Biden's Doc Refuses to Talk, Epstein is Dividing MAGA, and David Muir's Wardrobe, with Mark Halperin | Ep. 1104
Episode Stats
Length
1 hour and 43 minutes
Words per Minute
187.4209
Summary
On today's show, Megyn Kelly and Mark Halperin discuss what's happening on Capitol Hill with Dr. Kevin O'Connor, who was supposed to answer questions about the care he provided for former President Joe Biden. Instead, he invoked the Fifth Amendment and refused to answer any questions.
Transcript
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Welcome to The Megyn Kelly Show, live on Sirius XM Channel 111 every weekday at New East.
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Hey, everyone, I'm Megyn Kelly. Welcome to The Megyn Kelly Show, an unbelievable event just happening on Capitol Hill.
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We'll get to what's happening on Epstein. We got to talk about Dr. O'Connor.
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President Biden's doctor, Kevin O'Connor, just got called to Capitol Hill, where he was supposed to
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talk to James Comer and his committee about the care he provided for the now former president.
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And not only at this closed door hearing did he refuse to answer questions based on the doctor-patient
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privilege, but he asserted his Fifth Amendment right not to incriminate himself as a secondary ground
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for not answering. His Fifth Amendment ground to not incriminate himself.
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Joining me now, Mark Halperin. He's the host of Next Up with Mark Halperin on the MK Media Podcast Network.
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Go subscribe now. The show's crushing it at nextuphalperin.com on YouTube and wherever you get your podcasts for free.
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Riverbendranch.com, promo code MEGAN. Mark, welcome back. This is the guy at the center of it all.
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This is the guy who was treating him throughout the presidency, the guy who was on the receiving end,
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we believe, of those double-digit visits from neurologists during Biden's last year, which no
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one bothered to report on in the White House press corps until it was the very end. The guy who would
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have known about the prostate cancer if anyone knew. And now he gets summoned by James Comer to
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speak to the committee that's looking into the auto pen, etc. And yeah, I mean, I guess I would
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have expected doctor-patient privilege as an assertion, though we'll get to Comer's objections
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as to why that's inappropriate, too. But whoa, the Fifth Amendment against incriminating himself,
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what's happening here? Well, not adequately explained by his counsel, I would put this in
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the shocking but not surprising category. They were able to get through the presidency without
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this guy ever being held accountable. He's not a normal doctor for a normal patient. He's the
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president's doctor, and he's a doctor to a president who, along with his family and close
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aides, endangered America by having someone serve who had many moments, we don't know exactly how
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many, where he wasn't up to doing the job. So Comer has done a much better job framing this the
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correct way, not as politics, although obviously there are politics here. But we have to get to
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the bottom of this. This isn't a matter of embarrassing the Bidens. It isn't a matter of
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violating the president's right to privacy. It's a matter of how can we make sure that this doesn't
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happen again? And I'll say, he is not a normal doctor with a normal patient. So I think in the
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end, the Republicans are going to win this fight. But his invocation of the Fifth Amendment, his
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hiding behind doctor-patient confidentiality, goes to prove what we all suspected, which is they don't
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want whatever is left of the cover-up to fall apart. They're going to try to keep America from
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learning the truth. I don't think it'll work. And I'd urge Democrats to join in getting to the bottom
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of it rather than being on the wrong side of history. This is unbelievable. Now, as a result
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of him doing this and Comer's jumping up and down about it, we just get this in from Dr. O'Connor's
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lawyers. They cite the pending DOJ criminal investigation, which they say leaves Dr. O'Connor
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no choice but to invoke his constitutional rights under the Fifth Amendment of the Constitution.
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20 questions posted by the committee. We want to emphasize that asserting the Fifth Amendment
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privilege does not imply that Dr. O'Connor has committed any crime. The pending DOJ investigation
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took me by surprise. Last I heard, Trump said the DOJ should investigate this. And I don't know that
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there is a DOJ investigation, and that could matter. But I will say this, either way, if he did nothing
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wrong, what's the problem? Like, why is Dr. O'Connor genuinely worried about going to prison if he was
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just providing medical advice and not actually participating in a cover-up? Yeah. Well, in America,
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we should not challenge people's right to invoke the Fifth Amendment as a matter of law and individual
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liberty. But this is about political and public accountability. I don't know what crime he might
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have committed. But I do know that everything we know suggests that he was a central figure
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in attempting to keep the president's actual condition from the American people. You know,
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you could take a lot of examples. Either he tested him for cancer and covered up the results,
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a big problem, or he didn't test him, which doctors will tell you, also a big problem. Either he got him
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some scans to see what was going on in his brain and didn't release the results or say that they
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occurred. Or he didn't do it. Either way, a big problem. And this is not a normal patient. So
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I don't know if he's truly afraid of legal liability. What he's clearly counting on,
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what the whole Biden operation is counting on, is what they counted on for four years,
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which is that the press won't cover it. And I'll say, I don't always go reflexively to imagine if the
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shoe were on the other foot. But imagine if a Republican president was facing these accusations
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and a doctor took the fifth and had cited patient Dr. Confidentiality. Will this story lead the news
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tonight on the broadcast networks? Would it be on the front page of the New York Times, the Washington
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Post? It should. But I doubt that it will. This guy is a doctor, but he's also an American citizen,
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and he played a massive role in what was a cover-up. I mean, we know for sure that his haircut
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is a crime for which he should be. Against all humanity, not just those living now, Megan,
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but our ancestors. Our ancestors, wherever they are, are feeling the pain every time he appears on
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camera. And so, yes, he needs to be held accountable for that. And the barber, too. I don't think you can
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let whoever cut the hair off the hook. That person, as well, has some splaining to do.
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It's a conspiracy. Many were involved, and there were many predicate acts there.
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And again, the guy in the next barber chair, also, some culpability, some responsibility to turn and
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say, no, don't leave the chair. The guy's obviously not done. All right, we will drop in a close-up
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picture of Kevin O'Connor's hair for the viewing audience on YouTube at this point.
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Um, there's only video of him leaving Comer's office today, uh, because the behind-closed-doors
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thing was not, here he comes, stand by. There he is. There he is with the glasses. It's a problem.
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Um, so Comer also put out his own statement after this, and this is what he says. Uh, number one,
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he says, you can't assert the patient, uh, the doctor-patient privilege, he says, because
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the D.C. Court of Appeals has made clear that, um, that privilege only limits a physician's
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ability to disclose confidential patient information in federal courts in D.C. and in
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the District of Columbia courts, meaning like the state courts in D.C. And Congress is not a court,
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therefore, you may not assert that privilege. That's compelling. Then he says, second, um,
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according to the AMA, the American Medical Association's Code of Medical Ethics, he says,
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it's inapplicable because it's overridden by our subpoena. And he cites medical ethics opinion
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9.7.1. Physicians who testify as fact witnesses and legal claims involving a patient they have
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treated must hold the patient's medical interests paramount by protecting the confidentiality that
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patient's health information, unless the physician is legally compelled to disclose the information.
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And so that's, that's Comer's point is that you are now legally compelled to disclose the information.
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And that's why now they're, and I think they know they're going to lose on that mark, which is why
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they've added fifth and citing what I think is a made up DOJ investigation. We're looking into this
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right now. We'll know soon, but I think it was just a Trump threat. As far as I know,
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the DOJ is not actively investigating Kevin O'Connor. It's possible that they got some inquiry
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from the FBI. I don't, I don't know factually, but you're right. We should know that, you know,
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they also in their statement, uh, hid behind president Trump's invocation of the fifth in the,
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um, case in New York with Letitia James. I'll say again, this was a four-year coverup.
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Um, they, they, it was not about a small matter. It was about the, the ability of the United States
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to be, to function properly. And I think they can continue to try to use every legal and political
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and media trick possible to keep from explaining what happened, or they can get on the right side
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of history and explain it. But we've got more people coming in. A lot of the political aides are
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scheduled as well. They obviously don't have doctor patient. Maybe they'll invoke the fifth as well.
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Maybe they'll try to give clever, cute answers, but this doctor is essential to the thing. And,
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and, and I think that, uh, you, we can't, he can't be stopped from invoking the fifth,
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obviously, but he can be put in sharp relief in a public hearing and ask questions that I think
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the American people would be find reasonable, which is how did he care for not just his patient,
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but for the public interest as the person who basically by putting out an annual statement
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certified that Joe Biden had no cognitive decline. And, and, and we know that's not true.
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So now Comer, uh, gets him behind closed doors. Again, the haircut, it's the short for the listening
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audience. It's the short bangs, like the serial killer bangs that come just mid forehead.
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They're not even totally even, but they're disturbingly short with like a bowl cut after that.
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I don't know what's going on there, but it does speak to the man's terrible judgment.
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Yeah. Do you know those restaurants where you eat in the dark, where you're supposed to like
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have the sense of the food without seeing it. I feel like maybe he goes to one of those barbers
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where the lights are all off. And so the barbers just got to feel their way through how to cut the
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hair. It's also one of those situations like where you go to one of those restaurants and you go to
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the bathroom and it's absolutely disgusting and not clean at all. Then you're like, I got to get out of
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here. When you walk in, you see your physician with that hair, you got to turn around. You got to walk out.
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There's a level of care that's not present in his own daily routine. And you shouldn't subject
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yourself to this man. Here's what Comer asked him. These are the two questions he asked.
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He said, I'm going to read the first two questions that were asked. This is Comer speaking to the
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press right after quote, were you ever told to lie about the president's health? He pleaded the
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fifth amendment. He would not answer that question. The second question, did you ever believe
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president Biden was unfit to execute his duty? And he again, pleaded the fifth Comer says this is
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unprecedented. And I think this adds more fuel to the fire that there was a cover up here. This was,
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we learned from, um, from, uh, the tapper Thompson book that Dr. O'Connor was allegedly behind the
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scenes trying to get Joe Biden more rest. He quipped that Biden's staff were trying to kill him
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while Dr. O'Connor was trying to keep him alive. Given Biden's age, Dr. O'Connor also privately said
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that if he had another bad fall, a wheelchair might be necessary for what could be a difficult
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recovery, but the AIDS didn't want that while he was running. And he told others that he did not
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believe the science required him to do a cognitive test on Biden in connection with this annual
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physical. He saw the president frequently. And if he had reason for concern, he would have performed
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one. Ultimately Joe Biden's political advisors are great. Oh, I'm sure it was a real arm twist,
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but this is Jill Biden's guy. Remember he, he, isn't he super like Jill picked him Joe. There
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was the secret service agent, but this guy too, I think is close with Jill Biden and has a loyalty
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to the Biden's as opposed to, to the country from the sound of it. Well, all presidents choose as
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their white ass position, someone they're comfortable with, but I, you know, I know, I know you're not
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guilty of this, but I think too much of the press is acting as if there's some mystery here about what
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the guy did. Now, some of the details are mystery and, and who exactly was in charge is a mystery,
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but there's no mystery here. He didn't ever answer questions from the press. And, and he either,
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as I said before, he either performed tests and lied about whether they were performed and didn't
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disclose the results or he didn't perform them. Whereas it doesn't make any sense not to have had
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brain scans. It doesn't make any sense not to have had cancer tests. So I, I don't, I don't know,
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as I said before, I don't know what crime he might be guilty of, but I do know that he's abusing the
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public trust. And after four years of participating in the coverup and arguably the central figure,
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because he is a doctor and he does have a responsibility both to his patient and the
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public interest. I think, I just think it's, it's, it's, it's hard to me to see how he's going to
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sustain this unless the coverup was even more insidious than we knew it to be. In other words,
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one thing that hasn't been acknowledged by anybody on the inside, and he'd be considered on the inside
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is that they knew how bad it was and they covered it up. Their premise is we didn't really know
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if, if, if, if, if, if it went that far again, I don't know that that's a crime,
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but it's a political crime and it's a policy crime. And it's a, it's an irresponsible action
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for a doctor who's supposed to have a obligation to the American people to have done.
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Well, but here's the, here's the, the truth. No, one's looking to put Dr. O'Connor in jail,
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not Comer, not the DOJ. By the way, we did find out on June 4th, the white house released a memo
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directing the council to the president and the attorney general to conduct an investigation
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to determine whether certain individuals conspired to deceive the public about Biden's
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mental state and unconstitutionally exercise the authorities and responsibilities of the president.
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And, um, a subpoena was issued in June, possibly. I, I don't know if that means to Dr. O'Connor.
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So the president did direct DOJ and counsel to the president to conduct an investigation. But my
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point is simply the odds of the DOJ and certainly Comer and the U S Congress giving Dr. O'Connor
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immunity to remove his ability to raise the fifth amendment are very high. That's probably,
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yeah, that's almost certainly what they're going to do. Trump doesn't want to put Dr. O'Connor behind
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bars. He wants answers. And once you remove the fifth amendment privilege, and it looks like he's
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going to lose the doctor patient privilege because it has an exception to it. Um, meaning if you've
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gotten a lawful subpoena to testify, and of course we've seen that in medical malpractice cases, you
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cannot just maintain Dr. Patient confidentiality to the death. You get a lawful subpoena to appear in a
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courtroom about what you did or said, you're going to have to breach it. Uh, this guy's going to be
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forced to talk at some point, Mark, and then we're going to learn what he's so concerned about.
00:17:22.260
Yeah. I mean, it's important that the committee, and again, I'd urge the Democrats in the committee
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to join in, keep focused on the public policy question, which is vital for the country.
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We can't have another situation where a president suffers cognitive decline right before our eyes
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and the media and the Democrats pretend it's not happening. They just can't let that happen again.
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So I agree that he's not going to go to prison, but look at what they're doing. They're playing
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the normal card. Trump did it too. Trump is trying to improperly investigate us. They're trying to get
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the Democrat or the media rather to go back to their reflexive defense of the coverup. And it's
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going to be interesting to see, as I said, how this is covered because the press has kind of
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acknowledged the coverup kind of not fully. So if you acknowledge the coverup and then the coverups
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being sustained under a lawful subpoena by the majority in the House, I don't know how the
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press can treat that like a small story or an insignificant step, but I'm skeptical. We'll see
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I asked my team to pull this. I believe it was the New York Post that broke the story of
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the neurologist visiting the White House. Yeah.
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Almost double digits leading into the summer. This came out the summer, this time last year,
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just a little bit more than 12 months ago when Biden was hanging by a thread after that debate
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and all the press corps suddenly got really interested in his mental well-being. The Post
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had been interested prior to, but they reported, they broke the story on July 6th. Yeah. So almost
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exactly a year, um, about the fact that Biden's physician, Kevin O'Connor met with a Parkinson's
00:19:03.920
disease specialist in the White House. And then the New York times followed thereafter. And the report
00:19:10.240
was that an expert on Parkinson's disease from Walter Reed national military medical center visited the
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White House eight times in eight months from the summer of 23 through spring of 24, including at least
00:19:23.660
once for a meeting with president Biden's physician, Dr. Kevin O'Connor, the expert who came, Dr. Kevin
00:19:29.680
Canard is a neurologist who specializes in movement disorders and recently published a paper on
00:19:36.840
Parkinson's, by the way, not for nothing, but this, this came up when I sat with the New York times and
00:19:41.680
Lulu Garcia Navarro and I were having our tête-à -tête about, you know, how you can't trust these
00:19:46.900
podcasters to tell you the truth. And there's no system. And I was like, Oh, but we can trust the
00:19:51.640
New York times. And I said, they cut this out, but I said, where was Peter Baker and the report that a
00:19:57.020
neurologist had, had visited the White House eight times or 10 times over the course of the prior year
00:20:02.220
that finally he got his name on it after the New York post broke it one year ago today, but nowhere he
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had no interest. He wasn't checking the logs. He didn't care about Biden's mental acuity. He had another
00:20:13.140
press failure. Your thoughts. Yeah. Um, so I say again, if the president was not being seen by a
00:20:21.000
Parkinson's expert, O'Connor should be stripped of his medical license. Of course he should have been
00:20:25.920
seen by a Parkinson's expert. And of course he should have been having regular brain scans to see
00:20:31.400
what was going on. So this is, this is where, uh, the, they're kind of checkmated because they
00:20:38.440
either didn't do these things and it's malpractice because the president clearly needed as, as a
00:20:45.220
father and as a grandfather and as a husband, as a human being, he needed the treatment that you or
00:20:50.620
I would get for our dad. If they had this, they had those symptoms and behavior. And if they did do
00:20:57.460
them, which according to this reporting, they did, what were the results? Why was he there? They act as
00:21:02.720
if this is some private citizen Biden who's entitled to his medical privacy, the way private citizens are.
00:21:08.440
If the president of the United States is being seen by a Parkinson's expert, which it appears
00:21:13.540
happened, maybe not, but it appears it did. And it should have, that should be disclosed. And the
00:21:18.760
results should be disclosed. If the president is exhibiting the symptoms that this president did
00:21:23.880
nearly every Parkinson's doctor you've talked to. And I've talked to has said, not my patient, but I have
00:21:30.060
a C-SPAN subscription. I've seen how he's behaving. He needed a full battery of tests and that should be
00:21:35.800
disclosed. Fundamentally, it makes a mockery of the annual release of the note from the president's doctor
00:21:42.800
if the thing is filled with lies and incomplete descriptions about how he was being treated and what
00:21:50.840
Mm hmm. It's it's by the way, let's slap a subpoena on this Dr. Kevin Kennard. He's up next. Interesting last name.
00:21:56.720
Um, yeah, we'll slap a subpoena on him and let's see if he's as loyal to the president or, you know,
00:22:02.260
whether he's willing to come forward and give testimony to James Comer understanding. Maybe
00:22:06.460
he'll say, I did nothing wrong. I don't have to assert any privilege whatsoever. Let me tell you
00:22:10.760
everything that happened. I've been waiting for you to call, but I'm sure Comer's in the process of
00:22:14.360
doing that. You're absolutely right. It's look, it's not like they're randomly choosing Megan
00:22:18.920
Kelly and saying, I want all the results from your latest GYN exam, right? Like that's a what?
00:22:23.640
Okay. If you're a president and then you show obvious cognitive decline that it was on a
00:22:30.260
presidential debate stage, forget all the evidence we have leading into that moment for all the world
00:22:35.120
to see, we are entitled to go back and ask whether you were okay, what, what decisions you made and
00:22:42.460
what your mental capacity was at the time that you were making them. We're still living with the
00:22:46.940
consequences. A lot of a lot of those decisions. So this is a game you're right. They're not going
00:22:51.100
to win it. Comer's going to play the long game. I'm sure he's going to get these objections overruled
00:22:55.320
bit by bit. And we will know, we will know what happened to Joe Biden. And it's not even,
00:22:59.540
you know, we're focusing on the mental acuity, but you know, there's the matter of the prostate
00:23:02.880
cancer. It appears that the sitting president of the United States had advanced cancer while he was
00:23:08.360
running for reelection, trying to say he he'd have another four years. And for all we know at that
00:23:14.080
point, maybe it had already metastasized to his bones. Who knows what the prognosis was?
00:23:19.160
Somebody does know just you and I aren't among them. Yeah. And, and the excuse that, that, um,
00:23:25.640
was made when this became an issue a few weeks ago was men his age typically don't get the tests
00:23:32.140
because sometimes they're false positives and it brings up questions of treatment and anxiety.
00:23:38.400
He's not a normal president, not normal person. He's a president. And as you said, running for
00:23:43.060
election. So if they really didn't test him, I would say that's malpractice truly. And if they
00:23:49.320
did test him and they're lying about the results, also a problem. And I don't, I, it doesn't really
00:23:53.960
matter which it is. The reality is experts will tell you he has an advanced stage. It should have
00:23:59.860
been detected earlier. And if it wasn't again, shame on the doctor for saying, well, we're not going to do
00:24:05.360
the test because he's, it's normal not to at someone his age. He's the president. He's running
00:24:10.240
for reelection. The president of the United States has advanced cancer. That's a national crisis. It's
00:24:16.000
not, it's not some private personal matter. And it's not the same as Trump with his flippant,
00:24:23.720
you know, he's the greatest, most in shape president of all time. Dr. Memos, which are kind of a laugh,
00:24:29.880
but he does take a cognitive test. And if Trump showed signs, repeated obvious signs of cognitive
00:24:36.380
decline, or it came out that he had advanced cancer, there would be an inquiry by Democrats too,
00:24:43.860
on what actually went on in those meetings, what tests were conducted. Now we want actual results and
00:24:50.380
you can bet his lawyer, his doctor too, would get a subpoena that they'd have to respond to.
00:24:53.720
Yeah. I don't love Donald Trump's history of medical disclosure, including those buffoonish
00:24:59.540
over the top letters. Although I will say that last disclosure from the White House was much fuller
00:25:04.880
than what Joe Biden had put out in terms of stats and data. It should be more complete. This is a
00:25:12.220
problem. I've seen it my whole career. There's been one reporter in my career, Dr. Lawrence K. Altman of
00:25:19.580
the New York Times, who's really dug into this with candidates and presidents and tried to hold
00:25:24.540
them accountable. And it's a big problem, which I've long said, on days when the president's going
00:25:30.340
to, the doctor's going to brief or the press secretary is going to brief, every White House
00:25:34.360
political, because they're all political reporters, should be subbed out and the health reporters
00:25:39.640
should go. Because political reporters shouldn't be asking the White House press secretary or the
00:25:45.500
White House doctor medical questions. They don't have the expertise to do it. And so the Biden thing
00:25:51.160
is the extreme case. But there hasn't been a single president or presidential candidate in my career
00:25:56.020
who has sufficiently safeguarded the public interest by having much more disclosure than they do. And
00:26:03.180
that's up to the news organizations to safeguard the public in the spirit of Dr. Altman of the New York
00:26:08.240
Times to really understand the questions to be asked and to ask them repeatedly and to demand
00:26:13.620
answers, because there's nothing, literally nothing more important to understand whether
00:26:17.560
the person's up to doing the job. Yeah. And look, they're going to get Jill Biden is going to get
00:26:23.080
a subpoena. Joe Biden could get one. We'll see. But those around Joe Biden on the inner circle,
00:26:28.800
Donalyn and the others who were running cover for him are all getting subpoenaed. And like, again,
00:26:36.860
the only one I think President Trump and the Comer are genuinely issued or interested in the truth,
00:26:42.440
not in putting people behind bars. I'm sure Trump wouldn't mind seeing some of these people go
00:26:46.440
behind bars, given what was done to him. But if they give immunity to all of these people,
00:26:50.920
then they can't hide behind that, you know, the Fifth Amendment anymore. So this is going to be an
00:26:56.980
interesting one to follow. It's fascinating to see the first one on deck. Dr. Kevin O'Connor
00:27:02.240
immediately assert the fifth in response to two very anodyne questions that anybody should be able to
00:27:08.300
answer without much concern. Again, were you ever told to lie about the president's health?
00:27:13.040
And did you ever believe President Biden was unfit to execute his duty? That was all going down
00:27:18.840
about 365 days ago. As long as we're there, Mark Halperin, let me ask you about another piece of
00:27:25.160
news that just came out from that same time period. Kamala Harris. I remember we reported on this at the
00:27:31.020
time, but I don't think we had the tape. She went on a podcast, you know, she decided to dip a toe
00:27:37.740
into the podcast world. She went on with that vulgar sex podcaster, and they had a real heart to heart
00:27:43.540
about how much they both love abortion. And she was given an invitation to go on Joe Rogan, which she was
00:27:49.160
too afraid to accept. And then she swung by Subway Takes, hosted by Kareem Rama. And apparently,
00:27:58.760
it went so poorly that he did not release it. And he was a Kamala supporter. He was thrilled
00:28:06.140
that she swung by. And he thought, at worst case scenario, I can say I interviewed the sitting
00:28:10.940
vice president, the possible next president, show a picture to my kids. And he, Kareem, just sat down
00:28:17.100
with Forbes editor, with a Forbes editor, and spoke to what happened in this interview that was so
00:28:24.060
disastrous. He never aired it. Look at this, SOT7.
00:28:28.640
Her take was really confusing and weird and not good. And so, mutually agreed that we shouldn't
00:28:36.660
And I got lucky, because I didn't want to be blamed for her losing.
00:28:42.700
It was really, really bad. And it was, it was like, didn't make any sense. Bacon is a spice.
00:28:50.500
Do you think that was her opinion? You think she had like a research group trying to figure
00:28:53.960
Research group. Because originally the take that I was pitched was great. And it was that she does
00:29:00.520
not like to take her shoes off on airplanes. And then at the last minute, I think research group
00:29:05.740
said, this makes you look rich and snobby. And you need to appeal to the American people. So she
00:29:13.080
went with the bacon. And I tried to pause the interview and say, trust me, we shouldn't do the
00:29:18.480
bacon thing. And I was overrided by this guy, who was maybe her deputy campaign manager.
00:29:25.560
An hour later, I got a call that said, we can't do bacon. But then I tried to cut it
00:29:31.660
into something else. And I did make it work. And then they were like, this makes her look.
00:29:40.420
We, we can't trust me. We can't do bacon, Mark.
00:29:44.000
Megan, how bad would this interview have to go for you guys to just kill it out?
00:29:51.860
This isn't going well. Let's kill it out. You know, my, my sort of signature line about
00:29:57.820
Kamala Harris is she does not like to make difficult decisions under pressure. And you
00:30:02.300
saw that as vice president. You saw that as a presidential candidate.
00:30:05.760
Yeah. But it's like difficult decision under pressure. Bacon as a spice. The host tells you
00:30:10.140
don't do it. And you still like agonize over it. And, or, and the first one before that,
00:30:15.240
don't, don't underestimate her, you know, cause she also had to decide, do I stick with,
00:30:19.060
it's a hassle to take off my shoes, getting onto the airplane. Like something that now has been
00:30:22.920
universally accepted as Trump reverses that through his TSA. She would have been ahead of the curve.
00:30:27.560
Was it shoes through TSA or was it shoes on the plane? I thought it was shoes on the plane.
00:30:31.300
Maybe I miss her either way, either way, it's an issue. I, I, I bet you there are a lot more
00:30:39.220
stories about this because as we saw throughout the campaign, we saw this with the endless Rogan
00:30:43.340
negotiations. Like they were afraid to put her in situations. This is why when people say, oh,
00:30:48.900
she was such a good candidate. There's only, if she hadn't been such a great candidate, you know,
00:30:52.400
she couldn't have turned things around in 90 days. She's not a good candidate. She didn't perform
00:30:56.860
as a good candidate. And they knew that because they had to negotiate, you know, Trump's like,
00:31:01.060
somebody says, yeah, go do Rogan or go do, um, what's his name? The comedian who's been on your
00:31:06.280
show. Is that, uh, Theo Vaughn? No. Oh, Andrew Schultz. Andrew Schultz. Go do Andrew. Trump's would be
00:31:12.700
like, yeah, let's go. I'll stay for four hours. And, and, and, and her team is like, what's, what's the,
00:31:18.080
what size is the table going to be? What, what temperature will the water be? Uh, what questions will you ask?
00:31:22.480
Can we edit it? Like all these hyper controlling things and to have her spend time doing a podcast
00:31:28.920
and it's so bad. It can't be aired. Maybe that's happened in American history. It might've happened
00:31:33.780
to Monroe, but I doubt it. She wait. Oh, she, I guess Schultz asked her, but she declined. Of course.
00:31:43.900
Yeah. What a shock. Of course. Yeah. So, but think about it, like of all the inanities out there,
00:31:49.220
like you can't make your case about bacon in a compelling way. Like even I could make the case
00:31:55.700
that you could use bacon as a spice. I mean, I wouldn't argue this, but if I had to in a court
00:32:00.140
of law, you know, or like model UN style where you're, you're not given a choice. This is what
00:32:03.800
you're arguing. I would say they, they dry it up. They chop it up. They put it in one of those spice
00:32:07.960
looking shakers. People shake it on their salad. It's even a commercial. It's I've seen it in commercials
00:32:13.240
being shaken on a cell. You could make the case if you had to. When I was a child, there was a thing
00:32:18.080
called Baco's that probably didn't actually have bacon in it. Um, I, I can only imagine what
00:32:24.720
Bobby Kennedy would say about the ingredients of Baco's, but, um, but yeah, of course you could
00:32:29.840
argue that, but, but the point is you're going on some podcasts, your staff should have researched
00:32:34.880
it and you should be swaggering in and killing it rather than having the, rather than having the
00:32:39.980
segment actually killed because you can't perform well enough. It's just, it's, it's, it's why I say
00:32:45.560
like, you know, as, uh, as Bill Clinton once said about Mitt Romney, that person should not have a
00:32:51.420
job that requires them to speak in public. And I think the same thing applies to her. Uh, if it's,
00:32:57.240
if it's a pressure situation and I, I confess, I don't know the format of this show, uh, that she
00:33:02.500
went on, but it sounds like they shouldn't have gone into it without being confident that she could
00:33:06.900
master it. And it sounds like she couldn't. And by the way, she picked the subject. That's
00:33:11.880
what's so crazy about it. That's his whole point. Like they had to settled on the shoes thing. Then
00:33:15.640
she thought it would make her look too elitist because she was trying to tell us all she had
00:33:18.900
jobs at McDonald's, which was under scrutiny of course. And now she doesn't want to look like
00:33:23.840
the child of privilege that she was. And so she switches to bacon as a spice. She chooses bacon as a
00:33:29.480
spice. She can't make her own argument. She's so inept at it that they have to cut it out of
00:33:34.760
subway takes a fun, lighthearted show where you're supposed to just go on and show that you're,
00:33:39.640
you can be a fun person. I sort of, I sort of loved that host attitude as he explained the tragedy
00:33:45.040
that he didn't want to be blamed for her losing and her performance was so bad. He thought it would
00:33:48.880
lead in a linear way to 270 electoral votes from Donald Trump if he had pressed, if he had pressed
00:33:53.960
send and uploaded it. So I sort of enjoyed that. And now I kind of want to go on that show.
00:33:58.940
Yeah. The tragedy it was, he did seem to really feel this one.
00:34:04.240
Deeply. Deeply. Deeply. It's not good. Trust me. It's not good.
00:34:10.580
It was hard. Now he has to release the tape. Now my only goal in life is to actually see the actual
00:34:17.720
tape. Ask your sound engineer to invoke the brotherhood and sisterhood of sound engineers
00:34:23.000
and see if we can't create the world exclusive on that.
00:34:25.980
Yes. I mean, like it, you know, it'd be like some of those ditty tapes. We don't have to say
00:34:31.160
where they came from. We don't have to be explicit. It could be someone went rogue.
00:34:34.940
And let's crank up the AI or finger puppets. Cause I don't want just the audio. I want,
00:34:41.420
Maybe it'll be my next parody, Mark. You can play, you can play the podcaster and I'll play
00:34:46.320
We could, we could do it in the next segment. We could do, you'd be, I'll be the podcaster and
00:34:50.360
you explained to me bacon as a spice in a way so inept that the fit, the host who was sympathetic
00:34:55.120
to her said it would eliminate her chances of getting to 270 electoral votes. Had it ever,
00:35:02.560
It's really unbelievable. Okay. Wait, I'm loving this, this walk down memory lane. There's,
00:35:07.560
there's more news from this same timeframe. Can you believe it was only 12 months ago,
00:35:11.760
where there's yet another book out on Joe Biden and his mental decline.
00:35:18.880
And this book is by Josh Dossie of the Washington post and two others who were formerly at the
00:35:22.880
Washington post. And this book talks about how I think it was Dossie. One of the three
00:35:28.140
got the phone number of Joe Biden managed to get the cell number of Joe Biden. Meanwhile,
00:35:34.580
Trump gives his cell phone number out to like everybody. It was funny. It was about,
00:35:38.920
I don't know, a year and a half ago, Dan Bongino was on the show and he's talking about how
00:35:41.700
he's, he talks to the president on the cell phone all the time. He's like, yeah,
00:35:44.720
you probably have it. You know, I was like, no, no, it's, it's scrawled on the wall of every
00:35:49.120
cracker barrel South of the Mason Dixon line. Well, now Trump and I are in touch via cell,
00:35:54.640
but at the time we weren't, I was last to the party. Anyway, he's very easy to give it out.
00:36:00.680
He wants to talk to the press. He wants to talk to everybody. Joe Biden, completely the opposite.
00:36:05.180
Kamala Harris, completely the opposite, but really there was reason for Joe Biden's aides to not let
00:36:10.280
him be too easily accessible. And so he, he gets the number somehow. He doesn't reveal how,
00:36:17.300
and he writes about how this past March, March of 2025, after Joe Biden's left office,
00:36:23.240
Donald Trump has been sworn in. He calls him up and says, I'd like to talk to you.
00:36:27.620
And Joe Biden says, all right, well, I'm, I'm busy now, but you know, call me back and we'll talk.
00:36:31.920
So he did, he called him back and they had a very quick conversation as Joe Biden was leaving for the
00:36:37.480
train or something like that about how things were going. My team, can you guys help me out?
00:36:42.560
What page is this on in the packet? Cause I want to get the actual back and forth on how it went.
00:36:46.240
Um, Oh, here it is. Page five. I think it's, I think it's Tyler Pager, not Josh Dossie.
00:36:50.820
He was one of the coauthors, Tyler Pager. Yeah, you're right. It's Tyler Pager. Okay. So, uh, let's see.
00:36:58.500
Yes. Tyler Pager writes as follows. So he said, he'd be willing to speak for the book the next day,
00:37:03.380
the next morning he answered and said he was running late to catch a train. He said he had
00:37:07.200
a very negative view of Trump's second term. I don't see anything he's done. That's been
00:37:11.300
productive. He said, asked if he had any regrets about dropping out of the presidential race. He
00:37:15.820
said, no, not now. I don't spend a lot of time on regrets. He quickly hung up to get on the train.
00:37:21.520
Listen to this. After the first call, the book continues furious Biden aides repeatedly called
00:37:28.620
and texted Tyler Pager. After the brief second call, his aides blocked the reporter's calls
00:37:34.620
to the former president. Two days later, a message from Verizon wireless replaced Biden's voicemail
00:37:41.360
message with the number you dialed has been changed, disconnected, or is no longer in service.
00:37:47.460
They were that upset that one Washington post reporter. It's not like Megan Kelly got the number
00:37:55.440
had managed to break through the fortress and speak with the now former president that they
00:38:03.080
actually changed. It sounds like the president's cell phone number. Well, and of course, contrast to
00:38:10.200
the fact that, as you said, you're the last reporter in the world who had Donald Trump cell
00:38:14.020
number and he picks up all the time or calls people all the time. The, the, the posture that the
00:38:20.000
communications staff around Joe Biden had and has now apparently was to protect him and to keep him
00:38:27.200
from talking. And, and they hid behind this fiction that it was about, you know, he's, you know, he
00:38:31.720
always had what was called, uh, impolitely diarrhea of the mouth. He was never a safe bet to be free
00:38:38.800
and in talking to reporters without supervision, but that was before his cognitive decline. And again,
00:38:44.460
it's testament to the palace guard, uh, determination that allowed them to their professional credit in
00:38:52.500
some ways to get the guy through four years, even though the cognitive decline began before he even
00:38:56.900
took the oath of office in 2021, uh, they made it through because they browbeat reporters. And, you
00:39:04.160
know, I laugh when people who work for politicians call me and say, how dare you ask my boss a question?
00:39:10.300
I laugh and say, that's my job. And it's their job to decide whether they want to answer or not.
00:39:14.540
If you think your job is to try to stop me, good luck to you. But that was the posture of the Biden
00:39:19.000
folks. And I, I think they're right to highlight in the book that the extreme measures they took
00:39:23.860
to keep the reporter from trying to ask Joe Biden questions. Okay. So meanwhile, staying in the same
00:39:31.020
timeframe, um, Selena Zito's out with her new book, Butler. Uh, and it's a great book, highly recommend,
00:39:38.100
and it's already doing very well. And it takes a look at what happened at Butler. It takes a look
00:39:42.280
at the shooter, Thomas Crooks, and why we don't know more about him and takes a look at Selena's
00:39:47.220
bird's eye view from the whole thing. She was steps away from the president when he got shot.
00:39:51.400
And what was in the news yesterday was a report that these Democrats are now so determined to stop
00:39:59.800
Trump and to get themselves in the news as like fighters and also cool that they are actually
00:40:07.940
saying someone needs to get shot. Someone needs to go to one of these like ice facilities, these
00:40:13.020
detention facilities and get so in the face of ice or the guards who are on duty that they meaning a
00:40:19.240
democratic lawmaker, this is Democrats saying this actually get shot, which I would suggest to you
00:40:24.880
is inspired by in a weird, sick, warped way, what we saw in Butler because the Democrats went into
00:40:32.480
total denial that, that it had even happened when we saw Trump get shot and then rise up with the
00:40:40.320
fight, fight, fight in an extraordinary moment. They remember all the truthers on the, on the Trump
00:40:46.460
shooting, Joy Reid, Olbermann, there were, there were people you didn't even expect people who are more
00:40:52.460
mainstream who are like, uh, I don't believe it. You know, like I actually want to see the injury
00:40:56.720
who are pretending that the whole thing was made up. And now they've morphed all this time later
00:41:01.440
after it's been confirmed by the FBI. It was the Joe Biden FBI, um, that confirmed Trump had been
00:41:07.500
shot in the ear and so on. Now they have to accept that it happened and now he's won. And they see that
00:41:12.660
obviously the way he handled it and all of it propelled him to even more popular status. Now they're like,
00:41:18.880
someone needs to take a bullet. That's what's real. That's what's strong. And so Mark, just further
00:41:25.920
proof that they've lost their minds. Yeah. So I think there's two things about Trump derangement
00:41:32.020
syndrome that, that are a little bit seeming in contradiction. One is I think we shouldn't use it
00:41:37.460
promiscuously. We shouldn't attribute any opposition to Donald Trump to, we shouldn't attribute it to Trump
00:41:42.820
derangement syndrome because sometimes there's principled opposition that that's not deranged. But the
00:41:48.360
other thing is, I don't think we've sufficiently understood the extent to which that is in the
00:41:54.180
minds of so many Democrats, both prominent Democrats and rank and file Democrats, that truly a
00:41:59.940
phenomenon that causes them to say and do things that not only, um, are, are over the top, but are
00:42:06.900
actually helpful to Donald Trump. And this is another example of that. Uh, you'd have to have severe
00:42:12.880
Trump derangement syndrome to say, well, look how much being shot helped Trump. So we need to try
00:42:18.280
that ourselves. And yet again, that's, that's, that, that is unfortunately for the Democrats.
00:42:23.520
And I think for America, the, the point of view of far too many, I don't know, there was a blind
00:42:27.820
quote who knows, you know, how pervasive that sentiment is or who, well, they are getting aggressive
00:42:32.400
at ice detention facilities. Yeah, they are. Yeah. That was in lawmakers, but it was, it was
00:42:37.640
opponents of the president's policy. Oh, Oh, I see what you're saying. I think you meant the thing in
00:42:41.760
Texas the other day. Yeah, no, they have been aggressive. I think, I think that, uh, and,
00:42:46.460
and Selena, I talked about this on next up, but the, the, uh, well, besides denying he was shot
00:42:52.820
besides trying to, you know, memory hole it and not cover it, you know, very much besides showing a
00:42:58.400
total lack of curiosity about the motive of the shooter. They also, again, uh, act as if, uh,
00:43:06.800
Donald Trump, uh, you know, either did this on purpose or was exploiting it in some way that
00:43:11.440
was improper. Just, just the former president of the United States was shot and, and, and they can't
00:43:17.340
bring themselves to do anything, but be confounded by it as opposed to concerned about it or sympathetic
00:43:22.840
about it. And it's, again, it's a, it's another manifestation of Trump derangement syndrome.
00:43:26.620
That's, that's not good for anybody except maybe Donald Trump.
00:43:29.620
It, what was so hard about the Trump assassination attempt for them wasn't even that he got shot.
00:43:36.900
It was how he handled it. Yeah. It was a superhero moment. It just was like, it's the way every,
00:43:45.060
I don't know about every woman, but every man on earth, it's the way they hope they would react
00:43:51.040
if God forbid that this happened to them, you know, with strength and defiance and dignity.
00:43:57.720
And as a leader and keeping the crowd calm, all of it, it was superhero. It was superhuman real life
00:44:05.260
Rambo. And that's why they can't stand it. That's why they went into it's, it's not real. He faked it.
00:44:13.640
You know, he, he's not injured. The ear thing is fake and they're still reeling because he actually
00:44:19.460
won the presidency. I don't know. I heard you talking about this on your show and it was
00:44:23.500
just how profound that moment was and how the remnants of it, you know, the consequences of
00:44:28.880
it are still very much lingering, you know, with the Trump loyalists and with his greatest detractors
00:44:34.820
both camps for sure. Um, okay. So that's Butler, but out of Butler, he attracted a brand new and
00:44:47.220
very important friend and that was Elon Musk. Now Elon Musk, um, is now a frenemy or maybe true
00:44:55.100
enemy. I don't know which one, but not really friend of president Trump's anymore. The breakup
00:45:00.400
feels real. Um, after some like sniffing around about maybe we're going to make up, it seems like
00:45:05.720
they're, they're not making up. He was out there just the other day. Of course he tweeted that Trump
00:45:09.620
was on the Epstein list and then said he regretted tweeting that. And then he tweeted, tweeted that Bannon
00:45:14.040
was, is on the Epstein list and then said Bannon's going to be in jail. And now Bannon is out there
00:45:19.260
today. Linda Yaccarino announced this morning, she's resigning from X, the CEO for the past two
00:45:24.080
years. And Bannon saying she's going to go to jail too. So it's like a war between these guys. Um,
00:45:30.620
what would she go to jail? Not only she's not going to jail, but Bannon is not only angry at
00:45:36.260
Moscow, but, but Musk has formed this third party, the America party. And the conventional wisdom
00:45:42.380
is that this is only going to hurt Republicans. And I think he means it to hurt Republicans.
00:45:46.000
He's very angry at the Republicans who voted for the one big, beautiful bill after running for office
00:45:51.020
saying that they'd be fiscal conservatives and that they didn't want to increase, increase the
00:45:55.020
deficit or the debt. And, um, Harry Anton over at CNN, their data guru guy took a look at Musk and
00:46:03.240
this third party. And here's what he had to say about it. Saw three. This entire thing makes very
00:46:08.880
little sense to me. It makes about as much sense as selling sand in the desert. What is the size
00:46:13.360
of Elon Musk's base? Well, I calculated to be about 4%, just 4%, one, two, three, four percent of all
00:46:20.560
voters. What is that base made up of? Well, it's those who view Elon Musk favorably and the GOP
00:46:25.620
unfavorably. We're talking just about 4% of all voters out there because it turns out most of the
00:46:31.120
people who like Elon Musk already like the GOP already. That is, they already have a party form.
00:46:35.980
Americans with an unfavorable view of Ross Perot was only 14% back in 1992. Now the vast majority
00:46:43.000
of Americans are already against the Elon Musk. 58% elected the Congress from a third party since
00:46:49.540
1970. Just 0.2% of all winners, of all winners were either third party, independent or right. And
00:46:58.400
we're only talking about 24 out of over 13,000 winners. The bottom line is third
00:47:05.960
party, independents. They just don't succeed. Is he wrong? First of all, do you know Harry?
00:47:14.120
No, but I'd love to. Well, he's a friend of mine. We have dinner occasionally. We have mutual
00:47:18.260
friends. We've, we've dinner. And I got to say, that's how Harry talks at dinner too. It's extremely
00:47:22.500
exhausting. Does he go like, it was up here and now it's down here. They'll say, I want the veal. I
00:47:29.380
want the beef. How's the beef? Is the beef good? I need the beef. The beef is 18%. He's very intense.
00:47:34.560
The appetizer was out of this world. Exactly. Uh, you need four things to have even the premise
00:47:42.020
of a possible third party in a country, unlike all the other industrialized democracies that is
00:47:47.820
built legally, institutionally, culturally to keep the duopoly of the two major parties.
00:47:53.820
You need a lot of money, right? Cause it's expensive to launch the thing. Check. A lot of money. Although,
00:47:59.440
you know, a lot of money, like would he spend a billion dollars? I don't know. A lot of money.
00:48:04.480
Number one. Number two, you need an, a person who's popular and who people listen to and look
00:48:11.380
to, to say, yeah, that person's going to be different than Tweedledee and Tweedledum.
00:48:15.960
It's not Musk. Cause as Harry correctly points out, he's not popular. So he's going to have to find a
00:48:20.660
horse and whether that's several horses to run Senate and house races or a presidential candidate,
00:48:25.080
he's got to find actual human beings like Perot who are compelling three, you need an issue agenda
00:48:30.500
that the other parties would have trouble matching. And I don't know what that is because he talks
00:48:36.180
about fiscal discipline. Is he going to be the party of cutting social security benefits? I don't know
00:48:40.580
how he's going to have an issues agenda like Perot did, although he's had some problems too,
00:48:45.540
but at least had something to talk about. And then lastly, you need an army of really talented
00:48:50.260
political operatives who are willing to take your money to execute on ballot access and issue
00:48:56.000
development and communications. I think he's, you said check on number one. I don't think he has the
00:49:01.040
other three. So if he wants to make a few willing consultants, super rich by wasting the money,
00:49:06.480
he can, but I don't, I don't see it as a practical matter, how he goes from his current temper tantrum
00:49:13.000
and anger at the Republicans to doing anything like starting a third party, even getting a single
00:49:19.200
house member elected. It's very difficult to do in this country. Well, Andrew Yang is out there
00:49:24.900
saying, you know, I, I did it and the, you know, this is how you do it. And he's saying he did manage
00:49:30.340
to get candidates elected that it's really not that hard. Andrew really didn't. I mean, maybe,
00:49:34.960
maybe I missed it and he got some dog catcher elected somewhere, but Andrew is a very smart guy.
00:49:40.860
He's well-meaning. I think he understands the challenges of this, but they they've been at it for,
00:49:46.000
you know, a long time now, I think, I think a couple of years and, and they've not broken through
00:49:51.460
because again, this country is, is as much as people have been alienated by the two parties,
00:49:57.420
it just, it's inhospitable legally, politically, culturally to try to start a third party. It's
00:50:02.720
just, just tough. It's why Trump ran as a Republican, even though he definitely was not
00:50:08.720
a Republican and probably really isn't still a Republican, much to the consternation of much of
00:50:13.560
the party. He created a third party and he slapped a Republican sticker on it. Yeah. He changed the
00:50:19.420
Republican party into his image because he wasn't really a Republican. He certainly wasn't a
00:50:23.840
traditional Republican on so many issues. And, but that's what you have to do. And, uh, and by the
00:50:29.080
way, that's another thing, like many of us did not believe that Trump was pro life at all, but he,
00:50:35.820
you can't get the nomination as a Republican without saying that you are. And then he governed as a pro
00:50:40.360
lifer. So no one really cares, you know, like Republicans like fine. I don't know what's in
00:50:44.020
his heart as his business, but he's been a very pro-life president. The most successful pro-life
00:50:48.420
president in the country's history. Exactly. So, you know, it's kind of irrelevant. All right.
00:50:52.560
Stand by more with Mark coming up. He's the host of next up with Mark Halpern. You should go and
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00:52:37.420
This time yesterday, literally 24 hours ago, we were watching the following out of the White House
00:52:44.300
cabinet meeting where the subject of Jeffrey Epstein came up and Donald Trump injected himself into the
00:52:52.400
exchange, which was meant to be between the New York Post reporter and Pam Bondi as follows.
00:52:56.960
Satwan. Your memo and release yesterday of Jeffrey Epstein, it left some lingering mysteries.
00:53:03.620
One of the biggest ones is whether he ever worked for a American or foreign intelligence agency.
00:53:10.400
So could you resolve whether or not he did? And also, could you say why there was a minute missing
00:53:14.340
from the jailhouse team? Are you still talking about Jeffrey Epstein? This guy's been talked about for
00:53:20.140
years. You're asking, we have Texas, we have this, we have all of the things. And are people still
00:53:27.480
talking about this guy, this creep? That is unbelievable. Do you want to waste the time and
00:53:33.640
do you feel like answering? I don't mind answering. I mean, I can't believe you're asking a question on
00:53:38.180
Epstein at a time like this where we're having some of the greatest success and also tragedy
00:53:44.380
with what happened in Texas. It just seems like a desecration, but you go ahead.
00:53:50.440
Okay. Trump himself promised full transparency on the Jeffrey Epstein case when he was running for
00:53:57.840
president. This has been a big issue on the right. My friend Dan Bongino was one of the people who made
00:54:04.360
it a big issue. So did Kash Patel talking about it over and over and over again. It is just not
00:54:12.140
real for Trump to pretend he shocked. This is still an issue. Nothing's been resolved.
00:54:18.320
Nothing's been released. He promised transparency as did his attorney general. And then they release
00:54:25.140
a memo saying you're not getting anything. It's over. Just trust us. And that was not real. Trump
00:54:31.720
pretending he shocked that people are still interested in it. Your take Mark. Well, let me first talk about
00:54:37.280
that soundbite and then the bigger issue. So I'm a student of Donald Trump and how he handles public
00:54:44.640
appearances, as are you. And I don't have the world's most sensitive spidey sense, but I got
00:54:50.400
some spidey sense. He regularly says, I don't like that question, does it all the time, but that was
00:54:56.540
with a purpose. Okay. So, so I don't think, and I don't see how anyone could look at that and not see
00:55:02.820
an attempt by the president to intimidate the press from ever asking again about it. That's how I read
00:55:07.540
it. What are the arguments against withholding? What are the arguments for transparency? MAGA really wants
00:55:16.020
it. I keep a running list here of all the dues organizations on the right and individuals who are
00:55:23.380
demanding transparency. Still, it's a long list and includes many people who are typically
00:55:27.900
automatically supportive of the president. So MAGA wants it. His base wants it. Two, it's the right
00:55:34.000
thing to do for the victims and for public trust. Three, as you said, the president supported this on a
00:55:41.440
regular basis. And four, they said they were going to do it. So there's a credibility issue. So all those
00:55:47.000
things would argue for disclosure, transparency release. What's on the other side?
00:55:54.860
I pause. I pause pregnantly. What's on the other side? What's on the other side is the suspicion
00:56:00.340
is the suspicion that this is intended to protect rich and powerful men. So I, I, I think that,
00:56:09.400
that this could go either way. The news cycle could move on. MAGA often will pick fights with Donald
00:56:16.260
Trump and then move on. They're a resilient group. So this, and, and, and, and the press core,
00:56:22.500
the dominant press core, the so-called legacy media, they have for years and they're continuing now
00:56:29.820
to be remarkably uninterested in what is both an important and interesting story, something the
00:56:34.140
press core normally covers. Okay. So I think it could go either way. This could disappear. And,
00:56:39.840
and, and those who don't want further disclosure could have their way slash get away with it.
00:56:44.360
Or those demanding justice and disclosure could get their way. I don't know which way it's going to
00:56:52.180
go. But again, I'll go back to the first thing I said, that was a remarkable performance by the
00:56:56.520
president. It was an obvious attempt to deflect and to set the messaging. Like we're not talking
00:57:03.320
about Epstein anymore, period. And I'm the head of MAGA and that's what I say, but it's too late.
00:57:09.500
That animal has already been created and it's pretty ferocious. It's not going to be tamed just
00:57:15.060
by one line from the president at a cabinet meeting. He helped create it. He helped inspired it. His top
00:57:20.480
lieutenants helped create it. And, um, we too have been watching the reaction amongst the most, you know,
00:57:26.840
faithful supporters of the president. We put together a butted soundbite in this, you'll hear names.
00:57:30.740
You you'll hear from names that, you know, the only one who doesn't seem to be demanding more
00:57:36.440
is our friend Ben Shapiro, but you'll hear almost a uniform tone from literally almost everyone else
00:57:44.280
on the right. Take a listen. Nobody told us prior to this, that Epstein files would be anywhere,
00:57:50.800
even on the agenda for that day. And it was really sprung as a surprise to all of us. We get handed
00:57:56.640
these binders and then before we even have a chance to look into them, we're hauled out actually in
00:58:03.020
front of the cameras that were all there. We don't have the accountability that was spoken of. We don't
00:58:07.400
have the releases that were spoken of. And it's just, it's indefensible. It's indefensible that the
00:58:12.280
answers aren't there when so much was promised. As someone who voted for the president, campaigned
00:58:17.220
for the president a lot. Um, I'm not attacking the president, but I think even people who are fully
00:58:23.060
on board with, you know, the bulk of the MAGA agenda are like, this is, this is too much.
00:58:28.720
Yes. Yes. I'm saying that with love and I hope that they're listening. Um, because I think this
00:58:34.080
threatens to blow up the whole thing. By the way, when Pam Bondi went on television and said, I have a
00:58:37.680
videotape of kids getting abused. I didn't, I follow this case closely and I know a lot of the people
00:58:42.900
involved, as I've told you, I had no idea. I didn't know that really thousands of children got
00:58:48.700
raped. Who raped them? Where are the rapists? Like, why aren't they in jail? What, this is the
00:58:53.700
Department of Justice. Yes. That is so crazy. This is like, this is honestly one of the craziest
00:59:00.780
things I've ever seen in my entire life. And I just think it's very dangerous to play around with
00:59:07.020
this stuff. Can't the Department of Justice move to unseal things that were put under seal? Isn't that
00:59:12.740
technically the way that this could potentially be brought to the public? Because I think we need mass
00:59:17.740
disclosure. I think we need more information, at least for my under 30 crowd. I know my demo,
00:59:22.480
they are volcanic over this whole thing. And by the way, the over 60 crowd, they're like Epstein,
00:59:27.320
whatever, not a big deal. No, but under 30, can you explain that to our audience too, Mike,
00:59:31.220
the hyper online under 30 crowd? This is a major, major issue. If you're willing to throw that over
00:59:36.940
and claim they're lying, then I'd like to see you present your evidence that they are in fact lying
00:59:40.940
because I know Dan, I don't think that Dan Bajino is lying to me. I know cash Patel a little bit. I don't
00:59:47.200
think cash Patel is lying to me. I don't think these people are lying to me, which means that
00:59:52.000
if somebody else continues to claim that they're lying, they ought to provide their evidence at
00:59:54.820
this point. Pam Bondi needs to be fired. Who is rolling this out? The little rascals?
01:00:04.620
Panky, look, I got some videotape. What are you doing? This is ridiculous.
01:00:10.360
Really interesting, right, Mark? Yeah. Every time I see Ben Shapiro, I think maybe I should adopt
01:00:18.280
more of his voice for my show. I feel like he's on, he's onto something with that voice.
01:00:24.340
You know, I, as you and I have talked about, you know, Charlie and Tucker are extremely influential
01:00:28.960
with the administration. And when they say not just the morally right thing to do, but the,
01:00:34.080
but the demand of the base is more disclosure. And then, but, but Ben gives voice to the reality
01:00:41.840
for some, which is Pam Bondi's taking a lot more heat than cash Patel and Dan are a lot more. And
01:00:48.180
yet they're out there with more specificity saying, trust us case closed. So I'll continue to watch to
01:00:54.700
see how they handle this. The president endorsed them on, on true social the other day, not specifically
01:00:59.400
on this issue, but in general, but, but not her, although he was pretty friendly in the, in the
01:01:05.160
cabin room, but he knew she was, she was twisting by a string and he did not send out a nice tweet
01:01:10.940
about her. Now you didn't include Laura Loomer in your mashup. Um, and she's, she is, she is much
01:01:17.700
derided obviously. And there are people in the white house who don't like her influence, but, um,
01:01:22.800
she doesn't lose that often. She doesn't lose that often. And she's, she's very hepped up about this,
01:01:27.560
but, but I'll say again, there's a lot of, she wants bond fired. Yeah. There are a lot of mag
01:01:32.320
obsessions that, that aren't necessarily in the public interest or aren't rooted in truth, justice
01:01:38.580
in the American way. This is a real thing. And Tucker, I think gave voice to it. Like, like forget
01:01:45.300
the conspiracy theories, just deal with the reality of how this man was treated by the criminal justice
01:01:51.360
system and how, how, uh, discouraging that was not just to the victims, but to people who believe in
01:01:57.860
justice and people who believe in, in the American system, treating people fairly like this requires
01:02:03.460
extraordinarily, uh, detailed care and disclosure. And the administration after championing it and
01:02:11.420
after knowing full well, how important it was, as, as Charlie said to so many of Americans,
01:02:16.320
regardless of their political nation is basically saying, trust this case closed. And I, it could
01:02:21.860
sustain, but I don't think it will. And I, and I don't think it should because imagine the status
01:02:27.860
quo and what that will do to people's lack of trust in the government and in, uh, and, and, and
01:02:34.700
commitments that have been made. Listening to the theorizing around it has been fascinating.
01:02:40.400
Just this morning, I was listening to Scott Adams, creator of Dilbert and also just very bright
01:02:44.740
social commentator. And he was saying, let's just say without evidence, he was very open,
01:02:51.420
but this is just a theory. Let's just say that there is some Israel connection with Epstein,
01:02:57.980
like he was an agent, something, uh, collecting compromise on various people. And he went to Trump
01:03:05.660
and said, you got to make this go away. And Trump went to Bongino and Patel and Bondi and said,
01:03:12.260
for the sake of peace in the middle East, we're moving on. There's nothing to see here. And that's
01:03:19.320
what I want you to say. Would I consider that a lie? I couldn't forgive. That's a Scott Adams still.
01:03:24.920
No, I wouldn't. He said, I, and it, I mean the president, this is total speculation, but the
01:03:29.820
president going to those three and saying it's over, I don't care what you say, but you have to make it
01:03:35.420
go away. We're moving on would explain the way all three have behaved over the past couple of weeks.
01:03:42.740
Yeah. Um, again, if, if, if they, if they're telling the truth and there's, and they really
01:03:48.160
believe that the right thing for the world is to say, there's nothing to see here. Didn't commit
01:03:52.980
suicide. It wasn't murdered. Didn't have a list, nothing more to disclose. That would be good for
01:03:58.120
the public to know. Then they're doing a crap job explaining why they're doing a crap job giving
01:04:04.640
us confidence. There needs to be long interviews, long press conferences, not just a statement and
01:04:10.640
not just short disclosure. And they need to walk through it all. Pam Bondi yesterday says, well,
01:04:15.680
there's a minute gap every day, maybe, but minute gap is something that, you know, is not,
01:04:21.920
is not going to go away without a really clear explanation. And I'll say again,
01:04:26.180
like it was a nothing. Everybody was like, wait, what it's real. The minute before midnight thing
01:04:31.080
is real. And you thought you were just going to get away with it every night on, on next up.
01:04:35.240
There's a minute gap every episode where I tell my best jokes and the producers cut them out.
01:04:39.980
And someone winds up dead. FYI. Yeah. So someone dies at the end of every episode. Um, again,
01:04:47.140
the, the Mossad thing in my world, the Mossad thing is very big as a matter of speculation. Uh,
01:04:52.140
but the other speculation is, uh, as my friend says, Donald Trump, uh, uh, you know, has deep
01:04:59.500
affiliations where Jeffrey Epstein did in South Florida and on the upper East side of New York
01:05:03.740
city. And so maybe he's trying to protect friends. Now, some people say he's trying to protect
01:05:07.940
himself. No idea. But as I said before, there needs to be an explanation for what they're doing
01:05:13.600
because all the, all the, all the equities, all of the logic, all the, all the doing the right thing
01:05:19.700
falls on the side of disclosure. So if, if they're telling the truth, if they, if they're confident
01:05:25.780
that there is nothing more to disclose, it would be in the public interest to know there, they need
01:05:30.700
to do a better job of, of walking us through that and not just saying to reporters, how dare you ask?
01:05:36.700
Mm-hmm. The, um, this has been getting bandied about on X quite a bit. Elon, as I mentioned,
01:05:45.560
has weighed in on a couple of people. I didn't know that Roger Stone, longtime Trump advisor,
01:05:52.380
also hates Steve Bannon. Elon hates Steve. Roger hates, uh, hates Elon. Just for the record. I like,
01:06:01.840
just for the record. I like them all. Okay. So Roger, sorry. Roger doesn't hate Elon.
01:06:06.460
Roger hates Bannon. Yeah, no, I, I mean, I, I got no horse in this race, but I think it's
01:06:11.340
interesting to watch. And here is what happened between them yesterday. Elon tweeted, how can
01:06:16.800
people be expected to have faith in Trump? If he won't release the Epstein files, someone responded
01:06:21.220
will exposing the Epstein files rank high on the America parties list. Musk must says a hundred
01:06:26.640
percent. Then Elon tweeted out Bannon is in the Epstein files, but didn't offer any evidence to back it up.
01:06:33.180
But he was responding to tweets from Roger Stone as follows quote, why would Bannon meet with
01:06:38.080
Jeffrey Epstein both at his New York home and in Paris after Epstein was convicted on sex crimes in
01:06:43.720
Florida? Why would he coach Epstein for his 60 minutes appearance? This appears to stem from a 2021
01:06:49.400
book by Michael Wolf that Bannon helped Epstein prepare for a CBS 60 minutes interview that never
01:06:57.880
happened. And it's quoting here. Uh, I believe the quoting Bannon quote, you're engaging. You're not
01:07:03.820
threatening. You're a natural, you're friendly. You don't look at all creepy. You're a sympathetic
01:07:08.580
figure said Bannon during the early 2019 coaching and feedback session per the book. Bannon confirmed
01:07:14.960
to the New York times that he encouraged Epstein to do a 60 minutes interview and recorded more than 15
01:07:21.100
hours of interviews with the disgraced financier. Bannon told the New York times, however, that he
01:07:26.920
never did media train anyone and was instead working on the unannounced documentary to demonstrate how
01:07:35.080
Epstein's quote, perversions and depravity toward young women were part of a life that was systematically
01:07:41.440
supported, encouraged, and rewarded by a global establishment that dined off of his money and
01:07:47.420
his influence. That's kind of mind blowing. 15 hours of tape and Bannon today was critical.
01:07:54.940
I watched his show yesterday. He was critical of the way this is being handled and was demanding
01:07:59.000
more transparency. But the point is simply this thing has tentacles that reach deep pretty much
01:08:06.220
everywhere. And I don't know, Mark, whether we're ever going to have it fully figured out.
01:08:11.980
Well, it's hard to know because this administration doesn't seem on track to do it. They could reverse
01:08:16.720
course. Could be another taco situation. I doubt the press will do it because some press has tried.
01:08:25.520
It's hard, right? No subpoena power. I don't know that Congress is going to do it. I don't know that
01:08:30.120
any prosecutor is going to do it. Tom Fitton is saying he's going to do it. Who? Tom Fitton.
01:08:36.960
Oh, Tom Fitton. Judicial Watch. Yeah, Tom, Judicial Watch should try, but their main bag of tricks
01:08:42.560
involves trying to get courts to do things. I think that somebody would have to engage in a pretty
01:08:49.960
thorough effort with subpoena power, ideally, to figure out what to do. But it starts with the
01:08:57.580
executive branch, right? Because they've got access to all these documents, which they say
01:09:00.820
aren't going to be released. So the tale will be told by whether the administration changes its
01:09:10.820
posture. If the president and the Justice Department, the FBI continue to say case closed,
01:09:15.640
then the ball's going to move to another court. But they're in the best position to do something
01:09:22.720
about it. And as for the fights amongst people like Bannon and Stone, I've got some friends who
01:09:29.660
don't like each other and pretty strongly in a couple of cases. But the president has just an
01:09:35.340
enormous capacity to be friends with both Heckle and Jekyll and the Hatfields and the McCoys. And
01:09:41.940
yeah, and that that's just part of the colorful salon surrounding our president.
01:09:47.440
I just feel like no one's going to subpoena anyone because the Democrats probably have too many high
01:09:52.440
ranking people on their side who they're worried are in those files. Yeah. And clearly the Republicans
01:09:57.440
may have some bodies buried there, too. Although your best friend, Jamie Raskin and some other House
01:10:02.720
Democrats did write to the Justice Department or the White House, I don't know which administration
01:10:07.080
joining the core, the chorus of those saying, please release everything. So if they're worried
01:10:13.360
about Democrats, they're not acting like they are. Well, they don't have subpoena power right now.
01:10:17.820
They're not in control. Yeah. So, you know, let's see what they do if and when they win back the
01:10:22.880
House. Yeah. I do think the president's going to hear more from people. I don't think you see people
01:10:28.900
standing down on this on the right. I think, you know, the biggest mistake Pam Bondi made was
01:10:33.380
dragging those influencers into the White House and humiliating them. They're keeping score. I
01:10:39.240
started that clip with Jack Posobiec, who was one of them. Liz Wheeler is another. She'll be on this
01:10:43.540
program tomorrow telling us the full story of what happened there. It's not as we thought. It's
01:10:47.020
actually a little different. And she's going to tell. But I think they're rightfully pissed off on what
01:10:53.280
was done to them. And the only way it could have been fixed was if then Pam Bondi did deliver, did
01:10:58.360
make good on her promise to give the Epstein files to them. And instead, they got stiff-armed just like
01:11:05.200
everybody else. I just want to make one other comment on what Tucker was saying in that clip
01:11:08.140
with Sagar and Jetty on his show, on Tucker's show. My understanding on the children, the child
01:11:14.860
sexual assault material, child pornography, we used to call it, is that they have tens of thousands
01:11:20.700
of images on Jeffrey Epstein's computer that prove the guy was into that stuff, that he was looking
01:11:29.520
at highly contrabanded materials of young children. And that is a new disclosure. And Pam Bondi had
01:11:39.080
referenced it when caught on tape with James O'Keefe. And then she went to the microphones herself and
01:11:43.140
said it so that she couldn't look like she was gotten by James O'Keefe. But now they're saying it more
01:11:48.080
explicitly, that's what they're referring to. I have no reason to believe this is, these are, in fact,
01:11:54.000
I believe it's the opposite, that these were Jeffrey Epstein victims, you know, in person. It was his
01:12:00.780
chosen pornography. I mean, it's disgusting, but that's that. What they're saying in the memo is that
01:12:09.000
there are about 1,000 Jeffrey Epstein victims, actual victims. And by that, they mean young women.
01:12:16.460
And again, again, I've been describing them as barely legal because somebody very close to the
01:12:20.900
case told me that's that's what he was into. The bear, like in terms of actual physical interactions,
01:12:25.180
it was the barely legal type, like the 17, 18 year olds who looked 14. Then there are over a thousand
01:12:32.300
victims like that who were brought into the Epstein mansion. And the typical MO we've, we've learned this
01:12:38.140
throughout the cases is they would be brought into the Epstein property. They would be funneled into some
01:12:42.260
room. They would be paid. These young, young girls would be paid to give Jeffrey Epstein an X-rated
01:12:47.360
massage. You know, they were sort of lured. Many of them tolding to being told it's just going to be
01:12:51.520
a massage and you can make some extra money and they would do it. And then it would turn X-rated.
01:12:58.120
Mostly it was just these girls pleasuring Jeffrey Epstein. It wasn't like an actual sex act. Forgive me
01:13:03.100
for getting graphic, but this is what the evidence has been. Um, and, and so that's what they're
01:13:07.760
talking about just to distinguish. I have yet to hear anything, putting a number of victims
01:13:11.440
that Jeffrey or Ghislaine farmed out to other men. Now that's not to say Megan Kelly knows there were
01:13:17.700
none. It's just, I have never heard any specifics on that. I've heard the names like the guy who owned
01:13:24.140
Victoria's secret, how he was down at Epstein Island. And you know, I've heard a Bill Gates
01:13:29.320
connection, all that, that everybody else has heard too. I just haven't seen the proof that shows.
01:13:34.780
And this person was farmed out a young girl that participated in the trafficking of a young
01:13:39.760
girl. There's Virginia Giuffre who was definitely one of Epstein's victims and was in a photo with
01:13:48.160
Prince Andrew and Prince Andrew himself has been, you know, just all over the board on this and
01:13:52.560
clearly isn't being a hundred percent honest, but she's also dishonest. She's passed now. So forgive
01:13:57.240
me, but she's, she was definitely lying in part about her experiences in the Epstein lair.
01:14:02.880
Uh, she's the one who accused Alan Dershowitz after somebody else came to her and said,
01:14:07.280
why don't you include Alan Dershowitz? That would really get you some attention.
01:14:09.960
That's how he got looped in. She wound up dismissing that case saying, Oh, I may have
01:14:13.400
misremembered. Alan Dershowitz totally had disproven her allegations. He could prove he
01:14:17.540
wasn't even anywhere near any of Epstein's properties on the day she said she saw him and
01:14:22.800
was with him and all that stuff. So anyway, the whole thing is just such a morass, Mark, that I,
01:14:27.420
as a lawyer, I, I just want to follow actual facts and actual evidence. And that hasn't made it all
01:14:33.700
that clear to me other than what I've said. Yeah. And, and, and I'll put some, uh, responsibility
01:14:39.120
on the shoulders of the Florida prosecutors and the federal prosecutors who, who should add subpoena
01:14:44.200
power. And I wish had been clearer about what, what the conduct was. Yeah. And who knows why they
01:14:51.460
didn't. I mean, there, it could be they or somebody they knew was compromised. It could be,
01:14:56.100
he was an intelligent intelligence agent. That was a very weird thing of Pam Bondi's
01:15:00.180
answer yesterday, which we didn't play today, but we played it yesterday where she was like,
01:15:04.100
Oh, as for your question about whether he was an agent, I haven't looked into that. I'll get back
01:15:09.380
to you on that. What? This is one of the main theories about him. I mean, how do I, as a member
01:15:14.660
of the press know that you know, it, the audience knows it. And Pam Bondi doesn't know that's what,
01:15:19.060
that was a lie. She does know. So why didn't she tell again, raising more questions than answers,
01:15:24.320
including about the minute before midnight, which we decided yesterday is a great name for a movie
01:15:28.980
about this whole thing. And we just showed the audience while you were talking that we went back
01:15:32.960
and found the tape where you can see the jump cut there. There is, there's a cut. There's a
01:15:36.920
minute before a minute that midnight that was cut out of the Epstein jail cell. Every night happens
01:15:40.980
every night. So if you wanted to kill Jeffrey Epstein, you would know you had the minute before
01:15:44.940
midnight. My one, my one caution on the whole jail cell, the jail cell video is, have you seen the
01:15:52.660
two guards? Have you seen these two guys? Like it's a gallon, a guy, they are, forgive me, but
01:15:58.520
they're like obese, classic civil servant looking people in New York. Their excuses. We were surfing
01:16:06.020
the net and asleep, which is why we weren't really monitoring what was going on, which I totally
01:16:11.540
believe. And the opposite requires me to believe that maybe they were in on this conspiracy.
01:16:16.720
They allowed somebody to get in there all this time. They've managed to keep their mouths shut.
01:16:21.840
They haven't leaked it to anybody. I have a hard time buying it. I hear you, but I tend to think of
01:16:28.520
it the opposite way, which is to me, they're the weak link in those who want to dismiss the probability
01:16:35.080
possibility. He was killed because the, the, the series of events that had to occur on their end
01:16:41.240
to allow him to kill himself undetected. It's just, it's too much for me. It's just too many.
01:16:47.520
What part? That's the incompetence. That's all that it requires you to believe. Very easy.
01:16:51.920
It requires, it requires a level of incompetence over a long period of time. That's possible,
01:16:59.500
but, but in conjunction with him, not having someone in the cell with him in conjunction
01:17:05.520
with the one minute gap, it's too much. It's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's what someone inclined
01:17:10.780
to use cliches would call a perfect storm, that they would be that a hundred percent derelict in
01:17:16.260
what they were supposed to do for that length of time on this particular case.
01:17:20.160
Mark Halpern, have you ever been to the post office in New York city, the DMV in New York city?
01:17:28.380
I have. And, and I understand what you're saying. Although my post office in New York city
01:17:32.580
is actually pretty good. So I've, I've become a little bit, a little bit less, less, uh,
01:17:39.140
suspect of civil servants. I, I hear what you're saying. I'm just saying, go look at the,
01:17:43.860
the accounts given of all the things they had to do wrong for this to happen. It's a lot of stuff.
01:17:50.160
I was like, yeah, seems right. You can see them on the tape surfing the net ones asleep. We're
01:17:54.360
like, yeah, that looks about right on brand. Yeah. Um, but, but, but the point is, but let
01:17:58.720
me just, the biggest thing for me is the, the autopsy that Jeffrey Epstein's brother had
01:18:02.520
done with Dr. Bodden saying, this looks like a murder. I'll, you be Nancy Drew. I'll be a
01:18:06.860
Hardy boy. All those things had to happen when he wanted to kill himself. Right. In other words,
01:18:13.820
how did he know that they were going to be so down on the job that he had an opportunity to
01:18:19.320
kill himself? Right. He was also a New Yorker. And he just said, I know they're going to fall
01:18:25.160
asleep and search the web. So now's my chance. He took a shot. No, he was like, they don't,
01:18:29.780
he's been, he'd been there for a while, Mark. He's like, they don't come in. They ignore me.
01:18:34.440
I know they're going to be asleep. They never bothered me between 12 and three. Now's my chance.
01:18:39.720
They didn't do that every night. That's the thing. They didn't do it every night. There's no,
01:18:43.300
there's no documentation. We don't know that they did it every night. So exactly. So he,
01:18:48.080
so he's taking a chance to try to kill himself saying chances are, they're not going to come
01:18:52.780
in and stop me. I'm not saying he didn't kill himself. I'm just saying, I just, it's too,
01:18:57.580
it's, it's like the guy who shot at Trump. There's, there's all this stuff that had to happen
01:19:03.500
for him to be able to shoot at Trump. And it all happens. Just, it just seems a little weird.
01:19:09.220
Yeah. Well, I don't disagree. I was, I'm just trying to strong man the other position because I,
01:19:13.380
I also have questions about whether Jeffrey Epstein really killed himself. And in particular,
01:19:16.940
that, that Dr. Bodden autopsy for me, cause that's actual proof. Now we're talking real
01:19:21.400
hardcore evidence. The absence of, of other things can be evidence too, but that's, that's the thing
01:19:27.320
I've never gotten pie. And look, I, it's possible that the brother got to him and said, I really want
01:19:31.380
this to come out this, the following way. And Bodden did it. It's possible. Hired guns sometimes do
01:19:35.720
that. How often in the history of suicides, including prison suicides, have you heard an account of
01:19:42.200
someone caught in the act and stopped? How often have you heard of that happening?
01:19:47.340
I can't think of a single example of it. Never. Yeah. Right. So again, even if they, even if he said,
01:19:53.200
yeah, those two are clowns, they probably won't come in. Here's my chance. They could have come in.
01:19:59.260
They could have heard something there. There might not have been a one minute gap. Right. So again,
01:20:04.380
it had, if, if the story of their, their role is accurate, he somehow made a great calculated guess
01:20:13.180
that they wouldn't come in and stop him because if they had, he'd be the first person you and I
01:20:17.000
have ever heard of stopped in the act of trying to kill himself. Never heard of it.
01:20:21.380
I was reminding me that they, he did have a failed suicide attempt the month before.
01:20:26.960
Allegedly. Was he, did they walk? Allegedly. Did they walk in on him during that attempt? Steve,
01:20:32.460
do you remember that? Or was it just like he tried and they, they knew, we don't know. Okay.
01:20:37.060
I don't, I don't believe I, I, with respect to Steve, I don't believe that was documented.
01:20:40.560
Why can't Pam Bondi, Cash Patel and Dan Bongino either sit down for a long interview with yours
01:20:46.260
truly or someone else or have a presser, have a presser and just answer all these questions,
01:20:51.020
Mark. Let it, let it all hang out. But we know what the answer is. They don't want to.
01:20:56.840
Yeah. Well, and I think president Trump made clear he's totally on board with this strategy,
01:21:01.440
which means he likely directed it. And the question remains why I I'm offended by this
01:21:06.740
segment, Megan, just kidding. That we've continued talking about it after president
01:21:11.780
President Trump warned us, extolled, urged. Yeah. No. I mean, if they can't have a press conference
01:21:21.920
or do a long interview with documentation, they, they need to take it up with Charlie and Tucker and
01:21:27.540
you. Yeah. And that's the thing. It's like, most of us don't actually just follow orders. Most of us
01:21:33.840
have our own independent judgment and editorial sense sensibility. And, uh, this is one of those
01:21:38.840
things. I'll be curious to see the next white house reporter who asks in front of the president
01:21:42.880
about Jeffrey Epstein. Let's see when the next happens. Same. I mean, it's funny. Cause I was just
01:21:49.280
looking at some of the people on my YouTube feed will say, Oh, she, she never responds, but I actually
01:21:53.760
do look at the comments, but I never do respond on the, to the YouTube comments because I never
01:21:59.100
like surf the net under my real email. Cause it'll sometimes it shows your email and then people have
01:22:05.000
your email and I'm like, well, I don't, I don't want that. Um, but anyway, I do listen to your
01:22:09.240
comments. I read your comments, everybody on YouTube and elsewhere. And, um, you know, I, I see what
01:22:15.420
people are thinking. It's actually a very good tool to see generally how people are feeling about a
01:22:19.000
story. And for the first time yesterday, I started to see a more like move on, move on. Okay. Those
01:22:25.780
are true Trump loyalists. Cause there's just still so many, so many questions, but also as Charlie,
01:22:31.880
but also as Charlie said, not everybody is interested in this story about this one guy,
01:22:37.620
you know, it's just not everybody's cup of tea. I go back to as a journalist, it's super interesting.
01:22:43.660
And as a human being and a father, it did the victims are entitled to as much justice as they
01:22:49.080
can be given. Yeah. And for me, I'm in a weird spot because this has never really been my story.
01:22:55.680
You know, unlike Dan and cash, I actually haven't been out there for years, like pounding the Epstein
01:23:00.860
thing. I've reported on it when it's been news. Um, I've had certain newsmakers on to talk about it,
01:23:06.840
but like, it's never been my real thing. So, but now I'm in this weird position of saying like,
01:23:11.620
Hey, it's a thing when they're like, no, it's not a thing. I'm like, well, what do you mean?
01:23:14.800
It is a thing. Anyway. Um, okay, let's move on. I'm going to take a break. We're going to come back
01:23:19.600
and there's a, I have got to talk to you. I'm going to warn you, Mark Halpern. You didn't know
01:23:23.500
this is coming. I am going to talk to you about a former colleague of yours at ABC news, who I believe
01:23:31.380
is the vainest man in television. And I'm going to show you my evidence on why stand by for that.
01:23:40.800
I think I know who it is. Well, we'll find out. I won't, I won't say it when we come back. I'm
01:23:45.160
just, I'm going to ask you who your prediction is. And then I'll show you my evidence. Let me tell
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advice. I'm Megan Kelly, host of the Megan Kelly show on Sirius XM. It's your home for open,
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01:26:24.360
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apply. Okay. During the break, my team and I had in-depth discussions on what we're about to show
01:27:22.460
you. And we all have very strong feelings on this nest next little bit. So this segment is about vanity
01:27:29.300
in media, Mark Halperin. And you worked for many years at ABC news as one of the top honchos over
01:27:36.180
there. Who do you think I am going to say is the most vain man at ABC news? All right. You remember
01:27:45.080
Johnny Carson and Karnak. You've got the hand up to the head of the card. He's written it down. Yes.
01:27:52.080
DM. He's got the proper initials, just like Debbie Murphy, Canadian Debbie, but it's not her. She works
01:27:58.100
for me. It is David Muir. Okay. We covered him a couple of months ago at another tragedy and he was
01:28:09.240
caught on camera wearing his fake little fireman's jacket. This is him reporting. We're showing the
01:28:16.460
video. And he made the mistake of turning to gesture to the scene behind him. And you can see
01:28:21.960
he's got like the clothes pins on the back of his fake little fireman's jacket. He's not a fireman
01:28:28.380
trying to make his waist look skinny. Mark, what man makes his waist look skinny on television or
01:28:38.640
elsewhere. That's strange. Yeah. Unless you're gay. I need to accuse myself because I'm currently
01:28:45.320
wearing safety pins to cinch. Some people like the cut of my jib. I can't turn. If I did, you'd see
01:28:51.360
I'm just lousy with safety pins in the back. There's nothing wrong with being a gay man. None
01:28:56.000
whatsoever. David Muir. I don't know what he's not married. He's not out. I'm not sure what's going on
01:29:01.300
there, but his vanity runs out. I thought he was out. I don't know. He just gave a long interview that we
01:29:07.580
read and laughed at and people magazine where he was dancing around it, but he doesn't like his
01:29:12.960
dancing around like a partner or whatever, but he, no, he's not out. He's not out. It's just
01:29:17.040
suspicion. I don't think so. We've, we've, we've done some saluting, but in any event, gay or not
01:29:23.660
gay, if you're an on-camera man, you need to be a man. You need to be a manly man. You need to be in
01:29:30.360
control and you need to not be worried about your waist circumference or how tight you look around the
01:29:37.080
middle when you're reporting from natural disasters. So I would submit to the jury while
01:29:43.720
we do not have proof positive Mark Halperin, we have circumstantial evidence that he's at it again,
01:29:49.600
this time down in Texas reporting on the terrible flooding in Kerr County outside of Dallas. He
01:29:57.500
has for the, look at this for the past two nights, two nights in a row is wearing his teeny tiny black
01:30:06.400
t-shirt, super high cut on the biceps. So you can see his muscles and the teeny tiny waist down below.
01:30:15.920
And I will tell you something. We look, this is when you zoom out a little bit, you can see the
01:30:22.120
shirt has a little flare below the middle. That's not how t-shirts work. Men's t-shirts, t-shirts do not
01:30:28.340
cut in, in the middle and then flare down below. And we went and pulled the video of him doing his
01:30:35.000
walk and talk because we really care about this. And his t-shirt looks normal. Look, it looks like a
01:30:41.720
normal t-shirt, Mark Halperin, where he's in the field. There's obviously no cinchers. He's tucked
01:30:46.360
it in, in the back because I think he wants to show off his fanny and he's walking. He's a manly man
01:30:52.100
in the field, but then you get him on camera. It's got the normal drape to it. You get him on camera for
01:30:57.000
the nightly broadcast and in goes the waist where it's smaller than Megan Kelly's waist. But in my defense,
01:31:02.060
I've had three children and he hasn't. And he wants the world to know he's super, super tiny
01:31:07.580
in the waist, but super mostly in the, in the arms. And the reason this matters is because
01:31:14.120
vanity is a muck in TV news in general. And amongst our evening news anchors, it already brought down
01:31:22.060
Brian Williams, his need to embellish his life, his reporting himself. And I'm, I would submit to you
01:31:29.860
that this is like that in a different form. Well, two things. One, I can clear up the t-shirt
01:31:35.680
thing. Yeah. He wears it. I've been shopping with him. He wears a medium, uh, but it's a ladies medium.
01:31:40.700
Um, so that explains why it's so tight. Um, I have a great story to tell you, which is how I knew what
01:31:45.760
the answer was, but I, I can't tell you on the, here on the program, but next I see you now, I will tell
01:31:51.140
you another story. It's just so unfair to our viewers. I know it's just, I'm not in a position to say it
01:31:56.900
for wide consumption, but let me ask you this. Let me ask you this about your story without
01:32:00.660
getting into the details. Yeah. Do you feel it in a heartfelt personal way that he's the
01:32:05.940
vainest person at ABC news? I feel this story illustrates the fact that if there's another
01:32:11.320
contender for that award, they're distant second. Oh, at ABC. If there is, if there is, they are a
01:32:20.540
distant second. Yeah. Yeah. But maybe not just at ABC, maybe in all of Manhattan. We also,
01:32:26.000
I used to go to the same gym as he did too. So I've seen him in, in action.
01:32:30.540
So you go to the gym, but when I watch your show, you do not seem to feel the need to show
01:32:35.340
me the products of your gym visits. I do not see. I just don't, I just don't turn. I just
01:32:41.060
don't turn sideways to show you. And I said, I used to go to his gym. I don't still go to
01:32:46.280
his gym. Okay. I still go. I still go to the gym, but, but Steve has me working very hard.
01:32:51.280
So I can't, I can't spend three and a half hours at the gym.
01:32:55.420
This is how Steve shows up at work too. And I constantly tell him, Steve, no one can see you.
01:32:59.360
You're not, I'm just kidding. But I have worked with a lot. Steve is objecting. I've worked with
01:33:05.360
a lot of men in television. I worked for years next to Bill Hemmer. I worked for years next to
01:33:10.520
Brett Baer. And of course they care about how they look on camera. And there's a, there's an attention
01:33:15.620
to looking neat and making sure the hair is not like sticking out. But I have never seen
01:33:21.560
this level of vanity amongst the men that I have had the pleasure of co-anchoring with
01:33:27.260
or working next to. And I, that includes, I know some, I'm not going to say he'll be like
01:33:31.020
they do Botox. There's somebody at Fox. I knew who got a surgery, a man that I don't judge it.
01:33:37.640
Honestly, being on camera, it does, you know, you have to maintain things, but cinching the waist
01:33:44.320
for a super skinny girl likes felt figure is weird. And it's a bridge too far. This is where I draw
01:33:51.340
the line, Mark Halperin. Well, two things. One is, uh, you know, the song from the producers,
01:33:56.300
if you got it flaunted. So I think, you know, there's a certain element. He doesn't want to
01:34:00.180
waste what God has given him and what, uh, what, uh, Peloton has, uh, buffed. Um, Steve,
01:34:05.760
the other day called me and said he, he had 200, say, uh, uh, clothespins. I didn't want to know
01:34:11.060
when he bought on Amazon and wanted to know if I wanted a hundred of them. So you make of that
01:34:15.420
what you will, but some of us are cinching. We're just not dumb enough to turn sideways on camera.
01:34:21.140
Steve's very upset. He's getting thrown under the bus and has no microphone. This is very wrong.
01:34:25.940
Well, he should make his Amazon transactions private. Let me tell you something. Let me tell
01:34:32.420
you something else. Okay. Here's further evidence. Here's some context and some evidence. We decided to
01:34:38.880
take a look at the other anchors, but this is a national tragedy. You know, I mean, I shouldn't
01:34:42.060
have to point out you've got children who are dead, like seriously, who shows up thinking about the
01:34:46.060
size of their waist and whether they look buff in the evening news shot. It's very strange behavior.
01:34:51.900
So we took a look over at CNN. They've got Pamela Brown down there on site. Let's see how she's
01:34:56.940
dressed. Yeah. Like a, like a news anchor in the field reporting on a tragedy. Like you dress,
01:35:03.840
like you dress, if you were late to pick your kids up at school and you had to rush
01:35:07.000
to make pictures. Yeah, truly. She's not doing glam. And by the way, we all know that when we go on
01:35:12.660
site to, to report when their people have died, glam is not a thing you don't do. You don't do
01:35:17.440
if anything, you play it down. Everybody knows that, um, Pam Brown, totally appropriate. Now,
01:35:22.720
uh, who, who's the next one before we get to NBC? I think we have one other, we have,
01:35:27.560
we have Maurice Dubois over at CBS. Now looks totally normal. He's got CBS network.
01:35:33.640
I think he's, I think he's networked now. Yeah. Yeah. He, uh, evening news. Now who can keep
01:35:38.960
track? I mean, nobody, nobody pays attention to this stuff anymore. At this point, you and I are
01:35:42.340
the, at this point, you and I are the only two people who haven't anchored CBS evening news.
01:35:46.700
Everybody else has had their shot. Steve has done it. Steve also did. He's wearing a button down.
01:35:53.080
Allison's done it. Allison's done it. Everybody but us. Allison, our booker. She's, she's being
01:35:57.340
considered. Um, he's wearing a button down shirt, like a man's shirt that you'd wear,
01:36:02.160
like with a suit. That's appropriate. No tie in the field. Totally get it. That's what you
01:36:05.560
should do. And it's the right, it's the right size. If I worked at Nordstrom's, that's the size I'd
01:36:09.360
give him. That's right. And no cinching. I'm not looking at his teeny tiny waist. I'm not like,
01:36:14.320
oh, Maurice lost weight. Look at him or look at his big muscles. Not that either. Then we
01:36:19.200
meander over to NBC news. And this is Tommy. Is this Tommy? Tommy Amas, Lamas, Tommy Lamas.
01:36:27.740
Yeah. He looks totally appropriate. He has same as Maurice. He's got like a black
01:36:33.320
men's shirt on with a button down. His collar is buttoned appropriately. We're not looking at chest
01:36:39.260
at all. He's not showing off muscles. And let me tell you something. If he was wearing makeup,
01:36:44.360
he sweated through it too. Yeah. No, he actually could use a little like pancake makeup tonight.
01:36:49.440
Um, but, but he's a common for David Muir because even though Muir is crushing, uh, NBC right now,
01:36:57.220
just because people know NBC is bad, that they're evil in their hearts. Um, this guy,
01:37:01.840
Tom Lamas took over for Lester and he's younger and he's likable and he's actually doing well.
01:37:07.940
And he has like tripled his, um, the, the, the increases for the past two weeks. He's been on
01:37:14.300
and he's coming in the demo. Are his ratings higher than Lester's? Yes. Yeah. He's going
01:37:20.920
up above Lester and he's improving the NBC demo number, which is the number they really care about.
01:37:26.460
They want you to look at like, Oh, we have 7 million a night. We have 7 million. All anybody
01:37:30.240
cares about is the key demo. And in the key demo, he's making inroads against David Muir,
01:37:34.960
who is like tighter, tighter. I see this young man is coming for me. So I'm pulling my,
01:37:40.400
my stretchy pants right now. Super tight. Mark Halpern. It's, it's, it's, it's the,
01:37:44.460
it's the clothespin girdle combo that gets you where I can put my, my, my fans around the waist,
01:37:51.680
like Bart Simpson, like Homer, Homer and Bart's neck, right around David's waist.
01:37:56.920
And you gotta be able to do it and not touch him to circle. He's five demo points away from calling
01:38:02.560
in a Kardashian for a corset. That's where this is going. Just, you heard it here first.
01:38:07.580
Tighter cinch, tighter cinch. Runs amok. Forget, forget rewriting page two. I just need to tighten
01:38:14.640
the cinch. I, um, have to, I didn't even know we were doing this segment. I know I'm, I surprised
01:38:21.520
you. Wait, how much time do I have Steve? Steve's all, he's Steve's flummoxed. Canceling is it
01:38:27.100
canceling his Amazon orders? Okay. Yeah, exactly. And also your, um, your Venmos. Did you know that
01:38:34.120
your Venmos are public? I know other people's Venmos are public. I know when I signed up for
01:38:38.660
Venmo, I toggled the box to not let everybody know what I'm, what I'm paying for lawn mowing or
01:38:44.120
licorice. It's very smart. I don't use Venmo. I have Abigail Finan who does some Venmoing for me
01:38:51.640
and some other service she uses. And, and, but I didn't know that. And I think a lot of people get
01:38:55.920
burned by the fact that Venmo is public even well, the national security that had the former
01:39:00.420
national security advisor had that problem. Uh, uh, what's his name? Uh, the guy who was fired
01:39:07.180
walls, walls, walls, had public Venmo and he had a bunch of transactions with reporters.
01:39:14.020
Oh God. Oh God. Oh, that's humiliating. I don't remember that. I remember the signal gate,
01:39:19.140
but I didn't remember the Venmo. Okay. Last but not least, because I really want to get to this
01:39:25.640
other story, but I don't think we have time, right? We don't have time for opera. Do we? I'm
01:39:28.840
dying. My audience has been trying to get to opera. Can we, can you say five minutes late? Mark
01:39:32.820
Halperin? Yeah, I think. Um, okay. I'm going to get to that in a minute, but I have to, I'm going to
01:39:39.640
start with this. How about we reference at the top of the show, the fact that the TSA is finally saying
01:39:44.280
that we do not have to wear our shoes anymore on board airplanes. You need to go through TSA.
01:39:53.140
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. That we don't have to, we don't have to take them off. I hate to
01:39:57.520
take them off to go through TSA. I hate to say, I hate to sound like Kamala Harris,
01:40:00.160
but I've got pre-checked. So I haven't taken off my shoes in a while. You know, the whole shoe thing
01:40:04.040
was an outgrowth of the shoe bomber. Whose name was like Richard Reeve something. Richard Reeves.
01:40:10.180
Reeve or Reed. Yeah. Richard Reeve. Richard Reeve. Anyway, like it was like, it seemed to me a huge
01:40:15.460
overreaction. Like one guy put it in his shoe. And so for then on no liquids and no shoes. Uh,
01:40:22.400
like, I don't know. Uh, I guess, I guess, uh, I, I, I'm proud to live in a country where we can
01:40:28.840
figure out how to check the shoes while they're on your feet, as opposed to going. I was talking to
01:40:33.920
Paul Murray about this on sky news. Why not the belt? Why does the belt have to come off? What can
01:40:38.360
you hide in the belt? Yeah. I don't know. I'm for, I'm for safety, but I'm also for confidence.
01:40:44.900
But these are lies. These are lies. We were going through TSA. My son had a five ounce
01:40:49.920
toothpaste, not four, five stolen. They took it. Confiscated, confiscated. I'm like, he's literally
01:40:57.240
11. You think my 11 year old managed to get a bomb and his five ounce toothpaste, which would
01:41:01.420
have gotten through. What flavor was it? It was like the little, like the travel flavor of like the
01:41:07.300
kid, the kids, kids toothpaste, you know, it's got like, like bubble gum. Yeah. Like some sort
01:41:11.680
of sugary addition to it, which kind of defeats the purpose. Yeah. Again, the country's not that
01:41:17.100
advanced to know that bombs in four impossible bombs in five high security risk. And not only that,
01:41:25.040
you can bring multiple fours. So you can do four ounces of shampoo, four ounces of conditioner,
01:41:29.780
four ounces of face wash, four ounces of toner, four ounces of lotion, face cream, whatever that.
01:41:35.260
So if you're a bomber, why can, how can you make a bomb out of a five ounce toothpaste tube,
01:41:41.100
but not out of the multiple four ounces that Megyn Kelly has in her Ziploc bag? Huh? Yeah. Yeah. I
01:41:46.340
mean, the irrationality of the system is undermines our confidence, but I'm glad no one's going to be
01:41:51.760
taking their shoes off anymore, but I haven't taken my shoes off in a while. Right. Because you know,
01:41:56.380
what happens, Mark Halpern is you, you then have to put your little sweater in a bin that somebody's
01:42:03.020
disgusting shoes were just in that were walking all over the streets of New York,
01:42:06.460
or you've got to put your handbag that you're about to put over your shoulder in that same bin
01:42:11.220
that's got somebody's shoe filth all over it. This is, it was unsanitary. Yeah. But I'm being asked
01:42:17.400
all the time to sit on couches of dogs that sat on too. Well, look, we all know that the TSA
01:42:23.680
security system while technically for our safety is really about giving TSA agents the opportunity to
01:42:30.000
exercise their little modicum of power in a disproportionately large way. They get drunk
01:42:36.160
on their own power and then they abuse us by taking our toothpaste or our Johnson's and Johnson's baby
01:42:42.460
shampoo. One of my kids had like a small acne medicine. Oh, we're going to blow up the plane with
01:42:47.620
acne. It's like a teenager. What do you think we have it for? And they don't exercise discretion.
01:42:53.080
It's just, nope, we're taking it. Especially if it's a bottle of liquor, I'm just saying order must
01:42:59.480
be restored. And I believe Sean Duffy is going to do it. He's, he's been pretty good. I, Sean Duffy
01:43:05.280
is bringing humanity to air travel. Thanks for listening to the Megan Kelly show. No BS, no agenda, and no fear.