The Megyn Kelly Show - Carolla on Ellen, End of Woke Brands, Dems in Denial, and Paltrow's Bland Bio - MK Media Highlights

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00:01:00.120 Welcome to The Megyn Kelly Show, live on Sirius XM Channel 111 every weekday at noon east.

00:01:13.260 I'm Megyn Kelly.

00:01:14.300 Welcome to this special episode today featuring some highlights from our MK Media stars on our MK Media Podcast Network shows this week, just in case you missed their highlights.

00:01:24.260 I got them for you, Emily Jashinsky had Adam Carolla live on After Party this week, where they dug into Stephen Colbert and the truth about Ellen.

00:01:32.760 Link Lauren, he took a look at the way brands like Nike and, yes, American Eagle have swung back from their woke moments back in 2020.

00:01:40.980 Thank God he did that on his show spot on Mark Halperin got into the state of the Democratic Party on Next Up and why their leaders are in denial right now.

00:01:51.720 And Maureen Callahan took on Gwyneth Paltrow's bland new biography on her show, The Nerve.

00:01:58.420 Enjoy, and we'll see you Monday.

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00:02:53.500 One reason, actually, people alienate half of their audience is because so many fewer people are watching in general that it's easier to sell ads to a loyal group of people rather than trying to bring in a giant piece of the pie because everyone has so many different choices.

00:03:09.160 Do you think that's what's going on here, or is there something else happening?

00:03:13.860 I, you know, I don't know what the dynamic is behind a lot of stuff.

00:03:20.600 Like, I can't tell if it's just a personal preference thing or it's an overt, you know, attempt to make money.

00:03:31.280 I personally have just always sort of said what I wanted to say, and I never really thought much about who was angry or who was listening or anything.

00:03:40.660 I mean, every comedian says that, but I think some probably don't.

00:03:44.480 I think, I think Colbert and any late night comedian, and by the way, news anchors used to be this way, and Sunday show anchors used to be this way, and reporters used to be this way.

00:04:02.020 They felt there was a kind of a thing in our society in general where you were a little bit stoic about things.

00:04:12.400 There's no Pedro Pascal talking about all his emotional difficulties he's having.

00:04:17.200 Was he not stoic? 1.00

00:04:18.580 Yeah, you want to call the guy pussy, right? 1.00

00:04:21.380 And throwing him off the ship. 0.99

00:04:23.000 Like, well, what I'm saying is, is there isn't, I mean, I'm just sort of thinking this out in real time, but it wasn't about late night, and it wasn't about politics.

00:04:34.020 It was in general.

00:04:35.540 If I'm having issues at home, or I'm an issue with my children, or whatever, that's our business.

00:04:42.240 That's like our family business.

00:04:43.800 I'm not going to take to some Twitter that didn't exist back then, but, you know, write op-ed pieces and stuff talking about how much I hate my daughter or something, or my son's transitioning or something. 0.97

00:04:56.040 You know, it was like there was a decorum.

00:04:58.220 You know, it's like people used to dress to go on an airplane.

00:05:01.000 You know, and so late night show hosts, news anchors, news reporters, doctors, and lawyers weren't going to oblige and give you, let you know how they felt about everyone all the time.

00:05:14.520 You know, they, you know, if you brought up a Trump-like character, you know, in the 60s, then Jack Parr would have said, well, not exactly my cup of tea, but I'm sure some people find him amusing, or something snarky and a little underhanded. 0.99

00:05:30.260 But then when you go, fuck Trump, and start screaming it over and over again into a camera lens, you know. 0.98

00:05:35.420 So it was like there was a decorum. 0.99

00:05:37.760 And we didn't know what Johnny Carson thought politically because he didn't want us to, because he didn't believe just like whatever marital issues he was having or situations at home.

00:05:53.480 That wasn't our business.

00:05:54.660 He was there to entertain us, and we weren't there to know everything about him.

00:06:00.420 And now we've gone into some realm where these people have to be more than talking heads who entertain us.

00:06:09.080 They have to be our friends and our, you know, co-sponsors.

00:06:12.980 And so they're going to start talking about things that they never would have talked about that were personal.

00:06:22.720 You know, Jay, I should say David Letterman famously had his whole heart situation and a medical scare, and he got out there and, you know, came to tears and was talking about the surgeons that saved him and stuff.

00:06:35.360 And it was a moving moment, but Johnny Carson wouldn't have done that because that wasn't for us, you know, and it wasn't comedy.

00:06:44.000 He was doing the comedy.

00:06:45.460 That was him.

00:06:46.180 That was his doctor.

00:06:47.600 So I think in general, it's just a lot more sharing going on.

00:06:51.480 And I think if it's, you know, the ladies from The View or a late-night show, I think we're going to know how they feel about politics nowadays.

00:07:01.200 There's no more of that.

00:07:02.400 And I don't know that people want to go back to those days where we had no idea, you know. 0.56

00:07:09.260 I mean, hell, a guy could be gay for 50 years and be on TV every day. 0.99

00:07:13.160 No one knew it. 0.96

00:07:14.040 You know, that guy's a bachelor, and he's 74 years old.

00:07:17.860 Well, we knew David Letterman wasn't gay.

00:07:19.740 Let's roll this clip of Johnny Carson.

00:07:24.820 Let's roll Johnny Carson.

00:07:26.380 This is S5.

00:07:27.540 He was being interviewed, actually, by Mike Wallace.

00:07:29.880 And this sort of gets to, I think, the sentiment that used to drive the entire late-night ecosystem.

00:07:38.720 So this is S5.

00:07:40.060 Do you get sensitive about the fact that people say he'll never take a serious controversy?

00:07:46.360 Well, I have an answer to that.

00:07:47.720 I said, now, tell me the last time that Jack Benny, Red Skelton, Benny comedian, used his show to do serious issues.

00:07:57.820 That's not what I'm there for.

00:07:59.340 Can't they see that?

00:08:01.160 But you're not...

00:08:01.820 Why do they think that just because you have a tonight show that you must deal in serious issues?

00:08:07.620 That's a danger.

00:08:08.920 It's a real danger.

00:08:10.040 Once you start that, you start to get that self-important feeling that what you say has great import.

00:08:16.500 And, you know, strangely enough, you could use that show as a forum.

00:08:19.280 You could sway people.

00:08:20.320 And I don't think you should as an entertainer.

00:08:21.920 Adam, there it's almost eerie how accurately he describes what Stephen Colbert has become, at least from my perspective.

00:08:30.120 Yeah, I agree.

00:08:31.720 And, you know, I mean, sadly, there's a lot of...

00:08:35.180 Look, I wrote a book 15 years ago called 50 Years Walby Chicks and basically happened in 12 years.

00:08:44.340 So, I mean, there's lots of tape, lots of books, lots of KGB agents from the 80s explaining what they're going to do to the American mind.

00:08:52.460 And you go, but that's what we just did.

00:08:54.360 That was COVID, you know.

00:08:55.520 So, there's a lot of prescient stuff out there.

00:09:00.720 I agree.

00:09:02.980 On the other hand, it's your show and it's got your name on it and you should be able to say what you want.

00:09:12.140 And then once you say what you want, you should be prepared for any consequences that may arise from saying whatever you want.

00:09:20.600 So, I think that's the stage we're at.

00:09:22.800 I don't find it...

00:09:24.720 I don't feel like Colbert's been victimized and I don't feel like this is anything other than what shall be when you just do what you want to do.

00:09:33.880 I mean, personally, I...

00:09:38.760 You know, as long as stuff is funny, that's kind of...

00:09:42.760 That's the bar that it needs to clear for me.

00:09:45.440 Sometimes stuff just turns into something else like activism or something.

00:09:49.640 Yeah, let's put this Trump post up.

00:09:54.840 This is F1.

00:09:56.040 This was a truth social from last Tuesday.

00:09:58.320 He said the word is, and it's a strong word at that, 0.95

00:10:01.440 Jimmy Kimmel is next to go in the untalented late-night sweepstakes and shortly thereafter, Fallon will be gone.

00:10:08.220 These are people with absolutely no talent who were paid millions of dollars for, in all cases, destroying what used to be great television.

00:10:14.320 It's really good to see them go, and I hope I played a major part in it.

00:10:19.180 Let's also then put up Kimmel's response.

00:10:21.880 This is F2.

00:10:23.200 He said, I'm hearing you're next, responding to Trump.

00:10:26.580 Or maybe it's just another wonderful secret.

00:10:29.060 Alluding, of course, to that Wall Street Journal report that Donald Trump said something about a wonderful secret in a Jeffrey Epstein birthday book,

00:10:37.700 which is something that sounds like a Mad Lib, but Adam, did you predict that Kimmel would become a chick this quickly?

00:10:46.540 Well, first off, can we leave poor Jimmy Fallon out of this?

00:10:50.140 That guy just does impersonations, does a great Bruce Springsteen, plays acoustic guitar.

00:10:56.340 That's true.

00:10:56.460 I mean, I don't know how he got balled up in this whole mess.

00:11:00.240 I don't know that Fallon's ever done anything political.

00:11:05.380 Jimmy has always been feisty, I guess would be the, when we were taping the Man Show once,

00:11:15.080 he literally almost punched, he almost punched a guy in like the front row, kept telling him to shut up or something.

00:11:20.460 The guy like, I don't know, the guy was probably drunk or something.

00:11:23.560 I was like, it's going to be a lawsuit.

00:11:28.960 I don't know.

00:11:29.940 You were the chick in that situation.

00:11:31.360 I was the chick in that situation. 0.77

00:11:36.380 Jimmy hates Trump. 0.65

00:11:37.920 Trump hates Jimmy.

00:11:40.260 Jimmy's pretty alpha-y.

00:11:42.600 Trump's pretty alpha-y.

00:11:44.260 I realize there's a lot of alpha on alpha battles going on.

00:11:50.260 You know, us betas are just popping the popcorn and sitting back and watching.

00:11:56.400 Letting the alphas go at it.

00:11:57.360 It's weird.

00:11:57.760 I like Trump and I like Jimmy.

00:12:00.260 Like, I know them both.

00:12:01.660 Obviously, I know Jimmy a lot better.

00:12:04.820 They're both exquisitely different.

00:12:08.040 But, you know, there may be some of the same kind of alpha componentry somewhere lurking in both of them.

00:12:14.520 And, you know, the thing about Jimmy is my daughter's working for him right now.

00:12:22.460 I mean, not at the show.

00:12:23.900 She's doing his lawn.

00:12:26.180 But, no, she's at the show.

00:12:28.280 And he's treated me and my family and my kids especially like, you know, precious gems his whole life.

00:12:39.180 He's always been generous with me.

00:12:40.960 He's always been good with me.

00:12:42.420 So, I cannot summon any negative words about Jimmy Kimmel.

00:12:47.020 I don't agree with everything that comes out of his mouth, but I didn't agree with everything that came out of his mouth when we shared an office together for all those years.

00:12:55.500 But I've always loved Jimmy and I've always felt indebted to Jimmy.

00:12:59.380 And I like Trump as well.

00:13:02.180 And there is probably some universe somewhere where those two avatars could have a beer and have a laugh.

00:13:13.100 But not today.

00:13:14.820 What a beautiful moment that would be.

00:13:18.280 But is – so, okay, Trump is actually arguing something that a lot of his detractors or a lot of his supporters are not.

00:13:25.920 They're saying this had nothing to really do with Donald Trump.

00:13:28.400 It was just that Colbert wasn't very funny.

00:13:31.220 And here you have Trump saying, I hope I was the reason that Colbert started to fail.

00:13:36.680 Well, I don't like when people hang the, like, not funny on people they disagree with.

00:13:42.860 You know what I mean?

00:13:43.740 Like, I disagree with a lot of comedians.

00:13:48.400 And there are some who aren't funny.

00:13:50.960 But, like, you can't go about Jimmy.

00:13:53.140 You can't go, not funny.

00:13:54.580 You know what I mean?

00:13:55.220 And in a weird way, I think you hurt your case.

00:13:58.580 You know, when you just start – people – I've had it obviously done to me. 1.00

00:14:04.960 People do that thing where they go, this guy's an asshole and he's not funny. 0.98

00:14:08.900 And it's like, well, you know, Jimmy's been doing comedy for 30 – he's been getting paid to do comedy for 35 years. 1.00

00:14:15.740 He is funny.

00:14:17.300 He knows how to be funny.

00:14:18.680 You may not agree with some of his jokes.

00:14:24.080 But I don't like when people get, you know, wholesalely, you know, the untalented Jimmy Fallon.

00:14:29.000 Like, Jimmy Fallon's a very talented guy.

00:14:30.780 And I get what Trump's doing.

00:14:33.720 You know, he's got to paint with a broad brush.

00:14:37.600 But in a weird way, I think you kind of hurt – you know, I'll put it to you this way. 1.00

00:14:44.300 It's like when AOC goes, Elon Musk, that guy's an idiot, man. 1.00

00:14:50.040 He don't know anything, man. 1.00

00:14:51.680 It's like, okay, bitch, you seem stupid. 1.00

00:14:53.760 You seem really stupid now because, yes, he knows things. 1.00

00:14:57.220 I'd say it's fair to say he's not an idiot. 1.00

00:14:59.840 And, by the way, if he's an idiot, if Elon Musk is an idiot, that makes AOC fully retarded. 1.00

00:15:07.760 Like, if there is, right? 1.00

00:15:09.940 I mean, she's got to be almost vegetable. 1.00

00:15:12.560 Medically.

00:15:13.660 She's like Terry Schiavo.

00:15:16.760 I mean, right? 1.00

00:15:18.440 I mean, if you're just doing – we're not in good shape either if Elon Musk is an imbecile. 0.99

00:15:24.600 You know what I'm saying? 0.99

00:15:25.740 Yeah.

00:15:26.600 On the grand scheme of things.

00:15:28.700 But – so I don't like when people do that.

00:15:32.840 Just say, you know, the guy's smart.

00:15:34.160 He's done some good things. 0.99

00:15:35.140 I disagree with this latest thing he did or whatever that thing, whatever your bitch is currently. 1.00

00:15:41.200 You know? 0.97

00:15:41.720 But I feel that way with comedians.

00:15:43.720 I hate when people go, oh, I'm funny.

00:15:45.680 You know?

00:15:46.640 Well, it's the same standards.

00:15:47.740 Like, if the resistance wine moms are laughing at something that Colbert said and the, like, MAGA voters are laughing at something that a kind of right-wing coded comedian said, it's funny because people are laughing.

00:16:00.260 It's sort of the same – it meets the same very low bar.

00:16:02.620 Yeah.

00:16:03.620 Yeah.

00:16:04.680 Well, I don't – you know, I do think – I do think Trump is responsible for a lot of people's, I don't know, demise.

00:16:18.480 I'm not talking about Kimmel, but I'm just saying, in general, he gets under their skin and then they get a sort of obsession with him and then they become preoccupied.

00:16:28.900 And it's like in a movie – it's like in a basketball movie where you say to your little player, you know, go bug their star center.

00:16:40.200 Just keep bugging it.

00:16:41.020 And eventually the guy snaps and punches him and gets thrown out of the game.

00:16:45.200 Like, there's an element of that with Trump.

00:16:47.180 And the guy's laying on the ground.

00:16:48.940 He's got a bloody nose and he looks at his coach and he smiles, you know, because that guy's going to the locker room.

00:16:53.660 There's an element of that with Trump.

00:16:55.800 Well, okay.

00:16:56.440 So that's a great – there's a great transition into the one and only Ellen DeGeneres. 1.00

00:17:01.200 And I want to ask you, Adam, if you stick around through this very quick break, all about Ellen's move over to the United Kingdom.

00:17:07.960 First, though, over the years, I have, of course, been clear about this.

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00:18:10.760 Speaking of babies, let's bring Adam Carolla back in to weigh in on Ellen DeGeneres, who is now in the United Kingdom for some reason. 0.97

00:18:19.280 So let's go ahead and roll this clip of Ellen DeGeneres from last week, S7, talking about what she perceives as a grave injustice occurring under our noses here in the United States. 1.00

00:18:31.300 People in America and Republicans who would quite like to undo the right for gay people to get married.

00:18:38.860 I mean, that's back on the table as a debate, I think, isn't it?

00:18:41.260 Absolutely.

00:18:41.820 The Baptist Church in America is trying to reverse gay marriage.

00:18:46.440 They're trying to, at the very least, stop it from happening in the future and possibly reverse it.

00:18:50.480 And Portia and I are already looking into it.

00:18:52.740 And if they do that, we're going to get married here.

00:18:58.600 Honest to God, I didn't realize.

00:18:59.600 They love their applause lines.

00:19:00.660 They love it.

00:19:01.560 I thought they were married years ago.

00:19:04.700 She says she's also, this is F3.

00:19:07.500 She says she moved to the UK because of Trump, which reminds me of exactly what you were just saying, Adam,

00:19:13.540 that something about Trump himself seems to have triggered the unraveling of very talented people.

00:19:19.520 Do you consider Ellen to be one such case?

00:19:23.780 Well, Ellen has always been a mean person. 1.00

00:19:26.620 And it's not, you know, she had her dust up with the press and these stories probably three years, two or three years ago.

00:19:38.400 But I did her show.

00:19:41.480 And I mean, look, I'll tell you truthfully sort of how it works when you do every show.

00:19:47.100 Every show has its own kind of personality, the show itself.

00:19:52.580 Not the on-air show, but the behind the scenes.

00:19:56.440 They all take on sort of the personality of their leader.

00:20:01.880 And it's sort of like when you go into a business and people are always all friendly or they go into a business and everyone's sort of douchey, you know,

00:20:08.860 and you're going like, what's going on?

00:20:10.020 Why is everyone so mean and crappy in this business?

00:20:12.500 You know, it's the owners that way, you know. 0.69

00:20:15.440 And so when you would go do Letterman, I'll start here.

00:20:22.620 When you do Leno, Leno was fun and breezy and easy and people were nice and they were kind of laid back.

00:20:28.300 And they weren't looking over their shoulder at all.

00:20:31.880 And it was very kind of laid back.

00:20:34.440 And Kimmel's show is laid back and nice and people are nice.

00:20:39.760 And Letterman's show, people are scared or they were scared when I did.

00:20:47.120 Two times I did.

00:20:48.320 They're scared because Dave would scare them.

00:20:51.960 And Ellen's show, people were scared, real scared.

00:20:55.780 And I knew they were scared because it's like I was just sitting in my dressing room and they're like segment producer came in and he went, all right.

00:21:05.480 So we went over all the stuff we're going to talk about, you know, Christmas vacation or whatever it was.

00:21:10.260 And I go, yeah, yeah.

00:21:12.280 And he goes, you're not going to talk about meat or beef or anything like that.

00:21:17.040 Right.

00:21:17.400 And I go, no, I'm not.

00:21:19.740 I'm just going to talk about the stuff we talked about going on vacation or Christmas or the kids or, you know, their anecdotes, you know.

00:21:28.000 Oh, OK.

00:21:28.900 All right.

00:21:29.340 OK.

00:21:29.740 All right.

00:21:30.300 And he like came back like 20 minutes later before right before I went out.

00:21:34.120 And it's like, OK, but don't talk about beef or meat or any.

00:21:38.760 And I was like, you got two warnings.

00:21:40.820 Yeah.

00:21:41.020 Yeah.

00:21:41.260 And I was like, oh, this guy's scared to death.

00:21:44.100 This guy's scared.

00:21:45.100 And then and then later on, I talked to someone who signed an NDA.

00:21:51.020 So I won't say his name, but he wrote for Ellen.

00:21:54.580 And I just went, how's Ellen?

00:21:57.240 And he said, worst person, worst person.

00:22:01.140 And then we went, not worst person I've worked for.

00:22:04.420 Worst person I've ever met.

00:22:06.080 And by the way, I knew the guy did Rosie when Rosie was the duty chub club, the worst and the meanest. 0.66

00:22:13.220 So I don't know, some kind of some sort of mean off between Rosie in her prime and Ellen in her prime. 0.97

00:22:21.320 You know, the two Clash of the Titans, mud wrestling. 0.99

00:22:25.580 She's I like that.

00:22:28.880 But so she's not a nice person at all, which now everyone knows what I knew 15 years ago or whenever I learned it.

00:22:42.460 But now that seems to be common knowledge, which I would I was trying to explain everyone how mean she was, not because she was mean to me, because everyone was scared of her, which means she's mean. 0.99

00:22:52.060 She's not going to be mean to me.

00:22:53.260 I'm a guest on on the show, right?

00:22:55.560 So I wouldn't know it for my exchanges.

00:22:58.000 I would know it with how her staff was cowering.

00:23:02.220 What will the effect of the sparring between President Trump and the Federal Reserve be?

00:23:07.820 Can the Fed take the right action at the right time?

00:23:09.980 Or are we going to be looking at a potential economic slowdown?

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00:24:32.040 After years and years of wokeness, someone's in an advertisement that doesn't look exactly like you.

00:24:40.840 Get over it.

00:24:41.540 And Nike.

00:24:42.360 Nike is another brand like American Eagle.

00:24:44.420 They've decided to revert back to their core competencies.

00:24:47.720 They're now prioritizing tradition, conservative values, family by putting Scotty Scheffler in this new Nike ad where he's with his child.

00:24:55.140 It is a beautiful Nike ad, and it's in sharp contrast to their 2020 ad, Own the Floor, where they had plus-size women.

00:25:02.440 So they're switching it up, right?

00:25:03.600 They tried one thing, right, the last four years with Joe Biden.

00:25:06.480 In this post-November 5th world where President Trump won overwhelmingly, they're switching back now because it's popular to love your family, to be healthy, to be active, to get outdoors, to promote traditional conservative values.

00:25:19.860 That is what's popular now, and so Nike and a lot of these big brands, because of the free market, because of capitalism, they are going back to what they knew years ago, and it's why you see this side-by-side of how the ads looked years ago and how they look now.

00:25:33.720 And, of course, some people are going to choose to be offended, but there is no guarantee in life that every single brand is going to have someone that looks like you in an advertisement, okay?

00:25:42.140 If you want to get upset with Nike, that's fine, but you can also just go to buy the sneakers and the shorts and the athletic gear.

00:25:47.680 That's what you're supposed to be in the store for.

00:25:49.380 But there are also some other brands like Calvin Klein, right?

00:25:52.000 Calvin Klein, Calvin Klein, which was all about hotness, right?

00:25:56.820 Calvin Klein, they did all these hot ads with Mark Wahlberg and Nick Jonas.

00:26:01.120 Everybody was doing these Calvin Klein ads, you know, in the 90s and the early 2000s.

00:26:05.020 It was a whole thing.

00:26:06.920 Calvin Klein decided to go woke and go broke.

00:26:09.260 Also, I believe they put a bunch of, like, non-binary women with beards and men in dresses.

00:26:14.480 Calvin Klein, I don't know what was happening in those marketing meetings.

00:26:17.080 We'll put it up on the screen, but they decided to go woke and go broke as well.

00:26:21.460 Now, can we just have some hot people, okay?

00:26:23.720 Is it too much to ask that we have some hot people in ads?

00:26:27.540 Maybe it will drive some traffic to the website.

00:26:29.680 Maybe it will drive traffic to the stores. 0.97

00:26:31.060 Because I don't want to see, like, some overweight, non-binary man, woman with a beard, like a freaking circus clown, selling me underwear. 1.00

00:26:40.440 You know what I'm saying? 0.99

00:26:41.240 I don't need a circus clown selling me underwear.

00:26:45.620 And Calvin Klein, they've now gone back to putting some hot people in ads.

00:26:50.760 Okay, they have this new ad with Lily Collins.

00:26:52.700 She looks gorgeous.

00:26:53.600 She looks stunning.

00:26:54.200 If you look at Bad Bunny, if you look at these other people in the Calvin Klein ads, they have clearly done an about face, a 180.

00:27:01.540 They've left the non-binary Chewbacca trolls behind, and now they're prioritizing hotness. 1.00

00:27:07.400 And what confuses me also when it comes to these brands that went so woke and so broke, non-binary people are, like, 0.0000 whatever percent of the population. 0.99

00:27:18.100 But Calvin Klein, because of DEI, ESG, whatever, a lot of these big brands thought, we need to jump on this bandwagon.

00:27:24.740 This is what we need to do.

00:27:25.820 Sort of like Bud Light with Dylan Mulvaney. 0.98

00:27:27.800 Let's stray from everything we've known and everything that's worked for years and try this ridiculous tomfoolery, buffoonery, and clownery. 0.98

00:27:35.100 Guess what? 0.98

00:27:35.580 It didn't work.

00:27:36.560 It didn't work.

00:27:37.360 So now you've got Sidney Sweeney.

00:27:38.820 You've got American Eagle.

00:27:40.040 People are in an uproar.

00:27:41.100 But also, this is something money can't buy because you'd have to spend a lot of money to get people talking about your brand.

00:27:46.160 Now they're all talking about your brand.

00:27:48.500 Now, last night, I was talking to my producer, and this reminded us of the Victoria's Secret Fashion Show.

00:27:53.360 Now, as a gay man, a 100% gay man here in 2025, I will tell you with unequivocal certainty, I would make it appointment viewing to sit down and watch the Victoria's Secret Fashion Show.

00:28:05.300 Okay?

00:28:05.580 I love the entertainment.

00:28:06.840 I love the pageantry.

00:28:07.860 I love the music.

00:28:08.700 They always had, like, Taylor Swift performing.

00:28:10.760 Or they had Maroon 5.

00:28:12.640 Or whoever the hell was performing at the Victoria's Secret Fashion Show. 0.95

00:28:15.600 And I love to see these superhuman, size 0000, seven-foot-tall Amazonian models traipse down the runway in ridiculous clownery outfits. 1.00

00:28:26.180 Okay? 0.94

00:28:26.580 That is why I like the Victoria's Secret Fashion Show.

00:28:28.900 And it's probably why a ton of you also tuned in to the Victoria's Secret Fashion Show.

00:28:32.860 Well, a few years ago, they tried to cancel the Victoria's Secret Fashion Show because Ed Razek, one of the developers of Victoria's Secret, one of the producers of the iconic fashion show, made a comment about, oh, trans women aren't the fantasy.

00:28:46.520 Trans people aren't the fantasy.

00:28:48.280 Right?

00:28:48.620 He should be allowed to have his opinion.

00:28:50.620 Well, he got canceled.

00:28:52.020 He got so freaking canceled by the woke mob.

00:28:54.440 In fact, they didn't even do a Victoria's Secret Fashion Show for years.

00:28:57.780 They did not do one for years.

00:29:00.240 Well, they came back recently with the Victoria's Secret Fashion Show and they said, you know what? 1.00

00:29:03.920 Get those skinny bitches in here. 1.00

00:29:05.580 Get those size quadruple zeros in here. 1.00

00:29:08.060 Put the wings on.

00:29:09.180 Get the freaking music going and strut down the runway and make sure there's film in those cameras. 1.00

00:29:13.260 And we all loved it. 0.90

00:29:14.400 Okay?

00:29:14.980 Nobody out there thinks they should look like Bella Hadid all the time.

00:29:18.860 Okay?

00:29:19.220 Unless you are insecure.

00:29:20.280 Unless you're insecure and you're not living in reality, you know that these are alien superhuman people who have personal trainers, personal chefs, plastic surgeons, estheticians.

00:29:31.320 Okay?

00:29:31.800 Us as civilians, we're not supposed to look like superhuman models.

00:29:36.420 But some folks still get offended by seeing skinny models on television. 1.00

00:29:41.580 And that's sort of the dichotomy I'm trying to paint for you here in this episode right now.

00:29:45.100 There are brands that are allowed to put skinny, tall supermodels in advertisements. 0.97

00:29:51.320 Does that look like 99% of the country?

00:29:53.640 No.

00:29:54.020 Does it look like 99% of my group of friends and family who are of all different shapes and sizes and backgrounds?

00:29:59.080 Absolutely not.

00:30:00.440 But if you choose to be offended, that is because you are insecure and you have thin skin.

00:30:05.640 We shouldn't be so offended all the time that brands choose to give us some skinny models. 0.87

00:30:10.520 You know what?

00:30:11.400 If American Eagle decides we're going to put Sidney Sweeney, a skinny little hot blonde chick on Genuine Hollywood in an advertisement, and you choose to be offended, that's on you.

00:30:20.740 You're allowing that to erode your happiness and eat away at you.

00:30:23.800 Okay?

00:30:24.140 Not everyone is going to look like you all the time.

00:30:27.300 I walk into rooms.

00:30:28.300 I walk into meetings.

00:30:29.260 And sometimes I'm the only gay person in there.

00:30:31.540 But you know what?

00:30:32.180 I don't make being gay my entire personality.

00:30:34.520 And so for these folks at home, these liberals on the internet, they feel so upset when they see Sidney Sweeney or so upset when they see the Victoria's Secret fashion show and these skinny models because they're so insecure.

00:30:45.720 They need such outside affirmation all of the time.

00:30:48.840 They need to see someone who looks exactly like them, which is tough because some of y'all look like trolls and you look like Chewbacca.

00:30:55.600 Okay?

00:30:55.900 It's tough.

00:30:56.420 Some of these, like, LGBTQIA, R2D2 non-binary folks sitting around on TikTok with the pride flags in the background as we just showed you, they choose to be offended. 1.00

00:31:05.840 But someone isn't always going to look like you in every single TV show.

00:31:08.960 And they've ruined plenty of good TV shows, which we'll get to later in the episode, because they feel like they have to check every single box and every single quota.

00:31:16.260 If you choose to be offended by Victoria's Secret, that's on you.

00:31:19.420 If you choose to be offended by American Eagle, that's on you.

00:31:22.260 And you should go look in the mirror and get comfortable with who you are and your own skin.

00:31:25.480 That is how I live.

00:31:27.260 And that's the advice I give to so many people, especially young people growing up who message me, who leave comments.

00:31:32.480 And this is the advice I give to parents who are raising young kids and raising young adults going out into the world.

00:31:37.340 Be comfortable with who you are.

00:31:39.360 It might take a journey.

00:31:40.460 It might take years. 0.97

00:31:41.320 But figure out who the hell you are.

00:31:43.340 So when you go out into the real world, you're strong.

00:31:46.100 You're secure.

00:31:46.840 You know who you are.

00:31:47.680 And you can't be offended by every little thing.

00:31:49.420 You can't be knocked off your rocker.

00:31:51.440 Okay?

00:31:51.780 Because a brand puts some skinny model who doesn't look like you in an advertisement. 1.00

00:31:56.200 You can't be knocked off your rocker because someone makes a negative comment about the way you look maybe on your social media because that's the way the world is. 0.98

00:32:03.400 Do the work to figure out who you are and to be confident and secure in who you are so you can go out into the world and get shit done. 0.96

00:32:10.700 Okay? 0.98

00:32:11.200 That's what I did.

00:32:12.080 I knew growing up I'm not going to be a six-foot-tall supermodel.

00:32:15.440 But communication is my skill and it's what I was put on this earth to do.

00:32:18.700 So go to the drawing board and figure out what you were supposed to do in this world.

00:32:22.280 And it might not be being a supermodel.

00:32:24.380 Because for 99.9% of us, that is not the career path laid in front of us.

00:32:30.520 We aren't all going to be Bella Hadid, Gigi Hadid, and Kendall Jenner.

00:32:33.900 That's okay.

00:32:34.560 But you have to make the choice not to be offended constantly.

00:32:37.520 And it's interesting to see these brands go from woke back to what was working for them before for decades.

00:32:45.080 I think there are four things at least that are objectively in the interest of the United States.

00:32:50.480 One would be immigration, controlling the border. 0.98

00:32:53.440 Trump has clearly in this area, and all four of the areas I'm going to list,

00:32:57.160 he's clearly done some things that people rightly say are overstepped, that these posses have some downsides.

00:33:04.140 But controlling the border is something that's in the national interest, something a majority of the Americans want.

00:33:09.440 Trump has created a spectacle, but he's also shifted the paradigm on what it takes to close the border and how effective it can be.

00:33:16.800 Number two, tariffs.

00:33:17.900 Okay.

00:33:18.320 Trump has changed the paradigm there, too.

00:33:20.360 Lots of these countries now are doing what the United States wants.

00:33:23.680 The coverage this week of the deal with the EU, favorable to the United States, favorable to Trump.

00:33:28.780 Even news organizations that don't normally say positive things about Trump have said this is in the United States' interest.

00:33:36.700 Trump got a good deal out of this.

00:33:38.940 And again, the goal is clear.

00:33:42.080 He wants to reengineer global trade by leveraging the U.S. market and other American advantages without hurting the American or global economy.

00:33:49.540 Right now, that appears on track.

00:33:51.540 It's early.

00:33:52.040 These deals are not fleshed out yet.

00:33:53.900 But I'll say again, this is another area of a Trump achievement in the national interest.

00:33:58.340 Other presidents didn't do it, just like closing the border.

00:34:01.860 And Democrats just pretend it's just a total failure.

00:34:05.700 Same with, number three, controlling the size of the workforce.

00:34:09.300 Trump has turbocharged the capacity of a White House to control the size of the bureaucracy.

00:34:13.960 He already has eliminated a lot of positions.

00:34:16.200 He plans to eliminate more.

00:34:17.380 This concept that we've had for decades that the federal government is just going to keep growing, he's figured out a way to change that.

00:34:25.500 Again, popular, not in every respect, overreach in some areas.

00:34:30.600 But this is another area that Democrats are simply criticizing.

00:34:34.520 Finally, as I mentioned before, NATO, where Trump has ensured that terms and conditions apply now to be a member.

00:34:40.800 He's changed the relationship from one where the European countries were free riding and freeloading to one now that's more transactional.

00:34:48.820 It's a post-globalist arrangement in which the alliance can live on, but on terms that are far more favorable to the United States.

00:34:56.600 Now, again, I'd say again, in each case, there are objectively downsides to what Trump has done.

00:35:01.960 But I'll say also in each case that overall, these directionally are positive and popular, and no other recent president has had the requisite desire or drive to change the status quo in such a fundamental way.

00:35:17.260 In this country, the Democrats simply accentuate the downsides of these achievements, they find and highlight the weak links, and there are weak links, rather than grappling with what's actually happening that I think is more important, that the trends in this country in terms of public opinion have fueled Trump's rise in capacity to get stuff done.

00:35:37.320 Trump has understood where public opinion was on these issues and others, and the Democratic Party has been and largely remains clueless.

00:35:45.240 OK, this is, to me, fundamental, if you're thinking about the connection between what Trump has done and what's happened with the Democratic Party.

00:35:53.080 And it's not just the United States.

00:35:55.480 Trump has read the mood of where things are and these issues and others, and the Democrats have failed.

00:36:02.460 The American left has failed on these and other issues.

00:36:05.420 So if you look at Europe and the other industrialized democracies in the West, you see the same conditions that have grown over decades that have caused a rebellion against the parties on the left, out of control mass migration, out of control crime.

00:36:22.060 The dominant influence of wokeness in all sorts of cultural institutions, the LGBTQ changes that many have seen as overreach, particularly in the area of trans censorship, overregulation, cancellation, neo-socialism, all these things exist in other countries.

00:36:41.440 Kim Strassel has written about what's happened in the United States in The Wall Street Journal.

00:36:45.600 Very good focus that most Democrats haven't even thought about.

00:36:50.100 Open borders, unrestrained spending, supports for teachers' unions when they're acting antithetical to the interests of our kids.

00:36:56.860 An obsessive focus on climate change.

00:36:59.500 Bashing the police, being against Israel, the dominance of identity politics.

00:37:04.480 All of this has caused Democrats in this country to lose support from demographic groups, independent of Donald Trump, although Trump has taken advantage of that.

00:37:12.820 Imagine if the Democrats, if the Republicans, rather, were losing support from interest groups that had long been a bedrock of their electoral success.

00:37:21.120 Imagine if the reverse were happening, how much the media would cover it.

00:37:24.440 This is a massive story.

00:37:26.420 Democrats losing support from voters of color, from younger voters, massive.

00:37:30.780 Now, Trump is singular.

00:37:32.660 All these other industrialized democracies, they have the same issues.

00:37:37.400 But what's different is they haven't found their version of Trump.

00:37:40.020 There have been kind of poor man's versions of Trump, but they haven't succeeded.

00:37:43.560 They haven't had Trump's skill.

00:37:45.340 They haven't had Trump's level of aggressiveness tough enough and determined enough to take on the old order.

00:37:51.280 So what's happened to these other countries with their left parties, their equivalents of the Democratic Party, is they're weaker than they were before.

00:37:58.240 But they're not crushed.

00:37:59.500 They haven't declined as precipitously, in most cases, the way the Democratic Party has, who is now as low as they've been in poll after poll.

00:38:07.940 I'm thinking about this stuff, and I talked to some Democrats who are, but very few prominent Democrats, whether you're talking about people in elective office, you're talking about activists or writers or people in think tanks, they're not even vaguely grappling with this problem in public.

00:38:22.760 Why?

00:38:23.080 Because they fear that the activists left will push them out of the party or cancel them, and because most of them lack the creativity and self-awareness that's required to say, how did this happen?

00:38:35.620 How far back has this been going on?

00:38:37.460 Some of these trends go well before Donald Trump's rise.

00:38:40.280 When the few Democrats do tepidly and timidly put their toe in the water and say, what have we done wrong, they do it in a way that doesn't really give voice to a full analysis of what's happened and what needs to happen next.

00:38:57.380 Because they're afraid, as I said, of being canceled by the left.

00:39:00.340 They're afraid of being out of step with the activist wing of the party.

00:39:03.800 So, Neera Tanden, a liberal, advisor to Hillary Clinton, advisor to Joe Biden, one of the smartest people in the Democratic Party, in my experience, very knowledgeable.

00:39:13.080 She wrote an op-ed piece in the Wall Street Journal, not in the Washington Post, not in the New York Times, but in the Journal, a conservative editorial page.

00:39:19.360 And she admitted that the Biden administration that she was part of, a big part of it, in advising on domestic policy, screwed up on the Mexican border.

00:39:28.160 And she called for comprehensive immigration reform.

00:39:30.720 She rightly, in her piece, put in sharp relief all the unpopular elements of President Trump's immigration policies, because some of the things Donald Trump has done are unpopular on the border.

00:39:43.420 But she also felt compelled to call for a path to citizenship for some of the people in this country illegally.

00:39:49.360 That is known by many Americans as amnesty.

00:39:52.600 And she criticized other elements of what Donald Trump has done to try to stay on the good side of her liberal wing of her party.

00:40:02.080 If the Democrats can't figure out how to lead with being tough in 2028, whoever the Republicans nominate, whether it's Vance or somebody else, they'll make mincemeat of the Democrats.

00:40:14.260 In Trump world, they laugh at how, even now, even after Donald Trump's victory in 2024 was clearly fueled in large port by immigration, they laugh at how much the Democrats still don't have a clue on immigration and a range of other issues.

00:40:31.060 Then you think about New York City and the nomination by the Democrats of Mr. Mondani to be their mayoral candidate.

00:40:38.220 The reaction to that, again, reveals how clueless far too many Democrats are about what his election would mean for their brand.

00:40:45.500 Republicans are salivating at the notion of having Donald Trump be able to run against Mondani and campaign against him if he is the mayor of New York City.

00:40:55.760 Now, there are people in Trump's orbit who don't want him to win because they think he'd ruin the city and some of them have pretty big investments in New York.

00:41:02.520 So there's cross pressure there.

00:41:03.740 But on the left, they continue to not grapple with what it would mean to elect someone with Mondani's background and stated positions on the economy and law enforcement, a range of other issues.

00:41:14.020 There was an op-ed piece of The New York Times by a woman named Tressie McMillan-Kottom.

00:41:19.600 She argued that the opposition to Mondani is based pretty much solely on his racial heritage rather than, say, the fact that he's a socialist.

00:41:27.600 OK, New York Post's story this week talked about how so many prominent people in the party, in the Republican Party, plan to make Mondani the face of the Democrats.

00:41:38.580 And then you have people like Chuck Schumer, Hakeem Jeffries, the leading Democrats in Congress, both from New York City.

00:41:44.700 Kathy Hochul, the mayor of New York, the governor of New York.

00:41:47.080 They know how dangerous this is politically for the party.

00:41:50.760 They're really worried about it.

00:41:51.880 But except for the fact that none of them, none of those three have publicly endorsed Mondani yet, they're frozen in amber because the base does not want to see them be outspoken against the nominee.

00:42:05.360 And they're worried that he may win, but they're not doing anything, at least overtly, to stop his march to victory.

00:42:12.520 Who can solve this to the Democrats?

00:42:14.420 Who can speak out thoughtfully?

00:42:15.860 I don't think that the current Democratic Party chair, Ken Martin, or the past party leaders, Barack Obama, Kamala Harris, Joe Biden, these folks are not well positioned to try to stop Donald Trump on his march to achieving more or to do the other task that needs to be done in parallel, rebuild their party's brand, to try to come up with policies and ideas and messengers that could really make a difference.

00:42:40.780 OK, Trump's going to continue to have success and failures.

00:42:43.240 The Democrats may do very well in the midterms.

00:42:45.860 They may well.

00:42:47.760 But in each case where Trump may have failure, I don't think it has much to do with the Democrats having a capacity to affirmatively and assertively meet the moment, to rethink why voters are so down on their brand, to change their image on the economy, on social issues.

00:43:04.140 Because based on all the available evidence, the Democrats actually, right now, are in worse shape than the polling suggests.

00:43:11.980 Because the polling is a snapshot of where we are.

00:43:14.540 Now, they're running out of time.

00:43:16.160 Again, because of the nature of the midterms, because we don't know where the economy will be, we don't know what's going to happen with the Epstein story, it's possible that the Democrats will have a good 2026.

00:43:26.760 But the Democrats I talk to are far less worried about 2026 in the midterms because this history suggests that even weak, the party could still do well enough to take back the House.

00:43:37.480 What they're worried about is 2028.

00:43:39.100 What they're worried about is the capacity of the party to redefine itself and to win back voters that'll need to win the White House, particularly because they are a party right now without strong candidates.

00:43:51.300 The Democratic brand on its own right now, it appears to be on the wrong side of both the polling and of the history.

00:43:58.640 And that's a big problem.

00:44:00.440 It's a big problem to be on the wrong side of polling and of history.

00:44:03.200 You think back to where did this start to go wrong?

00:44:05.760 As I said, some of these trends have been around forever.

00:44:08.020 But what's to me and talking to the smartest Democrats I know, what to me is their biggest concern is not the history, but the future.

00:44:18.220 How can they fix this when so many of the dynamics on social issues, teachers unions, the economy, immigration?

00:44:27.640 Government spending, relationship with NATO on so many of these issues, there's no reflection about where things went wrong.

00:44:37.900 And it's very hard for Democrats to criticize Donald Trump and praise him, because if you give him any praise, think about in the first term with the Abraham Accords, ask any Democrat privately.

00:44:48.800 What do you think of the Abraham Accords privately?

00:44:52.140 They'll say fantastic.

00:44:53.540 Ask them what they think about shutting down the border.

00:44:55.640 Most of them will say, great, huge accomplishment.

00:44:58.440 But in our polarized red, blue America now, it's very hard for either party to praise.

00:45:03.940 And you take heat from the base if you praise Donald Trump.

00:45:07.800 And they're worried about what Donald Trump would do with that praise.

00:45:10.440 But a realistic appraisal shows that Democrats are not getting on the right side of these issues.

00:45:19.300 We're on the wrong side of public opinion, the wrong side of history.

00:45:23.400 These other industrialized democracies, their liberal parties, have survived because they haven't faced Trump.

00:45:29.580 And I'll say again, if you think Trump is a bad political athlete, you're making a mistake.

00:45:34.020 Trump has lots of unpopular policy positions, but he knows how to mitigate them better than the Democrats know how to mitigate theirs.

00:45:42.340 And he fights to get on the right side of issues when he's on the wrong side.

00:45:46.340 Democrats, for instance, are counting on being on the right side of Medicaid and Medicaid spending and people on health care.

00:45:54.140 Trump's not going to sit back passively and be on the wrong side of that.

00:45:57.260 He'll do whatever he can as much as he needs to change.

00:46:00.240 The Democrats have not shown the same level of awareness, the same level of nimbleness.

00:46:07.240 And so I say again, this question, how did the Democrats go wrong?

00:46:11.660 And there's plenty of other things we could list.

00:46:13.220 We've talked about some of them here, trying to block Bernie Sanders from winning the nomination in 2016 and 2020, trying to keep Bobby Kennedy off the ballot, lawfare against Trump.

00:46:23.220 There's a whole range of things that are kind of episodic that Democrats did, in part because of Trump derangement syndrome, in part because they were too wedded to the establishment of their party.

00:46:34.880 It's a long list, but the core of the list is being on the right side of the issues that matter to the American people.

00:46:42.100 I still rarely find any Democrats who can speak with passion about how they got on the wrong side of the issue of trans athletes and girls and women's sports.

00:46:52.400 Rarely.

00:46:53.320 They continue to drift back towards the ideological base of the party.

00:46:59.180 We'll see you next time.

00:47:29.180 I'm Megan Kelly, host of The Megan Kelly Show on Sirius XM.

00:47:56.540 It's your home for open, honest, and provocative conversations with the most interesting and important political, legal, and cultural figures today.

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00:48:50.600 The Gwyneth biography, which has been everywhere for about the past week.

00:48:59.820 It's coming out today.

00:49:03.200 Troublemaker.

00:49:04.960 Troublemakers everywhere.

00:49:05.920 Just save your money.

00:49:07.000 Okay.

00:49:07.160 I'll tell you what's in it and what's not in it, and we can talk about it.

00:49:12.460 I read it over the weekend, and it was kind of a slog.

00:49:16.080 It was kind of a slog.

00:49:17.220 And, you know, that's a lot to say for somebody who most people either love her or hate her,

00:49:23.360 but there's no in between.

00:49:24.300 So she's a polarizing figure who has been in the culture for about 30 years.

00:49:31.820 She's in her 50s now.

00:49:33.100 She got famous when she was in her early 20s.

00:49:35.140 I mean, we've been living with Gwyneth Paltrow for a long time, and if the best you can come up with is the headlines.

00:49:42.660 Okay, so there were a few takeaways we got last week.

00:49:45.340 One of the most Gwyneth anecdotes ever, she complained allegedly to a friend that she had to tell Brad Pitt the difference between beluga caviar and Ocetra caviar,

00:50:02.360 which I had to look up.

00:50:03.400 I didn't know the difference either.

00:50:04.520 I didn't know there was an Ocetra caviar. 1.00

00:50:06.120 And she told the cosmetics scion, Aaron Lauder, that Brad Pitt is dumber than a sack of shit. 1.00

00:50:18.200 And listen, I think Brad Pitt's got that coming. 1.00

00:50:20.820 He's had it coming for a while now.

00:50:22.480 He's getting it.

00:50:23.380 And there are also hints in this biography that Brad, even though he was a much bigger star when they got together,

00:50:29.560 was threatened a bit by Gwyneth's what was clearly a meteoric rise, and that wouldn't surprise me.

00:50:34.300 Now, Gwyneth also, according to this book, Gwyneth, the biography, I mean, you would think it was like a queen of England.

00:50:43.460 It's not that, it's a short life.

00:50:45.420 She's only 50. 0.94

00:50:46.640 Okay, according to this book, she told the late makeup artist Kevin Aquan that she loved it when Ben Affleck teabagged her.

00:50:55.740 I understand that there may be troublemakers among you who do not know what trouble, sorry, you know what trouble is, what teabagging is.

00:51:04.940 And I'm going to pause here and pay homage to the great John Waters, whose movies, like, saved me as a kid.

00:51:13.560 Like, I would go rent them and just, like, die.

00:51:17.580 I just laughed till tears were coming down my face.

00:51:21.080 Now, he is credited with introducing the phrase teabagging into the lexicon.

00:51:26.700 It was a movie he did called Pecker, I think.

00:51:29.360 So this is, this is, I'm going to warn you, it's graphic.

00:51:33.260 Children are around.

00:51:35.080 You don't want to listen to this aloud.

00:51:37.020 But it's very funny.

00:51:39.500 So here's John explaining this sex act to a writer at Boing Boing in a piece that was published April 17th, 2009.

00:51:48.260 John Waters, and I quote, teabagging, it sounds so dainty, doesn't it?

00:51:52.280 It sounds like you took your teabag out of your fine china and you just put it daintily on the saucer out of your sight. 0.98

00:52:00.460 Teabagging, John tells us, is, quote, by my definition, the act of dragging your testicles across your partner's forehead. 0.99

00:52:10.360 In the UK, it is dipping your testicles into your partner's mouth. 0.96

00:52:14.880 I didn't invent the term or the act, but I did introduce it in my movie Pecker. 0.97

00:52:20.460 Teabagging was also a popular dance step that male go-go boys did to their customers for tips at the Atlantis and now defunct bar in Baltimore.

00:52:28.500 Hope this helps.

00:52:29.320 John Waters always helps in the culture.

00:52:31.760 He always helps.

00:52:33.100 Now, the good part.

00:52:36.520 It's all good, but this is great.

00:52:38.540 Ben Affleck is scandalized by this.

00:52:41.940 He has been leveled by this.

00:52:44.440 He is utterly furious and he is contemplating reportedly a lawsuit.

00:52:49.460 An Affleck source told Radar Online last week that, quote, this isn't going away quietly.

00:52:54.180 Ben is livid and he is ready to fight back.

00:52:57.260 Now, I am sorry, but just like Brad Pitt, I'm not sorry, actually.

00:53:02.140 This is Ben's karma.

00:53:03.580 I bet Jennifer Garner was livid when rumors circulated that Ben was having an affair with Blake Lively on the set of The Town.

00:53:09.840 Go look at those paparazzi pics of those two. 0.92

00:53:12.320 The body language.

00:53:13.200 Or when he was accused of sleeping with the nanny, which he has always denied.

00:53:17.020 But, I mean, come on.

00:53:19.520 She walked away with a drop-top Lexi. 1.00

00:53:22.260 She was going on social media posting images and video of herself to Katy Perry's girl on fire.

00:53:26.820 Or, I'm sure, I'm sure during his infamous Oscar speech, which we all just revisited an episode or so ago, in which he said that their marriage was work.

00:53:36.940 Or when he told Howard Stern that he drank himself into oblivion because he, I'm, I'm, I'm, like, this is a, what do you call it?

00:53:46.860 I'm not quoting directly.

00:53:49.060 He felt trapped in their marriage.

00:53:50.860 I mean, I think Ben can take this one, okay?

00:53:52.720 I think he can field it elegantly and just accept it as payback.

00:53:57.060 And we will come back to him later, as promised, in the show when we get to J-Lo's latest onstage, I mean, I would call them sexploits, but that almost sounds like it's darker than that.

00:54:09.200 It's actually darker than that.

00:54:10.740 Now, okay, back to the Gwyneth book.

00:54:14.100 There is otherwise really nothing in this book, okay?

00:54:16.840 The last half of the book is about goop.

00:54:19.360 And who cares?

00:54:20.860 Do you really want to read about how she got the idea or how she came to, you know, do Series A rounds of funding or how her, her, she interacts with her employees or her managerial style?

00:54:35.060 Like, do you want to see the P&Ls, the profit and loss sheets?

00:54:38.720 It's so dry.

00:54:40.680 This book is so dry.

00:54:42.460 And it's clear that nobody in Gwyneth's circle talked to the author.

00:54:47.200 Nobody.

00:54:47.500 The only passage, by the way, that's relevant for our purposes at The Nerve, it goes to one Amy Griffin, who I think, I think her claims are specious at best.

00:54:59.200 Those claims that are in the tell we addressed again in a recent episode, but I'm going to read the passage in this otherwise snooze of a book about, well, okay.

00:55:14.000 So this graph first goes to Derek Blasberg, who, she does clock accurately in here.

00:55:23.040 And he is the guy who last summer, Gwyneth was reportedly spreading the word that Derek had been a guest at her house in Amagansett and had fled in the middle of the night after literally shitting the bed.

00:55:40.960 And he left a mess for the maids to clean up and didn't leave a note or apparently even send a text, giving a heads up.

00:55:49.960 Fled like a thief in the night down Montauk Highway.

00:55:54.340 Okay.

00:55:55.320 When I first met him, meaning Derek, I was a little dubious, Gwyneth admitted.

00:55:58.880 I was like, are you a professional friend of celebrities?

00:56:01.480 Yes.

00:56:02.360 That's my aside.

00:56:03.220 Anyway, the author then goes on to say, Gwyneth's circle around this time also included Amy Griffin, wife of billionaire hedge fund founder John Griffin, whose firm G9 also invested in Goop.

00:56:21.540 At first, Gwyneth told friends Griffin was one of her, quote, disciples and, quote, wants to be me.

00:56:29.600 I hope Amy Griffin is listening.

00:56:31.040 So good.

00:56:34.020 You know it's true.

00:56:35.580 But then she moved closer to Griffin and distanced from others.

00:56:38.760 Well, you know, Amy is a big investor in Goop, so, you know, that's how that works.

00:56:43.960 Okay.

00:56:44.860 I also want to give you guys just a little peek behind the curtain as to how most of this stuff works, especially when it comes to unauthorized celebrity biographies.

00:56:53.100 So, the author will have a meeting with sales and marketing about six months before the publication.

00:57:01.940 And they will say to the author, what are the headlines?

00:57:05.520 What's the stuff that nobody knew before?

00:57:07.280 And that's the stuff we're going to try to plant as a first serial in, like, meaning like a serial edition in, like, a People magazine.

00:57:16.880 We're going to try to get you booked on CBS Sunday Morning or The View or The Today.

00:57:22.580 You know, one of the very, like, there are very few mainstream media outlets left you can go to.

00:57:29.020 So, to get in is, like, is really hard.

00:57:31.580 And so, usually what happens is, unless you are bringing something really weighty to your subject matter, it's going to be the flashy stuff that gets the headlines and the first serial in People magazine, which I believe was, like, three or four pages, like, with art.

00:57:49.100 And that's it.

00:57:50.360 And they stripped this book for those parts.

00:57:53.980 There's nothing else in this book.

00:57:56.140 Nothing.

00:57:56.440 Nothing.

00:58:01.580 It just makes me angry because it's such a money grab, you know?

00:58:04.900 It's like, anyway.

00:58:07.000 So, Gwyneth, just the other day, this started going viral.

00:58:11.980 You know, her ex-husband is Chris Martin of Coldplay, who has found himself in the news cycle over the astronomer couple who are having an affair and have since been fired, let go, resigned, whatever.

00:58:24.900 And so, I bet an astronomer went to her and they came up with this.

00:58:29.980 Take a look.

00:58:31.580 Thank you for your interest in astronomer.

00:58:36.680 Hi, I'm Gwyneth Paltrow.

00:58:38.880 I've been hired on a very temporary basis to speak on behalf of the 300-plus employees at Astronomer.

00:58:45.440 Astronomer has gotten a lot of questions over the last few days, and they wanted me to answer the most common ones.

00:58:53.920 Yes, Astronomer is the best place to run Apache Airflow.

00:58:58.040 So, if you're listening, the question in that little typing sound accompanying that was a graphic that said Q colon underneath OMG period what the actual F.

00:59:14.520 Very cute, very clever.

00:59:17.020 And then we get – so, that's likable Gwyneth.

00:59:21.560 And see, this is where I really think a better author, a smarter one, frankly, would have been able to bring some sort of cultural criticism to bear here.

00:59:32.500 Because you have a Gwyneth who can be completely likable and funny in something like that and, like, winking and nodding and we're all in on the joke.

00:59:41.580 And then you get the totally insufferable Gwyneth, who last week was doing an Ask Me Anything for her podcast. 1.00

00:59:49.560 And she's asked, what do you think your husband most loves about her?

00:59:57.580 And this is what – buckle in, buckle in.

01:00:00.840 This is a little bit of a lengthy segment, but we've got to run it at length for the full effect.

01:00:05.800 This is what we get.

01:00:07.780 Do you want to see Brad's head?

01:00:09.260 Oh, I honestly don't have a favorite, he said.

01:00:14.640 I truly love every aspect of you.

01:00:15.600 This is her husband's text.

01:00:16.860 Your physical beauty, the way your body moves through space, the way you disappear a little when you're working, the way your hands add something to a pan.

01:00:27.120 Your love of dirty jokes and well-plastered walls. 0.85

01:00:31.240 How much you know about art, that you feel so comfortable naked and hate fake people.

01:00:36.280 I love when you're needy, when you're angry on the road.

01:00:39.360 I love when you chug water by the bedside at night.

01:00:43.080 I like the things you choose to worry about and how you handle problems.

01:00:47.000 I love your morning routine and when you act like I've been demanding you to get out of the bath when I haven't said a word about it.

01:00:54.060 I love the skin on the back of your knees and the arch of your feet and when you smile at me in bed after you've put in your retainers.

01:01:03.320 I love how hard you try and how often you succeed.

01:01:07.200 Oh my God.

01:01:07.360 I can keep going if you like.

01:01:09.240 I think that segment was like 28 seconds.

01:01:14.320 That's a long segment, maybe longer, maybe closer to a minute.

01:01:18.020 First of all, this guy clearly knows how to keep the peace at home.

01:01:21.480 Okay.

01:01:21.900 What do you like about me?

01:01:23.100 He submits a laundry list that includes things like well-plastered walls and like moving her body, moving through space.

01:01:33.040 You forgot time on that continuum, Brad.

01:01:36.080 It's Brad Falchuk, her husband.

01:01:37.480 I mean, a person with a little more self-awareness and a little less narcissism would have stopped less than halfway through that text and said, this is a lot and I'm not going to subject you guys to it.

01:01:49.560 Okay.

01:01:50.740 None of us want to be subjected to that.

01:01:53.580 That is a provocative personality though.

01:01:56.240 Okay.

01:01:56.480 You got to give her that.

01:01:57.900 And in this book, what we get is the equivalent of a book report.

01:02:02.340 Gwyneth said this, then she did that, then somebody else said this and did that.

01:02:07.300 I don't want a summary.

01:02:08.820 I want something I can sink my teeth into.

01:02:10.920 So save your money.

01:02:14.800 Thanks for listening to The Megyn Kelly Show. 0.94

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The Megyn Kelly Show - August 01, 2025

Carolla on Ellen, End of Woke Brands, Dems in Denial, and Paltrow's Bland Bio - MK Media Highlights

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