Russia's invasion of Ukraine continues, as Ukraine's president urges his people to take up arms against the Russian army, while the Russians close in on the Ukrainian capital. Meanwhile, President Biden will name his Supreme Court nominee, and we believe we know who it is.
00:22:12.680We made ourselves weaker and we made him more powerful.
00:22:16.100And 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.
00:22:37.040So he sees that and he sees a president who's been weakened by the way he handled Afghanistan.
00:22:42.160And he accurately deduces there's very little he can do to me.
00:22:48.180There's he doesn't have the public support for a big, bold move against me.
00:22:53.760And to be honest and fair to Joe Biden, it goes back prior to Joe Biden.
00:22:57.800He understands the United States is war weary after 20 years in Afghanistan, a disastrous experience in Iraq.
00:23:03.380You 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.
00:23:13.540And it's you know, we're feeling down.
00:23:16.060We're in sort of a pessimistic phase, both domestically and with respect to our role in the world.
00:23:21.200And man, is he taking advantage of it?
00:23:27.320And by the way, what is Xi Jinping learning from all of this?
00:23:30.280Right. What is the you know, they issued statements right away.
00:23:33.740After Russia ran into Ukraine, that Taiwan is a part of China.
00:23:37.580No surprising that they issued those statements.
00:23:40.120Listen, as we and just for the record, also then blaming us.
00:23:43.220The Chinese foreign minister came out and said, you know, oh, you claim you want to put out the fire.
00:23:46.800But meanwhile, you've been pouring fuel on it.
00:23:48.640And 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.
00:23:56.880But the Chinese, to the extent they've taken aside here, it's very clearly the Russians.
00:24:04.160I mean, there there seems to be some sort of special relationship between Putin and Xi.
00:24:09.740They and I don't know, by the way, I mean, historically, there's plenty of reasons for the two countries to be at odds.
00:24:15.020But 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.
00:24:24.140Whether we I know I certainly understand that we're weary as Americans.
00:24:28.320I 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.
00:24:35.860Went there a number of times with Mike Pompeo. We retried to negotiate the end of America's longest war.
00:24:41.120So I get it. And I am very sympathetic to that.
00:24:43.520When 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.
00:24:59.440That was that's very clearly what we are in, what we will be going forward.
00:25:04.580And 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.
00:25:17.180Well, 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.
00:25:30.740Right. This is our big strategic battle. And somebody will win. Right.
00:25:34.480The Chinese Communist Party will will either win out or democracy and freedom led by the United States.
00:25:41.340Well, 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.
00:25:50.900I 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.
00:26:01.800I mean, that should be the top foreign policy strategy of the United States.
00:26:06.800But 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.
00:26:16.000And then if anyone's going to stand up to the Chinese Communist Party, I do think it will it will be us.
00:26:22.100But 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.
00:26:30.080We'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.
00:26:45.760It'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.
00:26:56.960We need to be very clear on how we're going to orchestrate the right outcome without putting boots on the ground.
00:27:04.040And right now, it seems like we took a step back without figuring that out.
00:27:08.820All right. I stole the last word. Morgan, what a pleasure. So nice to meet you.
00:27:12.120Thank you so much, Megan. I appreciate it. I'm a big, big fan.
00:27:16.120Thank you. I will definitely have you on again. That was great.
00:27:19.080Coming 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?
00:27:30.440And how's that going to go? OK, we'll be back with that in one second.
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00:28:12.480Joining me now, Rich Lowry, editor of National Review.
00:29:02.440And 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.
00:30:13.820I 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.
00:30:30.120If 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.
00:30:43.820And everyone thought he was going to be a joke.
00:30:46.620He 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.
00:31:06.960They'll defend facing forward rather than with their backs.
00:31:10.800But 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.
00:31:25.460They're going to decapitate this government.
00:31:27.500They're going to capture or kill Zelensky, and they are going to create their own puppet government.
00:31:34.240It's just clear that's what's going to happen.
00:31:36.660And, 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.
00:31:49.520But 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.
00:32:03.520And sanctions are not going to make that much of a difference.
00:32:06.420Biden 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.
00:32:14.320And you could do things that would immediately create pain, like cutting off Russia from the so-called SWIFT system that enables international banking transactions.
00:32:23.720But the Europeans weren't going to go along with that.
00:32:27.740It's going to be a puppet government, and we'll see whether Putin can make it stick.
00:32:31.000It's so disturbing, this guy Zelensky, you're right, his speech was amazing.
00:32:35.520And 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.
00:32:45.500It's sad to hear his desperation saying to his own, you know, military, let them in when they come, let them in.
00:32:51.580And 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.
00:33:04.020If you don't help us now, tomorrow the war will knock on your door.
00:33:09.340And of course, that's the that's the scary thing about trying to pacify a wolf.
00:33:16.060You know, it doesn't it doesn't stop eating after the first one.
00:33:19.460And there is a question about whether Vladimir Putin is in the right headspace.
00:33:25.100There was an executive. I'm trying to think of the guy's title.
00:33:28.720He 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.
00:33:41.340And, you know, there's a question about what's next.
00:33:44.920Yeah, so I don't think he's lost his mind. I think he's incredibly rational.
00:33:51.560He is just irrational, unreasonable and driven by an unreasonable goal.
00:33:56.560And 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.
00:34:07.700And those are native members. So if he targets them, then you're really faced with a no kidding choice.
00:34:13.380Do 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?
00:34:25.940And 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.
00:34:39.700And 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.
00:34:50.820But it's China that's more threatening at the end of the day, in my view, than Russia.
00:34:56.700Well, and that's what the Biden administration determined, right?
00:34:58.800When they sort of set out their foreign policy, and I think it was spring of 2021, that's that's where they landed, too.
00:35:04.060China'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.
00:35:16.460And 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?
00:35:26.660You 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?
00:35:35.480And it was the one the one question in response to which Biden said, I can't comment on that.
00:35:40.700Unusually disciplined for this president actually said, I'm not going to comment on that.
00:35:45.760And so it does appear that they have some strange sort of bromance going that is definitely threatening to us in our interests.
00:35:58.000Yeah. So I'm not sure how long the bromance will last, but they share the same goal of ending this era of Western dominance.
00:36:07.760It's really dated. You can argue about it, you know, the last 300 or 400 years.
00:36:12.380And 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.
00:36:23.300And they need a return to imperial glory. Now, Russia, it's very threatening.
00:36:28.580It involves, you know, ending the NATO alliance, involves picking Europe apart and diminishing our influence or expelling us from Europe.
00:36:36.080But that matters. You know, that that's a hugely consequential question.
00:36:40.620But Russia does not have the capability the way China does to become the predominant economic power in the world.
00:36:47.800And some isolationists might think, oh, you know, that's OK. Why is that going to bother us?
00:36:51.980We'll just tend our garden here at home. We're protected by two big oceans and friendly neighbors to the north and the south.
00:37:01.120And 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.
00:37:15.080And when China has that sort of influence, we've already seen indications of it.
00:37:18.340They'll reach into this country and affect what people can say and do here.
00:37:24.080You know, there's a reason the NBA never criticizes China, right?
00:37:26.420It's because China cares. It's going to exact pain. Same thing with Hollywood.
00:37:30.800And there's the ability of China to do that will be much greater than it is today.
00:37:34.720So the stakes, the stakes are enormous. They're just this is this is big stuff.
00:37:40.140It 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.
00:37:50.340I had a guest on yesterday, Konstantin Kissen, who's really thoughtful about this whole issue.
00:37:56.720And 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.
00:38:14.180And that message here needs to be reinforced.
00:38:16.000Yeah, 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.
00:38:24.800But I think, you know, we're basically have decoupled with Russia.
00:38:29.600I 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.
00:38:43.180That's why the sanctions we're talking about now, you know, they'll pinch, but they they won't be decisive.
00:38:48.920And we're going to have to do the same thing with China and decouple be very painful.
00:38:54.060You know, Neil Ferguson, the great historian coined this term Chimerica to get to how intertwined our economies had become.
00:39:04.100That'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.
00:39:12.520I think we need to think about industrial policy in certain areas to compete with China.
00:39:18.820You 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.
00:39:28.020And that would be a huge blow to our economy and the world economy that's taken offline or is owned by China.
00:39:34.760So why are we that dependent on a plant and a company in Taiwan?
00:40:05.380This morning, President Biden's meeting with fellow leaders of NATO governments in what the White House is calling an extraordinary, extraordinary virtual summit.
00:40:15.980We'll see whether that moves any hearts or minds on this, you know, further sanctions.
00:40:22.120You know, it's like we were doubling down on a strategy that already didn't work.
00:40:25.260So query whether it will now work when we just add more to the non-working strategy.
00:40:30.980But we are absolutely looking at the largest ground war in Europe since World War II.
00:40:35.780Coming back with Rich right after this.
00:40:43.400Remember, if you want to watch clips that we play on this show, you can.
00:40:47.740You can do that by subscribing to our YouTube channel, youtube.com slash Megan Kelly.
00:40:51.500Or you can download the audio podcast there and comment, if you would like, in the Apple podcast comments section.
00:41:04.680This just in from The New York Times, Rich, apropos of the discussion that we were having on China and whose side they're on.
00:41:12.480Reporting that over three months, senior Biden administration officials held half a dozen urgent meetings with top Chinese officials
00:41:20.080in which the Americans presented intel showing Russia's troop buildup around Ukraine, urging the Chinese to tell Russia not to invade each time.
00:41:30.040The 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
00:41:36.160and the ambassador to the United States from China, rebuffed the Americans, saying they did not think an invasion was in the works.
00:41:44.000After one diplomatic exchange in December, U.S. officials got intel showing Beijing had shared the information with Moscow,
00:41:52.360telling the Russians that the U.S. was trying to sow discord and that China would not try to impede Russian plans and actions.
00:42:02.540I mean, there you have it right there.
00:42:04.080You know, I don't know if we needed a smoking gun, but there it is.
00:42:07.140Yeah, well, also, I mean, even if you weren't privy to information like that, it was clear what was going on.
00:42:13.900There was no way Putin was going to move prior to the closing ceremonies of the Olympics,
00:42:18.280because he didn't want to step on the propaganda value of this partner from hosting these games in a city that had no snow.
00:42:25.460You know, the whole thing was all manmade, fake snow with his dystopian views off of the left and the right.
00:42:31.820But he waited. And as soon as they were over, it it began and the balloon went up.
00:42:39.580So the reason why this partnership might not last is Russia will definitively be the junior partner.
00:42:44.320Now, perhaps now it has no alternative but being the junior partner because it's so estranged from the West, given its its aggression here.
00:42:53.040But it's not going to be a comfortable thing for Russia over the long run.
00:42:57.100They have a long border. The the Russian side of that border is not very heavily populated.
00:43:04.020You can see China having ambitions there. So it might not work out very well for Russia and there might be a divorce.
00:43:09.340But 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.
00:43:23.240As 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.
00:43:36.160I wonder whether it's going to change. Forget opinions, you know, over there.
00:43:40.300I'm sure the Ukrainians and even the Russians now.
00:43:42.440Seventeen hundred people arrested in Russia for protesting against this.
00:43:46.120That's extraordinary. You're not allowed to protest in Russia.
00:43:48.340So, 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.
00:44:03.040This is who Putin is. This is what he does.
00:44:05.340It's what hasn't really been a mystery even prior to now.
00:44:09.200So 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.
00:44:21.500I think American public public opinion is we don't want to get involved.
00:44:25.180There'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.
00:44:37.240So but it doesn't make much sense to me on the right.
00:44:41.140You have people who are OK. You know, Putin, he's religious, supposedly.
00:44:46.120You know, there's a Orthodox church, very influential in Russian society.
00:44:50.320And there are only two genders in Russia.
00:44:52.180They're not doing doing this crazy trans stuff that we are, which is all fine.
00:44:56.380But you can oppose crazy trans stuff in this country and also oppose dictators who poison and jail their dissidents and invade neighboring countries.
00:45:04.980That doesn't require much nuance or moral complexity.
00:45:16.700People realize with NATO under threat how valuable it is and it needs to be fortified.
00:45:21.880And 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.
00:45:36.940And 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.
00:45:46.760And as you say, the indications are that there's certainly more opposition to this in Russia than Putin counted on.
00:45:54.500Otherwise, he would have had, you know, all sorts of fake pro-war protests going.
00:45:58.760And he didn't bother to do that, which suggests.
00:46:01.260And the longer it drags on, the worse it is for him, the longer it drags on.
00:46:04.700I will say, though, you may be underestimating the love for Putin domestically because there is an actress making the rounds on Twitter yesterday.
00:46:31.620I'm so sorry that I was not your mother.
00:46:34.700If I was your mother, you would have been so loved, held in the arms of joyous light.
00:46:40.840Never would this story's plight the world unfurled before our eyes, a pure demise of nations sitting peaceful under a night sky.
00:46:49.120If I was your mother, the world would have been warm.
00:46:53.280So much laughter and joy and nothing would harm.
00:46:56.140I 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.
00:50:20.880Because in that way, it kind of could change the ideological balance.
00:50:24.320He was a little bit more of a moderate lefty. Is she?
00:50:27.160No, I don't think she's moderate at all. And I think that's exactly why President Biden selected her.
00:50:32.320And out of the shortlist that he had, she's definitely the most radical of the three who are on that final list.
00:50:39.620I think Leandra Kruger from the California Supreme Court, who I've, you know, had experience and had cases before the Supreme Court,
00:50:47.520I think is much more moderate and mainstream and has a longer appellate judicial history.
00:50:52.540And 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.
00:51:02.060Now, 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.
00:51:11.760And that certainly characterized Justices Kavanaugh and Amy Coney Barrett.
00:51:16.780But 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.
00:51:36.540She repeatedly ruled against the Trump administration on a number of important issues and was then reversed by the D.C. Circuit.
00:51:43.360She'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.
00:51:56.400And 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.
00:52:21.940I predict not a single Democrat votes against her just for a little flavor.
00:52:26.360And 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.
00:52:34.440But here is what he put out on Twitter.
00:52:37.300I'm excited to nominate one of the nation's brightest legal minds, Judge Ketanji Brown-Jackson, to be our next Supreme Court justice.
00:52:46.980Raised 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.
00:52:56.860Justice 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.
00:53:05.560Judge 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.
00:53:13.580She'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.
00:53:23.880I 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.
01:03:20.200Hannah Tubbs, is Hannah Tubbs grateful?
01:03:22.060Is Hannah Tubbs saying, oh my God, I made a terrible mistake, you know, in my youth and I feel so bad?
01:03:26.260You 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.
01:03:37.560So 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.
01:05:06.260I mean, and prosecutors in his office have told Fox News and others that all the documents are there.
01:05:13.260And 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.
01:05:22.920And the absolutely ignoring the rights of the victim in this circumstance.
01:05:27.120And California has a strong statute to protect victims' rights.
01:05:30.480And prosecutors like Queso Boudin and George Gascon repeatedly ignore that.
01:05:36.300And so you think about how ridiculous the situation is.
01:07:04.240He's the soft on crime DA Alvin Bragg of New York.
01:07:07.120All 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,
01:07:16.080including those two very young police officers and their widows directly blaming Alvin Bragg.
01:07:21.260Now he's like, oh, I'll reverse some of my things.
01:07:23.120Maybe I really will criminalize resisting arrest again and so on.
01:07:27.300And that's what Gascon is trying to do.
01:07:29.500He's like, oh, I'm going to reverse a lot of the stuff.
01:07:31.040Oh, I don't want to be recalled because the first recall effort failed.
01:07:33.820I guess they didn't get enough signatures.
01:07:35.040But the second one is looking good and could go down this summer.
01:08:57.260And, you know, John, this doesn't even touch on the fact that he's not the only prisoner doing this in L.A.
01:09:02.500We've had several prisoners who are men suddenly claim that they're women and get transferred into female prisons.
01:09:10.240And it doesn't matter how much the women in those prisons object.
01:09:15.300California is just determined to let them in.
01:09:16.880Yeah, because just another example of how woke and out of control our system has, our country, essentially, has become.
01:09:27.340Can I just add one thing sort of ancillary to this, Megan?
01:09:31.500And that is, you know, while all these DAs are getting very soft on big crimes, like these are big crimes.
01:09:36.980And, you know, they're turning a blind eye on purpose and they think that that's OK.
01:09:41.040Do you know who else is paying the price?
01:09:42.920The people who are committing small crimes.
01:09:45.480And I know like a lot of people out there might not care about criminals who commit small crimes.
01:09:49.340But 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.
01:10:10.560But these child molesters and murderers and everybody else are getting free reign.
01:10:14.720Oh, 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.
01:10:23.540It'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.
01:10:34.040We'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.
01:10:39.140I will say that the victim of Tubbs has come out.
01:10:42.180She's now 18 and given this statement to Fox News saying that the lenient treatment of Tubbs is a miscarriage of justice.
01:10:49.600It'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.
01:11:01.240I want him tried as an adult for the crimes he committed against me.
01:11:23.720Indiana's attorney general now calling BLM a scam, saying it's a house of cards.
01:11:29.600It may be falling and it's just the latest.
01:11:33.000So we got Indiana, we got California, we got Washington.
01:11:36.680There have been problems with them out of compliance, I guess, in some way.
01:11:40.660You 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.
01:11:52.900Harmi, basically, they're claiming to be a charitable organization, but they're not behaving like a charitable organization.
01:11:57.740Right. So when you introduced me, you mentioned I was the CEO of the Center for American Liberty, a small nonprofit.
01:12:03.280We won three cases at the United States Supreme Court last year.
01:12:06.220To 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.
01:12:19.380You 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.
01:12:32.540And they've simply blatantly blown through and ignored those requirements.
01:12:36.540So 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.
01:12:46.540They also are required in some jurisdictions to have to have audits or to have at least an auditable paper trail.
01:12:52.800So that's why the attorney general of Indiana is calling them a fraud.
01:12:56.700But when you even have California's liberal attorney's general's office, you know, questioning your practices, you're in deep trouble.
01:13:05.220And 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.
01:13:17.040It's racism or claim that perhaps it's, you know, some kind of discrimination.
01:13:28.640The 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.
01:13:40.920And I know, you know, it's like, oh, well, you know, it's the thought of BLM versus the organization.
01:13:45.520Well, 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.
01:13:54.580And this group, according to these state officials in the blue and the red states, is a fraud, is taking the money with no accountability.
01:14:03.520And right now, the charity has no known leader in charge of its bankroll.
01:14:07.880We do know, however, the old leader has three or four houses and is living large on apparently the donations.
01:14:14.700But we have no idea where the rest of the millions and millions of dollars went.
01:14:20.960I 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.
01:14:33.800I 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?
01:14:46.580I don't know how many cents on my dollar is going where I wanted to go.
01:14:50.760That's why we have the rules that we do for nonprofit organizations that need to be followed.
01:14:55.500Nobody 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.
01:15:07.120I 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.
01:15:14.700So I'm not surprised by this, but it is pretty disgusting.
01:15:19.380And I think this House of Cards is going to fall pretty quickly.
01:15:21.660I think about, you know, during after George Floyd, Harmeet, and when our kids were still remote learning, it was May of 2020.
01:15:29.860It was in the midst of the COVID pandemic.
01:15:32.280And I remember my daughter's teachers were popping up the BLM sign as their background, right?
01:15:38.520You're not allowed to do politics in the schools, but BLM, they got an exception.
01:15:42.660And I think, do you understand what you're backing there?
01:15:45.460Do 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?
01:16:03.580Except for the crazy racists who tend to do bad things and get tried and convicted.
01:16:07.600It'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.
01:16:24.280But people roll along in their lives like, oh, yes, I'll give money.
01:16:28.520And you got people giving tens of millions to this organization or its affiliates.
01:16:32.360Right. I mean, I think we're talking about 60 million dollars that have been raised by by this entity.
01:16:38.080Its leaders are in disarray and living large, as was said.
01:16:41.820What's really tragic about this is that, you know, some some on the right may not agree with me.
01:16:46.100But as a civil rights lawyer, I can tell you, we do have a history in our country historically of some discriminatory practices.
01:16:52.480And addressing that head on should be part of history.
01:16:55.340What 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.
01:17:12.560Even as this is happening in the courts, Megan, in the schools, the same ideology is currently being preached.
01:17:20.860Students are being asked to pledge allegiance to the principles of BLM, which are Marxist principles.
01:17:26.980They aren't American principles. And all of this is an offshoot of the Occupy Wall Street movement of anarchy, Antifa.
01:17:34.780There are not good things going on under the hood over here.
01:17:37.280So 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.
01:17:49.380Those are Martin Luther King Jr. principles. Those are the principles enshrined in our Constitution.
01:17:53.620And 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.
01:17:59.760If 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.
01:18:09.240They actually are doing it with people like Glenn Lowry. And the list goes on and on.
01:18:13.640But you'll be very impressed by who's on there. I'm on their board. But there are amazing, amazing people.
01:18:18.180Ayaan 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.
01:18:24.640And 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.
01:18:32.040She'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.
01:18:41.540And she's cool. She's not even 30. Anyway. OK, there's just a couple of tips for you.
01:18:45.420Now, 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?
01:18:56.040So what's happening now is Helena Hutchins, she was the cinematographer who was killed by Alec Baldwin on the set of his movie Rust.
01:19:02.080Her 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.
01:19:19.560In the context of that, they they produced a mockup of the moment Alec Baldwin shot Helena.
01:19:27.360What 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.
01:19:39.200It's disturbing. It's chilling. And he the husband is particularly angry over what we knew would come back to haunt him,
01:19:48.540which is Alec Baldwin speaking to ABC News, George Stephanopoulos saying the following. This is Sotnay.
01:21:09.820And hearing him blame Helena in the interview and and shift responsibility to others and and seeing him cry about it.
01:21:20.720I just feel like, are we really supposed to feel bad about you, Mr. Baldwin?
01:21:25.700Well, he never should have given that interview, never should have given that interview.
01:21:33.220Mark Garagos was on a couple of days after it happened, you know, famed criminal defense attorney saying he's an idiot.
01:21:39.060He never should have done it. And he predicted exactly this.
01:21:42.240Exactly. That line would come back to haunt him with a jury, with Helena's husband.
01:21:47.820And it was colossally stupid to give that interview to ABC.
01:21:52.360He did more harm than good. And you tell me, John, how this lawsuit is likely to go.
01:21:57.360See, this is horrible on a number of levels.
01:21:59.720I think we all can agree that this poor woman, Helena Hutchins, should not be dead.
01:22:03.340This was a tragedy. And I always and I think all of us would agree.
01:22:06.760It's not a matter of if somebody is going to pay for her death.
01:22:09.820It's a matter of how much is that check going to be for.
01:22:13.160And it will come from numerous sources, not just one person on that set.
01:22:18.560But as an attorney, I don't know if did somebody tell Alec Baldwin not to give that interview?
01:22:25.540I don't know what prompted him to do that.
01:22:27.360It's like he's trying to limit his own liability, but that's not how you do it.
01:22:31.320When you have something like this going on, you sit back, you say nothing except maybe, oh, my God, this was a tragedy.
01:22:37.600I'm so sorry, but I'm not allowed to talk about it until all the dust settles.
01:22:43.160Because this is what the lawyers need to do, apportion the liability and settle this case.
01:22:48.440This husband should not have even had to file a formal lawsuit to get there.
01:22:53.480This could have been negotiated without that.
01:22:56.580But Alec Baldwin needs to be Alec Baldwin, I suppose.
01:22:59.260And his behavior is really it's deplorable in a lot of ways.
01:23:03.200He really needs to shut up if it's not already too late.
01:23:05.800Harmony, 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.
01:23:19.760And that the husband is going to be far more sympathetic than you are, Alec.
01:23:28.400Alec Baldwin is a complete moron, and that predates this particular terrible incident.
01:23:32.760Now, 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.
01:23:44.040A lot of lawsuits happen because the person at fault didn't say, I'm sorry, what can I do to make this right?
01:23:57.340You 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.
01:24:09.000And 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.
01:24:21.820And 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.
01:24:35.840I mean, if I'm a lawyer with this client, I would fire the client.
01:24:38.100You know, you can't control this client.
01:24:40.440And I would distance myself from this client.
01:24:42.480Yeah, we've seen a lot of great lawyers do that in the past.
01:24:45.700When 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.
01:25:20.060And now it's coming back to haunt him.
01:25:22.320I 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.
01:25:31.540And 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.
01:25:45.220And that if anybody substituted in a real bullet, for lack of a better term, lie around, it was his obligation not to do that.
01:28:14.220Look, 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.
01:28:25.560But but what happened to her here in the courts is extremely disturbing and I think outrageous.
01:28:33.060And it is only because she's famous, it's getting attention.
01:28:36.520But 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.
01:28:53.460And 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.
01:29:01.900And and not allowed to reproduce, forced to wear an IUD as a as a condition of this ongoing persecution.
01:29:35.340So 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.
01:29:43.000And, you know, if these people did wrong to her, I hope they pay.
01:29:46.960And, John, it could be more than just the managers if she does file suit.
01:29:49.460I 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.
01:29:58.000And 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.
01:30:04.740But these documentaries on her really do take aim at the managers as having had a hand in all of this.
01:30:10.320They're going to argue, I assume, we always had her best interest at heart and she was not a well person.
01:30:16.580If 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.
01:30:29.300If 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.
01:30:35.700So, again, be quiet and let's not lose credibility in your arguments.
01:31:04.220Just ask Harmeet with all of her wins at the U.S. Supreme Court.
01:31:07.240The 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.
01:31:20.660So the CDC just announcing that it will ease its masking recommendations for 70 percent of the country, including inside schools.
01:31:32.440Look, 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.
01:31:41.620So for those, the CDC saying, OK, it's time to take the masks off.
01:31:46.220That'll help people in their fight to return to reason.
01:31:48.720But it is absurd that it has taken the CDC this long.
01:31:52.900And if you think for one minute that it has to do with science, you're insane.
01:31:58.320Let me tell you what happened just earlier this month, February 24th, 2022.
01:32:02.320There was research done by a Democrat hired research group.
01:32:06.660They circulated the memo and the Democrats, including Rochelle Walensky, have clearly gotten it.
01:32:12.880Talking 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.
01:32:28.940Most Americans reading from the memo have personally moved out of crisis mode.
01:32:33.240Twice 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.
01:32:39.900Two 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.
01:32:49.020Six in 10 Americans describe themselves as worn out by the pandemic.
01:32:52.140The 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.