Bud Light Backlash Grows, Mr. Beast Fallout, and Race Trumping Merit, with Michael Knowles and Heather Mac Donald | Ep. 530
Episode Stats
Length
1 hour and 34 minutes
Words per minute
173.86147
Harmful content
Misogyny
37
sentences flagged
Hate speech
84
sentences flagged
Summary
Heather MacDonald joins me to talk about her new book, Everything by Heather is Worth Reading, and her thoughts on Budweiser s attempt to apologize for the backlash they received after a leaked memo leaked to the media.
Transcript
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Welcome to The Megyn Kelly Show, your home for open, honest, and provocative conversations.
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Hey everyone, I'm Megyn Kelly. Welcome to The Megyn Kelly Show and happy Monday.
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I hope you had a better weekend than Budweiser did.
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Oh my gosh, I'm dying to talk to you about that case.
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There is so much news to get to today and we have two of our favorites.
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Later in the show, I will be joined by the one and only Heather MacDonald, the most fearless commentator in America.
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I really think she is. And that's a tough lane because people are getting more bold.
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This will be her first interview about her absolutely amazing new book, Everything by Heather is Worth Reading.
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And that includes her latest offering, which we'll get to.
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But we begin with another favorite of The MK Show, and that is The Daily Wire's Michael Knowles, host of The Michael Knowles Show.
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Michael, welcome back. You are just as bold as Heather MacDonald, but you're a lot younger, so you can't yet have the title of number one.
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I am happy to play number two to the great Heather MacDonald. It's a great honor in itself.
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I thought you'd feel that way. Okay, we got to kick it off with Bud Light because after we wrap the show on Friday,
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the CEO of Budweiser put out that pathetic, rambling, empty air sandwich of, I can't even call it an apology,
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an attempt to dissuade people from hating his company and him.
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It was an utter fail. And then they tried to release an ad to cover up any hard feelings.
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Let's show the horses again. Look at the pretty horses. See, we're all about America.
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So let's let me just start with his statement for those who missed it.
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Right now, I'll give the audience a couple of highlights in case they were living their lives and not paying attention to what the CEO of Anheuser-Busch said.
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His name is Brendan Whitworth. Whitworth. And he said, as the CEO of a company founded in America's heartland,
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drink. Okay, we're going to drink every time he tries to appeal to their working class base.
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Booze it up there with, oh, I was drinking out of that just this morning. Bailey Wire left us tears.
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Okay. As the CEO of a company founded in America's heartland more than 165 years ago,
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I am responsible for ensuring every consumer feels proud of the beer we brew.
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We're honored to be a part of the fabric of this country.
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Drink. Anheuser-Busch employees, more than 18,000 people, blah, blah, blah.
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We have thousands of partners, millions of fans, and a proud history of supporting our communities.
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We never intended to be part of a discussion that divides people.
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We're in the business of bringing people together over a beer.
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Okay. The fact that he's a veteran, that's supposed to appease anybody's objections.
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Taught me the importance of accountability and the values upon which America was founded.
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Yeah. Knolls is just in a permanent downpour right now, down his throat.
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As CEO of Anheuser-Busch, I'm focused on building and protecting our remarkable history and heritage.
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I care deeply about this country, this company, our brands, and our partners.
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I'll work to... I will continue to work tirelessly to bring great beers to consumers across our nation.
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None of this appeases any of us who objected to their bizarre Dylan Mulvaney campaign, embrace of wokeness, and of a person who spends his life essentially mocking women and womanhood.
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None of it. And the closest he comes to an apology is, we never intended to be part of a discussion that divides people.
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Well, you are, you were, and you haven't apologized.
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So, Michael, what do we make first of all of the statement?
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Megan, I don't know what Anheuser-Busch is paying to its crisis communications consultants right now,
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but I'm happy to take even a fraction of that for better advice than they've gotten, which is,
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shut up. Stop talking. You are only making things worse.
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And frankly, they could have stopped about a week ago.
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Do you remember a week ago, Anheuser-Busch came out, and they leaked through anonymous sources to the media
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that the people who were in senior leadership positions, they didn't know anything about this.
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It was a rogue VP of marketing who engaged in the Mulvaney campaign.
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Listen, conservatives, Budweiser's really on your side.
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One, because Budweiser had already made a statement essentially defending the ad campaign.
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But two, because this is exactly the kind of gobbledygook that crisis communications people always cook up.
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It allows the company to placate everybody, not totally to satisfy anyone in particular.
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They say, look, the senior people, the old fuddy-duddies, they're on the conservative side.
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The young whippersnappers who are going to take over the company someday, they're on the progressive side.
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Now, if they had just left it at that, probably Budweiser could have recovered from this.
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They lost something like $6 billion in market cap one day.
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But it's because they keep digging on this losing issue and they refuse to pick a side.
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On certain political issues, we can meet in the middle.
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Issues like taxation, you can find the number in the middle.
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On issues like immigration, you can find the number in the middle.
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On certain issues, you can't meet in the middle.
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And transgenderism happens to be one of those issues.
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Either women exist and men can't become them, or women don't exist as a real category and
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anybody can become a woman if he says he's a woman.
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Either women will be allowed to have their own bathrooms or they won't.
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Either women will be allowed to have their own sports teams or they won't.
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On this issue, if you stand in the middle of the road, you will be hit by a truck, as is
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By the way, he's all about America and his service to America, and we were founded in
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Just spare me with your America by American.
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It's HQ is in America, but this is a Belgian company.
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When you buy Anheuser-Busch products like Bud Light, you're paying money to the Belgians,
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not some guy who served his country, I'm sure honorably, who's now sitting in America
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And on that point, Megan, by sponsoring Dylan Mulvaney, Budweiser insulted women.
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But by issuing this statement, they've insulted Americans.
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Do they really believe that Americans were so stupid, were such yokels, that if you throw
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out a few platitudes about hard work in the military, that we're going to forget everything?
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I mean, I read this, I'm like, oh, your little, you know, market-tested buzzwords on what's
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The buzzwords we were looking for are, I'm sorry, we screwed up, and this woman, whatever
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Because whether she dreamed this up or not, she clearly approved it.
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Because, by the way, it's not just the ad campaign that has people very angry.
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But her comments on that podcast about how, which is too fratty, this brand is outdated.
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Are most of your customers out there drinking beer from condoms like you did when you were
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I went to Syracuse University, Albany Law School.
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Good luck trying to find a picture of me drinking out of a condom.
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So spare me your judgment on your customer base.
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It was a deplorables moment, and it was a moment of these elite, liberal power players
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Because they assume that the frat boys are going to keep drinking Bud Light, and they assume
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that construction workers are going to keep drinking Bud Light, and they assume
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that everybody who goes into a bar and just wants a cheap, light beer is going to continue
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to order Bud Light no matter how much we're insulted because, oh, you know, who cares what
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And I think they were truly shocked at the degree of organization here by the people who
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have been insulted, and I think they've been surprised at some of the other beer companies
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coming out yingling through some great corporate shade at Bud Light.
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They posted a picture of yingling beer in front of an American flag with a sunrise, and it
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said, the yingling has been making beer here for almost 200 years.
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And I think that yingling was getting ahead of this because they're afraid that my friend
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here, Jeremy Boring, is going to start Jeremy's lager pretty soon.
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There is obviously, there is a background here of conservatives finally saying, no, you're
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going to insult regular Americans and tell us to teach our daughters to shave their face,
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You're going to insult ordinary Americans and try to trans the chocolate bars.
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Okay, we're going to start our own chocolate company.
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And it's only a matter of time before the beer industry gets this message, too.
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This person who is on their beer can has made a mockery of womanhood and girlhood for literally
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the past year and has been celebrated by far lefties all across the country.
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But to see what's supposed to be a mainstream beer company do it was a bridge too far.
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That's why they're having the reaction they are.
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He needs to apologize if he wants to save his company and he won't do it.
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Instead, we're getting the horse's ad, which was, oh, I'm sure it was just completely coincidental,
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Brewed for those who found opportunity and challenge and hope in tomorrow.
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There was a 9-11 reference and notice who they showed in there.
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Two white guys, one with a beard and baseball cap, sitting on a porch in what appeared to
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And in no world does Dylan Mulvaney, dressed as Eloise, then prance out onto their porch with
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Those two guys would be like, who the fuck are you?
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This is a corporate identity crisis about an identity crisis of sexuality.
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If you are a man, that means that you are not a woman.
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And if you're a woman, that means that you're not a man.
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And if you're the blue collar, hardworking company, then you're not going to be the
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fae, liberal, preposterous company on the coasts.
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So Bud Light has had a great, successful corporate career just being the good old guys,
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We're staying out of all this crazy politics stuff.
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Now they're going to be a woke beer company that addresses the most fringe extremist elements
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But that means that they're giving up their old identity and they're going to have to pay
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They're like a trans apple martini, you know, appletini.
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We know you're still Bud Light, but they're transing themselves to try to get a different customer
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That customer base makes up less than 1% of the population.
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I saw Matt Walsh tweeting about it all weekend.
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Um, Donald Trump enters as somewhat of an apologist for Bud Light.
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Anheuser-Bus totally shit the bed with this Dylan Mulvaney thing.
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I'm not, though, for destroying an American and iconic company for something like this.
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When I actually look into it, I'm not going to blame the whole company for the inaction
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or the stupidity of someone in a marketing campaign that got woke as hell.
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And we looked into the political giving and lobbying history of Anheuser-Busch.
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In woke corporate America, Anheuser-Busch supports Republicans.
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Just two things, and I'm going to give it to you.
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Number one, as I point out, this is not an American company.
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And I'm not going to blame the entire company for the actions of one woke employee.
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The CEO is responsible for everything that happens on his watch.
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And if the CEO were upset about what the marketing department did here, there is zero evidence
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If you're not going to issue the apologetic, groveling email to your fan base, at least
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fire somebody so they get that you understand they're upset.
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I don't know if Don is trying to play a little good cop to the rest of our bad cop here and
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try to keep those Republican donations from Bud Light coming on in, especially obviously
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But the timing is really unfortunate here because whenever Don made that statement, at
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the very least, shortly thereafter, or at the very most, rather, shortly thereafter, the
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CEO makes the statement in which he acknowledges and doesn't quite apologize, but recognizes that
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Now it's not enough for the VP of marketing to get fired.
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I think probably the CEO has to get fired at this point.
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And it's a misreading of the moment because while maybe Anheuser-Busch has donated some
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money to Republicans in recent years, they're doubling down.
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They are endorsing this radical gender ideology.
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And especially this is an issue that we are winning on with the American people because
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And this is one of the few times that conservatives have actually been able to impose consequences
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on woke companies for going rogue and appealing to the fringe left.
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We need to show that there are consequences for these kinds of actions.
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And when we're on the brink of actually doing that, potentially even a leadership change
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at Anheuser-Busch, now is not the time to do it.
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Whatever donations Anheuser-Busch is making to Republicans, it's going to be offset by a
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slew of donations, either that will come in from companies who are pleased that conservatives
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Or as of now, if Anheuser-Busch is going to be the pro-Dylan Mulvaney company, I don't
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think you can bank on a lot of those Republican donations in 2024 or in the future.
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Well, so so there was a report, was it the National Republican Congressional Campaign
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Committee was about to post an ad in solidarity with the Bud Light boycott and then pulled
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it down once it got revealed by that Donald Trump Jr. was against the boycott and that
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I guess somebody let them know, hey, this is one of your donors and they pulled it.
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And now today, Ted Lieu, one of the most contemptible people in Congress, posted a picture that is
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like the best advertisement for Coors or Heineken you could ever want or Yingling.
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A nice Pennsylvania beer right where my husband's from.
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We'll put we'll put it up here sitting there with their Bud Light cans directly facing the
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You know, they they wanted to do what you did as a kid, Michael.
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They wanted to be little actors in front of the camera with their Bud Light cans, except
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they're mature adult men posing with their Bud Light.
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It's the worst advertisement for Bud Light literally ever.
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The only corporations we can possibly hope to influence are the ones that donate heavily
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The others don't give a damn what we say or think.
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So any Republican pushing for us to leave Anheuser-Busch alone because they donate to
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Republicans is really telling us to give up the fight against corporate wokeism entirely.
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Lots of valuable lessons being learned right now.
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Although Matt might overstate just how Republican Anheuser-Busch has been.
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In fact, that was one of Donald Trump's campaign lines in 2016 when people would knock him for
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He said, look, I'm a big business and I play both sides and we grease the wheels wherever
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And I'm sure that's what Anheuser-Busch has been doing.
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I think to give Don Jr. the benefit of the doubt, the most charitable read here beyond
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just trying to protect some campaign donations for Trump and the Republicans would be this
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line that a lot of conservatives in recent years have tried to push forward, which is
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And we don't want there to be any politics in the economy and in business.
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We're not going to play the same game that the left does when the left goes after companies
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and boycotts them for not being sufficiently woke.
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There, there's, there is no neutrality here, especially when we're talking about an issue
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that can't have a moderate position, either men or men or, or men can become women.
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And, and furthermore, all of the companies are engaging in politics.
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And, and we're debating really fundamental stuff in the country right now because we
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And if you ever want to restore a sensible country again, where we don't need to be litigating
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gender politics on beer cans, you're going to have to make companies, even companies
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that have been somewhat friendly, you've got to make them pay the consequences.
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Because if, if there's no, if there's no stick to the companies, then the carrot isn't going
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You know, the, the thing I think Junior's missing is the second piece of it.
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He's missing that she had her Hillary deplorables moment about their customer base too.
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That I guarantee you, the Republicans that Anheuser-Busch has donated to are the Mitt
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It's going to be establishment type Republicans.
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And there's not that there's anything wrong with them, but that's not Trump's base.
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You know, Donald Trump Jr. should be thinking about how Donald Trump's base is thinking.
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The Travis Tritts of the world, the John Riches of the world.
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These are country stars who have thrown out their beer off their, their Bud Light off their
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Um, and like, those are the ones who get that this company apparently hates them and hates
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their fan base and hates Donald Trump's fan base.
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Like there is, Donald Trump has enough donations.
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He got $10 million in the wake of the indictment.
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Like he doesn't need Anheuser-Busch's Belgian money.
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So I think that was a rare political misstep by, uh, team Trump on where the base is.
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They don't give a damn about prior donations on something as important like this.
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But the first time ever, the GOP base that objects to these crazy wokeism things is making
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Um, it's a good case to be made for, for doubling down on it.
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And don't forget, one of, one of the arguments for the Trump campaign is the guy is a brash
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New York billionaire who doesn't give a damn what the established powers say.
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And so I get that now we're in a different world.
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There has been a more established campaign apparatus.
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The, the RN, he's obviously been involved with the RNC for a long time, but, but no,
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the magic of Trump is I don't need your Anheuser-Busch money.
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I'm not going to let you completely upend our whole culture.
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We're going to do it on our own with, by, by sincerely appealing to the hardworking men
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and women of America who have been forgotten, the people who are called deplorable, irredeemable
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We're not going to appeal to them with empty platitudes.
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We're going to offer them a distinct vision for the country.
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And the CEO of Anheuser-Busch has, has made clear it doesn't want to be part of that new,
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Uh, I'd rather have an apple martini than a Bud Light at this point.
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Although skinny, spicy margarita has been my drink of choice of late.
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The vast couple of years, I've really been enjoying it.
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Because my canned alcohol of preference is White Claw, which is already sufficiently gay
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that I don't think it has to appeal to transgenderism or any other LGBT.
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So it will not be going woke, unlike Bud Light.
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It's so annoying, by the way, when people defending Bud Light, like we have to stand up for the
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That, stop trying to glom on to an issue everybody agrees on.
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It's the TQ that's taking over in bizarre and inappropriate places that we object to.
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So just stop trying to glom on to a battle that's already been won.
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Like, you know, Dylan Mulvaney walks up and he says, hey, fellas, they're really all attacking
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You're the one dressing up like Audrey Hepburn and threatening the rights and spaces of women
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Literally, Dylan put out a video that appeared to be tongue in cheek, though one can never tell
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with this person, talking about how Dylan was concerned that Dylan was late in getting
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So Dylan doesn't get a period because there's no uterus that just shed its lining once a
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No matter how much you push your Tampax online into other people, you don't need a Tampax because
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And I've talked to a number of my friends who identify as gay and lesbian.
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And they say, they say, Michael, listen, I know that you're not on board with the redefinition
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of marriage or all there are all sorts of culture war issues here.
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But I think we can agree this is this is a distinct phenomenon.
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And on this issue, the vast majority of Americans think this is absolutely absurd, especially when
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it's applied to children, especially when it's it's constantly forced down our throats
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He is the most prominent voice for cramming this ideology down everywhere in the entire
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Can I ask you quickly about the James O'Keefe video?
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He's separated from Project Veritas unwillingly from the sound of it.
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And he did one of his first new videos following Dylan around.
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Not going to lie, made me feel sorry for Dylan.
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Um, but he also reported that in following Dylan, Dylan went into the women's restroom.
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I don't want to play all 41 seconds to play a little bit so people get the feel.
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Do you have a comment on the story here of the women being raped by the men claiming to
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Um, do you, what do you think about the women who are being raped by the men who are transgender?
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Um, what do you think about, what is your comment to the women who are being raped by men claiming
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That's, that's not my approach in, in these kinds of debates, but in James's defense,
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first of all, I love that after that preposterous, uh, uh, uprising at Project Veritas, that James
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O'Keefe is just starting a new organization and he's going back and doing his work.
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Uh, but furthermore in James's defense, Dylan Mulvaney has chosen to become a public figure.
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He's, he's chosen to become a political persona in one of the most contentious fights in the
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And so I'm not going to be the one who's chasing people around with the microphone.
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That, that is not my style, but that is what happens to politicians.
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And it's usually the people on the left who are doing that kind of thing.
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Occasionally some people on the right who are investigative journalists do that as well.
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If Dylan Mulvaney did not want the microphones and the cameras in his face asking for his opinion
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on contentious public issues, then he shouldn't have injected himself into politics, but he's
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happy to take the fame and he's happy to take the money and he's happy to, to push this,
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When you inject yourself into politics, you're, you're going to be treated like a politician.
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It's not pleasant, but I mean, I've been there.
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I've, I've been chased into my home with my children all around town.
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It's not something I want to see more of, but Dylan is the person who injected him in the
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himself into, and I am using him for this person.
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And I'm, and I've been wrestling Michael, um, with whether to switch over to biological
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or real, real pronouns for trans people for a while.
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I'm going to have more to say about it soon, but I'm, I'm, as you would say, although I
00:26:38.700
didn't really understand the word, but you're basically, your position on this is fact-based.
00:26:43.440
It's anthropological and it's, what's the word epistemology?
00:26:49.440
I know, you know, it doesn't rattle off the tongue in a political slogan.
00:26:56.620
You know, at, at Yale, they teach you a few things.
00:26:59.540
Increasingly, they're teaching you, uh, transgenderism, but, but a few of those other things would
00:27:03.720
be that politics is based on deeper things like anthropology, which is the nature of what
00:27:11.080
Epistemology, which is how do we know anything at all?
00:27:15.260
And so I, I really applaud you, Megan, for taking this seriously because most people,
00:27:20.120
if they refer to Dylan Mulvaney as she, they're not making a conscious choice to do it.
00:27:24.620
It's just, there's a lot of pressure from the culture.
00:27:27.160
Dylan Mulvaney is dressing up as Audrey Hepburn.
00:27:29.140
And so that's a little bit confusing too, but it's really important because the way that
00:27:33.360
the, the left wins these kinds of debates is they manipulate language.
00:27:39.900
They, they manipulate language so that they can win the debate before the debate ever begins.
00:27:47.620
If you're debating whether or not a future American undocumented dreamer has the right
00:27:56.880
He's an American, albeit one without documents.
00:27:59.360
But if you're, if you're debating whether a foreign national illegal alien has the right
00:28:05.380
And especially here, if we refer to men who identify as women, maybe they're the nicest
00:28:11.820
If we refer to them as she and her, we've conceded the debate before it can begin.
00:28:18.760
We are granting that this person is a woman and she and her certainly have the right to
0.82
00:28:22.760
use the women's bathroom and play on the sports teams and take away the private rights
1.00
00:28:29.500
Um, because I read Posey Parker was on the show last week and I read at her, uh, suggestion,
00:28:36.080
uh, pronouns are hypnol, which you can Google and pull up.
00:28:40.740
It's an article that's been banned in a number of places, but you can find it's very interesting.
00:28:44.640
And then it talks about how, how do you say she can't use the women's restroom?
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00:28:56.520
How do you, but you know, the argument on the other side is we, we tell lies all the
00:29:04.400
No, you know, did, what do you think of my haircut?
00:29:08.600
Like we tell compassionate lies in polite society all the time, kind of go along with
00:29:15.360
somebody's self-delusion that they don't look fat in those teeny tiny pants, right?
00:29:28.920
And I'm not arguing that you ought to tell your wife that she looks fat or anything like
00:29:33.100
that, but we can use our language to speak in soft terms without outright lying.
00:29:41.280
When you say that, uh, there is a woman of a certain age rather than an old hag, you are
1.00
00:29:47.580
using nicer language, but you're, you're not lying because the, the woman is of a certain
0.99
00:29:53.320
Uh, and so I would encourage people to, to, uh, speak in ways that can be perfectly polite
00:30:00.100
and courteous, but that are, that are not lying.
00:30:02.580
If you're, if your wife says, how do I look in these jeans?
00:30:08.040
I would know if you, if you put that qualifier on the end, I would know.
00:30:13.500
You know, there are all ways that are a little bit, um, you're so smart.
00:30:19.760
But, but, you know, on this issue, it really does matter because if, if you live according
00:30:25.000
to lies, you are not going to have a flourishing society.
00:30:28.620
I think what, what the leftists who are trying to make this argument, what, what they are insinuating
00:30:37.960
Lies will set you free and that the truth is very cruel when in fact, the opposite is
00:30:43.020
The truth will set you free and lies will always get there.
00:30:51.980
I had a woman on the show, a trans woman on the show, uh, not, I don't know, like a year
00:30:59.400
And it was on, uh, the subject of the Connecticut runners, you know, the, the high school girls who
00:31:03.820
got beaten by these boys who ran as boys a year earlier and then just declared themselves
00:31:07.580
girls and ran and crushed that case is on appeal right now.
1.00
00:31:11.200
But this was a trans woman who said, you know, I said, I think I said biological male now trans
00:31:20.980
And this person corrected me, you know, that's not, that's not right.
00:31:28.240
Like they, they would actually say the truth is it's like a woman trapped.
00:31:35.860
That's why it's now called like affirming instead of gender reassignment surgery.
00:31:42.400
They, they do this and they, they keep changing the explanation.
00:31:45.580
The one that you've just described is the most common one, which is that my body has nothing
00:31:53.900
And it's somewhere they're really referring to their souls, but, uh, because we live in
00:31:57.780
modern times, people don't talk in those kinds of terms anymore, but that's what they're
00:32:01.780
And, and so you can examine that idea using your intellect and you can say, okay, well,
00:32:10.280
And there are all sorts of philosophical debates that have, have, uh, raged on this for 2000 years.
00:32:15.960
The short answer though is they can't be, if you look like a man, you, you are a man.
00:32:19.860
If you have the natural body of a man, you are a man, but they won't do that because the
00:32:23.320
moment you start engaging in that debate, they'll change it.
00:32:25.640
And they'll say, well, actually trans women, they have the brains of women, even though
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00:32:31.740
But that's an, that's an incomprehensible sentence because your brain is part of your
00:32:36.740
So then you're, you're saying, okay, well, part of my body is male, part is female.
00:32:40.060
So, and then the moment you say, you point that out, they'll move to a different argument.
00:32:43.560
Tomorrow, I'm supposed to debate a transgender identifying professor, triple Harvard grad, half
0.99
00:32:48.560
a dozen honorary doctorates, very distinguished scholar at the university of Pittsburgh on this
00:32:55.960
And at the last minute, he pulled out of the debate and he pulled out of the debate, not
00:33:01.080
because he learned anything new about my position.
00:33:03.420
My position has been pretty public for a while now.
00:33:07.500
He seemed to enjoy the meeting and at the end of it reiterated his desire to debate.
00:33:13.120
But I think he thought better of it by the end.
00:33:15.140
And I think he realized that I'm, I'm not going to shout at him or yell or call him names
00:33:20.700
I'm just going to present an argument as to why transgenderism doesn't make sense and
1.00
00:33:29.220
You know, even a distinguished scholar couldn't defend this kind of thing.
00:33:33.320
And so it seems to me on the matter of being polite and compassionate and nice to people
00:33:37.680
that, that we owe it to people if we're truly compassionate to tell them the truth about,
00:33:42.700
about who they are and not to affirm their delusions, which are not going to make them happy
00:33:47.460
And not only is it going to drive them mad, but it's going to drive the whole society
00:33:55.280
There's this disorder that makes you really think you need to have your arm cut off.
00:34:00.660
You do need to get rid of your perfectly health, healthy left arm.
00:34:06.780
You would not be saying, yeah, dude, the left arm's a problem.
00:34:11.080
Your feelings are spot on, out of compassion, out of respect for the genuinely held belief
00:34:17.740
You'd be like, I really hope you get the help you so desperately need.
00:34:28.220
You know, you, and you get off of that very uncomfortable topic because this person needs
00:34:32.340
Not, not the kind that engages in the same delusion.
00:34:36.180
I am interested in what's going on with this person who you mentioned, uh, the, the professor's
00:34:43.020
This is a man who's going as a woman and Deirdre has canceled on you as near as I can tell
00:34:49.880
Michael with a bunch of lies about why McCloskey is so terrified of you.
00:34:54.260
It's actually quite interesting what this person is claiming publicly versus what you say happened
00:34:58.860
We will let the audience in on that secret right after this.
00:35:02.000
Every time we have on Michael Knowles, host of the Michael Knowles show, he's been canceled
00:35:15.980
Um, and Deirdre McCloskey is not your fan or is Deirdre because Deirdre now canceled out
00:35:23.880
of this debate, uh, hosted by university of Pittsburgh, which is a public university, uh,
00:35:28.640
event sponsored by intercollegiate studies Institute, had agreed to debate you on these
00:35:34.020
Deirdre transitioned from male to trans female in the 1990s and is now 80.
00:35:40.820
Um, I love that you guys were supposed to debate the nature of womanhood.
00:35:50.200
Has dropped out saying McCloskey had no idea who Knowles was when McCloskey agreed.
00:35:56.920
And after learning more about you and your beliefs, McCloskey decided to withdraw.
00:36:01.160
Knowles is interested in stirring up hatred and violence, uh, that toward people who do
00:36:05.600
not fit his extremely conservative Catholic beliefs.
00:36:10.700
It's sad that the intercollegiate studies Institute, once a force for liberty, decided to sponsor
00:36:18.020
So you say, uh, McCloskey's acting because they knew full well who you were and what your
00:36:28.980
But, but, uh, Professor McCloskey's excuse as to why he's pulling out of this debate,
00:36:33.620
it's undermined even by his own tweets because weeks and weeks ago, uh, Professor McCloskey
00:36:39.300
went on Twitter and called me a fascist and called me an anti-Jesus Catholic, little, little
00:36:49.200
Uh, it, it, it's ironic with the claim that I'm a fascist though, because Megan, as I'm
00:36:53.560
sure, you know, fascism is far too modern and progressive and ideology for me.
00:36:58.440
I would, unlike most people who bandy that word around, I have read the founding documents
00:37:04.600
I just, as I've read the founding documents of communism and all sorts of, and I'll just
00:37:10.800
Uh, but the professor knew all of this going in and had reiterated his belief that it was
00:37:16.620
important to debate me on these issues and to, to, you know, win over the, the audience
00:37:22.960
And then we had a pre-debate phone call just two or three weeks ago in which Professor
00:37:27.820
McCloskey, I won't say he was exactly polite to me, but we, we discussed how the debate would
00:37:32.960
I explained where my stances derive from and why I just don't think that transgenderism
1.00
00:37:38.460
depicts a true, uh, understanding of human nature.
00:37:42.580
And by the end of the call, he, he was a bit friendlier and he once again reiterated his
00:37:51.820
And so, uh, obviously he's lying when he says that, uh, he discovered that I have no
00:37:59.820
Yeah, I mean, that's, that's obviously a lie, but, but it's kind of a perfect lie because
00:38:07.360
I think that Professor McCloskey may have gone into this thinking that I was just some bomb
00:38:11.500
thrower or provocateur who was going to make a big fuss of myself, in which case he could
00:38:16.980
have maybe won the debate by seeming like the adult in the room.
00:38:20.780
But when he realized that I, I don't hate anybody, I, I'm not going to call him any nasty names
00:38:26.560
or anything, I'm just going to state my view, which happens to be the view of everyone for
00:38:31.180
all of human history, which is the men and women are different.
00:38:33.620
I think he realized that there was no way for him to win that debate.
00:38:38.160
And especially because there was so much public interest in the debate.
00:38:45.160
I think Professor McCloskey concluded that it was better to concede the debate before it
00:38:49.820
began than to lose in front of C-SPAN's cameras.
00:38:52.720
Well, I had Kelly McGuire, one of my crack producers, go and pull some old soundbites
00:38:58.140
by McCloskey just so we could get a feel for how McCloskey performs publicly and why they
00:39:05.080
And here is Deirdre on with Dave Rubin in 2016.
00:39:12.240
So it's, it's what, four, seven years ago, making claims that I think you would have had
00:39:20.080
There's something that's really important for straight people to understand.
00:39:29.420
A, the number of people who have a regret one way or the other, male to female, female to
00:39:37.940
And B, if they have regret, they can change back.
00:39:47.820
Many perfectly well-functioning men don't have penises from terrible accidents or war injuries.
00:40:02.500
That's what determines how society takes you on.
00:40:22.380
I had seen other clips of Professor McCloskey debating these issues.
00:40:29.420
He's obviously been extraordinarily deluded on this issue of sex and gender.
00:40:34.980
So he can debate reasonably well on all manner of other topics.
00:40:41.800
On this issue, he just says the most preposterous things that are completely indefensible.
00:40:47.660
And so I actually think that one of the proofs of his intelligence is that he withdrew from
00:40:52.020
this debate, because I think he realized at the end that even with all his degrees and fancy
00:40:57.820
scholarly credentials, no one can defend the indefensible.
00:41:02.900
And when one tries to do it, it sounds absurd, as the professor did there on with the debate.
00:41:14.360
All these sort of advocates for these radical positions when asked to actually stand up to
00:41:19.860
someone smart on the other side who's well-versed in the issues and have a smart intellectual
00:41:31.000
Well, I should point out, Megan, ISI, after Professor McCloskey pulled out, ISI invited
00:41:36.100
like 10 or 12 leftists, transgender identifying people, prominent spokesmen for the transgender
00:41:45.480
So we now do have a debate opponent, which is Brad Palumbo, who is-
00:41:56.780
He doesn't identify as T, but he does identify with the LGB.
00:42:01.160
So he broadly defends the transgender movement.
00:42:04.800
The debate will be a little different, but it will go on.
00:42:08.420
Professor McCloskey will not have succeeded at shutting it down.
00:42:10.940
And the Democrat legislators in Pennsylvania will not have succeeded at shutting it down.
00:42:16.680
It will happen at Pitt tomorrow, and the libs can whine and cry about it, but we will be
00:42:21.640
hashing out these debates at a public university.
00:42:27.060
Okay, so good luck, and we'll be watching to see what happens.
00:42:32.640
I have to ask you about what's happening with his sidekick, Chris.
00:42:35.460
We talked about it on our show on Friday, and more clips are now emerging of this Chris Tyson,
00:42:40.820
who's been the main sidekick to Mr. Beast, the most popular YouTube figure by far, 144 million followers.
00:42:51.520
It was this married, masculine, mountain-type guy who had the beautiful young wife, has a two-year-old baby,
00:42:59.000
and now suddenly he's a she and looks, I have to say, absurd, but is celebrating his newfound womanhood and still posting publicly.
0.99
00:43:09.180
And if you object to what you've seen or your children seeing it, you're a transphobe.
00:43:12.520
Mr. Beast, who tries to stay political, apolitical, tweeted out on April 13th,
00:43:31.980
He's been studious in avoiding this kind of thing, but it's been forced on him by his friend who transitioned and is now owning it on camera.
0.96
00:43:40.400
Just for some context here, here's a bit of his transformation, Sot7.
00:43:47.780
Why did I paint my nails? Because my pee-pee big. That's why.
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00:43:59.180
He's like, hey, guys, welcome to my vlog. We're doing monkey things.
00:44:22.360
This man's out there saying his two-year-old baby absolutely supports him, has no problem.
00:44:28.320
Like, okay, the child has no idea what is happening.
00:44:37.640
Who would have imagined that a widely admired person in popular culture with the name Mr.
00:44:43.460
Beast might have a few things that are a little off about him?
00:44:46.380
But in his defense, he's in an impossible position here.
00:44:49.700
And this guy, Chris, has put him in that impossible position.
00:44:53.020
And the silver lining to this awful storm cloud, especially for his family, is it really clarifies
00:44:59.940
the problems of the transgender movement, and all of these leftist movements, for that matter.
00:45:05.360
Which is, this guy, Chris, has decided because he has some disordered type of desire, he's
00:45:11.000
going to shirk all of his other commitments and obligations, and he's just going to pursue
00:45:17.040
But that's not how we used to think about our identities and politics and the family,
00:45:23.820
We used to think of it from the position of obligation.
00:45:30.020
He took a vow and said he would be a husband to his wife.
00:45:32.680
And part of being a husband means you don't become a wife yourself.
00:45:38.340
When you become a father, you take on responsibility, and you have a responsibility to be daddy.
00:45:43.340
And by being daddy, that means that you can't become a bizarre caricature of mommy.
00:45:51.940
And it raises this question, why did this guy, in his late 20s, one day just wake up and
00:45:56.940
decide, after getting married, after having a kid, after being a dude for his whole life,
00:46:02.360
And what I strongly suspect is that one of the drivers of this is something that no one
00:46:10.000
wants to talk about with the transgender explosion, and that is pornography.
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00:46:14.540
My friend Ali Stuckey pointed this out not long ago, that Chris had had all sorts of strange
00:46:19.940
posts about really bizarre types of pornography, even pornography involving depictions of children.
00:46:27.120
And I don't bring that up to suggest that he's a pedophile.
00:46:33.940
The only reason I bring it up is to show that the man is fluent in the language of pornography.
00:46:40.040
And so he obviously has a relationship with pornography.
00:46:44.860
And one of the undiscussed stories here, you can read it on Feminist Current, a really good
00:46:50.020
article on that feminist website, is that there are genres of pornography that encourage men
1.00
00:46:57.360
When I brought this up on the show, many people started writing in to me saying that they've
00:47:01.640
It's obviously dangerous, it's obviously disordered, and people need to start paying attention
00:47:07.900
Well, we talked about this as well on Friday, and it's dark, this particular kind of anime.
00:47:16.300
Or did he try it out and it drove him in a direction he wouldn't go?
00:47:19.960
But once you get married and in particular have children, my position is it's utterly selfish
00:47:30.340
And to pretend your child's fine with it, it's not going to cause any damage, is a lie.
00:47:39.840
At least you have a very smart, fun, respectful sparring partner, or so we think.
00:47:44.720
We will find out when we watch it live on C-SPAN, me and Abby.
00:47:51.760
And remember, folks, you can find The Megyn Kelly Show live on SiriusXM Triumph Channel
00:47:56.000
111 every weekday at noon east and the full video show and clips by subscribing to our
00:48:00.900
Go there now, youtube.com slash Megyn Kelly to check out all of our fun clips.
00:48:08.400
Joining me now is the absolutely fearless and brilliant bestselling author Heather McDonald.
00:48:14.680
Heather is the Thomas W. Smith Fellow at the Manhattan Institute, a contributor and editor
00:48:20.020
at City Journal, and she joins us now for her first interview about her new book, When Race
00:48:26.040
Trumps Merit, How the Pursuit of Equity Sacrifices Excellence, Destroys Beauty, and Threatens Lives.
00:48:38.960
Such a timely book, and you have brought the receipts, as they say.
00:48:43.080
Um, can we kick it off with, uh, what's happening now with racial equity, the Supreme Court and
00:48:49.660
university admissions, because there's a case pending before the U.S. Supreme Court right now
00:48:54.420
that we think is going to eliminate race as an acceptable criterion for college admissions.
00:49:01.720
Right now, it's okay to use it as one of many, but it looks like the Supreme Court's about to
00:49:06.500
overturn that in a pair of cases that are, that have already been argued and will probably get a
00:49:10.160
decision in June. Um, I noted in the book, you talked, of course, about what, and you mentioned
00:49:16.080
this in your last book too, what happened in California when they got rid of affirmative
00:49:20.860
action by voter initiative in 1996 for their University of California schools. And the University
00:49:26.360
of California, having been through this experiment, and I've, I've read you, I've read Glenn Lowry on
00:49:31.060
this successfully, you would argue, successfully got rid of race as a, as a criteria for admission.
00:49:37.260
Um, now turns around and says to the U.S. Supreme Court in support of, uh, those who want race-based
00:49:43.460
admissions, it's been a disaster here. It's been a disaster. We haven't been able to get enough
00:49:49.420
diverse students. And the way they positioned it, Heather, I'd wanted to read this to you, um, was,
00:49:55.540
yes, we're racially diverse in our, in our schools, but not sufficiently racially diverse since you
00:50:01.460
said we couldn't have affirmative action. Black, this is from their amicus brief, Black Native
1.00
00:50:06.400
Americans and Latinx students, uh, are not sufficiently represented at most competitive
00:50:13.000
universities of California. And, uh, they, they widely report struggling with feelings of racial
00:50:22.140
isolation. That's their argument. They want to bring it back in California. They want to prevent
00:50:28.460
the ban, uh, across the country. What say you to this whole thing? They will try everything they can
00:50:35.480
to ignore and violate the law. If in fact, the Supreme court declares that you may no longer
00:50:42.700
discriminate against the most qualified student applicants on the basis of their race. Uh, they
00:50:49.280
will use holistic admissions. They've been setting, they've been preparing for this moment, Megan,
00:50:53.840
by saying you may not even submit SAT scores, uh, and, and they will, they will use holistic
00:51:01.860
admissions. They'll ask students to write essays that discuss their degree of oppression. They'll be
00:51:06.920
able to figure out the race of applicants and it will only continue the charade. The reason that we do
00:51:14.040
not have proportional representation in universities or any other meritocratic institution, Megan is not
00:51:21.020
racism. Standards are not racist. The problem is a vast academic skills gap. And the elites in this
00:51:31.020
country are terrified that that skills gap is never going to close and they make it taboo to discuss it.
00:51:37.260
And so these universities are in this bizarre position of claiming that they are somehow racist
00:51:44.400
institutions, that if they don't have 13% black, uh, student body at UC Berkeley or at Harvard or at Yale,
00:51:52.060
it's because they are discriminating. Well, if that's the case, tell us who's the discriminators
00:51:57.340
are and get rid of them. But the reason is not discrimination. It's the fact that for instance,
00:52:03.120
66% of black 12th graders do not possess even partial mastery of basic 12th grade math skills
00:52:12.400
defined as doing a bit able to do arithmetic or recognize a linear function on a graph.
00:52:18.760
That's the problem. And instead America is tearing down every meritocratic institution
00:52:25.380
on the phony charge of racism. It has to end. You know, the other, the other side will say
00:52:32.240
that too is caused by racism. Okay. Let's go back to K through 12. You want to talk about the 12th
00:52:36.860
graders, 66% of whom in the black community are falling behind when it comes to math. They don't
1.00
00:52:41.580
have their basic math skills. And I know your book says 50% of 12th grade black students aren't
00:52:46.280
proficient in reading either. The other side will say that too, America's racist past.
00:52:51.240
Well, okay. That's a different discussion, uh, but let's not tear down standards. Uh,
00:52:56.920
let's make sure that those kids can succeed. Now I would argue that at some point, uh, the culture
00:53:03.940
in those communities has to change. There are vast behavioral differences as well with regards to
00:53:10.340
our students taking their textbooks home to study. Are they, are they staying home at night to do their
00:53:16.420
homework? Are they out on the streets running with gangs? Are they involved in drugs? The black truancy
1.00
00:53:22.060
rate in California is four times that of the white, of white students in California. On average,
00:53:29.060
black students spend less than a third at doing homework than Asian students. All of these very
1.00
00:53:36.000
obvious, noticeable behavioral differences in how students approach schools and how their parents
00:53:41.800
regard academic achievement make a difference. To deny that is to deny just common sense. There's a
00:53:49.920
very terrible, uh, destructive, self-destructive ideology in black communities that says that
0.99
00:53:59.140
academic effort is acting white. So if you're a black student who is studying, who is paying attention
0.55
00:54:06.020
in class, you will be demeaned as somehow, uh, you know, betraying your race. How we expect to have
0.90
00:54:15.300
equal academic outcomes when an ideology as perversely self-destructive as that, uh, is dominant is
00:54:24.520
beyond me. And it's, again, it is a violation to a certain extent of racial etiquette to talk about
00:54:31.920
these skills gaps and behavior gaps. Megan, we are very uncomfortable doing so. Whites turn their eyes
0.88
00:54:39.240
away in, in discomfort to, to look at things head on. And I, I agree that racial etiquette ordinarily
00:54:47.000
should pertain, but when we have our elites and black activists going around lodging on a daily, if not
00:54:54.800
hourly basis, sweeping accusations of white supremacy, if every institution that it does not have a
00:55:03.260
proportional representation of blacks is per se today deemed by the New York times or CNN or Harvard
00:55:10.880
or Berkeley per se racist, the time for racial etiquette and, and pussyfooting around these
00:55:18.880
underlying problems is over. The, these activists will just keep going back. I mean, if they have to
00:55:25.680
go back to 16, 19 to say, no, the racism preceded every problem you just listed, that's what they will do.
00:55:33.400
As I was reading part of the book, here's one section that you have on it. And you're not the
00:55:37.640
first person to come up with. This is not Heather McDonald. There have been full studies on this.
00:55:42.180
You know, if you get the straight A's, it's quote, acting white. There was one out of, I think it's
0.86
00:55:45.780
Columbus, Ohio. That was, um, the most well-respected and you write behavioral differences also undercut the
00:55:52.860
expectation of proportional representation. In other words, 13% black people in the, in the community.
00:55:57.240
Therefore we have to have 13% uh, everywhere, you know, in all these admissions, one third, you write of
00:56:02.800
all black males have a felony conviction. The prevalence of out of wedlock births in the black
0.99
00:56:08.100
community, over 70% of all black births out of wedlock means that a high percentage of black
00:56:13.960
females are burdened with solo child rearing responsibilities and on it goes. And you are
1.00
00:56:19.940
right, man. You're not allowed to talk about that. And if you do, I'll go back. I'll go back one more
00:56:24.660
generation to blame it all on the founders. Well, you know what? Uh, I am, I've been on a
00:56:33.300
reading project to refresh myself on black civil rights history on America's history. And I am
00:56:39.600
absolutely heartbroken and appalled by how ugly America's past was. So in one sense, there's one
00:56:46.000
aspect of the 1619 project that I agree with. America clearly was white supremacist. It was an apartheid
0.83
00:56:51.580
country and Americans until, you know, fairly recently treated blacks just with gratuitous and
00:56:58.340
heartbreaking cruelty and contempt. But we have to be able to look at the facts today. That is not our
00:57:05.120
reality today. As impossible as it would have been to predict 50 years ago, we are a different country
00:57:12.580
and, and racism is not the problem. Here's the reality, Megan, black privilege. It's not white
00:57:18.920
privilege. It's black privilege. If there is a single black student who is applying to a selective
0.75
00:57:24.220
school and is putting his race down as white, because he thinks that being white will gain him
00:57:31.200
advantage to getting into Yale or Amherst or, or Scripps, you've, I would, I'll pay $10,000 to anybody
00:57:41.020
you can find that. The reality is being black today in any mainstream institution confers an enormous
0.99
00:57:46.920
advantage. There is not a single law firm, a single bank, a single tech lab in Silicon Valley, a single
00:57:54.180
science lab that is not twisting itself into knots to try to find, hire, and promote as many remotely
00:58:02.680
qualified blacks as possible. White heterosexual males, it's over for them. They are at the bottom of
1.00
00:58:12.220
the heap. So as bad as our country's past was, but I can also say this, it, it sickens me, but it was
00:58:20.020
worse every place else. Every other empire and, and civilization in the rest of the world practiced
00:58:28.760
slavery. Africans enslaved each other. They continue to engage in genocide. Uh, there is brutality
00:58:37.880
everywhere that the other has been treated with absolute cruelty in every other civilization. So the
00:58:45.380
United States, while certainly not perfect, and we certainly betrayed our founding ideals, was no worse
00:58:51.700
than any place else. And in fact, it was a lot better. And today, the very ideals that the left is using in its
00:58:59.400
various phony, completely ungrounded anti-racism crusades, are ideals that were created exclusively
00:59:08.240
by the West. Tolerance, equality, equality under the law, due process of law, all of these are Western
0.87
00:59:16.780
ideals. You can go to Africa today, and to the extent that those ideals exist, they have been imports.
0.99
00:59:22.800
So I made two white, um, I think heterosexual males. They're little, but so far, that's how it seems to
0.58
00:59:32.560
be going. I made two. And, uh, in addition to a girl, and I understand they're going to make them pay
00:59:38.880
for sins of not even their fathers, but this country, they're going to make them pay for what
00:59:44.100
happened during the David, uh, Duke generation that, you know, was alive and well during the 1950s
00:59:49.320
and flourishing, nevermind what happened before that. And I get that their position is, so what,
00:59:55.900
so what, you know, the, the black children of America suffered enough and now the white children
0.90
01:00:01.320
are going to have to suffer. But of course it seems rather unfair that my non-racist, absolutely loving,
01:00:07.020
thoughtful boys are going to have to pay for somebody else's sins. But what say you, Heather,
01:00:11.000
to that argument that it was the black kids who had to suffer unfairly and unjustly for so long.
01:00:16.000
And now the white kids are going to have to suffer too bad.
0.84
01:00:19.320
Well, that's a very, um, clear way of putting it. I've never heard it put exactly that, but that is
01:00:25.600
absolutely the motivation here, which is a, uh, a hatred and vengeance and retribution. Uh, I guess
01:00:34.880
leave, you know, leaving aside all the equity problems, let's put us back on blacks. And, and again,
0.97
01:00:41.680
none of us were enslaving. Uh, none of us have responsibility for the ugliness of the Southern
01:00:48.280
racists who were beating up black kids that just wanted to go to school. It's horrifying,
01:00:53.460
but I'm sorry, we do not have, uh, inheritance of acquired characteristics. None of us are those
01:00:59.220
people today. And again, the reality of white behavior today is whites yearn to be post-racial.
01:01:06.720
They do not give a damn. What they look for in people of all races is, do you share my values?
0.62
01:01:13.360
Do you share my bourgeois values? My belief in patriotism and hard work, uh, self-discipline,
01:01:20.020
deferred gratification. That's what people, and white Republican voters have had one love affair
0.69
01:01:25.680
after another with black politicians, whether it's Alan West, Alan Keyes, uh, you know, Trump's
01:01:32.500
health secretary. It just goes on and on and on. Uh, we are not systemically racist, but if you want
01:01:40.480
to help blacks at some point, we can acknowledge that there was decades of mistreatment of keeping
01:01:48.580
them down, of preventing them from reading. That was all true. But today there's nothing that the
01:01:54.740
outside world can do to make them competitively qualified. You have to do the reading yourself.
01:02:02.180
The only person who can put knowledge of air arithmetics in your head is yourself. There's
01:02:08.860
no amount of compensatory transfers or trying to pull white people down that is going to make
01:02:16.520
you able to read better. The, the effort has to come from within that home. And right now,
01:02:23.980
whites have to stop apologizing, Megan. It is all coming down. I see it on a daily basis. There's
1.00
01:02:31.280
not a single meritocratic institution above all in the sciences and medicine that is not in the
01:02:38.720
crosshairs. Any institution that is not proportionally black is now vulnerable. It is all in self-immolation.
0.95
01:02:46.960
Uh, and we have to be able to present an alternative explanation for racial disparities. That alternative
01:02:53.160
explanation, which is in my book, I give data page after page of data that explain why we're not
01:03:00.820
proportionally representative, whether it's academic skills or whether it comes to crime commission.
01:03:06.020
Those one third that you talked about of all black males that have a felony conviction, those,
01:03:12.100
that those convictions are not the result of racist police. They are a result of actual criminal
01:03:18.400
offending and the dead black bodies speak for themselves. We'll address that and we'll come
1.00
01:03:24.220
back. And I want to talk about what's happening with the elimination of, uh, advanced placement and
01:03:28.560
honors classes in the high school level. And then what's happening in medicine. We have a doc,
01:03:33.740
we had a doctor on the show on Friday, a black woman extremely accomplished who was saying what's
0.98
01:03:38.340
happening in the medical field is scaring her and what Heather found would back that up.
01:03:42.400
We'll do all of that right after this. So Heather, you lay out how at the high school level now in
01:03:51.780
certain States like California and others, there's a push to eliminate, uh, advanced placement or honors,
01:03:59.820
uh, classes because they don't think those are fair to minority groups. They, because they're
01:04:06.140
underrepresented there too. They want to see absolute proportionality that 13% of the population. And if you
01:04:10.840
have a greater Latino or black population in your city, then it should be reflected in the number in
01:04:17.220
the honors classes as well. Well, this is all the idea of disparate impact that any neutral colorblind
01:04:23.000
standard that is not racially based. If it has a negative disparate impact on blacks and Hispanics,
01:04:30.600
you don't need to ask any further questions. You just throw it out. It's per se racist. Uh,
01:04:36.300
and so these objective standardized tests that allow admissions to gifted and talented students of all
01:04:43.880
races, you know, the whole purpose of the SAT when it was first created after world war II was to knock
01:04:51.760
down the traditional elitism of, uh, Yale and, and Harvard that only accepted students from, uh, elite and
01:05:02.180
new England prep schools like Andover and Exeter and said, no, let's have a colorblind background,
01:05:08.100
blind legacy, blind wealth, blind test that will allow students of all backgrounds to show their
01:05:15.520
academic accomplishments. Then. So they brought in this test and all of a sudden, Whoa, you saw these
01:05:20.780
students from the Midwest that had never showed up at Harvard before. So these tests, again, they allow
01:05:26.520
above all, whether it's Stuyvesant high school in New York city and in the lead exam school elite,
01:05:32.360
only academically, Lowell high school in San Francisco, they're predominantly Asian so much
1.00
01:05:39.320
for white privilege. If, if it's white privilege, why are the Asians whooping everybody else's ass,
0.99
01:05:45.320
including Jews, whites, and every other group? Uh, these tests are colorblind. Nobody knows their
01:05:52.040
identity, but because of those academic skills gaps, because blacks and Hispanics are way, way behind
1.00
01:06:00.040
in reading and math from almost the start of their schooling, uh, they're not passing these neutral
01:06:08.200
colorblind anonymous tests at the same rates. So we've decided that we would rather not cultivate our top
01:06:16.040
math talent than have classrooms that are not proportionally diverse. And this is suicide,
01:06:23.080
Megan. It is civilizational suicide while we're canceling our advanced math courses. Here's what
01:06:30.280
China is doing. It is finding its top math talent and it is throwing everything it's got at them. It's
1.00
01:06:37.320
putting them into math Olympiads. It's putting them into the most demanding calculus classes without any
01:06:43.320
concern about the trivialities of identity. If the class is all female, fine. If the class is all male,
01:06:50.120
who gives a damn? And China is, is ahead in every international test of math and sciences. It's leading
01:07:00.280
in many, many critical technologies that are key to military preparedness for cyber warfare. It leads in a
01:07:09.720
whole bunch of artificial intelligence, nanotechnologies, because it is not held back by
01:07:15.800
this absurd disparate impact diversity conceit. Meanwhile, we're saying that instead of learning
01:07:22.280
math, students should learn about their own white privilege. This is a waste of time. It is
01:07:27.560
civilizational suicide. Yeah. It's worse than a waste of time. This is just a quote from the book.
01:07:33.480
Early drafts of the new California math guidelines under the proposed curriculum, mathematically gifted
01:07:38.040
students would not accelerate into advanced classes until the 11th grade in order to create more
01:07:43.800
exclusive, meaning racially proportional math classrooms in middle school and early high school.
01:07:49.720
And you go on to point out as of 2018, China ranked number one in the international tests of K through 12
01:07:55.800
math, science, and reading known as the PISA, the U S 25th. We ranked 25th. All right. So, but let me turn the
01:08:04.040
page to medicine because that's deeply concerning. I mean, you can't, if there's any place in which
01:08:10.120
merit should rule the day, it's medicine, firefighting, and the flying of airplanes,
01:08:15.720
just to name a few, but those, this should not be touched by anything other than merit. I don't want,
01:08:21.000
whatever. I wouldn't mind seeing a big burly female firefighter who looked strong, but I don't need
1.00
01:08:26.120
to see some little life ballerina wearing a fireman's hat to feel like I matter. Um, the U S medical
01:08:32.360
licensing exam is a prime offender of this, all these problems you write at the end of their
01:08:36.920
second year of medical school, students take the step one of these. Basically they're on the way
01:08:42.040
toward, um, they're called us MLEs. Now I know about this Heather, because in another life before
01:08:46.600
there was Doug, there was Dan, my ex-husband with whom I have a very friendly relationship still.
01:08:51.080
And Dan, I was with him during medical school, internship, residency, fellowship. I always joke
01:08:55.880
that I'm the worst gold digger of all time because I helped put him through all those things.
01:08:59.560
And then we divorced, right? He started making his money. Okay. I'm sure that's the case. He's,
01:09:05.640
he's, he's saying, what do I do? It landed in a good place for both of us romantically and
01:09:12.360
professionally. Um, so he took those step ones, you take it after second year and they're nerve
01:09:17.080
wracking. They're hard and they're hard for a reason. They're trying to ferret out those who are
01:09:21.560
going to make it in medicine and those who aren't. And then there are more steps after that. And I didn't
01:09:25.000
know this, but you write in the book since January of 2022. And I was with Dan back in 1997. I'm talking
01:09:30.920
about step one has been changed to pass fail, pass fail. Okay. That's new. And the, and then you take
01:09:39.320
on the claim that blacks are being excluded from medicine because of exams like this, that they're
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01:09:45.880
being excluded from medical training and from the medical field. And that's why they're underrepresented
01:09:50.360
in medicine. You have the numbers. You write from 2013 to 2016, only 8% of white college seniors with
01:10:00.360
below average undergraduate GPAs and below average MCAT scores were offered a seat in medical school.
01:10:07.160
Less than 6% of Asians who had those same problems in their qualifications were offered a seat in medical
01:10:11.560
school. Over 56% of black college seniors with below average undergraduate GPAs and below average MCATs
01:10:19.800
were admitted 31% of Hispanic students. That is unbelievable. So 8% of whites, 6% of Asians,
0.55
01:10:28.120
56% of blacks college seniors with below average grades and MCATs get admitted to med school. What does
0.98
01:10:34.920
that tell us? Thanks to the medical schools, all these schools are saying, if you take away racial
01:10:39.960
preferences, we will be terribly undiverse. So basically they're saying, and it's true, the facts
01:10:46.280
bear this out that virtually every minority student today in a selective school has been catapulted
01:10:53.080
outside of his actual academic skill range into a school for which he is not academically prepared
01:10:59.080
and he is falling behind because of that. You have no confidence that that doctor is the most qualified.
01:11:05.320
Now he may well be, or she may well be the doctor that you spoke to last week, Megan, but unfortunately,
01:11:12.120
thanks to racial preferences, the so-called beneficiaries of those preferences never know
01:11:18.040
am I the best candidate or am I the best black or female candidate? You and I have been the subject of
01:11:26.760
sex preferences all our lives, Megan, that cast doubt on our actual accomplishments, if there are any.
01:11:33.080
In your case, yes. In mine, who knows? But it's humiliating and it undercuts any sense of legitimate
01:11:40.280
accomplishment. And so the fact is, again, I hate to keep hammering this home, Megan,
01:11:48.600
the problem is not the standards. The problem is not the US medical licensing exam rating system.
01:11:55.080
It's not racist. Objective grades, objective standards are not racist. The problem is the skills
01:12:00.520
gaps and we won't talk about them and instead we're tearing everything down. And so now these residencies
01:12:05.960
that use step one of the US medical licensing exam to select students for the most competitive
01:12:13.640
residencies in neurology, radiology, oncology, they don't know who they're getting. A pass-fail system
01:12:21.880
is extremely crude. But the only reason we went to pass-fail, there was nobody saying the actual
01:12:28.360
grades were in any way inaccurate in assessing actual medical competence. The only problem with
01:12:36.920
the grades was that they had a disparate impact. And that is all you need to know today in order to get
01:12:43.320
rid of an objective and valid standard. One of the problems with this system is there are plenty of
01:12:50.520
black people who would pass these tests as is. You know, it's not the numbers that the these
01:12:55.080
wokesters want. But there are there are black people who work hard, who find a way, who happen
01:13:00.760
to be born into privilege, whatever it is, who would pass these more easily than you or I would.
01:13:05.960
But now they're going to have to be judged by this same. Oh, did you get in thanks to the 56 percent
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01:13:11.880
thing? You know, like what that would be incredibly aggravating. You know, I think about the kids who go to
01:13:17.240
school with my kids who are incredibly bright and some of the smartest kids in the class. And now they
01:13:23.240
they're going to be judged by this. Right. This sort of hand up to people who may not deserve it.
01:13:29.320
And then that's I mean, this is a problem in general with affirmative action is it's just
01:13:32.840
everybody gets tarred with the question mark when they might not deserve the question mark.
01:13:37.880
Well, in the 1990s, a Yale law professor, Stephen Carter, wrote a book called Reflections of an Affirmative
01:13:43.720
Action Baby, and he said it haunted him. Any time he got asked to speak or got an award, he didn't know,
01:13:51.800
am I the best person for that panel or for that award? Or am I the best black that they could find?
01:13:58.520
And that is the problem. So, yes, it is a pall that hangs over any so-called victim class. You never know
01:14:07.720
are you actually the best person. But it is also something that that can work to depress effort.
01:14:16.040
I remember when The New York Times used to write fairly a little bit, a wee bit honestly about
01:14:21.960
racial preferences in college admissions in the 1990s. And it quoted some black students that said,
01:14:28.040
well, we don't need to study particularly hard because we know we'll get in anyway. And and students
01:14:33.960
know this, you know, high school students all compare SATs and they can see precisely the preferences
01:14:39.160
that you spoke of, Megan, with regards to medical schools that a Asian has one ninth the chance of
01:14:47.320
getting admitted with a certain score level as blacks. These high school seniors all know that
0.98
01:14:52.760
they're black peers with SATs that are standard deviation below their own are getting admitted to
0.99
01:14:58.280
the Ivies and they've been rejected by every school they've been applied to. And then we turn around and
01:15:04.840
we have to all play this charade to say, oh, preferences don't exist. We are forced to live
01:15:10.520
a whole set of absolutely logical contradictions and impossibilities. On the one hand, the universities
01:15:18.280
in the affirmative action case that you spoke about in the beginning, Megan, say without preferences,
01:15:26.200
we cannot survive as a diverse institution. In other words, we would have virtually no black students
01:15:33.000
without racial preferences. But if anybody within that institution says, well, there's a good chance
01:15:38.520
that this or that person was here because of preferences, then that person is a racist and must be
01:15:43.960
cast out. And we see that happening now to Wax at the University of Pennsylvania Law School, who has said
01:15:49.880
she has actually spoken about the result of racial preferences, which is that the mismatch theory,
01:15:56.600
which is that students admitted to an institution which they're not competitive academically, they end up at
01:16:03.560
the bottom of their class. This happens at every single law school. The black law students end up at the
1.00
01:16:09.080
bottom of their class because they have been propelled into institutions for which they're not competitively
01:16:14.920
qualified. If they went to a law school where they were competitively qualified, instead of going to Harvard Law
01:16:21.320
School, they went to Boston College Law School, they would do perfectly well. Right. But instead flounder and
01:16:28.600
they're told by the bureaucracy to think that they're the victims of racism, which is another lie.
01:16:34.440
Well, the truth is, if you would take a step away from, you know, the obsession with race, right, the
01:16:39.240
wokesters and the people who are pushing all this for one second, they would see it like I, I did not get into Harvard.
01:16:45.240
And I would venture to say if I had gone to Harvard, I really would have flailed. I didn't do very well in
01:16:50.360
high school. I lost my dad. It was a tumultuous time. And I did not have the basis of knowledge or
01:16:56.520
learning for a successful career there. I went to Syracuse. I did very well. And based on those scores,
01:17:01.720
I got into Albany Law School, which was a fantastic law school, but it was good enough. And I wound up
01:17:06.920
thriving in the legal profession, which landed me here. Everything worked as it should in my case.
01:17:11.960
And so it's not about black or white or, you know, women or men. It's about what are your
01:17:18.520
qualifications? We're talking about certain professions that like the abandonment of merit
01:17:23.240
could potentially prove in this, that profession in particular, absolutely dangerous.
01:17:28.760
Completely. Not only are we putting individual lives at risk, but we also now are determining our
01:17:34.840
scientific research priorities based on race, not scientific needs. So the NIH,
01:17:40.920
NIH, which is the basic funder of biomedical research, is now deciding to move funding from
01:17:47.960
pure science. So trying to figure out what are the cellular pathways of cancers or trying to figure out
01:17:55.320
what's going on neurologically with Alzheimer's. This is basic science research that is extremely
01:18:01.720
complicated at this point, involves a whole set of different scientific fields, physics, sometimes
01:18:07.640
even engineering. They're moving money from that basic research that will be what frees us from our
01:18:14.600
lingering susceptibilities to crippling, debilitating disease into research on racism in medical areas,
01:18:26.680
health disparities, which is okay. It's a valid topic, although it is one that is vastly exaggerated.
01:18:33.240
I mean, I would say, actually, it is not a valid topic. The problem with health disparities in race is
01:18:39.320
not doctor racism. It's again, it's behavior, things that people can change, weight, susceptibility to
01:18:47.080
disease. But now we're going to give more funding to studying phantom racism in doctors than doing pure
01:18:54.600
science, just because more black MDs do that type of research and less pure science. This is insane.
1.00
01:19:02.680
We have the NIH doling out Alzheimer's awards based on the diversity of a research lab. Insane. It should
01:19:12.120
only be based on the scientific competence of that lab. And instead you have researchers, principal
01:19:19.640
investigators in incredibly important fields that are spending more time trying to justify their work
01:19:26.520
on diversity grounds or coming up with reasons why they can't have proportional representation
01:19:32.440
in clinical drug trials than they are explaining cell signaling in nematodes to talk about their cancer
01:19:39.960
research. It's crazy. You write in the book about how the NIH leadership of cancer labs in particular say
01:19:46.680
that your cancer lab should match the national or local demographics, whichever has a higher
01:19:51.560
percentage of minorities. And you point out about Johns Hopkins, where I was for a year when I was
01:19:57.560
married to Dan and he was doing his residency there, sorry, his fellowship there. Baltimore,
01:20:03.080
which is where Johns Hopkins is, is over 60 percent black. And you say, should Johns Hopkins
0.99
01:20:09.480
Cancer Center have 60 percent black physician administrators, which is what the NIH is saying?
01:20:14.680
Um, how like that would be a totally disproportionate number to any facility in the United States that
01:20:21.560
good luck finding it. Right. So you definitely have to lower standards in order to re to reach that.
01:20:27.320
Is that what the NIH wants? Yes, absolutely. And especially when like 10 percent of black
1.00
01:20:33.240
students actually have any basic skills in reading, but we are in Baltimore, in Baltimore. Yeah. We are
01:20:41.080
determined not to see any racial skills gaps. We're turning it away. And instead, we're determined to
01:20:47.400
blame American society, mainstream institutions for racism. So anything is vulnerable. Classical music
01:20:53.960
is vulnerable. Art museums is vulnerable. Oh, we've got to talk about that. We've got to talk about that
01:20:57.720
because this is there's a reason you talk about getting rid of beauty. And you've done so much great
01:21:01.160
writing on this. I remember we talked about some of this last time you were there, but it's not just
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met. I mean, those are important fields, medicine and so on, but it's also the arts that are under
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attack and that what's happening in particular when it comes to opera and the orchestras of America
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is crazy. I didn't realize for a long time that most of these bigger orchestras that you see,
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if you go to see the symphony to get into the symphony, to get try out for that kind of an orchestra,
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you have to go behind a closed door, like behind a screen.
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So they don't they intentionally are are trying to pick only the very, very best musicians
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no longer because that somehow where you actually literally didn't know the person's race race is
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racist. That's racist, too. It never ends. After George Floyd, every single classical music
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organization put out these peeling, nauseating statements, beating their chest, saying, woe is me,
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we're so racist. We are in a racist tradition. Our audiences are too white. Our composers we play
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are too white. We will never forget our mission today is anti-racism. No, it's not. Your mission
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is making is presenting a tradition of unparalleled sublimity in as perfect a manner as you can in as
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expressive a manner as you can without regard to identity. I do not, as you say, you do not need to
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see some female walking through the door or a female firefighter in order to feel validated.
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I don't need to hear a female composer in order to feel that I have reached some further understanding
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of the movement of the human soul. If I am listening to Bach or Mozart or Chopin or late
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Brahms piano music, I am experiencing feelings that I otherwise would never have had access to. And I
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could not care less whether I'm listening to a male or a female composer. The same goes with the race of
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composers. There are some fantastic black composers. They're not the ones that are being promoted now.
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There's some real mediocrities that are out there. But music is not about race. And yet you have the
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leaders of our classical music organizations, whether it's the director of the of the Metropolitan Opera,
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they're all they faced an incredible budget catastrophe during COVID because they closed down,
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they lost their audiences, they have no money coming in. And yet, even though they hire in a blind
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fashion, they do not discriminate against any group or any sex. All these organizations that work
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in near bankruptcy, hired way overpriced diversity consultants, have no musical background. Their
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only expertise is that they're black. And they come in at, you know, 100,000, 200, 500,000 dollars a year
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plus staff to go around saying, well, you don't have enough black musicians in your orchestras.
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We don't know who's auditioning when they're black. Conductors only want the best musicians.
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They don't give it their perfectionists, their tyrants, their their taskmasters. But the thing
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they're not is discriminators against talent. All they care is I do. I want a horn player that won't
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flood the solo in a Richard Strauss tone poem. And if it's that's a Nigerian, please come and be in my
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orchestra because I want the best talent. Right. But again, they would say, well, chicken and the
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egg. We we haven't fostered the arts for whole communities in the United States. We haven't lit
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the fire of love for music in a lot of these inner cities. And therefore, they don't fall in love with
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the cello. They don't fall in love with the violin. And they're never going to have this opportunity
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until maybe we help them get into college. And then something happens and they fall in love with
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it. And then maybe they're behind. And so they need they need a leg up because of the past historical
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discrimination. And we'll give them that leg up and maybe they won't be the soloist. But what's wrong
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with giving them a pathway into the larger orchestra when they've never historically had it? And there are
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bad reasons for that. Well, actually, they did have it. There was actually there was definitely
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heartbreaking discrimination against black musicians. On the other hand, there were very
01:25:23.320
many that were promoted, that were given conducting ships, uh, Pulitzer Prizes, fellowships. And in fact,
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the orchestra profession since the 1960s has been bending over backwards with one inner city fellowship
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program after another. To say that the contemporary, the mid 20th century orchestra was not concerned with
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trying to provide educational opportunities is completely wrong. Uh, they send musicians into
01:25:51.480
schools and again, they, they give fellowships and they, they try and cultivate talent. Uh, but we,
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the fault is not that we somehow excluded inner city students from music education. We've cut music
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education back completely. And I talk about some black violinists who did get exposed through their
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public schools back in the 1940s and 1950s in Detroit of all places. There were orchestras in, in, in
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schools, two or three, sometimes a black violinist, Joseph Striplin, who now leads a community orchestra
01:26:25.240
in Virginia. He grew up, he said, with a traditional inner city single mother, but he got it in his
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schools. And he, he had students, fellow students that had private lessons and he listened to them.
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He said, wow, they really play the violin. I better start studying more. So the solution is, uh, yes,
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better education across the board. It would be great if classical music wasn't so completely alien now in
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our culture, but the solution is not to lower standards at the end of the line. Uh, and Asian
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students are absolutely, again, whooping everybody's ass. Orchestras are way, way disproportionate Asian
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because of the home environment that the parents, these tiger moms are saying, not only are going to
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study calculus in the ninth grade, but you're going to play both the violin and the piano.
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And China, um, you know, they've got 300 million students studying piano today. It's fantastic if
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China ever decides that, oh, actually, you know, Harvard is not paying any attention to the fact that
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I'm showing up with three instruments. I still am discriminated against that. Maybe there's no point in
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my learning, uh, instruments. If it's not being driven by actual love of music, then classical music's
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over. Uh, Amy Chua's book, the battle hymn of the tiger mother is just so amazing. And she, she walks
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you through all of that and it, she's totally self-deprecating and delightful in it, but she
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does. She talks about how, uh, one of my favorite lines is she says, if a Western, she distinguishes
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between the sort of Chinese mom, the tiger mom, and the Western mom. She's like, if a Western child comes
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home, uh, with a B plus in math, the Western mother might say, okay, nice try, honey. You know,
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maybe you'll get them next time with an A let's go out and have fun. If, if a Chinese child ever came
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home with a B in math, which would never happen. She says the parent would be getting the practice
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tests all fun of any kind. If it had been allowed, the first time would be canceled. There'd certainly
01:28:20.920
be no, they're not allowed to do drama. They're not allowed to do, you can't get an A in anything
01:28:24.680
other than gym or can't get a B in anything, um, other than gym or theater, both of which
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they'd prefer to disallow. I mean, she just goes through it. It's hilarious, but it explains the
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great, great grades. It's a culture. It's a culture that prizes things like classical music and, and
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the values that come from that kind of repetitive practice, not to mention studying. Um, it's not
01:28:44.600
something I want for myself, for my kids, but that's probably that, you know, that's why I went to
01:28:49.320
Syracuse. Um, can we talk about the docents? This is one of my favorite stories of the entire year.
01:28:53.640
The docents in Chicago. It's unbelievable. The art Institute of Chicago, um, that turns out that
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they were too white. They were great. They were free. They loved what they were doing. It was a
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bunch of old ladies who had devoted their lives for free to helping people go around the museum and
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understand love of art fired to white hashtag museum to white. And thus it remains to this day.
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White calling is the order of the day. It's museums. It's it's virology. It's it's vaccine
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distribution. It's orchestras. There was a orchestra in England that fired half of its
01:29:33.320
musicians because they were too white. Let's be honest again. This is no longer the time for racial
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etiquette. Uh, Megan, it is white calling. Every institution is trying to get a proportion of whites down.
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Chicago had one of the most vibrant volunteer traditions in the 1950s, the Art Institute of
01:29:52.680
Chicago, which is an unparalleled collection. I recommend that everybody go while they still
01:29:56.680
can before all of the wall labels have been turned into anti-colonialism, anti-racism, anti-white, uh,
01:30:03.480
harangues. Uh, they've got an amazing collection of 18th century pastel portraits that I visit every time
01:30:09.320
in there. In the 1950s, Chicago, the Art Institute was in financial trouble and women got together and
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and fundraised for them and did such a good job that the universe, that the Institute decided to
01:30:22.680
incorporate women into a women's board and the, they get, they thought, okay, what should we do next?
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Well, how about we start education? At the time it was assumed that especially for educating children
01:30:34.040
about art, you should have paid, uh, official credentialized, uh, museum MFAs. And they said,
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no, we're going to be volunteers, but we're going to put ourselves through a program that is
01:30:45.720
as rigorous as getting a Masters of Fine Arts, and we're going to do it for free. And starting in the
01:30:52.520
60s and 70s, of course, they became very concerned about diversity and they would do, you know, their own
01:30:59.160
trainings about reaching out to diversity audiences, but they brought thousands of Chicago public school
01:31:06.200
kids into the museum to expose them to the beauty of art, to try to acclimate their eyes to seeing the
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vast dramatic evolution of style, which is one of the great dramas in human history of how you get
01:31:21.160
from Chartres Cathedral, uh, to the Renaissance, to Brunelleschi, to, to Beaux-Arts, and, and then to
01:31:30.200
modernism. How do you get from Giotto to John Singer Sargent? These are incredibly dramatic changes in human
01:31:37.560
expression, but in comes the, a former contemporary art curator, James Rondeau, who is a total idiot, and I say
01:31:49.080
that with factual basis and you can read his remarks in the book. He's, he sounds like he's a 12-year-old
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valley girl. He and his new, uh, director of the Women's Board, herself a diversity hire, decided the
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docents were too white, and so they completely terminated their docent program. They said,
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okay, clean out your lockers and for a consolation prize, we'll give you two years of free Chicago
01:32:15.320
Art Institute membership. Uh, and, and so now they've got at best six paid educators who are not
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going to be able to educate, bring in the students that they did, and they will be chosen on anti-racism
01:32:28.280
equity grounds, not on whether they know a damn thing about art. Oh my lord. All right, so in the time we
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have left, is there any cause for hope? I realized the world exploded after George Floyd. There was a
01:32:42.520
seismic shift in the ground underneath our feet when it came to all this race essentialism,
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but here we are almost three years later. Are we getting over this? Is this so baked in,
01:32:53.240
there is no getting over it? Where are we? Well, I do take hope from governors like Ron DeSantis and
01:33:00.360
some of these legislators that are pushing back. I would just add, you know, the third part of the
01:33:04.920
book is to talk about criminal law enforcement. There again, if you're confused as to why prosecutors are
01:33:09.960
not prosecuting, why judges are not sentencing, why police chiefs are saying do not enforce the law,
01:33:14.840
including against resisting arrest, everything there too is explained by disparate impact.
01:33:20.120
We've decided we would rather not enforce the law than put more black criminals in prison,
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even if that means that thousands more black lives are taken, including dozens and dozens of
01:33:29.640
black children who are gunned down in barbaric shootings in their backyards, in their beds, in
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their living rooms. All of this is because of disparate impact. It explains everything in our world.
01:33:40.360
Nevertheless, there is some pushback now. It is absolutely appropriate for governors to say in
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elementary school, you're not going to get the damn trans ideology. Children should have innocence.
01:33:54.360
It's not about being anti-trans, whatever that means. It's about not forcing kids to rub their
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noses in premature knowledge of sexuality. It is perfectly appropriate to say as a public university,
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we are not going to fund these totally unnecessary diversity, equity and inclusion bureaucracies.
01:34:14.440
Because again, Reagan, colleges are not racist. They are the most left-wing organizations in human history
01:34:21.800
towards society's traditionally marginalized groups. They are all, every single one,
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are discriminating in favor of blacks, not against blacks. Offices of diversity, equity and inclusion
01:34:34.760
are founded on a lie. They are staffed by people who have no competence. So we should continue fighting
01:34:43.000
back. So that does give me hope. Heather MacDonald, the book is When Race Trumps Merit. Thank you so much for being here.
01:34:51.800
Thanks for listening to The Megyn Kelly Show. No BS, no agenda, and no fear.