040 take two, quote, engaging diversity courses. At Davidson College, the requirement goes under the

01:01:21.740 title of justice, equality and community. Students have to fulfill it by taking courses like racial

01:01:25.660 capitalism or reproduction and queering performance. One more Northern Arizona University,

01:01:32.360 if your kid goes there, their general education curriculum requires nine credit hours of diversity

01:01:38.160 perspectives, including a unit on intersectional identities. I could go on. There's a whole list

01:01:45.160 of other colleges who have fired professors for not being sufficiently woke, for opposing affirmative

01:01:50.760 action, for criticizing the term anti-racist as actually being racist and so on. This is like it's

01:01:58.220 everywhere. And has been for some time, too, by the way. It's unfortunate to say I'm just,

01:02:04.480 you know, just a quick, quick thing is I had to do this when I was in college. I had to take two as

01:02:08.440 a history major, two diversity history courses. And the beginning of my career is a complete and utter

01:02:14.520 pain in the ass. I made the argument that Japan, like a course about Japan is diverse, but the modern

01:02:20.640 Japanese empire. And they're like, no, that's not what we mean. So sorry, Camille, go ahead.

01:02:23.960 Well, no, I mean, the appropriate response to any such mandate is to get into the course and to say

01:02:32.660 what you think and to be honest, to be candid. And by so doing, be incredibly disruptive, I suppose.

01:02:39.940 It's worth bearing in mind that we have many of the same kinds of licensing institutions here in

01:02:46.220 the United States. And yes, they can be a vector for all sorts of nightmarish awfulness. One wonders

01:02:53.840 like what they ought to exist for. And it's kind of like beyond a perfunctory rubber stamp that someone

01:03:00.740 actually secured a degree. I'm not sure that I would like those things to exist. I mean, one story

01:03:06.380 that I'm not sure I've ever told in public is that my wife and I were doing, you know, marital

01:03:12.240 counseling as people do like we're fine. We love each other, et cetera. But we had this woman who

01:03:18.220 was our, our marital counselor and I would never report her to the board for this. But in the course

01:03:25.200 of our conversations, she discovered that I had unusual politics for someone who happens to look

01:03:31.860 like me. And at some point begins to interrogate my views on diversity, equity, inclusion, et cetera,

01:03:39.380 and suggests explicitly, or at least asks, if I think that the reason I have trouble accepting

01:03:46.840 the, the kind of importance and significance of white supremacy as a force in my life and in society

01:03:53.660 is not because of some, uh, uh, kind of inborn, uh, white supremacist ideas that I've adopted

01:04:01.460 myself.

01:04:02.380 Wow.

01:04:03.380 And this is a marriage counselor. My wife isn't complaining about these views.

01:04:08.840 She's being polygated into this, into this context. Now, of course I wouldn't report her

01:04:14.720 because I don't think that's appropriate. Um, I don't want her to necessarily lose her job,

01:04:18.940 but if anyone came to me and asked, do you think this woman would be a great marriage counselor for,

01:04:24.080 for me and my wife? What do you suspect my answer would be? I paid for that hour. I didn't pay for

01:04:29.220 any more after that, but I paid for that hour. Um, and I think that's the appropriate way for

01:04:33.840 these things to be decided. It is, it is imperative to keep that sort of thing in mind because there

01:04:37.820 are so many instances where people say, oh, you know, there's not enough fairness in social media

01:04:42.080 and in all these other contexts. What we need is some sort of fairness doctrine for Twitter,

01:04:46.480 for Facebook. We need some agency to come in and ensure that conservatives, that libertarians

01:04:51.700 are appropriately represented in these contexts. And that solution will not work. At some point,

01:04:56.600 the abuse will happen. It is a vector of attack and the only protection for a culture of free speech.

01:05:02.820 The only way to safeguard it is to practice it and insist on it. And yes, when, when necessary,

01:05:08.960 you take it to the mat, you take people to court, you do what Dr. Peterson is doing in this particular

01:05:14.200 case. Um, because it is unconscionable compelled speech is, are you kidding me? Yeah.

01:05:20.400 It's about conditioning, right? I mean, isn't that the whole point, Megan, you, you brought up,

01:05:24.660 um, your favorite person. And I know I listen to the show and I'm just like, I don't know if I can

01:05:28.680 listen to this where she loves Megan Markle so much. And so this thing about Megan Markle,

01:05:32.880 you know, the regulator in the UK is called Ofcom and Jeremy Clarkson, whose old brand is that he's

01:05:38.760 a dick, right? His whole point. He used to be the host of Top Gear. He has a calm in the sun. And he

01:05:43.800 wrote this very funny column of Megan Markle, um, which had an illusion. I want to talk about this.

01:05:48.640 Yeah. Keep going. Yeah. He alluded to, uh, something in game of Thrones, you know,

01:05:52.560 take her head naked and you throw, throw excrement at her. And it's a scene in game of Thrones.

01:05:57.420 Shame, shame, shame. And it's a joke and that's his brand and that's who he is. And you know,

01:06:03.540 the conditioning aspect of it, and this is not even people even notice in the UK, I always do when

01:06:08.480 I'm reading this stuff is they in the news story say how many complaints that Ofcom got.

01:06:13.320 Ofcom got 6,000 complaints about this television story. This day, I mean, that doesn't happen in

01:06:19.740 America. There's, there's no in like, people don't say, Oh my God, I have to go to some government

01:06:24.040 agency and complain about, you know, a mean kind of, uh, you know, uh, article in the newspaper.

01:06:31.460 That's the thing about Jordan Peterson and all of this stuff is to condition people to not speak

01:06:36.240 or when they do speak condition others to report them. And that's really, really, really kind of

01:06:42.000 totalitarian in its basic nature. That, that whole thing with that columnist was, no, it wasn't a

01:06:47.720 nice piece, but I watched game of Thrones. So I understood the reference immediately as you did,

01:06:50.960 right. It was, it was, it was classic scene at a game of Thrones where, uh, they did that to this

01:06:55.780 one actress, well, to this one character. He, he doesn't, he's not saying he actually calling for

01:07:00.400 that actually to be done to Megan Markle. He's saying, this is how much I loathe her that I, that I

01:07:04.540 would pleasure. I would take pleasure in something like that. Um, and so like I, to me, the reason,

01:07:10.180 one of the many reasons I can't stand this person, um, it, her is, I love derailing the show by

01:07:17.240 bringing her up. But seriously, one of the reasons is, do you know the amount of shit I have taken

01:07:26.180 in my career as a public figure? You know, whether it's from being on the wrong, from being at Fox

01:07:30.740 News, from being on the wrong side of Trump, from upsetting Vladimir Putin for a time, from being on

01:07:35.700 the wrong side of Steve Bannon, from being on the wrong side of NBC, from being on the wrong side of

01:07:39.680 Fox News. Do you have any idea, like the amount of media ink, those entities I just mentioned can

01:07:47.600 control, right? And the viciousness of the pieces that have been written about me. I can remember

01:07:53.200 a couple in particular. I, I, Abby, Abby never forgets. She's like my Irish sidekick. She's not

01:07:59.480 even Irish. She's got my Irish. She was like F everyone. I forget no one. I remember everything.

01:08:03.080 Um, anyway, like I never, I was never turned into this whiny baby bitch about it. Like Prince Harry

01:08:11.720 is. He's a whiny. Yeah. And then you have ideas and you can, that's all, that's all she has. I mean,

01:08:17.600 her entire personality is someone who's aggrieved. You can actually respond to these things and talk

01:08:22.500 about a million other issues. I could have run around being like, I want her fired and I want

01:08:26.960 him fired and I want, and how dare they and misogyny. And yes, there has been a lot of

01:08:31.320 misogyny. I'm not denying that. Um, one, the only person I specifically raised it with in on,

01:08:37.400 and when it came to me was never president Trump, it was Steve Bannon, who I do think is horrible,

01:08:43.540 but in any event, uh, that's all they do. That's all they do. And it's like the, the,

01:08:49.540 the principle that these people are allowed to say whatever they want about me,

01:08:53.500 you know, as long as it's not defamatory by our very tough legal standards or about her or about

01:08:59.720 him is an important principle. It may not be enjoyable to go through. It tends to be temporary

01:09:04.860 in nature. Most grownups suck it up, get through it and go on leading their beautiful lives. These

01:09:10.120 two refuse to. One, uh, thing that's worth mentioning about the Canada situation in particular,

01:09:16.020 right? So Jordan Peterson is, uh, hauled up for calling not even Trudeau, but a Trudeau advisor,

01:09:21.920 a prick. What did Trudeau called the, uh, trucker protests called them terrorists. So he's not like

01:09:29.240 a rando, uh, you know, or not even rando, but he's not a well-known author or an academic. He's

01:09:35.460 the prime minister. He actually can affect laws. He can, I don't know, have an emergency decree

01:09:41.580 that somehow allow suddenly allows him to seize the assets of a bunch of people who are engaging

01:09:47.460 in peaceful protest. Um, and he calls them terrorists, which is a definition under the law

01:09:52.300 in Canada that puts you in a pretty precarious and difficult situation. Um, is he being hauled up

01:09:57.440 in front of a human rights commission or a professional licensing board for bad haired

01:10:02.140 prime ministers? No, he's not. Um, so there's always a power imbalance that are used in these

01:10:07.480 situations against private citizens in the service of power. It's just like blasphemy laws in general.

01:10:14.200 They're always used by people in power against those who don't have the power, which is why,

01:10:19.940 um, you know, if you're trying to say that, uh, I want this free speech, I want this speech

01:10:25.460 restriction in the name of helping the powerless. You are wrong, sir or madam. It, that is the exact

01:10:32.480 opposite of how this stuff works. Um, free speech is the greatest tool exactly for the downtrodden

01:10:38.640 against the powerful. It's always going to be used. The fairness doctrine, Michael mentioned before,

01:10:43.200 was used when it was actually in effect in America broadcasting law. It was used to

01:10:48.180 marginalize viewpoints. Of course it is. It's not, you think libertarians are going to get a fair

01:10:52.500 hearing under the fairness doctrine. No, it's going to be, uh, the people who have power, which is

01:10:57.100 Democrats and Republicans and office holders using it to basically, uh, uh, nullify, uh, people from,

01:11:03.760 uh, being, uh, invited on television broadcasts and elsewhere. I'm glad that it's gone.

01:11:07.800 Yeah. And a small, but important historical footnote is when the fairness doctrine, um,

01:11:12.160 was retired and this is really important. Um, it was at 87, Matt around there, 86, 87.

01:11:18.940 What does that coincide with the beginning of talk radio and the beginning of Rush Limbaugh in

01:11:24.060 absolute sea change and how Americans viewed politics because they didn't have to be spoon fed

01:11:29.980 by the three networks and PBS or their local newspapers or their statewide newspapers.

01:11:35.160 They actually had an outlet for views that weren't being aired in that changed everything in a certain

01:11:42.280 group of people in this country, never got over. And you know, the number of people I have heard

01:11:46.780 people that I know who are smart people saying, what do we do to ban Fox news? How can we get Fox

01:11:52.580 news off the air? Not how do we debate them? How do we run them off the air? That's a very,

01:11:56.800 very common sentiment on people I know. And that probably says a lot about my friends, but, uh,

01:12:01.000 but yeah, no, but it's also the max boots of the world. I mean, there's a lot of

01:12:04.980 people who think that that is the root problem. Uh, it's, it's not, it's actually a root solution

01:12:09.720 to allow free speech and to allow the rise of Fox or MSNBC or whatever the hell you want to watch

01:12:15.360 out there. And it's a, it's a damn shame that Republicans and conservatives led by Donald Trump

01:12:20.240 in this example, he's talked about reinstating the fairness doctrine. He's, he's put up mergers for

01:12:25.300 analysis because he doesn't like the way that he's talked about on Saturday night live. I mean,

01:12:29.100 it's ridiculous. And now there's a whole brand of conservative who's out there thinking,

01:12:33.200 yeah, I want to use the force of government to compel speech or to compel certain, uh, elements

01:12:38.300 of fairness to social media companies or to broadcast companies. They're undoing, or they're

01:12:42.660 threatening to undo decades worth of good conservative activism, which understood that

01:12:49.100 these types of regulatory schemes are going to be rigged by the Lyndon Johnsons of the world in ways

01:12:54.940 that are really, really ugly and bad. We need to keep freedom as the kind of central pursuit of media

01:13:00.640 approach and policy in this country. That's all true. However, you are wrong about Justin Trudeau's

01:13:05.380 hair. That is his one greatest thing. Him and Gavin Newsom. Holy cow. I'm sorry, but they both have

01:13:11.460 good hair. That's, that's the fact. You're defending Gavin Newsom's hair. Yeah. It's, I'm on record.

01:13:16.980 You can hold it against me. It's, I said it. Okay. If I can do a Keith Elberman impression here,

01:13:21.840 you ma'am are a disgrace. He's actually said that about me many times.

01:13:27.740 Oh, I'm sure he did. All right. Let's shift gears to something lighter. I'm really enjoying

01:13:33.500 this discussion. You guys are so smart. It's great talking to you. Um, did you know the Golden

01:13:37.440 Globes are coming on tonight? Are you guys already got your popcorn, got your cocktails?

01:13:41.800 Wow. Literally had no idea. I do have my cocktails, but unrelated to what's on television,

01:13:45.900 I only hope Top Gun wins all of the awards is my only hope. That's a movie. Wasn't that in the

01:13:52.220 eighties? Oh, it's like, no, it's Top Gun Maverick. Wait, you mentioned cocktail reminded me of

01:13:58.700 something. I've got to tell you something. So my husband, Doug Brunt has a, has a new podcast.

01:14:02.220 It's called dedicated with Doug Brunt, where he interviews famous authors, like really successful

01:14:05.380 people. How did you become such a famous author? And he just had somebody on, he's going to kill me

01:14:09.820 for not remembering who it was, but their drink was the French 75. That is delicious.

01:14:15.900 It's fantastic for me. I'm like, what is this wonderful thing? I it's got, you wouldn't think

01:14:21.340 it would go together. It's like gin and champagne with like a hint of lime juice. I think a little,

01:14:28.120 anyway, a little sprig, uh, uh, orange rind up there at the top. Sure. Correct. Well done,

01:14:34.120 Matt Welsh. I recommend go listen to dedicated with Doug Brunt. You will, you will hear for yourself

01:14:38.200 today. He's got the guy, um, who, who he does screenwriters too. And he's, he's got the guy who,

01:14:44.380 um, who did Chernobyl. Uh, like that's a great show. Yeah, I know. Yeah. Absolutely fantastic show.

01:14:50.860 Grant Mazin. Thank you. What's the first name? Is it Grant? Craig. Thank you. Craig Mazin. Uh,

01:14:56.160 I haven't listened to it cause it just came out, but great podcast in any event. Check it out.

01:14:59.220 So the golden globes are tonight and I'm like, okay, what did they, are they coming back swinging?

01:15:04.860 Right. Because they were canceled because it was like golden globe. So white basically, right? It

01:15:11.220 was like Hollywood foreign press, which votes on the nominations was all white. And then it came out

01:15:17.540 that they were, I didn't actually know this cause I'm not a Hollywood person, but they were neck deep

01:15:21.200 in like buying the votes. Like everyone, all the studios were whining and dining. The people who are

01:15:26.360 part of the Hollywood foreign press, I guess, um, what's that show? Emily in Paris. Uh, it came out

01:15:32.620 that they took a bunch of these people with votes over to Paris for like two nights for

01:15:38.260 like the equivalent of $1,400 a night hotel and the accommodations and so on. And lo and

01:15:43.280 behold, that show got nominated, right? So like, it's kind of how it works. Anyway, it

01:15:48.080 became controversial, especially because of the diversity thing. And they canceled it.

01:15:53.160 Like didn't happen for two years or happened. It was canceled for one year. And then the next

01:15:57.740 year they did it, but they didn't have a TV show tonight. It's back on. Did they get

01:16:01.040 Ricky Gervais come out swinging? Say, you know what? We're over that wokeness nonsense.

01:16:04.860 We're just going to be us. And we're going to try to drive numbers, which we've never

01:16:07.880 done before. No, no. They have Jared Carmichael. Has anybody ever heard of Jared

01:16:14.040 Carmichael? Is he my dentist? I think he was a receiver for the Eagles in the eighties.

01:16:21.600 Yeah, he was great. Yes. They got your dentist. Surprise.

01:16:24.900 Surprise. Oh, man.

01:16:28.100 I don't know. What my team tells me is he's a sort of woke-ified comedian who they use

01:16:34.160 on NBC a lot. Steve, forgive me for quoting your text publicly. He's one of those sort of

01:16:39.780 comedians who really just talks about race and sexual identity a lot. That sounds fun.

01:16:44.280 That sounds really like a laugh riot. So he's going to be hosting it. And this in the midst

01:16:51.100 of a season where there's a push to get rid of the gender categories now over at the Oscars

01:16:57.820 and potentially the Golden Globes, the LA Times thinks that best actress is sexist.

01:17:06.660 And what we really need is gender neutrality in all the awards. They're saying the Grammys

01:17:12.460 went gender neutral 10 years ago. So they're going more woke than ever. And they'll probably

01:17:18.040 have fewer ratings than ever. Because the movies being featured, other than Top Gun Maverick,

01:17:23.800 are going to be woke and pandery and all the things we've seen coming out of Hollywood

01:17:28.560 the past several years. So will anybody watch? And are we happy this thing is coming back?

01:17:33.660 Are you joking to see Hoagie Carmichael talk about race before movies I've never seen? Good Lord,

01:17:40.180 no. I will say this. I noticed this morning, there were two things this morning that I noticed. One

01:17:45.420 was a story that said, you know, the inexorable rise in the murder of transgender people. That

01:17:51.700 was the first thing. The second one I saw, and I'm not going to derail this, Megan. It was the

01:17:55.960 Megan Markle thing. They said, you know, as the racist coverage of Megan Markle proves. And these

01:18:01.780 two things hit me. And I said, oh God, these are the things that no one looks into and they're just

01:18:06.520 established as facts and no one's ever checked them. And I want to throw to Camille on this because

01:18:10.760 it was the same thing happened in, in the, the, the Oscars and the golden globes. And it was, um,

01:18:17.480 uh, Oscars so white. And, um, the reason I do a podcast with Camille is because he's a clever guy

01:18:24.820 who says, wait a second and starts digging into the numbers. And it turned out that Oscars so white

01:18:30.620 wasn't even true. Correct. Camille. Am I wrong? No, it wasn't. It wasn't true. And I, and I don't

01:18:35.820 remember the exact figures, um, but I went back and crunched the numbers for like 30 years, um,

01:18:42.540 on the nominations for like the top categories. And I think black people secured like 25 or 30%

01:18:50.780 of the nominations, which mean 13 odd percent, 18% of the population of the United States, 13,

01:18:57.320 right? Um, like that is, that's pretty impressive. And, and I believe that, uh, Morgan Freeman,

01:19:03.700 Denzel Washington, some of the most nominated and decorated actors and actresses in Hollywood also

01:19:11.260 went and looked at like box office numbers to see, like, do people are with, are they willing to see

01:19:16.380 films with black people and leads? Yeah. Hell yes. Samuel L. Jackson, I believe is like the number one

01:19:23.400 guy associated with films and dollars earned at the box office. Wow. We have a preposterous obsession

01:19:31.020 with race and it precedes evidence. It is all about presumptions. Um, and I, I don't know how I

01:19:39.220 feel. I guess I don't care if they want to get rid of the, the sort of gendered actor, actress

01:19:45.320 categories, but I can't for the life of me understand why having the two be segregated by a gender would

01:19:52.380 actually be bigoted. Well, you will care. How does that work? You will care, sir. When Samuel L. Jackson

01:19:58.140 never wins another award again, because he's the wrong gender. That's so, so, so much the worst for

01:20:05.300 him, not me actually. But that's what, like, I love this woman, Sasha Stone. She's come on this show and

01:20:09.980 she does awards daily. She's been writing about Hollywood forever. And this is the point she's

01:20:14.240 been making, which is, you know, they're so, they're so woke-ified now in Hollywood. If you merge

01:20:18.320 the categories, good luck to all the future men, like who might've otherwise won an award. They're

01:20:22.980 not going to, it's going to be, you know, eight of the top 10 are going to be women, women, women,

01:20:27.340 women. Maybe they'll throw like the bottom two to like some man who also checks another, uh, some

01:20:32.120 sort of diversity box, but like the Moynihan's and the Welsh's of the world, you can forget it.

01:20:37.220 You're not, you're never getting a shiny golden statue. I don't get anything. I get fired.

01:20:42.020 I just, I can't, I'm not getting any awards ever. Uh, you got some Emmys. You got a bunch

01:20:48.180 of Emmys. I have two Emmys, but, um, would you like to see them? I could just bring them

01:20:52.420 on camera. No, I have them on the desk at all. Why, why would you, I mean, the studios

01:20:58.620 must absolutely hate this by the way, because it reduces the number of people who get awards

01:21:02.400 and therefore the number of things you can put on posters that, you know, Academy award

01:21:06.680 winning film is now, you know, you had five people and now it's, you know, two or 10 people.

01:21:11.960 Now it's five. I can't imagine there's much, there's much appetite for this. And it's one

01:21:16.300 of these things that is satisfying a hunger that nobody has. Yeah. Nobody is that like,

01:21:22.500 well, except the LA times are like, I can't, I can't, I need to compete with the men because

01:21:26.560 what happened for a long time was in bookstores. There was somebody famous. And I can't remember

01:21:30.940 who said this is in the eighties or nineties said, you know, I don't want to be a black writer.

01:21:34.540 I just want to be a writer. I want to be in with writers. That's what I do. And then,

01:21:38.880 you know, as time went on, segregation became more voguish. So it's amazing. This coming back

01:21:44.720 the other way, because the voguish thing is like, now there's African-American writers.

01:21:47.980 There's an Asian American writer section. There's female writers. There's not just writers. And so

01:21:52.840 that's good, but somehow this is bad. Who decided that? I don't know why we're not. When is it good?

01:21:58.860 And when is it bad? Somebody call me about that.

01:22:00.780 Well, and honestly, it's like, yes, acting is sort of like, like sailing. Sailing is something

01:22:06.780 you can do great if you're a woman or a man, right? It's like, you don't necessarily need a

01:22:11.920 gender category, but, um, it's, you do have to sort of look at the opportunities that are being

01:22:18.600 offered in today's day and age. It's all Marvel, right? It's all like superheroes. Um, my, you know,

01:22:25.400 sort of armchair understanding of that is there are way more roles for the guys there than there are

01:22:28.940 women. So I'm not sure the LA times is right. That it's going to have this, this great effect

01:22:33.840 of elevating more women. Um, you know, cause that's what they want to see. They're saying,

01:22:38.320 uh, that, that, uh, the best actresses is, is sexist and that this started 95 years ago and that

01:22:45.400 the Emmys, um, and, and the Oscars have to follow course in what the Grammys did. Uh, they're worried

01:22:51.880 that also about non-gendered acting categories. Did you know, did you guys watch the crowd?

01:22:56.320 No, I haven't watched it. No, no, no. Apparently the woman, well, the person who played Diana is

01:23:06.040 a non-binary in like the most recent iteration. And they brought this person up as an example,

01:23:11.520 who was submitted for an award under the, she, the, the actress category. But since then went nine,

01:23:19.260 non-binary. So that person has no category. So we have to get rid of the categories.

01:23:25.040 Cause nine, non-binary. Wrong. I'm going to do my Donald Trump impression. Wrong.

01:23:30.680 Sad. That's wrong. By the way, I hate this like ex post facto thing. We do this all the time. You

01:23:37.160 don't go to the 1976 Olympics in Montreal, look at the clips and say, look at Caitlyn Jenner.

01:23:42.520 It was Bruce Jenner. I'm sorry. When you did the role, that's what exists. I will call you Caitlyn

01:23:47.340 now. I could care less about this stuff. It doesn't animate me in any way, but to go back and say,

01:23:52.000 no, no longer she's playing, she wasn't playing a non-binary princess. She was, she was playing

01:23:57.940 Diana and she had identified as a woman at the time. So does this bother you? Cause the New York

01:24:01.640 times, my friend who we text every day emailed me an article from the New York times this morning

01:24:06.380 and it's entitled defining non-binary work, where how non-binary professionals thread the needle,

01:24:13.840 thread the needle of getting dressed for the office. I would submit to you gentlemen,

01:24:18.280 that these pictures do not thread any needle whatsoever. There is no, no needle being

01:24:24.360 threaded. Can you see this? For the listening audience, the first one was a man in a dress

01:24:31.300 with sneakers on his bare legs. This is not threading the needle. No. And now this is a man

01:24:36.640 with facial hair, you know, skirt. I mean, you're not allowed to say man, whatever. It's a non-binary

01:24:41.600 person. And these folks are go by not Mr. Or miss, but mix MX. That's the new thing.

01:24:49.840 And they're talking about how they're really sick of, you know, dress codes that go female or go male.

01:24:55.840 And they really just want to be themselves and wear, you know, what, whatever the hell they want. And

01:25:00.960 that they just want to be thought of for their thoughts. They want to be looked at for their

01:25:04.700 thoughts and not because of what they are wearing. And of course, the answer to that is to just

01:25:09.020 dress according to the identity that you say you are. But then they're like, I don't say I'm a

01:25:16.180 woman or a man. So what do you think? The New York Times article maybe suggests that you're a little

01:25:21.040 more concerned about that than you're letting on. But we have a listener, a super fan who is

01:25:26.380 non-binary. And we have asked this person, they, how to navigate this and try to be respectful and

01:25:33.500 everything. And they, and again, it's still hard for me, uh, cause it's, it's a plural and, and

01:25:39.180 confusing. It's already taken. They is taken. It's already taken. I get, I like mix better. Um,

01:25:44.680 said something to me one time of like, look, you know, you're, you, you mean, well, you screw up.

01:25:50.240 What's, what's the big deal you're trying. I mean, there's a person who listens to fifth column. So

01:25:53.420 they're, they're obviously not particularly sensitive about these things, but you know, I feel like

01:25:57.420 some of this stuff is just laying minds for people to step on. Yes. And that's what offends me. Like

01:26:02.360 I'm, I try my best. I try not to offend people. That's actually not true. That's not true at all.

01:26:06.840 Wait a second. Let me stop that. Can we cut the tip? Can we go back? I do try to offend people if

01:26:12.500 it's funny, but I don't, I don't go out of my way to do it. And if somebody wants to call something

01:26:16.800 I can't, I can't get over the fact that I feel like people are setting me up all the time of like,

01:26:23.940 you didn't get this thing. If you walked into the office, let, if you go, you know, into whatever

01:26:29.480 reason or vice Vox, I can never remember which one it is, Michael. I got fired.

01:26:34.980 Oh, okay. If you walk into your robustly staffed fifth column podcast center and you see what appears

01:26:45.100 to be a man with facial hair, I mean, facial hair, like full beard and mustache wearing a cute little

01:26:52.000 dress. That's like a mini dress, like that guy, that person in the other picture with little

01:26:57.760 sneakers down below. And like this person has man hair, but we've seen somebody on the show with

01:27:05.480 like the long blonde wig with, with the beard. What would you say? Would you, I wouldn't, I

01:27:10.520 wouldn't bat an eye. I honestly wouldn't. I mean, it's just, I live in Brooklyn. I see this stuff all the

01:27:15.140 time. I just doesn't interest me in any way. I mean, I don't believe that you wouldn't walk out

01:27:22.380 and be like, Oh my God, did you see what happened there? What's going on there? I worked around that

01:27:26.860 a lot. I'd be honest. I'd be like, what's happening. Why? I like, I really feel like whatever

01:27:32.200 you are is fine with me, but this is, it's a bridge too far. I'm sorry, but this is just too jarring.

01:27:37.960 It's too disruptive. The average customer or client coming into your firm, if they see that is going to be

01:27:44.260 like, Whoa, I mean, you go to the Midwest, you're not going to have the Brooklynites. You're going

01:27:47.600 to have people who haven't seen that and aren't used to that and actually find it kind of problematic.

01:27:52.080 Go ahead. I respect every response. If you want to be, I don't even notice it, but yeah, go ahead.

01:27:56.380 Yeah. At a minimum, if you want to be judged for your ideas and not on the basis of what you wear,

01:28:02.000 I mean, that, that may mean that you want to dress a bit more conservatively in traditional ways,

01:28:07.720 but if you don't care that people are going to stare at you and look at you because you look

01:28:13.400 unusual, then that kind of comes with the territory. I will say that I'm, I'm probably,

01:28:19.180 I'm not probably, I'm very much in the Moynihan camp. I don't really care what other people

01:28:23.740 wear, not terribly interested. Um, I will say that someone like a Billy Porter, like I've seen dude

01:28:29.980 on the red carpet at the Oscars and like a black tuxedo gown thing. And he looks remarkable in it.

01:28:38.560 What do you mean remarkable? I think he looks ridiculous. He gets celebrated. He gets put

01:28:43.440 on the front of magazines. I just feel like, you know what? No, I, I, I just feel like changing

01:28:49.020 norms around gender. I don't accept them. I don't accept them. I'm not going to bully this person,

01:28:54.220 but I don't have to celebrate it. I'm offended by it. We wear the dress to celebrate. I think the

01:28:58.540 point that I'm making is good in this. People will say I'm a bigot just for having this opinion.

01:29:02.940 Sorry. Go ahead. Well, but this is, but this is kind of the point at a, at a minimum,

01:29:07.300 we ought to be able to acknowledge that there are subjective assessments of what looks good

01:29:12.560 and what is interesting and what is attractive to us. And I can, I can say Billy Porter looks

01:29:17.280 really good on the red carpet. The two guys that you just showed me or they, them, I don't know.

01:29:22.200 I have no idea who they are, but the, those two images, not attractive.

01:29:26.280 I'm trying to put a voice to what bothers me about Billy Porter and also Harry Styles in women's

01:29:34.820 clothing, looking more and more feminine. Like the, like it bothers me because I object to the

01:29:40.920 merger of gender as a real thing. I really do. But women didn't use to wear pants. My grandmother

01:29:45.560 used to object to women wearing pants and we've gotten over that. And do you, are you objecting

01:29:50.920 to David Bowie, Megan Kelling? I feel like he was an artist who was being provocative.

01:29:56.100 And I don't see that the same as insisting that we merge gender, that we get rid of.

01:30:01.380 I don't think it's insisting. I mean, Prince, do you object to Prince?

01:30:04.880 He was wearing a phone and eye makeup and his hair was crazy. And he was writing songs about

01:30:10.620 all kinds of perverted stuff. Of course, he's the same as David Bowie. And I feel like we've

01:30:15.180 always had room for these eccentric artists, but this is going mainstream. This, the whole New

01:30:20.060 York times piece is about, this is like mainstream going to be at your office. Well, guess what?

01:30:23.780 The Supreme Court has already made very clear that you can have dress codes at the office

01:30:27.780 and you can say people who identify as female. It can be somebody who's a biological male.

01:30:33.220 That's fine. But you have to dress as a female. Like we are. The law recognizes employers with

01:30:38.280 the ability to say you may not do the cross thing at the office. You got to pick a lane.

01:30:43.060 And so while I have plenty of trans people who I know and love, I think that the confusion of the

01:30:49.620 beard and the man hair versus the female dress, I don't think America's ready for it. I really don't

01:30:56.820 with respect to their own identity. I think it suggests that something's possible that's not

01:31:03.180 actually possible. That's actually being forced on us by this sort of woke, very small contingent.

01:31:08.920 And while I wouldn't bully the person, I wouldn't allow it in my office place either.

01:31:15.280 Again, the freedom to make determinations about your own office place is something that shouldn't

01:31:20.320 be violated in any way, shape or form. I think the basic principle of toleration and acceptance of one

01:31:28.520 another and the freedom to let your freak flag fly, whatever that may sort of generally mean for

01:31:33.600 you personally, is something we should all generally embrace. And I actually think that we could

01:31:38.840 do with a heck of a lot more sanity around conversations about trans issues, about gender,

01:31:44.240 about all these other things. I think it would be wonderful if people could acknowledge that it is

01:31:49.520 not the same thing at all to express concern about whether or not there is something that is kind of

01:31:56.100 harmful happening with the number of young people that are identifying in one way or another. To ask a

01:32:01.160 question about that trend is not at all the same thing as being hateful as threatening to hurt someone or

01:32:10.520 insisting that you are challenging whether or not trans people exist. I think that the kind of absurdities

01:32:18.080 in our language, the kind of necessarily exaggerated assertions about the harm that's being leveled against

01:32:27.020 people like is is inherently bad. But I also think that it's imperative for us to just acknowledge

01:32:33.140 that norms change. And so long as we're holding on to the right things, toleration, free expression,

01:32:40.700 again, the cultural free expression we've been talking about all along here, getting away from

01:32:45.120 compelled speech. OK, but I don't agree. I don't I don't agree that that's a complete list. I was with

01:32:50.880 you. I was with you up until like I think gender is a real thing. I don't think it's as fluid as these

01:32:55.660 people want me to believe that it is. I think that there's something going on there with people. A lot

01:33:00.040 of them need to work it out. A lot of them want attention. And I'm not actual, you know, gender

01:33:05.180 dysphoria and being a trans person. That's real. I don't accept that that's not real. When it happens

01:33:09.600 very young, typically in males, it's been documented. But this sort of I'm neither and I'm going to

01:33:15.100 mix from both. I don't know what that is to me. That seems like attention grabbing. And I am not

01:33:19.420 ready to accept that as a new norm. That still makes me uncomfortable. I'm allowed to say that.

01:33:25.320 OK, if you want to call me names because of it, that's fine. That's how I feel. I certainly would

01:33:30.220 dramatically discourage that in anybody I happen to be raising. All right. Like I look how like I feel

01:33:38.380 like you need to fill up a different bucket, a different psychological bucket if that's where you're

01:33:42.620 getting your kicks from. And there's a reason why this hasn't been a thing for ever. Right. Like

01:33:48.240 there has non-binary and wearing like the women's clothing while you look like a man and not picking

01:33:52.740 a lane. That's brand new. I'm not the only one feeling uncomfortable with it. And they attempt to

01:33:56.680 totally normalize and mainstream it like The New York Times did. I stole the last word. No problem.

01:34:01.560 We're coming right back. Fifth column. Let me squeeze in a quick break.

01:34:04.040 Guys, let's end it on a happy note. Demar Hamlin out of the University of Cincinnati Health

01:34:13.660 Hospital. He's going back to a hospital in Buffalo. He's tweeting. He's Instagramming. And

01:34:21.780 he reportedly woke up, you know, from his his it wasn't a coma, but he was intubated and sedated

01:34:28.920 and said, did we win? Did we did we win the game? Which is so sweet. But of course,

01:34:35.980 since it's a new show, it's not going to be all sunny. This is we get several think pieces by

01:34:42.240 random people, including Karen Atiyah of The Washington Post, who says, why is America addicted

01:34:47.860 to this violent, brutal game? Considering that nearly 70 percent of the NFL's players are black.

01:34:52.760 The Hamlin episode is a reminder that almost every weekend Americans tune in to watch mostly

01:35:00.420 black men bash into one another for the profit of white team owners and goes on from there.

01:35:05.660 She's not the only one. Long piece over at someplace called Scientific American talking about how his

01:35:10.480 collapse highlights the violence black men experience in football. Is this a chance to talk

01:35:15.700 about what we're doing to just just the black men on the field on Sundays who are getting paid?

01:35:21.800 You're only allowed tens of millions of dollars, by the way. Yeah, it's for the enrichment of the black

01:35:26.580 men and the white owners. Yeah. Like everyone's up there with their, you know, dollar bills in their

01:35:32.320 hand going, get more, kill each other. It's like, no, they're getting paid a ton.

01:35:35.920 Is she is she suggesting that we should be watching hockey instead? I just want to try to figure out

01:35:41.040 what the white people bashing each other's hands. She wants she wants she wants hockey to be a more

01:35:46.580 lucrative sport celebrated by more Americans. Why should America's pastime be football?

01:35:51.820 Don't take don't take the wind out of our sails. You know, this is like it was actually such a

01:35:55.260 lovely unifying moment for the whole country. Black, white, left, right, football, non-football.

01:36:00.380 Everybody's rooting for this guy and celebrating his choice to make a bunch of money playing this

01:36:06.260 game, which, by the way, has resulted in millions of dollars now going to his charity,

01:36:09.660 not to support the injury. I'm just saying he was thinking of others even when he got this great

01:36:14.120 deal. And let's just celebrate him and his recovery and not make everything a racial debate.

01:36:19.740 Amen. Amen. Amen. All right, guys, such a pleasure. Enjoyed it as always. I did look up the Charlie

01:36:25.200 Hebdo cover this week, and I am disturbed.

01:36:31.120 My book here is done.

01:36:33.260 We'll be back tomorrow. Lots of love, guys.

01:36:35.640 Thanks for listening to The Megyn Kelly Show. No BS, no agenda, and no fear.

The Megyn Kelly Show - January 10, 2023

Biden's Classified Docs, Free Speech Crackdowns, and Woke Golden Globes, with the Fifth Columns Hosts ｜ Ep. 468

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