The Megyn Kelly Show - Biden's Incoherent State of the Union and Pandemic Hypocrisy, with Charles C.W. Cooke, Jeremy Peters, Matt Welch, and Nancy Rommelmann ｜ Ep. 272

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

00:00:11.620 Hey everyone, I'm Megyn Kelly. Welcome to The Megyn Kelly Show.

00:00:14.880 Hours after President Biden vowed to make Russia pay for its attacks on Ukraine,

00:00:20.160 there is little evidence that Vladimir Putin is ready to retreat.

00:00:24.000 Instead, the president of Ukraine offered this grim warning overnight.

00:00:27.500 They have an order to erase our history, erase our country, erase us all. 0.99

00:00:34.340 Even before the war began last week, there was a lot riding on President Biden's speech.

00:00:39.340 Democrats were hoping for a reset of the party's message because they have midterms facing them down in November,

00:00:46.920 apparently hoping that Americans might forget about the mask and the vaccine mandates,

00:00:52.720 to the calls to defund the police departments around the country, to what's happening down at the southern border and so on.

00:00:59.940 How'd that go? We'll get it discussed in a second.

00:01:04.120 Now, they wanted to pivot toward unity, right? Unity.

00:01:09.460 Remember Biden's calls for unity in his inaugural address last year and right after he won last year.

00:01:14.920 And then, of course, there was the way he actually governed since that point.

00:01:19.480 Here's a reminder.

00:01:20.960 Without unity, there is no peace, only bitterness and fury.

00:01:26.500 No progress, only exhausting outrage.

00:01:30.800 Do you want to be on the side of Dr. King or George Wallace?

00:01:35.040 Do you want to be on the side of John Lewis or Bull Connor?

00:01:40.800 Do you want to be on the side of Abraham Lincoln or Jefferson Davis?

00:01:45.480 This is the moment to decide.

00:01:47.720 We've been patient, but our patience is wearing thin.

00:01:52.420 And your refusal has cost all of us.

00:01:54.760 Let's stop seeing each other as enemies and start seeing each other for who we are, fellow Americans.

00:02:01.680 So he doesn't talk to the American people writ large the same way he does when he is not on a big stage, right, for things like the State of the Union.

00:02:11.620 And I think the American people know that.

00:02:14.020 Look, joining me to break it all down for us, all angles on the State of the Union, we have Charles C.W. Cook with us today, senior writer at National Review.

00:02:20.920 And Jeremy Peters joins the program for the first time, national political reporter for The New York Times and author of the new book, Insurgency, how Republicans lost their party and got everything they ever wanted.

00:02:34.320 It's a clever title.

00:02:36.020 Welcome to you both.

00:02:36.940 Thanks for being here.

00:02:37.880 Thank you.

00:02:38.820 Thanks for having me.

00:02:39.840 OK, Charles.

00:02:40.380 So let me start with you, because I know you have a piece up on National Review this morning, which everybody should read.

00:02:46.160 It's called All the President's Incoherence.

00:02:48.780 Your thoughts on how he did.

00:02:51.320 I thought it was an unmitigated disaster.

00:02:53.900 I'm not perhaps the target audience.

00:02:56.800 As you and your listeners know, I don't rate this president.

00:03:00.740 But even on his own terms, I thought it was misconceived.

00:03:05.840 The first 10 minutes on Ukraine were fine.

00:03:08.880 But after that, he didn't do any of the things that we were told he would do.

00:03:13.980 He was supposed to reset.

00:03:16.660 Well, he didn't.

00:03:17.640 He was supposed to shift to deficit reduction, away from Build Back Better, in an attempt to win over Senator Manchin.

00:03:26.000 He didn't.

00:03:26.940 He reiterated the entire Build Back Better agenda without saying those three words.

00:03:33.980 He contradicted himself.

00:03:35.940 He introduced topics at random.

00:03:37.660 I likened it in the piece to David Bowie, who used to write down random lyrics on a piece of paper, cut them up, throw them up in the air and then reassemble them.

00:03:46.680 That's how it sounded.

00:03:47.720 Then there's the question of his delivery, which is getting worse and worse.

00:03:53.460 People say that it's because he had a stutter when he was a child.

00:03:57.220 It's not.

00:03:58.040 I've been watching Joe Biden for years.

00:03:59.600 He wasn't like this 10 years ago.

00:04:01.360 He does seem old.

00:04:03.360 He seems incoherent.

00:04:04.740 He slurs his words.

00:04:05.960 He reads the wrong words.

00:04:07.480 I didn't think this worked for him at all.

00:04:11.320 Jeremy, what do you make of it?

00:04:12.840 What do you think?

00:04:13.300 I think it was the message that you would expect from the leader of a party that doesn't really have a coherent message to unify voters around going into this next midterm election and possibly even into 2024.

00:04:28.760 It was a string of very vague utopian promises.

00:04:34.180 We're going to end expensive prescription drugs.

00:04:38.200 We're going to end expensive housing.

00:04:40.760 We're going to end all inequality.

00:04:42.760 We're going to end poverty.

00:04:43.840 We're going to end misery, period.

00:04:45.620 And it seemed that all of those promises, the president really couldn't back up with any specifics.

00:04:53.440 I mean, it struck me how vague many of his lines were.

00:04:59.380 And I think that while there probably were some appeals there that he made to the center, you know, there was a line he had where he said, we're not going to defund the police.

00:05:11.660 We should fund the police.

00:05:13.620 I think the perceptions of this administration as captive to the far left are really problematic, even if that's often exaggerated.

00:05:24.980 I think that the hardest thing that the Democrats are going to have to contend with over the next few months is a version of what we saw unfolding in Texas last night with the primaries in the southern part of the state where you have a progressive and a moderate who are headed off into a very contentious runoff.

00:05:40.980 And if that progressive ends up winning, it's going to really make it hard for the party to say that it's it's representative of most Americans and not a far left entity.

00:05:52.340 Mm hmm. I want to get to that defund the police thing in one second.

00:05:55.260 But, you know, to your point of this, you know, wish list, this Democratic utopia, all I could think while watching it was, OK, so he's throwing out these huge things.

00:06:04.680 And again, we're going to cure cancer and we're going to have all sorts of provisions for Democrats that they've been asking him for.

00:06:10.660 And I thought, all right, well, in 2022, I I would like to have the body of Giselle and the skin of J-Lo and the energy of a 12 year old, along with the metabolism.

00:06:21.180 Those are my goals for myself. They're just about as attainable as his goals.

00:06:26.820 And the thing about Joe Biden's list, Charles, is that it was sort of he wanted to have it both ways on so many things.

00:06:35.100 Right. Like build back better is gone, but I'm bringing it back in pieces.

00:06:38.500 I'm going to do something about inflation. But here are all these huge things, these spending measures, which, by the way, I know I cannot get through.

00:06:45.600 But they're going to make you feel good as you go to sleep tonight.

00:06:48.260 Neither party at the moment is especially coherent.

00:06:53.120 And when I say that, I don't just mean that both parties have broad coalitions full of people who disagree with one another, although that is true.

00:07:01.840 I mean that their stated policy aims are often incoherent.

00:07:05.460 But it was remarkable last night to hear incoherence from one person, the president of the United States.

00:07:13.460 There were two moments that jumped out to me.

00:07:15.500 The first was that Biden tried his folksy shtick about how he understands the effects of inflation.

00:07:21.180 He knows what it does. He understands why people are so angry.

00:07:25.220 And almost in the next sentence, he touted the two trillion dollars in spending that his party rushed through last March, which is responsible for exacerbating inflation on a grand scale.

00:07:40.100 Pick one.

00:07:41.180 The second thing he did was focus in on what is really a more Trumpian line, which is make it in America, build it in America.

00:07:49.660 Now, that's actually quite popular.

00:07:51.620 And the reason he's doing that is that he has found out from focus groups that when Democrats talk about inflation, people don't really buy the idea that it's because we have greedy corporations.

00:08:03.160 But they do buy, erroneously, because this is economic nonsense, the idea that we can fight inflation by bringing manufacturing back to the United States.

00:08:10.920 So he went all in on that. But then he proposed a whole litany of ideas that would make it much more difficult to bring manufacturing back to the United States by making us less competitive, by making labor more expensive and by making capital likely to flee.

00:08:29.340 Again, pick one.

00:08:30.520 So, you know, in a sense, this was this was a president who was trying to push buttons and work around the public's distaste for him, but doing so in no thought through way at all.

00:08:43.640 I think in reading opinion pieces from the left and the right this morning, most people are agreed that in agreement that the best part was on Ukraine, where he kicked it off at the top and they had a real moment of unity where both sides stood and clapped for what he was saying.

00:09:01.660 Here's just a little bit of that.

00:09:02.900 That this is soundbite, too.

00:09:04.520 He thought he could roll into Ukraine and the world would roll over. Instead, he met with a mall, a wall of strength he never anticipated or imagined. He met the Ukrainian people.

00:09:17.120 Our forces are not engaged and will not engage in the conflict with Russian forces in Ukraine.

00:09:24.300 The United States and our allies will defend every inch of territory that is NATO territory with the full force of our collective power.

00:09:32.380 What did you make of that, Jeremy? Because I one point somebody made was great.

00:09:39.140 He's rolling along strong. He's got everybody standing.

00:09:41.540 And then it just sort of pivoted to something that was more like like you said, a wish list or sort of a college discussion.

00:09:48.080 It's just like a couple of minutes later, we're talking about such small minutiae after this big moment.

00:09:54.920 One pundit was suggesting shorter, less pick your top three points, get in, get out, sit down.

00:10:00.960 Right. Well, that, Megan, is the problem with the speech overall. There was nothing unifying it.

00:10:05.860 And I think right there you have a perfect example of the way that Democrats have struggled to connect with voters.

00:10:13.880 OK, so on the surface, he's saying the right things.

00:10:17.780 Yes, the Ukrainian people are standing up. The United States is behind you, Ukraine.

00:10:22.080 However, there was no concrete action to back that up.

00:10:26.600 And there I think people are kind of left with the question, OK, that's great.

00:10:30.460 It's nice rhetoric. But what are you going to do?

00:10:33.600 And I'm not saying that I think there is a whole lot militarily the United States should be or could be doing right now that wouldn't drag us into a full on military conflict with Russia.

00:10:43.540 But it's an example of the way that I think the Democratic Party has has struggled to effectively speak to people's concerns and anxieties.

00:10:54.020 And this is why the Republicans and Donald Trump have been making really big inroads with a lot of voters who wouldn't ordinarily think about voting Republicans.

00:11:02.060 Republicans right now are just better at channeling the anxieties, the fears of voters out there and giving them a sense that that they understand, to borrow a cliche phrase here, the voters pain.

00:11:17.940 They there's an there's an empathy there that is is much more concrete that I think works for everybody from Donald Trump on on down, who is speaking to this notion that there are Americans who feel like their government isn't doing much to help them in what are pretty depressing and trying times for a lot of people.

00:11:43.240 He tried. He tried. He tried to do to do the Joe Biden folksy. We've heard him do it a million times, Jeremy. Right. I get it. I get it.

00:11:50.740 You know, the increased prices, the inflate. Trust me, I get it. But there wasn't a lot that followed to make you actually believe he gets it.

00:11:59.160 I think that's exactly right there. Like like we said, he was very short on specifics of how he would address it.

00:12:05.000 But then when I listened to Kim Reynolds speech delivered the Republican response, there was a real fire there.

00:12:13.000 Like, you know, she was speaking to a lot of the concerns that voters have, that their elected officials aren't representing them, that they aren't listening to them.

00:12:22.100 One Democratic strategist I spoke to before the speech said, like, you know, the Republicans understand that parents, for example, don't want to hear that school boards don't want them involved in their children's education.

00:12:34.100 And, you know, regardless of the specifics of any particular debate in any given school district, that's true.

00:12:41.060 Parents don't want to be told to shut up and sit down, just like average voters on any number of concerns don't want to be told, oh, well, what you're worried about isn't isn't really a big deal.

00:12:53.240 So, you know, let's let's let's move on. And I think the Democratic Party's problem and what Biden's lack of specifics last night really points to is the struggle that Democrats have had in acknowledging people's problems, whether that's inflation, whether that's crime, whether that's what the curriculum that's being taught in schools.

00:13:12.700 They have a denial problem. And they until they learn to speak to the concerns that not just, you know, Republican or even centrist voters have, but that like many Democratic voters, many Democratic parents have, they're going to come up short.

00:13:28.920 Charles, it makes me wonder whether it's good old fashioned shame, but most politicians don't feel that.

00:13:33.420 But, you know, the old you can't kill your parents and then beg for mercy on the ground that you're an orphan.

00:13:38.320 Like, do you is there any chance Joe Biden's not touting those things and not speaking about his understanding of the working class?

00:13:44.240 Because he knows very well that his exorbitant spending has helped put them in the position they're in now, not to mention, you know, these covid mandates that have resulted in the loss of so many of their jobs and so on and so forth.

00:13:57.760 No, it's not a shame.

00:14:00.960 I don't think he knows. He still seems to think Afghanistan was a success.

00:14:06.580 He didn't mention it at all last night.

00:14:09.300 Maybe his speechwriters know.

00:14:11.100 I don't think that this is a man who is feeling shame.

00:14:15.460 No, he may be feeling frustrated.

00:14:17.420 He may also be feeling, and this is true in certain ways, that much of what is going on is not his fault.

00:14:23.400 But I think he strongly believes in everything that he pushed again last night.

00:14:28.820 I think that was Joe Biden.

00:14:31.360 I don't think this is a ruse.

00:14:33.360 I don't think this is a calculation.

00:14:34.720 Some 8D chess.

00:14:37.140 I think that is Joe Biden.

00:14:39.500 And the cancer thing you mentioned earlier is a good illustration of this.

00:14:43.460 The way that Joe Biden talks about cancer is indicative of somebody who has spent his whole life in politics.

00:14:50.900 Obviously, everyone wants to fight and defeat cancer.

00:14:54.680 But Joe Biden seems at one level to believe that if the government gets more involved, we'll do it.

00:14:59.960 That we haven't done this thus far because the government hasn't been sufficiently supportive.

00:15:05.800 And that's not why we haven't defeated cancer.

00:15:09.440 And that, as far as I can see, is his view on pretty much everything.

00:15:14.680 What he is interested in doing tends to change because he likes to keep himself at the center of the Democratic Party at any given point.

00:15:22.740 This is one reason he's moved so far left, because the Democratic Party has.

00:15:26.680 Joe Biden is not a man who spends a great deal of time thinking about ideology or policy.

00:15:31.260 He moves with the wind, at least the wind as it is defined by the Democratic Party.

00:15:38.800 And so what he wants to do alters over time.

00:15:42.360 But his constant is that government is good and that Democrats running the government is good for the little guy.

00:15:51.100 And the problem he has at the moment is that Democrats running the government is not especially good for the little guy.

00:15:57.760 Now, again, I don't think that all of the problems that Americans are facing are Joe Biden's fault or the Democratic Party's fault or frankly, the government's fault.

00:16:05.700 I do think, though, that he can't get out of that mindset.

00:16:09.180 And so what did he do last night?

00:16:10.580 He made a speech about how every single thing that is currently wrong or every single thing that is currently motivating the members of his party and his coalition could be fixed if the government came in and did it.

00:16:23.020 Even though there is almost no chance of the government coming in and doing pretty much anything he proposed.

00:16:29.040 He's already tried that.

00:16:30.220 And he doesn't have the support for most of these policies amongst his own party.

00:16:33.720 Never mind if you factor Republicans into it.

00:16:37.140 One point and then, well, two points.

00:16:39.160 And I'd love to get your reaction, Jeremy.

00:16:40.380 First, I personally thought it was not a good idea to yet again raise his son Bo's death.

00:16:45.120 At the same time that he was totally ignoring the death of the 13 service members in pulling out of Afghanistan, just don't if you're not going to go there, not going to touch Afghanistan, you're not going to touch on, you know, the 13 dead Marines and service personnel, then don't raise your own son's death.

00:17:01.720 You know, Charles has talked about this before.

00:17:03.480 It's just too much.

00:17:04.960 It's too insensitive.

00:17:05.840 And the loss of those 13 families is still too recent.

00:17:09.380 But the second point I wanted to make was brought more broadly on Ukraine.

00:17:14.180 I actually thought he had more room for touting what he's done.

00:17:18.780 I was surprised he didn't spend more time on it.

00:17:21.960 Just this morning, I listened to The Daily, the New York Times podcast with Michael Barbaro, which I always try to do.

00:17:27.680 And it's interesting.

00:17:28.640 I like to get my information from both sides of the aisle.

00:17:30.460 And today they had a great report about what actually Joe Biden had been doing months prior to right now to try to generate unity amongst the Europeans against Putin.

00:17:42.860 And that was the subject of the podcast.

00:17:44.540 It was about how the Europeans came together.

00:17:46.600 And they didn't give Joe Biden all the credit, but they talked about how he had been going to the Europeans and sharing the American intel and saying, no, this is what's going to happen.

00:17:56.100 You need to take a hard look at this and really sold it personally for them to believe it.

00:18:00.220 And it was a great story about how there's this other guy who wears like sneakers and bad suits, who is in the European Union, who everybody sort of mocks normally.

00:18:08.640 But this one little guy who understood the importance and value of U.S. intelligence went country to country within the EU, trying to convince various factions.

00:18:16.740 We got to do something.

00:18:17.600 We're going to do something.

00:18:18.300 And that's why they were able to act so quickly on the sanctions.

00:18:20.680 And it was a great piece.

00:18:21.640 Didn't hear any of that.

00:18:22.840 Oh, I hear that in The Daily and not the State of the Union.

00:18:26.100 I think it speaks to the larger problem that this administration has had with talking about the right things.

00:18:34.060 They seem to constantly be on the subject, on the wrong subject, really.

00:18:39.500 I mean, and this is not just something that I hear Republicans, conservatives criticizing this president for.

00:18:45.780 It's something I hear Democrats talking a lot about, too, is that one of the things that voters will punish you for undoubtedly is that if they believe you are not on the right.

00:18:56.100 The subject, if you are not connecting with what is important to them in that moment.

00:19:02.000 And when America was concerned about, you know, the coronavirus restrictions and Afghanistan, Democrats were busy fighting each other over this infrastructure bill.

00:19:13.740 I mean, that's a perfect example.

00:19:15.020 Right now, when the world's attention and America's attention is focused on this conflict in Eastern Europe, the president isn't really talking about why they should care, why they should, frankly, look to what his administration has done and be proud of that.

00:19:36.520 And I think that's what you're identifying there.

00:19:38.420 It's just it's an inability to talk about the right things.

00:19:42.580 And if that doesn't change, if the kind of lack of a coherent message that we saw last night in the State of the Union isn't fixed, I don't see how Democrats are going to be able to communicate with the country in a way that puts them back in the same place where they were two years ago, which is we are the party that can restore normalcy and competence to the government.

00:20:06.740 It's so true. Talk about missed opportunity. It's like I've learned all about the beams that go in certain buildings, but I didn't learn any of this stuff that actually would have been unifying, would have instilled some patriotic feelings and as a result, some good feelings about him.

00:20:20.860 But nope, we you mentioned it, Jeremy, Jeremy, a second ago, the defund the police thing.

00:20:26.520 I don't believe the solution is to defund the police. We should fund the police.

00:20:30.060 OK, well, that that is not representative of a huge faction of his party.

00:20:37.200 And and it's not in touch with what we saw happen over the past two years in this country to the great consternation of many black, white, Democrat, Republican.

00:20:49.400 We're going to play that moment, Joe, what Joe Biden said and what the Democrats around him have been saying prior to this.

00:20:57.860 When we come back after a very quick break, don't go away.

00:21:00.800 Let's talk about this defund the police moment to listen to Joe Biden last night.

00:21:13.020 You you would have thought there's absolutely zero daylight between Joe Biden and even Donald Trump on the issue of defunding the cops.

00:21:21.280 Here's what the president said last night, we should all agree.

00:21:24.580 The answer is not to defund the police is to fund the police.

00:21:29.000 Fund them. Fund them. Fund them with resources and training, resources and training they need to protect our community.

00:21:48.140 Look, look, Kamala Harris on her feet. Kamala Harris, who's been pretty explicitly on the other side. 1.00

00:21:56.160 But forget them, because the Democrat Party, Democratic Party has so many representatives who have been pushing for this and who got it over the past couple of years, resulting in disaster after disaster in cities like Minneapolis.

00:22:08.060 We put together just a short list of examples. Here they are.

00:22:12.320 Suck it up. Defunding the police has to happen. We need to defund the police. 1.00

00:22:16.360 Mayor Eric Garcetti saying, take some of the money from policing, about one hundred fifty million dollars.

00:22:20.940 I applaud Eric Garcetti for doing what he's done.

00:22:23.540 Not only do we need to disinvest from police, but we need to completely dismantle the Minneapolis Police Department. 0.97

00:22:32.080 So, yes, defund your butts. Defund you. 1.00

00:22:34.660 Yes, I support the reallocation of resources from NYPD.

00:22:39.640 We will be moving funding from the NYPD to youth initiatives and social services.

00:22:45.680 They are talking about reducing the allocation of resources to that department.

00:22:50.240 And I think every single city in this country ought to be thinking about the same thing.

00:22:55.280 Yes, I support the defund movement.

00:22:57.160 I'm for responsible reallocation of resources.

00:23:01.020 And defund the police.

00:23:02.080 I think you do all those other things.

00:23:03.440 You don't need all the money that's going to the police department.

00:23:05.760 So, yeah, I mean, the spirit of it, I do support that.

00:23:08.840 OK, so, Charles, he can stand at the top and, you know, stand at the lectern all day long and say he's against defunding the police.

00:23:19.800 But the American people have a memory and we've seen it tried in city after city.

00:23:24.520 And we've heard those Democrats very publicly calling for it.

00:23:28.140 And it's been a disaster that plus the soft on crime D.A.s have has led to real crime problems in many cities.

00:23:35.160 So what do you make of it?

00:23:36.080 I think there's two things to say here.

00:23:39.560 The first is it would be churlish not to applaud Biden for taking this position.

00:23:45.280 The purpose of politics is to convince people that you're right and they're wrong.

00:23:49.980 Now, Biden has never been a defund the police guy, but it should be seen as a victory for those who are against this idea that he felt the need to stand up there.

00:24:00.560 And it's something Jonah Goldberg always points out.

00:24:02.940 What you actually want is for the other side to adopt all your ideas, because then you don't have to fight very hard.

00:24:08.520 And the fact that Joe Biden said this does signal a shift and it is a good thing that he's not on board with this.

00:24:16.260 So I would certainly give him that the political problem for him, as you say, is that he's still taking a defensive action there.

00:24:26.120 He felt the need to say it because his party, not all of them, but certainly the most vocal elements, have created this hostage.

00:24:35.140 Bill Clinton did not say fund the police.

00:24:39.140 George W. Bush did not say fund the police.

00:24:41.340 Barack Obama did not say fund the police.

00:24:43.280 Why? Because they had nothing to respond to.

00:24:46.940 Certainly there have been criticisms of the police, some of which are warranted.

00:24:50.780 But this movement is something of a weight around Biden's neck.

00:24:56.800 And so although I applaud him for saying it, he probably didn't want to have to, that this is not a good thing for him to have to respond to, and that it is still out there is going to hurt his party going forward, especially, I suspect, in the sort of moderate and suburban seats that he's going to need in 2022 and if he runs for re-election in 2024.

00:25:21.140 You know, Jeremy, Defund the Police is an explicit piece of the Black Lives Matter platform.

00:25:27.820 It's on their website.

00:25:28.820 They've made no mystery about it and of so many Democrats, as we just played.

00:25:34.180 And there was a bizarre tweet by Eli Mistal of The Nation in response to this quote.

00:25:41.200 He writes, we don't need to defund the police.

00:25:43.260 We need to fund them.

00:25:44.320 He's quoting Joe Biden with resources and training. 0.97

00:25:46.780 And then he responds, what freaking bollocks. 0.98

00:25:49.180 Yes, but it's what whites want to hear. 0.99

00:25:52.220 Now, the truth is, it's not just whites who want to hear that.

00:25:56.260 It's actually black voters, even more than white voters who have pushed this reversal.

00:26:01.880 And if you look back at the history of what they did in Minneapolis and what they did in Detroit and so on, all these other cities that fell victim to the defund the police pushers, it was black voters who were objecting the loudest.

00:26:16.300 In in Minneapolis, three quarters of Minneapolis black voters were against defund the police.

00:26:22.420 And in fact, what they said there was, well, what about just having a Department of Public Safety where we reimagine the police department?

00:26:29.400 And they were like, not only no, but hell no, no, we don't want that blacks more than whites saw the same thing in Detroit. 0.90

00:26:36.400 So while people will try to racialize this, you know, the push to fund the police as opposed to defund them, the truth is the facts belie that claim.

00:26:46.080 Mm hmm. It's it's not only untrue that that's what whites exclusively want to hear and that blacks don't want to hear that.

00:26:57.180 Neither do Hispanics. If you look at what happened in southern Texas in the 2020 congressional races, a lot of the backlash to the Democratic Party there was because of the heavy law enforcement presence. 0.77

00:27:10.360 A lot of the people who live down there are in the Border Patrol or they are in some type of law enforcement that they rely on for their family's survival.

00:27:20.340 And they don't like to hear defund the police slogans any more than than people who live in high crime areas do.

00:27:28.260 And I think that, you know, I actually want to point out, Megan, that while there are loud voices in the Democratic Party that, you know, you played the majority, vast majority of Democratic voters and people who are liberal and even the vast majority of the Democrats in Congress don't support this.

00:27:47.400 The problem is they just haven't pushed back when the loudest voices call for defunding the police.

00:27:53.680 Well, and the second the second problem is that it's actually been happening. You know, I mean, I lived in New York City.

00:27:57.620 One of the final straws in in our relationship between Manhattan and our family was when de Blasio said he was going to defund the police by one hundred million dollars.

00:28:05.160 It was like, peace out. Right. And so it actually it's not just the rhetoric of people like Cori Bush or Rashida Tlaib.

00:28:11.680 It's actually been happening in major blue cities.

00:28:15.000 Yeah. And but voters have also rejected like the overwhelmingly liberal Democratic voters in Minneapolis rejected, you know, the Department of Public Safety proposal that you were talking about.

00:28:25.260 And in New York City now, the new mayor, a former cop has has has has very wisely shifted away from that kind of talk.

00:28:33.940 It's talking about how we need to have a better relationship with with our police forces.

00:28:37.460 And he didn't change in his proposed budget this year, didn't didn't touch police funding, which is, you know, basically a repudiation of what the people under in the de Blasio era were calling for from the city council on up.

00:28:51.980 So, yeah, I think there is a much bigger recognition now that the Democrats need to learn how to how to respond when the ideas of a relative minority of people in their in their party have no constituents.

00:29:08.660 I mean, there is no constituency for defund the police.

00:29:12.600 It's it's a it's a it's a tiny fringe movement.

00:29:17.460 So but it gets outsized attention and and Democrats struggle with how to deal with that.

00:29:23.520 I think, you know, one of the things that we saw play out in the 2020 elections and I get into this in my book is the way that Democrats struggled to even say things that were complimentary about law enforcement.

00:29:36.700 I talk about this race in Iowa where the the Republicans started doing polling, asking people, OK, do you agree with the statement?

00:29:45.560 Are there a few are cops mostly good people, but there are a few bad apples who need to be thrown out?

00:29:50.520 Or do you believe that the policing in the United States is systemically broken and we need to start from scratch?

00:29:57.460 And overwhelmingly, they agreed with the former that there are a few bad apples, but that most cops are good people.

00:30:02.920 But Democrats never figured out how to express that.

00:30:07.380 And they're still struggling with how to do that.

00:30:09.660 Charles, this sort of speaks to a wider point of some of the items that Joe Biden was hitting last night.

00:30:14.620 So, OK, defund the police is not the right move.

00:30:17.480 It's fun. The police without any acknowledgement of how that became an issue and why it's on the mind of so many Americans who have lost their safety, in part because of these policies.

00:30:25.980 Right. Illegal immigration. 0.97

00:30:27.720 He talked about how we need to secure the border.

00:30:30.660 Right. Well.

00:30:31.700 Well, the American people know very well that he's implemented a whole host of policies that have, let's I think it's fair to say, loosened the border as opposed to securing it.

00:30:43.240 And they know that's on him. And he ticked off some small things.

00:30:46.200 We have new technology like scanners to detect better drug smuggling.

00:30:51.060 OK. Joint patrols with Mexico and Guatemala.

00:30:53.680 All right. But we're not we're missing sort of the big policies that, for example, President Trump put in place that did make a dent, didn't solve it, but did make a dent.

00:31:02.680 And then the big the mother of all of those was covid.

00:31:05.980 Right. Like covid.

00:31:07.620 Things are getting better and we're going to take the masks off and we're you know, well, you don't have to listen to me say it.

00:31:14.720 Here's Joe Biden saying it. I think it's soundbite three.

00:31:16.720 So stop looking at covid as a partisan dividing line.

00:31:21.600 See it for what it is.

00:31:23.640 A god awful disease.

00:31:25.860 Tonight, I can say we're moving forward safely back to a no norm more normal routines.

00:31:32.500 Our schools are open.

00:31:33.900 Let's keep it that way.

00:31:35.440 Our kids need to be in school under the new guidelines.

00:31:38.260 Most Americans and most of the country can now go mask free and based on projections and thanks to the progress we've made in the past year, COVID-19 no longer need control our lives.

00:31:52.840 So how did how did all of that happen to us?

00:31:55.760 How did the schools stay closed when they should have been open?

00:31:58.700 How did covid become such a partisan dividing line?

00:32:01.640 Could it have been all the rhetoric demonizing people who had already had covid but didn't want to get a vaccine, medical workers, et cetera?

00:32:09.260 I'll let you take it from there.

00:32:10.560 I think, Megan, you're you're failing to relate to your audience.

00:32:15.440 The extraordinary good fortune that Joe Biden has benefited from in that the science changed one day before his State of the Union.

00:32:25.100 No one could have seen that coming.

00:32:26.440 There's two years worth of tests and it just so happened that March 1st, 2022 is a cutoff point.

00:32:34.220 Now, I found this very, very annoying as a Floridian to be lectured about political divisions on covid by President Biden and his party, because here, as I've said to you before, everyone that I know did not initially see this as a political question.

00:32:55.020 And it was quickly turned into one and certain states and approaches and governors were vilified nationally, including by President Biden.

00:33:06.500 And for him to to talk in that saccharine way, I think is is unreasonable.

00:33:14.500 I think more broadly, the three issues you mentioned shows that the Democrats can also suffer from having so much cultural power.

00:33:25.880 There are a lot of ways in which the Democratic Party benefits from its prominence in the media, in academia and entertainment.

00:33:34.240 But sometimes it can become captured by those institutions and it can have fringe messages or elite messages amplified to its detriment.

00:33:47.940 And it seems to me that the defund the police case that Jeremy is right when he says this is not held as a value by the vast majority of Democratic voters, but he is popular among wealthier, more heavily educated and more nationally influential types.

00:34:12.300 And so it was pushed out there was it was it was promulgated across the entertainment world, across the media world, across the academic world.

00:34:22.440 You have, therefore, a Democratic Party whose reputation on questions such as defund the police, enforce the border and our covid rules is hostage to a smaller group, but a more influential group than the party represents at large.

00:34:43.920 And I think for once, Democrats are really suffering from this, because if you talk to sort of rank and file Democrats across this country, they do not sound like the New York Times editorial page or the Washington Post editorial page on the question of covid.

00:35:00.740 They don't sound like the faculty at Harvard.

00:35:03.780 But a lot of those people are really struggling to give this up and until they do things, even that Biden is not responsible for, are going to continue to weigh him down.

00:35:20.120 That's very true.

00:35:21.120 I mean, it does seem like Joe Biden couldn't really have a spike the ball on the end zone moment, just given the past behavior and messaging from the administration, but also because there's a strong piece of his base that is still very afraid of covid.

00:35:37.060 Jeremy, I mean, speaking of the daily, they did a deep dive into this with David Lanhart not long ago on how there's it's become so partisan that like the hardcore left is just definitely not willing to let go of covid.

00:35:50.140 And that's one of his challenges in declaring victory and sort of trying to clear a path between now and November for we beat it.

00:35:58.360 Forget those two years in the masks and the mask mandates and the vaccine mandates and so on.

00:36:03.980 Right. And this is a perfect example of, you know, I most of my college, the vast, vast, vast majority of my colleagues in the media are not the kind of people who are making things up.

00:36:14.780 They're not purveyors of fake news.

00:36:16.200 They're good, decent, hardworking, honest journalists.

00:36:18.740 But the problem with the way that a lot of the media portrays these issues is is perfectly emblematic of this larger struggle with the Democratic Party in that they are talking and promoting the ideas that only a relative small elite is talking about on social media.

00:36:38.740 And there's a huge difference between the conversation that is happening on social media among progressives and many in the media and what voters are saying back at home.

00:36:49.000 Defund the police is a perfect example of that.

00:36:51.640 And so is is covid. Right.

00:36:54.160 I think the majority of the country, you know, has is if not moved on, is ready to deal with it, ready to live with covid in a way that does not restrict them.

00:37:06.640 And if you look at even in New York City, like I live in New York City, I was walking down the sidewalk the other day and I heard a woman on her cell phone saying, thank God this, you know, the mask will be over.

00:37:16.400 And there are people who have you know, I know there's this this this this cliche that New York, everybody is like super liberal and covid phobic.

00:37:25.160 But people have been done with masks outside here for a really long time.

00:37:29.100 And you have seen you don't see people wearing them as much, nearly as much as you used to.

00:37:33.080 And if you're seeing that in New York City, that's an example of, I think, how people have just the leaders of the Democratic Party in a lot of ways.

00:37:41.220 And many progressives are just out of step with how people want to live their lives and what they're worried about right now.

00:37:47.680 To your point about the media not getting, you know, what really is on the mind of the voters.

00:37:51.540 I think it was CBS, but yesterday they did a story on how the war in Ukraine is going to affect one particular transgender person because, you know, the Russians aren't so pro transgender issue.

00:38:06.820 Like, um, talk about like a day 200 story running on day six.

00:38:13.560 Like, OK, we can get to that changes in Ukraine once Russia takes over. 0.69

00:38:18.340 If they take over, we could get there. But right now there's actual still fighting in the street and the Ukrainians still believe they might actually pull this out.

00:38:24.960 And the international community is rallying behind them. And that is really the story.

00:38:28.560 I don't think people are really focused on the one in any event.

00:38:31.780 OK, let me pause there. I'll do another break and come back.

00:38:34.060 I got to ask you about the weirdest moment with Nancy Pelosi and the closed fist clapping about the fire pits.

00:38:41.600 I don't know what was going on there, but we have to talk about that and about, you know, Biden and his many gaffes that just continue to surface and what we should be taking from that.

00:38:52.260 More with Charles and Jeremy and more on Jeremy's book coming up.

00:38:55.000 Back with me now, Charles C.W. Cook of National Review and The New York Times is Jeremy Peters, who is the author of a brand new book called Insurgency, how Republicans lost their party and got everything they ever wanted.

00:39:15.300 Let's start with that, Jeremy. What does that mean?

00:39:17.240 OK, so I don't think you can tell the story of the modern Republican Party and Donald Trump's rise without acknowledging that this wasn't a hostile takeover.

00:39:27.440 Trump didn't come in and displace everybody and take command of the party.

00:39:33.960 It was a partnership in a lot of ways.

00:39:36.420 And what many establishment Republicans agreed to take with the bad that came along with Donald Trump was a lot of the good that they saw from a policy perspective.

00:39:47.240 And that's why, you know, when you ask many Republicans from, you know, social conservative, anti-abortion activist types who I spoke a lot to for this book,

00:39:58.440 to folks who are more establishment minded, who were part of the Bush wing of the party, they're fine.

00:40:06.300 Well, maybe not fine, but they are willing to say that January 6th wasn't all that big of an issue as far as they were concerned.

00:40:17.400 They could look past it because Donald Trump delivered the Supreme Court for them.

00:40:21.560 And the Supreme Court is about ready to strike down Roe v. Wade, we think.

00:40:24.760 So, you know, that's just one example.

00:40:27.280 But if you look at the types of Republican policy that were pushed, that was pushed through during Trump's presidency,

00:40:34.760 a lot of it was very conventional Republican fare.

00:40:38.300 A lot of it, of course, on trade and immigration was not.

00:40:42.020 But the establishment of the Republican Party went along with Trump at first reluctantly,

00:40:48.680 but then willingly because they saw it was a good deal for them.

00:40:52.600 And ultimately, that is Donald Trump's transactional style of politics.

00:40:57.080 And he infused the party with that in a way that I think surprised a lot of folks.

00:41:02.200 Well, Charles, you're you're a good person to respond to that, because I know you're not a Donald Trump fan.

00:41:06.820 Our audience knows that about you.

00:41:09.080 But on the policies, I would imagine you're much happier with how Trump governed

00:41:13.900 than with the presidents who preceded or came after him.

00:41:17.420 Well, and with how I thought a President Trump would govern.

00:41:23.680 Jeremy's absolutely right to say a lot of what came out of the Trump years was pretty standard Republican fare.

00:41:29.900 The one thing he got done through Congress was a tax cut.

00:41:34.500 There you go.

00:41:35.920 He tried to get Obamacare repealed.

00:41:38.360 And in fact, it wasn't for lack of effort on Trump's part that that failed,

00:41:44.000 although his total disinterest in and lack of knowledge about health care probably did hurt.

00:41:51.880 I would just as a personal matter distance myself.

00:41:55.420 I'm not suggesting other people don't believe this from the idea that January 6th was worth it.

00:42:01.560 I would never see that as a moral or reasonable way of judging it.

00:42:09.480 I think that it is possible, though, to say that January 6th was a national disgrace

00:42:14.160 and that many of the things Trump did as president were good.

00:42:19.580 And I think really the inability of many people, some on the right, some formally on the right,

00:42:25.560 some on the left, to distinguish between these things is one of the reasons our politics is so messed up.

00:42:30.400 It is simply not to endorse all of Donald Trump's shortcomings to say that, say, Amy Coney Barrett is a good judge.

00:42:40.960 She is.

00:42:42.100 That is true independently of Trump.

00:42:45.960 And I hope that at some point we'll be able to go back to a politics in which that man is not at the center of everything we believe.

00:42:54.340 I heard the regret in your voice at the CPAC straw poll that he still ran away with, 59 percent.

00:43:01.360 DeSantis was the next closest, but it wasn't really close unless you took Trump out of it, in which case DeSantis was the heavy favorite.

00:43:08.080 But his numbers, Trump's numbers went up this year versus last year.

00:43:11.540 And so the Republican Party, they seem to miss him, how that will play out over the next year or so.

00:43:18.020 We can only wait and watch and cover as reporters and commentators.

00:43:21.980 OK, can I just ask you, because it's a bit of a weird turn, but I've got to ask you about the weirdest moment of last night, which was Nancy Pelosi.

00:43:28.120 What was going on?

00:43:29.240 And as as Joe Biden was talking about the this was wasn't this when he was talking about the burn pits that our servicemen may have been getting cancer from in the Iraq and Afghanistan wars.

00:43:41.600 She stood up to applaud.

00:43:43.320 I don't know what's happening with her fists, but for the audience listening at home, she's got closed fists and she's kind of bouncing them together. 1.00

00:43:50.420 And she looks, I mean, as the kids would say, awkward AF.

00:43:54.080 All right, here it is.

00:43:54.960 One being stationed at bases, breathing in toxic smoke from burn pits.

00:44:02.040 Many of you have been there.

00:44:03.960 Jeremy, would you like to take a shot at what's happening there?

00:44:07.540 I don't know.

00:44:08.540 I think one of the things that that people don't realize who haven't been in the room during these state of the unions is members of Congress have the speech there in front of them.

00:44:17.360 Right. So they're reading along.

00:44:18.760 And who knows which maybe she read, skipped ahead a few lines to what he said next and was was anticipating that and and and got up a little too quickly.

00:44:27.420 Just get back down then.

00:44:28.600 Sit, sit, sit, sit back down immediately.

00:44:31.060 Yeah, it was it was it was hard to explain.

00:44:33.420 There hasn't been worse clapping since Nicole Kidman at the at that award ceremony with her weird rings on that day.

00:44:39.740 OK, how long is the Biden sort of gaffe sought, Debbie?

00:44:43.100 All right, let's play it.

00:44:43.940 Here's Biden, a mashup of some weird moments.

00:44:46.380 It may circle Kiev with tanks, but it'll never gain the hearts and souls of the Iranian people. 1.00

00:44:52.300 Time to see the the what used to be called a Rust Belt become this the the the home of a significant resurgence of manufacturing.

00:45:04.960 I bless you all and may God protect our troops.

00:45:09.180 Thank you.

00:45:10.880 Go get him. 1.00

00:45:12.000 Now, Charles, I you write at National Review that you saw an oblivious, ignorant, overconfident blowhard last night. 0.94

00:45:18.780 So I'm going to guess you didn't like it and that you thought some of those moments were the reasons. 0.92

00:45:22.860 But you tell me.

00:45:23.960 Well, I think he's been that for a long time.

00:45:26.140 The thing that worries me about him is he can't speak.

00:45:29.380 He can't read off a teleprompter.

00:45:31.120 He clearly doesn't have the mental acuity anymore to digress.

00:45:37.460 Even you see him reaching for stories he's been telling for years and he can't finish them, can't remember them and he can't incorporate them into what he's saying.

00:45:45.980 And this isn't a one off thing.

00:45:47.800 I'm notoriously soft on politicians who make mistakes.

00:45:51.560 I was always the guy at National Review saying the 57 states thing didn't matter.

00:45:55.920 Corpsemen didn't matter.

00:45:57.400 It doesn't matter if a president or a politician who travels all the time says, hello, Detroit, when he's in Indianapolis.

00:46:04.800 But Biden does it every 30 seconds.

00:46:08.780 And I think that should matter.

00:46:10.220 I think that should matter, especially in the sort of international crisis that we're in now.

00:46:15.600 Indeed.

00:46:15.840 I want to remind the audience that Jeremy's book is called Insurgency, How Republicans Lost Their Party and Got Everything They Ever Wanted.

00:46:24.680 Thanks to both of you for being here.

00:46:26.220 Don't go away.

00:46:26.980 Matt Welsh is back next, along with someone you're going to love.

00:46:35.140 Joining me now, Nancy Rommelman and Matt Welsh.

00:46:38.860 Nancy is an author, journalist and co-founder of Paloma Media.

00:46:42.000 And Matt is co-host of The Fifth Column Podcast, which is awesome.

00:46:46.800 And veteran guest of The Megyn Kelly Show.

00:46:49.380 You're a veteran, Matt.

00:46:50.900 Great to have you both with me.

00:46:52.140 I'm Putin.

00:46:52.940 Hey, Megan.

00:46:53.620 Thanks, Megan.

00:46:54.520 I like it.

00:46:54.960 You can show Nancy the ropes.

00:46:56.260 This is what we do when she does this. 0.94

00:46:58.240 You can prep me today.

00:46:59.620 Good.

00:47:00.120 OK, so let's start with the news of the day.

00:47:02.300 And I'd love to get your reactions to last night's State of the Union.

00:47:05.820 Matt, thoughts?

00:47:07.100 I yeah, I you know, it was a great 10 minute speech and a really bad 50 minute follow up

00:47:14.600 to that speech.

00:47:16.400 I'd like the Ukraine stuff.

00:47:18.240 I think he spelled out explicitly and correctly that the U.S. is not going to get involved

00:47:24.660 militarily in this fight and with Russia, which is, I think, what you should do. 0.98

00:47:29.880 And also that the NATO alliance will be defended within every inch of territory.

00:47:35.680 Both of those things are what a U.S.

00:47:37.200 president should do.

00:47:39.560 Wasn't a little bit more queasy about we're just going to start seizing, you know, random

00:47:43.560 Russians property right and left. 0.91

00:47:45.520 My libertarian heart doesn't like that.

00:47:46.960 You're a libertarian.

00:47:48.340 I'm like, get him.

00:47:49.760 Yeah, I know a lot of people, a lot of people like that.

00:47:53.560 But then the the whole laundry list at the end, I mean, he pivoted from like uniting all

00:47:59.020 of us to saying, oh, yeah, the tax cut trickle down theory only benefited the one percent.

00:48:04.120 It's like, well, what are we doing here?

00:48:05.480 It's it was very it detracted from the seriousness of the first 10 minutes to make the last 50 minutes

00:48:11.640 be like a Bill Clinton speech from 1999.

00:48:13.900 Yeah.

00:48:14.380 The misleading on the tax cut and the misleading on the protection that gun manufacturers have

00:48:20.500 on their you know, they're the only company, the only company that can't be sued.

00:48:22.940 They can be sued.

00:48:23.680 The 100 percent they can be sued.

00:48:24.940 They manufacture a gun that misfires in a way that actually hurts a human.

00:48:28.620 A hundred percent you can sue them.

00:48:29.680 You cannot sue them for violence done by some random criminal with their gun because we've

00:48:35.120 recognized that it's too attenuated a link.

00:48:37.100 In any event, he says it all the time.

00:48:39.080 And I guess his base loves it.

00:48:41.440 What were your thoughts, Nancy, overall?

00:48:43.040 Well, the first thought I thought this every time I saw the State of the Union, I really wish

00:48:46.920 they'd get rid of the Soviet era clapping.

00:48:49.460 It's just it's just takes so long.

00:48:51.780 Not even Chuck Schumer.

00:48:52.600 No, that was fantastic.

00:48:54.900 I was like, what was that?

00:48:56.440 What happened with him?

00:48:57.740 He just got like ahead of the applause line.

00:49:00.120 He stood.

00:49:00.540 Nobody else stood forever.

00:49:02.200 He kind of went.

00:49:02.980 Oh, oh, oh.

00:49:03.860 Um, so number one, uh, number two, I agree with Matt.

00:49:08.020 I mean, though I said, you know, at lunch earlier today, I'm like, look, dude, if if Joe Biden

00:49:12.200 can cure cancer, I will vote for even the corpse of the man in 2024.

00:49:17.340 But it's just like you're just throwing on all this stuff.

00:49:20.660 And, you know, I mean, he better than anyone.

00:49:23.560 How long has he been in politics?

00:49:24.700 He knows these things are not going to happen.

00:49:26.360 So why?

00:49:27.640 What's the point of listening to it again?

00:49:29.220 So, um, yeah, there were a few things I liked, but none of those were were part of it.

00:49:33.720 You liked funding the police.

00:49:35.000 I did.

00:49:35.880 I did like funding the police.

00:49:37.440 But can we talk about the moment where he tried to say that women, women fell out of the

00:49:41.360 workforce during covid because they didn't have child care?

00:49:47.060 What?

00:49:47.660 And and why do you think they didn't have child care?

00:49:50.260 I don't know what could have been happening at the same time.

00:49:53.560 Where would kids usually have been during the day?

00:49:56.420 Why was child care necessary Monday through Friday during school hours?

00:50:00.900 And it was crazy portraying portraying our sudden maskless moments, which I can't wait

00:50:05.860 for the rest of Washington, D.C., like the schools to be able to also enjoy, in addition

00:50:10.360 to the octogenarians breathing on each other in a closed space.

00:50:14.600 But to celebrate that is like, you know, we won.

00:50:16.640 Um, no, a lot of people didn't win that.

00:50:19.740 I mean, I'm not saying that he was being callous to those who died, but but he's sort of taking

00:50:25.180 credit for the policies of the last two years and the policies in, you know, especially towards

00:50:31.800 people who have kids in schools, as Megyn Kelly knows with gritted teeth, haven't been

00:50:37.780 a winning thing for a lot of people, especially in places controlled by Democrats.

00:50:42.580 It's been really two different pandemics.

00:50:44.960 The attempt to sound like the voice of reason, you know, it's time given the progression and

00:50:49.860 the way COVID is now, you know, the decrease in cases.

00:50:52.560 OK, so here just we went back for fun to take a look at March of twenty twenty one, which

00:50:57.820 is when Texas lifted its mask mandate.

00:51:00.420 OK, and the Democrats freaked out.

00:51:03.580 Biden called it Neanderthal thinking.

00:51:05.640 Fauci, you're inviting another surge.

00:51:07.920 Beto, it's a death warrant.

00:51:10.040 Gavin Newsom, absolutely reckless, reckless.

00:51:12.400 Guess what the daily average of cases was when that happened, when it was absolutely

00:51:16.120 reckless and Neanderthal thinking?

00:51:17.860 It was around fifty four thousand.

00:51:20.080 That was the daily average.

00:51:21.320 Guess what it is now?

00:51:23.220 Now that Biden thinks it's OK to take away the masks.

00:51:26.040 One hundred thousand.

00:51:27.440 Almost double when he called it Neanderthal thinking.

00:51:31.220 And why?

00:51:31.780 So how does he get there?

00:51:32.560 He says, well, it's time to focus on the hospitalization rate instead of the case rate.

00:51:36.780 Well, that's always been the case.

00:51:38.280 You just refuse to do it.

00:51:39.400 It's right.

00:51:40.900 Right.

00:51:41.040 Welcome to the party.

00:51:41.940 So no acknowledge that's why they're there.

00:51:43.780 I know the term gets overused, but like they're gaslighting us.

00:51:47.380 The you know, David Leonhart from The New York Times is a classic case of someone who's

00:51:53.580 you know, he's writing for The New York Times audience, telling them very gently what those

00:51:59.340 of us who are not working for The New York Times have been screaming about, you know,

00:52:04.920 a year to 18 months before.

00:52:06.900 Like maybe we don't really like when Saturday Night Live did a skit the other day of people

00:52:10.880 talking around and kind of realizing at a dinner party that maybe all of these sort

00:52:16.100 of mask policies and these things were more theatrical than a science cycle.

00:52:21.160 You know, it's it's it's infuriating.

00:52:24.580 I'm happy to see it happen.

00:52:26.020 My my daughter's daughters are going to be able to take their masks off at school next 1.00

00:52:30.380 week in New York City.

00:52:31.960 Finally.

00:52:32.880 So I'm happy and I don't want to look to look a gift horse in the mouth, but it is infuriating

00:52:37.840 and Republicans are right to in their response say, hey, look, there's a parental revolt happening

00:52:43.200 right now because you screwed with parents and you and and you got in bed with the teachers 0.87

00:52:47.600 unions in your making of policy, which is absolutely true.

00:52:51.040 Joe Biden literally goes to bed as he brags in his speeches with the teachers union member

00:52:56.780 member every night.

00:52:58.360 It's so true. 0.84

00:52:59.180 There's a lot in there.

00:52:59.780 So, David Leonhardt, I agree with you.

00:53:01.160 I think he's a gift, though.

00:53:02.500 He's been on this show, too.

00:53:03.840 He's also a veteran.

00:53:05.620 And the reason he's so important is because he does speak to the audience that we most need

00:53:09.680 to convince.

00:53:10.340 I know we're angry at these people who imposed all this stuff on us, but like he is a voice

00:53:14.340 they will listen to and they get mad at him.

00:53:16.840 But he does keep reminding them of what the truths are.

00:53:20.100 And I will say, even when he was on this program, we were talking about Omicron.

00:53:23.300 It was at the beginning.

00:53:24.280 And I was like, well, you know, it doesn't seem to be that serious once you get it.

00:53:28.420 So, you know, what's the big freak out about?

00:53:30.160 And he was like, well, if you look at how easily it's spread, it will result in a massive

00:53:36.680 number of deaths if it spreads like this.

00:53:38.800 And some of my audience wrote me and said, well, we don't like it.

00:53:41.680 We don't hear from him.

00:53:42.500 He's a he's an alarmist.

00:53:43.600 Well, he was right.

00:53:44.760 Exactly what he predicted would happen did happen.

00:53:47.700 So to his credit, you know, he speaks truth no matter who the audience he's in front of.

00:53:52.860 And I appreciate that in a reporter left or right.

00:53:57.240 But yeah, can we talk about that Saturday Night Live skit?

00:53:59.900 So people may have missed it because they're not really watching Saturday Night Live.

00:54:04.300 But it was unbelievable.

00:54:05.320 It was like two minutes long.

00:54:06.380 We won't play the whole thing.

00:54:07.500 But it was all these actors from SNL out there pretending to be Democrats.

00:54:11.320 Well, sure.

00:54:12.320 Pretending what great acting.

00:54:13.560 And like starting to criticize what the Democrats did to us for all this time with these mandates

00:54:21.740 and shutdowns and so on and like questioning the orthodoxy a little.

00:54:26.860 Here it is.

00:54:27.540 Well, I heard the CDC is going to lift all mask mandates soon.

00:54:30.760 Oh, yeah, I know.

00:54:32.740 It's so weird.

00:54:33.940 It's it's like COVID's not over, but it's just going to stop.

00:54:37.440 I don't know how I feel about that.

00:54:39.100 Oh, you know, that reminds me of this article I read.

00:54:41.460 Honey, no one wants to hear about that.

00:54:43.560 Well, it was in Bloomberg and I thought it was interesting.

00:54:47.460 What what article?

00:54:49.920 Well, honey, it was just saying how mask mandates had, I don't know, little to no effect on COVID.

00:55:04.860 Cue the shocked looks.

00:55:10.120 Nervous water pouring.

00:55:13.560 I'm sorry.

00:55:19.180 It's not like I'm anti mask or anything.

00:55:21.640 I just sometimes wonder if any of the things we did actually help.

00:55:24.900 I went to a child's birthday party.

00:55:26.740 Self careful.

00:55:27.780 And they did gymnastics in masks. 0.70

00:55:30.720 Don't.

00:55:31.700 And then they went into another room and took off their masks to eat pizza.

00:55:36.800 This is the end of me.

00:55:38.460 So did they really need the mask or no?

00:55:43.320 Did any of us ever need the mask?

00:55:48.780 No.

00:55:51.820 Oh, my gosh.

00:55:53.460 You want to laugh? 1.00

00:55:54.520 But also, I want to punch them in the face. 0.99

00:56:00.580 I mean, Nancy's been leading a one woman crew to take masks off people's faces since about June 2020. 1.00

00:56:07.740 Oh, my sister from another mister. 1.00

00:56:10.420 Yeah, yeah, yeah.

00:56:10.880 I started having people over for lunch in June 2020.

00:56:13.780 And everyone's like, wait, what?

00:56:14.780 What do you mean?

00:56:15.300 I was like, don't you just come to lunch?

00:56:16.660 We're not going to French kiss.

00:56:17.660 We'll just have like two people.

00:56:19.060 And everybody like crept out of their houses.

00:56:21.320 I was like, it's okay.

00:56:23.280 And it has been okay.

00:56:24.980 So the skin was pretty funny.

00:56:26.160 They had one a couple of years ago based on Me Too, which I actually thought was even funnier than this one.

00:56:32.120 But it is kind of amazing to me as someone who has not been of that ilk to think that people really, really, really believe what they're doing.

00:56:42.860 Like they really believe they are right in having masks on this time.

00:56:46.800 I mean, is that really possible?

00:56:48.660 I think there's a signaling exercise with it that's pretty explicit.

00:56:52.500 And we've seen this in school policies too, right?

00:56:54.220 Like people were afraid to, up until basically Election Day 2020 in blue states, express out loud too much that they were against school closures because, and this is on the record, lots of people said that they didn't want to be perceived as Trump supporters, right?

00:57:11.000 They didn't want to be as Trumpy.

00:57:12.160 My daughter goes to middle school in Brooklyn at the nice white parent school.

00:57:16.440 I should hesitate to add.

00:57:18.960 But she used to be a mask kind of fanatic, but then she's now been kind of the leading, put it on the chin or take it off altogether. 1.00

00:57:26.960 And she's immediately called Trumpy by her classmates in a place where there might be a, yeah, my, you know, my daughter, that's not likely.

00:57:35.760 But in a place that probably voted 103 percent for Joe Biden this last time.

00:57:42.900 So there's a there's a sense of and you saw this in Portland, right, where Nancy's done a lot of great reporting of people wearing a mask to signal their like a sort of solidarity and their political point of view more than that.

00:57:57.760 We had Jennifer say on the program, but we had Jennifer say on the program, who is the head of Levi's and she got forced out because what was her sin? 1.00

00:58:09.140 Was she out there parading against, you know, with the truckers against the vax mandates?

00:58:13.180 No. Was she even parading against the mask mandates?

00:58:16.780 No. She wanted the schools to be open in San Francisco, which now we've seen.

00:58:21.860 And I want to get to this, too.

00:58:22.920 So she she wanted those school board members recalled she wanted the schools to be open. 1.00

00:58:27.940 And they called that Trumpy within Levi's supposed to be America's brand.

00:58:31.780 Guess again, consider Wrangler, everyone.

00:58:35.220 And she wound up fired.

00:58:37.060 She wound up fired for that absurdity.

00:58:39.940 Go ahead, Nancy.

00:58:41.120 Well, I was just going to I was going to say I just spoke with someone from Portland two days ago who said that, you know,

00:58:46.960 Portlanders keep their masks on because they want to signal that they care. 0.93

00:58:50.580 They care more than other people.

00:58:52.080 They care about old people and and whoever might be more vulnerable.

00:58:55.420 And even now, even now that it's being lifted everywhere, they're not lifting it yet in in in Portland.

00:59:01.040 In terms of the recall, we both were at.

00:59:04.140 We were both at the recall party.

00:59:05.900 We were at the recall watch party.

00:59:07.500 And it was like being inside an Alka-Seltzer. 0.97

00:59:10.260 It was so exciting.

00:59:12.460 You could tell like there was no way that these people were not going to be recalled.

00:59:16.940 And they were and they were slaughtered.

00:59:18.940 They were slaughtered.

00:59:19.460 And it was really, really nice to see.

00:59:21.020 And I think I am going to go back and cover the the Chesa Boudin recall because I think.

00:59:25.920 Yeah.

00:59:26.420 So the Chesa, the Chesa Boudin thing is blowing my mind.

00:59:29.300 And my audience knows I'm now obsessed with Chesa Boudin.

00:59:31.600 I mean, people don't know.

00:59:32.580 But like he this is the man. 0.76

00:59:34.860 This is the son of two convicted murderous terrorists.

00:59:37.540 Of domestic terrorists who was raised by two other murderous terrorists, Bill Ayers and Bernadine Dorn. 0.70

00:59:44.520 Bill Ayers and Bernadine Dorn.

00:59:46.020 I mean, Bill, the head of the Weather Underground, which bombed several buildings.

00:59:49.200 They actually did blow up a building, including themselves.

00:59:51.520 Not Bill and his wife, but their group and so on.

00:59:53.720 And that's his parents and then his adoptive parents.

00:59:57.400 No wonder the guy does not want to fight crime.

00:59:59.320 And now he's gotten all his bad press for the murder rate in San Francisco and the crime rate and the carjackings and the car thefts and so on. 0.97

01:00:07.020 And unlike London Breed, the mayor of San Francisco, who's like, oh, shit, I'm going to pivot on this. 0.97

01:00:13.480 I'm pivoting. 0.95

01:00:14.840 He's like more prosecution does not does not stop crime.

01:00:20.620 I'm telling you, you guys need to listen to me.

01:00:23.100 What I am doing is working.

01:00:24.820 He is going to be recalled.

01:00:27.020 Yes.

01:00:27.980 Yes.

01:00:28.220 He's going to be recalled.

01:00:29.100 I'm in touch with some people that are leading the recall there and they are adamant.

01:00:33.280 I think I think the wave is with them.

01:00:35.480 I think especially after the slaughter of the school board members.

01:00:38.060 And when you look at what these people have done, like item by item, it's it's unbelievable.

01:00:42.220 I think he will be recalled.

01:00:43.240 I think we might be seeing a little sea change in San Francisco.

01:00:46.460 We'll see.

01:00:47.100 I mean, there's a there's a political sea change, too.

01:00:50.200 You can see it in the personage of Eric Adams in New York.

01:00:54.240 And there's a big city backlash against over progressive policies.

01:00:59.660 Some of that stuff is going to lead to places that makes me uncomfortable. 0.75

01:01:01.980 I think that in addition to Chase Abedin being a clown and in way over his head, that people 0.52

01:01:08.740 not just in San Francisco, but in New York are they're pinning. 0.69

01:01:13.220 They're pinning those policies for things that may or may not have something to do directly

01:01:16.780 to the things that they're mad about.

01:01:18.420 Some of them do.

01:01:19.400 Some of them don't.

01:01:20.460 It's kind of it's it.

01:01:22.180 And they're going to perhaps throw out some what I would consider to be good policies about

01:01:27.700 cash bail, for example, not to say that you let people go who are against you again.

01:01:32.780 It's a it's that if you've this is your 12th time, you know, and you're violent, that's

01:01:38.140 a different thing altogether.

01:01:39.480 But you're seeing a real backlash.

01:01:41.340 And I think, you know, you can even bring it back to CDC masking policies and the fact

01:01:47.020 that we somehow took the masks off last night in Washington.

01:01:50.200 It's amazing how the science seems to be impacted by what happens at the ballot box, beginning

01:01:55.740 with Glenn Youngkin in Virginia and then going on to literally literally one day, I think

01:02:03.800 it was after this Democrat polling group came out with a red alarm fire notice to the Dems

01:02:10.020 saying you will lose.

01:02:12.040 Stop being such downers on covid.

01:02:14.480 The American people are over it.

01:02:15.780 They want to live with it.

01:02:16.780 They do not want to be reminded of restrictions or any of this.

01:02:19.660 Just stop it.

01:02:20.840 Stop it.

01:02:21.640 And suddenly, oh, one hundred and two thousand cases is no longer a problem when, you know,

01:02:27.560 fifty four thousand was death, destruction.

01:02:30.800 You can't you don't care about people.

01:02:33.940 Yeah.

01:02:34.420 Again, it's really hard not to grit your teeth at this, given, you know, everything that every

01:02:41.640 single person, including people who are not like us, we are public figures.

01:02:45.740 I understand, Megan, that you've been criticized a time or two in your public career.

01:02:49.000 I have to maybe to a lesser extent, but that's fine.

01:02:56.880 It's part of our job description, but it's not part of the job description of just parents

01:03:01.240 who are going to school board meetings and saying, hey, how come the schools aren't open?

01:03:04.380 And they were brutalized by teachers unions, by by politicians.

01:03:10.200 Richard Carranza, the school board chief in New York, until he fled about a year ago, they

01:03:17.020 would just call those people racist.

01:03:18.520 And it was it's an incredible discouragement to public participation.

01:03:21.920 And one of the interesting things about the San Francisco recall, the co-organizers of

01:03:25.640 it were really great people, one of whom is an immigrant from India, the other whom is a woman

01:03:31.680 progressive from Caltech.

01:03:34.200 And they just didn't give a rat's patootie about being called a racist.

01:03:38.700 And in fact, they saw what they did.

01:03:40.060 And that was the number one thing that they would be hit with in San Francisco.

01:03:43.440 We're going to hit the Democrats by calling them racist.

01:03:46.120 They wanted to make the discourse safe for people and have people be brave and say, when

01:03:55.320 you are called that, laugh at the person, say, that's just not true, and then just move on

01:03:59.880 immediately.

01:04:01.220 And that part of the Alka-Seltzer in the room is that you could see there's a galvanizing

01:04:04.560 effect on people who are no longer discouraged from public participation by this kind of freighted

01:04:11.280 name calling.

01:04:11.880 So can I tell you, this is one of the very, very rare disagreements I have with the brilliant

01:04:16.040 Douglas Murray.

01:04:16.920 I mean, he's just such a smart social commentator.

01:04:19.860 And his book, The Madness of Crowds, is just well worth your time.

01:04:23.100 But he really feels strongly that if somebody hurls the R word at you, you should respond

01:04:32.300 indignantly.

01:04:33.600 You know, you should be like, how dare you?

01:04:36.320 How dare you use that word against me?

01:04:38.400 How dare you water it down in this way?

01:04:40.020 And I am like, that may have been true three years ago.

01:04:45.540 About five years.

01:04:46.260 But like, they hurl around so much now.

01:04:48.440 I mean, truly, I think you're right.

01:04:49.600 The only response is to laugh and move on.

01:04:51.720 Like, OK, I got it.

01:04:52.640 I'm racist.

01:04:53.140 Then I'm racist.

01:04:53.800 OK, got it.

01:04:55.100 Let's move on.

01:04:55.860 Because they've used it against everyone.

01:04:58.240 Black people, white people, Republicans, Democrats.

01:05:02.980 Asian-Americans, my God.

01:05:05.060 What?

01:05:05.780 I mean, someone can say to me, you know, you are a seven foot tall, left-handed Croatian

01:05:10.340 tennis player.

01:05:11.120 And I'm like, yeah, that doesn't have anything to do with me.

01:05:13.480 And they could call me racist.

01:05:14.540 Like, it doesn't have anything to do with me.

01:05:15.960 Let's move on.

01:05:16.920 It's just, it just doesn't have any power.

01:05:18.780 And it's a shame because bigotry is bad.

01:05:21.040 You know, like making collective demonizations of populations based on stuff that they didn't

01:05:27.360 choose, or even sometimes stuff that they do choose, like their politics.

01:05:29.940 But to say that an entire large class, millions of people are, you know, deplorable or beyond

01:05:35.740 the pale in some way or inferior in some way, that's awful.

01:05:39.320 And we need a language to describe that.

01:05:41.940 And that language has been so abused.

01:05:44.720 And the threshold of evidence for it has been so incredibly lowered,

01:05:50.480 especially in within journalism over the last five, six years, that that it's kind of robbed

01:05:56.600 us of the language to call things by their proper names. 0.99

01:06:00.240 And that's a that's a damn dirty shame because racism sucks and we shouldn't tolerate it. 1.00

01:06:05.900 Xenophobia sucks. 1.00

01:06:06.920 You know, when Donald Trump said that, you know, the Judge Curiel, whatever his name was 0.99

01:06:11.820 in 2016, said that that we can't trust him to make a judgment in a case because of his

01:06:18.900 background, that was terrible.

01:06:20.820 You should never do that.

01:06:22.000 You should have a language to describe that.

01:06:24.780 That that was one of the things that I hit Trump for.

01:06:28.520 It was actually Trump.

01:06:29.260 You know, he had attacked me and then we kind of made up.

01:06:31.340 And then, you know, I continued to hit him when he deserved it.

01:06:34.180 And I can continue to this day to defend him when he deserves it.

01:06:37.820 That's like what a real what an honest journalist slash commentator should do.

01:06:42.760 If somebody is uniformly defending one side or so on, then you're you know, you should

01:06:47.180 understand what you're getting, which is somebody who's partisan, not objective.

01:06:50.700 But that was clearly beyond the pale and was a nonsense objection to Judge Curiel.

01:06:55.140 Anyway, yes, we need that.

01:06:56.620 We need that word.

01:06:57.480 We need the word racist to work, but it doesn't anymore.

01:07:00.840 They've completely diluted it past the point of it being effective.

01:07:05.120 And I think to your point, Nancy, like the people who spoke up at that school board meeting,

01:07:08.920 they got it.

01:07:09.880 And I give him credit for being Democrats and getting it.

01:07:12.200 I think we actually have a clip.

01:07:13.240 This is your clip.

01:07:14.020 This is from your video.

01:07:14.980 You were there of one of the parents there talking about how the school board needs to

01:07:20.560 think about educating the kids and not just renaming schools while this while the education

01:07:25.960 is shut down.

01:07:26.680 Here he is.

01:07:28.160 And we want to see school board members who put education first.

01:07:33.120 Yeah.

01:07:33.320 And who put the needs of the most disadvantaged kids first, who have been the ones who've fallen 0.94

01:07:43.560 the furthest behind in the two years that the school has been shut and who've lost the

01:07:48.180 most in this pandemic.

01:07:49.640 And who the school board, which talks about social justice nonstop, has not prioritized.

01:07:55.820 It is not progressive to set back the kids who are the most disadvantaged to not prioritize

01:08:00.740 their education.

01:08:01.440 It is not progressive.

01:08:02.540 And San Francisco today has shown us what it means to be progressive.

01:08:06.380 Yeah.

01:08:06.960 Like that guy.

01:08:08.600 Oh, man.

01:08:09.100 He was great.

01:08:09.840 Boy, his voice.

01:08:10.820 When he gets at volume, boy, he was.

01:08:13.040 Woo.

01:08:13.620 Doesn't need a microphone.

01:08:14.580 Yeah.

01:08:14.920 He was one of the main organizers, he and his partner.

01:08:17.500 And they were accused, you know, we actually went to their apartment.

01:08:20.480 They live in kind of like a big rambling apartment with five kids.

01:08:24.000 And they were accused of being part of the billionaire class.

01:08:27.240 It's like, yeah, not really.

01:08:29.600 Not really.

01:08:30.440 Nice try.

01:08:31.560 Yeah.

01:08:31.760 That's what they'll get you on something.

01:08:32.940 If they can't get you on racism, you know, because you happen to be have brown skin, they'll 0.75

01:08:37.360 try anyway.

01:08:38.240 They don't care.

01:08:38.860 They'll try anything.

01:08:39.800 All right.

01:08:39.980 So there's a lot more to talk about, including Nancy's significant time with a bunch of serial

01:08:45.880 killers.

01:08:46.260 So we're going to get to that.

01:08:55.480 So I would be remiss if I moved on to serial killers without talking first about another

01:09:00.720 notable performance last night or yesterday.

01:09:03.360 And that is the vice president of the United States, Kamala Harris, who well before the events

01:09:10.620 of last night, gave an interview earlier in the day to a radio station in St. Louis that

01:09:17.020 has been universally mocked.

01:09:19.880 I mean, it was mocked by the left and the right all over Twitter yesterday.

01:09:23.280 And take one listen.

01:09:24.780 And you tell me why.

01:09:26.760 Ukraine is a country in Europe.

01:09:30.620 It exists next to another country called Russia.

01:09:34.340 Russia is a bigger country.

01:09:36.100 Russia is a powerful country.

01:09:37.740 Russia decided to invade a smaller country called Ukraine.

01:09:41.420 So basically that's wrong.

01:09:43.780 So sharing is caring.

01:09:47.820 Now, I will say he asked her to explain it in layman's terms or simple terms.

01:09:52.760 Oh, are the like are the St.

01:09:55.840 Louis now just suddenly a bunch of kindergartners?

01:09:57.920 Did all the grownups leave the city?

01:09:59.320 Yeah, I was going to say, was that to a second grade that she was speaking to?

01:10:04.000 I mean, at least it's better than that thing that she said about six weeks ago when someone

01:10:09.800 was asking her about COVID policy and whether they got tests wrong, whether they did bad

01:10:16.400 things.

01:10:17.300 And she said something to the effect of every day is the day to start doing the things

01:10:25.900 that are better.

01:10:27.560 And that's why we are going to be doing that.

01:10:31.580 That was like the old story.

01:10:33.420 I think right today before we leave the State of the Union, I'd like to give one.

01:10:38.360 There was one thing for me that was surprising and positive.

01:10:42.540 This when he started talking about policing, which is something that I've covered a lot since

01:10:46.680 I covered protests in Portland and the murders in the NYPD here and just in general,

01:10:51.240 I've talked a lot about policing when he started talking about it.

01:10:53.800 I was terrified, Megan.

01:10:54.980 And I was like, oh, my God, he's going to be like, we got to start defunding and we

01:10:58.600 have to like have neighborhood groups doing this instead.

01:11:00.880 And when he said we have to fund the police and he I think he said it three times.

01:11:04.920 I was heartened to hear that.

01:11:07.260 You know, we talked about this in our first with our first panel.

01:11:09.740 And I mean, yes, he said the right words, but he's not really the problem.

01:11:13.960 It's Democrats across the country who are the problem.

01:11:16.920 I agree.

01:11:17.780 But I think we saw in the run up to the election that he was I don't want to use the word pandering,

01:11:23.080 but he was listening quite a lot to the really, really more progressive wings of the of the

01:11:28.580 Democratic Party to try to hedge a little bit more.

01:11:30.940 You're right.

01:11:31.400 He did.

01:11:31.720 He was hedging on this issue a bit more.

01:11:33.920 Yeah.

01:11:34.220 So let's see.

01:11:36.200 You're you're applauding the end of the hedging.

01:11:38.040 I would applaud the discussion altogether.

01:11:41.480 As long as he legalizes weed.

01:11:42.980 Yeah, look, my feeling is and I know like it's he's easy to make fun of.

01:11:47.840 So is Kamala.

01:11:48.480 But and so is Trump.

01:11:49.880 But people died as a result of these crazy policies.

01:11:54.020 They defund the police policies that were pushed on city after city.

01:11:56.900 People died.

01:11:57.480 And you know who died more than anybody?

01:11:59.740 African-American people, because it was their neighborhoods that lost police presence

01:12:04.160 and needed the most in too many big cities.

01:12:06.300 And so where do those people who unnecessarily lost loved ones go for their apology now now

01:12:11.960 that Biden's pretending like he and his party have been against this all along and, you know,

01:12:15.920 they're the voice of reason nonsense.

01:12:17.620 They are the reason this happened.

01:12:19.560 And it's yet another thing to hold them accountable for.

01:12:21.920 I'm glad he's changing his messaging.

01:12:24.220 Go talk to Cori Bush.

01:12:25.320 Talk to Ilhan Omar.

01:12:26.260 Talk to AOC, who is, you know, one of our first guests was talking about how, yes,

01:12:30.680 Mayor de Blasio said he was going to defund the police by 100 million dollars in New York

01:12:35.720 City.

01:12:36.180 But Eric Adams hasn't changed the budget for this year, but they already took the money

01:12:39.880 away.

01:12:40.680 You know, I mean, like real people have suffered as a result of these decisions.

01:12:44.940 And that's what elections are for.

01:12:47.960 That thing with the cops was so awful, Nancy.

01:12:50.900 And I don't think the New Yorkers are soon to forget it.

01:12:53.460 In Portland, where they have as acrimonious a relationship with their police department

01:12:57.340 as any city in the country, they are on target now to have 30 percent more murders

01:13:01.820 this year than last year.

01:13:02.800 And last year was a bit of a record, not the record, the 80s.

01:13:06.080 It was larger.

01:13:07.000 But you can't look at what's going on in cities in terms of violent crime and then say, you

01:13:12.440 know, really what what we really should do is keep going down the road where we're taking

01:13:16.180 more money from the force and having a more acrimonious relationship with the police

01:13:20.960 department.

01:13:21.580 It's got to stop.

01:13:22.940 Mm hmm.

01:13:23.460 And you see the cops like I'll see cops out there who listen to the show or know me.

01:13:27.700 And they're so grateful.

01:13:29.680 They're so grateful that there's anyone out there defending them at all.

01:13:34.680 They don't need just a defense.

01:13:35.780 It's just I don't, quote, defend the police.

01:13:38.680 I offer facts.

01:13:40.580 These are the facts.

01:13:41.360 I counter nonfactual narratives with truth.

01:13:44.460 And for that, they're so grateful because people within the Democrat Party are the ones

01:13:48.940 spinning lies that have endangered and cost lives.

01:13:52.700 And they they can't get away with just defund the police.

01:13:56.020 I know.

01:13:56.440 What do you mean?

01:13:56.840 We're going to we're going to fund the police.

01:13:57.920 That's us.

01:13:58.640 And Joe Biden's been trying to play that for a while with like, remember, he had he claimed

01:14:02.920 his American rescue plan, which was the covid relief, you know, that he was trying to fund

01:14:07.940 the police with three hundred million dollars in that.

01:14:09.820 And that was like his attempt to fund.

01:14:10.960 And because the police, the Republicans wouldn't support his whole wish list of stuff.

01:14:14.460 They were against whatever.

01:14:16.180 It's all political maneuvering.

01:14:18.760 OK, let's talk about serial killers.

01:14:21.680 Matt's like, yes, yes.

01:14:23.620 I'm waiting for this.

01:14:26.060 Why are you spending so much time with them?

01:14:28.820 Well, and what have you learned?

01:14:30.700 It's not so many serial killers.

01:14:32.740 I did interview John Wayne Gacy before about a week and a half before his execution, because

01:14:37.580 I had an opportunity to drive cross country with one of his pen pals.

01:14:40.540 And and interview the guy.

01:14:42.120 And nobody really had done that.

01:14:43.480 It had been very I think one journalist from The New Yorker had it was kind of a mingy piece.

01:14:48.620 Sorry, writer for The New Yorker.

01:14:50.480 And so I did that.

01:14:51.680 I have written about I've written about a moon cows and by proxy mom who killed herself

01:14:55.420 and her daughter.

01:14:55.880 And then a book that I wrote a couple of years ago called To the Bridge, a true story of

01:14:59.780 motherhood and murder. 1.00

01:15:00.520 Great book.

01:15:01.040 Thank you, Matt, that a woman in Portland threw her two young kids off a bridge and so

01:15:07.240 at the Selwood Bridge in Portland, Oregon, and the little four year old died and the seven

01:15:10.960 year old survived.

01:15:11.800 She actually saved her own life.

01:15:12.720 She screamed and screamed until she was rescued by some good Samaritans.

01:15:15.680 It's not that I'm like fascinated with murder.

01:15:18.460 It's just that sometimes these stories get told and they're told in a way where people

01:15:23.040 are in curious because they're scary.

01:15:24.880 And I always think it's a little better to really look at things and unpack it and sort

01:15:30.180 of understand it.

01:15:31.660 And that's what I do.

01:15:33.300 I get fascinated and I go looking and I write the story.

01:15:35.860 So so when you walk into I've walked into jails before and sat with criminal defendants,

01:15:40.200 people accused of murder.

01:15:41.840 There's like one of the greatest stories of my legal career involves such a such a moment.

01:15:46.860 I'll tell you tell it quickly.

01:15:48.380 I was very young.

01:15:49.480 I was interning for a criminal defense attorney out in Syracuse, New York, where I wasn't actually

01:15:54.000 yet even in law school.

01:15:54.860 I was just this was a do you really want to be a lawyer type internship?

01:15:58.100 And believe it or not, I went on to become a lawyer after this story.

01:16:00.520 But anyway, I taught aerobics at the time.

01:16:03.180 And so my boss said, we got to go to the prison on Saturday.

01:16:06.340 And I was like, well, I got to teach this class in the morning.

01:16:08.160 And he said, that's fine.

01:16:09.180 Just meet me at the office after you're done and we will we'll go.

01:16:12.640 I said, fine.

01:16:13.320 Well, something happened on his end and he wasn't able to meet me at the office.

01:16:16.720 And without understanding that I didn't have my business outfit at the spa at the gym,

01:16:22.000 he came by the gym to pick me up and we were going to go directly to the jail, maximum

01:16:25.640 security prison.

01:16:27.060 And I didn't I was planning on going home and then go to the office and changing.

01:16:30.560 But it didn't didn't work out.

01:16:32.100 So, I mean, now it was I was in college between 88 and 92.

01:16:35.580 OK, so this is, I guess, whatever, 91, probably.

01:16:38.680 And, you know, the aerobics of the time was very spandexy, was very neon.

01:16:44.320 It was very tight.

01:16:45.660 It was very revealing.

01:16:47.140 What I had was it didn't happen.

01:16:48.940 I had on a one piece black leotard, of course, skin tight because it was like, you know,

01:16:56.940 skin tight with a neon orange thong, neon orange thong on the back of it.

01:17:03.540 Right.

01:17:03.840 My bottom was covered because it was black. 0.90

01:17:05.660 But, you know, that was the look with neon orange slouch socks, because that was, of course,

01:17:11.480 and a neon orange scrunchie with my big over teased hair sticking.

01:17:16.980 And I that's how I so we show up to the prison and the guards that you have to.

01:17:23.160 I had a winter coat on it.

01:17:24.140 Thank God, because at least it was Syracuse.

01:17:25.640 You know, you always have to have a winter coat and the guards.

01:17:28.320 You can't take your coat in when you go visit the prisoners at the maximum security.

01:17:32.140 You have to take the they made that rule. 0.99

01:17:34.860 Truly, I'm like, oh, my God, what the fuck is going on here? 0.97

01:17:40.940 So we're we're going and they're like, she's got to take the coat off. 0.99

01:17:44.820 And my boss looks at the guards and he looks at me and he goes, show them your little outfit.

01:17:52.740 So I like open the coat and they're like, the coat stays on.

01:17:56.740 She keeps the coat.

01:17:57.560 So they did not make me go in to see the murder defendant in that outfit.

01:18:02.820 But trauma, trauma, I get it.

01:18:05.180 I need a trigger warning when you talk about going to the prisons.

01:18:07.860 You just reminded me of something that I forgot.

01:18:10.320 So when I went to go see Gacy, you know, you check in and I was not wearing spandex,

01:18:14.100 but I was like 30 years old and, you know, whatever looked OK.

01:18:17.380 So he was up, of course, he was on death row.

01:18:19.760 So he was up.

01:18:20.640 We went and visited and there was not like there was no plexiglass or anything.

01:18:23.300 I was sitting at a table with the guy like three feet between us.

01:18:25.740 His hands were shackled, but going up to see him, we had to kind of go up this long,

01:18:31.360 curvy staircase and prisoners could see us from other windows. 0.77

01:18:35.940 Oh, boy.

01:18:36.540 All of a sudden I started hearing this like, whoa, whoa, whoa.

01:18:41.260 It was just a cyclone of men because it was a woman. 1.00

01:18:44.880 And like, you know, they don't get to see women.

01:18:47.040 It's just like, anyway, yeah.

01:18:49.880 Then you're wondering, like, is this skirt long enough?

01:18:52.460 Is this like going up the stairs?

01:18:54.520 It's shorter.

01:18:54.660 Is it short enough?

01:18:55.880 Is it short enough?

01:18:56.600 Matt.

01:18:56.980 Matt's going a different direction.

01:18:58.520 So what?

01:18:59.180 I mean, weird, weird question, but everybody wants to know.

01:19:01.520 What was what was John Wayne Gacy like?

01:19:03.460 What was it like to be across from him?

01:19:05.420 You know, I've said this a lot. 0.66

01:19:06.880 He was kind of like kind of old and fat and like super cheerful.

01:19:10.700 Hey, Megan, how you doing?

01:19:12.000 How's your family?

01:19:12.660 Yeah, yeah, yeah.

01:19:13.240 I like that show.

01:19:14.240 So hey, hey, guys, get this lady a cheeseburger. 1.00

01:19:16.260 So tell me, Megan, like, tell me, like, you can tell me about your sex life. 0.65

01:19:18.920 It's fine.

01:19:19.220 You can tell me.

01:19:19.920 He was super, super loquacious, absolutely hungry for communication.

01:19:25.960 But it was the John Wayne Gacy story.

01:19:28.060 It does show.

01:19:28.700 It was like he was on stage.

01:19:30.100 And I got to tell you, it was exhausting.

01:19:33.480 Was it scary?

01:19:35.080 You know, you're sitting in the maximum security there.

01:19:39.960 There's guards right there.

01:19:41.120 They're armed.

01:19:41.880 His hands like he's not going to do anything to you.

01:19:44.640 But, you know, you do learn when you leave that someone that looks just this sort of like 1.00

01:19:48.940 your fat Uncle Johnny actually has killed at least 33 and not just killed, but killed 0.99

01:19:53.900 and tortured and raped 33 young men and boys. 0.99

01:19:57.500 So that's kind of an eye opener. 0.55

01:19:59.700 If people want to read about it, it's on Amazon.

01:20:01.260 They go buy it.

01:20:02.440 So, OK, gosh, that's like this is so disturbing.

01:20:04.740 And I know, yeah, you've written about how it's sort of bizarre to be across from somebody

01:20:08.860 like that who's clearly a psychopath and yet wants to charm you.

01:20:13.740 Like, what's going on? 0.98

01:20:15.860 Absolutely.

01:20:16.480 But that's that's, you know, these these sorts of charming sociopaths.

01:20:21.180 They have this terrible and terrific trait of making you believe that they really like

01:20:25.620 you and you have a lot in common.

01:20:26.840 And that's why people that's why people fall for them.

01:20:30.280 It's it's a terrible, terrible talent.

01:20:31.960 And people have asked me, like, do you think that he understood right from wrong?

01:20:35.080 I'm like, oh, I'm sure he does.

01:20:36.840 But what what we don't understand is that we're not allowed to do those things.

01:20:40.720 But he's so much smarter than the rest of us that he's allowed to do those things.

01:20:44.660 That was what I came away.

01:20:46.360 OK, let's I'm sorry to ignore you, Matt, but there's a lot of interesting stuff to go.

01:20:50.340 So just sit there.

01:20:51.200 OK, let's talk about the Me Too dust up that you got into, which I find fascinating.

01:20:57.020 So when the Me Too movement was happening, you saw an opportunity to offer a different

01:21:02.620 point of view, like, all right, something else could be going on with some of these

01:21:06.100 accusers, some of these women, not everybody, but some of them. 0.97

01:21:08.980 And it's worth probing and it's worth providing due process for those who get accused.

01:21:13.900 And you got the shitstorm raining down upon you and your husband and his business, because

01:21:19.700 that was I guess I will be charitable to the people who came after you and say that was 0.92

01:21:26.400 the bomb throwing phase of that revolution.

01:21:29.740 And they were taking down anyone who had the temerity to question the believe all women 0.80

01:21:36.180 narrative, something I do think we're now over.

01:21:40.500 I do.

01:21:40.780 I do.

01:21:41.060 It's a different time right now.

01:21:42.300 We're also a different city.

01:21:43.140 This was in Portland, Oregon.

01:21:44.260 You know, had this happened, it was a former angry employee of my husband's.

01:21:48.080 You know, if she had gone with her information to the press and she lived in New York City

01:21:52.120 where there are 5000 restaurants and, you know, 150,000 employees, it would have been

01:21:55.520 a non-story.

01:21:56.400 But in Portland, it was a story and it was a story they wanted to hear.

01:22:00.620 They wanted to have confirmed that they were correct.

01:22:04.860 And anybody that spoke with some nuance, I mean, our first story that I did was talking

01:22:09.440 about like, you know, is Aja Argento really the best face of Me Too?

01:22:13.140 Like, I don't really think so.

01:22:15.520 Aja Argento.

01:22:16.300 OK, sorry.

01:22:16.760 Yeah.

01:22:17.080 Who had been accused of statutory rape and they'd been paying off the boy her late boyfriend,

01:22:23.000 Anthony Bourdain had.

01:22:23.880 And it was, you know, it was an interesting story.

01:22:25.120 And yet she's out there with Rose McGowan.

01:22:27.020 I am the face of Me Too.

01:22:28.260 And, you know, I thought that was probably a pretty poor choice.

01:22:31.680 But, you know, I was writing about this yesterday.

01:22:33.720 We were talking earlier about these words, right? 0.98

01:22:36.600 Misogynist, racist, transphobe.

01:22:38.740 And I was writing yesterday that it's sort of like people take these shortcuts, right? 0.98

01:22:43.400 They take their shortcut to the destination they want, whether it's a destination that

01:22:47.640 they want a better future for the world or they take a destination that they want to look

01:22:51.240 heroic for bringing somebody down.

01:22:53.200 It's like a game of chutes and ladders.

01:22:54.640 You know, you can go all the way around the board or you can find this one, you know,

01:22:59.540 ladder that springs you up like really fast because I'm going to, you know, call Nancy

01:23:04.460 Rommelman a misogynist and then I will look like a hero for rape apologist. 0.78

01:23:08.740 Oh, yeah. 0.99

01:23:09.160 A rape apologist.

01:23:10.300 I mean, it's just sure it's right. 0.78

01:23:12.480 Yeah, it's bananas.

01:23:13.420 But you know what?

01:23:14.300 It works or it used to work.

01:23:16.040 But people do.

01:23:17.200 You know, we spoke earlier about this.

01:23:18.740 You're just like that has nothing to do with me.

01:23:20.980 But at the time, you're completely right, Megan.

01:23:22.880 And at that time, you know, this was just you just set fire to the stuff and it burns

01:23:26.700 up.

01:23:26.980 And it was it was extremely devastating.

01:23:29.900 I should take some of the blame for it because I came up with the name of their little YouTube

01:23:35.480 whatever video podcast of which there's five episodes from what I was it again.

01:23:40.760 It was like not me or what was it?

01:23:42.680 Me neither.

01:23:43.520 Hashtag me neither.

01:23:44.480 It's a good name, but it's also like hit me.

01:23:47.140 It's Matt's fault.

01:23:47.900 It's my fault.

01:23:49.200 Everything really.

01:23:50.560 Yeah.

01:23:50.700 But do you think I'm curious now because I do think, you know, we're definitely in a

01:23:54.840 very different place in the Me Too movement.

01:23:56.760 And with, you know, all these states investigating Black Lives Matter for its fraud and for pocketing

01:24:02.420 the money and the donations.

01:24:03.540 And, you know, we started off talking about how they're the ones who push defund the police

01:24:08.480 more than anyone, which is now, I mean, all the way up to the president of the United

01:24:11.640 States, the Democratic president of the United States being dismissed and disagreed with.

01:24:16.480 Do you feel like what's happened with that sort of racial reckoning, the overcorrection,

01:24:22.240 not just actually taking a hard look at whether, you know, we see racism in this institution 0.97

01:24:26.500 or that, but like the craziness, you know, the insanity of like all the black students 1.00

01:24:30.360 get free tutoring and nobody else does. 0.85

01:24:31.880 And, you know, like just this sort of all the white people have to resign from their jobs

01:24:36.360 so that black people can have those roles like the guy from Reddit.

01:24:38.660 But do you feel like that phase is over, too?

01:24:42.560 I don't.

01:24:43.580 I keep I keep waiting for the corner to be turned decisively.

01:24:47.560 We were not in the mania that we were at the height of the George Floyd protests and

01:24:53.420 afterwards, by which I don't actually refer to the George Floyd protests themselves, but

01:24:57.400 like the media reaction there.

01:24:58.740 It's a guy, the director of a museum in San Francisco had to resign for like saying something

01:25:05.140 completely innocuous of poetry, man, it was supportive of BLM, but not not enough.

01:25:11.960 And then it's like, well, you're past racism. 0.98

01:25:14.520 You should shut up. 0.86

01:25:15.680 The Poetry Foundation in Chicago, like completely imploded. 0.98

01:25:19.520 There's like knitting groups like a terrible, terrible fratricide with the knitting groups

01:25:25.640 happening.

01:25:26.480 We're not exactly in that freak out that was there that summer that caused a lot of implosion

01:25:32.060 in the media.

01:25:32.560 And that's good.

01:25:34.000 But the trend lines, the stories keep happening.

01:25:36.880 I mean, John McWhorter wrote about a story just like that today in The New York Times.

01:25:42.740 It keeps with us.

01:25:44.020 I'm afraid that the there's an institutionalization of this, of diversity, equity and inclusion

01:25:52.140 training and departments at universities and things like that.

01:25:55.600 They need something to do.

01:25:57.000 Right.

01:25:57.280 It's like you see this in some of the coverage.

01:25:59.400 There was a piece, I think it was CBS News, and I'm sorry if it wasn't, but out of Ukraine,

01:26:05.840 which is a Ukraine's a really interesting place right now.

01:26:08.280 A lot of news happening that you could write about.

01:26:10.780 And it was about what would happen, you know, the experience of one trans Ukrainian.

01:26:16.400 Yes.

01:26:16.720 We're on the same page.

01:26:17.720 I mentioned this in the A block.

01:26:19.160 Yes.

01:26:19.560 It's absurd.

01:26:20.500 Who cares about that right now?

01:26:21.760 It is a story, every individual, you know, dignity and story.

01:26:25.800 But like you could see that there's these desks that exist at media institutions and they

01:26:30.240 need to come up with stories.

01:26:31.980 And there are departments within and human resources departments.

01:26:35.300 My God, the amount of which this has been institutionalized.

01:26:38.520 So I'm afraid that we're going to keep seeing this over and over again.

01:26:41.360 And we have this whole generation of people who've just been compiling social media that

01:26:45.840 can be mined by, you know, outrage archaeologists.

01:26:49.940 So I would like to think that we've turned the corner and I and I really hope so.

01:26:54.900 And the more that we laugh and just call BS right in its face, the better, the quicker

01:27:00.660 we'll get to a different place.

01:27:02.440 But I think it's going to be a while before the legacy.

01:27:05.380 What you said reminded me of something that Joe Biden actually said on Defund the Police.

01:27:08.500 At the time when he was candidate Biden, he was asked about this, right?

01:27:11.960 It was in the height of the post George Floyd time and he hadn't yet been elected.

01:27:15.900 And he was asked where he stand on Defund the Police.

01:27:18.560 And he said, oh, no, I'm you know, I'm for, you know, reform, police reform and funding

01:27:25.380 the police so long as they have the requisite number of diversity hires.

01:27:30.940 So the police department, you know, in Butte, Montana, where our guest on Monday was from,

01:27:38.080 which has very low in black population, they need to have 50 percent black police in order 1.00

01:27:45.140 for Joe Biden's view, in his view, for them to get their funding right.

01:27:48.980 Like he needs perfect parity between blacks and whites. 0.91

01:27:51.600 That's what he was saying when he was running.

01:27:53.280 And not only that, on his first day or second day in office, he signed a whole of government

01:27:57.940 executive order to install an equity lens by which they will measure all of their outputs

01:28:04.120 and inputs and hiring and everything else.

01:28:07.340 I know people work in the federal government.

01:28:08.800 It's changed the way that they do their work because they're fulfilling this basically

01:28:13.700 HR request, but also sort of a measurement impact request as well.

01:28:18.060 You have to show some work at the end of that.

01:28:21.980 So he has been very receptive to this notion.

01:28:24.340 But it is interesting, as my fifth column co-host Camille Foster pointed out on Twitter

01:28:28.880 yesterday, the word equity didn't show up in that in that speech.

01:28:32.640 This was not the most woke speech from a Democratic president that we've seen in a long time.

01:28:37.460 If anything, it was kind of closer to the opposite.

01:28:39.600 Back to that.

01:28:40.100 So this is a separate memo that went out to the Dems about two weeks ago from the D triple 0.70

01:28:43.800 C. They had done their own research and they said, voters find us preachy, judgmental

01:28:50.760 and insufferable.

01:28:52.000 And we have to stop with the culture war stuff because we're losing.

01:28:56.100 So it's like they're finally getting the memo.

01:28:58.700 I feel like I feel vindicated because everything we've been saying is right, has been proven

01:29:03.400 right.

01:29:03.980 And we're not only right with the Republican voters, we're right with the Democrat voters.

01:29:08.600 I've been saying this all along that I've been saying to my Republican friends, do not

01:29:12.400 divide our army because when it comes to fighting this woke cultural rot, the left is with us.

01:29:19.240 It's the far left wokesters who are against us.

01:29:21.800 And I even don't even want to say far left because Crystal Ball, she once said, like, I'm

01:29:25.440 kind of far left, but she's not woke.

01:29:27.500 It's those it's the woke warriors who have nothing to do but create problems for people

01:29:31.820 like you say that.

01:29:33.520 What is it?

01:29:34.300 What archaeologists, the the online archaeologists, outrage.

01:29:37.940 Those people, those are the ones who have been the enemy of normal, reasonable people,

01:29:43.080 black, white, left, right.

01:29:44.720 And they're losing.

01:29:46.460 There's the thing that that people don't realize, I think, is when that wave comes to

01:29:52.560 them.

01:29:52.960 I mean, most people don't really necessarily identify with, quote unquote, cancel culture

01:29:56.720 stories or whatever, as long as it doesn't like directly encroach on them.

01:30:01.380 And this is why the parent revolt is so significant, because, you know, there's 50 million plus

01:30:05.120 kids in public schools.

01:30:06.680 A lot of parents out there, when they see these policies affect their lives, their kids

01:30:11.520 lives, they've got a lot of skin in the game and suddenly they're noticing a lot more things.

01:30:16.440 This is also true with just normal, you know, or not normal, abnormal kind of woke related

01:30:22.460 type of things, the DEI struggle sessions at your work when that comes into your workplace.

01:30:27.420 And I, and I've gotten hundreds of emails from people, uh, you know, people in their

01:30:31.900 own company, they started their own company, were sat down and subject to these kinds of

01:30:36.820 cross examinations.

01:30:37.760 They go, hold on a second.

01:30:39.140 This is now where I live.

01:30:40.780 And the stuff, um, seems so crazy.

01:30:43.760 The San Francisco school board, like the way that they conducted themselves, the language

01:30:47.440 with which they, they talked about their own work is so crazy sounding to normal people,

01:30:52.340 um, that as soon as it hits normal people, uh, either at their workplace or their kids or

01:30:57.180 something else like that, there is going to be a huge backlash because it's going to

01:31:00.460 be seen like an alien came down and started spouting all this gibberish at them.

01:31:05.000 Uh, this is a tremendous, uh, threat I think to Democrats going forward.

01:31:10.380 And you're going to see a lot of people backpedaling furiously.

01:31:13.800 Well, I'll end it with another quote of Douglas Murray, the great and the one and only Douglas

01:31:17.220 Murray, who, you know, he says when your employer comes to you and tells you that you must

01:31:21.200 participate in a session like that, you should say, I refuse, I refuse to let you re-racialize 1.00

01:31:28.980 my country, my company, and myself.

01:31:33.020 I love it.

01:31:34.100 He's brilliant.

01:31:34.620 Always worth listening to as are you too.

01:31:37.280 Nancy, Matt, thank you so much for being here.

01:31:39.780 Thanks for having us.

01:31:40.500 Thank you, Megan.

01:31:41.480 Uh, don't forget to watch tomorrow because we've got Buck Sexton and Jason Whitlock.

01:31:45.860 Check us out on YouTube in the meantime, we'll see you tomorrow.

01:31:48.060 Thanks for listening to the Megan Kelly show.

01:31:52.080 No BS, no agenda, and no fear.

The Megyn Kelly Show - March 02, 2022

Biden's Incoherent State of the Union and Pandemic Hypocrisy, with Charles C.W. Cooke, Jeremy Peters, Matt Welch, and Nancy Rommelmann ｜ Ep. 272

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