BONUS： Megyn Kelly on the Need to Fight For Our Kids, Fani Willis, and State of the Media, at CPAC
Episode Stats
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Summary
Megyn Kelly and Mercedes Schlapp discuss how the media has changed over the years, including the rise of alternative media and the shift from straight facts to fake news, and why CNN is failing to understand where the rest of America is.
Transcript
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Please welcome journalist and host of The Megyn Kelly Show, Megyn Kelly, and CPAC Senior Fellow, Mercedes Schlapp.
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The media told me nobody was here. Look at all these people.
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Yes, I was never allowed to do this kind of thing when I was at Fox, and now I'm free.
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And let's talk a little bit about this. So there's this rise of alternative media.
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I don't even want to call it alternative media, but it is this media that's trying to present the truth.
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It's trying to present a more comprehensive picture.
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I mean, when I was a lawyer back in the dark ages, I remember seeing clips of this woman, Jessica Savage.
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And if you're old enough, you remember who that is.
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And if you're young, you've never heard of her.
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But she was on NBC, and she was beautiful, and she rose at the same time as Connie Chung and made it at a time when very few women were even in news.
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And that was the era of, like, straight facts, no personality, just the facts.
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It wasn't completely infected with left-wing bias.
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And then you flash forward to during the Trump era when they openly declared their bias.
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They thought it was important to say their own opinion.
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And completely sacrificed their objectivity and, in so doing, sacrificed the industry.
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I mean, it was, I've said before, it was an assisted suicide.
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Trump helped them, but they did it to themselves.
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Yeah, but we just saw, for example, when President Trump won the Iowa caucus, and you saw Rachel Maddow come out on MSNBC saying, no, no, we're not going to put out the whole speech.
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No, no, because they want, because she wanted her voice to be heard and not allow the viewers, now we know the viewers there are, you know, lean left, to listen to what Donald Trump had to say.
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She never had children, and she decided her audience must be her children.
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They need to be babied like little toddlers because their mommy can't allow them to hear any of the naughty words that Trump is going to speak because, she explained, they traffic in truth at MSNBC, which is the biggest lie we've heard out of anybody over there.
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I mean, after all the years of Russiagate, for her to actually look at the audience and say, we don't traffic in lies and we can't allow a non-true thing to be said to you, and I'll be the policewoman of it, please.
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The media is this leftist media, this propaganda machine.
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They literally line up the Democrat talking points, and it is so much of this Trump hatred like I've never, ever, ever seen.
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And quite frankly, they hate the Trump activists.
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Is it just New York and, like, the New York media, that kind of elite media that is not understanding where the rest of America is?
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I mean, it's really all media other than alternative.
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But this is, I think, what CNN is struggling with right now.
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At least MSNBC has kind of owned how much it hates Republicans for a long time.
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I mean, they're fake news, but they're not faking it.
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But CNN, you know, back when I was on the primetime of Fox News, I used to watch CNN as I was getting ready for the Kelly file.
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They were kind of boring, but they were straight down the middle.
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They ruined themselves, but, you know, he gave them the invitation, and they took it.
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And now they want us to see them as possible to trust.
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You know, now we're supposed to look at the same anchors who said, not only do I disagree with you, I hate you.
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Your children, everything that is important to you, I loathe.
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And I do think that's one of the reasons why alternative media is doing so well.
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Well, the Trump derangement syndrome grows even further when we're talking about lawfare.
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This is something that, you know, we see the propaganda machine, something you would see in an authoritarian regime.
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Then you're moving towards this sense of lawfare, which is really, I think, a scary tactic that's being used by the left.
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I felt like I was watching a soap opera when I was watching Fonny Willis and her love interest, Nathan Wade.
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I mean, that was one of the craziest court, TV court, I mean, you know, that you can imagine.
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I was not going to do a show today because I was coming here to be with all of you.
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But then I don't know if you saw today's news on Fanny Willis.
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I just did a show from the hotel room before I came down here.
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So these two prosecutors, Fanny Wade and the man she brought in, Nathan Wade, admit that they had an affair.
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I mean, I'm hoping something good could come out of this for them.
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They denied that they had an affair any time prior to her hiring them.
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And now, bit by bit, we're learning, of course, it appears very much the opposite.
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And what happened today was the Trump team got, they subpoenaed the cell phone records of Nathan Wade during 2021.
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And according to the private investigator, who's got expertise in analyzing cell phone tower data and cell phone data, he called her.
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They spoke on the phone in 11 months, 2,000 times, 1,800 texts.
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I went back and looked at mine with my husband.
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We were at one-fifth of the ratio that those two were.
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He was allegedly over there, according to the cell phone analysis, between the hours of 11 p.m. and 3 a.m. and then midnight and 5 a.m.
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And according to CBS News, she's going to get ready to defend this today by saying, he was part of my, like, kitchen cabinet team.
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Because, you know, when you have business to discuss.
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Who doesn't have their platonic colleague over at 4 a.m.?
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We were saying it wasn't a booty call, it was a fanny call.
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So, I do believe they're both going to get booted off of this case.
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I believe they lied under oath to this judge to save their own skins.
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They're prosecuting Trump and his colleagues for lying.
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That is one of the main things that she's accusing them of.
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And the reason it's so delicious is because the same thing I believe that made Fannie Willis lie under oath,
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despite the fact that it would be wrong for a civilian, but it's really wrong for an officer of the court,
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is the same thing that made her bring this BS prosecution.
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She wanted to get Trump, just like Letitia James wanted to get Trump and Alvin Bragg and Jack Smith.
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And I really think that the brilliant lawfare artists on the defense side in Georgia should have a talk with the other defense lawyers in these other cases.
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Because if this is how we're going to fight, dirty, below the belt, making up charges, breaking our system of rule of law,
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which didn't use to prosecute political enemies, then we should fight back the same way.
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It should be brought right back on all these prosecutors.
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Going into what we've seen with all of these cases, I mean, you've got the Stormy Daniels case against Trump as well.
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You've got Jack Smith's obsession, obsession with Donald Trump.
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You've got, obviously, the civil fraud case in New York, Judge Enderon, who $340 million.
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They're trying to destroy his life, destroy his family, all for political persecution.
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We just, we never used to do this to each other.
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We'd fight, you know, bare-knuckled brawling the two sides.
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But we would never put a man's freedom at risk just because we disagreed with him.
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We would never try to devastate his business and disincentivize any good man or woman for running for office.
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Don't you know, like, a couple of great people in your life, and you're like,
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Who that's sane would run if you thought this was a likely outcome?
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I interviewed him in September, and I was like, what are you doing this for?
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You could be in Scotland doing the golf, which you love, and enjoying your grandkids,
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And I do think he thinks he's got unfinished business for the country, you know?
00:10:13.040
So, what legal advice would you give Donald Trump?
00:10:21.420
Because I'll tell you, Trump's got four criminal trials coming his way.
00:10:25.500
And in order to avoid, I heard Rob and J.D. talking about, is he likely to, you know, go to jail?
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But Trump needs to pull an inside straight in order to avoid jail.
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It's not a lock, but it's going as well as it can go.
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He's obviously got very good lawyers around him.
00:11:03.780
And then they're mad he didn't document his hush payment.
00:11:06.100
That's the very nature of a hush payment is that you don't write it down and tell everybody about it.
00:11:13.240
Then you've got the two Jack Smith litigations where it's all, you know, January 6th and the Mar-a-Lago documents.
00:11:18.700
Well, the Mar-a-Lago documents is getting slow-rolled and slow-rolled and slow-rolled because it's so complex.
00:11:25.680
Do the lawyers need security clearance to see the documents he had?
00:11:31.080
And if Trump can win, both of those federal prosecutions go away.
00:11:36.560
He just needs to pull the DOJ off of the cases.
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All he needs to do is delay those two cases until post-November.
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Now, the one in D.C., she really wants to try this case.
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Judge Chutkin would love to put Trump behind bars.
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And that one he's vulnerable in because of the jury pool.
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But that one, too, has got the main heart of it, of the obstruction charge.
00:12:02.120
And I'm trying not to bore you, but the main charge is the obstruction charge.
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You obstructed a proceeding of Congress on January 6th.
00:12:07.900
That's going up to the Supreme Court through the other January 6th defendants.
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So the heart of that Trump case could get thrown out through a proceeding that's going up with other defendants.
00:12:19.980
And that leaves us with Georgia and my girl, Fannie.
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And if Fannie Willis is thrown off this case, her entire office is thrown off this case.
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And there are real questions about whether there is another prosecutor down in Georgia who would take it and wants to try it.
00:12:43.220
Shifting gears here, obviously, you're a mom, you know, and you have two boys, one girl.
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We were having this discussion as a mother of five girls, and parents out there, they're freaking out.
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They're looking at the fact that this leftist agenda has penetrated into their schools.
00:13:03.560
This is a topic we've been discussing here, where you have 14-year-old girls having mastectomies.
00:13:16.780
If you take nothing else away, I hope, from anything I say tonight, please take this away.
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You can't remain silent to protect your reputation or how people feel about you.
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Your child's safety, and apart from their safety, their opportunity, their chance at winning,
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the chance of having the glory of crossing the finish line first.
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You want to be seen as empathetic and not a bigot, not a transphobe.
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Eventually, hopefully, you'll get to the point where many of us are, which is, I don't care what you call me.
00:14:03.620
I couldn't care less what you think of me when I'm standing up for children's rights.
00:14:10.500
Number one, they tell us that the puberty blockers into the cross-sex hormones, it's fine.
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Ninety-seven percent of kids who go on puberty blockers will do cross-sex hormones immediately thereafter.
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Now your child is more than likely going to be sterile and zero sexual enjoyment for the rest of his or her life.
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There will be no sexual pleasure for your child.
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You want to make that decision for a 13-year-old?
00:14:40.520
There was a detransitioner recently who managed to get pregnant, which is against all the odds.
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And she was in tears at the birth of her baby, not fully tears of joy, but also because she couldn't breastfeed.
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She had had her breasts chopped off when she was a teenager, a young teenager.
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And you know, Mercedes, it's like when I had my child, my first child, I, of course, went through the nine months of pregnancy.
00:15:03.400
The moment I felt like I really became a mother was when they put that baby to your breast and you're like, holy mother of, right?
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And the male pregnancy, that's the one I'm like, really, people?
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They pump these men through full of hormones so they can produce something approximating milk.
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And then this poor, tortured baby is in agony trying to get enough out of there.
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They have changed what is what would be common sense, just language.
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Every time I see these young people out there where they on Instagram and they're like, she, her, they.
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Not for, for, but it's like, how can these parents get to their kids and their grandkids
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It's a leftist media, leftist sports, leftist corporate America, not to mention the academy,
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You have to inoculate them at home by talking about it.
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If somebody asks you what your pronouns are, you just say, I'm not comfortable with that.
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Just because some leftist tries to make you, you don't have to do that.
00:16:39.620
There was a great piece online, and I love the line, the title of it.
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It's the way the left controls language is to make you behave the way they want you to behave.
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And saying the pronouns is how they get you to bend on gender ideology.
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They dull your brain to the incongruity of calling a he a she.
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They want you to get dulled to that fake reality they're shoving down our throats.
00:17:14.560
First, you can say with all due respect, I don't do that.
00:17:18.640
And look, if I'm sitting across, and I've actually had this conversation with Caitlyn Jenner,
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but if I were sitting across from Caitlyn Jenner, would I intentionally be like, he, he, he?
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But I would not say, you know, what's it like to be a woman?
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How about being, you know, being a girl, being a...
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And I do think we need to reject pronouns and the lies of language because otherwise we're pulled in.
00:17:45.740
And then on the biological men playing in women's sports, which again, I cannot believe that we are talking about this now.
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Like, I just cannot believe that we have to face this where our girls have to be put in a situation where they can actually get hurt.
00:18:01.880
There was Peyton McNabb in North Carolina who still has permanent injuries, including mental issues, brain issues, and paralysis down her arm after a male volleyball player posing as a girl spiked the ball so hard in her head that she suffered permanent damage.
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There was a girl playing field hockey in Massachusetts just a couple of months ago who got all of her teeth knocked out as a boy pretending to be a girl slammed that field hockey ball hard into her face.
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There were three girls in Massachusetts this week in Lowell, Massachusetts, who were hurt playing basketball against a six-foot-tall boy pretending to be a girl.
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It's a boy pretending to be a girl who hurt three girls to the point where they had to end the game early, and the coach pulled the team.
00:19:00.280
And I think I will say in this room we've got the fighters.
00:19:04.560
These are the people who go back to their community, and they make a difference.
00:19:08.340
They are so incredible in terms of getting involved in their communities, and so many organic groups have come out of CPAC,
00:19:14.780
and they are the ones involved in so much of the election process as well, which is incredible.
00:19:23.480
We know we had a panel up here, Would Moses Go to Harvard?, which I loved.
00:19:28.660
Of course, Schlapp comes up with these great panel names.
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It made it on Jimmy Kimmel, which was kind of funny, kind of.
00:19:40.580
There is, again, you stay shocked because you're wondering, how can so many young people not understand the role of Israel
00:19:49.460
and not understand the Hamas terrorism propaganda message that's being pushed through TikTok, through social media, to these young people?
00:20:01.380
And then you've created this animosity on campus for Jewish students.
00:20:06.700
Well, I think there are two things going on there.
00:20:09.140
Number one, back to the inoculation point, I don't think anybody could do this to my kids.
00:20:20.980
We've shared our values, and we've talked to our kids about what is going to be done to them on college campuses.
00:20:26.160
And we, in our family, do not allow our children to use social media, which parents misunderstand.
00:20:32.580
You can give them a phone, and they can message.
00:20:34.300
And they can, we actually do some YouTube, which I know is technically social media, but, like, my daughter watches Dance Moms on it.
00:20:45.760
But I'm talking about, like, TikTok, Snapchat, Instagram, Facebook.
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Like, these are not appropriate tools for children.
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And in particular, TikTok is where this begins.
00:20:55.400
So I do think keeping them away from social media and the young formative years and you reinforcing your own values and what's true is important.
00:21:03.240
And keeping the right news sources funneling to them so they're hearing facts that you know are real and not leftly.
00:21:08.620
It's not like, don't leave Al Jazeera on the TV while you go off for your run.
00:21:11.800
But I also think that, like, when they get to the university, they're going to need to find their spines and their friends.
00:21:21.560
This is one of the reasons why I love Turning Point.
00:21:23.980
Like, we have to get to young people and make sure they know they're not alone.
00:21:27.920
You may feel like you're the only conservative voice on campus, but you're not.
00:21:31.100
The TikTok in particular is a problem because that is really funneling pro-Hamas information and pro-Bin Laden.
00:21:37.780
You saw that, like, literally these morons were like, you know that Bin Laden really, you have to hand it to that Bin Laden.
00:21:50.460
You've got to actually do some study and some homework.
00:21:52.580
So the only plus of the anti-Semitism that we've been seeing on college campuses, the only upside to all of this in the wake of the horrific October 7th attack,
00:22:03.200
is that our Jewish friends, who were more left-leaning and believed the DEI lie, I think are now seeing the truth,
00:22:11.700
which is that it's pernicious and it's actually really dangerous.
00:22:16.180
And so, like, it's not okay to, whether it's black and white or Hispanic and Jews, whatever, like, it's not okay to divide us by race or ethnicity.
00:22:26.880
That's why I don't like the black national anthem.
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So, in any event, I think all that's important messaging, but the number one thing is to shore up your child before he gets there.
00:22:42.160
Although I've met a lot of parents that say, my kid was conservative, they go to college, and then I lose them.
00:22:48.380
And that's a challenge for these parents, right?
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And then you're just, literally, I feel like we have to constantly be, I say, pray every day for your kid.
00:22:58.880
Because they have to understand, when you, being here, you know you're going to get persecuted.
00:23:16.240
I'd rather people try to destroy me and me keep going than people never try to destroy me at all.
00:23:22.380
You know, you don't know how strong you are until somebody keeps knocking you down and you keep getting back up.
00:23:28.520
And I really, like, I think it's true for my kids and I think it's true for me.
00:23:35.640
But in the same way, like, I really kind of hope, I know it sounds weird, but I hope they all get their hearts broken.
00:23:45.980
I hope all those things happen to them because I want them to be strong.
00:23:51.540
And you don't get strong if nobody ever challenges you or hurts you or comes at you.
00:23:56.600
And I think for all of you guys, you know, you're active and you're activists and you're out there fighting these good fights.
00:24:09.380
And you, just like I, have to realize that there's a difference between the you, you and the branded you.
00:24:16.900
Like, Megyn Kelly is, it's a brand because it's on a show name and people know it from news.
00:24:23.680
And when I see the attacks and people write the terrible things, I never take that as an attack on Megyn Kelly, the person.
00:24:31.280
That's Megyn Kelly, the brand that they're attacking.
00:24:39.280
And it makes it very easy for me not to hold a grudge and to continue fighting and to continue seeing these people and not to become bitter.
00:24:50.320
You're going to put your public face out there and you're going to say these things that are controversial.
00:24:55.180
And they're going to call you the names and maybe ostracize you.
00:24:58.020
Maybe you don't get invited to the best cocktail parties.
00:25:02.180
And you make the distinction in your own life between the professional you that's got to make these points to keep your kids safe, et cetera,
00:25:09.780
and the real you who they don't know and they couldn't possibly be criticizing.
00:25:15.920
What message of hope do you want to give this group?
00:25:23.680
Look, we're in, I would say, one of the toughest times of our country.
00:25:40.020
I think, look, I think you guys should feel great because the country is divided,
00:25:44.860
but I actually happen to think it's not as bad as many think.
00:25:54.740
They're coming over on some of the Trump economic programs.
00:25:59.740
But I'm just saying the right is winning these fights.
00:26:06.200
It takes Governor Abbott sending the busloads up to New York and Chicago and California.
00:26:11.780
Like, these people have to feel the actual effects of their policies,
00:26:15.060
and then slowly but surely they start to see reason on the gender stuff.
00:26:19.240
Seventy percent of the American population believes that boys should not be playing in girls' sports,
00:26:25.420
That's something on which there's common ground.
00:26:27.280
And DEI, as I said before, that people are starting to shift on that and see the folly of this dividing us by race.
00:26:33.420
And even those who aren't seeing it are going to have to live with it because we have a great U.S. Supreme Court right now
00:26:39.380
that is issuing ruling after ruling, setting things straight.
00:26:43.240
From Dobbs to the affirmative action case, and we're going to get a whole lot more like it.
00:26:48.640
So that's not to say that they haven't crossed a lot of disturbing norms with the lawfare and so on.
00:26:54.640
But I do think regular Americans aren't as divided and are starting to see the wisdom in a lot of these fights
00:27:02.840
the right has been fighting for a long, long time.