Biden Says COVID is Over, and Martha's Migrants, with Victor Davis Hanson, and a Powerful Tribute to Blake Barklage | Ep. 393
Episode Stats
Length
1 hour and 33 minutes
Words per Minute
179.12738
Summary
Joe Biden says the Pandemic is over, and the White House is not happy. Plus, a story about a Florida governor who is doing exactly what he said he would do, and why it s not good at all.
Transcript
00:00:00.520
Welcome to The Megyn Kelly Show, your home for open, honest, and provocative conversations.
00:00:11.720
Hey everyone, I'm Megyn Kelly. Welcome to The Megyn Kelly Show and happy Monday.
00:00:15.760
We have a packed show for you today, a great, great show, including a really personal and amazing, inspiring story that we've been working on for a long time that we're going to bring you in our second hour.
00:00:28.000
But I want to begin with the news. The 50 migrants, 50. Okay, 50. We've had 2 million. We're on pace to hit 2 million trying to get into the country this year.
00:00:38.420
50 were sent to Martha's Vineyard and all hell broke loose. Governor Ron DeSantis was responsible for it.
00:00:45.280
He made sure that they had the bus rides and the ferry rides they needed to get to the vineyard.
00:00:49.020
And the migrants have left the island. But the story's not going away.
00:00:52.820
The incident has brought the entire immigration crisis in America into focus because it's very easy to be pro-immigration when you don't have to deal with any of the consequences of it.
00:01:03.420
And quite something else when it's on your doorstep.
00:01:07.240
So we'll get into all of that. But we've got to start with the big news overnight.
00:01:14.560
That's according to President Joe Biden. And that's about as official a pronouncement as we're going to get.
00:01:19.500
Yes, the president himself made that admission during a 60 Minutes interview that made quite a bit of news.
00:01:25.780
We'll go through it with you. News the White House is now trying to clean up again this morning.
00:01:30.820
He says one thing and then the White House team of advisors says something very different.
00:01:35.720
So what's real? What's the what's the end result?
00:01:39.640
Turning us now to discuss all of it is one of our favorites, Victor Davis Hanson, senior fellow at the Hoover Institution.
00:01:53.480
President Biden gives an interview with 60 to 60 Minutes last night when we'll get to immigration in a second.
00:01:59.100
He was not asked about the crisis at the southern border.
00:02:02.100
It didn't didn't come up. Didn't think that was important.
00:02:05.040
But he did declare the pandemic is over, which was music to my ears because I've been listening to their denialism on this for quite some time.
00:02:14.780
And finally, he said it. Here it is for those who need to hear it as well.
00:02:21.240
Miss President, first Detroit auto show in three years.
00:02:40.260
Now, the White House aides are reportedly trying to push back, but this has all sorts of implications, Victor.
00:02:46.320
And I, for one, am so glad that he was walked into it by Scott Pelley, whether Scott Pelley expected that or not.
00:02:54.860
And this is an issue that's very dear to his base, as you know, Megan.
00:02:58.960
His base, the swing suburban voter or the solidly left-wing voter is dedicated to a perennial plague and a nonstop COVID because they like the idea of government control.
00:03:14.320
They like the idea that they are the model citizens and everybody else are renegades and don't follow the rules.
00:03:20.980
And Joe Biden did this, remember, when he was inaugurated.
00:03:24.020
He bought into the idea that the Trump vaccinations were going to be bulletproof.
00:03:31.000
He announced, I think it was in January, the last week in January, he said that by July, we would all have a normal July 4th.
00:03:38.500
And we don't, you can't really predict this COVID.
00:03:42.880
We don't know anything about these new shots for these two new Omicron variants.
00:03:47.060
It's pretty scary when they say the shot's going to have a double whammy.
00:03:50.840
It's going to be really two shots in one when a lot of people had reactions to the first two and the booster.
00:03:58.020
But I don't know why he had to say that because his voter is the one that has been insisting that schools have to be locked down, the country has to be locked down because COVID is going to be with us forever.
00:04:09.080
And for him to just reasonably dismiss it, I think his handlers are pretty upset about it.
00:04:21.300
Apparently, the aides are upset about his admission on COVID because there are a lot of policies in place that depend on the pandemic not being over, right?
00:04:37.180
So there's a whole series of obligations and contractual arrangements that were all suspended because of the supposed COVID-ubonic plague that was never going to leave.
00:04:46.980
And we were in a state of crisis, which they like.
00:04:49.120
And remember, Megan, it was everybody from Gavin Newsom that said during COVID, we have to have a new progressive capitalism.
00:04:58.180
We have to really go for single payer health care.
00:05:00.540
So a lot of the left's strategic planning was based on using the COVID pandemic as a cover to really enlarge government and take away freedoms and turn them over to the select group of platonic guardians.
00:05:14.420
And for him just to lightly say something like that, it's like, wow, we don't have an excuse anymore to coerce people to a particular way of thinking.
00:05:24.880
So it does have potential implications on this, quote, student debt forgiveness program, which was explicitly based.
00:05:32.700
At least one of the main rationales was that we're in an emergency because we're in a pandemic.
00:05:39.820
And that's going up on legal challenge right now, not to mention some of these other policies.
00:05:44.640
I mean, just in New York City, they just laid off 850 teachers because they wouldn't get the vaccine mandate because of the emergency.
00:05:51.660
And remember Molly Ball in that time, February 2021, gushing essay about how they had changed the voting laws because of COVID.
00:06:00.140
And they used that basically, and this is a person of the left, wrote that Mark Zuckerberg had given $419 million and da, da, da, da.
00:06:08.280
And the net result, she bragged that only 30% of the people showed up on election day.
00:06:12.760
The other 70% for the first time in history either voted mail-in or early ballot.
00:06:17.700
And that this, as she gushed, was a windfall for the left.
00:06:22.820
And so, or what are we going to do now when they continue this strategy for 2024?
00:06:30.180
But even for the midterms, are they going to say, you know what, we need more early voting.
00:06:39.500
We need to have more vote harvesting because of COVID.
00:06:41.920
And now he says it doesn't really, it's over with, so maybe we could return back to the pre-2020 voting protocols in which, you know, about 70% showed up on election day.
00:06:53.700
Under Joe Biden, election day has become, and under the COVID scare, it had become a construct.
00:07:03.420
Remember, Donald Trump's second debate, 60 million people had already voted.
00:07:06.860
He had a disastrous first debate, but the second debate was pretty good, but it was irrelevant the way that voting had progressed.
00:07:15.040
We're looking at this in Pennsylvania right now where Fetterman refuses to have a debate.
00:07:19.780
Maybe he'll have one, but he'll have it at the end of October.
00:07:22.440
Meanwhile, voting will have been underway for almost a month by that point already.
00:07:26.240
This is, again, is in the state of Pennsylvania where they changed the rules on mail-in votes.
00:07:30.480
So it's interesting to me because the White House, they're having to walk back what Biden said on Taiwan because there, again, for the second time, he said we would have boots on the ground in Taiwan if China invaded.
00:07:43.880
And he's already done that, and the White House has already come out and said, no, no, that's not official policy.
00:07:49.040
Exact same thing happened in 60 Minutes last night with Taiwan.
00:07:51.600
Then he says the thing about the pandemic being over, and today the White House is running around saying, well, that wasn't planned.
00:08:00.340
And I said to my team, Victor, this reminds me of the scene in Animal House, which anybody who's got good taste in movies has seen, and this particular moment with John Belushi.
00:08:15.120
Was it over when the Germans bombed Pearl Harbor?
00:08:26.060
Yeah, I mean, it was really funny because there was a reason that Barack Obama said, remember, don't underestimate Joe's ability to F things up.
00:08:37.280
And because Obama had carefully cultivated this idea that as a staunch Christian, he did not believe in gay marriage.
00:08:44.720
He said a marriage between a man and a woman, and he was going to use that all the way to his re-election campaign.
00:08:50.900
And then Joe Biden went before a crowd and said, oh, yeah, gay marriage is fine.
00:08:55.580
And he kind of burst this pseudo veneer of Obama's, and he got angry about it.
00:09:02.540
And Biden did that all the time during the Obama administration.
00:09:08.320
And we had this thing called strategic ambiguity with Taiwan.
00:09:11.260
We never really let the communists know what we would do.
00:09:16.680
We may or may not have, you know, strategic nuclear responses, tactical.
00:09:23.280
And then Biden comes along and basically says that.
00:09:26.280
The only thing that's in our interest, and maybe we'll excuse him, they are pretty convinced that he's non-composmenta.
00:09:33.960
So when he says something like that, the Chinese are now huddling and saying, but unfortunately, we can't take him at his word because he doesn't know what he's saying.
00:09:42.260
So maybe they're as confused as we want them to be.
00:09:59.100
If, in fact, there was an unprecedented attack.
00:10:01.280
After our interview, a White House official told us U.S. policy has not changed.
00:10:07.820
Officially, the U.S. will not say whether American forces would defend Taiwan.
00:10:13.300
But the commander-in-chief had a view of his own.
00:10:17.660
So unlike Ukraine, to be clear, sir, U.S. forces, U.S. men and women would defend Taiwan in the event of a Chinese invasion.
00:10:28.280
So how do they get out of this by saying that policy hasn't changed, but the commander-in-chief is saying explicitly, yes, we will defend them if there is an attack?
00:10:40.780
We can't declare war without Congress, but he can certainly send troops over there and get us involved in this conflict as the commander-in-chief.
00:10:48.960
Yeah, but again, I think we have now had him as president for nearly two years, and we've all been acculturated to what he says, and it's gibberish.
00:11:00.100
And so when people hear him, whether he weighs in on Ukraine or he weighs in on Afghanistan or he weighs in that there's zero inflation, nobody believes him anymore.
00:11:09.660
And that works to his advantage because otherwise we concentrate on his cognitive disabilities.
00:11:16.520
But now we say, you know what, if he slurs a word or he does something, turns around and shakes somebody's hand that doesn't exist, or he gets a little bit too close to somebody, that's Joe.
00:11:27.880
We know what he does, and we don't pay any attention to it.
00:11:37.540
I mean, we've got to remember that Mark Milley told us that because the president of the United States, in his professional medical opinion, without a medical license, that if he determined that Donald Trump was erratic, then he was going to contact his Chinese counterpart to warn them.
00:11:56.300
But Donald Trump, compared to Joe Biden, I mean, it's not even close.
00:12:00.100
So, you wonder what the chairman, the joint chief, is doing now, and you wonder what the military is doing because they've had this activist role where they've assumed rules that are not constitutional in the joint chiefs, and yet they're selective about how they do that and how they evaluate a problem with the president.
00:12:18.840
The question of Joe Biden's mental fitness was raised last night in the interview, and the president's answer, I thought, was somewhat revealing.
00:12:28.280
Some people ask whether you are fit for the job, and when you hear that, I wonder what you think.
00:12:44.440
If you think I don't have the energy level or the mental acuity, then, you know, that's one thing.
00:12:51.860
You just watch and, you know, keep my schedule.
00:13:01.800
I think it's, I haven't, look, I have trouble even mentioning, even saying to myself, my own head, the number of years.
00:13:10.560
I no more think of myself as being as old as I am than fly.
00:13:14.980
I mean, it's just not, I haven't observed anything in terms of, there's not things I don't do now that I did before.
00:13:29.000
There's, I, I don't even, I no more think of myself as being old as I am than fly.
00:13:39.880
Yeah, the Romans had a phrase, the thing speaks for itself, and that's what it does.
00:13:45.440
I mean, he's trying to explain that he's cognitively sharp, and he, he can't explain why he's cognitively sharp.
00:13:56.040
We know that he is not cognitively sharp, but in his defense, Megan, he was always erratic, and before he had this problem with age, there's two things going on.
00:14:07.380
One is age, but this myth of Joe Biden is this, on top of things, nice guy, competent, going all the way back to his plagiarism problems, his lies about law school, his really venomous attack on Robert Bork and Clarence Thomas, his,
00:14:24.780
all of these stories, you know, about put you in chains, corn pop sagas, you ain't black, Barack Obama's the first clean, articulate African-American.
00:14:37.000
He's got a bad history, even when he was not non-compositive.
00:14:42.980
We all have this image that sad Joe Biden is not Joe Biden from Scranton, the good, lovable guy that was going to unite us.
00:14:49.940
But that was a complete myth that was fabricated.
00:14:52.860
And he was always a hard, very, I think, very rude, tough, mean SOB.
00:15:06.280
He led him down a path of, you know, Washington wasn't always like this.
00:15:10.860
It used to be you didn't, you know, you hate the message, not the man.
00:15:17.060
So he didn't ask him about the dark Brandon speech, you know, in front of the red lights and the towers.
00:15:23.220
He didn't follow up by saying just a couple of weeks ago, you basically said half the country is awful.
00:15:31.340
Right. He let him he gave him a pass on the fact that Miss President Unity has been disparaging literally half the country since he took the oath of office and before.
00:15:41.460
He has. And I think what Scott Pelley and the left really mean is that in the old days, when John McCain ran and they said he couldn't remember how many houses he had or he had an affair with this woman or when Mitt Romney ran and they said he put a dog on the top of his car or he's going to put you all in chains.
00:16:02.740
That was a very accomplished group of professional African-Americans he was talking to in a very condescending fashion or his wife was an equestrian or he had an elevator.
00:16:13.160
They just did that. And the Republicans played by the Marcus of Queensbury rules.
00:16:17.540
They said, you know what, we're never going to win like George H.W. Bush did in 1988 under Lee Atwater.
00:16:23.080
We just don't do that anymore. No more Willie Horton, no more Boston Harbor, no more tank commercial.
00:16:27.980
We're going to play by the Marcus of Queensbury. And they lost six out of the seven popular votes.
00:16:35.120
So now I think the Republicans are starting to push back. And all of a sudden, this is not fair.
00:16:40.780
There used to be a good old time in politics when everybody was friendly.
00:16:44.380
No, it was basically the left had a blank check and nobody replied.
00:16:48.440
And Trump came along for good or evil. He brought in a bare knuckles.
00:16:52.600
We're going to reply tit for cat. And suddenly it's, wow, what happened to America?
00:16:58.360
Well, what happened to America is somebody emulated the tactics that they had used.
00:17:06.840
The I can't get off of Biden on 60 Minutes without talking about inflation.
00:17:11.820
The downplaying of what the country's going through right now with their grocery bills through the roof.
00:17:18.960
Their gas bills are still high, maybe not as high at the pump as they were in June, but very high.
00:17:25.680
Not to mention what they're paying for electricity back at home.
00:17:28.740
He gets asked about it by Scott Pelley and basically pooh-poohs it. Here it is.
00:17:34.080
As you know, last Tuesday, the annual inflation rate came in at 8.3%.
00:17:49.500
Well, first of all, let's put this in perspective.
00:18:03.740
I mean, it's not, you're acting make it sound like all of a sudden, my God, it went to 8.2%.
00:18:09.240
It's the highest inflation rate, Mr. President, in 40 years.
00:18:14.840
We're in a position where for the last several months, it hasn't spiked.
00:18:27.340
That's like you fall in a pit and you're 10 feet in a pit and you can't get out.
00:18:31.860
But maybe the water's coming up and you float up two inches and you say, well, I'm not as
00:18:37.320
bad as I was, you know, two inches below, but you're still in a pit and we have hyperinflation.
00:18:43.500
What Pelley didn't say is that we've also had two quarters of negative growth.
00:18:48.440
So we're in a recession and now we're in a quandary because if we raise interest rates,
00:18:53.480
which we have to do to stop this hyperinflation, which Biden discounts, then we're going to
00:19:00.360
And if we don't raise interest rate, the inflation rate's going to go back up.
00:19:03.780
And the only reason the inflation rate is it's hyperinflation, but the reason it hasn't
00:19:09.620
even gotten higher is because we're in a recession and people know that.
00:19:14.300
And you can see it with the housing market, the days of houses on the market, you can see
00:19:18.460
it, the unemployment rate's starting to creep up.
00:19:21.900
You can just feel it, that we're in a recession.
00:19:24.680
And I think we're going to get three and four quarters of negative growth and we're going
00:19:33.960
He printed all of this money, quantitative easement.
00:19:39.220
And rather than just let the economy deal with it naturally, he pumped it up with all
00:19:45.180
And we had these huge $4 trillion in new money that was spread around.
00:19:50.200
And then he cut back energy, which was still the life force of the economy and war.
00:19:56.060
No president in history has had fewer new federal leases for gas and oil bill than Biden did.
00:20:01.520
So he deliberately got what he wanted, a restrictive carbon market.
00:20:13.140
It's a very strange logic, Megan, that when you have this high inflation and you're not
00:20:19.580
worried that it hasn't dipped down from a year ago.
00:20:22.480
And then yet you just look at month to month and you say, well, it could be worse.
00:20:28.820
You know, even Jerry Ford said whip inflation now.
00:20:31.440
And Jimmy Carter turned loose Paul Volcker to kill it.
00:20:37.540
He killed the economy, but he killed inflation in the process.
00:20:40.400
Yeah, we went up to nine and eight percent under you, under your leadership.
00:20:48.020
Megan, don't you think there's something, though, about Biden, his demeanor, that when
00:20:53.420
he says these things and Pelley asks these questions or anybody and they look at his face
00:20:59.060
and he looks confused and he gets angry and he's given the floor and he says these crazy
00:21:05.720
things and there's never a counter because the people think, well, why would I counter
00:21:23.920
And people don't pose it because they know that they're afraid that if they do, he has
00:21:30.820
So in a very strange way, his cognitive challenges have really worked to excuse his record.
00:21:40.040
Even a follow up question, I will say, you're not arguing that 8.3 is good news is kind
00:21:47.080
Like, I'm telling you, Mr. President, don't argue that, you know, it's he Scott Pelley could
00:21:53.100
sense that he was out on a limb and, you know, kind of threw him an olive branch there.
00:21:58.100
And Biden didn't understand and continued to defend his 8.2 or in his 8.3.
00:22:04.260
The final question I wanted to ask you about was it was an interesting exchange on whether
00:22:14.320
It finally occurred to me the Democrats have gotten to him and he may know it's not possible
00:22:21.100
Sir, are you committed to running again or are there certain conditions that have to
00:22:29.120
Look, if I were to say to you, I'm running again, all of a sudden a whole range of things
00:22:33.480
come into play that I have requirements I have to change and move and do.
00:22:40.020
And it's much too early to make that kind of decision.
00:22:48.900
And within the time frame that makes sense after this next election cycle here, going
00:22:56.840
You say that it's much too early to make that decision.
00:23:00.600
I take it the decision has not been made in your own head.
00:23:03.960
Look, my intentions I said to begin with is that I would run again, but it's just an intention.
00:23:24.240
Gavin Newsom is all he here in California has basically announced he's going to run.
00:23:29.480
And they know that the people that were in that primary, Megan, in 2020 are not capable.
00:23:36.700
You and I are critiquing Joe Biden, but it's on the premise that compared to the other people
00:23:42.580
that were in that field, whether it was Cory Booker or Beto or Bernie Sanders or Elizabeth
00:23:48.640
Warren, he was the best they had, the most presentable.
00:23:51.920
But now they have a new group of younger people, I think, and he's not going to run.
00:23:58.380
So even with his approval reading, you saw what they did with Jim Clyburn and what they
00:24:05.640
They just decided that he was going to be the nominee and he was going to be old Joe Biden
00:24:11.200
And then all of a sudden, mysteriously, Warren dropped out and, you know, Buttigieg dropped
00:24:22.220
Even with his approval reading inching back up, it's nowhere near as low as it used to
00:24:29.620
And now on his string of legislative victories, you know, half of which may be struck down
00:24:39.160
But, you know, I went back and I think a lot of people have.
00:24:41.620
If you go back to the two greatest setbacks of the Democrats in the House in the last,
00:24:45.880
you know, quarter century, it was Bill Clinton's 1994 wipeout by Newt Gingrich and the Contract
00:24:53.180
And then 2010 Tea Party rebuke of Barack Obama and both of those cases.
00:24:58.220
It was pretty clear that entire summer that they were going to really suffer.
00:25:02.460
But after Labor Day, all of a sudden the media said, we have new polls.
00:25:09.880
There's going to there's a renaissance by Obama's now more popular.
00:25:14.420
Clinton's got his mojo back, kind of like the Aviator Joe stories.
00:25:22.140
I mean, we're going to have the cycle dramas, Megan.
00:25:29.700
We had the Trump raid that kind of fell out for a while.
00:25:32.780
Then we had the Phantom of the Opera speech with all those sets.
00:25:37.580
And then we and then we have now the January 6th.
00:25:41.100
So they're going to do anything other than talk about.
00:25:46.700
And I don't think anybody that's listening should be fooled.
00:25:49.740
They're going to be they're going to really suffer a really big rebuke.
00:25:53.540
And I think a lot of the polls, as we know from those two critical years in 94 and 2010,
00:25:58.980
were off by about four or five points in every race.
00:26:03.760
The Phantom of the Opera speech is an interesting way of referring to dark brand.
00:26:08.120
And that play, that show by Andrew Lloyd Webber is now closing after 30 plus years on Broadway.
00:26:24.960
So if you haven't seen it and you want to get to New York, now's the time.
00:26:27.900
And that may be the case for you and your relationship with President Biden, if you like him, too.
00:26:36.560
More with the brilliant Victor Davis Hanson as we pick up what happened in Martha's Vineyard
00:26:40.420
and is still happening, an update on what they're doing right now after this very quick break.
00:26:53.160
Victor, the immigration crisis has taken a turn I've never seen before in the years I've been covering this
00:27:04.280
Governor Abbott in Texas, Ducey in Arizona, and now DeSantis in Florida,
00:27:08.460
taking migrants and bussing them to sanctuary cities in blue states like New York City,
00:27:16.260
like now we see Martha's Vineyard thanks to DeSantis, Washington, D.C., and so on.
00:27:23.480
And Governor DeSantis just said those first two flights that he sent to Martha's Vineyard
00:27:30.000
This is we get news that another six buses from Texas have just left to bring more of these migrants
00:27:36.700
to New York City as the shelter system here reaches its tipping point.
00:27:42.340
But the Martha's Vineyard reaction is what made all the news, right?
00:27:46.680
Like this town, and I get it, it's a small town.
00:27:52.480
They reacted as though 50,000 had been sent to them declaring a, quote,
00:27:58.400
humanitarian crisis on Martha's Vineyard because 50 people showed up.
00:28:07.860
I mean, 50 people, and they all virtue signaled.
00:28:12.160
They said they were all patting each other on the back, and then they shipped them out.
00:28:17.320
You know, and then everybody went back and calculated how many empty bedrooms were on
00:28:24.520
How many people could possibly be there in the summer if they had no facility?
00:28:28.480
There were 200,000, and they could have a million.
00:28:32.100
I, you know, I'm at ground zero here in Central California, rural California, and right over
00:28:36.520
there, Megan, there's two or three houses about a quarter mile away, and there's old farmhouses
00:28:42.340
that somebody purchased, and then they have sheds, shops, garages, barns, Winnebago's that
00:28:50.980
don't run, trailers that don't run, and there's 50 or 60 people in each one of these places.
00:28:55.220
So I can tell you that 50 people can live exempt from regulation, at least in California,
00:29:01.780
and not every blue city, and they can, they're fine, I guess.
00:29:05.340
And so this community that I live in has been inundated with people who came illegally across
00:29:13.480
And so, you know, it's, it's, it was a brilliant stroke because on a lot of levels that Ron DeSantis
00:29:20.500
is trying to show, I think, the Republican constituencies that he's Donald Trump's mega
00:29:27.340
You can have the mega agenda, but you don't have the Twitter cul-de-sacs or the gratuitous
00:29:34.640
And then people threw it back at him and said, yeah, but you don't, you won't, nobody can
00:29:39.240
fight the left, and gets up every morning thinking, I got to fight the left, goes to bed
00:29:45.400
But when he took on Disney and people like that, and then he does this, they're starting,
00:29:52.000
that's what this is intended to show you that he's, he's as fiery as Trump, but he's more
00:30:00.320
And the message is that we have a bi-coastal leak that's never subject to the consequences
00:30:06.660
Maybe it'll start a trend that maybe we can say, you can't be on a private jet if you
00:30:11.900
vote for the new Green Deal, or we should say everybody should take a pledge not to live
00:30:16.820
in a house with greater than 5,000 square feet so we don't use too many carbon fuels.
00:30:23.100
Or, you know, we could, if you, if you are against charter schools and you're pro-teachers
00:30:28.600
union, then maybe you shouldn't put your kids in prep school, stuff like that.
00:30:34.160
I'm sure that people in Florida are thinking about what's next.
00:30:37.540
And then, you know, another thing is that they're, they're kind of emulating the left
00:30:41.240
because the left has dominated the news cycle, as I said, with January 6th and the raid and
00:30:46.820
the, and the semi-fascist and the, and the speech.
00:30:50.300
And now all of a sudden we haven't heard that they, it's performance art on the part of the
00:30:54.580
Republicans and it's, but it's more effective because they're, it's connected with a real
00:30:58.800
issue, an open border rather than just Donald Trump's supposed melodrama.
00:31:04.660
Some on the left and soft right, uh, have been pushing back against DeSantis' tactics saying,
00:31:12.620
You're using human beings to make a political point.
00:31:15.800
I mean, I will say, I mean, there's been hysterical people.
00:31:18.060
Some are referring to this as like the Holocaust.
00:31:22.600
I mean, okay, this is not like the Holocaust, but the way I see this every day, because we
00:31:28.040
cover the border a lot here, sometimes with you and you're living it.
00:31:31.800
Um, this humanitarian crisis is happening to the States along the Southern border and the
00:31:37.760
people who get pulled across by coyotes or drug gangs or bad dealers, uh, who are endangering
00:31:45.520
the lives of kids and women and innocent guys every day.
00:31:50.920
This message of open borders is getting people killed.
00:31:53.620
And so if 50 people need to get on a plane to Martha's Vineyard, which by the way, the
00:32:00.400
reporting is that it was consensual and it was voluntary and it was disclosed.
00:32:04.480
Um, there's some question about that, but that's what the majority of reporting is in
00:32:09.200
order to send a message to people that this isn't going to end well, and that your policies
00:32:13.620
in your sanctuary, sanctuary city, so-called, are actually getting people killed.
00:32:17.740
Then there's a very good argument that it's worth it.
00:32:23.980
No, I mean, if you say to people in my community that are here illegally and just cross the border
00:32:29.460
and I see them every day, a quarter mile from my home and in my home, I mean, people come
00:32:34.080
by and knock on the door and they, you know, and I said to you, I can give you a ticket right
00:32:40.440
now to go to a seaside resort called Martha's Vineyard.
00:32:43.780
That's one of the wealthiest places in the United States.
00:32:46.020
And it's got more, they would love to go compared to what they're living in now.
00:32:50.500
And so that was one of the things that DeSantis deliberately did.
00:32:53.840
It was very hard for them to make the argument that they're being exploited when they're being
00:32:57.660
ushered into one of the most, uh, Tony, uh, communities in the United States.
00:33:02.760
The second thing he did, which was smart was he didn't create these tactics.
00:33:07.500
He just emulated what the federal government's been doing for a year and a half.
00:33:11.240
They have been busing and flying people in non-transparently, but unlike DeSantis who did
00:33:19.640
And they're in this area of Iowa, they have flights that come in and then people, and who
00:33:25.600
When you talk to people, they say the following, Megan, they say, you know, we're really worried
00:33:29.800
about our schools because we fought hard for advanced placement and we can't have advanced
00:33:34.360
placement because we don't have the resources if we have all these non-English speakers.
00:33:43.220
And this is one of the reasons they're going to vote against.
00:33:45.700
A lot of them are going to vote against the democratic agenda.
00:33:48.660
And they say things like my mother, uh, is on dialysis and all of a sudden there's people
00:33:53.400
coming across the border and they swarm the health facilities, or they'll say, you know what?
00:33:57.920
These people are coming across the border and they're M13 or Norteños or Sireños gangs.
00:34:03.020
And they go rough up my kid because he doesn't speak Spanish.
00:34:07.220
And so there's all these other problems that the left doesn't care about.
00:34:12.080
It's basically an elite problem that this, I don't want to use that word too often, but
00:34:16.420
a bi-coastal left-wing elite, mostly white, that virtue singles and performance art, they're
00:34:25.100
Because I don't, I really want to be very careful, but I don't, I work with them at
00:34:30.880
I don't think they feel comfortable with people who are poor or non-white and they know that.
00:34:37.900
And that's why they create this, this entire alternate universe of caring.
00:34:45.600
You never really saw an example like Martha's Vineyard, where if you looked at their faces,
00:35:00.240
You could have put them all in a beautiful tent city on the Obama's lawn.
00:35:04.800
OK, we lost his mic, so we're going to try to fix it and break and we will be right back,
00:35:10.060
we hope, with more Victor Davis Hanson right after this quick break.
00:35:12.940
But I will tell you, there's much, much more because I've got to play you the soundbite
00:35:15.780
of what the woman, the coordinator in Martha's Vineyard said about these migrants and now
00:35:22.980
And some of the Martha's Vineyard residents who shoved these immigrants out of their town
00:35:26.740
so fast, if you blinked, you would have missed their stint there, are now saying they're
00:35:39.560
So we were talking about these coastal elites who are they support these policies in theory,
00:35:45.440
but not in practice when it comes to their neighborhoods.
00:35:47.840
And just to set you up, just a couple of items on the news.
00:35:52.240
El Paso, Texas, right now, completely overwhelmed.
00:35:56.680
Thousands are already filling the local local shelters there, which are at capacity of
00:36:03.380
Children as young as two being forced to sleep on the street in El Paso because they do not
00:36:10.600
The Border Patrol in one week alone released 1,000 migrants onto the streets of El Paso.
00:36:18.540
And now you've got Martha's Vineyard with 50, 50 migrants bused there reacting as follows.
00:36:27.220
Here's Lisa Belcastro, the coordinator for Martha's Vineyard, Martha's Vineyard's homeless shelter,
00:36:35.500
The difficult challenges are we have at some point in time, they have to move from here
00:36:44.500
We cannot we don't have the services to take care of 50 immigrants and we certainly don't
00:36:52.640
We're in a housing crisis as we are on this island.
00:36:55.300
And so we don't we can't house everyone here that lives here and works here.
00:37:02.620
And then just just to follow it up, Victor, Mayor Muriel Bowser of Washington, D.C., the
00:37:14.220
We don't have an infrastructure to handle this this type of level of immigration to our
00:37:25.280
Because Texas, you see, Texas is set up to handle 1000 migrants a day in El Paso and
00:37:33.500
kids drowning in the in the Rio Grande trying to get over.
00:37:37.540
It's so bad in Eagle Pass, Texas, they estimate they're recovering one dead migrant body a
00:37:42.740
day as people try to get into the area or get there and can't survive.
00:37:46.500
And so like this is absurd for these other towns, these sanctuary cities to say like, hey,
00:37:51.300
Yeah, I think the subtext is that these are a bunch of Mexican people and this is a Mexican
00:37:57.380
person problem and they live along the border or Mexican-Americans.
00:38:01.580
So this is this is people coming in from the country they used to come in.
00:38:06.680
We're not going to handle it, even though the people in these communities had no vote or
00:38:11.000
no say in who set border policies, which came from Washington, nor do we we don't discuss
00:38:17.620
that the people in Martha's Vineyard, if you pull them, say, I don't know.
00:38:25.700
The left likes the idea for a variety of reasons.
00:38:27.920
They feel that they're creating a constituency that will be dependent on the federal government
00:38:34.720
They feel they flip California, Nevada, Colorado, New Mexico, maybe Arizona and Texas someday.
00:38:46.580
And they've talked about it and they've always talked about the new democratic majority.
00:38:51.200
And so they created this and they let it go on because they want it to go on.
00:38:55.680
And what they're angry now is they've been exposed that they don't like these people.
00:39:01.320
And she says we don't have the resources you want to say.
00:39:04.280
Well, how did you have the resources to welcome in 200,000 wealthy visitors just a month ago?
00:39:11.720
Where did they stay if you can't have 50 people?
00:39:14.840
And we have Michelle Obama and Barack Obama about every six weeks come out of their Colorama
00:39:20.960
mansion or their new Hawaii mansion or their Martha's Vineyard mansion.
00:39:25.820
And then basically indict America for being illiberal.
00:39:30.020
You want to say to them, just give us one bed, one bedroom and one bath, or just give
00:39:36.740
us one quarter of an acre on your lawn and and let's see what you could help.
00:39:43.540
Look what Poland's doing for the Ukrainian refugees, right?
00:39:47.880
Like people are opening up their their spare bedrooms and letting them stay there.
00:39:52.380
I have some American friends overseas who are opening up their homes to house these refugees.
00:39:57.080
But these people who have a sanctuary city who try to pride themselves and claim to be
00:40:01.940
our moral betters by saying they would that they they're ready to take care of these people
00:40:06.040
when the when push came to shove refused to do it.
00:40:08.540
They shoved they shoved them off to a military base on Cape Cod.
00:40:17.320
I walk every night on my 40 little 42 acres and every other night I see somebody from
00:40:24.280
Oaxaca, Mexico who does not speak English and wants to walk around or he wants to take
00:40:36.640
You're not going to go back now and say, get off my grass, that type of attitude, because
00:40:41.840
you can't because there's three million people who come across the border and you can see
00:40:47.760
You can see all through rural California and all the rules.
00:40:52.040
And just to clarify, so it's two million encounters, but that does not include the so-called getaways.
00:40:57.540
So it could be as many as three million who have come into this country over the past year
00:41:03.020
They don't care about the people who suffer on the communities.
00:41:07.940
They don't care about the fentanyl that's going to kill 100,000 people a year.
00:41:11.580
They don't care about the cynicism of the Mexican government that uses this as a safety
00:41:16.240
valve and likes to cause problems to the United States.
00:41:20.220
They don't care about what the Chinese are smiling with their drug conduits.
00:41:26.300
And they do care that they're seen as progressive and enlightened from a distance.
00:41:31.600
But this is why they're so angry, because they can't get out of it.
00:41:35.420
And no matter what they say, every argument turns out to implode.
00:41:40.240
They say, you know, this is treating people like commodities.
00:41:43.320
And then you say, well, Joe Biden's been busing them.
00:41:50.940
Well, you did have those facilities for tourists and mansions.
00:41:58.940
And so it doesn't, they're squirming and squirming and squirming.
00:42:03.060
Well, now, now those same Martha's Vineyard residents are looking back at their 12 hours
00:42:09.380
with these migrants as though they were the Polish taking in the Ukrainians.
00:42:19.620
Migrants, 44 hour visit leaves indelible mark on Martha's Vineyard.
00:42:24.340
Somebody's actually saying they enriched us in their day here.
00:42:27.580
Remember, they have a piece, one piece of the article says, one asylum seeker in his
00:42:35.160
He asked about the price of a hamburger at a fancy eatery.
00:42:37.960
When told it was $26, he noted that was more than he earned in a month in Venezuela when
00:42:49.360
The governor, one guy says, the governor of Florida got it all wrong.
00:42:55.860
They really care as you as they booted these people off to a military base again in under
00:43:01.500
One woman, Jackie Stallings, says she hopes to visit the migrants at the Cape Cod base,
00:43:09.080
And that's going to make Jackie feel better about her sanctuary city message.
00:43:13.660
While at the border, women are being raped and kids are drowning in the Rio Grande every day.
00:43:33.480
He's in the middle of the Rio Grande and he is going under.
00:43:42.280
And the guy narrating the video and the original, you can hear his concerns and he's going to die.
00:43:50.240
But as I say, up to one person a day is dying in just one of these towns, Eagle Pass, Texas,
00:43:57.380
not to mention all the others who die in the back of trucks who get raped and sold into sex traffic.
00:44:01.780
So why doesn't Jackie spend some time thinking about how to stop the lure to these people and taking these risks
00:44:08.960
instead of talking about going to visit the people at the military base who she helped kick out?
00:44:18.920
It's the same ideology why John Kerry flies around in this gas guzzling, carbon polluting private jet to save us from fossil fuel.
00:44:28.940
It's the same idea of these people that I have to work with at Stanford University.
00:44:33.760
Those kids are in the most tony prep schools, which I have no problem with, except they damn charter schools.
00:44:42.120
They damn any public school that tries to reform.
00:44:47.360
And they love teachers union, but they never would put their children there.
00:44:51.060
And we've created this entire, I know it's a trite term, ruling class, but they really do believe that because they were the winners in globalization,
00:45:01.420
that they have skills or money or influence that allows them to pontificate without ever suffering any of these consequences,
00:45:10.240
whether it's shutting down the fossil fuel industry, opening the border, hyping this inflation.
00:45:19.200
And now that that veneer was torn off, Megan, that scab.
00:45:27.100
They don't care about anybody but their lifestyle.
00:45:29.560
When that woman said we're not equipped, what she meant was we demand a particular type of lifestyle that we earned,
00:45:36.680
and nobody else has it, and we're not going to give it up for anybody, and that's our birthright because we're superior to everybody.
00:45:45.240
The notion that Texas is equipped is completely ignorant, and the notion that Arizona is and that Florida is completely ignorant.
00:45:55.800
So before you set these lures, you have to think about our friends down in the south.
00:45:59.920
I should apologize to Miss Jackie because I don't know whether she helped push the immigrants out.
00:46:05.000
And I've got to squeeze in a quick break, but I've got to play for you Kareem Jean-Pierre's reaction to all of this, Victor,
00:46:11.840
because it may be her lowest moment yet, and that's saying something.
00:46:21.380
So, Victor, on the subject of these kids and their families who try to make it across the border to get into the country right now,
00:46:32.340
and we're expecting to set a record this year on the number who are crossing or attempted to cross,
00:46:37.080
Fox News went down there and interviewed—it was Griff Jenkins, my old pal Griff Jenkins from Fox—and interviewed one of these migrants
00:46:46.080
and listened to the following very telling exchange.
00:46:50.560
Okay, so this is somebody who had been bused to D.C. by one of the southern governors.
00:46:56.680
Do you believe that the border is closed, or is it open?
00:47:02.460
Do you believe that all the migrants believe that the border is open?
00:47:05.080
Yeah, everybody believes that the border is open.
00:47:13.740
But it's open for you to come illegally, right?
00:47:25.480
It begs the question, when we see this every night that the border is open,
00:47:30.480
and we see the people entering illegally say, confirm, the border is open,
00:47:34.960
and then they say it's closed, like Kamala Harris or secure, they're lying.
00:47:40.080
And everybody knows they're lying, but we don't know what to do about it
00:47:47.520
You know, it's what you see, what you know, what people say is an alternate reality.
00:47:52.100
And it's so ironic because they kept saying that Donald Trump lived in an alternate reality.
00:48:00.380
Well, I mean, it's crazy when you think about the fact that 60 Minutes did not bother to ask Joe Biden
00:48:04.900
Like, of all the things that made the list, this wasn't one of them.
00:48:08.240
Thank goodness, Karine Jean-Pierre was asked about the crisis and asked whether the White House
00:48:15.100
stands by its comments direct from Kamala Harris, direct from Karine Jean-Pierre,
00:48:20.620
the White House spokesperson, that the border is, quote, secure, that it's secure.
00:48:25.360
And truly, this may have been her lowest moment yet.
00:48:28.240
She made the mistake of going off of those notes, which she so desperately needs.
00:48:35.080
Does the White House stand by those comments that the border is secure?
00:48:39.200
What we stand by is that we are doing everything that we can to make sure that we follow the
00:48:49.040
That's why we have historic funding to do just that, to make sure that the folks that we encounter
00:49:16.120
The process means that somebody legally comes across the border and they get across, and
00:49:21.020
then everybody knows you get across, so more come and more come.
00:49:24.740
And she calls this a process, and then she calls it secure, and everybody knows she's
00:49:28.840
lying, or she's either lying or she's so incompetent that she doesn't even know what
00:49:35.740
They're doing this, and the only thing that's mysterious, Megan, is why are they doing this?
00:49:42.220
And I don't know the answer other than I feel if they want a constituency, they feel.
00:49:48.920
It would be highly ironic that within a generation, these immigrants, if they stay, may become
00:49:55.820
a little bit more skeptical of the people who welcome them in because of other issues that
00:50:03.060
But nevertheless, in the short term, they're right.
00:50:05.080
This is the constituency they want, and they feel that it will bring dividends in the near
00:50:19.160
And this really is going to be interesting because if the House Republicans take over,
00:50:24.380
and there's going to be a lot who are going to talk about impeachment.
00:50:29.000
But if they were to introduce articles of impeachment, it wouldn't be over a phone call to a foreign
00:50:35.980
It would be over the deliberate destruction of federal immigration law and the inability
00:50:40.160
or unwillingness of the commander in chief to faithfully execute the laws as he swore.
00:50:45.980
He wouldn't go anywhere in the Senate, probably.
00:50:48.300
But the point is, if there is such a thing as an impeachable offense, this is it, to just
00:50:53.320
deliberately destroy federal law the way that Biden has.
00:50:56.600
The Democrats now are crying foul, saying this is human trafficking.
00:51:08.400
Gavin Newsom, who's challenging Ron DeSantis to a debate, is also urging Attorney General Merrick
00:51:16.400
Garland to investigate DeSantis and other GOP governors who have been sending migrants in
00:51:21.220
sanctuary cities for alleged kidnapping and civil rights violations.
00:51:27.060
Meanwhile, everybody, we're told, who gets on these buses signs a consent form and is
00:51:32.620
I mean, like, to your point, who wouldn't want to go to this beautiful, you know, coastal
00:51:40.220
And Eric Adams, again, Sanctuary City, New York, his city mayor, says this is a humanitarian
00:51:46.740
So Martha's Vineyard had one with just 50 migrants.
00:51:50.280
New York City says it's suffering a humanitarian crisis.
00:51:54.820
Texas has shipped more than 7,700 illegal immigrants to Washington, D.C. and more than 2,000 to New
00:52:06.640
By the way, we have 20 million a day when people come in to do their jobs.
00:52:12.600
And meantime, you compare that to what's happening in the Texas towns.
00:52:16.820
Del Rio, Texas had almost 50,000, 49,500 migrant encounters in July alone, 50,000 in July
00:52:27.660
That is more than the population of the city itself, which is just over 34,000 people.
00:52:36.300
Martha's Vineyard, humanitarian crisis with 50, they have 17,000 people there.
00:52:40.600
And just one other stat for you, McAllen, Texas has a population of 142,000.
00:52:46.100
They also took in more than the population of their entire city in migrants during the
00:52:53.820
So these sanctuary city mayors have a lot of nerve saying humanitarian crisis.
00:53:00.920
It means that you have people arrive in these communities along the border from the poorest
00:53:06.020
regions in the world, Central America, Oaxaca, Mexico, and they come and they have no English
00:53:11.880
skills and they don't have a high school diploma.
00:53:22.120
So then the school districts have to provide non-English instruction.
00:53:29.820
And so you're going to have to find rental agreements for them.
00:53:33.660
And then you've got problems of law enforcement.
00:53:38.160
A lot of people come with a lot of health problems.
00:53:40.780
And the system is already dysfunctional for poor people anyway under Obamacare.
00:53:45.560
And so these people and Martha Vineyard know exactly what they're talking about when they
00:53:49.880
say, get them out of here, because it's inconvenience for everybody.
00:53:54.200
If we just had 200,000 people come legally and we vetted them, it would work, but not
00:54:02.780
We're telling people in the U.S. military and the federal workforce, if you don't get
00:54:09.220
And yet we're welcoming foreign nationals across the border without a vaccination test,
00:54:17.840
So actually, the citizen is of less importance to this government, this administration, than is
00:54:23.520
a foreign national, because we don't apply the same rule.
00:54:26.860
If I just came in, you know, in June, and I saw a person that had lost his passport on
00:54:32.420
the plane coming in from the Middle East, and they were not able to go in the United States.
00:54:38.460
What does that say that a person is not a citizen, just walks across?
00:54:42.840
And so they understand all too well all of the difficulties, economic, social, cultural,
00:54:48.900
political, that happens when you swarm people without any audit or any background checks.
00:54:55.100
And that is why they don't want them in their communities, because they know too well what
00:55:01.460
And they don't mind because they don't like these border communities.
00:55:09.240
They think it's kind of cute and neat that their open border policies fall exclusively on
00:55:14.820
these people, and I won't get into what they mean by these people, but I think we all know.
00:55:19.760
And now there's a little tiny boomerang, just an iota, and they go hysterical.
00:55:27.300
To your point earlier, if they're so upset about the busing of migrants or the plane fulls
00:55:32.260
of migrants from Texas, from Arizona, potentially funded by Florida even now, to these northern
00:55:39.040
towns, why weren't they upset when Joe Biden was doing it?
00:55:42.700
Why weren't they upset about the plane loads of people who were coming to Westchester County,
00:55:46.880
New York, overnight that the New York Post got on camera?
00:55:49.760
They couldn't have cared less when it was their leader doing it.
00:55:52.760
But when the towns that actually have to deal with the crisis do it, it's the Holocaust.
00:55:58.420
Chris Hayes of MSNBC, deeply, deeply sick and dehumanizing to fling human beings somewhere
00:56:07.320
I mentioned to you, oh yeah, here's a CNN reporter, former CNN reporter, Jackie Schneckner,
00:56:12.960
who tweets, the Nazis also had a relocation program, referring to DeSantis.
00:56:18.740
And so they're really actually comparing this to Nazi-esque behavior.
00:56:22.740
So your bottom line on whether this actually is working and whether it was a good move by
00:56:34.500
They're elitist and they have no concern about anybody other than their selfish self.
00:56:42.460
They knew exactly what these communities were struggling, mostly Mexican-American people.
00:56:48.940
They thought it was kind of neat that they lived in red states and that their policies, not
00:56:53.160
theirs, their policies of open borders and blue state open borders especially, fell on these
00:57:00.560
And they loved the idea that Texas and Arizona and Florida were dealing with these problems.
00:57:07.300
And then it came around to bite them and they went hysterical.
00:57:09.640
And you can always tell that when they have the reducto ad hitlarium argument.
00:57:13.600
Every time the leftist gets trapped and they have no means of escape, they always evoke
00:57:21.440
Ken Burns did it the other night with his Holocaust documentary.
00:57:26.100
Well, DeSantis, as I said, he says those two flights were, quote, just the beginning.
00:57:37.760
We're going to be right back with a story we've been working on very hard.
00:57:41.820
And I'm really, really looking forward to sharing with you.
00:57:44.580
I knew a lot about Allison and Tom Barclidge before I actually met them.
00:57:51.760
They were the couple suffering through life's worst nightmare.
00:57:56.040
Eight months earlier, their teenage son had died suddenly and mysteriously.
00:58:09.100
And to be honest, there was also this question looming.
00:58:13.720
How will I handle being around people whose struggle is likely to remind me of my and most
00:58:23.220
But what I soon noticed about Allison and Tom and their daughter, Alexis, turned their story
00:58:31.620
Because what I felt around this family, what they exuded, was not darkness.
00:58:44.040
They taught a master class at the beach this summer in how to grieve and how to live in
00:59:06.280
The All-Boys Catholic High School had been dominating the playing fields outside Philadelphia
00:59:12.780
That was the day they clinched the league championship.
00:59:16.760
No one was happier about the win than team manager Blake Barklage.
00:59:20.460
As he headed to the post-game party, his mother Allison checked in, the usual back and forth
00:59:29.780
I had been texting him about when he was getting home or whatever, and I was like, I love you,
00:59:41.020
That text, those words, would be the last Allison would say to Blake.
00:59:45.360
She and her husband, Tom, were about to lose their only son.
00:59:50.700
Their daughter, Alexis, would have to turn 16 without her big brother, and Blake's friends
00:59:55.700
and teammates, Kyle and Hayden, would never be the same.
00:59:59.140
We all pretty much had perfect lives and anyone's normal standard.
01:00:03.560
And then after that day, I don't know, it kind of, it was like, it was life-changing.
01:00:11.140
The day had been picture perfect, a winning game and the gathering of a brotherhood, young
01:00:16.460
men all going through the rites of passage of a high school senior year.
01:00:20.200
We won the Philadelphia Catholic League championship, and then we went to a team party at someone's
01:00:34.920
Pretty much, we were only at the house for about, I would say like 15 minutes.
01:00:42.040
And I just like felt, because we would always like joke around and like hit each other and
01:00:46.580
So like, I thought he was just like hitting my shoulder just to like tell me to move out
01:00:53.480
So he like grabbed onto my shoulders a little bit.
01:00:56.020
And then like a second later, I turned around like with a smile on my face, like seeing what
01:01:10.600
For like, I would say like a minute or two, I was, we were all kind of like freaking out.
01:01:19.420
Not really sure if it was just like he passed out or something.
01:01:22.400
Well, I understand some of the guys tried CPR on him.
01:01:31.100
He was a goalkeeper on the team and he was the lifeguard.
01:01:43.260
I mean, at first I thought, well, he was eating.
01:01:49.720
So at first I thought maybe he could have been choking.
01:01:57.440
But then it was clear that after like, you could see what was happening to his body, that
01:02:06.780
I texted my mom and then my mom called Mrs. Barklage.
01:02:18.360
And he put his hand on Kyle's shoulder and then he went down.
01:02:21.700
So, but just that drive to the party first in the hospital, just like, you got a thousand
01:02:28.040
We're driving and Allison's talking to one of the moms and then we get a call from the
01:02:33.580
Like, don't go to the party, go to the hospital.
01:02:36.100
So everything just starts going and we pull into emergency room and we got put in a room
01:02:40.600
and we're sitting there like, and I just kept saying like, this, this isn't good.
01:02:44.660
And then the, uh, the, the doctor came in tears just so they, we'd been trying for 42
01:02:52.240
So we're just like, like, like a thousand things.
01:02:55.680
Just first of all, I go numb, but then he's just like, what, what just happened?
01:03:01.500
Lexi was at a Halloween party, then got the message to come home.
01:03:05.040
And I remember we, I like ran inside cause I was like, what is going on?
01:03:11.320
I just get out of the car, run in, I opened the, I opened the door and I'm like, like,
01:03:16.440
And then like, it just, my mom was like, no, like he didn't make it.
01:03:27.100
Couldn't even like stand to like literally stand.
01:03:30.900
Like I was just sitting on the floor, like hyperventilating.
01:03:39.360
My dad, um, you would stop crying for about like 30 seconds.
01:03:43.420
And then you would just think like, this is real.
01:03:52.040
Like it was just, I remember looking at my parents and like thinking like they just lost
01:03:59.600
It would take months before they understood what happened.
01:04:02.500
And I want to ask you about the cause because you did ultimately get an actual diagnosis
01:04:20.700
Spoke to the medical examiner for hours on my behalf.
01:04:25.520
And during the investigation and everything, um, ultimately, I guess, uh, he had some sort of
01:04:33.400
I don't know how long ago a virus would have been in a system to have, but he had no symptoms.
01:04:43.780
So we'll never know that piece, but, um, he had fluid in his lungs.
01:04:46.980
His heart was enlarged and the ultimate cause of death on his death certificate was, um, natural
01:04:53.680
Of course, people will ask, was it related to COVID?
01:05:05.240
I mean, he was vaccinated in, uh, that May or end of April, second dose in May, um, of
01:05:12.900
So he died in October of 2021, but he donated blood at LaSalle, um, just in a blood drive
01:05:18.340
the March of 2021 and he had the antibodies for COVID.
01:05:22.560
So he had never, we never tested him for any COVID early on.
01:05:26.360
We think he had it, but, um, he, he didn't really have any strong symptoms in July of
01:05:35.740
Um, and those were the last times he ever had any symptoms of being sick.
01:05:39.260
So little over a full year of him passing away.
01:05:42.900
And I think they say within five days, if it's something to the vaccine, someone else had
01:05:47.000
mentioned, it could be up to 40, which we are so certainly out of that window.
01:05:50.940
Um, but we'll just, we'll never know the cause infection that went to his heart.
01:05:56.240
Impossible as it was to believe an enlarged heart took down a kid already known for his
01:06:04.780
So they know a little bit about who he was and what he was like, because I've gotten to
01:06:13.660
I feel like I met a new friend and, you know, you spent a lot of time.
01:06:17.000
You spent enough time talking to you guys, talking to his, his friends, his sister, and
01:06:21.040
you really have this person come alive for you.
01:06:28.440
His friends have lots of funny stories, um, you know, of him.
01:06:31.860
And so I, I really wouldn't have thought of that initially, but I think he was funny.
01:06:38.220
He was your, your typical son, your child, because he would, he would love to challenge
01:06:43.060
Like he always thought that he had the gift of gab, that he could outsmart us out, outwit
01:06:48.740
And I would always try and get him follow some of the footsteps, some of the things I did
01:06:52.320
when I was growing up, like in terms of being a caddy.
01:06:54.360
And I always wanted him to be a caddy at the local golf course.
01:06:59.480
And he met some great people on the course and I received some great messages, but he
01:07:04.520
was just a, a kid that I would love to sit on the couch and watch a football game with
01:07:10.700
And I remember a great story with him, which we were watching a Clemson, Georgia football
01:07:15.180
And he goes, dad, whoever wins this game, that's going to be my number one choice to go to school.
01:07:22.320
It's going to be based on a lot of other things, but he was just, just the conversations
01:07:26.700
that we had and, and that, that's something that's missed is just the, the times that
01:07:33.060
I would say he was like super caring, like in a way that you don't see in a lot of people.
01:07:37.840
He was, I'd say hardworking, hilarious, outgoing, outgoing.
01:07:55.460
He was always just like the life of the party, um, always cracking jokes and, uh, making
01:08:01.960
He was always so intentional with everything that he did and said, and that he always made
01:08:10.420
I think also in addition to his wit that really, uh, you know, was, it was critical to me as
01:08:15.720
his passion, looking for service, um, which really he developed entirely on his own in high
01:08:24.260
It's a home for men with intellectual disabilities.
01:08:27.420
He sat a lot with this one gentleman who had Down syndrome and we've started to volunteer
01:08:41.660
Or they must not have seen the organ donor on his license, but we were about to walk out
01:08:48.540
We got a call a couple of days later that somebody who knows somebody who worked in a
01:08:52.400
local hospital down in Philly and they said a angel delivered life to a few kids down at
01:08:59.200
And they said, we can't know for sure, but we know it's Blake's.
01:09:12.920
As touching as Blake's gifts were, I couldn't help but wonder if any of this would really ease
01:09:20.280
Can anything be of comfort after you lose a child?
01:09:28.280
I mean, the pain, the pain is just like, you wake up every day.
01:09:38.460
I'm a very emotional guy, but I go through the day and it's some good days, some bad days,
01:09:42.560
but it's just like, I know Blake is sitting there like that.
01:09:49.320
We have, I mean, someone said to me recently, unfortunately, another, a girl, 20, I think,
01:09:56.160
she was 20, passed away of a sudden cardiac arrest in the area as well, July 9th.
01:10:02.920
And her mother, when I was talking to her, the father actually spoke at the eulogy and
01:10:07.940
he had, he had said in there, you know, you could be bitter or better, you know?
01:10:17.460
And as I've watched the Barclay family this summer, all I could think is there's such
01:10:29.640
And there was something about Blake that has brought out the very best in everyone around
01:10:39.160
You know, you hope it doesn't happen in the wake of a tragedy.
01:10:43.040
You hope it doesn't take a tragedy to see that in your life, but you guys are part of
01:10:47.700
And I just wonder if you could tell me what the LaSalle community has gone through in
01:10:53.480
the days after you lost Blake and, and then the weeks and months to follow.
01:11:04.080
I definitely believe it seeing like all the guys come together to support us.
01:11:08.420
And even we had a game for Blake and like the amount of kids that came out was unbelievable.
01:11:14.640
Learned yourself another day in by far the most difficult circumstances any of us could
01:11:21.280
Everyone supports each other and just pushes you.
01:11:24.960
Always made me feel like one of the guys, even though I was some little freshman.
01:11:32.800
Even when he wasn't having his best day, he was there to make somebody else feel better.
01:11:37.260
Blake had like a way of making literally anything we were doing fun.
01:11:41.580
Blake's friends, they're a huge part of this story.
01:11:44.900
The way they've rallied to openly talk about him, to keep his memory alive, to support you
01:11:56.980
I know they used to call you guys, the group that hung out together, the Divine Nine.
01:12:03.020
And Tom saw you recently and said, hey, the great eight.
01:12:15.280
This picture was taken of the guys last October.
01:12:18.760
Within a month, eight of them would be pallbearers at Blake's funeral.
01:12:23.180
They remain a constant presence in the Barkledges' lives.
01:12:29.820
Like, guys, this is where we need to lean on each other.
01:12:32.220
Like, I need you as much as you need me because I want to hear about the stories.
01:12:38.940
Maybe not in front of Allison, but you can tell me those stories.
01:12:41.660
I want to hear about Blake when I didn't see what he hid for me.
01:12:44.660
After what happened, we're literally, like, family now.
01:12:50.840
Like, she said to us early on that, like, she gained, like, eight new brothers.
01:12:54.940
Like, her birthday was a week after Blake passed away.
01:12:57.600
So we all, like, came together really quick just to, like, try and make her birthday special for her.
01:13:02.900
Divine Nine came into the house, snuck into the house with presents.
01:13:11.940
And she's like, and they all sang happy birthday to her.
01:13:49.940
Like, I don't even know how to describe them because they're all so different.
01:13:54.040
And they're, we each add, like, a little different sprinkle of personality to the group, which is funny at some times.
01:14:00.000
Which annoys me at sometimes, like, a little older brother would.
01:14:03.860
Like, they actually are, like, my older brothers now, which is so crazy to me.
01:14:09.040
Like, they'll embarrass me in public like an older brother would.
01:14:14.680
Like, they make sure of it every time I see them.
01:14:20.380
And they're like, all right, we just have to make sure.
01:14:23.100
Even, I remember one day putting up Christmas ornaments, the lights outside.
01:14:27.740
I started to put the lights up, broke down in tears, walked away, couldn't do it.
01:14:30.980
Next day, seven, eight of the boys are over at the house helping me put the lights on.
01:14:40.180
Whenever we would see them, it would just, like, light up the whole hallway.
01:14:43.240
But he would always make sure that he was supporting his friends to the highest standard.
01:14:47.300
Especially in the beginning of this year, I set, like, a list of schools that I was going to apply to.
01:14:51.880
And, like, almost every day, he, like, kept asking me.
01:14:54.580
He was like, so did you put your stuff in for that school yet?
01:15:00.440
So stuff like that where it's, like, where I was getting forgetful or I didn't really want to apply to that school.
01:15:07.280
He just, like, kept motivating me and kept pushing me to get it all done.
01:15:10.620
He would love to debate on things, on certain topics.
01:15:17.720
He was an advocate for what he believed in, even with people he loved, right?
01:15:22.340
So it's easy to challenge someone you dislike, whether it's a president or a corporate head or even a parent with whom you don't get along.
01:15:31.320
But when you're at an institution like LaSalle, his high school, that you love and you really consider yourself part of a brotherhood within, it's harder.
01:15:40.520
It's harder to raise your voice in challenging decisions.
01:15:45.200
I know he sent an email to the administrators at the school challenging and asking serious questions about the mask mandate.
01:15:54.180
And, I mean, this is a cause near and dear to my own heart.
01:15:57.440
But what I love about the way Blake did it was it was done 100% out of love and respect.
01:16:04.020
He really had questions about why they had promised the kids that if they got the vaccine, they could take off the masks.
01:16:12.200
And he said, I received my Pfizer shots in May and was told I did not need to wear a mask because of my vaccination status.
01:16:19.820
Fast forward till midsummer and the first rumors about vaccination status being non-important while considering masks were being spread.
01:16:30.020
The government, state and national has been mandating me to do certain actions for the past 18 months.
01:16:34.980
And now I feel that my freedom to choose and autonomy is gone.
01:16:48.740
Tom and Allison found out about the letter when the head of LaSalle read it at Blake's funeral.
01:16:56.100
But it was just amazing how he respectfully challenged.
01:16:59.920
And that's the key word that Brother James said, that he did in such a respectful way that we wanted to listen.
01:17:07.340
So, yeah, I mean, you read further in the in the mail and he and he writes as follows.
01:17:14.320
America is a shining beacon of freedom, liberty and justice across the globe.
01:17:19.320
Freedom is probably my most important virtue in our society.
01:17:25.640
So I'm not against government in the slightest.
01:17:28.680
I just have a problem that after all this time and multiple assurances that my personal freedoms would not be infringed, the government overreached.
01:17:40.640
I mean, down at the shore house with the American flag always up there.
01:17:45.300
It was just you go into his room and that's what you can tell.
01:17:51.380
Things like that was just unbelievable about him.
01:17:55.540
I mean, he read a lot of books about the American history and things like that.
01:17:58.480
Blake's patriotism was well known to his friends who introduced our family to Tom and Allison.
01:18:07.520
And I told the audience about this after we did it.
01:18:09.520
But we we've been having annually now a Fourth of July celebration that's patriotic and celebrates our country and our values at which we have taken to reading the Declaration of Independence.
01:18:19.620
And we asked you if you would be one of the readers this year, just getting to know you.
01:18:24.460
We didn't we didn't know you prior to this summer.
01:18:28.480
That to secure these rights, governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, that whenever any form of government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the right of the people to alter or to abolish it and to institute a new government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such forms as to them shall seem most likely to affect the safety and happiness.
01:18:58.480
All of his friends show up wearing like basically head to toe American flags.
01:19:06.160
We were telling me how much Blake loved America and how, you know, you see these signs.
01:19:15.100
And you were and you got up there and you felt a connection with him.
01:19:18.480
And all of his friends came decked out into the American flag and they felt the connection.
01:19:24.180
Even though Blake's applications to college were withdrawn, an acceptance letter came from Clemson, his number one choice.
01:19:34.000
This is maybe a month after Blake passed and I see a big package from Clemson.
01:19:38.200
So I open up this package and I open it up and the letter says, congratulations, Blake, you're in.
01:19:43.820
You have a congratulation to class of 2026, whatever it may be, and you have an academic scholarship.
01:19:48.380
And I was like, again, what I do, I went to the couch and just started bawling.
01:19:54.220
And Allison was like, that's got to be a sign from Blake.
01:19:58.420
And I'm like, I don't know, but it's still, it hurt.
01:20:01.160
Signs, often in orange, Clemson's color, came to them time and time again.
01:20:06.560
The LaSalle soccer team had already made orange wristbands to honor Blake and magnets with his initials.
01:20:12.460
There was the sunset Blake painted as a boy, which looks remarkably similar to the view from shore of a sailboat not far from where friends were scattering Blake's ashes.
01:20:24.460
There was the family friend who felt drawn to the orange corner flag on a soccer field.
01:20:29.080
She gets the flag and she like, she realizes it's red.
01:20:31.560
And she's like, oh, well, like, you know, because the corner flags and soccer fields are red.
01:20:35.520
But she gets there and she's like, all right, well, like, I guess it wasn't a sign or whatever, the orange flag.
01:20:39.320
And she glances down and out of the corner of her eye is an orange golf ball.
01:20:44.000
There was the time Tom was in downtown Philly for a meeting.
01:20:47.420
We were just going through sales, whatever it may be.
01:20:51.660
And we talked about, break down what's on your mind right now.
01:20:55.300
And again, I sort of write about Blake and I get choked up.
01:20:57.900
I walk out of, I mean, 300 people in there walk out.
01:21:00.500
My boss comes out and says, Tom, let's talk about it.
01:21:02.500
Blake is still giving, even though he's not here.
01:21:04.720
So we go walk back in the hotel and the door is locked.
01:21:07.040
So I walk around the front of the hotel and I bump into a car and there's a BB magnet right on that car.
01:21:12.840
And I'm like, this is, my boss is like, Tom, that's a sign.
01:21:16.780
My manager is like, that's a sign from Blake that he is here.
01:21:19.800
And then it just so happened that the manager of the hotel comes walking out.
01:21:24.160
And I'm like, what's the significance of the BB?
01:21:29.040
And one of his great friends is Blake Barclay, who passed away.
01:21:37.120
So that's where going through a rough moment was just, it was just like, okay.
01:21:47.580
A big one for me and tying it into LaSalle is like, as a senior, we go on Kairos, which is like, it's called like God's time.
01:21:54.900
It's a three-day retreat that all the seniors go on for like, all of us getting close out of the class, but also getting close with God.
01:22:04.260
And I was lucky enough to go a second time and lead a small group.
01:22:08.360
And one of the things that we have to do is we have to give a talk.
01:22:15.040
So obviously, I spoke a lot about Blake and I's friendship and how it's changed now and how it's developed.
01:22:22.780
But a big thing for me was I was so nervous to get up there and basically prepared to cry in front of 50 kids in my grade.
01:22:33.020
And as soon as I got up there and like said the first word, as I went throughout my entire speech, I kept having to look over to my left.
01:22:41.780
Because the presence of Blake standing right next to me was so strong, where I like had to keep looking over and be like, are you like standing right next to me right now?
01:22:50.880
Alexa sees signs too, a cardinal suddenly in her path, for example, which many believe represents a lost loved one.
01:22:59.140
But she wrestles with whether it means what she wants it to.
01:23:03.000
Part of me doesn't want to believe in these signs.
01:23:06.080
And it's just like the other part of me, like the part that I can't control.
01:23:10.860
And you say, I don't, I don't want to believe in these signs.
01:23:14.960
I just feel like if this hadn't happened and I saw a cardinal, like, I feel like life would be the same.
01:23:20.880
And while more private in her grief, she misses her brother constantly.
01:23:28.300
And whether that's just going on my back deck and seeing the sunset or I do go to the grave site, that's a little more emotional for me.
01:23:38.440
If I'm feeling a little more down, I'll go to the grave site.
01:23:46.100
I actually feel the most, I've, every time that I'm home and it's an anniversary, I'll like sleep in his room or whatever.
01:23:52.780
For Tom and Allison, option B, the book Facebook executive Sheryl Sandberg wrote in the wake of losing her husband, has been a comfort.
01:24:02.400
I mean, it talks a lot about loss and devastating loss.
01:24:05.360
And so just that you're not alone and different things she went through that we could certainly relate to.
01:24:11.880
But there's the one part of it where she had, her daughter was going to, I think, a father-daughter dance and her friend was over.
01:24:21.560
And he was like, well, we don't have that as option, you know, that is an option.
01:24:28.480
And that really resonated with me because we have Alexis, who we love more than anything.
01:24:32.220
I mean, and we're grateful for the 17 and a half years that we had with Blake.
01:24:42.620
We have to, you know, and we have so much joy with her still, so much laughter.
01:24:53.720
Cheryl wrote that book after her husband died unexpectedly of a heart attack.
01:24:57.760
And I know I was struck by the way you talked about its role in your life at Blake's memorial service this summer at the shore.
01:25:09.640
This past weekend, Cheryl Sandberg got remarried and managed to find love.
01:25:16.320
And I don't know if we can say her broken heart was healed, but it's certainly soaring in its own new way.
01:25:24.580
And I reached out to her and she sent a video message for the two of you, which there's a little bit of background noise because she's literally going to her wedding within 24 hours.
01:25:36.540
But I have a message for you from Cheryl Sandberg.
01:25:46.720
The loss of a child is a truly tragic thing, but you've worked so hard to keep this memory alive.
01:25:52.200
And I know that so many people will remember Blake for the loving the way that he was.
01:25:59.580
I know you're inspiring so many people because when people face real loss, real grief, it is how we persevere through it that changes our lives and the lives around us.
01:26:18.920
It never goes away in the same thing, but it does get better.
01:26:22.900
And that makes memory live on not just in your heart, but in so many hearts.
01:26:33.560
We never know how much strength we have until we face that situation that brings it out in us.
01:26:49.480
Sheryl Sandberg advocated for more flexible and humane bereavement policies in corporate America.
01:26:55.560
Tom has tried to do the same at his company, Johnson & Johnson.
01:26:58.540
She changed the bereavement policy at Facebook.
01:27:01.420
And that gave me the, with that and with Blake's story about challenging, respectfully challenging, that was my second pain of purpose is really looking into the bereavement policy at J&J.
01:27:23.880
I have, I've got 18 years at J&J and they've been great with it.
01:27:27.660
And my boss and they're all the way up on our side.
01:27:33.120
But I just, I just remember what Blake did by respectfully challenging a, something that was out there.
01:27:39.420
And I decided to write a few letters and I wrote a few letters to everybody on the board at J&J saying, here's my story.
01:27:50.660
I'm fighting for everybody else that doesn't, who may not have the management that I have, that, that has helped Alice and I and Alexis through all this.
01:27:58.320
So I wrote a few letters and, and I found out that they are looking into it, which is great.
01:28:01.700
With Blake never far from their hearts, the Barclages now partner with Simon's Heart, a group that screens children for cardiac issues.
01:28:11.940
People ask all the time, like, what, if Blake had been to a screening, would you, would he have been, would he be here?
01:28:18.460
I will never know that, but, but somebody else might be.
01:28:22.380
LaSalle High School was among the first to do a screening.
01:28:25.460
There was a wait list for the screening that evening.
01:28:27.520
And the last person to get in via the wait list, they found the condition in.
01:28:35.020
The mother said that she felt like there was definitely divine intervention.
01:28:39.260
Although my big brother isn't here with me, doing what big brothers do, he is now my guardian angel.
01:28:45.320
He's yours too, watching over all of us every day.
01:28:48.340
With every orange sunset and every orange rubber band worn on her wrist, he's with us.
01:28:55.300
Alice and Tom and Alexis will soon mark the first anniversary of Blake's death.
01:29:08.800
I obviously knew I wanted to, like, wear orange to the prom, which was, like, a big thing for me because it was just kind of, like, it felt right to just, like, wear orange dress to my first prom.
01:29:16.080
So Kyle and Hayden struck the same pose in this shot as they did the year before with Blake.
01:29:23.780
And it's just, like, it felt like the thing I was saying before, like, good and bad.
01:29:28.980
They walked with Alexis at graduation as she accepted Blake's diploma.
01:29:46.240
What lessons has this taught you about why we're here?
01:29:54.100
I mean, every time I'm hanging with my friends now, I, like, I always just take a second just to, like, look around.
01:30:01.340
Because I feel like when I used to hang out with them, with my friends, I wouldn't, like, live in the moment, I guess you could say.
01:30:10.100
Or now, like, we're all leaving for college, the hangouts before last few weeks.
01:30:15.520
Like, I just look around and just, I can enjoy it so much more.
01:30:19.620
Because, like, you never know when you'll see your boys again.
01:30:32.240
Clemson's man down going into this freshman year.
01:32:10.240
For example, it's a blueprint for anyone dealing with tragedy.
01:32:21.440
My thanks to Tom and to Allison, to Lexi, to Kyle and Hayden for helping put together the piece, and to Mary Murphy, one of my favorite producers who helped me put the whole thing together.
01:32:34.820
I'm very grateful to everybody who worked on it.
01:32:37.860
And don't forget, Simon's Heart advocates cardiac screenings in children at their annual physicals, and those really can detect a lot of problems that parents might not otherwise have thought of.
01:32:48.340
It's worth considering, especially in this day and age when we're seeing such a spike in cardiac incidents.
01:32:56.360
If you have feedback on our piece or thoughts for the Barkledges, you can email me now, megan, M-E-G-Y-N, at megankelly.com.
01:33:05.720
And check out this piece on youtube.com where you'll see the pictures.