The Megyn Kelly Show - Biden's Putin Miscalculation and Supreme Court Pick, with Morgan Ortagus, Rich Lowry, Harmeet Dhillon, and Jonna Spilbor ｜ Ep. 269

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00:00:31.000 Welcome to The Megyn Kelly Show, your home for open, honest, and provocative conversations.

00:00:42.320 Hey everyone, I'm Megyn Kelly. Welcome to The Megyn Kelly Show.

00:00:45.580 We continue to follow breaking news today on multiple fronts.

00:00:49.400 Russia's invasion of Ukraine has continued today as Ukraine's president urges his people

00:00:53.860 to take up arms against the Russian army while the Russians close in on the Ukrainian capital.

00:01:00.000 Meantime, President Biden will name his nominee to the Supreme Court later this afternoon.

00:01:05.540 We expect an announcement at 2 p.m. today, and we believe we know who it is.

00:01:10.520 We'll get into her.

00:01:11.800 We have a Kelly's Court panel here to talk not just about that, but many more of the hot legal

00:01:15.880 cases in the news in our second hour.

00:01:17.460 But we are going to start with Putin's next move in the region.

00:01:20.960 Morgan Ortegas is a former State Department spokesperson and Navy Reserve officer who is

00:01:25.940 now running for Congress in Tennessee, and she joins me now. 0.99

00:01:29.560 Morgan, thank you so much for being here.

00:01:32.020 So thanks for joining me here.

00:01:33.260 To hear Zelensky, the president of Ukraine, come out explicitly and say, we are defending

00:01:40.760 ourselves alone and looking at the United States specifically saying, we are getting no help

00:01:47.520 from the world's most powerful nation.

00:01:49.620 Now, we are providing some help, but not the kind that he needs.

00:01:54.380 And while Ukraine is putting up quite a fight, I have to say, they're putting up quite a fight,

00:01:58.700 right?

00:01:59.460 It's it doesn't look good for them, and they certainly are outmatched in terms of the numbers

00:02:03.840 and the equipment.

00:02:05.140 And, you know, we had Pompeo on the show yesterday saying it's likely that Ukraine will fall and

00:02:10.860 that Russia will take over. 0.50

00:02:12.340 And they seem to want to instill either a puppet government or to get Zelensky to sign some statement

00:02:17.060 surrendering in all ways, and that Russia will be in control of this country, an American 0.51

00:02:22.200 ally rather soon.

00:02:24.360 I mean, that's the worst case scenario.

00:02:26.840 How do you see it?

00:02:27.760 How do you see the stakes that we're looking at right now?

00:02:30.440 Well, I think to go back with where you started, Megan, and thank you so much for having me

00:02:34.660 on.

00:02:35.280 But you made a really great point.

00:02:37.400 You know, the Ukrainians has been reported in the news and they have they have brought 1.00

00:02:41.540 this up themselves.

00:02:42.500 I gave up their nuclear weapons.

00:02:44.660 Right.

00:02:44.960 And this was a part of America, Europe, the West.

00:02:48.000 We were convincing them to do so.

00:02:50.680 And as things started to really unravel last week, I thought, you know, first of all, beyond

00:02:57.280 even just Ukraine, why would anyone else sort of disarm or give up nuclear weapons?

00:03:02.180 So I think that that's something that we have to look to specifically because right now in

00:03:06.840 Vienna, President Biden's negotiating team are with the Iranians.

00:03:10.920 Funny enough, the Russians are at the table in this negotiation for them, for the Iranians

00:03:16.080 and for the U.S. really to get back in the JCPOA, which is what President Trump always

00:03:20.460 called the failed Iran deal.

00:03:23.080 That deal, by the way, just to remind everybody listening, was supposed to prevent Iran from 1.00

00:03:27.940 getting a nuclear weapon.

00:03:29.800 So they may or may not go back in.

00:03:32.180 It will be a much weaker deal.

00:03:33.260 But I think what is happening in Ukraine today actually sets the stage for these negotiations

00:03:38.740 with Iran.

00:03:39.440 If you're the state of Israel, how do you trust and depend on the United States anymore to

00:03:44.040 have your back, especially why they're negotiating with Iran?

00:03:46.800 And if you look around the world, I think that countries are going to start calculating

00:03:50.520 and say, OK, what is our alliance with the United States?

00:03:54.260 What is it actually worth?

00:03:55.540 Right.

00:03:55.760 Are they really going to protect us and come to our aid?

00:03:57.920 And if we get rid of any of our weaponry, North Korea is a great example, right? 1.00

00:04:03.760 They have the Internet as well in North Korea.

00:04:05.900 They're certainly looking at this.

00:04:07.880 So you've got, I think, because of the dovishness and the weakness of this administration, you're

00:04:13.780 going to see a lot of states actually work to improve their nuclear weapons, to improve

00:04:19.460 whatever conventional weaponry they may have.

00:04:22.080 I think the world is becoming a much more dangerous place because of this weak president.

00:04:25.600 The there's a harsh but fair piece in I think it was Politico this morning by Nahal Tusi

00:04:33.960 saying Putin was playing Biden all along and concluding that Biden thought he could manage

00:04:40.240 Putin.

00:04:41.260 That calculation was dead wrong and going on to say he repeatedly tried to reason with

00:04:46.860 Putin and Putin cannot be reasoned with, you know, that it kind of recounts effectively

00:04:51.360 the number of things that Joe Biden did to try to try to counter Putin's behavior.

00:04:56.620 They met last June in Geneva.

00:04:58.380 Biden urged Putin to end his aggression toward Ukraine and to stop hacking the United States.

00:05:04.420 In December, they had a call and Putin was assembling thousands of troops along the border

00:05:08.600 with Ukraine.

00:05:09.700 Biden pushed him to deescalate and to return to diplomacy earlier this month.

00:05:13.320 Biden warned Putin reinvading Ukraine would diminish Russia's standing, would produce 1.00

00:05:17.560 widespread human suffering and on and on it go.

00:05:20.220 None of it worked.

00:05:21.420 Neither did the threat of sanctions, the words of condemnation.

00:05:24.640 This is again from that piece.

00:05:26.320 Emotional appeals on human rights grounds, deployments of U.S. troops to NATO countries

00:05:30.140 in the area, weapons to Ukraine or the relatively united front put forth by the U.S. and its allies.

00:05:36.020 None of it.

00:05:36.940 None of it.

00:05:37.480 Even publicizing significant amounts of intelligence about Putin's plans did not stop him.

00:05:42.380 So where did we go wrong?

00:05:44.080 What more should we have been doing?

00:05:47.560 The problem is, is that we keep thinking of Putin and the Biden administration does this.

00:05:52.420 They think of him as a rational actor and they think that people like Putin, like Xi

00:05:57.760 Jinping, are worried about what's said at them at Davos, right, or at cocktail parties in 1.00

00:06:02.320 Paris.

00:06:02.820 And clearly they're not.

00:06:04.640 So this administration tried their strategy at deterrence and that strategy failed.

00:06:09.480 You know, the only thing something like Putin, someone like Putin, the only thing that they

00:06:14.100 understand is hard power and strength.

00:06:16.020 You know, you had my last boss, Mike Pompeo, on yesterday.

00:06:20.260 And Pompeo constantly said to me and all of us working around him, we have to see the

00:06:24.680 world for how it is, not for how we want it to be.

00:06:27.400 We can't be naive about others' intentions.

00:06:30.120 And so there is this, you know, this mentality that people like Putin can be reasoned with it

00:06:36.160 for all the reasons that you just said, stated, and specifically on the sanctions and on the

00:06:41.020 economic side.

00:06:42.240 I think that we have leaned in too heavy on that as, as an approach and not that I think

00:06:47.440 we shouldn't be employing sanctions.

00:06:48.980 We shouldn't.

00:06:49.640 In fact, what Biden did yesterday was too little, too late.

00:06:52.960 It was a slap on the cheek instead of a knockout punch.

00:06:55.540 And so that's certainly a problem.

00:06:57.860 But sanctions should be a part of a whole, if you look at a cake or if you look at the

00:07:03.780 whole piece of the pie, for example, the whole pie, sanctions is but one piece of the strategy.

00:07:09.560 And when you don't have the credible threat of force to back you up in a negotiation and

00:07:15.300 you're only leaning on sanctions, well, that's not what sanctions are designed for.

00:07:19.000 They're designed to help curb behavior.

00:07:21.580 But again, I think that you look at all the steps that led up to the past year and it

00:07:27.320 actually, you know, I think when history looks at this, it will make a lot of sense.

00:07:31.060 So there's some little things, for example, in the Trump administration, I think it was

00:07:34.580 in the last year at Pompeo State Department, we got out of an arms control treaty called

00:07:41.780 INF, you know, simply because we thought that the Russians were evading it and that there

00:07:45.560 was no point in it being something that Russia was cheating.

00:07:48.300 Similar for Newstart, there's somebody named Marshall Billingsley who worked for us at State.

00:07:53.840 He was renegotiating Newstart because it was supposed to be re-upped.

00:07:57.060 And we said, you know what, we're not going to just, you know, we're not just going to

00:08:00.080 re-upped it.

00:08:00.500 We want to get something for it.

00:08:01.620 We want to know that you guys are actually going to comply and that this is going to be

00:08:04.920 real arms control.

00:08:07.140 And so all the things that, by the way, for the past year that Putin has put on the table,

00:08:11.420 things like not allowing Ukraine and NATO, trying to negotiate with us over our security

00:08:16.880 presence in Europe, whether it's our missile defense system or our troops, they tried to

00:08:21.340 negotiate all of that stuff with us.

00:08:22.660 And we said, no, thank you.

00:08:23.700 Like, go fly a kite.

00:08:25.060 And we were certainly, if we had had another four years, we would not have just re-upped

00:08:29.380 that treaty.

00:08:30.260 Well, the Biden administration comes in.

00:08:31.840 What's the first thing they do?

00:08:33.240 They renew Newstart, the tongue twister, without getting anything from the Russians for it, right? 1.00

00:08:41.320 Then you see the attacks on our critical infrastructure that I think, you know, there was definitely

00:08:46.780 not a strong enough response from this administration.

00:08:49.960 And then, of course, you see things like Afghanistan, you know, that matters.

00:08:53.920 It was a huge embarrassment to the world.

00:08:56.000 You also see somebody in Putin who has, listen, I met him with Pompeo and meeting him in person

00:09:00.860 felt like meeting pure evil.

00:09:03.140 But I had to meet Lavrov quite a bit with Pompeo.

00:09:06.220 That's the foreign minister.

00:09:07.280 And, you know, listen, Pompeo is as tough as it gets.

00:09:10.980 And so they would definitely try, you know, to get a few inches in meetings.

00:09:14.360 And Pompeo was strong and tough and held the line instead of for America.

00:09:19.520 And I think that's why you didn't see these sort of incursions on our watch.

00:09:23.700 Trump and Pompeo made it very clear to them to know in certain terms behind the scenes

00:09:27.460 what would happen if they did this sort of activity.

00:09:31.120 And so just to go by, you also have, you know, you have a guy who's done whatever he

00:09:35.520 wanted as leader of Russia, you know, for decades now, for over two decades. 0.97

00:09:41.620 He can kill whoever he wants to kill. 0.95

00:09:43.700 He can do whatever he wants with the oligarchs. 1.00

00:09:46.220 He can commit all the war atrocities in Syria.

00:09:49.680 I mean, what you're starting to see in Ukraine and war crimes.

00:09:53.220 I just read about a kindergarten this morning.

00:09:55.820 I think that was, you know, potentially bombed.

00:09:58.980 I mean, you're going to see more of this stuff.

00:10:01.220 And by the way, it's just an appetizer for what the Russians are capable of doing. 0.99

00:10:04.980 And if anybody's paid attention for what they've been doing for, you know, at least seven years

00:10:08.900 in Syria now.

00:10:10.040 So he's been able to commit all of these war crimes in Syria, all of these human rights

00:10:14.320 atrocities.

00:10:15.120 And everyone, including us, are still buying their oil this morning.

00:10:19.960 The Russian stock market, unless it's changed in the last hour, it was actually up this morning,

00:10:25.000 which is pretty unconscionable to me.

00:10:27.900 You know, what Biden should have done is not just done a slap on the cheek.

00:10:31.760 But he, like I said, the economic sanctions that he should have unveiled should have been

00:10:35.620 a knockout punch where he said, you know what?

00:10:37.580 You are no longer doing business with the West. 0.91

00:10:40.140 We're not traveling there.

00:10:41.200 You're not coming here.

00:10:42.280 We're going after you.

00:10:43.440 We're going after the oligarchs.

00:10:44.920 We're going after oil and gas.

00:10:47.320 And the other economic, you know, like I think they have a lot of timber that they do

00:10:53.480 in Russia as well.

00:10:54.720 So my point is, is all the economic levers should have been turned on and said, you are

00:11:00.240 effectively cut off from the West.

00:11:01.820 But what the Biden administration said instead does is they keep doing these little steps,

00:11:06.280 these little half measures.

00:11:07.340 Well, if we, you know, if we only slap you a little bit, maybe you'll actually stop in

00:11:11.560 Ukraine.

00:11:12.020 We keep thinking if we hold back the punch, we being the Biden administration, they keep

00:11:16.520 thinking if we hold back the knockout punch, maybe you'll stop.

00:11:20.540 But bullies only understand the knockout punch.

00:11:23.440 It's so true. 0.84

00:11:24.100 It's like.

00:11:24.720 I mean, I, as you probably know, have met with President Putin numerous times and interview

00:11:30.380 I remember that many times.

00:11:32.340 But the thing about Putin is if he wants to charm you, you will be charmed.

00:11:36.460 He's a former KGB agent.

00:11:38.160 He knows how to act in whatever way he needs to to have its desired effect.

00:11:44.860 And so he could absolutely sit across the table from a Joe Biden as he did.

00:11:49.140 And that was something else Biden did was give him a one on one meeting, whereas, you know,

00:11:52.920 previously he'd been treated as just sort of other, you know, they sort of otherized him.

00:11:56.180 There was sort of, you know, he wasn't somebody we'd necessarily have a one on one meeting

00:11:59.180 with and convince Biden that he was there, that he was open minded, that he was going

00:12:04.180 to negotiate.

00:12:04.760 But his behavior all along has reflected something very different, that as soon as he's out of

00:12:10.240 sight, he sticks the thumb in the eye.

00:12:12.200 He has absolutely no interest whatsoever in being friendly with the United States.

00:12:17.820 We stand against everything that he holds dear and vice versa.

00:12:22.880 And what we've seen is that every single thing that Biden has tried has failed every single

00:12:28.300 thing.

00:12:28.700 Not one has deterred Putin from doing a single thing, whether it's hacking, you know, cyber

00:12:33.640 hacking or aggressive aggressiveness towards Ukraine and so on.

00:12:38.640 And so now I just want to talk to you about the sanctions.

00:12:40.360 So because it gets confusing is the sanctions that he added yesterday are as follows is reading

00:12:48.540 from an article from The Hill curbing Russia's access to foreign capital, trying to hobble

00:12:55.100 the financial freedoms of Moscow's wealthy elite and preventing Putin's military from obtaining

00:13:00.200 the latest high tech weapons systems.

00:13:02.320 But there are several other options not deployed.

00:13:05.540 Here are a few.

00:13:08.860 Cutting off Russia's access to this international messaging system for banks, the SWIFT system.

00:13:13.700 Biden says he can't do it because we have unnamed European allies who don't want it.

00:13:18.060 Hi, Germany.

00:13:19.600 He won't name them.

00:13:20.680 But we I mean, come on.

00:13:21.400 Right.

00:13:21.560 We don't we don't have the muscle.

00:13:22.860 They won't listen to us.

00:13:24.920 Seizing the Russian oligarchs assets like their yachts and villas.

00:13:29.540 They won't like that.

00:13:30.480 That hurts.

00:13:31.100 That's personal.

00:13:32.980 Sanctioning Putin personally.

00:13:34.260 He won't do that.

00:13:35.540 Now, why is that?

00:13:36.320 Because he's really worried about taking off the bully like the bully is going to get

00:13:39.640 really mad if I sanction him personally.

00:13:42.200 Well, aren't we there?

00:13:43.880 It goes on.

00:13:44.940 This is from Representative Bill Pascrell, a Democrat.

00:13:48.680 Some of the Democrats, Menendez of New Jersey, this guy Pascrell of New Jersey, have pushed

00:13:53.240 back on what Biden did yesterday, saying it's not enough.

00:13:55.660 They have to feel acute pain.

00:13:57.720 He says seize their estates and pound their yachts, auction their possessions, topple their

00:14:01.240 stock market, embargo their fuel, kick their kids out of colleges.

00:14:04.480 He says Putin's one of the richest men on Earth.

00:14:07.220 He's got billions.

00:14:08.000 Grab every penny of it that can be grabbed.

00:14:11.020 And then McConnell came out and said, yes, we need to do more with sanctions and we have

00:14:15.460 to provide Ukraine with more aid to fight the Russian military.

00:14:20.480 Pat Toomey of Pennsylvania saying we need tougher restrictions on Russia's oil and gas industry.

00:14:25.560 So you were just mentioning we need Iran style secondary sanctions on Russian banks that force

00:14:31.120 the world to choose between doing business with us or with Russia.

00:14:35.740 We haven't done any of that.

00:14:38.100 Right.

00:14:38.300 So the question is, though, why?

00:14:40.860 What what do you think Biden is waiting for?

00:14:42.860 I wish I knew the answer to that.

00:14:47.220 I do know that a lot of the people that were in charge in the Obama administration,

00:14:51.240 they've shut they've shuffled the deck chairs.

00:14:53.860 Right.

00:14:54.200 And so they're all in different positions.

00:14:55.620 So in the Biden administration.

00:14:57.540 So Putin knows who these people are.

00:14:59.720 He knows what he's getting out of them.

00:15:01.600 Most of these people were in power.

00:15:03.400 And the second term of the Obama administration when he invaded Crimea.

00:15:08.040 So, again, that's probably his calculus.

00:15:10.180 Right.

00:15:10.320 All of these people were in charge the last time he invaded Ukraine and not enough happened.

00:15:16.400 There were some sanctions, but not enough happened to prevent his behavior.

00:15:21.620 And again, there wasn't a comprehensive strategy for it.

00:15:23.940 You know, I don't understand the weakness.

00:15:26.000 I will tell you one of the things that me and many others were frustrated whenever Afghanistan

00:15:32.260 ended so badly, that just terrible, disastrous withdrawal from Afghanistan that just embarrassed

00:15:37.620 us as a nation, nobody was held accountable from his national security team.

00:15:42.600 Right.

00:15:43.080 Not the national security advisor, not the secretary of states.

00:15:46.180 I mean, set up nobody.

00:15:47.620 They didn't even put up a figurehead.

00:15:49.420 Right.

00:15:50.020 To to to fire, you know, or to hold accountable.

00:15:53.660 That's right.

00:15:54.040 And so I think part part of the problem going into this crisis is you have a national security

00:15:59.760 team who learned apparently no lessons from Afghanistan.

00:16:03.720 There's been no accountability.

00:16:05.420 And I got to tell you, I think we're incredibly close to to.

00:16:09.140 I mean, we certainly need congressional hearings to to understand what this team is doing and

00:16:14.480 why.

00:16:14.860 I mean, I'm getting to the point that I am incredibly worried and concerned for NATO writ large and

00:16:20.900 for the surrounding countries.

00:16:22.160 You know, one of the things that we did when we withdrew from the JCPOA and the Trump administration

00:16:27.260 is is we put on the maximum economic pressure campaign against Iran.

00:16:33.580 And you can basically take that playbook.

00:16:36.420 Iran, for example, is you're hearing everybody talk about Swift.

00:16:39.540 You brought it up earlier.

00:16:40.860 We kicked Iran out of that. 1.00

00:16:42.340 And basically every day we looked at how we can tighten the screws on the regime in Iran

00:16:48.160 economically to cut them off from the rest of the world.

00:16:50.480 So there is an example, the maximum method, not that you would do every everything, you

00:16:54.880 know, exactly as we did it.

00:16:56.160 But there was certainly a playbook for what we did in Iran for, you know, through the maximum 0.89

00:17:02.440 economic pressure campaign.

00:17:04.020 We need one of those applied to Russia.

00:17:07.520 I mean, it's happening like the thing we were we were trying to prevent.

00:17:10.580 It's happening.

00:17:11.500 He's doing it.

00:17:12.440 So what are we waiting for?

00:17:14.420 You know, I mean, this actually this question was put to Joe Biden yesterday by NBC's Peter

00:17:19.080 Alexander.

00:17:19.780 Here's here's how that went.

00:17:21.560 Listen to this.

00:17:23.060 You detailed some severe and swift new sanctions today and said the impact it will have over

00:17:27.720 time.

00:17:28.180 But given the full scale invasion, given that you're not pursuing disconnecting Russia from 0.57

00:17:34.040 what's called Swift, the international banking system or other sanctions at your disposal,

00:17:39.000 respectfully, sir, what more are you waiting for?

00:17:42.180 Specifically, with the sanctions we've imposed to exceed Swift, the sanctions we oppose to

00:17:47.960 exceed anything that's ever been done.

00:17:50.120 The sanctions we imposed have generated two thirds of the world joining us. 0.99

00:17:54.580 They are profound sanctions.

00:17:56.700 Let's have a conversation in another month or so to see if they're working.

00:18:00.420 They impose they're worse than anything ever done.

00:18:06.200 I mean, maybe he was referring to Russia.

00:18:09.140 I'm not sure.

00:18:09.620 Like I just said, we had the maximum economic pressure campaign against Iran, which is certainly 1.00

00:18:14.000 a good playbook to start.

00:18:16.280 Listen, I think that there's a chance that he got as tough sanctions as he could, given

00:18:22.740 the partners that he is dealing with.

00:18:25.960 And it's been reported that Germany and Italy are two of the main advocates, you know, against

00:18:31.720 any further sanctions.

00:18:34.720 Listen, when President Trump was in office, everybody got really upset because they said,

00:18:39.480 oh, you're weakening NATO by constantly berating them and telling everyone to pay their fair

00:18:44.740 share.

00:18:46.100 But I think I think in many ways, as it relates to NATO, he was sort of a prophet in the wilderness

00:18:51.740 in that he saw that it could have been inevitable that we would have some sort of confrontation

00:18:58.740 with Russia.

00:19:00.420 And, you know, once again, it would just be the United States there militarily to pick

00:19:04.820 up the ball if there is a confrontation with with the NATO ally.

00:19:09.360 Obviously, no one's advocating sending troops into Ukraine right now.

00:19:12.620 But but I think it's really important because I think it was 2018 whenever Trump was at that

00:19:18.240 NATO meeting and and he really berated Germany and said, listen, you're bought and sold for 0.84

00:19:23.560 by the Russians.

00:19:24.280 You're totally dependent on their on their energy.

00:19:27.440 And he was right.

00:19:28.700 Right.

00:19:28.880 He didn't say it nicely.

00:19:29.820 And it made everyone upset because he wasn't very, very nice about it.

00:19:33.400 The new spin on that.

00:19:34.740 I actually think this is really interesting.

00:19:36.260 The new spin on that from the Biden administration is, see, we had to clean up that mess when

00:19:41.400 we took over.

00:19:42.580 You know, President Trump didn't he wasn't nice, nice with Germany and some of our other

00:19:47.440 NATO and European allies.

00:19:49.200 And therefore, that is why Biden had to greenlight the Nord Stream 2 pipeline.

00:19:54.420 We know we were trying to repair relationships with our European allies.

00:19:59.340 That's really what got us in this position.

00:20:01.520 That's their spin.

00:20:02.240 So they have confused strengthening NATO with appeasing Germany.

00:20:08.400 Right there.

00:20:09.240 First of all, if you look at it, climate change is supposed to be the number one thing that

00:20:12.440 guides this administration.

00:20:13.440 It's not even clean energy that they're getting from Russia.

00:20:16.840 What they would import from the United States is certainly more true. 0.95

00:20:20.340 So they violated they violated their climate change principle or their clean energy principle

00:20:25.260 to begin with.

00:20:26.440 I mean, listen, there's a number of reasons, by the way.

00:20:28.420 One of the reasons that he's probably not going after the oil and gas sector as much

00:20:32.800 as he should is because it will we know it will make energy prices rise in the United

00:20:36.480 States.

00:20:37.000 Well, why have you spent the last year reversing all of the things that the Trump administration

00:20:42.420 put into place to make the United States energy independent?

00:20:46.900 I mean, if the 2008 financial crisis, I was actually at the Treasury Department at the time.

00:20:52.760 But one of the things that I thought that we all learned, Megan, from the 2008 financial crisis

00:20:56.860 is that we need to make things at home.

00:20:59.320 Right.

00:20:59.540 And then fast forward to the pandemic.

00:21:01.720 I thought that we all learned the lesson that we shouldn't be dependent on the Chinese 1.00

00:21:05.380 and other countries for things like masks and gloves and medical equipment.

00:21:10.940 Right.

00:21:11.100 We keep having whether it's the 2008 financial crisis or whether it's the pandemic, you can

00:21:15.320 go through another a number of examples.

00:21:18.140 History keeps showing to us that we cannot be dependent on on critical needs such as energy,

00:21:23.780 oil and gas from other countries.

00:21:26.380 Right.

00:21:26.780 We need to manufacture things here in the United States.

00:21:29.820 The financial crisis, the pandemic taught us that.

00:21:32.680 And here we are.

00:21:33.840 Now we're in a situation with Russia where we, too, are importing their oil and gas.

00:21:38.720 We we have removed the steps to make the U.S. energy independent.

00:21:42.340 We've canceled the Keystone pipeline.

00:21:45.320 I mean, none of this makes any sense to that.

00:21:47.160 How can it make any sense to the average American?

00:21:49.720 We need to be energy independent.

00:21:51.660 We need to be making critical medical equipment here at the United States.

00:21:54.960 We need to be producing things, you know, at home if we learn from the financial crisis.

00:22:00.720 But in doing all that, your point is in doing that, we made him more powerful.

00:22:04.380 We put more money in Putin's coffers by forging that relationship between him and Germany by 0.85

00:22:10.060 by hobbling ourselves.

00:22:12.680 We made ourselves weaker and we made him more powerful.

00:22:16.100 And he's watching all of this and he's also watching record inflation in the United States is soaring division and tribalism, which there's no question Putin helps stoke via his bots and so on.

00:22:27.700 But we're stoking it ourselves.

00:22:28.920 I mean, you've got, you know, memos from the federal government saying you can't refer to pregnant women and you can't use the term moms.

00:22:35.680 I mean, things like that.

00:22:37.040 So he sees that and he sees a president who's been weakened by the way he handled Afghanistan.

00:22:42.160 And he accurately deduces there's very little he can do to me.

00:22:48.180 There's he doesn't have the public support for a big, bold move against me.

00:22:53.760 And to be honest and fair to Joe Biden, it goes back prior to Joe Biden.

00:22:57.800 He understands the United States is war weary after 20 years in Afghanistan, a disastrous experience in Iraq.

00:23:03.380 You know, it goes back to George W. Bush and I and he he realizes the American psyche is not behind playing the role of world leader at the moment.

00:23:13.540 And it's you know, we're feeling down.

00:23:16.060 We're in sort of a pessimistic phase, both domestically and with respect to our role in the world.

00:23:21.200 And man, is he taking advantage of it?

00:23:24.520 Well, you are absolutely spot on.

00:23:27.320 And by the way, what is Xi Jinping learning from all of this?

00:23:30.280 Right. What is the you know, they issued statements right away.

00:23:33.740 After Russia ran into Ukraine, that Taiwan is a part of China.

00:23:37.580 No surprising that they issued those statements.

00:23:40.120 Listen, as we and just for the record, also then blaming us.

00:23:43.220 The Chinese foreign minister came out and said, you know, oh, you claim you want to put out the fire.

00:23:46.800 But meanwhile, you've been pouring fuel on it.

00:23:48.640 And they're referring to our putting weapons in inside of Ukraine, which is, you know, you could argue the bare minimum we should have been doing as it was very clear they were about to get attacked.

00:23:56.880 But the Chinese, to the extent they've taken aside here, it's very clearly the Russians. 0.74

00:24:01.000 Oh, absolutely.

00:24:04.160 I mean, there there seems to be some sort of special relationship between Putin and Xi.

00:24:09.740 They and I don't know, by the way, I mean, historically, there's plenty of reasons for the two countries to be at odds.

00:24:15.020 But it's it seems like the two of them, especially over the past decade, that their relationship has gotten even closer and has and has forged and been tighter.

00:24:24.140 Whether we I know I certainly understand that we're weary as Americans.

00:24:28.320 I get it. Right. Like I've been as a civilian, I've been in and out of Iraq and Afghanistan myself over the past 15 years.

00:24:35.860 Went there a number of times with Mike Pompeo. We retried to negotiate the end of America's longest war.

00:24:41.120 So I get it. And I am very sympathetic to that.

00:24:43.520 When you look at the broader picture, when you looked at the national security strategy that that we put out in the first year of the Trump administration, we said, listen, we are moving to an era of geopolitical competition between the United States, China and Russia.

00:24:59.440 That was that's very clearly what we are in, what we will be going forward.

00:25:04.580 And there is a battle for ideas. You know, we think I think that we've been lulled into the sense of security because we won World War Two and because the rules based order has been based off our the West right democracy.

00:25:17.180 Well, the if you talk and you look at what the Chinese are saying, what the Russians are saying, they don't necessarily think that democracy and freedom are going to win the day over the next, you know, over the rest of our lifetimes.

00:25:30.740 Right. This is our big strategic battle. And somebody will win. Right.

00:25:34.480 The Chinese Communist Party will will either win out or democracy and freedom led by the United States. 0.70

00:25:41.340 Well, and what concerns me, Megan, is, is when I look around Europe, I think how much of our allies are really, truly in the fight with us.

00:25:50.900 I mean, certainly the Eastern Europeans have a, you know, have a lot of gumption and we need to be doing even more to strengthen our alliances in the Indo-Pacific.

00:26:01.800 I mean, that should be the top foreign policy strategy of the United States.

00:26:06.800 But I am concerned, not that we I do think even though we're going through a rough time, that the United States, people of the United States don't want the communists to win.

00:26:16.000 And then if anyone's going to stand up to the Chinese Communist Party, I do think it will it will be us.

00:26:22.100 But I hope you're right. I hope you're right, because the rhetoric I'm hearing now from sort of the anti-establishment left and right is very like they're on their own.

00:26:30.080 We're sick of wars and it's not at all sort of cognizant of the responsibility we have as a world leader, as you know, if we see that space, it will be filled and not by good people, not by countries who share anything like our values.

00:26:45.760 It's not to say we should run around commencing wars or jumping into wars everywhere, but we need to be a lot smarter if we're going to be in this more sort of relaxed posture, for lack of a better term.

00:26:56.960 We need to be very clear on how we're going to orchestrate the right outcome without putting boots on the ground.

00:27:04.040 And right now, it seems like we took a step back without figuring that out.

00:27:08.820 All right. I stole the last word. Morgan, what a pleasure. So nice to meet you.

00:27:12.120 Thank you so much, Megan. I appreciate it. I'm a big, big fan.

00:27:16.120 Thank you. I will definitely have you on again. That was great.

00:27:19.080 Coming up, Rich Lowry's here. So so what are the political ramifications of this war in Ukraine as President Biden has no choice but to take his eye off of China?

00:27:30.440 And how's that going to go? OK, we'll be back with that in one second.

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00:28:12.480 Joining me now, Rich Lowry, editor of National Review.

00:28:15.920 Rich, good to have you here.

00:28:17.080 So just a few line items from what's happening right now in Ukraine.

00:28:22.000 Um, Chechen special forces forces have been unleashed there to try to detain or kill Kiev officials.

00:28:28.640 We are told Ukrainian troops are facing Russian troops inside Kiev at this hour.

00:28:33.260 Residents being urged to make Molotov cocktails to defend themselves.

00:28:37.260 Um, there are civilian attempts to block the Russian military convoy of trucks and tanks coming in.

00:28:43.740 It looks like something out of Tiananmen Square when you see one guy there trying to head the tanks off the road.

00:28:49.700 Um, which he did actually in one case.

00:28:52.460 You see these Ukrainian soldiers lining up with their bodies on the highways.

00:28:57.360 They're blowing up their own bridges to try to stop the advancement.

00:29:01.020 Um, it's disturbing.

00:29:02.440 And we took the liberty, forgive me for, for, you know, it's a little crude, but there is a Ukrainian woman confronting, confronting a Russian soldier, which just apparently has gone totally viral inside of Ukraine.

00:29:14.540 They're on their own, Rich.

00:29:15.400 They're on their own.

00:29:16.900 They're asking every man, woman and child who's capable of firing a gun to grab an arm.

00:29:20.580 And meanwhile, the Ukrainians are like, there's a quote in one of the papers, the guy saying, this isn't like America.

00:29:25.240 We don't just have guns everywhere.

00:29:26.380 Like we, where are we going to get a gun at this hour?

00:29:29.400 Um, and you see this elderly woman go out and confront a Russian soldier.

00:29:35.460 It was translated on the daily mail that wouldn't help many people because they are listening to this show.

00:29:41.360 Most of them.

00:29:42.240 Um, so we had our team reenact it.

00:29:44.960 Here's how it went.

00:29:46.160 You can watch it on YouTube or just listen to it here.

00:29:48.700 Um, forgive the swearing.

00:29:50.220 It's per the original.

00:29:51.740 Listen, who are you?

00:29:53.120 We have exercises here.

00:29:55.240 Please go this way. 0.99

00:29:56.880 So what the fuck are you doing here? 0.99

00:29:58.700 Our discussion will lead to nothing. 1.00

00:30:00.800 You're occupants. 1.00

00:30:01.840 You're fascists. 1.00

00:30:02.960 What the fuck are you doing on our land with all these guns? 1.00

00:30:06.160 Take these seeds and put them in your pockets. 1.00

00:30:08.880 So at least sunflowers will grow when you all lie down here.

00:30:12.360 Wow.

00:30:13.240 How about it?

00:30:13.820 I mean, it's like this woman, this elderly woman on the streets of Ukraine has got sort of more chutzpah and more determination to confront these guys than pretty much the rest of the world, which is really not doing that much to help them, Rich.

00:30:28.280 Yeah, so it's been incredibly moving.

00:30:30.120 If there are any doubt that the Ukrainians feel a strong sense of national identity, it should have been removed the last couple of days, starting at the top, where you had this former comedian, President Zelensky, who became president in 2019.

00:30:43.820 And everyone thought he was going to be a joke.

00:30:46.620 He gave one of the best speeches of the century a couple of days ago, directly addressing the Russian people, not that the Russian people are going to hear or see it, thanks to the controls of Vladimir Putin, but a really moving, stirring, eloquent speech about how the Ukrainians want peace, but they'll defend their national honor.

00:31:06.960 They'll defend facing forward rather than with their backs.

00:31:10.020 And that's what we've seen.

00:31:10.800 But unfortunately, the balance of forces here, obviously, in Russia's favor in a decisive way, it's wonderful to see that woman doing what she did, but it's not going to make a difference.

00:31:25.460 They're going to decapitate this government.

00:31:27.500 They're going to capture or kill Zelensky, and they are going to create their own puppet government. 0.96

00:31:34.240 It's just clear that's what's going to happen.

00:31:36.660 And, you know, I think the West obviously should have done much more to arm Ukraine prior to this, at least to increase the cost to the Russians, you know, with anti-aircraft and anti-tank weapons.

00:31:49.520 But at the end of the day, if you're not going to fight a war over it, and we're not, and I don't think we should have, there are just limits to what you can do to stop a strong man who was bent on taking this territory.

00:32:03.520 And sanctions are not going to make that much of a difference.

00:32:06.420 Biden implicitly admitted it yesterday when he said the sanctions aren't a deterrent, even though they pretended as though they were going to be a deterrent for months.

00:32:14.320 And you could do things that would immediately create pain, like cutting off Russia from the so-called SWIFT system that enables international banking transactions.

00:32:23.720 But the Europeans weren't going to go along with that.

00:32:26.020 So this is what it is.

00:32:27.740 It's going to be a puppet government, and we'll see whether Putin can make it stick.

00:32:31.000 It's so disturbing, this guy Zelensky, you're right, his speech was amazing.

00:32:35.520 And now he's urging, as I said, all Ukrainians who can handle a weapon to do so, urging all Europeans, everyone outside Ukraine who's willing to help to come into Ukraine to help.

00:32:45.500 It's sad to hear his desperation saying to his own, you know, military, let them in when they come, let them in.

00:32:51.580 And calling on his own people to show solidarity, to help the elderly and the young who are scared and don't know what to do right now, saying Russia's embarked on a path of evil and warning the rest of us outside Ukraine.

00:33:04.020 If you don't help us now, tomorrow the war will knock on your door.

00:33:09.340 And of course, that's the that's the scary thing about trying to pacify a wolf.

00:33:16.060 You know, it doesn't it doesn't stop eating after the first one.

00:33:19.460 And there is a question about whether Vladimir Putin is in the right headspace.

00:33:25.100 There was an executive. I'm trying to think of the guy's title.

00:33:28.720 He was in Great Britain. Oh, he's the defense secretary, Ben Wallace, who had a quote yesterday, Rich, saying, I think Putin has gone full tanto, which if you read it in context, apparently means he's lost his mind.

00:33:41.340 And, you know, there's a question about what's next.

00:33:44.920 Yeah, so I don't think he's lost his mind. I think he's incredibly rational.

00:33:51.560 He is just irrational, unreasonable and driven by an unreasonable goal.

00:33:56.560 And the danger, of course, now is, as you say, the appetite grows with the eating and that he'll target the Baltic states that are quite vulnerable to the north.

00:34:07.700 And those are native members. So if he targets them, then you're really faced with a no kidding choice.

00:34:13.380 Do you fight, you know, Russia over, say, Estonia or do you are you willing to contemplate the dissolution of the NATO alliance, which is a key part of Western security?

00:34:25.940 And we're really faced with this dual challenges. Morgan was citing in your conversation just a few moments ago by Russia, by China to end Western preeminence and American leadership in the world.

00:34:39.700 And this will be a struggle for years, perhaps for decades. And we're going to have to engage in new thinking, create new institutions to deal with this challenge just the way we did with Cold War.

00:34:50.820 But it's China that's more threatening at the end of the day, in my view, than Russia. 0.87

00:34:56.700 Well, and that's what the Biden administration determined, right?

00:34:58.800 When they sort of set out their foreign policy, and I think it was spring of 2021, that's that's where they landed, too.

00:35:04.060 China's the much bigger threat. The Russian economy really is nothing. And so while Putin's got a big military and nuclear weapons, other than that, he doesn't really pose much of a threat, certainly not economically.

00:35:16.460 And so but the so the problem with all these sanctions, as I see it, Rich, is even if they are painful, what good do they really do if China's there as a backstop? 0.70

00:35:26.660 You know, if China is saying, don't worry, Russia, we got you. And somebody asked Joe Biden yesterday, are you urging China to rush to isolate the Russians?

00:35:35.480 And it was the one the one question in response to which Biden said, I can't comment on that.

00:35:40.700 Unusually disciplined for this president actually said, I'm not going to comment on that.

00:35:45.760 And so it does appear that they have some strange sort of bromance going that is definitely threatening to us in our interests.

00:35:58.000 Yeah. So I'm not sure how long the bromance will last, but they share the same goal of ending this era of Western dominance.

00:36:07.760 It's really dated. You can argue about it, you know, the last 300 or 400 years.

00:36:12.380 And they feel as though they're both humiliated by Russia with the end of the Soviet Union and China about 100 year period from 1839 to 1949 or so.

00:36:23.300 And they need a return to imperial glory. Now, Russia, it's very threatening. 0.97

00:36:28.580 It involves, you know, ending the NATO alliance, involves picking Europe apart and diminishing our influence or expelling us from Europe.

00:36:36.080 But that matters. You know, that that's a hugely consequential question.

00:36:40.620 But Russia does not have the capability the way China does to become the predominant economic power in the world.

00:36:47.800 And some isolationists might think, oh, you know, that's OK. Why is that going to bother us?

00:36:51.980 We'll just tend our garden here at home. We're protected by two big oceans and friendly neighbors to the north and the south.

00:36:58.360 But China will not leave us alone. 0.74

00:37:01.120 And the way that everyone has to come to the U.S. with regard to any really important diplomatic, military, economic question having to do with the standards for trade and technological development, that will all go to China.

00:37:15.080 And when China has that sort of influence, we've already seen indications of it.

00:37:18.340 They'll reach into this country and affect what people can say and do here. 0.65

00:37:24.080 You know, there's a reason the NBA never criticizes China, right?

00:37:26.420 It's because China cares. It's going to exact pain. Same thing with Hollywood. 1.00

00:37:30.800 And there's the ability of China to do that will be much greater than it is today.

00:37:34.720 So the stakes, the stakes are enormous. They're just this is this is big stuff.

00:37:40.140 It is it's on par with the Cold War and it will affect our prosperity and our freedom and security if we don't get it right.

00:37:50.340 I had a guest on yesterday, Konstantin Kissen, who's really thoughtful about this whole issue.

00:37:54.620 He's Russian. He's half Ukrainian.

00:37:56.720 And and he thinks he had an interesting point, which was he thinks as a result of all this globalization is dead, that it's just reinforced, that it cannot work, given the various interests at stake and situations that will inevitably come like this, that we have to be self-reliant.

00:38:14.180 And that message here needs to be reinforced.

00:38:16.000 Yeah, I'm increasingly at that point of view myself, I would have rejected that several years ago, might have even rejected it a year ago.

00:38:24.800 But I think, you know, we're basically have decoupled with Russia.

00:38:29.600 I mean, Russia after 2014 and the sanctions when it went into Ukraine the first time and grabbed Crimea, meant Russia had to sort of create these self-reliant industries and cut itself off to some extent from the West.

00:38:43.180 That's why the sanctions we're talking about now, you know, they'll pinch, but they they won't be decisive.

00:38:48.920 And we're going to have to do the same thing with China and decouple be very painful. 0.73

00:38:54.060 You know, Neil Ferguson, the great historian coined this term Chimerica to get to how intertwined our economies had become.

00:39:04.100 That's going to have to begun to be unwound, beginning with the things that are most sensitive in terms of national security and something that's not ideologically welcome to me.

00:39:12.520 I think we need to think about industrial policy in certain areas to compete with China. 0.76

00:39:18.820 You know, one of the things that's worrisome about China potentially taking Taiwan is that the most sophisticated semiconductor manufacturer in the world is there in Taiwan.

00:39:28.020 And that would be a huge blow to our economy and the world economy that's taken offline or is owned by China. 1.00

00:39:34.760 So why are we that dependent on a plant and a company in Taiwan?

00:39:39.820 Why can't we have that here?

00:39:41.340 And if private industry can't do it, maybe government needs to help them.

00:39:45.540 Right, right.

00:39:46.220 Lessons to be learned.

00:39:48.580 And if we do learn those lessons, maybe this, you know, in some ways has some upsides, not to diminish what's happening now in Ukraine.

00:39:55.560 The latest from Zelensky is that he said 137 Ukrainian heroes are dead, including 10 officers, 316 wounded.

00:40:04.480 That was overnight.

00:40:05.380 This morning, President Biden's meeting with fellow leaders of NATO governments in what the White House is calling an extraordinary, extraordinary virtual summit.

00:40:15.980 We'll see whether that moves any hearts or minds on this, you know, further sanctions.

00:40:22.120 You know, it's like we were doubling down on a strategy that already didn't work.

00:40:25.260 So query whether it will now work when we just add more to the non-working strategy.

00:40:30.980 But we are absolutely looking at the largest ground war in Europe since World War II.

00:40:35.780 Coming back with Rich right after this.

00:40:37.440 Don't go away.

00:40:38.140 I'm going to play the most extraordinary clip on the Internet from yesterday.

00:40:40.900 Most extraordinary.

00:40:41.520 My whole team was talking about it.

00:40:43.400 Remember, if you want to watch clips that we play on this show, you can.

00:40:47.740 You can do that by subscribing to our YouTube channel, youtube.com slash Megan Kelly.

00:40:51.500 Or you can download the audio podcast there and comment, if you would like, in the Apple podcast comments section.

00:41:04.680 This just in from The New York Times, Rich, apropos of the discussion that we were having on China and whose side they're on.

00:41:12.480 Reporting that over three months, senior Biden administration officials held half a dozen urgent meetings with top Chinese officials

00:41:20.080 in which the Americans presented intel showing Russia's troop buildup around Ukraine, urging the Chinese to tell Russia not to invade each time.

00:41:30.040 The Chinese officials, including the foreign minister, the one who's now saying you poured fuel on the file fire and then complained about the flames

00:41:36.160 and the ambassador to the United States from China, rebuffed the Americans, saying they did not think an invasion was in the works.

00:41:44.000 After one diplomatic exchange in December, U.S. officials got intel showing Beijing had shared the information with Moscow,

00:41:52.360 telling the Russians that the U.S. was trying to sow discord and that China would not try to impede Russian plans and actions.

00:42:02.540 I mean, there you have it right there.

00:42:04.080 You know, I don't know if we needed a smoking gun, but there it is.

00:42:07.140 Yeah, well, also, I mean, even if you weren't privy to information like that, it was clear what was going on.

00:42:13.900 There was no way Putin was going to move prior to the closing ceremonies of the Olympics,

00:42:18.280 because he didn't want to step on the propaganda value of this partner from hosting these games in a city that had no snow.

00:42:25.460 You know, the whole thing was all manmade, fake snow with his dystopian views off of the left and the right.

00:42:31.820 But he waited. And as soon as they were over, it it began and the balloon went up.

00:42:39.580 So the reason why this partnership might not last is Russia will definitively be the junior partner.

00:42:44.320 Now, perhaps now it has no alternative but being the junior partner because it's so estranged from the West, given its its aggression here.

00:42:53.040 But it's not going to be a comfortable thing for Russia over the long run.

00:42:57.100 They have a long border. The the Russian side of that border is not very heavily populated.

00:43:04.020 You can see China having ambitions there. So it might not work out very well for Russia and there might be a divorce.

00:43:09.340 But for now, as we were talking earlier, they're thrown together by their distaste for their West and for their their desire to restore their former supposed imperial glory.

00:43:23.240 As we see these shots of, you know, the about we see young people terrified in the streets of Kiev, children, again, the elderly not knowing what to do except for that one badass woman who got in the face of a Russian soldier.

00:43:36.160 I wonder whether it's going to change. Forget opinions, you know, over there.

00:43:40.300 I'm sure the Ukrainians and even the Russians now.

00:43:42.440 Seventeen hundred people arrested in Russia for protesting against this.

00:43:46.120 That's extraordinary. You're not allowed to protest in Russia.

00:43:48.340 So, wow. But I just wonder whether it's going to change some of the sentiment back here at home that lately has seemed very pro Putin, like people on the left and the right being weirdly pro Putin.

00:44:03.040 This is who Putin is. This is what he does.

00:44:05.340 It's what hasn't really been a mystery even prior to now.

00:44:08.480 What do you make of it?

00:44:09.200 So I'm not sure this the sentiment has much purchase beyond a few opinion makers, both both on the left and the right in terms of American public opinion.

00:44:21.500 I think American public public opinion is we don't want to get involved.

00:44:25.180 There's a poll that showed that very starkly the other day, but it's also not in favor of invasions of sovereign countries by dictators that Vladimir Putin is.

00:44:37.240 So but it doesn't make much sense to me on the right.

00:44:41.140 You have people who are OK. You know, Putin, he's religious, supposedly.

00:44:46.120 You know, there's a Orthodox church, very influential in Russian society.

00:44:50.320 And there are only two genders in Russia.

00:44:52.180 They're not doing doing this crazy trans stuff that we are, which is all fine.

00:44:56.380 But you can oppose crazy trans stuff in this country and also oppose dictators who poison and jail their dissidents and invade neighboring countries. 0.98

00:45:04.980 That doesn't require much nuance or moral complexity.

00:45:08.220 It just seems easy.

00:45:09.800 And the best case here is that Europe gets more serious about its defense.

00:45:14.900 There's some indications about that.

00:45:16.700 People realize with NATO under threat how valuable it is and it needs to be fortified.

00:45:21.880 And perhaps over the medium or long term, Putin has bitten off more than he can chew, because whatever government he's going to set up will be hugely unpopular in Ukraine, will be totally illegitimate and will be under considerable stress.

00:45:36.940 And unless he's, you know, has a secret police there forever assassinating and jailing people, which will be difficult, it's going to be hard to maintain that government.

00:45:46.760 And as you say, the indications are that there's certainly more opposition to this in Russia than Putin counted on.

00:45:54.500 Otherwise, he would have had, you know, all sorts of fake pro-war protests going.

00:45:58.760 And he didn't bother to do that, which suggests.

00:46:01.260 And the longer it drags on, the worse it is for him, the longer it drags on.

00:46:04.700 I will say, though, you may be underestimating the love for Putin domestically because there is an actress making the rounds on Twitter yesterday.

00:46:12.260 I don't know if you saw this.

00:46:13.500 Apparently, she was in that show Nip Tuck, which wasn't bad for a while.

00:46:17.260 And she decided to make a video telling Putin things could have gone differently for them if only she had been his mother. 0.98

00:46:24.940 Listen to this lunatic. 0.97

00:46:28.600 Dear President Vladimir Putin. 0.97

00:46:31.620 I'm so sorry that I was not your mother.

00:46:34.700 If I was your mother, you would have been so loved, held in the arms of joyous light.

00:46:40.840 Never would this story's plight the world unfurled before our eyes, a pure demise of nations sitting peaceful under a night sky.

00:46:49.120 If I was your mother, the world would have been warm.

00:46:53.280 So much laughter and joy and nothing would harm.

00:46:56.140 I can't imagine the stain, the soul-stealing pain that the little boy you must have seen and believed and the formulation of thought quickly taught that you lived in a cruel, unjust world.

00:47:08.400 Oh, my Lord.

00:47:08.940 That's enough of her. 1.00

00:47:10.000 OK, the one good thing of this, Rich, the one good thing was the responses.

00:47:13.700 Somebody responded.

00:47:16.060 So the answer to this whole crisis was Putin needed more tummy time.

00:47:19.580 And then here is a responder, Kate.

00:47:24.980 Well, she goes by Kate Barstool.

00:47:26.780 Listen to her response.

00:47:28.580 Dear President Vladimir Putin, I'm so sorry that I was not your mother.

00:47:33.480 You would get so many raspberries after your bath.

00:47:37.920 Real funny ones on your little Putin belly. 0.96

00:47:40.640 You'd laugh so much you'd shake like a bowl of Putin jelly.

00:47:44.900 If I had been your mother, I'd let you stay up late to watch 90 Day Fiance.

00:47:50.460 You wouldn't understand it, but we'd have fun anyway.

00:47:54.000 It's totally worth looking up.

00:47:55.580 If I were your mother.

00:47:56.100 She's amazing.

00:47:57.340 We only have 30 seconds left, Rich, but your thoughts on these dueling narratives.

00:48:01.820 Yeah, it's like you've stumbled into the worst poetry jam at Brown University ever, right? 1.00

00:48:08.540 If it were Vladimir Putin, I would have kicked his ass like every day, 0.99

00:48:12.040 told him not to steal the cookies and to obey the rules like a good child. 1.00

00:48:17.380 Maybe that would have made a difference, but I don't think so. 1.00

00:48:19.080 Would have kicked his ass, smoked more grass. 1.00

00:48:22.460 Anyway, we'll think of some other rhymes over the break. 1.00

00:48:25.080 Rich, what a pleasure.

00:48:26.160 As always, don't forget to check out National Review and the one and only The Editor as well.

00:48:29.800 All worth your time.

00:48:30.440 Up next, Kelly's Court on the new Supreme Court pick.

00:48:34.020 Don't go away.

00:48:39.800 Kelly's Court is back in session, and today we are discussing some hot cases in the news.

00:48:44.320 We're going to take a look into allegations that BLM is a big scam,

00:48:47.380 plus a horrifying story out of L.A. involving a trans woman who admitted to sexually assaulting a child as a man

00:48:55.980 and was told that she would serve out her sentence in a juvenile facility and not have to register as a sex offender. 0.98

00:49:03.320 The L.A. District Attorney is a disgrace. 0.97

00:49:06.540 He is a disgrace, and we'll get to him in a second. 0.98

00:49:09.500 There's also news on the Alec Baldwin and Britney Spears fronts, 0.87

00:49:12.680 so a lot to get to with our court panel, but we're going to begin with the big announcement out of Washington at this hour.

00:49:18.520 President Biden making his Supreme Court nomination official later today, and we'll tell you who it is.

00:49:25.620 First joining us are Janice Bilboer.

00:49:27.880 She's a criminal defense attorney and founding attorney of Janice Bilboer Law,

00:49:31.720 and Harmeet Dillon, who is managing partner of Dillon Law Group and CEO of the Center for American Liberty.

00:49:37.620 Ladies, it's appropriate. It's a three-lady lawyer panel to discuss the latest lady lawyer nominated to the U.S. Supreme Court. 1.00

00:49:47.920 I don't think many people are going to be surprised that it's Ketanji Brown-Jackson.

00:49:53.160 She's from the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals.

00:49:55.460 The thing I love most about Ketanji Brown-Jackson is that they continue to talk about how young she is at age 51.

00:50:02.840 One, I love you. We need to get that going and make that a thing.

00:50:10.520 So let me start with you on this, Harmeet.

00:50:12.240 We knew, you know, it's not going to change the ideological balance of the court because Stephen Breyer was a lefty and she's a lefty.

00:50:18.800 But just how lefty is she? 1.00

00:50:20.880 Because in that way, it kind of could change the ideological balance.

00:50:24.320 He was a little bit more of a moderate lefty. Is she?

00:50:27.160 No, I don't think she's moderate at all. And I think that's exactly why President Biden selected her.

00:50:32.320 And out of the shortlist that he had, she's definitely the most radical of the three who are on that final list.

00:50:39.620 I think Leandra Kruger from the California Supreme Court, who I've, you know, had experience and had cases before the Supreme Court,

00:50:47.520 I think is much more moderate and mainstream and has a longer appellate judicial history.

00:50:52.540 And so Judge Jackson Brown has been on the D.C. Court of Appeals for only about eight months, and she has a long and very radical history.

00:51:02.060 Now, what's interesting about the differences between the parties is Republicans typically nominate judges who have as little political and radical history as possible on the right side.

00:51:11.760 And that certainly characterized Justices Kavanaugh and Amy Coney Barrett.

00:51:16.780 But this judge, if confirmed justice, has represented Guantanamo detainees, not just in her job as a defense attorney, but also on purpose, you know, in private practice when it wasn't her necessarily her job to do that.

00:51:36.540 She repeatedly ruled against the Trump administration on a number of important issues and was then reversed by the D.C. Circuit.

00:51:43.360 She's probably one of the justices, if she gets confirmed, who's been reversed the most by higher courts when she was a district court judge and served in, you know, ally of Obama administration and so many others.

00:51:56.400 And so what's going to be interesting to see is whether conservatives and this is going to be a very, very close vote, whether they're simply going to genuflect and defer to President Biden, whether they're going to ask her some hard questions and ultimately vote against her on the merits of whether she's judicially suited temperamentally, given some of the things she's said and done over the years.

00:52:21.940 I predict not a single Democrat votes against her just for a little flavor. 0.96

00:52:26.360 And we expect President Biden to speak in an hour with the official news, with, you know, his nominee next to him and, you know, the sort of the more formal presentation.

00:52:34.440 But here is what he put out on Twitter.

00:52:37.240 Watch.

00:52:37.300 I'm excited to nominate one of the nation's brightest legal minds, Judge Ketanji Brown-Jackson, to be our next Supreme Court justice.

00:52:46.980 Raised by public school teachers, she was a standout student who became a clerk for Justice Breyer, the same justice that she will be replacing when confirmed.

00:52:56.860 Justice Breyer gave me the chance to work for him as a law clerk and thereby bear witness to the workings of his brilliant legal mind.

00:53:05.560 Judge Jackson has been confirmed by the United States Senate three times in her career and garnered support from both sides of the aisle each time.

00:53:13.580 She's a history maker, the first black woman ever to be nominated to the Supreme Court, an immensely qualified judge who's going to help make our court stronger and more reflective of our country.

00:53:23.880 I mean, John, the chances of her not getting through, which would require a Democrat to go against her and all Republicans, including Susan Collins of Maine to go against her are slim and none.

00:53:37.340 Yeah, I agree with that.

00:53:39.280 You know, but I want to say this, because Biden, first of all, didn't pick her.

00:53:44.960 I mean, I'm of the opinion that Biden doesn't really do anything.

00:53:48.800 Somebody else picked her and Biden is really the puppet being puppeteered by somebody else.

00:53:54.260 That said, he limited his pool.

00:53:56.980 I mean, he came out and said that he was going to nominate a black woman so that he could have the first black woman on the Supreme Court.

00:54:03.280 And I don't know if how fair that is, because to me, that is blatant racism.

00:54:08.760 She may end up being a fantastic Supreme Court justice if she does get confirmed. 1.00

00:54:12.400 But how is that OK that you limit your pool by race?

00:54:19.000 And that I know that's a touchy subject, but it's something that I think is on the minds of a lot of people.

00:54:24.580 Well, this is this is a bone to James Clyburn because Biden was losing the presidential primary contest.

00:54:30.880 He hadn't he was going into South Carolina.

00:54:33.340 And if he didn't have a win soon, he wasn't going to win the nomination.

00:54:37.000 And James Clyburn of South Carolina said, you better make this promise.

00:54:40.400 And he did. And he won South Carolina.

00:54:42.580 And who is standing next to him when Breyer retired?

00:54:46.160 But James Clyburn saying, you better say it and you better say it out loud.

00:54:49.700 And then what did the puppet do?

00:54:51.180 He said it and he said it out loud.

00:54:52.980 I'll be nominating a black woman to the Supreme Court. 1.00

00:54:55.040 In my view, just as a woman, I feel like he he screwed her. 0.99

00:54:59.380 He screwed her over. 0.98

00:55:00.920 He won't just to shut up. 1.00

00:55:02.480 Just tell James Clyburn to shut up.

00:55:04.280 And either he'll get what he wants later or he won't. 0.98

00:55:07.660 But you don't have to lick his boots in the moment just because he's saying you better

00:55:10.300 say it out loud. 0.75

00:55:11.020 He kneecapped her.

00:55:12.620 Now we're looking at her as, oh, she's there because of her race and her gender. 1.00

00:55:16.500 Whereas, look, it's not like nobody would have thought, oh, you know, it's just coincidental. 0.85

00:55:20.540 He chose a black woman. 0.97

00:55:21.800 But it would not have been as obvious and clear as he has made it.

00:55:26.460 And it's irritating to me.

00:55:28.380 He wanted the political points at her expense.

00:55:30.800 And he got him, I guess.

00:55:31.940 I don't know.

00:55:32.580 I haven't seen his poll numbers shoot up at all.

00:55:34.480 But I guess in his mind, he got him.

00:55:36.300 No, I agree with that.

00:55:37.040 And now forever in my mind, I'm going to refer to Biden as a bootlicker.

00:55:40.540 I like that phrase.

00:55:41.420 That's exactly on point.

00:55:42.940 And that's and that's what's happening here.

00:55:44.920 So I guess.

00:55:45.580 But you're right.

00:55:46.480 It's not going to change the ideological makeup of the court.

00:55:49.660 So I guess maybe that's why nobody's really up in arms about it.

00:55:54.160 But it still smells bad.

00:55:56.500 Well, the thing is, Harmi, you're not going to see I maybe they'll prove me wrong, but

00:56:00.760 I don't believe you're going to see Republicans or their supporting groups, allies, what have

00:56:07.500 you, organize insane personal character attacks on her, like we saw in Kavanaugh, where they

00:56:16.820 try to destroy her as a human or like we saw with Amy Coney Barrett, where they tried to

00:56:21.700 destroy her as a mother, as a bad mother, you know, I mean, just below the belt. 1.00

00:56:28.620 However, however, if you ask.

00:56:32.180 Ellie Mistel, right, he's he's on MSNBC.

00:56:36.960 I think he's like their justice.

00:56:38.660 Yeah.

00:56:38.980 Oh, he's with the nation, but he's on MSNBC all the time.

00:56:41.020 Listen to what he tweeted out.

00:56:42.860 OK, it's crazy. 0.99

00:56:45.620 Jackson will be attacked by the worst white people this country has to offer. 1.00

00:56:51.640 J.D. Vance will feel threatened and worry that hillbillies with Yale law degrees and 0.96

00:56:56.340 venture capital backing are being left behind.

00:56:59.500 The Georgetown Constitutional Law Center will hold a symposium extolling the virtue of judicial

00:57:05.280 eugenics. Tucker Carlson will warn that black people mean to make slavery unconstitutional,

00:57:12.480 then claim to have been joking when someone informs him that it's unconstitutional already. 0.99

00:57:17.840 And then he goes on to say she's a strong nominee and screw them.

00:57:21.120 This is the lunacy that you get on the left. 0.99

00:57:24.060 Well, no, that's disgusting. 0.95

00:57:25.320 I feel like taking a shower after hearing that. 0.57

00:57:27.100 And the reality is on the right, we don't care about race.

00:57:30.780 It's like you said, it's a real disservice to all of those shortlisted nominees that

00:57:37.140 people are looking at them through that lens, because each of them is a very qualified jurist.

00:57:42.540 And certainly Republicans are put in a box by the fact that and I'm sure this played into

00:57:46.660 the decision.

00:57:47.300 So, for example, Republicans didn't have to vote to endorse Leandra Kruger to the California

00:57:52.360 Supreme Court.

00:57:53.080 So their nomination vote or their their vote on confirmation can't be thrown up in their

00:57:57.560 faces, but it can here.

00:57:59.380 So where Lindsey Graham has effectively rubber stamped just about every single one of Biden's 0.99

00:58:05.780 nominees, it's really hard to go back and say, well, all of a sudden, I don't think she's

00:58:10.200 qualified for the Supreme Court.

00:58:12.140 So that work should have been done earlier on.

00:58:15.500 So at the end of the day, you're probably right.

00:58:17.000 She's probably going to get through.

00:58:18.220 It's unfortunate.

00:58:18.960 She's been labeled with this sort of token label as the first whatever, because I think

00:58:25.340 each judge should be judged on the merits of their rulings and their career and their

00:58:30.400 judicial philosophy.

00:58:32.040 And so, you know, one more important thing is that because she's on the Harvard Board 0.97

00:58:35.800 of Overseers, she may have to recuse herself. 1.00

00:58:38.620 She probably should have to recuse herself if she gets seated and has to rule on that Harvard 1.00

00:58:43.580 admissions case.

00:58:45.300 And so that's going to be interesting as well.

00:58:48.340 That is the where they're being challenged for their for using a race as one of one of

00:58:52.680 the criteria in assessing whether somebody should be allowed into the university.

00:58:56.680 And of course, it affects more than Harvard.

00:58:58.180 It affects all universities.

00:58:59.360 That's fascinating.

00:59:00.440 Well, if she has to recuse because of that, I'm sure they factored that in in choosing

00:59:04.520 her.

00:59:05.000 But, you know, again, she will have a long tenure on the Supreme Court because she is only 0.99

00:59:11.800 50, 51.

00:59:13.940 She is a babe in the woods.

00:59:16.340 Let's keep that rolling.

00:59:17.540 That is a positive of this nominee.

00:59:19.540 All right.

00:59:19.840 Let's move out out westward from L.A. 0.84

00:59:22.800 Because I mean, from D.C. to L.A. 0.90

00:59:25.580 Because what this lunatic D.A. is doing, I can't decide like if I, you know, gun to the 0.89

00:59:31.560 head.

00:59:31.740 If you had to decide which which D.A. would you want running your city?

00:59:34.860 Chesa Boudin of San Francisco or this guy Gaston, I keep calling him Gaston because that's

00:59:40.940 from Beauty and the Beast, right?

00:59:44.860 I spend too much time with little children.

00:59:47.200 Gascon.

00:59:48.020 It's George Gascon.

00:59:50.140 I don't know who I'd pick.

00:59:51.820 They're equally awful and equally uninterested in enforcing crime at all.

00:59:57.560 So let me just start with the headline.

00:59:59.080 This guy, the L.A. Association, he's at L.A. DA, the L.A. DA of deputy district attorneys

01:00:07.900 voted by a 97.9 percent majority to support the recall effort against their boss.

01:00:15.640 They hate him.

01:00:17.000 The like every single D.A. in his office hates him.

01:00:20.600 They want him gone.

01:00:21.500 It's not like they hate him personally.

01:00:22.660 Maybe they do.

01:00:23.380 It's because he won't prosecute crime.

01:00:25.420 And John, I'll give it to you.

01:00:27.100 There's a case in point involving a 26-year-old transgender woman.

01:00:33.140 So it's a biological male who's now going as a woman that goes by the name of Hannah 0.95

01:00:37.840 Tubbs that basically demonstrates how ridiculous this D.A. is. 0.96

01:00:43.820 What's the story with Hannah Tubbs? 0.97

01:00:46.100 Yeah, this is absolutely ridiculous. 0.96

01:00:47.580 Now, all right. 0.92

01:00:48.060 So this case may have started, for lack of a better word, innocently enough because we

01:00:53.740 do have a juvenile justice system in this country and it does treat the defendants or the people

01:00:59.860 involved in that system with kid gloves literally, right?

01:01:04.760 Because the theory is that when you are under a certain age, your brains aren't developed.

01:01:10.060 We treat you different because you have a chance to get rehabilitated and grow up to be a normal

01:01:14.020 human being and not commit any more crimes.

01:01:16.040 And it's helpful if you don't have a criminal record or you don't have to register as a sex

01:01:20.680 offender in order to live the rest of your life.

01:01:23.380 I get that.

01:01:24.200 I've worked in the juvenile system for a long time.

01:01:26.460 That said, it's not one size fits all.

01:01:29.960 And there are oftentimes when somebody does something so egregious or doesn't deserve to

01:01:34.840 be treated in the juvenile system, they deserve to be tried as an adult.

01:01:39.000 This was likely one of those cases, especially now that we know that Hannah Tufts, who, sidebar, 1.00

01:01:46.120 I don't believe she's a transgender woman at all. 1.00

01:01:49.120 I believe this is part of her time to get over on the system. 0.83

01:01:52.820 But she basically, he, she basically molested a 10-year-old girl in a restaurant bathroom, 1.00

01:01:59.980 got put into the juvenile justice system, and then was all giddy over the fact that he,

01:02:05.740 she was not going to get sentenced as an adult.

01:02:09.020 And the most disgusting part, when you hear her phone call, I guess, with her father,

01:02:14.760 basically said that, you know, he was on the prowl looking for some meat. 0.51

01:02:18.480 And that meat was a 10-year-old girl in a public bathroom. 1.00

01:02:25.000 This guy deserves to be punched in his cojones and not treated like a kid, 1.00

01:02:31.480 treated like the adult sex offender that he is. 1.00

01:02:33.720 And that's not going to happen now.

01:02:35.100 And it's not going to happen because of George Gascon.

01:02:37.920 So if I understand the facts correctly, Harmeet, the Gascon, George Gascon last month,

01:02:44.440 sentenced him to a youth facility for the remainder of Hannah Tubbs' sentence. 0.70

01:02:50.760 It was a two-year sentence out of fear that Hannah Tubbs would be victimized by adult offenders, 0.98

01:02:56.640 like Hannah Tubbs did to the 10-year-old girl Hannah Tubbs assaulted when the girl was 10 and Hannah Tubbs was 17. 1.00

01:03:05.780 Okay.

01:03:05.980 So to protect Hannah Tubbs, he sentenced Tubbs to a youth facility and says,

01:03:11.980 you don't have to register it as a sex offender because you're underage to the point that Jonna was just making.

01:03:16.920 And this is evidence.

01:03:20.200 Hannah Tubbs, is Hannah Tubbs grateful?

01:03:22.060 Is Hannah Tubbs saying, oh my God, I made a terrible mistake, you know, in my youth and I feel so bad?

01:03:26.260 You tell me, because here's Hannah Tubbs in tapes obtained by Fox News on that phone call talking about how Hannah Tubbs feels about this situation. 1.00

01:03:37.560 So now they're going to put me with other trannies that have similar cases like mine or with one tranny like me that has a case like mine. 0.52

01:03:49.460 Okay.

01:03:50.380 So when you come to court, make sure you address me as her.

01:03:55.960 Oh, yeah.

01:03:57.180 Yeah, it'll be hard, but you have to do it.

01:04:01.500 What we're trying to avoid is trying to avoid the registering thing.

01:04:05.300 That's what we're trying to do.

01:04:06.100 Hardest to not do.

01:04:08.240 Yeah, I know, Bubba.

01:04:09.940 We're also trying to avoid going to prison again.

01:04:12.580 Yeah.

01:04:14.000 That'd be great.

01:04:15.880 Yeah, that's a good idea.

01:04:17.840 Yeah, because this time if I went in, I'm getting a sex change.

01:04:21.080 Do what?

01:04:21.840 Yeah, this time if I go in, if I was to go in, I would get the sex change. 0.91

01:04:25.580 So I wouldn't be in a man's prison no more.

01:04:27.680 Yeah.

01:04:28.400 I'd be in a female's facility. 1.00

01:04:29.680 It'd be better. 1.00

01:04:30.720 There's some bitches in there, too. 1.00

01:04:33.800 Okay, so his name is James when he was, when he committed the offense. 0.97

01:04:37.560 Now he claims it's Hannah, and you can judge for yourself how real his transition is.

01:04:43.760 He basically puts the lie to it himself. 0.98

01:04:47.020 Ladies, it's disgusting. 1.00

01:04:48.800 And instead of owning this, George Gaston, Gascon, Harmeet, appears to lie and say, I knew nothing about these recordings.

01:05:00.660 Nothing.

01:05:01.580 But that, as it turns out, does not appear to be true. 0.97

01:05:04.040 This Claude Rains Act is ridiculous.

01:05:06.260 I mean, and prosecutors in his office have told Fox News and others that all the documents are there.

01:05:13.260 And in fact, senior prosecutors in the office were fully aware of their emails documenting that the L.A. County District Attorney's Office was fully aware of the fraud that was being perpetrated on the court.

01:05:22.920 And the absolutely ignoring the rights of the victim in this circumstance.

01:05:27.120 And California has a strong statute to protect victims' rights.

01:05:30.480 And prosecutors like Queso Boudin and George Gascon repeatedly ignore that.

01:05:36.300 And so you think about how ridiculous the situation is.

01:05:38.940 This person is 23 years old, okay? 0.93

01:05:40.860 And so the theory is, oh, because they were a minor, 17, when they committed this crime, we're going to put them in a juvenile facility.

01:05:48.120 Where does that logic end?

01:05:49.160 What if we find out that somebody committed a murder and they're in their 50s, but they committed the murder when they were a teenager?

01:05:54.320 Do we sentence them to a juvenile facility at that point?

01:05:57.840 Particularly if they're a known predator.

01:06:00.560 And so, you know, one more point I want to make about the difference between these two prosecutors.

01:06:03.880 I live in San Francisco.

01:06:05.420 George Gascon was the district attorney here in San Francisco.

01:06:08.360 He's worse, okay?

01:06:09.680 Because he actually started out as the police chief here in San Francisco.

01:06:14.340 And he was a Republican.

01:06:15.680 He identified as a Republican.

01:06:17.780 And then he became the district attorney.

01:06:20.320 And then suddenly he changed.

01:06:21.880 And now he's on the far left.

01:06:24.120 So wolf in sheep's clothing.

01:06:25.920 I don't think he ever would have made it here back in that day as a far left police chief.

01:06:31.500 And that's how he got in the door and turned into this.

01:06:34.320 It's almost a microcosm of what he just did to this little girl.

01:06:37.480 He's, you know, sort of using this victim that identifies as something else.

01:06:41.920 He's victimizing the entire county of Los Angeles.

01:06:45.640 And I think that now that he's scared that the recall, second recall effort against him is gaining steam.

01:06:52.400 That is why he is suddenly exhibiting this about face on this circumstance.

01:06:56.840 Yes, because now he's trying to pull an Alvin Bragg.

01:07:01.140 It's all fake.

01:07:02.040 It's all fake.

01:07:02.500 Don't believe it.

01:07:03.060 I'll leave it at LA County.

01:07:04.240 He's the soft on crime DA Alvin Bragg of New York.

01:07:07.120 All these are Soros-supported guys who's now, Alvin Bragg's like, oh, well, I'll reverse some of my crazy policies after we have all these cops dead,

01:07:16.080 including those two very young police officers and their widows directly blaming Alvin Bragg.

01:07:21.260 Now he's like, oh, I'll reverse some of my things.

01:07:23.120 Maybe I really will criminalize resisting arrest again and so on.

01:07:27.300 And that's what Gascon is trying to do.

01:07:29.500 He's like, oh, I'm going to reverse a lot of the stuff.

01:07:31.040 Oh, I don't want to be recalled because the first recall effort failed.

01:07:33.820 I guess they didn't get enough signatures.

01:07:35.040 But the second one is looking good and could go down this summer.

01:07:37.760 And I hope he does lose his job. 0.99

01:07:39.880 I hope the citizens of L.A. stand up and fire his ass just the same way they do Chesa Boudin, who, yes, OK, I see your point. 1.00

01:07:46.180 At least he's not a wolf in sheep's clothing. 1.00

01:07:47.780 He's a sheep in sheep's clothing. 0.97

01:07:49.280 But I don't think the good people of San Francisco had any idea what kind of a lunatic they were putting in office. 0.95

01:07:53.980 The child basically of Bill Ayers and Bernadine Dorn, who raised him, who are domestic terrorists, 0.52

01:07:57.960 and his biological parents are convicted felons who killed two cops and a security guard.

01:08:02.240 Yes.

01:08:02.680 Yeah, it's rank choice voting in San Francisco.

01:08:05.660 Literally, this guy was actually not the choice of a Democrat machine.

01:08:09.840 It was a more moderate prosecutor.

01:08:11.720 This guy got in because of our split voting system in San Francisco.

01:08:15.500 People do regret it across the political spectrum here.

01:08:18.260 And so I feel like we're going to see a second recall here.

01:08:20.560 Yes.

01:08:21.060 Those school board members went down and Chesa Boudin is going down, too. 1.00

01:08:24.480 And reason will ultimately prevail or so we hope.

01:08:28.080 Can I just listen to the second?

01:08:29.100 Because we have more of this Tubbs on camera talking about the sweetheart deal that James, now Hannah, has managed to get.

01:08:38.660 Don't worry about it.

01:08:39.540 It's a strike.

01:08:40.380 But they're going to plead.

01:08:41.000 I'm going to plead out to it.

01:08:41.820 I'm going to plead guilty.

01:08:43.080 They're going to stick me on probation.

01:08:44.680 And it's going to be dropped.

01:08:45.700 It's going to be done.

01:08:46.320 Done.

01:08:46.700 I won't have to register.

01:08:47.840 I won't have to do nothing.

01:08:48.520 For an offender, you don't have to register?

01:08:50.800 I won't have to do none of that.

01:08:52.020 So what are they going to do to you then?

01:08:54.000 Nothing.

01:08:54.360 Sweet.

01:08:57.260 And, you know, John, this doesn't even touch on the fact that he's not the only prisoner doing this in L.A.

01:09:02.500 We've had several prisoners who are men suddenly claim that they're women and get transferred into female prisons.

01:09:10.240 And it doesn't matter how much the women in those prisons object. 1.00

01:09:15.300 California is just determined to let them in. 0.94

01:09:16.880 Yeah, because just another example of how woke and out of control our system has, our country, essentially, has become.

01:09:27.340 Can I just add one thing sort of ancillary to this, Megan?

01:09:31.500 And that is, you know, while all these DAs are getting very soft on big crimes, like these are big crimes.

01:09:36.980 And, you know, they're turning a blind eye on purpose and they think that that's OK.

01:09:41.040 Do you know who else is paying the price?

01:09:42.920 The people who are committing small crimes.

01:09:45.480 And I know like a lot of people out there might not care about criminals who commit small crimes.

01:09:49.340 But example, because I do this every day, you can have somebody who drives for a living, drives a commercial vehicle for a living, goes out, two glasses of wine, gets popped for DWI.

01:09:59.560 That's a relatively minor crime.

01:10:00.880 Nobody's dead.

01:10:01.600 It's a low BAC.

01:10:03.080 They lose their livelihood because of that, Megan.

01:10:05.160 They lose their livelihood because they lose their commercial driver's license.

01:10:08.100 Nobody's crying about that.

01:10:09.380 Everybody's letting that go.

01:10:10.560 But these child molesters and murderers and everybody else are getting free reign.

01:10:14.720 Oh, and by the way, go to go to prison and then get your free sex change so you don't have to, you know, watch out for your soap on the road. 0.97

01:10:22.720 I mean, come on.

01:10:23.540 It's it's people aren't thinking about they're not thinking about the little people who have livelihoods and careers that are getting overlooked.

01:10:31.640 Yeah, well, I mean, of course, right.

01:10:34.040 We're thinking of the of the victims of these criminals who get out there, but it's not it's not a bad side point there.

01:10:39.140 I will say that the victim of Tubbs has come out.

01:10:42.180 She's now 18 and given this statement to Fox News saying that the lenient treatment of Tubbs is a miscarriage of justice.

01:10:49.600 It's insulting and it's unfair to her as a victim saying, quote, the things he did to me, the things he did to me and made me do that day were beyond horrible for a 10 year old girl to have to go through.

01:11:01.240 I want him tried as an adult for the crimes he committed against me.

01:11:06.680 Wow.

01:11:07.160 OK, so we have so many more things to go over.

01:11:09.540 We're going to squeeze in a quick break and come back on Brittany, on Alec Baldwin and much, much more.

01:11:15.180 Don't go away.

01:11:20.500 All right.

01:11:21.220 So BLM back in trouble.

01:11:23.720 Indiana's attorney general now calling BLM a scam, saying it's a house of cards.

01:11:29.600 It may be falling and it's just the latest.

01:11:33.000 So we got Indiana, we got California, we got Washington.

01:11:36.680 There have been problems with them out of compliance, I guess, in some way.

01:11:40.660 You guys explain how in Connecticut, Maine, Maryland, New Jersey, North Carolina, Virginia, according to the Washington Examiner, which took a deep dive on this, seems to be with respect to their tax and charity filings.

01:11:52.900 Harmi, basically, they're claiming to be a charitable organization, but they're not behaving like a charitable organization.

01:11:57.740 Right. So when you introduced me, you mentioned I was the CEO of the Center for American Liberty, a small nonprofit.

01:12:03.280 We won three cases at the United States Supreme Court last year.

01:12:06.220 To operate a small nonprofit in this country and do fundraising in the 50 states, you have to file extensive paperwork throughout the country, particularly in these blue states, California and others, pay a small fee in some circumstances and do that annually.

01:12:19.380 You have to certify that you have particular objective criteria and that there's somebody watching the hen house besides the fox to make sure that the money isn't being stolen by the leaders of the organization.

01:12:32.540 And they've simply blatantly blown through and ignored those requirements.

01:12:36.540 So not just the states you mentioned, but in I think over a dozen states, they've failed to file necessary filings that demonstrate their bona fides.

01:12:46.540 They also are required in some jurisdictions to have to have audits or to have at least an auditable paper trail.

01:12:52.800 So that's why the attorney general of Indiana is calling them a fraud.

01:12:56.700 But when you even have California's liberal attorney's general's office, you know, questioning your practices, you're in deep trouble.

01:13:05.220 And so I think that, indeed, that is why they hired the shadiest of the lawyers on the political left, Mark Elias, somehow to come in and try to perhaps demagogue their way out of this claim.

01:13:17.040 It's racism or claim that perhaps it's, you know, some kind of discrimination.

01:13:21.300 Perfect.

01:13:21.540 To require people to comply with paperwork requirements.

01:13:24.320 That's perfect.

01:13:25.040 It's racist.

01:13:25.660 This attack on us is racist.

01:13:27.220 I mean, where else would they go?

01:13:28.640 The thing is, Jonna, this organization has been promoted by the by corporate America, by the NBA and on its courts, by New York City on Fifth Avenue.

01:13:40.920 And I know, you know, it's like, oh, well, you know, it's the thought of BLM versus the organization.

01:13:45.520 Well, people who want to help support BLM when they see the big BLM on Fifth Avenue go online, Google it, and it takes them to this group.

01:13:54.580 And this group, according to these state officials in the blue and the red states, is a fraud, is taking the money with no accountability.

01:14:03.520 And right now, the charity has no known leader in charge of its bankroll.

01:14:07.880 We do know, however, the old leader has three or four houses and is living large on apparently the donations.

01:14:14.700 But we have no idea where the rest of the millions and millions of dollars went.

01:14:18.900 Yep.

01:14:19.540 Yep.

01:14:20.000 And we may never.

01:14:20.960 I mean, I think that's how they how they got caught, basically, is that one of the founders is turning turning money into another charity in Canada and then buying a whole lot of real estate through that charity.

01:14:33.800 I don't know who they were trying to fool, but, you know, look, whenever somebody wants to be benevolent and donate to any nonprofit, the key here is nonprofit organization, we're all kind of guilty of it, right?

01:14:45.240 Like, I've donated to plenty.

01:14:46.580 I don't know how many cents on my dollar is going where I wanted to go.

01:14:50.760 That's why we have the rules that we do for nonprofit organizations that need to be followed.

01:14:55.500 Nobody was looking for a period of time with BLM because, oh, BLM could do no wrong when you have the mayor, the former mayor of New York City, plastering it, like you said, up Fifth Avenue, like they can't do anything wrong.

01:15:07.120 I always knew that they were probably going to get caught up in something because Al Sharpton, whenever he's involved, you never know what the heck's going to happen.

01:15:14.700 So I'm not surprised by this, but it is pretty disgusting.

01:15:18.060 It absolutely is.

01:15:19.380 And I think this House of Cards is going to fall pretty quickly.

01:15:21.660 I think about, you know, during after George Floyd, Harmeet, and when our kids were still remote learning, it was May of 2020.

01:15:29.860 It was in the midst of the COVID pandemic.

01:15:32.280 And I remember my daughter's teachers were popping up the BLM sign as their background, right?

01:15:38.520 You're not allowed to do politics in the schools, but BLM, they got an exception. 0.97

01:15:42.660 And I think, do you understand what you're backing there?

01:15:45.460 Do you understand that phrase, those letters have been co-opted by a group that stands for far more than the basic concept that black people should be valued as much as white people, which is not controversial and accepted by 99.99% of Americans, right?

01:16:03.580 Except for the crazy racists who tend to do bad things and get tried and convicted.

01:16:07.600 It's you're conveying support for an organization that I would argue is rotten to its core, that that is dividing us, that is defrauding us, that is padding its own pockets to support things like the division of the nuclear family.

01:16:24.280 But people roll along in their lives like, oh, yes, I'll give money.

01:16:28.520 And you got people giving tens of millions to this organization or its affiliates.

01:16:32.360 Right. I mean, I think we're talking about 60 million dollars that have been raised by by this entity.

01:16:38.080 Its leaders are in disarray and living large, as was said.

01:16:41.820 What's really tragic about this is that, you know, some some on the right may not agree with me.

01:16:46.100 But as a civil rights lawyer, I can tell you, we do have a history in our country historically of some discriminatory practices.

01:16:52.480 And addressing that head on should be part of history.

01:16:55.340 What BLM has done is hijacked that very important American sentiment of acknowledging things we need to change and improve and turn it into an industry, turn it into a Marxist loving and promoting organization and turn it into politics in our schools.

01:17:12.560 Even as this is happening in the courts, Megan, in the schools, the same ideology is currently being preached.

01:17:20.860 Students are being asked to pledge allegiance to the principles of BLM, which are Marxist principles.

01:17:26.980 They aren't American principles. And all of this is an offshoot of the Occupy Wall Street movement of anarchy, Antifa.

01:17:34.780 There are not good things going on under the hood over here.

01:17:37.280 So if I were the civil rights movement and concerned about having their message not be tainted by this, I would distance myself from BLM and I would start fresh because the principles of everyone should be treated fairly.

01:17:49.380 Those are Martin Luther King Jr. principles. Those are the principles enshrined in our Constitution.

01:17:53.620 And those are valuable. So we should not throw out the baby with the bathwater, but we should call out these grifters and these frauds for what they are. 0.99

01:17:59.760 If you want to make a donation to a group that is actually helping people and trying to stop others from dividing us by race, consider fairforall.org.

01:18:09.240 They actually are doing it with people like Glenn Lowry. And the list goes on and on.

01:18:13.640 But you'll be very impressed by who's on there. I'm on their board. But there are amazing, amazing people.

01:18:18.180 Ayaan Hirsi Ali. There are people on the left and the right who are working with Fair for All to try to actually fight discriminatory policies.

01:18:24.640 And as for these sort of, you know, people who come into your school and try to divide your kids, go to Chloe Valdry, Theory of Enchantment.

01:18:32.040 She's an MLK proponent. She has these courses that try to fight discrimination that bring you together, that don't shame anybody, that are uplifting, that are cool, that use pop culture.

01:18:41.540 And she's cool. She's not even 30. Anyway. OK, there's just a couple of tips for you.

01:18:45.420 Now, Alec Baldwin. Oh, my gosh. Have you guys seen the video markup or, you know, it's a mockup, I should say, of the shooting?

01:18:56.040 So what's happening now is Helena Hutchins, she was the cinematographer who was killed by Alec Baldwin on the set of his movie Rust.

01:19:02.080 Her Rust. Her husband has filed a lawsuit on February 15th against Alec Baldwin and others involved in the film claiming that he was reckless and that they cut costs and that that is what really led to the 42 year old Helena's death.

01:19:19.560 In the context of that, they they produced a mockup of the moment Alec Baldwin shot Helena.

01:19:27.360 What it shows is her shooting Alec Baldwin with a camera and him sitting, which I actually didn't realize prior to this, that he was sitting and pulling out the gun and shooting her.

01:19:39.200 It's disturbing. It's chilling. And he the husband is particularly angry over what we knew would come back to haunt him,

01:19:48.540 which is Alec Baldwin speaking to ABC News, George Stephanopoulos saying the following. This is Sotnay.

01:19:55.880 Do you feel guilt?

01:19:57.260 No, no. I feel that there is I feel that that that someone is responsible for what happened.

01:20:06.420 And I can't say who that is, but I know it's not me.

01:20:08.620 There are some who say you're never supposed to point a gun at anyone on a set, no matter what.

01:20:14.060 Well, unless the person is the cinematographer who's directing me where to point the gun for her camera angle.

01:20:21.680 And the husband's come out and said, you know, watching him, I feel so angry.

01:20:27.400 And the notion that that my wife told him to point the gun at her, he says, almost sounds like like he was the victim.

01:20:37.980 Here's the husband, Matt Hutchins, responding notably not on ABC. Right.

01:20:42.100 He went to NBC. Here he is on the Today Show.

01:20:44.400 He said, essentially, he felt grief, but no guilt.

01:21:04.240 Almost sounds like he was the victim.

01:21:09.820 And hearing him blame Helena in the interview and and shift responsibility to others and and seeing him cry about it.

01:21:20.720 I just feel like, are we really supposed to feel bad about you, Mr. Baldwin?

01:21:25.700 Well, he never should have given that interview, never should have given that interview. 1.00

01:21:33.220 Mark Garagos was on a couple of days after it happened, you know, famed criminal defense attorney saying he's an idiot. 1.00

01:21:39.060 He never should have done it. And he predicted exactly this. 1.00

01:21:42.240 Exactly. That line would come back to haunt him with a jury, with Helena's husband.

01:21:47.820 And it was colossally stupid to give that interview to ABC. 0.99

01:21:52.360 He did more harm than good. And you tell me, John, how this lawsuit is likely to go. 0.99

01:21:57.360 See, this is horrible on a number of levels.

01:21:59.720 I think we all can agree that this poor woman, Helena Hutchins, should not be dead.

01:22:03.340 This was a tragedy. And I always and I think all of us would agree.

01:22:06.760 It's not a matter of if somebody is going to pay for her death.

01:22:09.820 It's a matter of how much is that check going to be for.

01:22:13.160 And it will come from numerous sources, not just one person on that set.

01:22:18.560 But as an attorney, I don't know if did somebody tell Alec Baldwin not to give that interview?

01:22:25.540 I don't know what prompted him to do that.

01:22:27.360 It's like he's trying to limit his own liability, but that's not how you do it.

01:22:31.320 When you have something like this going on, you sit back, you say nothing except maybe, oh, my God, this was a tragedy.

01:22:37.600 I'm so sorry, but I'm not allowed to talk about it until all the dust settles.

01:22:43.160 Because this is what the lawyers need to do, apportion the liability and settle this case.

01:22:48.440 This husband should not have even had to file a formal lawsuit to get there.

01:22:53.480 This could have been negotiated without that.

01:22:56.580 But Alec Baldwin needs to be Alec Baldwin, I suppose.

01:22:59.260 And his behavior is really it's deplorable in a lot of ways.

01:23:03.200 He really needs to shut up if it's not already too late.

01:23:05.800 Harmony, you know what Alec Baldwin forgot that the husband can get access to a microphone, too, that he wouldn't have the one and only word on this, not in the public domain, not in a courtroom.

01:23:19.760 And that the husband is going to be far more sympathetic than you are, Alec.

01:23:25.620 So keep your mouth shut. 1.00

01:23:28.400 Alec Baldwin is a complete moron, and that predates this particular terrible incident. 0.99

01:23:32.760 Now, I mean, as a lawyer, I will tell you, and I think all three of us can tell people, that the biggest mistake people make in a circumstance like this, and they could avoid so many lawsuits by simply saying, I'm sorry. 0.99

01:23:44.040 A lot of lawsuits happen because the person at fault didn't say, I'm sorry, what can I do to make this right?

01:23:49.480 And John is absolutely correct.

01:23:52.320 This could and should have been resolved privately out of court.

01:23:55.200 The liability is very clear.

01:23:57.340 You know, what happened here is, you know, apparently there was gross negligence, and people walked off of the set hours before this incident happened because of prior incidents involving this specific weapon.

01:24:09.000 And so, you know, I don't know whether he's a narcissist who's listening to his narcissist's wife, Hilaria, telling him to go out there and tell his story, but he wasn't the victim, and now he's going to have to pay.

01:24:21.820 And I hope it impacts his career as bad judgment here because it is really unfortunate that this family is being victimized not only by the death, but also by this callous and even cruel commentary spewing forth.

01:24:35.840 I mean, if I'm a lawyer with this client, I would fire the client.

01:24:38.100 You know, you can't control this client. 1.00

01:24:39.560 He's crazy. 0.82

01:24:40.440 And I would distance myself from this client. 0.92

01:24:42.480 Yeah, we've seen a lot of great lawyers do that in the past.

01:24:45.700 When you're up against it, you want the best legal talent you can find representing you, whether it's a criminal case or a big civil case like this.

01:24:53.480 And they have rules, too.

01:24:55.340 And they will not represent a client who just fires off, you know, goes off the handle and doesn't take their advice.

01:25:00.400 There's a reason these very great lawyers get very great reputations, right?

01:25:05.660 It's like they need to handle the case.

01:25:07.200 They go through this all the time.

01:25:08.560 I don't have to tell you ladies this.

01:25:10.020 You go through it way more than your clients ever go through it.

01:25:12.120 And they need to shut up and take your advice if they want the right outcome.

01:25:15.840 But he was too full of hubris. 0.60

01:25:18.700 He thought he knew better.

01:25:20.060 And now it's coming back to haunt him.

01:25:22.320 I do want to say, interestingly, the movie's armorer, Hannah Gutierrez-Reed, is also named in this lawsuit, which she has filed her own lawsuit.

01:25:31.540 And she is alleging that a different crew member named Seth Kenny supplied the ammunition to the set and that she believed she had been loading dummy rounds into that gun.

01:25:45.220 And that if anybody substituted in a real bullet, for lack of a better term, lie around, it was his obligation not to do that.

01:25:54.660 Like he was giving her the ammo.

01:25:56.380 And I'm sure he's defending that and denying that.

01:26:00.320 But this is sort of we're starting to see the blame game go with the fingers pointing this way and that way and the other way.

01:26:05.260 And to your point, Jonna, as far as civil liability goes, the insurance carrier is going to have to pay.

01:26:09.560 They're probably going to have to pay out the full policy.

01:26:11.620 Just do it.

01:26:12.240 Just who wants to go to court on some nice freaking pay? 0.97

01:26:14.860 Okay, let's switch over to Britney Spears. 1.00

01:26:18.080 She is.

01:26:19.900 Look, I'm glad the conservatorship is done, but she's not a particularly well woman. 1.00

01:26:24.220 Let's be honest.

01:26:24.920 She's not.

01:26:25.800 All of her public statements lead me to be really concerned for her mental state.

01:26:30.040 I just don't think she's all all together.

01:26:33.500 And I don't think that's an excuse for what her dad did to her all those years.

01:26:36.360 But I'm just saying we've talked about before how a lot of Hollywood stars are not all together.

01:26:39.880 They don't have a conservatorship where their father controls her every motion.

01:26:42.920 However, I don't know.

01:26:46.640 Every statement she gives, I'm kind of like, I don't know.

01:26:49.960 She is now threatening to sue her former business manager, TriStar Sports and Entertainment,

01:26:57.820 making allegations against her former managers in an Instagram post that has since been deleted.

01:27:04.880 But I'll just give you a flavor for what she's saying.

01:27:06.980 She writes, before they sent me away to a treatment facility, they, she's saying, sent me away.

01:27:11.900 Like, TriStar brought me into their offices. 1.00

01:27:15.440 The swanky, suited up bitches. 1.00

01:27:17.300 So nice with their. 0.99

01:27:18.400 We're here to make you feel special, she wrote, before specifically naming her former business managers.

01:27:23.640 This is Brittany.

01:27:24.520 She writes, I had lunch with these two.

01:27:26.860 And they said, Brittany, look at your picture on the wall with a huge black and white frame picture in the hall of their office.

01:27:32.220 Kate Peckensdale was there, too.

01:27:33.820 They sucked up to me and made me feel special.

01:27:36.060 Right. 0.90

01:27:36.660 Ha. 1.00

01:27:36.860 Those same bitches killed me a week later. 1.00

01:27:39.340 She claimed her father worshipped these two, would have done anything they asked of him, said, I think they were trying to kill me. 1.00

01:27:44.880 I still do to this very day.

01:27:45.940 I believe that's exactly what they were trying to do.

01:27:47.300 But not a damn thing was wrong with me.

01:27:48.900 And I didn't die.

01:27:50.100 Nobody would have lived through what they did to me.

01:27:51.720 I lived through all of it.

01:27:52.460 I remember all of it.

01:27:53.320 I will sue the blank out of TriStar.

01:27:55.040 TriStar and they got away with all of it.

01:27:56.980 And I'm here to warn them.

01:27:59.360 TriStar says, these claims are entirely false, as well as highly offensive, damaging and unacceptable.

01:28:09.480 And I'm sure they will be defending themselves if she does file said suit. 0.64

01:28:13.380 Harmeet, what do you make of it?

01:28:14.220 Look, I think I think you put your finger on on it, which is she's probably not starting from, you know, a full a full box of crayons.

01:28:25.560 But but what happened to her here in the courts is extremely disturbing and I think outrageous.

01:28:33.060 And it is only because she's famous, it's getting attention. 0.69

01:28:36.520 But the abuse of conservatorship and the payment of of a lot of money to conservators for people who are either elderly, but perfectly compost mentis or people like this who are very successful and can be a gravy train for their for their parasites who are manipulating them.

01:28:52.500 It's really disturbing.

01:28:53.460 And I'm kind of shocked that this judge continued to rubber stamp this conservatorship, even to the point of her being forced to perform, making money for all these other people.

01:29:01.900 And and not allowed to reproduce, forced to wear an IUD as a as a condition of this ongoing persecution.

01:29:08.760 I think it is outrageous.

01:29:09.880 And so if she's the imperfect vehicle to bring this issue to the world's attention, I guess I'm OK with that.

01:29:16.480 I hope she gets the help she needs and the support she needs.

01:29:18.620 But can you blame people who are very successful from a young age, in part because they're manipulated by their parents?

01:29:25.060 They don't get good guidance.

01:29:26.380 They don't get proper schooling.

01:29:27.800 They don't get any reality check from a normal upbringing or college or friends mocking them.

01:29:33.060 And then they turn out like this.

01:29:35.340 So I suspect there's some statute of limitations issue here having to do with the fact that she was legally not capable of filing a lawsuit.

01:29:41.160 And now is her time to do that.

01:29:43.000 And, you know, if these people did wrong to her, I hope they pay.

01:29:46.960 And, John, it could be more than just the managers if she does file suit.

01:29:49.460 I mean, who knows? She could go after the guy who was supposed to be representing her, remember, who seemed way more in bed with the dad than he was with her.

01:29:58.000 And it is weird that this judge has kept rubber stamping this over and over and over, though it's really tough to sue a judge.

01:30:04.740 But these documentaries on her really do take aim at the managers as having had a hand in all of this.

01:30:10.320 They're going to argue, I assume, we always had her best interest at heart and she was not a well person.

01:30:16.580 If she actually sues, I don't know how much of her, you know, rhetoric right now is her just trying to lash out on social media to feel the roads a little bit and how much of it is really going to form the basis of a lawsuit. 1.00

01:30:29.300 If she does intend to sue anybody and if there is any liability there, if I were representing her, I'd say, listen, you're ahead.

01:30:35.700 So, again, be quiet and let's not lose credibility in your arguments.

01:30:40.180 Let's put the arguments on paper.

01:30:42.040 Let's keep them off Instagram and make sure that the arguments are credible and will survive a lawsuit.

01:30:48.980 Don't go out and, you know, shout about it on social media.

01:30:52.540 That rarely helps.

01:30:54.620 As powerful of an author as you may be, I am even more powerful as your lawyer.

01:31:00.140 And wait until you see what I can do with a beautiful legal brief.

01:31:03.280 You're going to love it.

01:31:04.220 Just ask Harmeet with all of her wins at the U.S. Supreme Court. 0.96

01:31:07.240 The turn of a beautiful phrase in front of very smart judges can really do a lot, a lot more than Instagram posts in the middle of the night.

01:31:14.780 Ladies, what a pleasure. 1.00

01:31:15.920 So, so great to have you here.

01:31:17.060 Thank you so much.

01:31:18.560 Thanks, Megan.

01:31:20.300 Unbelievable.

01:31:20.660 So the CDC just announcing that it will ease its masking recommendations for 70 percent of the country, including inside schools.

01:31:32.440 Look, this is not this is not bad news because some of these counties continue to treat the CDC like it's God and do only what it recommends.

01:31:41.620 So for those, the CDC saying, OK, it's time to take the masks off.

01:31:45.440 That's a good thing.

01:31:46.220 That'll help people in their fight to return to reason.

01:31:48.720 But it is absurd that it has taken the CDC this long. 0.96

01:31:52.900 And if you think for one minute that it has to do with science, you're insane.

01:31:58.320 Let me tell you what happened just earlier this month, February 24th, 2022.

01:32:02.320 There was research done by a Democrat hired research group.

01:32:06.660 They circulated the memo and the Democrats, including Rochelle Walensky, have clearly gotten it.

01:32:12.880 Talking about how people are worn out and feeling real harm from the years long restrictions on covid advising that they need to take those people's side in order to win over Democrat voters to win them back.

01:32:28.940 Most Americans reading from the memo have personally moved out of crisis mode.

01:32:33.240 Twice as many voters are now more concerned about covid's effect on the economy than about someone in their family or someone they know becoming infected with it.

01:32:39.900 Two thirds of parents and 80 percent of teachers say the pandemic caused learning loss and voters are offering overwhelmingly more worried about that than kids getting covid.

01:32:49.020 Six in 10 Americans describe themselves as worn out by the pandemic.

01:32:52.140 The more we talk about the threat of covid and onerously restrict people's lives because of it, the more we turn them against us and show them we're out of touch with their daily realities.

01:33:03.060 That's Feb 24, 2022.

01:33:06.200 Today is Feb 25, 2022.

01:33:09.960 And today is the day Rochelle decides to issue a memo saying we can ease the masking recommendations.

01:33:19.480 We don't need these. We're moving on.

01:33:22.800 We're moving past the most crucial phase of the pandemic. 0.88

01:33:27.680 These are such dishonest people.

01:33:31.200 You know it. 0.95

01:33:32.120 I know it.

01:33:32.880 And the American people finally know it. 0.99

01:33:36.520 You're a dishonest broker, Rochelle. 1.00

01:33:39.240 So is your friend Anthony Fauci. 0.95

01:33:41.120 And we're on to you.

01:33:42.920 That's the glory of where we are right now.

01:33:45.140 OK, let me talk to you about the glory of Monday because we have a special show that I really want you to note.

01:33:48.980 But please listen to it.

01:33:50.200 Please download it.

01:33:51.720 I hope you heard our Memorial Day show with Rob O'Neill.

01:33:54.180 You know him as the man who killed bin Laden.

01:33:55.780 One of my favorite shows ever.

01:33:57.220 Well, Rob O'Neill is back with us on Monday along with Dakota Meyer, another war hero.

01:34:03.320 They're out with a new book next week.

01:34:04.740 It's fascinating, perfectly timed, called The Way Forward.

01:34:07.640 Master Life's Toughest Battles.

01:34:09.500 I am so excited for this.

01:34:10.780 It's their first interview.

01:34:12.360 Don't miss it.

01:34:12.920 Download the show and have a great week.

01:34:14.620 Thanks for listening to The Megyn Kelly Show. 0.94

01:34:18.200 No BS, no agenda, and no fear.

The Megyn Kelly Show - February 25, 2022

Biden's Putin Miscalculation and Supreme Court Pick, with Morgan Ortagus, Rich Lowry, Harmeet Dhillon, and Jonna Spilbor ｜ Ep. 269

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