The Megyn Kelly Show - Brutal Reality About Putin, and Biden Sounding Like Trump, with Buck Sexton and Jason Whitlock

00:00:00.440 Welcome to The Megyn Kelly Show, your home for open, honest, and provocative conversations.

00:00:11.900 Hey everyone, I'm Megyn Kelly. Welcome to The Megyn Kelly Show.

00:00:15.200 We begin today with reports that Russian forces have captured their first city in Ukraine,

00:00:21.000 a town of 300,000 called Kherson.

00:00:23.920 One week into the conflict, what happens next?

00:00:26.900 And if Russian President Vladimir Putin feels like he is losing, what is his next move?

00:00:33.340 My first guest today is a man you know well, Buck Sexton.

00:00:36.620 He's co-host of The Clay Travis and Buck Sexton Show.

00:00:40.120 He's also a former CIA analyst.

00:00:42.720 He completed tours of duty as an intel officer in Iraq and Afghanistan,

00:00:46.100 as well as other hotspots around the globe,

00:00:48.120 and led intelligence briefings for senior U.S. officials,

00:00:51.320 including former President George W. Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney.

00:00:55.520 Buck, great to have you back.

00:00:56.660 How are you doing?

00:00:57.880 I'm good, Megyn. Thanks for having me.

00:00:59.760 Okay, so there's so much to talk about with this story.

00:01:02.520 I mean, from the split within the conservative and Republican side on, you know,

00:01:08.860 how to handle this and what to do with respect to Putin and so on,

00:01:12.920 to, you know, whether Putin's losing his mind,

00:01:15.960 or this is all part of a long game calculation,

00:01:18.660 and he's the chess master some believe him to be.

00:01:21.280 So let's just start with the latest sort of round of headlines,

00:01:25.220 which is queries about why it's taking Putin so long,

00:01:30.080 about why it hasn't gone as well as at least the West thought it would,

00:01:34.700 about why we're one week into this with only one city surrendering,

00:01:38.640 or at least in Putin's control in Ukraine.

00:01:42.060 Well, Megyn, I think the dominant narrative on this is wrong.

00:01:48.160 I think that people who are focused in too much,

00:01:52.580 a lot of the analysts, a lot of the news coverage,

00:01:54.240 seems to suggest that Russia is almost in an unsustainable position already,

00:02:00.660 and that the Ukrainian resistance,

00:02:02.980 and I don't want to say this because I would very much like it

00:02:07.940 if this war would end as we're speaking,

00:02:10.000 and with the Ukrainians maintaining their sovereignty,

00:02:13.140 their independence, and defeating this Russian incursion.

00:02:16.060 That all said, the overwhelming narrative that I've seen in the last week is,

00:02:21.160 look at how the Russians have been slowed.

00:02:24.340 This is a disaster for Putin.

00:02:25.920 Putin, there seems to be a bit of wishful thinking, I believe,

00:02:30.000 in how they're assessing the ability of the Ukrainians to continue on in this fight.

00:02:34.760 I mean, I could go through, if you want,

00:02:37.240 I mean, I've done some wargaming of this on my own,

00:02:39.100 and also with other people I know who are national security experts specifically,

00:02:43.500 about what's likely to happen the days ahead,

00:02:46.140 but the Russian capitulation is unfortunately not even a little bit of a possibility

00:02:51.780 at this stage based on what we're already seeing.

00:02:53.800 The Russians are actually moving really fast,

00:02:55.920 and I think most of this is going according to Putin's plan.

00:03:00.600 How so, right?

00:03:01.900 Because I think a lot of us thought it wouldn't take a week, right?

00:03:05.060 And that they wouldn't be losing Russian soldiers at the rate they reportedly are.

00:03:09.700 I mean, who knows what to believe when they repeat these numbers?

00:03:11.960 The Russians lie, the Ukrainians lie.

00:03:13.840 We don't know what's real in terms of the losses,

00:03:15.720 but why do you think it's taken one week for him to capture one city?

00:03:19.460 Sure.

00:03:21.220 Well, you know, if you think of it almost in terms of a boxing match,

00:03:24.540 you've got a heavyweight who is much larger than the opponent, right?

00:03:29.620 The Russians are the bigger, stronger, heavier boxer than the Ukrainian forces they're fighting against,

00:03:35.200 and absolutely came out with a big swing and tried for a knockout right away.

00:03:40.360 That doesn't mean that now that it goes 12 rounds that you're not going to see something

00:03:47.060 that is unfortunately favoring the larger, stronger opponent, which is, I think, where we are.

00:03:52.900 Yeah, absolutely.

00:03:53.660 Putin, and I think that whatever, you know, the intelligence assessments are still classified,

00:04:00.160 but what's made it into the press seems to be there was a belief among the Russians that he could,

00:04:05.860 among the Russian leadership, among Putin and his top advisors,

00:04:08.820 that he could probably do this in a few days.

00:04:11.720 Okay, he also planned for it not to go a few days.

00:04:14.280 That's why he only deployed maybe 10% or so of his actual forces gathered on the Ukrainian border in the first week.

00:04:21.720 So when you look at that, I mean, if he were, if the whole plan were to just go and knock out the Ukrainian resistance

00:04:30.000 and either have Zelensky flee the country or be captured, wherever it may be, in a week,

00:04:35.220 he would have gone with everything he had or something close to it.

00:04:38.020 He went with a small portion of it.

00:04:39.880 He didn't go for shock and off.

00:04:41.780 Exactly.

00:04:42.460 I mean, this is, when you look at other military campaigns, sure,

00:04:45.520 would we have loved it if Saddam Hussein had been capitulated or even died in an initial strike of shock and all?

00:04:52.460 Yeah.

00:04:53.120 But there's a reason why we had hundreds of thousands of troops ready to go

00:04:57.280 and not just what was already in country or the airstrikes.

00:05:00.460 My concern, Megan, is that the Russians are going to, and this is, I think, part of the,

00:05:06.780 when I say the plan, I mean, everything is dynamic, right?

00:05:09.280 There is that great line by Mike Tyson that no plan survives.

00:05:13.720 Oh, sorry, everybody has a plan until they get, that's a different line I was going to quote.

00:05:17.880 Everybody has a plan until they get punched in the face.

00:05:20.740 That's the reality of all warfare, all conflict.

00:05:23.780 And, you know, no plan survives first contact with the enemy is the other famous line.

00:05:28.040 So the Russians, I think, are prepared for this.

00:05:31.260 What you're going to see likely is the encirclement of Kiev and a major air campaign.

00:05:37.980 And this goes to where the Russians, whenever you're invading another country,

00:05:41.660 you're on someone else's turf.

00:05:42.780 We saw this in Iraq.

00:05:43.740 We saw this in Afghanistan.

00:05:45.640 It's very hard to do ground operations, stability operations, because you're just vulnerable.

00:05:50.200 You're in convoys.

00:05:51.300 They can see you coming.

00:05:52.380 They know where you're going to be, and they know how to hit you.

00:05:55.380 When you use air superiority, which we also had in those two countries,

00:05:59.340 but use it in a way that the Russians will be willing to,

00:06:01.360 which I think, tragically, unfortunately, is going to be pretty indiscriminate and high-level casualties.

00:06:07.440 I mean, Chechnya, if I think very few people in America have an understanding of the recent Russian history in Chechnya,

00:06:16.240 that's the closest.

00:06:17.820 When you say Chechnya, this is what I think of.

00:06:19.940 I think of a scene from Bridget Jones where Renee Zellweger is out with Hugh Grant,

00:06:25.620 and she's trying to make conversation with him, and she says,

00:06:28.340 isn't it horrible what's happening in Chechnya?

00:06:30.380 And he says, Jesus, Jones, I couldn't give a fff.

00:06:33.220 I'm giving up swearing for Lent.

00:06:35.380 So that's the thing.

00:06:37.420 People are like, who?

00:06:39.040 What?

00:06:39.740 Where?

00:06:41.380 I actually haven't seen Bridget Jones, but I do.

00:06:43.920 Oh, my God, Buck.

00:06:44.780 What am I going to do with you?

00:06:45.820 You've been out advising all these presidents on wars and CIA matters.

00:06:49.520 You haven't been doing the important stuff.

00:06:51.440 Yeah.

00:06:52.500 So I have to add that one to the list.

00:06:55.660 But, yeah, as for Chechnya, and it's interesting because it actually would be much more,

00:07:00.520 I think it's better known in the European context just because of the geography

00:07:03.460 and, you know, closer and closer in the neighborhood.

00:07:05.920 But, you know, the Russians went in twice under Yeltsin, 1994, 1996.

00:07:10.380 The Soviet Union dissolves, and you have all these independent Soviet,

00:07:16.740 former Soviet republics popping up.

00:07:18.440 And some of them did so, I think the line from Yeltsin was something like,

00:07:21.840 you know, you can have all the sovereignty you can stomach,

00:07:24.260 or something like that, right?

00:07:25.360 Like, go for it.

00:07:26.060 If you want to break off and, you know, the economy's a mess, go for it.

00:07:29.300 Except for Chechnya.

00:07:30.340 And that had to do, in large part, with it being an enclave of, well, radical Islam, jihadism.

00:07:37.280 And there were concerns that this would be something that could stretch well beyond Chechnya

00:07:42.260 if they were allowed to have this as a stronghold.

00:07:44.280 At least that was the Russian point of view on it.

00:07:46.820 Anyway, they went in.

00:07:47.380 Actually, the Russians effectively lost the first incursion.

00:07:51.520 The Chechens.

00:07:52.240 And I always think this is interesting, Megan, you know, hill people, whether it's the Scots,

00:07:57.640 or it's the Hmong in Southeast Asia, or it's the, all the tribes in Afghanistan,

00:08:04.480 hill people tend to be pretty fierce and into resisting central authority.

00:08:09.900 Same thing is true in Chechnya, where the Chechens have a long, centuries-long history

00:08:14.440 of being fighters, essentially, bandits, fighters, you know, honor society, where they will die

00:08:20.840 before they submit, that kind of stuff.

00:08:22.620 So they fought the Russians, actually beat the Russians well enough that they maintain

00:08:26.740 some degree of independence.

00:08:28.000 Then Putin comes along, which is, I think, the interesting part of the quick history I'll do.

00:08:31.840 And this is, I think, 1999 or so.

00:08:34.480 And Putin comes in.

00:08:35.540 They fake, using FSB agents, some apartment bombings, kill a whole bunch of Russians and

00:08:41.700 say, oh, that was the Chechens who did that one.

00:08:43.820 So now we've got to go in with everything we've got.

00:08:46.160 And, Megan, they basically leveled Grozny, which is the capital city or the primary city

00:08:50.160 in Chechnya.

00:08:52.840 And that was a very bloody, very bloody fight where they brought in and Putin was willing

00:08:58.920 to just use artillery and airstrikes to beat them.

00:09:02.540 And finally, after 10 years of fighting, I think 2009 or so, it was considered over.

00:09:06.740 So, although it still goes on in little pockets here and there.

00:09:10.000 So Putin is the guy who came in and is like, whatever we have to do.

00:09:13.020 And that's how he rose to power.

00:09:14.380 People got to remember this.

00:09:15.340 That was in the beginning, right?

00:09:16.640 So Putin, I think, has both the the mindset and also the experience to elevate things

00:09:25.340 dramatically in Ukraine to get his way.

00:09:27.220 That's what I think is going to happen.

00:09:28.340 And again, this is one of the times I really hope I'm wrong.

00:09:30.380 I hope the Russian casualties, which are high, are such that Putin is getting pressure from

00:09:35.240 home and all this sort of stuff.

00:09:36.900 I just don't think that's the way it's going to play out.

00:09:38.720 He's not he's not typically a guy who bends under pressure.

00:09:41.420 It's not exactly what he's known for.

00:09:44.080 Yeah.

00:09:44.440 I mean, I'll tell you, just in my own life here, you know, talking to moms who are only

00:09:49.120 keeping one finger on the news cycle, you know, they don't have the full pulse covered.

00:09:53.400 We'll say, like, could they win?

00:09:55.640 You know, I'm praying for the Ukrainians.

00:09:57.180 Like, maybe they can do it.

00:09:59.180 And I think, sadly, we're confusing hope with, you know, predictions.

00:10:03.460 We would all like to see the Ukrainians and Zelensky manage to pull out a W.

00:10:07.140 It's a sovereign nation.

00:10:08.000 It's been invaded.

00:10:08.940 You don't want to see the invaders conquer.

00:10:10.920 But it doesn't look like it's going to go that way, especially with the more time that

00:10:14.980 goes on.

00:10:15.320 And now they're saying some people in the intelligence and defense communities are saying

00:10:19.180 this thing could go on for 10, 15 years that where you have basically an insurgency going

00:10:24.520 on within Ukraine.

00:10:26.280 The fighting never ends.

00:10:27.560 Ukraine is completely destroyed as a country.

00:10:30.300 And even if they wind up getting it back after all that time, what are they getting back?

00:10:33.980 And we're seeing it destroyed brick by brick on the news every night.

00:10:37.520 So we don't there's not a lot of hopeful outcomes that are realistic right now with

00:10:42.520 Ukraine.

00:10:42.960 But let's get to how we got here and how we should be thinking about it, because it's

00:10:48.420 been fascinating watching the factions divide on this story.

00:10:54.200 The left seems very pro.

00:10:57.000 I don't know if it's fair to say they're pro intervention, but they're the ones that

00:11:01.060 have all the Ukraine flags and their avatars on Twitter.

00:11:04.200 And they're sounding a lot more pro invasion or certainly pro war than they have in a long

00:11:10.840 time.

00:11:11.340 And the right.

00:11:14.040 They're all over the board.

00:11:15.680 There's that faction that says we should be going in and we should be doing a no fly

00:11:19.400 zone.

00:11:20.400 There's, you know, the faction that says we shouldn't be touching this.

00:11:24.040 There's a faction that says we caused it and we have only ourselves to blame.

00:11:29.060 And Putin's in the right, even though they don't like what Putin's doing.

00:11:31.720 They'll say, like, he's not wrong in his outrage.

00:11:34.320 Where do you fall?

00:11:36.900 I just draw a bright red line on this is not America's fight.

00:11:40.640 And so we shouldn't.

00:11:42.300 And by that, I mean, we should not send in troops.

00:11:45.600 And the moment you are squaring off against.

00:11:48.960 Remember, we didn't even do this during the Cold War.

00:11:52.240 You know, we were not we're not shooting Russian or Soviet at the time planes out of the sky.

00:11:57.180 So this would be something that we haven't seen in call it roughly 100 100 years or so

00:12:04.880 of dealing with the Soviet Union and now the remnants of it through Russia and Putin's

00:12:09.800 authoritarianism.

00:12:10.780 So when I think you put it in a historical context, it's easier to understand why that

00:12:15.240 kind of escalation is so, so frightening.

00:12:17.840 And and also not just on unwise strategically and terrifying from a human loss perspective.

00:12:25.300 I think the left I mean, I can I'll start on that side of it for a second.

00:12:29.280 I think they just back the regime.

00:12:31.280 I think that they've been conditioned.

00:12:33.760 I mean, you know, our reigning regime.

00:12:35.960 Is that what you?

00:12:36.720 Yes, I'm sorry.

00:12:37.540 I mean, I mean, the Biden.

00:12:38.620 Sorry, the Biden regime.

00:12:40.060 I think they just back their people in power.

00:12:44.160 And so, you know, if all of a sudden Joe Biden said that it's really important for humanitarian

00:12:49.400 purposes for us to invade, fill in the blank country.

00:12:53.340 I mean, look, we saw this with the Obama administration, with Hillary Clinton and Libya.

00:12:58.140 All of a sudden, it's we have a humanitarian need.

00:13:00.120 We've got to back an air campaign.

00:13:01.420 And we essentially did an air campaign without a grand ground campaign and let that country

00:13:05.780 dissolve into into civil war and a failed state.

00:13:10.080 That was the legacy before.

00:13:12.200 So I think the left just goes, oh, OK, well, this is what we're supposed to do now, according

00:13:16.840 to the people that we trusted to tell us to double mask outside alone, because God forbid

00:13:22.120 you breathe fresh air like a normal human.

00:13:24.640 I think they go along with it.

00:13:25.880 On the right, it's a little bit of a more complicated discussion.

00:13:30.280 There are some there are some voices on the left.

00:13:32.380 I mean, there's Glenn Greenwald and Matt Taibbi and some others.

00:13:35.780 We're saying you guys know we shouldn't go to what like we spent 20 years learning why

00:13:39.820 we shouldn't go to war in places we shouldn't go to.

00:13:42.520 So maybe we remember that lesson.

00:13:44.160 Right.

00:13:44.480 There are some voices on the left on the right.

00:13:46.900 I think it's actually almost a feel.

00:13:49.920 It feels like more of a reversal where you have very few people that want any kind of military

00:13:54.860 intervention.

00:13:55.540 I don't think anybody in the conservative base respects what Congressman Kinzinger, for example,

00:14:01.360 has to say about honestly anything.

00:14:02.840 And I mean, I'm not going to live.

00:14:04.340 But just as an aside, that's a that's a whole other outrage about how they forge forward

00:14:07.980 on January 6th with him and Liz Cheney.

00:14:10.780 And it's whatever comes out there is going to be a joke because Trump basically has no

00:14:14.300 defense.

00:14:14.780 You know what happens when a prosecutor goes into a court of law and the defense doesn't

00:14:18.040 get to stand up and has no represented representation.

00:14:21.260 The prosecution wins.

00:14:22.520 What a shock.

00:14:23.180 Sorry.

00:14:23.520 Go ahead.

00:14:23.860 No, no.

00:14:25.000 Look, it's so important.

00:14:25.980 People realize that, you know, they're the Democrats could be serious about certain things.

00:14:31.120 You know, we could have full scale hearings and actually look at security failures on

00:14:35.480 that day and look at who did what you know.

00:14:37.160 But they don't they want to turn it into a circus.

00:14:39.940 And that's that's what they've been doing from the very beginning.

00:14:42.840 So I think on the on the on the right people recognize that.

00:14:47.220 It's I mean, I put myself in this category.

00:14:51.140 We got to stop fighting wars for other people that we aren't even sure what the strategic

00:14:56.280 with the long term strategic goal is.

00:14:58.740 I mean, in the case of Ukraine, sure, it would be Ukrainian independence.

00:15:03.480 All right.

00:15:03.580 But how do you get there and how much are you willing to do?

00:15:06.320 And if you don't have answers to these questions, we're not even willing right now, it seems,

00:15:10.120 to fully sanction Russian energy sector.

00:15:14.360 So how much can we talk about, I mean, you know, when you're talking about a no fly zone

00:15:19.400 or troops or anything, I mean, that's that's orders of magnitude beyond even what we're

00:15:23.800 not willing to do on a bipartisan basis right now.

00:15:26.760 So I think Joe Biden, just for the record, Joe Biden has been saying and said the other

00:15:30.640 night at the State of the Union, we will not be sending troops into Ukraine and seems

00:15:34.920 to be ruling out any explicit or open use of the military.

00:15:40.700 Yeah, no, that that is there's a basically a bipartisan.

00:15:44.360 Consensus as much as one can be right now about that.

00:15:46.560 I think that's important to establish, but it's a lot easier to establish that or rather

00:15:50.640 that is much more it seems much more durable in the early days of a conflict like this.

00:15:57.280 Again, I hope that I am wrong, although I've been saying for for days now, you know, they're

00:16:04.660 going to take a city and this is going to be you know, this is not nowhere near to say

00:16:09.260 it's nowhere near over.

00:16:10.260 Is it really a statement of the obvious?

00:16:12.000 But we had all this focus on the like patriotic fight in Ukraine and the all these fake stories

00:16:18.520 were coming out and the ghost of Kiev shooting all the planes out of the sky, that kind of

00:16:22.460 stuff.

00:16:24.300 But it's becomes very different when people start to see buildings levels, hospitals

00:16:30.960 on fire, little girls being pulled out of the rubble.

00:16:34.020 So that's going to maternity wards bombed.

00:16:38.140 Yeah.

00:16:38.640 And that's going to happen.

00:16:40.080 The Russian military, the Russian security apparatus is ruthless.

00:16:45.820 It truly is ruthless in a way that is not, I think, reflective at all of the general will

00:16:51.420 of the Russian people, which is another distinction that I think gets lost in a lot of it.

00:16:54.700 It's authoritarian that they're not voting.

00:16:56.960 They're not actively voting for this or supporting this.

00:16:59.620 The Russian people, I mean, I've been there quite a few times.

00:17:02.560 It's they're lovely.

00:17:03.720 They're lovely.

00:17:04.280 They love Putin because he's a strong man.

00:17:06.380 And Russia's had a rough 20, 30 years.

00:17:09.500 And so they like somebody who talks about Russia in strong terms and sort of tries to

00:17:12.800 build it back up.

00:17:13.660 But they're just like any other person.

00:17:16.080 They're lovely.

00:17:16.760 They care about their families.

00:17:18.080 They don't want bombings.

00:17:19.340 They defer to their leader because he's gotten them through some tough times and he loves

00:17:25.120 Mother Russia.

00:17:25.760 And so do they.

00:17:26.780 But I don't believe that they're in favor of this bombing campaign.

00:17:30.580 They just they're not in control.

00:17:32.900 Yeah, I think it's it's interesting that that is the the the separation that I think people

00:17:38.720 should know of, which is that there's not there's not direct support for this.

00:17:43.700 I think if you were to get polling, you can't get polling.

00:17:45.860 I've talked to pollsters about it.

00:17:47.100 You can't get real polling in Russia about this issue, for example.

00:17:50.320 It's just not really possible to do not in not in a, you know, a a meaningful by the

00:17:55.380 data way.

00:17:57.240 But you it is worth noting that there's support for Vladimir Putin generally, as you said,

00:18:03.700 inside of Russia.

00:18:04.640 And it's much broader.

00:18:06.040 Putin was turned because of the Trump thing.

00:18:08.020 And this is a whole other whole other component of this.

00:18:10.740 And I just it clouds so many people in positions of authority, clouds their thinking.

00:18:17.780 Putin was turned into this like cartoon villain helping Trump puppet.

00:18:23.420 Trump's the puppet, stealing the election, all this stuff.

00:18:26.500 And, you know, and they don't really have an understanding.

00:18:29.360 OK, well, who is this guy?

00:18:30.540 What does he want?

00:18:31.880 And does he have the support of a large portion, at least of the Russian people and the Russian

00:18:36.980 security apparatus?

00:18:37.880 Because the answer to that question is actually yes, he does have support, you know, whether

00:18:44.220 he would win a free and fair election, you know, probably not.

00:18:47.400 Maybe.

00:18:47.740 Who knows?

00:18:48.320 I mean, well, he probably would because he controls the media.

00:18:50.880 Right.

00:18:51.260 Like, that's another.

00:18:52.260 Well, that's what I mean.

00:18:53.140 So what's a free and fair election in Russia?

00:18:55.420 I mean, he's kicked out all the international NGOs that were kind of saying, hey, you don't

00:18:59.300 even have basic civil society poisoning his chief rival.

00:19:02.840 I mean, like there are certain places we won't go here.

00:19:05.560 But this is this is always I remember I had I sat down over lunch with a guy in New York

00:19:14.440 who's big and very, very big in the art scene a long time ago.

00:19:17.480 And this is when I was this is when I was still in my kind of government phase.

00:19:22.280 It's like, what's going on with this guy who got poisoned with the polonium and everything?

00:19:28.300 He asked me this question.

00:19:28.940 I just said to him, the Russians send a message.

00:19:34.380 This isn't that they're this isn't sloppy as in they didn't know they couldn't think

00:19:37.700 of a better way to do it.

00:19:39.240 The Russian security apparatus, they're all remnants of the KGB.

00:19:42.900 And the KGB was effectively an evil and godless security service.

00:19:48.660 So that still is very those we think of the deep state in this country.

00:19:52.400 The deep state in the former Soviet Union and Russia is a whole other level.

00:19:58.660 So I think that's important to know.

00:20:00.280 But but Putin did shepherd people in the people of Russia out of it was humiliating.

00:20:07.300 I think that's an important part of this, too.

00:20:10.120 I mean, with the collapse of Soviet Union, we all view it as, you know, the victory that

00:20:13.660 St.

00:20:14.540 Reagan gave us, which is great.

00:20:15.800 But the truth of it is that for the people that live there, they were impoverished in

00:20:23.240 a way that I think very few people in the West really have any understanding of.

00:20:27.060 And it was truly humiliating.

00:20:28.340 And so Putin came along as and Yeltsin was also an embarrassment.

00:20:32.500 And Putin came along all the time.

00:20:34.700 You know, he's drunk.

00:20:35.300 I mean, the guy's drunk all the time.

00:20:36.440 And it was like it was he was a late night laugh lot.

00:20:39.020 Truly.

00:20:39.520 Right.

00:20:39.740 I mean, still is to this day in a lot of ways.

00:20:41.560 And Putin comes along.

00:20:42.600 He's like, no, there's something called Russia and it's serious.

00:20:45.400 And, you know, we we are a real people and we're, you know, manly and tough and all this

00:20:51.440 stuff and also built a Russian middle class.

00:20:53.700 Now, he did it with fossil fuels that were there before he got there.

00:20:58.520 But there is a Russian middle class of some kind that didn't exist before.

00:21:02.200 So it's just more.

00:21:03.540 And I think there's some elements on the right, Megan, right now in our conversation, bring

00:21:06.780 it back to that, who are more aware of the complexity of the Russian situation, of

00:21:12.200 Russia's view of what data is.

00:21:14.780 And and I think they're also sensitive.

00:21:16.740 And this I this I agree with them on.

00:21:18.180 They're sensitive to shutting down discussion, to squashing discussion about important policy

00:21:23.420 issues, because what we saw during covid was just was was a national shame of shutting

00:21:30.540 down important discussions.

00:21:32.100 Interesting.

00:21:32.240 That's an interesting parallel.

00:21:34.120 I hadn't yet made that connection.

00:21:37.040 You're right, because you know what?

00:21:38.720 When I hear I don't want to say that people are blaming America exactly, but there's been

00:21:45.200 a fair amount of talk about what we did and prior to the invasion over the past 10, 15

00:21:52.100 years in Ukraine.

00:21:53.160 And, you know, there were some people who talked like that after 9-11 and it was absolutely

00:22:01.240 verboten.

00:22:02.140 I mean, that that kind of talk was not going to be tolerated with 3000 Americans dead.

00:22:07.880 Little kids losing their parents who just went to work one day, finding out that they no

00:22:12.800 longer had a dad or no longer had a mom and little kids themselves getting burned up on

00:22:16.000 airplanes that were used as missiles.

00:22:17.260 We were not going to talk about our own foreign policy.

00:22:22.060 And, you know, it was like blaming the victim.

00:22:24.800 You know, it was like blaming the victim.

00:22:26.260 It's like when the woman gets killed, who's in a domestic violence situation, you go after

00:22:32.980 the man.

00:22:33.700 That's it.

00:22:34.560 You put the husband in jail, period.

00:22:36.480 You don't say, well, what does she do to annoy him?

00:22:38.420 You know, and I do think the 9-11 situation is a little bit more like that.

00:22:42.680 There's not a lot of good to be spent talking about what do we do?

00:22:46.380 Because it's us.

00:22:47.140 It's our it's our world beliefs.

00:22:48.420 It's the way we view the world.

00:22:49.820 It's our commitment to freedom and so on that Osama bin Laden hated.

00:22:53.000 It's not like we irritated him and we're sorry.

00:22:56.260 This is not that this we actually did do some provocative things that he was warning all

00:23:03.560 along would have devastating consequences.

00:23:06.820 Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama, even Bill Clinton.

00:23:11.820 You know, there's a history.

00:23:13.560 Anyway, that's where we're going to pick it up right after this break.

00:23:15.860 I'd love to get your reaction to what I just said and then take it further.

00:23:19.760 This is an important conversation when I've been dying to have.

00:23:21.820 So glad to have you here today, Buck.

00:23:23.860 Don't go away.

00:23:24.520 Much more to do.

00:23:32.620 Okay.

00:23:33.000 I'll let you take it from here, Buck, in response to what I said before the break.

00:23:36.060 Sure.

00:23:37.000 I mean, look, the and this is tough because there's there's a sense of of mobile as there's

00:23:43.840 outrage and there's mobilization underway right now.

00:23:46.600 So we talk about what are the U.S.

00:23:48.580 And when I say the U.S., what are essentially the West, Europe, what was done that was even

00:23:56.760 if you want to say exploited by or seized on Putin, it's it's at least worth being aware

00:24:02.220 of what happened that that pushed it to this this place.

00:24:06.660 And and look, I would I would argue that the Russians have been running.

00:24:10.820 Georgia was effectively a dry run for this and the setting up of the two autonomous zones

00:24:16.820 of south of Ossetia and Abkhazia, where they just decided, OK, well, these are Russian speaking

00:24:22.880 enclaves in a internationally recognized country.

00:24:25.500 They're now not.

00:24:26.820 There's something that the Russians are the Russian puppet states, client states.

00:24:31.440 So the Russians have been angling for this for a while, too, to be fair.

00:24:33.880 This is, you know, Putin is not a guy who's sitting around thinking about how he can get

00:24:39.240 along better with the international community and be a moral actor.

00:24:42.680 He thinks he's being a a great game power strongman actor.

00:24:48.760 Well, that's that's worth pausing on, too.

00:24:50.240 First of all, so Georgia happened in 2008 and then we did nothing really afterward.

00:24:55.500 But that's another important thing.

00:24:57.840 So Putin, people who are having a love affair with Putin in our country, I mean, there is

00:25:02.540 a certain faction that really they love the guy because they think, well, I don't know,

00:25:05.700 he's not woke and he's a strong man.

00:25:07.860 OK, let's not confuse ourselves.

00:25:08.960 Those those things are true.

00:25:10.040 But Putin is not rooting for the United States of America at all.

00:25:15.680 Putin would love to see the American experiment fail, has done his level best to try to make

00:25:20.600 it fail without necessarily leaving fingerprints on all of his efforts.

00:25:24.000 What he really wants is chaos.

00:25:25.660 He'll take the Black Lives Matter messages and have his bots promo that all over social

00:25:31.240 media.

00:25:31.760 And then he'll take the sort of the more right wing response to it and promo that all over

00:25:36.420 social media.

00:25:37.000 He doesn't care which side wins.

00:25:38.600 He cares that we're fighting.

00:25:39.600 He's absolutely trying to subvert unity within the United States, criticize capitalism and

00:25:46.180 would love to see the United States in a weaker, more submissive position.

00:25:50.300 So people shouldn't get confused about what Putin wants with respect to us or our country.

00:25:56.740 Yeah, I think that's all true.

00:25:58.300 And I think that's important context for all of our thinking about what he's going to do

00:26:03.120 and also what we should do and have done up to this point.

00:26:06.780 So that's it's worth remembering.

00:26:09.040 He is zero sum with the U.S.

00:26:11.780 And you have to when we see it this way or when people think of it this way, I think it's

00:26:17.000 helpful, Megan, that the when he says what the greatest tragedy of the 20th century was

00:26:23.160 the collapse of the Soviet Union.

00:26:24.860 I mean, this is a mentality that is is not you know, you have to be aware of it in the

00:26:31.540 Russian context to understand that they view all of this, that the creation of these other

00:26:36.760 republics, the carving up of the former Soviet Union.

00:26:39.560 Putin views this as unjust and something that should be corrected.

00:26:45.380 He views the separation of Russian speaking peoples as a result of these national boundaries

00:26:49.560 as an affront to the dignity of the Russian people.

00:26:54.500 I mean, there's a whole a whole history here as well, I think is not is not well understood

00:27:00.200 in the in the West of the Russians thinking of themselves as the the latest incarnation,

00:27:08.220 if you will, of Rome.

00:27:09.020 And I know this is but Russian Orthodox Christianity is an offshoot of Eastern Orthodox or Byzantine

00:27:16.780 Christianity.

00:27:18.360 And they view themselves as the defenders and the the not just the heirs, the inheritors

00:27:23.220 now of that legacy.

00:27:24.860 And so there's all these these stories of not just national, but civilizational pride that

00:27:30.620 go into the Russian thinking about who they are and what their role is in the world and

00:27:34.520 trying to trying to get that back at some level after the collapse of the Soviet Union.

00:27:40.500 But there there, believe it or not, there is a thread that it's there was the ancient

00:27:44.160 Rome that we think of.

00:27:45.160 And then there was which obviously turned became a Christian Christian empire.

00:27:50.240 And then there's the Eastern Orthodox Christian empire out of Constantinople, Byzantium.

00:27:56.040 And then it moved to Russia.

00:27:58.340 And they're the final inheritors of the legacy of Orthodox Christianity and the defenders of it.

00:28:03.720 And that's why the Russian Orthodox Church is, you know, the separation between church

00:28:08.540 and state does not exist there.

00:28:10.180 The Russian Orthodox Church is very much a part of a lot of what Putin, Putin's nationalism

00:28:15.800 and narratives are.

00:28:17.780 So in all that context, I think when you look at what the U.S. did or how we how we handled

00:28:26.280 this up to this point, you know, it should have been we should have seen this coming at

00:28:32.300 some level, I think I do believe that there was a sense that he wouldn't do this, that

00:28:37.400 there was a oh, no, he won't attitude about Ukraine that was ignoring the trajectory and

00:28:45.020 ignoring the recent history.

00:28:46.720 And can we talk about what specifically we did?

00:28:50.200 You know, can we talk about what I mean?

00:28:52.060 The United States that some call it a soft coup to 2014 trying to remove this pro Soviet leader

00:28:59.940 of Ukraine, the Maidan Square and that's what they called it, the Maidan revolution.

00:29:05.240 But, you know, Putin would say whatever you want to call it was the United States basically

00:29:10.040 deposing the pro Russian leader of Ukraine and replacing him with a pro Western leader of

00:29:17.420 Ukraine and our expansion of NATO, forget Ukraine, but our expansion of NATO prior to Ukraine and

00:29:23.220 and at least talking about whether Ukraine could be part of it and putting troops, you

00:29:27.540 know, closer and closer to his borders, which he said, you know, you guys didn't like that

00:29:31.080 in Cuba and I don't like it here and you better stop it.

00:29:34.820 And there's no reason for it.

00:29:36.420 You know, World War Two is a long time ago.

00:29:37.960 The Soviet Empire fell.

00:29:39.760 What are you doing?

00:29:40.340 It's provocative.

00:29:41.600 And I will respond.

00:29:42.980 And Crimea happened because of the 2014 change in leaders.

00:29:48.660 And that's that was one of the things he did.

00:29:51.220 There was Crimea and then there were the, you know, the two separatist areas.

00:29:54.360 In any event, how do you see our own manipulation of Ukraine?

00:30:01.080 Because some are now looking, you know, one of the things I said early on in this in this

00:30:03.880 controversy was Ukraine did nothing to deserve this.

00:30:07.000 And I think that's still fair to say they did nothing to deserve what he's doing to them.

00:30:10.980 But maybe it's too simplistic because they and the West have been maneuvering in a way

00:30:18.140 that's been provocative to Russia.

00:30:20.280 Again, none of this is to just to justify his behaviors.

00:30:22.420 It's just background.

00:30:24.380 Yeah, I think I think understanding the full context is necessary for sound decision making.

00:30:29.620 If we allow emotion and there has been a lot of that.

00:30:32.180 And I think a lot of the analysis, I mean, I'm seeing people that I know who are people

00:30:38.500 that that have real military experience, including at the at the command level going on TV and

00:30:45.800 saying, oh, my gosh, the Ukrainians are just kicking Russian Russian ass.

00:30:50.220 And this is going to be, you know, if we keep going here, I'm like this saying there's there's

00:30:55.100 no way there.

00:30:55.620 But they're caught up in the emotion right there.

00:30:57.140 They're forgetting what they already know and what they've experienced in the past, which

00:31:00.940 is the way a military campaign like this would unfold.

00:31:04.820 So just as as a point of a point of prefacing, I think that's important.

00:31:10.380 And then as to what we've done, I mean, the why does NATO exist?

00:31:14.260 I was in Afghanistan right before the first time I actually ever did your show, Megan, back

00:31:19.240 in the day.

00:31:19.680 I was in Afghanistan and people forget that was a NATO mission, but everyone's kind of

00:31:25.060 sitting around saying or, you know, our NATO allies were there.

00:31:27.460 We're saying, well, wait, is this is NATO now a global peacekeeping force?

00:31:31.500 Is that why the answer is no, not not really.

00:31:34.460 I mean, it's actually supposed to be about Russia or was about the Soviet Union.

00:31:39.200 And so the continuation of this military, it's a military alliance.

00:31:43.560 If anyone attacks anyone.

00:31:45.260 Now, people say it also keeps the peace in Europe because this way, you know, France won't

00:31:49.540 invade Germany or whatever stuff that obviously historically was a big problem.

00:31:54.120 Used to be a thing.

00:31:55.480 Yeah, used to be a thing.

00:31:56.600 Definitely.

00:31:57.420 But in the meantime, we look at what's going on with Russia and you have to say, OK, so

00:32:02.680 now it really is about about creating a military buffer and essentially make sure that Russia

00:32:11.260 stays outgunned on.

00:32:13.160 It's not just when it comes to invading NATO countries, but even on its own periphery countries

00:32:17.500 like Ukraine and Georgia and areas that were now the Baltics are under the NATO umbrella,

00:32:23.180 which is a huge sore spot for Putin and Russians who think like him.

00:32:28.300 But, you know, we were thinking about taking a military alliance that does thoroughly outgun

00:32:34.720 the Russians in a conventional military sense right up to the borders of his country.

00:32:40.280 And that was under active discussion.

00:32:42.360 Again, this is not the you know, this is not to be a Ukraine's actions have resulted in

00:32:50.100 this discussion.

00:32:51.080 But just to understand how we got here, I think people underestimated in the West Putin's resolve

00:32:58.260 about this and how much, you know, he views it as a provocation.

00:33:01.640 He also views it, I think, at some level as an opportunity.

00:33:03.920 I mean, he does want Russian client states because, of course, he does, because he thinks

00:33:08.860 about this in a zero sum way.

00:33:10.100 He doesn't care about democracy.

00:33:11.140 He doesn't care about the the day to day folks who live in Ukraine or Georgia or the

00:33:15.700 Baltics or you name it.

00:33:17.220 It's just whatever is best for the project of Russian, dare I say, in his mind, Russian

00:33:23.380 greatness or the reconstituting of Russian greatness.

00:33:26.000 Gary Kasparov is on the show earlier this week, you know, a famous world famous chess player

00:33:30.000 and Putin critic and he's Russian, been pushing for democratic reforms there for years.

00:33:35.140 And he said that you're asking.

00:33:36.380 I said, why?

00:33:37.000 Why would he do it?

00:33:37.740 He said, you're asking the wrong question.

00:33:40.280 It's not why it's why not in Putin's mind.

00:33:44.680 Yeah, there's no moral compunction.

00:33:46.620 This is a KGB guy, truly a KGB guy.

00:33:49.540 Now it's broken up and you have the GRU Russian intelligence for the military.

00:33:54.560 You have the SVR foreign intelligence.

00:33:56.320 You have the FSB domestic intelligence.

00:33:57.880 But that's just essentially like taking the different components of what was the KGB.

00:34:02.760 A lot of them, a lot of the same people actually running it and saying, OK, well, now you're

00:34:06.400 moving the acronyms around, but it's effectively still spells KGB ultimately.

00:34:12.120 Yeah.

00:34:12.480 You add it all together, it kind of still does spell KGB.

00:34:15.000 It's close enough.

00:34:16.400 And and I think that, you know, when we were still forgetting in many cases how much that

00:34:24.500 legacy, that mentality lives on.

00:34:26.800 I mean, when you have the head of the country, he was set up so that the great enemy and

00:34:31.440 to the point of of the the the belief in that there could be even the annihilation of the

00:34:36.040 Russian people in a nuclear exchange.

00:34:38.460 The enemy was America and Europe.

00:34:40.840 That that was the this is a guy who his formative years were spent learning that we were the

00:34:45.880 bad guys.

00:34:46.680 Yeah.

00:34:46.900 And that's you know, you don't you don't shake that, you know, I mean, I don't know.

00:34:49.940 I'm sure people listening to this.

00:34:51.200 My grandfather fought in World War Two in the Pacific theater and, you know, it was a

00:34:57.780 very different Japan.

00:34:59.560 You know, he passed about 10 years ago, but he still had some feelings about that part

00:35:03.580 of the world that he never shook that.

00:35:06.140 I mean, they're there.

00:35:07.180 You're when you spend your 20s thinking that someone and fighting in somebody as as the

00:35:11.860 enemy, it can really affect your thinking over the long term.

00:35:15.360 In the case of Putin, I think.

00:35:16.740 Well, I mean, let's just let's go out into a truly fantasy wing and say the Taliban somehow

00:35:22.080 decides to run Afghanistan in a kind, gentle way.

00:35:24.960 And they've managed to provide food for people and provide jobs for people in a way that's

00:35:29.760 definitely not happening now because there's mighty suffering in 20 years.

00:35:33.340 Will anybody who lived through 9-11 and the war there be looking at, oh, yeah, OK, I've

00:35:38.540 softened on the Taliban?

00:35:40.120 You know, like, no, we will not.

00:35:41.180 We know who they are.

00:35:41.920 We lived it firsthand for years.

00:35:44.880 Yeah, I mean, that's that's that's really exactly what I'm saying here.

00:35:47.720 I mean, I, you know, I was a CIA analyst, so wasn't wasn't a door kicker, wasn't a ground

00:35:54.200 pounder like the guys in the military over there.

00:35:55.840 But I was in theater trying to figure out and help them find the bad guys and try to

00:36:01.080 tell the policy community what was really going on.

00:36:04.500 And Taliban was the enemy straight up.

00:36:07.380 And it's you know, that my thinking on that is is always it's always going to be colored

00:36:12.040 by that at some level.

00:36:12.880 I mean, and seeing what was being done and the fighting that that our guys were doing

00:36:17.600 over there, you know, it's tough to shake that.

00:36:20.440 And so I think people should remember that in Putin's mentality, we're the bad guys.

00:36:24.200 And by the way, you know, not to this justify what I'm saying, but if you look back at sort

00:36:28.180 of the 1980s, which I remember all of our movies, you know, the Russians were always the bad

00:36:32.520 guys.

00:36:33.060 We always demonize them, too.

00:36:35.420 And we did during the Cold War and the escalation of the nuke buildup and so on.

00:36:39.340 It was we at every turn wanted to demonize the Russians.

00:36:41.960 And he lived that through that, you know, at a much older age than I was and remembers

00:36:47.120 it.

00:36:47.380 So he's not a fan of the United States.

00:36:50.100 He's not a fan of pro-Western democracies.

00:36:52.460 He he wants Mother Russia to be returned to its old glory.

00:36:56.600 And right.

00:36:57.400 So your point is well taken that he's got a couple of goals here.

00:37:00.300 He's mad about what we've been doing that he finds threatening.

00:37:03.120 But he also again, back to Kasparov, why not?

00:37:06.180 Because this is well along the road toward what he wants anyway.

00:37:10.500 Yeah.

00:37:10.740 And anybody who does a risk reward calculation in the West, I think, quickly realizes that,

00:37:16.000 I mean, how much how much do we really look we want to we want to believe and I think

00:37:21.980 this is hard for a lot of people to hear right now.

00:37:23.900 We want to believe that we'll do whatever it takes to defend sovereignty of a democracy

00:37:33.040 and human rights and human life anywhere in the world.

00:37:35.960 Yet when you ask people, OK, does that are we going to completely cut ourselves off from

00:37:41.120 the Russian energy sector?

00:37:42.200 Just do that.

00:37:43.560 Most people go, well, hold on a second.

00:37:44.980 Does that mean I'm going to be paying what?

00:37:47.860 Fifty percent more at the pump.

00:37:49.780 The U.S. economy goes into a recession.

00:37:52.920 Everything is more expensive because energy people.

00:37:55.100 I think a lot of folks should be reminded half of of petroleum, half of oil goes into

00:38:02.520 products, doesn't even go into transportation, gasoline, fuel, et cetera.

00:38:05.700 It actually goes into things that you need and rely on for your day to day life to make

00:38:09.620 them.

00:38:10.520 So, you know, man, you just in the manufacturing process.

00:38:13.960 So I think that when we are not even willing to take maximum economic action, we have to

00:38:19.520 realize, no, there are limits to this.

00:38:21.460 And we should we should be I just think we should all be adults in that conversation.

00:38:25.880 And I do think there are some voices on the right who are trying to say that.

00:38:29.460 And I think there are some other voices that get into weird Putin fanboy stuff, which is

00:38:32.660 gross.

00:38:33.380 Yeah, that's much more rare, though.

00:38:35.100 And by the way, the so I, you know, I interviewed the former president with Clay last week on

00:38:41.140 this, and they said that the whole focus was that he called Putin a genius.

00:38:45.640 He was saying Putin is a genius in the context of the strategic maneuvers that he's making

00:38:50.200 against vis-a-vis Biden and the ineptitude of the administration right now.

00:38:56.280 He also said.

00:38:57.160 So overblown.

00:38:57.720 So so alone.

00:38:59.260 Yeah.

00:38:59.640 He also said he's amazing and we should admire him.

00:39:03.320 He's saying recognize what his talents are and judge for yourself whether they're being

00:39:07.860 well executed and better than our own policies are.

00:39:11.700 Yes, you get that.

00:39:13.100 Right.

00:39:13.320 This is what actually was.

00:39:14.360 This is what actually was the was the communication that he was he was having with us at that time.

00:39:18.660 And it was just amazing to see people who think of themselves as serious and honest brokers

00:39:23.200 in the news.

00:39:23.960 I mean, remember that that's a laugh line or not, completely misrepresenting it as the

00:39:28.260 he's a Putin fan.

00:39:29.960 He's not a Putin fan.

00:39:31.600 And I wish I could say the stuff that he was saying to us off the record about Putin before,

00:39:35.060 but obviously it's off the record before the interview, because I can tell you he's not

00:39:38.300 a Putin fan at all.

00:39:39.940 But, you know, there's this they want to I think at some level, Megan, there's also a

00:39:46.160 desire to come up with some narrative among Democrats right now that Joe Biden isn't in

00:39:54.460 some way related to at least the the the cause of this, that he's not basically there.

00:40:00.800 I think people are starting to realize this is an embarrassment of an administration.

00:40:03.500 And so there's a desperation to create narratives from the Democrat side of things right now

00:40:09.200 that, oh, it's not really he's not the embarrassment.

00:40:12.660 It's Trump who likes Putin.

00:40:13.880 Trump's not even in office.

00:40:14.900 He's not even running for office.

00:40:15.740 Why are they even talking about his view of Putin?

00:40:18.860 What does that even matter for right now?

00:40:20.360 Right.

00:40:20.840 What are they going to say?

00:40:22.620 Run the clip from 2019 of Joe Biden saying Putin doesn't want me to be the president because

00:40:27.300 I'll hmm.

00:40:28.160 Well, it turns out.

00:40:29.040 You know what it's like, it's a little like the way they use January 6th against Trump

00:40:36.620 and Trump supporters is not it's not dissimilar from the way they're using the Ukrainian invasion

00:40:43.580 now because they demonized everything Trump did while he was president, everything.

00:40:52.580 And while they were doing that, they pushed a fake, completely invented Hillary Clinton

00:40:59.640 endorsed theory about Trump somehow having some back channel, some nefarious back channel

00:41:05.080 dealings with Russia that made him president.

00:41:07.720 And when that completely collapsed, they didn't acknowledge it.

00:41:11.260 They didn't admit it.

00:41:12.780 They didn't apologize.

00:41:14.320 They just switched to the awfulness that was January 6th and said, you see, Trump is evil.

00:41:21.700 We've been trying to tell you all along he's evil.

00:41:25.500 And now it's like they while demonizing Trump all that time, they were demonizing Putin.

00:41:31.040 Right.

00:41:31.200 And Putin has done some bad things with respect to America.

00:41:33.180 We covered some of that.

00:41:34.340 But he's their other villain in that story.

00:41:36.960 So now it's like he's terrible.

00:41:38.180 He's terrible.

00:41:38.760 He's an enemy of the state.

00:41:39.680 He worked with Trump.

00:41:40.320 He did all the bad stuff.

00:41:41.140 OK, that falls apart.

00:41:42.060 They don't acknowledge what they said about him with respect to that piece.

00:41:46.040 You know, this alleged cooperation and Alpha Bank and all that nonsense.

00:41:48.780 But now he does something truly awful.

00:41:51.920 And it's like we feel justified.

00:41:54.460 You know, the end story shows you this was a terrible person.

00:41:59.080 So in a way, it gives them comfort for the misrepresentations they've been telling us all

00:42:05.680 along.

00:42:05.940 Yes, yes, I think that's completely accurate.

00:42:11.200 I mean, I would I would endorse your whole theory of their mentality here because I think

00:42:15.600 that is what's going on.

00:42:17.440 And I I would add to it that right now there's got to be some sense of I think they're the

00:42:27.180 Democrats are a little bit at some level, at least unnerved by the recognition that their

00:42:34.560 God Fauci was a false God, that a lot of what they were told and went along with and were

00:42:40.840 were really kind of vicious little marionettes of those in power about when it came to COVID.

00:42:47.320 Anyone who's honest would have to admit now that the the the apparatus, as I like to call

00:42:53.440 it, which is, by the way, a Soviet kind of a Soviet reference, but the apparatus of

00:42:57.540 COVID control was almost entirely destructive and almost zero benefit from all the stuff

00:43:04.460 that they put us through.

00:43:05.340 Not not not entirely, but 90 percent of it was either useless or actually made things

00:43:11.480 worse.

00:43:12.620 And I think that now there's a desperation for, oh, and defund the police is horrible

00:43:17.820 and resulted in more people, disproportionately more young black men being killed in this

00:43:23.160 country in criminal incidents after undermining police and progressive prosecutors.

00:43:28.500 You see spending too much money turns out causes inflation.

00:43:31.300 Oh, what a shock.

00:43:32.340 It's apparently a shock to buy it in the people around him.

00:43:34.820 So there's a desperation.

00:43:35.980 He's like, I've got the solution.

00:43:37.120 We're going to spend more money.

00:43:38.420 We're going to spend more money.

00:43:39.160 Exactly.

00:43:39.580 The inflation is going to get better, Megan, when they when they spend even more trillions

00:43:42.700 more dollars.

00:43:43.860 Great.

00:43:44.100 And you sit here and I think Democrats in general, and I know a lot of them, they emotionalize

00:43:50.660 their politics and internalize it where it's really, really hard for them.

00:43:54.660 Like sometimes as a Republican, I'm like, wow, maybe was I wrong on that?

00:43:57.300 Or I just think we have a different a different mentality on the right about this stuff.

00:44:02.180 They're desperate for a narrative of they're the good guys.

00:44:05.120 And so by pushing for Ukraine, they say, ah, see, we're the good guys again.

00:44:08.860 And by demonizing not just Putin, but also Trump, it's those are the bad guys.

00:44:13.260 They're they're making this they're making this a point of psychological comfort for themselves

00:44:18.940 at a time when the Democrat Party in the last last year or so is responsible for a lot of

00:44:24.260 really bad ideas with covid, with crime, with the border, with go down the list, objectively

00:44:29.060 bad with with bad results that folks should be kind of embarrassed about their belief that

00:44:34.840 Biden was going to be a good president.

00:44:36.060 I'm just going to say that.

00:44:36.880 I mean, you know, you can disagree with what Trump did in a lot of ways.

00:44:40.320 And I know there are people even on the right who do.

00:44:42.880 But he was kind of what you you know, he was sort of what was voted for.

00:44:46.420 Rather, you know, people knew what they were getting.

00:44:48.760 Joe Biden has a steady hand on foreign policy who unites the country and is going to bring

00:44:52.920 back a roaring economy and everything's going to be great and pleasant.

00:44:55.520 We're all going to get along.

00:44:56.300 This is lunacy.

00:44:57.380 This is a delusion.

00:44:57.980 There's a reason he has a 38 percent approval rating lower than Trump's was going into his

00:45:02.520 first state of the union, lower than Trump, who is a far more controversial,

00:45:06.320 official figure.

00:45:07.580 And what it tells you is that he has no support amongst independents.

00:45:10.760 It's 30 percent support of independents and that his own party is actually starting to

00:45:15.200 flake off that there.

00:45:16.880 Even they are starting to waver on what's going on.

00:45:20.000 Is he there?

00:45:21.320 Is he all there?

00:45:22.160 And is he capable of this job?

00:45:24.860 All right.

00:45:25.020 Let me pause it one quick break back with Buck Sexton.

00:45:28.220 Great.

00:45:28.680 Really enjoying this whole discussion.

00:45:29.860 Very illuminating after this.

00:45:31.720 And don't forget, folks, you can find The Megyn Kelly Show live on Sirius XM Triumph Channel

00:45:35.380 111 every weekday at noon east.

00:45:37.400 The full video show and clips by subscribing to our YouTube channel, youtube.com slash Megyn Kelly.

00:45:41.980 And if you prefer an audio podcast, you can subscribe and download on Apple, Spotify, Pandora,

00:45:46.500 Stitcher or wherever you get your podcasts for free.

00:45:52.160 But there are some now saber rattling about more being done by the U.S. and Ukraine starts

00:46:02.140 to get you a little nervous.

00:46:04.280 Former NATO Supreme Commander Wesley Clark gave an interview saying he wants, I think, no

00:46:10.340 fly zone and saying what we really need to do, like the number one thing we need to do

00:46:15.120 is to declare Putin a war criminal because it will make him a pariah on the world stage.

00:46:19.600 Uh, there are some talks about that suggesting, you know, talking about the murder of civilians.

00:46:25.880 And Joe Biden was asked about that by reporters.

00:46:29.160 Um, I think yesterday.

00:46:30.860 Here's how that went.

00:46:32.020 Listen.

00:46:32.180 His last statement was, it's clear they are targeting civilians.

00:46:49.960 So what do you make of that strategy?

00:46:51.820 Not the airstrikes.

00:46:52.740 I know you're against, I mean, airspace, you're against that.

00:46:54.740 But, um, declaring him a war criminal.

00:46:57.280 Well, here's the truth.

00:47:00.280 And I mean, we can go back and clip this, uh, clip this segment of the interview, Megan.

00:47:04.300 I think it'll look pretty prescient in a year or two.

00:47:07.900 Um, Putin will be back at the United Nations or, you know, he'll be back in these international,

00:47:14.400 uh, meeting, meeting spots, uh, whether, you know, whatever they go, a G7, all this sort

00:47:19.540 of stuff, it's just a matter of time.

00:47:21.280 Russia's too big, too economically because of its, uh, fossil fuel reserves, too economically

00:47:26.520 important.

00:47:27.440 There's no North Korea in Russia, if you will.

00:47:30.740 That's just not going to happen.

00:47:31.740 That's, that's, that's an unserious view of geopolitics, in my opinion.

00:47:37.000 Uh, so we're going to have this guy back on the world scene at some point.

00:47:41.520 And so it's just a question of what we're willing to do now to get this fighting in Ukraine

00:47:45.280 to stop, I mean, I, I think that you're going to have Kyiv surrounded and, and unfortunately

00:47:51.640 pummeled really hard.

00:47:53.040 And then there'll be, uh, and they'll also take other major cities in the weeks ahead.

00:47:56.960 Then there'll be some kind of negotiation, probably with, you know, uh, maybe with a

00:48:02.740 third party, uh, uh, intermediary involved between the Ukrainian government and Putin.

00:48:07.420 And he's going to say effectively everything from, uh, Kyiv East is a protectorate of the

00:48:14.400 Russian Federation and the Donbass region is now an independent country, uh, as in it's

00:48:20.020 part of the Russian Federation.

00:48:21.120 It's, it's Russian soil for all intents and purposes.

00:48:24.000 I think that's where this is heading.

00:48:26.000 So my guess is he's going to cut the country in half.

00:48:29.040 And, and that way he still has, uh, he'll essentially say, well, the Ukrainian speaking

00:48:34.120 Ukrainians, um, and there, cause there are some linguistic separation.

00:48:37.960 Now people speak Russian and Ukrainian usually, but the more, um, more pro-Western, uh,

00:48:44.400 folks within the country will, will consolidate in the West.

00:48:47.120 That's what I think is going to end up happening.

00:48:49.000 So the make him a pariah, yeah, make him a pariah in the short term, uh, go after the

00:48:54.400 pressure points that you can economically.

00:48:55.900 Of course that should be done, but it's all temporary.

00:48:58.460 And he knows Putin knows that.

00:49:00.160 And that's why he's willing to go and do this and escalate everything else, because

00:49:03.680 there, there is no, there is no future in which Russia is not a part of the international

00:49:09.400 community at some level, uh, as a country with, uh, a huge nuclear arsenal and enormous

00:49:15.100 fossil fuel reserves.

00:49:16.000 And that stretches across like what, six or seven time zones.

00:49:18.860 Like there's, there's no way that they're just told you're, you're not a player anymore.

00:49:24.000 That's fascinating.

00:49:24.780 You can't North Korea eyes, Russia.

00:49:26.580 That's very, very sound, but this is the best discussion I've had all week.

00:49:30.700 I really appreciate your insights on it.

00:49:33.260 As always, I've been doing it for how many years now?

00:49:35.400 Uh, it's a pleasure talking, you can have me back so we can talk about fun stuff sometime.

00:49:39.560 I know I will, but this was good.

00:49:41.640 I appreciate it.

00:49:42.280 Thank you so much.

00:49:43.000 Up next, Jason Whitlock's take on president Biden and the state of the union.

00:49:53.160 Politics and sports collide again, as we dive into a series of controversial stories, golf

00:49:58.980 great Phil Mickelson in a world of trouble over comments he made about Saudi Arabia and an

00:50:05.120 alternative to the PGA tour.

00:50:07.620 Uh, then there's a football coach out of a job now before he could even start it.

00:50:11.200 Is there a double standard in how the woke social media mob treated him versus these

00:50:15.720 famous, famous athletes that have had trouble with the law and is Joe Biden morphing into

00:50:21.640 Donald Trump?

00:50:22.520 What my next guest says it.

00:50:25.400 So Jason Whitlock is co-host of fearless with Jason Whitlock on the blaze TV and the columnist

00:50:32.240 with the blaze.

00:50:33.240 Jason, so great to have you back again.

00:50:34.980 I got to start with that.

00:50:35.740 What do you mean he's morphing into Donald Trump?

00:50:37.840 Say what?

00:50:38.160 Did you not listen to the second half of his, uh, speech, uh, the state of the union address,

00:50:44.480 or I'm sorry, state of the new world order address, uh, at the beginning.

00:50:48.000 And then, and then after he talked about Ukraine and unity among NATO countries and all that,

00:50:54.760 then he pivoted to all of our, many of Donald Trump's talking points, bringing manufacturing

00:51:00.500 jobs back, uh, make it here in America, the Democrats chanting USA, USA, like they're at

00:51:07.180 a Trump rally.

00:51:08.400 Secure the border.

00:51:09.640 Yeah.

00:51:10.260 Fix the border.

00:51:12.200 Uh, defund the police.

00:51:15.480 Uh, so I, I think he stuck his finger in the air.

00:51:19.560 His pollsters did and said, Oh my God, we're about to get crushed in these midterm elections.

00:51:25.260 Uh, we got to go back to pretending like we love America and having sold out all the way

00:51:30.600 to China.

00:51:31.600 Uh, and so he did his little best little Trump impersonation that fell flat inauthentic,

00:51:37.480 obviously.

00:51:38.720 Um, but yeah, I, I think that the Democrats are realizing they've gone too far.

00:51:45.480 Uh, with their demonization of America and their anti-American sentiment and, and Joe

00:51:53.000 Biden tried to walk that back a little bit, uh, on what was that Tuesday or Wednesday?

00:51:57.940 Wednesday, I think.

00:51:59.180 Yeah.

00:51:59.380 No, I don't think you're wrong.

00:52:00.200 I was on, um, went on my pal, Eric Bowling's show on, uh, Newsmax yesterday and, and basically

00:52:06.280 said the same thing.

00:52:06.900 I was like, what he basically did was take on all of the policy positions that Republicans

00:52:11.820 have been advocating for years now and say they're right without admitting that's what

00:52:17.080 he's doing.

00:52:17.420 I mean, to have Joe Biden of all people, when we have record illegal immigration now attempts

00:52:22.360 across our Southern border to talk about how we really need to secure the border and with

00:52:26.040 these illegal immigrants saying they're coming because of Joe Biden's policies, they're coming

00:52:29.840 because they know he's soft on the border to actually look us in the eye and try to tell

00:52:34.140 us this is one of his concerns was a joke and the defund the police are in now his term

00:52:39.100 is fund.

00:52:39.500 The police is a lie.

00:52:40.600 I mean, it's not only has the Democrat party been the one that's been defunding the police

00:52:44.520 across the country, Jason, but they've, they haven't been pro law enforcement.

00:52:48.080 The Democrats have been anything but pro law enforcement and they put cops in a terrible spot

00:52:53.120 for two years and I was just going to breeze past the demonization of police at every turn

00:52:59.700 like it didn't happen with three words, fund the police.

00:53:04.380 Let me tell you what I found interesting about that, Megan, is he talked about, I think, a

00:53:09.820 New York police officer that was gunned down and meeting with that guy's family.

00:53:15.260 And, and what I think he left out, because again, you know how the state of the union works.

00:53:19.100 They bring in special guests to sit in the audience so they can point them out.

00:53:24.040 And when he didn't have anybody from law enforcement or that man's family there, that to me says

00:53:31.740 things aren't right with Joe Biden and law enforcement or that man's family, or they would have been

00:53:37.480 sitting in that office, been a special guest, uh, you know, at the state of the union.

00:53:42.080 And so it just screamed inauthenticity, inauthentic, inauthentic to me, uh, it's, it's the audacity

00:53:52.180 of Biden and the Democrats to do what they did Tuesday night.

00:53:57.920 Uh, because again, I believe all of that is orchestrated.

00:54:01.040 I think there was a script about, okay, we're going to chant USA, USA at this point in the

00:54:06.360 deal.

00:54:06.700 So they were trying to put on an hour long television commercial for the midterm elections

00:54:11.260 and try to communicate to regular Americans that, Hey, we haven't abandoned you.

00:54:16.520 And look, Joe Biden has always been a relatively inarticulate speaker.

00:54:22.440 Uh, but I think his, and he's always loved the word folks, folks, folks, but, but if you

00:54:29.620 really go back and examine his speech after the Ukrainian stuff, he was trying to sound

00:54:37.380 like Trump at a Trump rally.

00:54:40.640 Uh, and I mean, the folksy way he was trying to talk and, you know, he really leaned into

00:54:47.420 that.

00:54:47.800 And, you know, at some point, all of America is going to have to deal with the fact that

00:54:55.940 even though Trump put out mean tweets, even though Trump, uh, didn't do everything right,

00:55:02.240 he was right about a lot of things that would have put America in a better position right

00:55:08.600 now.

00:55:09.000 We look so weak and so divided right now.

00:55:12.820 I think that's why Putin feels so emboldened and why China feels emboldened, uh, is because

00:55:20.200 we're so weak and divided.

00:55:22.280 Well, I mean, it's no accident that, you know, who was missing from the state of the union was

00:55:26.760 any family member of the 13 fallen Marines and service members who were killed in that

00:55:31.780 debacle of a withdrawal from Afghanistan.

00:55:33.440 This enormous success that Joe Biden told us he had, if it was so enormous, why didn't

00:55:38.440 you mention it?

00:55:39.280 Why wasn't, why didn't it come up even one time?

00:55:42.440 Why did you pause to pay tribute to your own fallen son who died of cancer, Beau Biden?

00:55:47.840 And you said maybe because of toxins from a fire pit while serving overseas.

00:55:51.620 And you didn't, you didn't have the courage or the kindness to mention those fallen Marines

00:55:57.880 and service personnel.

00:55:58.800 Why not?

00:55:59.620 Why?

00:56:00.260 It was a lie.

00:56:01.160 Let me give you another enormous omission in my view, based off the way Democrats have

00:56:08.860 behaved over the past year.

00:56:10.620 Joe Biden was speaking at the Capitol, uh, the site of Pearl Harbor 2.0 January 6th, allegedly

00:56:20.080 is, you know, a date that will live in infamy.

00:56:23.840 You know, our democracy, our Republic almost went down, never said a word about it.

00:56:29.920 You know, and again, Democrats have defined that day in this moment as historic and they've

00:56:37.240 used it to beat up Trump supporters and, and define them as racist, insurrectionist.

00:56:43.620 And so here he is at the scene of this great historic crime, uh, doesn't mention it, doesn't

00:56:50.220 say a word.

00:56:50.720 It's suddenly dropped from their talking points.

00:56:52.960 And that was the, him not doing that is the first hopeful sign because January 6th is one

00:57:00.740 of the days I'm most passionate about because I think we've put a bunch of political prisoners

00:57:06.460 in dungeons, uh, who were, uh, mostly for nonviolent crimes for trespassing.

00:57:12.420 And I'm a big defender of those people and think it's, uh, reprehensible the way they've

00:57:19.820 been treated.

00:57:20.940 Uh, you know, there was one guy that, uh, just committed suicide after his continued harassment

00:57:27.380 from the department of justice.

00:57:29.040 Uh, Ashley Babbitt was assassinated in cold blood, posing no real threat to anybody shot

00:57:36.220 and killed by this Michael Byrd.

00:57:38.080 I, I, I'm never going to let that go and quit talking about it and quit.

00:57:42.900 Uh, I'll never not say that these people have been treated very unfairly, particularly when

00:57:48.820 you compare, uh, how we treated, how Kamala Harris and LeBron James were offering bail money

00:57:54.640 to people, uh, rioting, looting, killing, causing chaos in the name of George Floyd.

00:58:00.560 And to see these people, uh, thrown in dungeons and treated like the worst people on the planet

00:58:05.800 sickens me.

00:58:07.240 And, and so I just thought it was very hypocritical.

00:58:10.180 It's some, somehow that talking point must not be working.

00:58:14.620 Uh, and that's why it was not used at the state of the union.

00:58:18.040 That's a good point.

00:58:18.900 Hadn't, hadn't considered that, but I think you're probably right.

00:58:20.940 Um, there was first, the first guilty plea to quote seditious conspiracy by one of the

00:58:27.040 January 6th protesters.

00:58:28.500 He's from one of these sort of far right groups.

00:58:30.960 Um, so they got their one, you know, that they've been looking for somebody to plead guilty

00:58:34.420 to that crime.

00:58:35.960 You know, I don't, I have to tell you the Ashley Babbitt thing, you know, who's to say

00:58:41.780 whether that cop felt genuinely under threat.

00:58:43.760 It was a very chaotic situation.

00:58:45.420 I don't want to make excuses for the January 6th rioters to be distinguished from the protesters.

00:58:51.100 I don't really have a lot of tolerance for guys who attack cops.

00:58:53.760 Um, but that's not to say you're wrong about the disparate way they've treated those guys

00:58:59.920 versus the way they treated the black lives matter rioters over the summer and the, you

00:59:05.340 know, more than 80 protests that turned into riots where buildings were burned, lives were

00:59:10.140 taken, cops were hurt.

00:59:11.400 And these Democrats didn't give two shits and not just any Democrats.

00:59:16.480 Our vice president, Kamala Harris had the nerve to stand up and clap when he said, fund the

00:59:22.300 police.

00:59:23.000 She is such a hypocrite.

00:59:26.100 She's not in favor of funding the police.

00:59:28.260 As you point out, she was out there getting these rioters out on bail.

00:59:33.140 This is a person who went and visited Jacob Blake after he resisted arrest, threw punches

00:59:40.360 at cops and then drew a knife on a cop, which is what got him shot multiple times in the

00:59:45.280 back when the cops finally realized he was armed and coming for them.

00:59:49.700 The only thing I would add to that or just my point of view, I actually think that Kamala

00:59:57.400 Harris is for funding the police now that they are under her control and totally under

01:00:04.920 the control of the left, because go look up in Canada and the way Justin Trudeau used the

01:00:10.480 police to break the truckers and the freedom convoy.

01:00:15.280 And so the Democrats are not anti-police.

01:00:18.740 They just want them to be completely under their control, executing their game plan.

01:00:25.120 And so Kamala Harris, now that they're in control and are able to use the FBI, law enforcement

01:00:33.980 of all kinds to exert their power and punish their opposition.

01:00:40.660 Yeah, she's for funding the police.

01:00:43.440 Well, and Joe Biden's administration wants to do the same thing that Obama's administration

01:00:47.120 did, which is have the DOJ take over various law enforcement departments one by one so that

01:00:53.820 they actually are in control.

01:00:55.380 It's not just theoretically.

01:00:56.540 They're at the top.

01:00:57.220 They want federal control.

01:00:59.040 And again, it's they want federal control, law enforcement, no question about it.

01:01:03.220 That's another way of, you know, sticking their hands in individual states and taking control

01:01:08.960 away from the people.

01:01:10.380 It's a group of the states, the police powers, they belong to the states.

01:01:14.180 Yeah.

01:01:15.120 And again, the people in the state have to, they report or have to answer to the local

01:01:21.540 people there, their local voters and constituents.

01:01:24.140 We're trying to gather up and all the power in one little location federally among elites

01:01:32.780 and they control everything.

01:01:34.820 And that's just never what America has been about.

01:01:38.160 You know, and I get we had a civil war and adjust one that was, you know, where states were

01:01:45.540 trying to claim, hey, we got state rights and we can have our own little rules about slavery.

01:01:51.060 That's an exception.

01:01:52.360 You know, since that civil war, you know, the states should retain their rights to run things

01:02:01.580 the way that that populace sees fit as long as, you know, there's not the kind of human rights abuses

01:02:09.580 we had before the civil war.

01:02:12.180 But yeah, it's important, you know, as someone who moved from California to Tennessee in the past two years,

01:02:18.800 I did that because I like the way the state of Tennessee is run in comparison to California.

01:02:26.280 I, you know, I'm one of the many people who have fled California and and, you know, government overreach.

01:02:34.560 I'm a New York expat myself.

01:02:36.940 I've led to Connecticut, which is not red like Tennessee or at least, you know, reddish.

01:02:41.760 But it's less blue than New York.

01:02:43.360 I can tell you that the governor here is definitely a Democrat, but he's not one of the lunatics.

01:02:47.300 He's not like totally insane, like Kathy Hochul, who took over for Andrew Cuomo.

01:02:52.460 I'm not saying I miss Andrew Cuomo.

01:02:54.220 Don't misunderstand.

01:02:55.480 But this new person is is a lunatic.

01:02:58.720 I mean, my problem with her is actually she's just not very smart.

01:03:01.840 She's not a smart person.

01:03:03.540 And we're stuck with her for at least the time being in New York.

01:03:06.680 OK, let me shift gears and ask you about something else that was said at the State of the Union.

01:03:10.340 Of course, Joe Biden took a moment to tout his latest Supreme Court pick, his only Supreme

01:03:15.160 Court pick thus far, Ketanji Brown Jackson, who was on the D.C.

01:03:19.300 Circuit Court of Appeals.

01:03:20.820 He's now nominated her.

01:03:22.220 He's he wants her to be the Supreme Court justice, replacing Justice Breyer.

01:03:26.260 And she'll have to go through the Senate confirmation process and in all likelihood will be confirmed

01:03:30.380 swiftly and without too much controversy.

01:03:32.180 So Tucker discussed this last night on his show.

01:03:36.700 I know you were on his show.

01:03:38.340 He discussed Tucker Carlson discusses on his show and said the following, which is being

01:03:43.480 attacked by many corners today.

01:03:45.660 Listen, so it might be time for Joe Biden to let us know what Ketanji Brown Jackson's

01:03:50.120 LSAT score was.

01:03:51.520 What else you do in the LSAT?

01:03:53.200 Why wouldn't he tell us that?

01:03:54.200 That would settle the question conclusively as to whether she's a once in a generation legal

01:03:58.380 talent, the next learned at hand.

01:03:59.560 It would seem like Americans in a democracy have a right to know that and much more before

01:04:04.560 giving her a lifetime appointment.

01:04:05.820 But we didn't hear that.

01:04:07.800 OK, so DNC chair Jamie Harrison tweeted this in response, saying Judge Brown Jackson graduated

01:04:14.060 magna cum laude from Harvard, cum laude from Harvard Law and was the editor of the Harvard

01:04:19.480 Law Review.

01:04:20.540 She is the real deal.

01:04:21.880 I've never heard tie too tight.

01:04:24.420 I guess that's her cute little name for Tucker.

01:04:26.060 Ask about LSAT scores for other nominees, but typical of those who feel a bit, quote,

01:04:32.160 inadequate.

01:04:33.320 And then you've got Ellie Mistel.

01:04:36.080 God, we mentioned him virtually every other day.

01:04:37.780 He's always writing these tweets.

01:04:40.420 I think he's with the nation.

01:04:43.060 He tweets out the kind of racism Tucker's throwing at KBJ happens to black people all the

01:04:49.240 time in the legal profession.

01:04:50.840 We're constantly asked to reprove that we're qualified by white people who are never satisfied.

01:04:59.160 No way.

01:05:00.440 Not to mention Nicole Hannah Jones.

01:05:02.360 I mean, you can imagine what she said and so on.

01:05:04.600 Your thoughts on it, Jason.

01:05:06.740 Well, I was Tucker's first guest.

01:05:09.580 Listen to his mono and didn't bat an eye at the comment.

01:05:13.820 And I just want to be crystal clear on this because I'm actually writing a column about

01:05:19.320 this today for the blaze.

01:05:21.660 I scored an 880 on the SAT as a high school junior.

01:05:29.480 That is not impressive at all.

01:05:32.120 I graduated from Ball State University, magna cum hungover with a 2.23 grade point average.

01:05:41.100 And so I was not a serious student and I regret that in life.

01:05:50.120 And it made me, I had to get, when I did graduate from college, I had to get in the back of the

01:05:54.700 line.

01:05:54.940 I had to take a $5 an hour part-time job at a very small newspaper in Southern Indiana

01:06:00.160 because I just wasn't that serious of a student.

01:06:03.940 And so I'm not a, and so no one saw my rise in sports journalism coming.

01:06:08.420 So I'm not a big proponent of, hey, what people scored on a standardized test 20 or 30 years

01:06:16.640 ago has any relevancy.

01:06:19.480 But I don't think Tucker's critique is remotely racist.

01:06:24.840 And again, that's because I have an understanding of politics.

01:06:29.780 Politics is a contact sport.

01:06:31.900 Politics is old school tackle football, the Dick Buckus generation of football.

01:06:39.380 It's not this new stuff where you can't hit people over the middle hard.

01:06:43.380 And so if to sit here and pretend like, because this man has asked a question about something,

01:06:51.400 about her qualifications, that whether you think it's relevant or not, it's still a fair

01:06:57.660 question.

01:06:58.220 And in terms of the kind of hits that we see in politics, the dirty hits we see in politics,

01:07:05.880 what happened to Brett Kavanaugh, what happened to Clarence Thomas, we can remove the conservative

01:07:15.260 side of it.

01:07:16.340 The Clintons, people are very fond of saying that the Clintons are involved in every murder

01:07:22.900 from Abraham Lincoln to Jeffrey Epstein.

01:07:26.640 And they just have to deal with that.

01:07:29.140 Politics is a blood sport.

01:07:31.220 No, this isn't even really a hard hit.

01:07:34.220 He just, Tucker Carlson just tried to pull her down by the back of her jersey.

01:07:40.820 That's, this isn't even a hard hit in politics.

01:07:43.840 Call me when they're digging through her high school dating and what happened at a party when

01:07:51.100 she was 15 or 16 years old and they're trying to use that to take her down.

01:07:55.680 And calling her a serial rapist, a serial rapist, like they called Brett Kavanaugh.

01:08:03.020 It's a blood sport.

01:08:05.100 Yes.

01:08:05.320 And so liberals, whether black or white, have this belief that black liberals should be immune

01:08:15.100 from the contact of politics, that black people, black liberals can't play tackle football.

01:08:21.240 They can't play political football.

01:08:23.280 They must play flag football where there's no contact or it's racist.

01:08:27.900 And so that's what bothers me.

01:08:30.220 Like, either we want to be in this political game in a real way with the same rules as

01:08:36.300 everybody else and the same tough skin as everyone else, or we don't.

01:08:40.940 And it's like, do we have a layman's understanding of like what people will do in pursuit of power?

01:08:49.400 There's nothing they won't do.

01:08:51.460 There was the TV show Game of Thrones.

01:08:53.900 I don't know if you ever watched it, but, you know, a lot of the fake kind of sorcery stuff

01:08:58.020 I wasn't into, but I loved the show because it was an explanation of what humans will do,

01:09:05.160 man or woman, what they will do for power.

01:09:08.160 And there's nothing they won't do.

01:09:11.080 Stannis Baratheon burned his young daughter at a stake, killed her, trying to get the throne.

01:09:18.380 It's not even talking about the red wedding.

01:09:19.660 Yeah.

01:09:20.820 And so as silly as the show was, or it was just explaining like, man, power corrupts,

01:09:30.880 power makes people desperate, power makes people throw out their ethics and do crazy things.

01:09:36.620 That's politics.

01:09:38.660 And so someone asking what her LSAT scores were, that's not racist.

01:09:45.680 That's politics.

01:09:46.520 Hmm.

01:09:47.780 Well, I mean, listen, I will say as an Albany law school grad, you know, Harvard Law is

01:09:53.320 not exactly Albany, but, um, you know, it LSAT scores, whatever.

01:09:58.820 I mean, you're right.

01:09:59.440 Tucker's making a point about, let's see her qualifications.

01:10:02.240 You walk us through it.

01:10:03.080 You told us why you picked her.

01:10:04.700 You know, I mean, you, you sort of, you call that you were the one who injected race and

01:10:09.100 gender into it, undermining her credentials because you told us you were picking her based on

01:10:14.360 something else.

01:10:16.740 I mean, like Joe Biden is the one who kneecapped his own nominee before he even named her by

01:10:21.100 doing that.

01:10:22.520 Um, but I think Tucker would be the first to admit that, you know, your LSAT score.

01:10:25.820 I mean, let's just say it doesn't necessarily predict legal greatness or, um, or, or folly.

01:10:32.680 Uh, either way, I can speak to that firsthand.

01:10:34.820 Okay.

01:10:35.500 I know.

01:10:36.640 I'm sorry.

01:10:37.200 Go ahead.

01:10:37.920 Go ahead.

01:10:38.200 Yeah, yeah, yeah.

01:10:38.520 No, I got it.

01:10:39.360 Uh, he, Jason staying with us because now I don't follow golf that closely or at all,

01:10:43.000 but I'm very interested in what's happening with Phil Mickelson Mickelson.

01:10:45.720 I mean, he was caught in sort of a brutal honesty moment talking about this new golf league that

01:10:53.640 Saudi Arabia is trying to put together to compete with the PGA.

01:10:56.360 And now boy, oh boy, he is apologizing, apologizing, and apologizing more.

01:11:01.620 Jason will or will not let him off the hook.

01:11:04.980 Stay tuned to find out.

01:11:11.520 All right, Jason.

01:11:12.540 So explain to me what is going on with Phil Mickelson, 51 years old.

01:11:17.760 Um, he made some comments about this.

01:11:20.620 I guess the Saudis are forming a competitive league or tour to the PGA here in America.

01:11:27.700 They want to get some cash in on some of the big dough that these golfers can make.

01:11:31.760 That's my understanding of it.

01:11:33.220 But he stepped in it.

01:11:34.680 How so?

01:11:36.460 Well, uh, his comments to Alan Shipnick with Sports Illustrator or who formerly with Sports

01:11:45.800 Sports Illustrator is writing a book about Phil and Phil and he were having a conversation

01:11:51.980 over the phone and Phil talked with Shipnick about like, hey, I know the Saudi Arabian government

01:11:59.360 is brutal and that I'm crawling into bed with some scary mofos, his, his, his own words.

01:12:07.260 Uh, and he's very aware of their human rights abuses and how they, they murder gay people

01:12:13.060 or, you know, uh, sentence gay people.

01:12:16.140 Washington Post reporter, Jamel Khashoggi.

01:12:19.360 Yeah.

01:12:20.300 He's aware of all of that.

01:12:21.880 And so to me, Phil represents, uh, the elite hypocrisy that drives me crazy.

01:12:31.320 The, the PGA tour has made him rich beyond his wildest dreams.

01:12:37.620 He's probably made a hundred million playing golf.

01:12:39.800 He's probably made another two to 400 million in endorsements from his golf career.

01:12:46.040 And he's a very wealthy guy who loves to gamble and has lost a lot of money gambling.

01:12:52.560 And so he wants more and more and more from the PGA tour.

01:12:56.980 You know, he's not satisfied and maybe the PGA tour is heavy hand.

01:13:01.320 But turning to the Saudis is no different in my view.

01:13:06.380 Then I'm looking at Nike, the NBA and NBA players turn to China.

01:13:12.560 It's never enough.

01:13:13.820 There's the disease of more, more, more, more.

01:13:16.160 I got to get wealthier.

01:13:17.000 Well, they got 1.4 billion people over in China.

01:13:19.700 I could care less what they do to Uyghurs.

01:13:21.560 I can care.

01:13:22.040 Yes, care less.

01:13:22.960 They're a communist country.

01:13:24.040 I could care less if they smear the United States is irredeemably racist.

01:13:28.440 When China is a thousand times more racist and brutal than America.

01:13:33.440 So these athletes, these elites, these Americans who get rich off of our system eventually wind up in their pursuit of cash, getting in bed with foreign governments and serving them.

01:13:49.040 And so I wrote a piece and talked on my show.

01:13:52.340 Phil Mickels is no different than LeBron James.

01:13:54.260 He sold us out.

01:13:55.380 He has a problem with the organization, the American organization.

01:13:59.480 It helped make him rich.

01:14:00.740 He's going to the Saudis to get leverage over them and trying to start a rival league.

01:14:08.120 And it is disgusting.

01:14:10.140 And this is what I think it's a prime example of just how our elites, regardless of color and regardless of politics, Phil Mickelson, I would imagine, based off the interviews I've read and what he insinuates, he's a conservative.

01:14:24.680 But for money, he will sell out the PGA Tour and his peers on the PGA Tour, who are very upset with him, who don't think he's gone about this in the right way.

01:14:38.040 And he will sell us out.

01:14:41.780 And so when people think of Trump and the America first thing and people think of like, hey, this globalism thing, this is a problem that we don't get to hold on to our traditional American values that created all this freedom and opportunity that we all enjoy here in America.

01:15:02.840 This globalism thing is taking our uniqueness away and imposing China's values on us and all these foreign countries.

01:15:14.940 So we got to all be a part of this global society.

01:15:17.500 We can't be uniquely American anymore.

01:15:20.500 And so when you look at our movies and how they bend over backwards for China and change things up so they can reach the 1.4 million people or 1.4 billion people over in China and why the messaging in much of our television and movies is so anti-American.

01:15:40.980 It is. Oh, no, we did a great segment not long ago on how the Chinese have totally bought Hollywood.

01:15:46.740 Everything you're being fed from Hollywood is you're being fed it by the Chinese Communist Party.

01:15:51.660 And they're trying to manipulate the way you think.

01:15:54.280 They'll decide what's entertaining there.

01:15:56.240 They have pro-China messages and anti-American messages and our Hollywood greedy elite just go along with it because they want the dough.

01:16:04.220 And to your point, I mean, Phil is complaining to this reporter one word about the alleged off the record nature of the conversation.

01:16:11.760 You're dealing with a guy who's writing a book about you and you want to have an off the record conversation.

01:16:16.600 You better make damn sure the reporter knows this particular conversation is off the record.

01:16:20.920 And anybody in Phil's position, if they were smart, would have taken out their little iPhone, which we all know has a recorder on it, and said, I'm going to record this.

01:16:29.120 This part is off the record so that you have a record of the fact that you said it's off the record and you don't find yourself in this position.

01:16:35.700 And by the way, the reporter who undoubtedly reported the recorded the conversation should be releasing the beginning of it so that we can see whether Phil said anything to that effect.

01:16:47.960 You know, because if it's off the record, it's not fair game and we shouldn't be having this discussion.

01:16:52.020 Anyway, here's what Phil said.

01:16:54.840 He said the PGA is exploitive and he's talking about how I know I know the Saudis are bad in his word.

01:17:01.220 They're scary efforts.

01:17:03.140 Again, trying not to swear to Lent to get involved with.

01:17:06.820 We know they killed Khashoggi.

01:17:08.340 They have a horrible record on human rights.

01:17:10.220 They execute people over there for being gay.

01:17:12.080 Knowing all of this, why would I even consider it?

01:17:13.920 Because this is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to reshape how the PGA Tour operates.

01:17:18.720 They've been able to get by with manipulative, coercive, strong-arm tactics because we, the players, had no recourse.

01:17:24.560 As nice a guy as PGA Tour Commissioner Jay Monaghan comes across as, unless you have leverage, he won't do what's right.

01:17:32.120 And the Saudi money has finally given us that leverage because they're offering these eye-popping salaries.

01:17:36.960 The Saudis are, not surprisingly, they're going to go way above and beyond.

01:17:40.220 They have to.

01:17:41.100 Otherwise, nobody would do business with them.

01:17:42.700 He says, I'm not sure I even want the Saudi League to succeed, but just the idea of it is allowing us to get things done with the PGA Tour.

01:17:49.960 And apparently the PGA's Monaghan has warned the players, if you jump ship, you could be banned for life from the PGA Tour.

01:17:56.180 He's talking about leverage.

01:17:57.380 That's what Phil Mickelson is talking about, leverage.

01:17:59.800 However, you raise the issue of the gambling.

01:18:02.380 I also did not know this, but they say he has, or at least had, massive gambling losses that are also going to be detailed in this book.

01:18:10.700 Notwithstanding the fact that he earned almost $100 million in PGA Tour earnings, second only to that of Tiger Woods, he had to sell, he sold his Gulfstream jet in 2019.

01:18:22.640 Someone had said, quote, he loved that plane so much it was like his fourth child.

01:18:27.360 And it does raise the question about whether this is not really about improving leverage, but covering gambling losses that resulted in the loss of his airborne fourth child with very lucrative Saudi deals.

01:18:42.240 Megan, this entire conversation ties together, because if you listen to what Phil Mickelson said in his experience, this is a once in a lifetime opportunity to reshape and to reshape things and to seize more power.

01:18:56.540 And so that's the same mindset that the Democrats used in terms of, whew, Antifa and Black Lives Matter, we're going to look the other way as you terrorize these cities, because this is a once in a lifetime opportunity to seize power and to reshape America.

01:19:14.860 And it's the same mentality if I'm Nike. Some of the things that Phil was saying there in terms, oh, we don't have leverage and it's hard to work with the restrictions here in America and American workers cost so much.

01:19:29.060 And so this is a once in a lifetime opportunity to take our manufacturing over to Asia and where their workers aren't unionized, don't have rights.

01:19:41.400 Some of them are slaves. Some of them are children.

01:19:43.880 Some of them are children. This is a once in a lifetime opportunity to reshape and re-energize and to make Nike more and more powerful and richer.

01:19:53.260 You know, I really don't want to do this. I really don't want to get in bed with China.

01:19:56.400 I really don't want to get in bed with Saudi Arabia. I really don't want to get in bed with Black Lives Matter and Antifa.

01:20:02.240 But it's a once in a lifetime opportunity. Screw America.

01:20:07.520 And so that's what I just sit here and just wonder how John F. Kennedy, JFK asked, you know, about what you can do for your country.

01:20:20.480 And we've completely lost that spirit. No one thinks about that.

01:20:24.640 We're all so fat, happy and greedy that all we can do is think about how we can enrich ourselves and screw America.

01:20:33.700 Hmm. Well, it's not working out so well for him because he's been dumped by KPMG cutting ties with him, Amstel cutting ties with him, Callaway cutting ties with him.

01:20:44.340 And then, of course, we get his apology. I used words I sincerely regret that do not reflect my true feelings or intentions.

01:20:51.420 It was reckless. I offended people. I am deeply sorry for my choice of words and goes on and on and on talking about how my I've always tried to act in the best interest of golf and my peers and my sponsors and my fans.

01:21:03.540 Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. These were taken out of context and says I've often failed myself and others, too.

01:21:09.540 Through the past 10 years, I have felt the pressure and stress slowly affecting me at a deeper level.

01:21:15.480 I know I have not been my best. I desperately need some time away to prioritize the ones I love most and work on being the man I want to be.

01:21:23.100 Well, I accept that and I hope that's true. So, you know, wishing him well and a chance to rethink these decisions.

01:21:30.240 All right. Let's talk about, you know, as I as I talk about my Lent, Val, I did swear during the Buck Sexton.

01:21:36.680 How come none of you told me when I was talking to Buck Sexton? I'm going to have to go confess that this weekend.

01:21:41.120 I'm working on it, people. Oh, Steve Krakauer says it was just the S word, not the F word.

01:21:46.320 Well, you take it up with the Lord. I will on Sunday.

01:21:50.740 All right. Let's talk about is it Bryles? Are Bryles, Jason?

01:21:54.020 Yes, ma'am.

01:21:54.680 OK, so he's a football coach, a coach, 66 years old, had been hired just last week by, I guess, the head coach, Hugh Jackson of Grambling State to be the team's offensive coordinator.

01:22:07.280 Grambling State is a historically black university in Louisiana.

01:22:10.580 Great. He's off to the races. He's going to be an offensive coordinator.

01:22:13.000 And apparently he's very good at that job.

01:22:14.360 So it's problematic because he used to work in that same job, I guess, at Baylor where he was booted eventually back in 16 because a bunch of sexual assault allegations had been made against students, including but not limited to football players.

01:22:29.460 And this led to the Baylor, the head of Baylor, the president, Ken Starr.

01:22:34.680 Yes, the one from the Ken Starr report being booted as the head of Baylor.

01:22:38.560 And it also led to a coach Bryles losing his job now.

01:22:42.520 And now some are outraged that he's having a second act over at Grambling State.

01:22:48.420 Right. And it it worked, the outrage, because now he says he'll no longer be a coach, says, thanks for giving me the opportunity to be part of the coaching staff.

01:22:57.960 But I think my continued presence is going to be a distraction, which is the last thing I want.

01:23:02.480 What do you make of it?

01:23:04.320 Well, I want to our brows was this amazingly successful high school football coach in Texas.

01:23:12.600 And eventually he transitioned into the college ranks and was a first, I think, an assistant at Texas Tech.

01:23:21.980 Then the head coach of the University of Houston took them to unprecedented success in a five year deal, five year span, then went to Baylor for seven or eight years.

01:23:32.500 And Baylor was an awful program.

01:23:34.920 He made him a nationally ranked program with his spread offense.

01:23:38.360 He had this quarterback, Robert Griffin, the third, who won the Heisman Trophy.

01:23:43.440 It was an amazing story what he did at Baylor and his offense kind of revolutionized college football and had an impact on NFL football.

01:23:54.320 The guy's super successful and offensive guru as a head coach.

01:23:58.840 This Baylor hires a law firm, Pepper Hamilton, to examine their university, their campus about sexual assault.

01:24:11.320 And and Pepper Hamilton says they've uncovered a hundred or more sexual assault allegations on the Baylor campus.

01:24:20.540 And five of them involve Baylor football players.

01:24:25.020 And so the real problem for Baylor was they weren't following federal guidelines for student safety protocols as it related to reporting and handling sexual assault cases.

01:24:38.480 And so the University of Baylor was wide open for lawsuits.

01:24:44.800 They had more than 100 cases.

01:24:47.300 They weren't following federal guidelines.

01:24:49.500 And eventually Baylor decided the people in power, the board of regents to kind of save themselves, is we're going to scapegoat the football program.

01:25:01.180 Again, there's more than 100 sexual assault allegations.

01:25:05.320 Five of them involve the football team in this original report.

01:25:10.240 And so they decided, hey, Art Browse on the football team, we can point the media that direction.

01:25:15.820 We get rid of Art Browse and we've made this gigantic step in cleaning up the toxic culture at Baylor.

01:25:24.920 Come to find out several of the players that were accused but were found guilty in court or had their convictions overturned.

01:25:34.580 Some were never charged.

01:25:36.960 I think one was convicted of sexual assault.

01:25:41.960 Art Browse was a scapegoat.

01:25:44.180 He and they used him to cover up for the entire university.

01:25:50.920 Art Browse is a Christian man.

01:25:53.920 Art Browse is is someone who stood by some of his players because the players had convinced him.

01:26:01.640 Hey, these allegations aren't true.

01:26:04.600 And a couple of them were vindicated in that.

01:26:07.760 And the media wants allegations to be enough to eliminate people.

01:26:14.200 And they were bothered or fell for the trap of, well, Art Browse is defending.

01:26:18.900 And as it turned out, you know, the football players that were had these allegations were all black and it came.

01:26:27.740 This is from the white assistant coaches and Art Browse.

01:26:31.940 They felt like, and I have having really dug deep in on this story, the university scapegoated black football players and Art Browse for a campus wide problem.

01:26:46.980 And like most universities, there's an alcohol, drug and fraternity problem on most of these campuses.

01:26:55.980 And again, not to say that the football players, the athletes were uninvolved and not a part of the problem, but you can blame, you can point to the athletes and ignore all the malfeasance and assaults and things that go on.

01:27:14.040 Because I know there was at least one guy, Tevin Elliott, who was sentenced to up to 20 years in prison.

01:27:18.780 So certainly some were found guilty and held to account.

01:27:23.240 But your point is that they were they focused on the football team with particular vigor.

01:27:28.620 The one of the Art Browse's lawyers pointed out, hey, in these allegations, there was this terrible assault inside of one of your fraternity houses.

01:27:38.280 Did the head of that fraternity, the overseer of that fraternity, are we firing him?

01:27:43.000 Does anyone know his name? Is he being scapegoated?

01:27:45.420 Is he being blamed for the pattern of abuse that was going on in that fraternity house?

01:27:50.680 No, he's not.

01:27:52.260 And so why are we doing this to Art Browse?

01:27:54.960 If they did this to every coach in football, basketball, baseball, that any of their players have allegations and therefore we're blaming the coach and you must be eliminated.

01:28:07.560 There's going to be a lot of coaches without jobs.

01:28:10.680 Well, it's interesting who who the media, who the left, who the Democrats decide gets a second act and who who they choose not to.

01:28:19.700 Right. It's like I was thinking about it when I was watching the Super Bowl.

01:28:22.420 And, you know, this was like, I know that guy.

01:28:25.440 I remember when he had problems with the law and that guy, he got arrested for, you know, attacking women.

01:28:29.700 But it's like, no problem.

01:28:31.500 OK, but this guy who actually didn't do any of the attacking, but was the offensive coordinator or a coach of a team that had problems at a school that had even more problems.

01:28:39.880 He's not allowed a second act.

01:28:41.940 He was the head coach at Baylor.

01:28:43.620 He's been over the last five, seven years.

01:28:46.280 He can't get a head coaching job.

01:28:48.180 He was trying to be one hundred and fifty thousand dollar a year offensive coordinator at Grambling University.

01:28:56.180 That's that's he has fallen very far since being dismissed in 2015.

01:29:02.640 The guy probably at Baylor was making five, six million dollars a year.

01:29:06.360 I just how much punishment is enough and and should the man be allowed to work again?

01:29:13.740 We're talking about being the offensive coordinator at not even a division one school, Grambling State University.

01:29:20.800 But one of Grambling's most famous alums, Doug Williams, the first black quarterback to win a Super Bowl, you know, without having spoken to Art, without having spoken to the head coach, Hugh Jackson, objected to Art Browse being hired.

01:29:38.160 And that kind of took on a life of its own.

01:29:40.880 Well, I know you pointed out, Jason, like what about Michael Vick?

01:29:44.320 I mean, I covered that case in depth and what he did to those dogs was absolutely inhuman.

01:29:51.160 No problem.

01:29:52.160 The best example to me is Kobe Bryant.

01:29:56.760 Kobe Bryant was accused of rape in Colorado, I believe, in 2003, 2002.

01:30:04.060 I can't remember.

01:30:06.200 You know, he eventually works his way out of the criminal case.

01:30:10.760 He reaches a financial settlement in the civil case.

01:30:14.560 He he never stopped playing basketball and he is a basketball deity at this point.

01:30:20.520 He's worshipped at this point.

01:30:22.100 Everybody moved.

01:30:22.980 And I mean, obviously, he's he had suffered a tragic death.

01:30:25.540 But even prior to that, your point was prior to that.

01:30:27.780 No, it was not held against him.

01:30:30.000 No.

01:30:30.640 And and so and I want to say this.

01:30:33.940 I don't know what happened with Kobe Bryant.

01:30:36.980 And so, you know, he has a version.

01:30:40.020 She has.

01:30:40.380 We know what happened with Michael Vick.

01:30:42.140 Well, we know he I mean, he was found guilty and he served time.

01:30:48.100 Yeah.

01:30:48.400 And got to resume his career.

01:30:50.100 And trust me, I'm in defense of all that.

01:30:52.260 I believe that Michael Vick deserved that second opportunity shot at redemption.

01:30:57.720 Joe Mixon running back for the Cincinnati Bengals just played in the Super Bowl.

01:31:01.900 One of their best offensive players.

01:31:03.540 He's on camera.

01:31:05.980 Beating up a woman on camera and got to play football at Oklahoma in the NFL.

01:31:12.600 Well, no problem.

01:31:14.960 People.

01:31:15.440 This is the land of opportunity.

01:31:17.080 This is the land of second and third chances.

01:31:19.160 Art Browse, seven years after the Baylor thing, is worthy of an opportunity at redemption.

01:31:27.360 And quite frankly, I don't think he's guilty of anything other than being loyal to his players.

01:31:34.260 I don't think he set a tone within the football program where, you know, sexual assault was prevalent.

01:31:44.080 He was scapegoated to cover up for the entire university.

01:31:47.560 Well, and I'll tell you what, you could certainly make the case that now, having been through what he's been through,

01:31:52.360 he'll be the most vigilant guy you could hire if a sexual assault or harassment allegation were to come up.

01:32:01.080 But yeah, we're not in a very charitable mood these days for whatever reason when it comes to certain people.

01:32:08.160 And these people, like there's, he's not, it's not like whatever media where you can go out and launch your own situation.

01:32:14.680 If you're a coach of a football team, like there's only, you gotta, you gotta have an organization believe in you and be willing to give you that second chance.

01:32:23.140 Don't go away because we got just a little bit more right after this.

01:32:26.920 Don't go away.

01:32:32.480 Jason, Leah Thomas of the UPenn swim team, transgender swimmer, made a bunch of headlines over the past few months,

01:32:40.920 is speaking out, giving an exclusive interview to Sports Illustrated.

01:32:46.120 It just hit.

01:32:47.900 And it kind of supports what we've been hearing about Leah Thomas all along,

01:32:52.380 that her fellow swimmers who have spoken out anonymously to Outkick and other publications have been saying,

01:32:59.480 Leah doesn't mind this at all.

01:33:00.520 Leah's loving the attention.

01:33:02.040 Leah parades through the women's locker room with male genitals like it's not a thing.

01:33:06.880 And if the other women feel uncomfortable, Leah doesn't seem to give,

01:33:10.920 uh, darn, I'm getting there.

01:33:14.900 Um, and this interview says as follows.

01:33:19.080 Okay.

01:33:19.480 This is just a couple of highlights.

01:33:21.380 Uh, okay.

01:33:22.240 I just want to show trans kids and younger trans athletes.

01:33:24.740 She paints herself as a hero that they're not alone.

01:33:26.940 They don't have to choose between who they are in the sport.

01:33:29.260 They love Thomas says she has ambitions to compete beyond college,

01:33:33.220 beyond college, which could set her on a course,

01:33:35.300 writes Sports Illustrated to be Katie Ledecky's teammate at the 2024 games in Paris.

01:33:42.060 So Leah could be on the U S Olympic team, uh, when we go to Paris in 24 and perhaps challenge Ledecky's Olympic records.

01:33:49.440 Leah is going to compete in the NCAA championships in about two weeks, um, that they happen in March and could break some of Ledecky's records.

01:33:57.860 It's there Leah says, quote, I'm a woman.

01:34:00.980 I am a woman, just like anybody else on the team.

01:34:05.400 I've always viewed myself as just a swimmer.

01:34:08.200 It's what I've done for so long.

01:34:09.340 It's what I love.

01:34:10.160 Um, and then goes on to say a couple more highlights.

01:34:14.780 Um, she went on a hormone replacement therapy a little bit more than two years before competing as a woman.

01:34:23.360 Notice that her strength wasn't the same fat had also been redistributed within her body.

01:34:29.320 She shrunk about an inch, uh, and holding her own practice paces was an impossibility.

01:34:34.080 This is them trying to convince us why it's okay for her to swim against the biological women.

01:34:38.580 Here's the end part regarding those who support her transition, but not her swimming for the women's team.

01:34:44.220 She says, there's no such thing as half support.

01:34:48.080 Um, well, somebody says there's no such thing as half support.

01:34:50.960 Either you back her fully as a woman or you don't Thomas quote.

01:34:54.900 The very simple answer is that I am not a man.

01:34:58.140 I'm a woman.

01:34:59.200 So I belong on the women's team.

01:35:01.320 Trans people deserve the same respect.

01:35:03.120 Every other athlete gets your thoughts.

01:35:05.960 My initial thought is I'm not going to be critical of him.

01:35:11.920 I'm going to be critical of the parents of the other women at the university of Penn.

01:35:19.680 And I'm going to be critical of, of, of men, whoever's, whoever's leading Penn, the school.

01:35:29.780 They need to step in here.

01:35:31.760 Penn has been dreadful.

01:35:32.600 A man or a woman and, and shut this down.

01:35:36.480 You've got a man running around naked in a woman's locker room, pretending to be a woman.

01:35:45.000 And, uh, I get however he feels, but we can't have a world based on feelings.

01:35:54.340 We have to have some agreed upon established facts, or we're going to have, or we're going

01:36:01.980 to continue to have total chaos and division in this country.

01:36:07.160 And I get, and, and, and this will, if we have a world just based on feelings, there are so

01:36:17.120 many things that I feel that I have no right to.

01:36:21.100 In Leah's defense, gender dysphoria is a thing.

01:36:26.440 I mean, it is a recognized, um, I don't want to say disorder.

01:36:29.900 I know that they will, they'll recognize anything, Megan.

01:36:33.900 I have a food dysphoria.

01:36:35.860 I have a food dysphoria, but I don't want people feeling sorry for me.

01:36:39.780 I love fast food.

01:36:40.940 Well, I don't think it's no good for me.

01:36:42.860 They're not asking for, for sorrow.

01:36:44.320 And I can defend Leah as a transgender person who identifies more as female.

01:36:49.300 Couldn't be competing with girls.

01:36:50.520 I agree with that.

01:36:51.600 But I mean, it gets dicey when you refer to her as a man, like say she's, she is a man

01:36:56.060 still.

01:36:56.420 She has a penis.

01:36:57.320 He has a penis.

01:36:59.160 Well, it's not chopped off.

01:37:01.800 And even if it were, I mean, there are questions about whether in the sports arena that would

01:37:06.400 make you, you know, more of a woman, like a, somebody who's a, cause like, even if she's

01:37:10.680 lost an inch in height and so on.

01:37:13.200 Yeah.

01:37:13.440 This is an outrage.

01:37:14.420 You still have long femurs.

01:37:15.580 You have longer arms.

01:37:16.580 You have a greater wingspan.

01:37:17.720 You have broader shoulders.

01:37:18.780 It doesn't make you a woman to go on two years of, of hormones.

01:37:22.500 Well, I can tell you this.

01:37:23.960 If this is, if this is the standard, I want to be led into some women's tennis locker rooms

01:37:29.600 so that I can run around naked and call myself a woman.

01:37:33.300 Don't really want that.

01:37:34.720 Yes, I do.

01:37:35.860 And I'm not, I'm not, that's not a joke at all.

01:37:40.940 You do not want to do that.

01:37:43.400 But if you do, could I be your first interview after the national news hits?

01:37:48.780 I have to say something in defense of the parents of the female swimmers with whom she swims

01:37:53.940 because they have spoken out.

01:37:55.680 These poor parents have come out both on the record and behind the scenes, and they can't

01:37:59.800 get any help from UPenn, which has been disgusting.

01:38:03.000 UPenn referred the female swimmers, if they objected this, to therapy, therapy, right?

01:38:08.620 And the parents, they understand what they're up against.

01:38:10.680 But I have to say once again, for the record, the women at UPenn who object to this, the

01:38:15.540 swimmers must speak up on the record.

01:38:18.600 And if you don't, you will regret it for the rest of your life.

01:38:23.100 If you want to do with me, Debbie, my producer keeps saying you can email us at questions at

01:38:28.180 devil may care media.

01:38:29.240 She's so proud of me now.

01:38:30.400 And I'd be happy to do the interview.

01:38:31.900 But in general, you must speak out or rue the day you fail to.

01:38:36.700 Jason Whitlock, always interesting.

01:38:38.440 Thank you so much for being here.

01:38:39.460 Tomorrow, we have Rod Blagojevich with us.

01:38:43.320 This is going to be spectacular.

01:38:44.900 He's the former governor of Chicago.

01:38:46.420 He then went to prison for almost eight years.

01:38:49.220 President Trump commuted his sentence.

01:38:51.640 Fascinating guy.

01:38:52.860 You do not want to miss this one.

01:38:56.760 Thanks for listening to The Megyn Kelly Show.

01:38:59.000 No BS, no agenda, and no fear.

01:39:09.460 I don't know.

01:39:10.800 Thank you.

01:39:13.200 No BS.

01:39:14.380 All right.

The Megyn Kelly Show - March 03, 2022

Brutal Reality About Putin, and Biden Sounding Like Trump, with Buck Sexton and Jason Whitlock ｜ Ep. 273

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