CNN CEO's Shock Firing, and Trans Ideology in Schools and Sports, with Peachy Keenan, Steve Krakauer and More | Ep. 567
Episode Stats
Length
1 hour and 38 minutes
Words per Minute
192.15042
Summary
Chris Licht is out at CNN, and the network s new owner, David Zaslav, is trying to figure out what to do about it. Plus, two Connecticut high school track athletes are suing the school system for forcing them to compete against biological males.
Transcript
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Like that woman over there with the designer jeans.
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Your home for open, honest, and provocative conversations.
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Hey, everyone. I'm Megyn Kelly. Welcome to The Megyn Kelly Show.
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We're going to hear from two former female high school track athletes out of Connecticut
00:01:22.680
who are suing after they were forced to compete against biological males.
00:01:27.200
We first brought you this case right after the podcast first launched, and I mentioned it
00:01:32.000
in my talking points the other day on why I'm done with the gender madness.
00:01:36.580
Now these two young women have seen their case through a lot of trials and tribulations.
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So far, they're losing, but the Second Circuit full court of appeals has agreed to hear the
00:01:48.220
case, and that's a glimmer of hope. We'll get into it.
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Then we're going to be joined by one of my favorite Twitter follows, Peachy Keenan, as Pride Month
00:01:58.260
goes into overdrive. But we begin with the way forward for CNN and the breaking news out of that
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network. That is the subject of today's memo. Less than five days after a devastating piece on CNN
00:02:11.000
chief Chris Licht appeared in the Atlantic, Licht is officially out at the network. His boss,
00:02:17.620
David Zaslav, the very guy who promised the Atlantic reporter an interview in which he was
00:02:22.040
expected to support Chris Licht and say glowing things about him, only to then back out of it
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altogether, now tells the CNN newsroom, Licht tried, but thanks to a myriad of problems, he's out.
00:02:33.640
So much for Licht's assurance to the Atlantic that David Zaslav has my back, like any media
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executive. He did until he didn't. It's a disgusting industry. It's how it works. The problem for Chris
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Licht was not entirely his vision or that of CNN's new owner, Warner Brothers Discovery, to remake CNN
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into a more fair and balanced network. The problem was one of ego, style, and approach. Licht inspired
00:03:03.540
as far as I can tell, but no one. He was not adept at building relationships at all. He seems to be a
00:03:10.220
man with a fragile ego who obsesses over press coverage, not of the news, but of himself. He came
00:03:15.780
in with a lot of swagger on the heels of a beloved leader being quickly ousted. Yes, Jeff Zucker was
00:03:21.600
beloved, biased and responsible for ruining the network, but he was beloved. That situation required
00:03:29.080
some tact and perhaps some handholding. And Licht seemed incapable of either. Focused more on his
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newly svelte machine-like body, that's a quote from him, and typing his name into Google than on
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earning the respect of his staff. Which leaves the question, can anyone turn CNN around? The problems
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Licht was trying to solve are very real, whether CNNers want to admit it or not. CNN has lost the
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trust of its one-time large audience. Its brand has changed from most trusted to most pathetic.
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Jim Acosta and his enormous ego, Breonna Keillard and her sneering coverage of anything Trump-related,
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Alison Camerata and her snide judgments, Christiane Amanpour and her smug elitism.
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Even formerly benign anchors like Anderson Cooper and Wolf Blitzer are now more associated with the
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resistance than with straight news journalism. The soul-searching, tearful meltdown post-Trump Town
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Hall is just the latest example of how far left the network has gone. Are we in the news business
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or aren't we, folks? So what now? Can anyone rebuild this brand into, if not a Sterling name,
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than at least an acceptable one? Zucker tried to make CNN into MSNBC by design. He saw no market for
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a nonpartisan news network. In doing so, he attracted many liberal viewers who already had
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and have their choice between virtually every network save Fox and Newsmax. But he sacrificed
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CNN's appeal to its centrist audience, never mind any right-leaning viewers who did not consider
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themselves, never Trumpers. Chris Licht tried to undo that bias, but with the same anchors and the
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same audience who were already hooked on the crack cocaine of hating Donald Trump. No wonder it didn't
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work and the channel's ratings are now in the toilet. Seriously, they are regularly losing to Newsmax,
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which is in some 20 to 25 million fewer homes than CNN, with probably one one-thousandth the budget.
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Discovery Time Warner bought this asset, reportedly wanting to make it more fair, less biased,
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less hateful toward Republicans and the right, but not disdainful of the left either. You know,
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the way CNN used to be. It really did used to be that way. I used to watch it while I was on Fox.
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That's going to take time. A lot of it. Zaslav seems to know that. In March, he spoke to the CNN
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newsroom acknowledging what Jeff Zucker had done, that he had gone hard partisan. And while that
00:06:09.240
brought some more viewers in, Zaslav reportedly said, it's not what I came here to do. Even saying
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as they turned this ship around, quote, ratings be damned. And they were. So can CNN be salvaged?
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The hope is clearly that long term, they will win enough audience back from the middle and the right
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to make CNN a profit leader again. Change out the far left audience. But they forgot the other part
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of the formula. The workforce must change as well. The ones who cost the network its reputation in the
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first place. The far left producers deciding on CNN's online and show content. Their influence is
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enormous and extraordinarily brand damaging. Roger Ailes hired plenty of lefties. News leans left,
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especially straight out of journalism school. But they had to be open to a different way of covering
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the news or they would not be hired there. CNN has activists who will never embrace a fair and balanced
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mission. Each one of them should be rooted out and fired. That is the only way. And then there's the
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talent. Tolerable as secret lefties who had their own political views, but were at least
00:07:22.060
generally respectful to the other half of the country while on the air. They were coaxed, goaded
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and encouraged by Jeff Zucker into letting their leftist flags fly during Trump. They laughed at his
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voters, mocked at them, derided them. The examples are legion. They spat all over everything from gun rights
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to pro-life beliefs, to voters' questions about the fairness of elections, to their doubts about the
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COVID hysteria, not to mention the Black Lives Matter abuses, gender insanity, and sexualization
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of children in school. None of that, none of it got a fair shake on CNN under Jeff Zucker or since.
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Why? Because no one kept their hands at 10 and 2 on the steering wheel and too few internally had a
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basic instinct to be fair. If I were David Zaslav, I'd be pulling an Elon Musk. I'd fire a lot of people,
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a lot of people, on air and off. Anyone whose views did not align with the new mission of
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unbiased news would be given a severance package and shown the door. CNN is well known to be one
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of the most grossly overstaffed media companies in the business to begin with. They can take a massive
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staffing cut, trust me, and they will be just fine. Remember when Netflix was getting pulled to the far
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left and staffers wanted the bosses to terminate their deal with Dave Chappelle? It took absurd demands
00:08:40.520
like that to make those in charge finally say, uh, no, no, we will platform people of all views. And if
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you don't like it, there's the way out. The Wall Street Journal went through this too. In July of 2020,
00:08:54.940
280 of its staffers, this is a more right-leaning publication, 280 of its staffers openly demanded
00:09:01.660
changes to its opinion pages after pieces appeared that they found objectionable. Pieces from people
00:09:06.600
like, oh, Vice President Mike Pence on COVID and Heather McDonald on the left's lies about systemic
00:09:13.640
racism. The company refused to be cowed, telling the whiners it would not bow to cancel culture and
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that these staffers were free to work elsewhere, adding, quote, the anxieties of the staff are not
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our responsibility. Pitch perfect. CNN, it's your only choice. The anchors and reporters who have
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alienated the viewers, you are trying to win back, need to go. Firing Don Lemon, Chris Cuomo,
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and Brian Stelter was a start, but I'm afraid the problem went well beyond that. And so must the
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solution. You're going to have to say goodbye to still more talent and many who work behind the
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scenes. I have nothing personal against these folks, but they sacrificed their credibility during
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the Trump era and that of their network. And there is a price to be paid for that. It is the only way
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forward. The rub of all this is it may not work. I'm not at all sure CNN is savable, but this is
00:10:10.260
its only chance. And the Chris Licht replacement needs to not only be mission focused, a term Licht
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was apparently fond of per the Atlantic, which is ironic since he apparently failed to share that
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mission with the staff who were reportedly blindsided to read about it in the Atlantic,
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but also someone who knows how to lead. Not everyone understands that to maintain the authority
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of a boss and also has a proven record of inspiring people to follow him or her to that person who has
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not yet been chosen. Lots of luck. You're going to need it here to discuss it. All is the executive
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producer of the Megyn Kelly show. Steve Krakauer, who is also a media watcher, has a media newsletter
00:10:59.600
called Fourth Watch, where he keeps an eye on people in our business and what they're doing
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mostly wrong. Steve. Okay. So where do you stand on it? The breaking news this morning. Chris Licht is
00:11:11.160
out. It's on some level shocking to me, although maybe it shouldn't be. You know, the last time I was
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on here talking with you about a big media story, it was April 24th and Tucker Carlson getting the axe
00:11:23.940
on a Monday morning in a shocking way. That was really shocking. You know, this one, I think the
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writing's been on the wall in a lot of ways about this. I think that we've seen the leaks against Chris
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Licht from inside that newsroom, from as far as we can understand, very prominent people from anchors and
00:11:41.120
behind the scenes executives. That's been going on for close to the entirety of his time at the network.
00:11:46.880
So almost a year that this has been going on, leaking to people like Dylan Byers and the New
00:11:51.400
York Times and elsewhere. More recently, obviously, in the wake of this, really, I think the straw that
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broke the camel's back Atlantic story, it's been getting louder. And so perhaps it was inevitable
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and certainly felt that way to a lot of people that I talked to after the Atlantic piece published.
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It was just a matter of when, not if, he was going to be out at some point. So this was,
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it was fast. And that was a little bit shocking on my end. But I will say this, look, I know Chris
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Licht. I've known him for a long time. We've had our ups and downs. I've written about in Fourth Watch
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how he once blocked me on Twitter because he didn't like something I said. We've gotten past that.
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And like you, I think that the mission that Chris talked about in that Atlantic piece and has
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a little bit publicly, that was a mission that I support. And I think that is the right move for CNN.
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It's frankly the only move for CNN. And we can get into why that I believe that establishing CNN as a
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trustworthy source of objective news is much more important than the day-to-day ratings that happen
00:12:51.120
on that network, even from a business perspective, you know, from what happens with cable providers,
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they need to make themselves boring old CNN that people just trust again. That is, that is truly a
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strong mission, not just for CNN, the business, but I think for America, you know, I don't know not to
00:13:05.980
be too, you know, big, big picture about it, but I do think that we need strong news like CNN used to
00:13:11.420
be, at least what they strive to be. And they, they just completely went away from that. So I'm
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disappointed in that. But the only solace I would say that I feel right now is also that David Zaslav
00:13:21.400
is still there. John Malone, who I know people have talked about, he's still there. Discovery is
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running the show and they want that CNN still, even if it's not with Chris Licht.
00:13:30.940
Right. So my take, it seems to be the same as yours, which is the mission is a good one. The
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leader they chose turned out not to be, he was not the right man for the job. He did. I think his ego
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really ruined his chances. He lasted 13 months. And if you read that Atlantic piece, it makes clear
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it was his ego, as Mark Eichlars would say, was not his amigo, that it was just, he was too much
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about himself. He didn't build relationships. He didn't reach out to the staff enough. You can't just
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go in there all swagger and say, there's new Boston town. I'm changing everything. You guys
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sucked before I got here and now do it my way. I mean, there does need to be some amount of
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finesse. And he apparently didn't get that. And also just wasn't a natural born leader. You know,
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I mean, few are, to be honest, few are, you gotta, you don't have a lot of Jocko Willinks running
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around out there in the media landscape. Um, but he was about as far away from it as, as the,
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as he could be. And so those, that combination wound up being toxic and, and failed, made him
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fail in the execution of the Malone Zaslav mission, which is a good one.
00:14:32.660
Right. Right. Yeah, no, it, it certainly seems that way. And I think one of the biggest things
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that stood out to me in that Atlantic piece was that if you're an average CNN staffer, let's,
00:14:42.300
you know, put aside people like the Jake Tappers of the world or Oliver Darcy, the people that
00:14:46.400
like Oliver Darcy, you know, celebrating today, the person, the people that have been firing missiles
00:14:51.140
at Lick's direction for a long time from inside the building. But if you're just the average
00:14:55.020
staffer, you probably learned a lot about what Chris Lick thinks about the old network,
00:14:59.700
about what his mission is, what he wants it for the future, how he sees it evolving in that Atlantic
00:15:04.400
piece. And perhaps you didn't necessarily even fully know that when, you know, the last year has
00:15:10.840
been going on. Now, maybe you've gotten hints of it here and there. Obviously there's the big Trump
00:15:14.660
town hall, which I think is perhaps the precursor to this, not the actual town hall itself, but
00:15:20.320
the massive fallout, both internal and external to that town hall, I think was, was maybe, you know,
00:15:26.600
step one towards the beginning of the end in some ways. So you're learning a lot about that. And I
00:15:31.460
think that that, that, that is a problem. You know, it's, it's, it's the ego that you saw in it.
00:15:35.600
Like you talk about the, the, having a reporter follow along on your, your morning sessions that
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of working out and talking about being a machine. I mean, like you talked about yesterday, I mean,
00:15:46.360
that that's just, that's not what you want from, from a leader. You don't want that to be what
00:15:51.100
your, what your legacy is going to be, but also you want to make sure that everyone, maybe they're
00:15:56.740
not going to be on board with that mission. And those people, like you said, should be shown the
00:16:00.160
door still today, but you want to make sure you're communicating that to the average person that's
00:16:04.360
working at the network and make them buy into this new mission.
00:16:08.320
That's, that's so much of the problem, but the thing that we're, you know, people saying,
00:16:12.540
oh, this is because of the Trump town hall. The left is going with a totally different narrative
00:16:15.500
right now on Twitter. They're saying, oh, I mean, I'll just give you one example. John Cooper,
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former Dem finance guy tweets out breaking Chris Lick is leaving CNN after doing horrible damage to
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the network's reputation. That's not what happened. That's not why he's being pushed out. He didn't
00:16:30.200
have the support of the staff for all the reasons outlined thus far on this show and in the Atlantic
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piece and so on. But, and then yes, there's a core group within CNN who didn't believe in the
00:16:39.560
mission, but he did not ruin CNN. He did not do horrible damage to the network's reputation.
00:16:48.860
Yeah, look, and that, that is, I think what's going to be missing in all this. And also why I
00:16:53.620
think all these people who are, you know, dancing on the grave of Chris Lick today are going to be
00:16:57.560
sorely disappointed when whoever that next leader is brought on from Warner Brothers Discovery,
00:17:02.440
that mission's not going away. So it's going to be a different person that's going to be executing
00:17:05.720
that, but I don't think they're going to like where it's going if, if they think that's the
00:17:09.220
takeaway from this. No, I, I, I look, there's a column that was published yesterday, which
00:17:13.940
kind of prescient today, but Perry Bacon in the Washington Post, just a shockingly terrible column
00:17:20.780
called CNN's Chris Lick showed the problem with anti-woke centrism. And, and what he has described
00:17:27.500
as anti-woke centrism is that he's saying that Chris Lick embodies an increasingly prominent American
00:17:33.660
media and politics among powerful white men who live on the coast, don't identify as Republicans
00:17:38.480
or conservatives, but are, have this anti-woke mentality that as he concludes this piece, I
00:17:45.180
mean, you've got to go and read this piece. This is so bad. He says, I can't tell if the anti-woke
00:17:49.420
don't understand what's actually happening in America, or if they actively oppose a more equitable
00:17:54.020
country. This is the takeaway from, from this person. And I have to say this, this has been shared
00:17:59.160
widely among the, the people that don't like the Chris Lick vision of CNN. And, and I think it's
00:18:05.820
so wrong. You know, one of the biggest things that, that I think Brian Stelter of the world didn't like
00:18:10.120
in that Atlantic piece was Chris criticizing CNN's COVID coverage. And he criticized them. It wasn't in
00:18:16.460
the Atlantic piece, but Semaphore then later published it, that he was criticizing it with a
00:18:21.820
background to it. They did a poll of why are people losing trust in CNN? Number one was liberal bias.
00:18:27.200
Number two was Chris Cuomo. Number three was the way they covered COVID the, the hysterical,
00:18:33.600
overly dramatic way that they covered COVID. So he's absolutely right about that. The people that,
00:18:38.320
that love the resistance TV of Jeff Zucker are completely wrong about what the average person
00:18:43.220
in America thinks of CNN and would like from a CNN. And, and that's just the loud Twitter crowd.
00:18:49.220
That's making a lot of noise here. He's got to do an Elon Musk. Elon Musk got rid of 80% of the
00:18:54.440
Twitter staff. And yes, they had a glitch when they were launched with Ron DeSantis because of
00:18:58.780
volume, but Twitter has been working just fine other than that. And he's making it. I mean,
00:19:03.120
it's lost a lot of profit given all the problems, but the point is you can't create a new mission
00:19:08.800
for a social media company or another media company with the same staff that's committed to a very
00:19:13.700
different mission. How are you going to get Don lemons fired? Right? What about all the staffers
00:19:17.280
who laughed just as hard behind the scenes? And that sneering video that you found Steve,
00:19:20.900
that we've shown many times with Rick Wilson and Wajah Ali, right? Laughing about how the Trump
00:19:26.880
viewers, this is stupid. Yeah. With like their maps, their maps. And they're like that how those
00:19:32.840
staffers are all presumably still there. So you cannot like cleaning house is that firing Don,
00:19:39.720
firing Stelter, firing Cuomo. That's not cleaning house. And the viewers know it and can feel it.
00:19:46.860
Yeah. It's, it's very hard. Right now the revamped, what, what people see on air too
00:19:54.200
are essentially the same people. You mentioned all these people, Brianna Keillor. I mean,
00:19:57.920
she's just now, I believe she's on it from nine to noon or from one to four. She's in one of these
00:20:03.500
news slots. It's a different version of her. Jim Acosta is now on the weekends and he's doing
00:20:08.020
maybe a slightly reduced version of it. Everyone remembers, no one's stupid. Everyone knows what these
00:20:12.660
people were only a couple of years ago and what they were empowered to do a couple of years ago.
00:20:17.820
It's very hard putting that genie back in the bottle and trying to just run it back with the
00:20:21.800
same staff. And, and, and so I think that's another just total misconception. And I completely
00:20:27.720
agree with you people behind the scenes too. If you're not on board with this idea of getting back
00:20:32.660
to the news version of CNN, and there are people inside who I think were a little bit leery of the
00:20:38.320
way it's seen and drifted during those Trump years and like the direction that it's going back,
00:20:42.740
those people can stay. There's some of those, but the rest you got to go. And, and, and another big
00:20:48.680
storyline that's being made these days or these past few days really is the ratings that, you know,
00:20:55.000
oh, well, well, the ratings are so terrible. I mean, before Chris look took over, there's a Forbes
00:21:00.200
report from February of 2022, right before Chris took over in that last year, CNN had lost 70%
00:21:07.940
from the previous year in that time. This was before Chris took over the demo at that time
00:21:13.300
was 126,000. The demo prime time number there. Yeah. This February, 122,000. So, okay. It's,
00:21:23.220
I mean, it's, it's negligible. I mean, the ratings were terrible before Chris Lick got in there.
00:21:27.640
And, and I just, I think it's really important to note that what matters to the bosses, you know,
00:21:33.140
they, they say, David Zaslow says, it doesn't matter about the ratings right now. Sure. Eventually,
00:21:37.120
maybe it will. What matters is getting that brand respectability back. So when you go and negotiate
00:21:42.180
your next contract with the Comcasts of the world or the direct TVs of the world, you can say people
00:21:47.060
trust us. That's what they lost. And these one 26 versus one 22, it's all bad. It's not getting
00:21:53.220
better. Sure. But that's not what matters. Most what matters is getting the brand back, right?
00:21:57.660
It's going to take years if it's possible at all. I agree. It's worth a try, but you've got it like
00:22:04.620
in the same way they, the new owners came in and said, CNN plus has got to go. This is a disaster
00:22:09.160
in the making. We're not putting more money into this nightmare. Get rid of it. Nobody wants to
00:22:13.280
watch John Lemon in front of a talk show audience or Anderson Cooper cook or whatever he was doing.
00:22:19.040
And they got rid of, they need to do the same thing with CNN proper. They just do. And if you look at
00:22:23.440
CNN digital, which is really their money-making arm, it's as biased as it ever was. Somebody needs to put
00:22:29.040
the hand on the tiller there too, because half the stuff we make fun of on shows like this come
00:22:34.180
from CNN.com. So it's not just the on-air talent. If you really want to change CNN back to the way
00:22:41.160
it used to be, you've got to say to the staff, either you get on board with the new mission or
00:22:46.500
you get out or we'll kick you out. That's the way it's going to be. It's a business, not a daycare.
00:22:52.700
Yeah. Yeah. And, and I mean, we've talked about this too, Megan, like it's going to be harder
00:22:57.080
to do that. It was always going to be harder to do that if you're Chris Licht with the 800 pound
00:23:02.220
gorilla in the room, right? Donald Trump running for office again, makes this that much more
00:23:06.260
challenging because with every indictment, with every time that Donald Trump brings up January 6th,
00:23:11.100
okay, well now we've got our opportunity to go, go to run the greatest hits of the quote unquote,
00:23:15.060
big lie. And it's, it's hard to, to change those muscles or the muscle memory or what was
00:23:21.780
requested of the staff in the old days. It's, it's hard enough to do that if Donald Trump's not
00:23:28.100
involved, but he is involved. He's going to be very, very involved over these next 18 months.
00:23:32.200
And you need a very steady hand and you need buy-in. You need the full buy-in of the staff.
00:23:37.220
If you're not going to just make the same resistance TV mistakes that you made over these last seven
00:23:43.100
years, when Donald Trump was running for office and then when he was in the white house. So it's,
00:23:47.300
it's going to be a challenge no matter who's there, but if those people are not on board with,
00:23:51.420
we're going to do Donald Trump differently. Let's just start there. You're not, you're not going to
00:23:56.080
fix anything. No, they are, they're activists, as I said, and it's going to be very tough to get
00:24:00.720
them to turn in any event. They're, they're programmed. It's, it's like you've been programmed
00:24:04.840
to hate him, to absolutely loathe him, to think he's a Hitler-esque character. How are you going
00:24:08.380
to cover him fairly? And so they should be given the chance. Either you try and you succeed or get out,
00:24:13.960
get out and we'll give you a soft landing with a package and a nice recommendation. But they ought to
00:24:17.940
think about it long and hard because media jobs are hard to come by. They really are.
00:24:21.600
Health insurance. It's fun to work in news. A lot of people want to do it. You want to walk away
00:24:26.000
from your CNN job because they want to become more fair because they want to go back to being less
00:24:30.340
biased. Get out. You know, you should just get out, go, go work for a hard partisan, go work for
00:24:34.680
Rachel Maddow. Don't pretend you're in the straight news business because you're not. Um, want to add
00:24:39.660
this, just a little color from page six of the New York post reporting that Licht was blindsided by his
00:24:45.400
ouster. That's kind of tough to believe given the amount of articles that had come out since that
00:24:50.380
Atlantic piece on Friday. But they say insiders say he had meetings on his calendar for Wednesday.
00:24:55.860
That's today, which as of Tuesday night, he was expecting to attend. We're told that after a
00:25:00.480
mortifying profile in the Atlantic was published over the weekend, the infamously confident Licht
00:25:04.240
thought he was going to ride it out. Sources tell us his longtime pal Warner Brothers Discovery CEO
00:25:09.680
David Zaslav surprised Licht when he delivered the news that he is being replaced. I mean, if he was
00:25:15.560
surprised by it, I think he was the only one, Steve, because how many pieces do we have saying
00:25:19.800
he's done? He's out. He can't survive this. He's lost his staff. Yeah, I, I, everyone I talked to,
00:25:27.120
every single person, uh, believed much more strongly than I did. I have to say that, that this would be,
00:25:32.600
this would be the end that, and, and it's hard to survive massive profiles like this. I, I've,
00:25:38.120
I've heard the, the Tim Alberta piece, you know, which he wrote the Atlantic article as a hit piece.
00:25:42.920
I, I really think that's a wrong positioning of it. I, I actually don't think it really was an
00:25:47.560
unfair piece to Chris Licht. In fact, I think it actually was sort of a pretty representative
00:25:52.760
idea of exactly what was happening there. I mean, we, we, I know you read some of these hilarious
00:25:57.980
moments on Friday about Don Lemon and what was happening in the control room there that made Don
00:26:02.520
look bad essentially. And, and a lot of Chris's points in there were, I think like you and I would
00:26:08.540
agree with, but he said it to a reporter. He said it in that way. It was framed in, in this way.
00:26:14.400
That's going to just, it's going to be a bomb exploding in that newsroom that already was very
00:26:20.380
leery of the way he, of where he was leading in that way. And my understanding from talking to people
00:26:25.780
today is that opened the floodgates that, that the last vestiges of people who had his back,
00:26:32.040
or at least were willing to ride it out said, that's it that I I'm going to my bosses. I'm going to
00:26:37.260
every boss I can talk to and saying we're done. And, and that really was the beginning of the end
00:26:41.740
there. You know, it's true because while you and I agreed with all the criticisms of how CNN handled
00:26:46.380
COVID and Trump and so on. And as you point out, the CNN viewers reflected that in polls and focus
00:26:53.100
groups that Chris Licht had seen when it comes to messaging as the boss, you do need to handle that
00:27:01.160
kind of thing gingerly because it's the same staff working for you right now that committed those sins.
00:27:06.900
And so there's a way of correcting them because in the CNN staffers defense, they were unleashed
00:27:12.400
by Zucker. They were told to lean into bias. So as the new boss, there is a sort of a tact that would
00:27:18.660
be required in helping them come to see how we're going in a new direction now. And we believe that
00:27:25.480
you were given the wrong instructions by the wrong leader, at least with respect to CNN's brand.
00:27:31.420
Your personal politics don't, don't matter, right? You can be as far left as you want, as long as you
00:27:35.820
cover the news in an unbiased way. And what the Atlantic piece wound up being was him bashing CNN
00:27:42.320
at every turn, the old CNN, having almost nothing nice to say about the current CNN, having a lot of
00:27:47.380
nice things to say about himself and appearing extremely vain and obsessed with himself, which
00:27:53.980
was already a feeling that the staff was getting. So it was mishandled from start to finish. I don't
00:27:58.440
know what's going to happen to CNN. I care a little because I do think it'd be good for the country to
00:28:02.440
have, you know, one network that has, you know, power that has reach. Like with respect to News
00:28:10.240
Nation, they're trying, their numbers are like single digits in the thousands. But CNN does have
00:28:16.540
huge reach, global reach. So if they could turn it around, it would be a delight. It would give us
00:28:22.140
all something to tune to, at least when there's breaking news. In the meantime, good luck and stay
00:28:28.000
with us either way, because we got your back and we actually truly are fair and balanced news.
00:28:33.620
Thanks to Steve Krakauer and my crack team too. Thank you, sir. Thanks, Megan. All right. When we
00:28:39.740
come back, the Connecticut runners in their legal battle now getting more and more weighty, more and
00:28:45.720
more important. This is a battle that can affect every school child potentially in the country and
00:28:52.020
where their fight stands when it comes to girl sports. Your business doesn't move in a straight
00:28:57.060
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00:29:28.640
Joining us now, two former high school track athletes, Chelsea Mitchell and Alana Smith. They,
00:29:34.260
along with two other athletes, filed a lawsuit over a Connecticut policy that forced them to compete
00:29:40.040
against biological males in their high school competitions. The case was dismissed in December of
00:29:46.040
2022 and it was given a second chance in February. Ultimately, it was heard yesterday by the full
00:29:53.940
Second Circuit Court of Appeals. They join us now along with their attorney, Kristen Wagoner, CEO and
00:30:00.180
president of Alliance Defending Freedom. Love Alliance Defending Freedom. This is the group that fights
00:30:05.700
these fights across the country and we are all better off because of them. Ladies, welcome back to the show.
00:30:11.620
Great to see you again. Thank you. All right. So when we last spoke, you girls had graduated
00:30:18.560
from high school, I believe, but had brought the lawsuit because you'd been damaged. Your records
00:30:25.280
didn't reflect your actual accomplishments. These biological males had taken titles that you might
00:30:30.680
have otherwise gotten, had taken opportunities that you might have otherwise gotten, and even potentially
00:30:35.640
scholarships. You just don't know. And you were in the legal battle. Now you lost. The trial court judge
00:30:43.340
said, you graduated. So you're not going to, the problem's kind of over. Call it mootness in the law.
00:30:51.040
And you know, you lost your standing to bring this case. So frustrating. And then you appealed it,
00:30:57.460
Kristen, to the Second Circuit, which is a very liberal court, very liberal courts in the New York area.
00:31:01.800
And you lost there too, is my understanding. But then you asked for the full Second Circuit Court
00:31:07.060
of Appeals to hear the case. Is that right? Well, actually, the Second Circuit Court of Appeals
00:31:13.520
decided to hear it on its own. But yes, they heard it yesterday and oral arguments were held yesterday
00:31:18.980
in New York. Well, that's big. That is very big because normally when you go up to an appeal in a
00:31:23.860
federal court, you just get a three judge panel. You don't get the entire circuit of judges in the
00:31:28.440
Second Circuit. When they sit and listen to it like that, they're interested. And it means they
00:31:32.740
are potentially interested in overruling the ruling that went against you. So that's one glimmer of
00:31:40.100
hope. Let me start with you as the lawyer. How did it go yesterday? It went great. I mean,
00:31:45.380
unfortunately, a lot of these decisions come down to ideological views of the judges. And that's
00:31:51.420
something we always have to struggle with. There were 15 on the panel, but the questions were
00:31:55.360
very friendly to us in many respects, and even the hostile questions we had good answers for.
00:32:00.720
You know, the case boils down to, Megan, a motion to dismiss. These girls haven't even had the right
00:32:05.480
to go to court yet. So that's what this issue is about, is whether they can even have their case
00:32:10.840
heard. They've never even been heard on the merits, which is that girls should be able to compete on a
00:32:15.800
level playing field. So we're anxious to be able to assert the legal theories that we have because we
00:32:21.320
know they're right and hoping that the Second Circuit will allow us to do that.
00:32:25.460
Isn't the standard to get around the mootness objection, you know, like this case is moot,
00:32:30.240
they graduated, something like likely to repeat itself, likely to repeat yet incapable of review
00:32:36.300
or something like that. Like, in other words, the fact that this is likely to keep happening
00:32:42.760
That is one of the exceptions to the mutinous doctrine, but we don't even need to rely on that
00:32:46.640
exception. The important point here is that these girls filed their lawsuit when they were
00:32:51.020
in high school. And what's egregiously wrong with the way the trial judge handled it, among other
00:32:55.600
things, is that he waited 14 months from the time that we filed the complaint to dismiss the case
00:33:03.600
Yes, and never did rule on the merits. So under the law, the issue is whether essentially we have
00:33:09.780
ongoing harm. Until those records are corrected, we have an injury, and that's what you're required
00:33:14.720
to demonstrate in the law. An injury that can be redressed. They can fix those records,
00:33:19.800
and they need to do so. In addition to that, you know, they've certainly lost the podium spots and
00:33:25.720
the opportunities, but they can't even put that they were winners on their resumes, for example,
00:33:30.940
for job opportunities. So we feel strongly and believe that the Second Circuit will vindicate
00:33:36.460
the right of these girls to go to court. And that's really what's at issue as a first step.
00:33:41.340
One of the annoying things, Chelsea and Alana, in reading the case is how the court and the ACLU,
00:33:46.880
which is representing the other side, come out with, she won. Chelsea won this. Alana won this.
00:33:53.540
What do you mean? They were winners. They did have the opportunity to win. As if you managed to pull
00:33:58.200
out a W in one race, it should be enough that, you know, who cares if it was an unfair race
00:34:04.760
in 10 others. I wonder how you felt reading that. I'll start with you on that, Chelsea, about how,
00:34:10.080
look, you did win. And in fact, the court accepted that. The Second Circuit wrote,
00:34:13.040
plaintiffs simply have not been deprived of a, quote, chance to be champions.
00:34:21.160
Well, I mean, there were four state championships where I should have been at the top of the podium,
00:34:25.560
but instead that honor went to a male. And in the races that I did win, those were still unfair races.
00:34:30.700
And there were girls that still lost opportunities in those races because of the biological males in
00:34:35.020
that race. And so it doesn't really matter. We need our records fixed to reflect what actually
00:34:42.400
happened in the race. And that is not what they currently say.
00:34:46.080
One of the other things, Alana, that the ACLU is pointing out is you both did go on to race
00:34:51.680
in college and and obtain scholarships, too, from what I read. And so what are you complaining about?
00:35:01.900
Well, like Chelsea said, we did win a few times, but it's bigger than just me and her and the other
00:35:08.960
girls involved. In the case, it's about the girls that didn't make didn't get to advance to other
00:35:14.600
meets and didn't get scholarships. And so it's just about doing it for future generations of women and
00:35:20.840
just making sure that we don't become sidelined in our own sport.
00:35:24.760
Megan, Megan, I'll just point out on that alone. As Chelsea said, she lost out on four state
00:35:30.720
championships. Those boys, two boys in a three year period, took 15 state championships and set 17 state
00:35:37.880
records. I mean, just think about that in 85 times they displace girls. So it's not just about the
00:35:43.600
other girls. It is about Chelsea. It is about Alana. We don't know what scholarships they could
00:35:48.700
have gotten had Chelsea gotten all of the state championships that she should have been rightly
00:35:53.180
awarded. We don't know that. What we do know is that those records are wrong, that it was unfairly
00:35:58.560
administered in terms of the rules and that they need to fix it. So I think that there's a difference
00:36:03.900
between winning this one and winning that one and looking like Flojo to the colleges who are doing
00:36:11.300
the recruiting and and the entrance of two biological males into your competition may have been the line
00:36:17.220
between you and those two places. Exactly. I mean, there is a difference between 10 state championships
00:36:22.500
and one. We know that intuitively. Mm hmm. But now there this whole thing, Kristen, comes down to
00:36:28.740
whether Title IX, which protects girl sports, includes those who identify as girls. Gender
00:36:35.800
identity. Is that included in the word sex? You know, your biological sex would use to protect you
00:36:41.400
when it came to women's sports. And now under, I think it's Connecticut state law and certainly the
00:36:47.620
policy governing the public schools. Sex includes gender identity, somebody who identifies as female.
00:36:55.360
So what is that? Does that require the Second Circuit Court of Appeals to say those are invalid
00:37:01.640
interpretations of Title IX? It is. They are invalid interpretations. What we know Title IX was intended
00:37:08.480
to do is to ensure that both sexes, the two sexes, have equal opportunities, equal benefits. And the
00:37:14.800
regulations under that even say that includes that girls should be able to compete based on their
00:37:20.400
competitive abilities based on their skill sets. They shouldn't have to essentially have less
00:37:25.320
competitive races that their brothers have, for example. And so that's how Title IX has always
00:37:30.500
applied. And it's how I believe it will continue to apply when we eventually win this issue.
00:37:35.720
There are many states who have a law like this. Connecticut has a law saying you can race according
00:37:39.820
to your gender identity. I think it's 29 states. So if this case were to go all the way up to the
00:37:46.260
Supreme Court, we could be changing law in a lot of places. Your thoughts on it?
00:37:50.400
Well, there are 21 states that actually have taken action to ensure that males can't compete against
00:37:55.700
women. They recognize the truth that men and women are different, that the physical advantages are
00:38:00.680
different, and they can't be overcome simply through supplemental hormones. And so states are
00:38:06.660
recognizing that 21, just I think as the last count was just a few months ago, where 21 states
00:38:14.280
have protected it. But ultimately, this comes down to a federal law question as well. It's kind of a
00:38:19.740
belt and suspenders approach, you might say. And the question is, does Title IX require, the other
00:38:25.480
side saying it requires men to compete as women? And our position is no, Title IX requires that you give
00:38:34.020
women and girls equal opportunities and fair play. And so that's the final question that will need to be
00:38:39.880
decided by the Supreme Court. And it hasn't decided that question yet.
00:38:42.900
The two biological males who decided to run against you girls. I mean, the case of Terry Miller is
00:38:51.520
particularly shocking. Did you both race against Terry Miller?
00:38:58.640
And so can you tell us the story of Terry Miller and what happened with Terry Miller when he was
00:39:04.340
racing against you girls as as part of the girls team?
00:39:08.540
Yeah, so so my sophomore year, actually, Terry raced on the boys team in the indoor season, and then in the
00:39:15.260
outdoor season, switch to the girls team. And Terry, I'm not sure the exact number, but Terry was blowing us
00:39:22.720
girls out of the water. I mean, I remember at the state open championship in 100 meters, Terry in the red.
00:39:31.380
Terry went by like over half a second to the second biological male. And then the me and the other
00:39:40.760
female finishers were after them. But the both of them just blew us out of the water consistently.
00:39:48.560
And what I mean, that's amazing, because you have the same person racing as a boy and a girl within a
00:39:54.580
few months, within a few month period. So I mean, a lot of help us non athletes understand what that
00:40:00.460
feels like when you show up there, and you're at the, you know, starting point, and you look over
00:40:05.460
and there's there's a biological boy or two, who you now know you're going to have to try to be.
00:40:11.360
Yeah, it was so frustrating, because I know, I mean, I used to spend hours, a day at track practice
00:40:17.880
just to shape off, I mean, 10s of a second, hundreds of a second tracks of sport were just like
00:40:22.980
a little bit of time off is huge. And it was just so frustrating to line up and just feel like
00:40:28.880
I was racing for second place. And even if I was trying my hardest, I knew that I wasn't going to
00:40:33.400
get the top spot. And then just to know that me and the other girls were, we would do we didn't
00:40:38.940
have a level playing field. Yeah, well, there was a case in California recently, did you girls see
00:40:44.720
this, where there was a track meet? And same thing, biological boys were participating at the high
00:40:51.180
school level. And they they were winning. And one of them said, I was so proud of myself. One of the
00:40:58.300
boys, I was so proud of myself, because I managed to shave 17 seconds off of my time in the past few
00:41:04.560
months. And I just read that as a non runner, like, well, that that sounds good. But the female runners
00:41:09.520
were like, that doesn't happen. That doesn't happen for female runners, shaving 17 seconds off in a couple
00:41:16.660
of months. Is that basically what you're saying, Alana? Yes, I mean, 17 seconds is huge, because even
00:41:22.180
just half a second, a 10th of a second is huge in track. And yet, were there any requirements,
00:41:28.820
you know, in your state that you know of, that they that they, you know, take that they reduce
00:41:35.940
their testosterone, that they do something to reduce the biological advantage as if we could get rid of all
00:41:41.180
of them, but at least on the testosterone front, Chelsea? No, that the CIC policy was pretty much
00:41:47.560
just if you identify as a girl, then you can run the girls team, there was no policy that you had to
00:41:53.800
lower testosterone or anything. They are saying now, Kristen, well, there's no one you can point to on
00:42:00.940
the current team in Connecticut current teams that has a biological man. So, you know, it's over.
00:42:08.240
There's only a handful of these people in the country. You're making a mountain out of a molehill.
00:42:13.800
Well, unless you have your head under a rock, I think that you know that this is a problem
00:42:19.260
around the nation and around the world. We are going to see women continue to lose equal opportunities,
00:42:27.360
continue to lose the ability to compete on a fair and level playing field if we don't start to stand
00:42:33.500
up and speak up and insist that our rights be protected. And again, there is harm done when you
00:42:40.840
are asserting a claim in court. You need to prove that you have an injury and that the court can do
00:42:46.320
something about that injury. And when the records are not corrected, justice is not done. And that's an
00:42:52.440
ongoing injury that the court can address. I mean, we know that when, you know, think about examples where
00:42:57.940
people are cheating, caught cheating after running a race, whether it's they have testosterone,
00:43:02.580
they're taking hormones, they were ineligible to compete, too old, too young, whatever.
00:43:07.080
They have a system that they use to correct those records. And that same system needs to take place
00:43:12.180
here. It's just too big of an issue to let go. And again, it's, it's just shocking to me that we
00:43:18.640
can't even get into court after three years. Yeah, that's right. And then they have the nerve to tell
00:43:25.040
you you're too late after keeping you on ice for 14 months. There was an extraordinary moment on
00:43:29.960
MSNBC yesterday that I've been wanting to ask you about ever since I saw it late yesterday.
00:43:34.500
Nicole Wallace hosted the head of the Southern Poverty Law Center in a discussion over biological
00:43:39.680
boys participating in girls sports in what I consider just a shockingly out of touch discussion.
00:43:46.580
But you're the ones who actually had to live this. So I'm more interested in what you think.
00:43:51.120
Watch this. There are maybe 100 trans athletes. And to be clear, as an ex Republican, I think
00:43:59.080
they're only upset about trans kids who identify as girls. How do you explain the gap between the
00:44:05.040
reality that there are less than 100 trans kids playing sports and the rise and the platforming of
00:44:12.560
hatred? This is very much a coordinated effort. There are actually 12 anti-student inclusion groups
00:44:20.640
in the country that are pushing to ban certain books, ban curricula, punish teachers who talk about
00:44:28.340
inclusive education and generally make our school boards miserable.
00:44:34.480
So essentially, your position is classified as hate. What's your response to that, Chelsea?
00:44:40.920
Well, it only took two biological males in our races to take 15 state championships away from
00:44:48.640
girls. And and really, this is just a women's rights issue. I mean, we just want to be able to
00:44:52.660
win just like the male athletes at the at these meets. I mean, why do why do all the male athletes
00:44:57.120
get to be champions, but the women are sidelined? Like, that's not fair. And we deserve that right to win.
00:45:03.560
What do you think, Alana, when you watch that and they are categorizing people like you who object
00:45:08.260
to this situation as really just part of hateful groups who are against inclusivity?
00:45:14.900
It's extremely frustrating because it's all about fairness and it's all about finding a spot
00:45:19.880
for everyone to play the sport that they love. But it's about finding where it's most fair
00:45:25.900
and having biological men compete with biological women is just so unfair. And like Chelsea said,
00:45:32.980
we deserve to be champions, too, and we shouldn't be sidelined in our own sport.
00:45:36.360
Right. You last time you gals came on, we talked about how you, Chelsea, and maybe you will to
00:45:42.940
Alana, but you you did have a couple of races where you beat these competitors, these male
00:45:47.740
competitors. And you had pointed out to me, Chelsea, that in at least one of those or I think it was a
00:45:53.580
couple. There were actual reasons for that that may not have to do with your incredible ability to
00:45:59.200
beat men so much as the fact that there were false starts by the male runners in those races,
00:46:05.760
which doesn't get reported by the media or the judge. The judge, you know, like they're like,
00:46:10.460
hey, you you beat them without pointing out that there was a false start. I thought it was interesting
00:46:14.540
because after our interview, this is just July of this past year, Andrea Yearwood, who's one of the
00:46:20.180
trans athletes, discussed your lawsuit on Vice TV and and had thoughts about that false start. Listen to this.
00:46:29.200
The lawsuit came about, I think, my junior year of high school in order to not only stop me from
00:46:35.880
running, but to also like erase all my records from the record book with throughout high school
00:46:41.840
and all my medals. So it kind of erased me from the track scene in Connecticut, like altogether.
00:46:48.360
When I first found the news, I really tried to like put it in the back of my mind, not worry about it
00:46:52.620
yet. And Jada, like you have bigger things to worry about. You have a meet tomorrow. Try to focus on that.
00:46:57.100
I guess my Jada is coming out the best of me and I false started.
00:47:03.280
So it was it was jitters that led to the false start, but no apology for the fact that this
00:47:09.280
person's running and taking your titles and your medals anyway. What was your reaction to that soundbite?
00:47:16.020
Well, I mean, I think about all the state championships that I lost that I deserve to be
00:47:20.920
the winner that haven't been rectified. And, you know, those three races where I won against these
00:47:27.440
athletes, there were two false starts. And so, you know, it's just an inaccurate representation of
00:47:32.820
what happened, you know, in the race that day. I mean, I was nervous, too. I had filed the lawsuit
00:47:36.660
two days before. So I think we were all equally kind of jittered up and nervous at the meets. But
00:47:42.800
what about Alana? He said that he says in that clip, you want to stop him from running. You want
00:47:48.100
to erase him and his records. Your response to that? Well, like I said before, it's all about
00:47:56.480
fairness and everybody does deserve to play the sport that they love. But it's about finding
00:48:01.140
where it's most fair. And obviously, biological males should not compete in the women's category.
00:48:06.960
And that's why we have sex separated categories in sports. Like an open category would be a
00:48:13.000
solution where they can race other other people in the open category, but not just take all the
00:48:17.620
girls medals. Kristen, I'll give you the last word. How do we like our chances now with this full
00:48:21.260
circuit reviewing it? And when do we expect an opinion? Well, we don't know exactly when we'll get
00:48:26.860
an opinion. It will take probably weeks, probably months, actually, before we get a decision. There are
00:48:32.440
other cases that are also pending that ADF is litigating. I think one thing that we haven't
00:48:37.080
touched on that would be important for your listeners to know is that there's a 10 to 50%
00:48:41.420
performance gap between men and comparatively trained and fit women. That is a flat biological
00:48:47.700
reality that doesn't change. And that's what makes, you know, the false start and the jitters.
00:48:53.640
What he's actually saying is that he should have won that race had he not had those jitters. And what
00:48:58.680
we're saying is, no, the law and policy needs to reflect biological reality.
00:49:03.580
You shouldn't be, you shouldn't have been in the race to begin with. I mean, I would love to see a
00:49:07.740
test case go up on this. I know, Kristen, you guys are handling cases about forced use of pronouns
00:49:12.740
in the, on the college setting and elsewhere. Do you think there's a glimmer of hope in those cases?
00:49:19.480
I just feel like they're so committed to this ideology. It's all an uphill battle.
00:49:23.180
But it's one worth fighting. I mean, we know that unjust laws create real harm. And you look
00:49:29.220
at these kids who are being confused. How can we not speak up? How can we not fight it? And I do
00:49:34.260
have hope. I mean, we've won the pronoun issue in the Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals. We have laws
00:49:40.060
right now that are being put in place in progressively left states that deny parents the right to be able
00:49:45.540
to get their children help to overcome gender confusion or same sex attraction. And that's just
00:49:50.360
through listening and counseling. This has to be stopped as parents and people that care about the
00:49:57.020
next generation. We need to ensure that our laws reflect biological reality. It's common sense. And
00:50:02.500
it's the way to protect freedom in the future. Yes, this is America. This is America. We're still
00:50:08.100
allowed to speak the way we want, especially if it's consistent with reality. Ladies, thank you so
00:50:13.240
much for telling your story. We'll follow it. We'll look forward to the decision and good luck to all of
00:50:17.300
you. Thank you. Wow. It's unbelievable. It's unjust. And the Second Circuit better do the right
00:50:23.440
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Life, insurance, investments, advice. The Daily Mail now reporting that the beer brand Modelo has
00:51:02.820
officially overtaken Bud Light as America's top selling beer. Take that Bud Light. Bet you're missing
00:51:11.940
your fratty audience now. Bet you really miss your beer guzzling frat boys, don't you? Not a lot better
00:51:19.500
without them, is it, Alyssa? Bud Light had held the number one spot for the last, oh, 22 years since
00:51:27.940
2001 when it topped its sister brand, Budweiser. Modelo makes Modelo beer and also, as Debbie Murphy,
00:51:37.480
who is a teetotaler, told me, Corona to Canadian Debbie. She's so fun. But Modelo sales are up about
00:51:49.920
16 percent, 16 from last year. Bud Light sales are down about 23 percent. It's truly, you know, go woke,
00:51:56.440
go broke. Hope you're paying attention, Target. My next guest is the perfect person to talk about all of
00:52:01.960
this. She is one of my favorite people on Twitter when it comes to the culture wars. She posts under the
00:52:06.760
pseudonym Peachy Keenan. Get it? Peachy Keenan. She doesn't use her real name in order to try to
00:52:12.320
shield herself and her family from the shitstorm that comes your way when you talk honestly about
00:52:16.400
these issues. But she is revealing herself on camera now because she is out with a new book.
00:52:21.960
It is called Domestic Extremist, A Practical Guide to Winning the Culture War. Peachy, welcome to the show.
00:52:30.440
Thank you so much, Megan. It's so great to be here.
00:52:32.460
Oh, it's great to see you. It's great to see you. And I don't question your choice at all. We've got
00:52:37.360
these guys from Ruthless and one of the guys who's part of Ruthless is comfortably smug and he comes
00:52:43.160
on. You know, that's not his real name. Right. And he comes on with his disguise of just sunglasses and
00:52:49.100
a baseball cap. But it's kind of become a joke now. But I mean, you do get a lot of blowback when you
00:52:54.060
take honest positions on the culture war issues. Yes, you do. I mean, that's why I started tweeting
00:53:00.400
under this crazy pseudonym because at the time I was working full time for a very large,
00:53:07.440
very well known media company here in Los Angeles. And, you know, there was no way for me to express
00:53:14.600
my very dangerous conservative opinions under my real name. I would have been I would have been not
00:53:22.720
only, you know, fired and canceled, but probably like beheaded. I mean, there was just no way that
00:53:28.300
I could have been myself. And a lot of dissidents like me, you know, conservatives feel the same
00:53:34.080
way. I mean, I have a lot of friends who are sort of hiding in the closet at work, you know,
00:53:37.980
and going along with it to get along. I mean, that's just so common, especially on the left
00:53:42.820
coast. So the book is called Domestic Extremist and you have in it a domestic extremist quiz.
00:53:50.140
I'm going to go through this with you in the audience so that the audience can figure out whether
00:53:53.620
they too are domestic extremists. This is fun. I actually took the test this morning.
00:53:58.300
Um, there's 12 questions. Uh, number one, I am married or would like to be now audience pay
00:54:04.600
attention to how many of these are a yes for you. I am married or would like to be, I want or have
00:54:10.100
at least three children. I want or have four or more children. I, or my wife stays home with our
00:54:17.040
baby, or I wish I, or she could, I believe parents are a child's primary authority and educators. Uh,
00:54:25.100
kids generally do best when raised by their married mother and father. I would not trust
00:54:29.500
the average politician or childcare expert to walk my dog. We try to attend religious services
00:54:34.220
as a family. Life begins at conception. Children cannot choose their gender. Sex education should
00:54:40.700
be left up to parents and not taught to elementary school age kids. Promiscuity, pornography, and
00:54:45.460
abortion are not conducive to long-term happiness. If you answered yes to one to three of these,
00:54:50.940
yikes, you might be a domestic extremist. Yes. To four through seven, uh, four to seven of these
00:54:56.280
warning. You are definitely a domestic extremist eight to 10 red alert. You are a dangerous domestic
00:55:01.720
extremist and should expect a knock on your door by a government official shortly. 11 to 12. Bubba,
00:55:06.420
I have fun in the gulags. I came in at a strong 10. I was 10 at nice. So I'm with you. Yeah.
00:55:15.660
Yeah. We're going to be sharing a cell in the gulag you and me, Megan, but this is real. And I wonder
00:55:21.920
with your LA friends, what do you think the average school score would be out there?
00:55:27.260
Um, you know, probably, you know, three to four. And I mean, it's funny since I kind of have come
00:55:33.680
out now with my face. Um, I am expecting like a few very surprised, uh, text messages in the next few
00:55:40.500
days as like word leaks out. Although like, I don't think any of them watch any of the media that
00:55:45.040
I've been doing. Um, but it's definitely scary. I mean, the thing is that most of my friends who
00:55:50.760
are on the left, who are liberals, who are Democrats here in Los Angeles and in New York, um, they
00:55:56.660
already thought I was crazy. You know, I think having a third child already kind of marked me as
00:56:01.420
like someone on the fringe to them. I mean, that's how weird strange it is. Yeah. You can't have more
00:56:06.280
than two. And then like when I converted to Catholicism, you know, that was like the real
00:56:10.840
like, Oh, now she's a freak. That was the straw that broke the camel's back. It was. I get it.
00:56:17.160
I get it. Especially because, I mean, I've lived in New York for almost 20 years, but I've paid a
00:56:21.260
lot of visits out West and it's a special kind of liberalism out there. Um, I mean, the New York
00:56:27.280
liberals are very judgy and they hate conservatives for sure. But the LA liberals have a more elitist
00:56:34.840
quality to their, to their liberalism. Like they really do look down on you. If you don't see the
00:56:41.260
world as they like, you're genuinely a bad person. Yeah. I mean, like I read about in the book,
00:56:46.780
there is some memoir in there because I grew up on the West side of Los Angeles and I myself
00:56:51.120
was like a snob towards conservatives or anyone on the right or Christians. You know, I looked down
00:56:57.720
on flyover country, you know, I was better than that. And I've just had this sort of very interesting
00:57:03.080
journey, like done a total one 80 politically, you know, um, in terms of my faith, um, my social
00:57:09.780
conservatism. And so I really kind of don't fit in here. Although I will say, you know, there are a
00:57:15.660
lot of, um, surprisingly a lot, a large number of conservatives here. I went to a book reading a few
00:57:21.820
weeks ago, actually in person and young men were coming up to me and they were going to, they go to
00:57:26.700
like local colleges in LA and they were fans and they're fans of yours. And I was like blown away
00:57:32.480
to, to know, like, we're not alone here, even in the heart of deep blue California.
00:57:41.940
So my parents were sort of like Reagan Republicans, but I ignored them. I, I kind of
00:57:46.780
rebelled against them. And I, you know, went through high school and college and came out,
00:57:50.580
uh, you know, a fully woke, liberated feminist, you know, militantly pro-choice, um, woman and my
00:57:58.900
twenties were for avoiding pregnancy, avoiding marriage, having fun dating, you know, finding
00:58:05.320
out who I was all that stuff. I believed all the whole, the whole package of feminist, you know,
00:58:10.320
lies. And I think politically, I sort of started to change right around nine 11. Um, when my kind
00:58:15.740
of like latent patriotism was sort of awakened when I saw people burning the American flag,
00:58:21.500
like that day in union square in New York. And I was like, wait, what? That's weird. I didn't,
00:58:27.020
I didn't even know people like that existed in America. I thought we were all on the same team.
00:58:31.120
And so I became a kind of political conservative after that. And then when I met my husband, um,
00:58:36.900
sometime later, he, he had been sort of newly red pilled. He was pro-life and really in the process
00:58:42.960
of wooing me and flirting with me, he kind of wooed me over to his side, to the dark side.
00:58:48.020
And I became, you know, officially conservative, but, but was it closeted still with respect to
00:58:53.800
your friends and not, not your family, I guess, but your friends. Yeah. Uh, we had some friends
00:58:59.440
who were sort of aligned with us, but I remember we were, we would like, we would like get threatened
00:59:03.580
even among my friends in New York city. They would be shocked. And they were shocked and appalled
00:59:08.540
that I was dating, you know, a horrible conservative man. You know, he'd been in the
00:59:13.160
military. Like he, how, how could I be betraying my feminist friends? Um, so we just sort of,
00:59:21.180
you know, what, what can you do when you have friends like that? You just kind of have to peel
00:59:23.840
them off and you kind of distance from them. And we got, we got new friends.
00:59:28.600
Good call. Well, you know, I'm thinking about it because your book is so timely. I don't know if
00:59:32.920
you saw this clip that we did in the last segment of Nicole Wallace. Um, but this knee jerk instinct
00:59:40.080
to label somebody as an extremist or as hateful, um, just because they disagree with you on these
00:59:48.000
culture war issues is really dangerous and it's all too common. I go back to, I'm going to play
00:59:53.920
the clip in a second, but the Southern poverty law center used to be, used to be a well-respected
00:59:58.700
group that if they labeled somebody, a hate group, you'd be talking about the KKK. You know,
01:00:03.140
you'd be talking about a group we could all agree is a hate group. Then during the 2016 presidential
01:00:08.860
election, they labeled Ben Carson, an extremist. They put him on the extremist list. Um, and then
01:00:17.460
they took it, they took it down. And this was, uh, one of the quotes they took issue with that Ben
01:00:22.500
Carson had said, quote, if we can redefine marriages between two men or two women or any other way
01:00:27.080
based on social pressures, as opposed to between a man and a woman, we will continue to redefine it
01:00:31.820
in any way that we wish, which is a slippery slope with a disastrous ending as witnessed in the dramatic
01:00:37.220
fall of the Roman empire. So what you're hearing here is a Christian man who believes in the biblical
01:00:41.960
approach and definition of marriage. And for that, he got put on their extremist list. Ultimately,
01:00:48.980
they had to change that after the outrage. So that's 2014 that happened. Now, yesterday on MSNBC,
01:00:56.820
I'm going to show you, we can just play the normal clip. You guys, um, I'm going to show you what
01:01:01.160
happened between Nicole Wallace and the now head Margaret, huh? Is it Wang? Uh, who's now running
01:01:07.940
the Southern poverty law center and the exchange they had about what makes one hateful and includes
01:01:13.160
according to the SBLC moms for Liberty, a group I absolutely love. I'm sure you love them too.
01:01:23.980
There are maybe 100 trans athletes. And to be clear as an ex Republican, I think they're only upset
01:01:30.960
about trans kids who identify as girls. How do you explain the gap between the reality
01:01:36.580
that there are less than a hundred trans kids playing sports and the rise and the, and the platforming
01:01:43.420
of hatred. This is very much a coordinated effort. There are actually 12 anti student inclusion groups
01:01:51.740
in the country that are pushing to ban certain books, ban curricula, punish teachers who talk about
01:01:59.340
inclusive education and generally make our school boards miserable. Your reaction to that and the, and
01:02:06.780
the targeting of a group like moms for Liberty. What's amazing is that if you took like an old
01:02:13.600
school feminist from the sixties or seventies, they would be considered a hate, a person full of hatred
01:02:20.400
for trying to promote biological women now. And when I talk about becoming more domestic, you know,
01:02:25.960
returning to sort of these like timeless essential things that make us human. I'm not talking about
01:02:31.300
returning women to like the medieval era. I'm talking about like, like things that were normal
01:02:35.420
in 1980s, you know, like these are not extremist views. And it's totally insane that just being a mom
01:02:42.060
and choosing to opt out of what they want us to believe that makes you a hater that makes you,
01:02:49.040
um, you know, a dangerous person. We're just trying to opt out. That's all we want.
01:02:54.220
These labels. I mean, I, I laugh them off. It's absurd. And I think most reasonable people would know
01:02:59.460
that, but I'll tell you, even when I was at NBC 2018, there were, this group was pitched to me as
01:03:06.620
well with the Southern poverty law center says that they're extremist. And I remember running around
01:03:09.980
saying, have you not been paying attention to the news for the past five years? Like they're the
01:03:14.240
extremists. We, I am not citing the Southern poverty law center in anything we do. So there are
01:03:19.760
people, you know, in the news, nevermind just lay people who have to go about their lives and live
01:03:24.940
their lives without paying attention to this nonsense who might actually believe, Oh wait,
01:03:29.540
moms for Liberty. That's an extreme. That's a hate group. Okay. Maybe we shouldn't invite them here.
01:03:33.520
Maybe I shouldn't click on that video. Meanwhile, this is a collection of moms. I've been down there
01:03:37.520
in Orlando, Florida who decided to run for school board, who decided to stand up against the COVID
01:03:41.900
craziness, who decided to stand up for biological girls and their rights. And now they've got to deal
01:03:47.760
with these kinds of labels. I mean, it really is. It's dangerous. Yeah. I mean, actually they are the
01:03:53.420
ones who inspired me to write this book and the title of my book, you know, during COVID when we
01:03:57.940
saw brave parents standing up to these school boards. And for the first time people realized
01:04:03.380
like, who the heck are these people on these school boards? Like, why are they, why do they
01:04:07.400
get to dictate our kids curriculum? Why are they putting, you know, really open pornography in
01:04:12.500
elementary schools? And then when I saw that some of the parents who fought back were being labeled
01:04:18.040
domestic terrorists by our government, I realized like we've gone like so far into crazy land.
01:04:26.340
And so that's why the title is ironic. I mean, we're here kind of holding the normal line
01:04:30.900
and they have gone so far over to the left. And so that's why they have to call us extremists. They
01:04:36.560
have to call us, you know, a hate group so they can normalize their own behavior, which we can all see
01:04:42.520
is, is really out of bounds. Mm-hmm. You know, we're in the middle of pride month. It's never
01:04:48.320
ending pride. It's always pride. It's pride here, pride infinity. And, um, some of these displays
01:04:55.800
right now, normally, like, look, I've been in New York for two decades. You go down to Chelsea on
01:05:01.060
Halloween, you're going to see some nudity. You're going to see some debauchery like you've never seen.
01:05:06.600
That's just the way it is. And I used to live there in Chelsea. So I know normally I don't care.
01:05:10.740
Um, but if you're going to bill your event as child friendly, which is what happened in West
01:05:15.920
Hollywood the other day and encourage children to show up and then behave like that you're about
01:05:20.500
to see in the video, I'm going to show you, you're going to get upset. You're going to get some moms
01:05:23.700
upset, including moms for Liberty, which you know, viewer warning, this is graphic, but this is what
01:05:29.040
was strolling down the street in West Hollywood as part of their pride parade for the listening
01:05:32.720
audience. You see a man in BDSM type bondage where another man is in front of him bent over
01:05:39.980
with a naked bottom and leather straps going up the crack. And the man in the back is
01:05:45.480
purporting to whip him with some sort of feathers or light leather. I can't tell what it is over and
01:05:51.860
over and over as the guy, the first guy sticks his naked butt out and they're just, who the hell does
01:05:58.580
this represent? Who gets away with calling this child friendly peachy? Yeah, it's funny. You know,
01:06:05.560
I used to live in Chelsea also, and I used to go to the pride parade. I mean, back in the day,
01:06:10.000
um, they were not for kids and it was just kind of like a fun party. I didn't have a problem with
01:06:15.280
it. No one's ever really had a problem with any of this stuff. No one's ever been protesting down at
01:06:19.540
like gay bars in West Hollywood. Really? No one cared. Everyone has, has been, you know, live and let
01:06:24.760
live even, you know, most conservatives, but this is, this is totally different. Um, this is openly
01:06:30.780
being promoted as for children. I think it started with like maybe when they brought sort of bringing
01:06:34.660
in the drag Queens and here's like the crazy horse, the Barbie flow for the, for promoting the new
01:06:39.620
movie, which I'm sure will appeal to children. Barbie, oh fun Barbie. So I could see Barbie and
01:06:44.400
a man's naked bottom getting whipped by another man. Keep going. Have they come out with a trans
01:06:48.980
Barbie yet? Because if not that we know that's actually, I think they might have come out with
01:06:53.440
a trans Barbie. Um, you know, that's where they're going. I mean, when you look at those pride
01:06:58.700
parades, uh, they really feel like this year they are, they're not pride parades. They're victory
01:07:03.680
parades. I think they feel like they've won the culture war and now they're celebrating. And, you
01:07:09.540
know, with good reason, I mean, they've gotten their, this ideology into every school LAUSD. I think
01:07:15.640
just yesterday, Los Angeles unified school district, one of the largest in the country just made it
01:07:21.380
required that every single school in LA County must teach the LGBTQ agenda. Like not just during
01:07:30.020
pride month, everyone must celebrate it all the time. And there is no opting out. It's the opposite
01:07:36.520
of what Ron DeSantis is doing saying you want to talk to your kids about being, being gay or lesbian. You
01:07:41.980
want to talk to your kids about being trans and what that means. Do it, do it all day long. But when
01:07:46.360
they're sitting in school, no, we're going to focus on reading and writing and history and
01:07:51.000
arithmetic and all the rest of it. And so he's been treated like a domestic extremist too. But
01:07:55.160
yeah, so that what you're saying is happening in LA is exactly the opposite. We will be in charge
01:07:59.120
of forcing this information on your child. We're, as you point out in your list of domestic
01:08:03.800
extremes, we don't believe that parents are a child's primary authority, um, and educators. We
01:08:09.140
believe we, we are, and we've heard this from top Democrats over and over, right? They're
01:08:13.140
everyone's children. They're all of our children. Yeah. It takes a village, you know, unfortunately
01:08:19.080
it's a village full of idiots and you need to get your kid out of there as fast as you
01:08:22.660
can. I mean, here in California, Gavin Newsom, another law, another wonderful law that I get
01:08:27.460
to live under. I think he legalized what people are calling, you know, child kidnapping where
01:08:32.420
California is a sanctuary state for any parent, any child whose parents do not want them to
01:08:38.060
transition. That child is welcome to do it here in California. Um, basically like a magnet
01:08:44.000
for, for, for confused children. And the parents have no legal say, and I'm pretty sure that's,
01:08:49.620
uh, child kidnapping, but that's that. And that's not extreme. Like what is, what is going on here?
01:08:57.800
Well, so here's the other thing. I mean, I agree with you. It's, it's beyond back when I was in
01:09:02.280
school, you know, they, they used to have like sex ed, but it would be age appropriate. You know,
01:09:06.780
you, you kind of got introduced to the concept of like menstruations coming when you were in
01:09:11.840
fifth grade, which I think is fine. A lot of girls get their periods in sixth grade. So might
01:09:15.360
as well get in there and start talking about, well, you wouldn't have any talk about like sex
01:09:18.560
at that young, young age that would come later. That was eighth grade. And then you had to have a
01:09:23.620
parental opt-in, you know, and then it got more explicit as you got older. And then sophomore year,
01:09:28.220
they'd get a little bit more explicit on contraception and so on. Um, now this is out of Hartford,
01:09:32.920
Connecticut. There, um, was a video that was shown a gender identity video that was shown to
01:09:37.860
elementary school students, elementary school students there. Um, and apparently the parents,
01:09:45.140
even in liberal Connecticut are mad because they say they were not told that this video was going to
01:09:51.560
be shown and that the kids are too young. I think we have a snippet of it. Here's Sot 6.
01:09:56.560
What pride means to me is just being myself and standing up for what I believe in. Pride means
01:10:03.540
you should be able to be free. All my life, I never really felt like a boy and I don't really
01:10:08.900
feel like a girl. So I'd rather be both. Pride means a person could be whoever they want to be
01:10:14.340
in their heart. The fact that I could say that I like to be called a boy makes me feel happy inside.
01:10:20.260
Okay. So to, to single digit children, they're talking about being quote non-binary that you don't
01:10:25.560
have to be a boy or a girl. You can be both. Uh, that is, that is totally insane. And I mean,
01:10:33.220
it just, it does seem to me that they are the, the transgender activists is very small,
01:10:39.940
but very vocal and extremely militant group has sort of taken everyone hostage. And they seem to
01:10:46.120
be using children now as human shields for their ideology, because if the kids are doing it, you know,
01:10:51.800
none of us want to hurt kids, we're all pro kid. And so the more kids they can get kind of into this
01:10:57.120
sort of trans machine, um, then the, the, the less, the less able we are to, to attack it or try
01:11:03.220
to fight back because then we're, we're fighting kids. We must hate children. And really we're, you
01:11:08.720
know, you and me and Ron DeSantis, we're child advocates and that makes us evil. And we, I mean,
01:11:17.560
just, it is like a terrorist tactic to use a kid to promote your own personal beliefs on this sort
01:11:23.660
of, you know, transgender ideology. I mean, how do we, how do we, how do we stop that? I mean,
01:11:29.080
I think parents just, if that, if that's in your school, you have to pull your child out. You don't
01:11:33.440
even have a choice anymore or you will lose your child. And this school is saying that that video
01:11:37.780
is appropriate from two years old, two years and up appropriate. Hell no. And we, by the way,
01:11:45.160
we got our hands on a picture that shows what was in the quote puberty kit that was being given to
01:11:52.380
the young children, boys and girls were given tampons and pads. What does a boy need a tampon
01:12:01.120
and a pad for? And I don't know what that, what is that bottle over there on the left? I, I hope
01:12:07.560
it's hand sanitizer and not lube. I don't know, but nothing's out of the back. Nothing's impossible
01:12:12.320
in today's day and age, but this is where it is. So you can be both a boy and a girl.
01:12:17.080
And here's your maxi pad for you little boys in the third grade.
01:12:22.380
You know, I, I have a friend who sends a child to Brentwood school, which is a kind of a very,
01:12:28.300
a very elite private school here in Los Angeles. And part of the sixth grade sex ed curriculum
01:12:33.900
includes a segment on black queer love. Okay. And these are 11 year old boys and girls. Like,
01:12:41.320
I don't even know what that means. And I think they are teaching them things that I can't even
01:12:45.240
utter on the air with you. Sexual activities. They're, they're showing them pictures. Anyone
01:12:50.820
who's looked at like, this is in California common core sex ed. It's extremely graphic. It's,
01:12:56.740
it's basically pansexual. You can do anything with anyone. Yeah. As long as you lose,
01:13:01.560
use the things in the puberty kit, as long as you're using protection and enough lube,
01:13:05.820
just have fun kids. Right. It's, it's, it's actually just really damaging. I mean, I know that
01:13:11.960
the boys who were subjected to this in this school were privately complaining that they were confused
01:13:17.340
and they were mortified. This is embarrassing. You actually are inflicting discomfort and upset
01:13:23.880
on kids who had none and who are not advanced by being handed a maxi pad as a 10 year old boy.
01:13:31.960
But actually just confused and upset by it. There's no care for those kids at all.
01:13:40.300
You know, they don't like us to call them groomers, but I don't really know
01:13:43.680
how else you could describe what they're doing. I mean, it's sort of like, you know,
01:13:47.640
the old fashioned groomers would hand a kid a dirty magazine and some candy,
01:13:51.500
but now we're grooming them a different way to be confused. And the last thing that we need little
01:13:56.820
boys to be confused on is the fact that they're boys. I mean, we have a, there is a war on boys.
01:14:02.320
We have a problem with people thinking boys are, you know, toxic masculinity is a bad thing. Boys
01:14:07.740
need to be more like girls. They need to be more feminized. And so the last thing in the world you
01:14:13.040
would want to give a little boy is a tampon kit. I mean, I have, I have young sons, like I can't even
01:14:18.020
imagine how, how cringe that would be for them. They would just never, they would be so humiliated
01:14:24.140
just to even know what that was for. What, what purpose could there be other than just to confuse
01:14:29.600
these like very young, innocent minds? Oh, I have a friend whose mother worked at
01:14:35.000
Planned Parenthood. My friend is, she's more right-leaning, but you know, she's got that in
01:14:39.160
her DNA. And when her kids were in their teens, she gave each one of them condoms. She's like,
01:14:45.320
I don't know what's going to happen. And I just, whatever, I just want them to have it in case.
01:14:49.780
And, um, I think the one was 20 and he took it. The one was 18 and she called the mom disgusting.
01:14:55.900
And the 16 year old was just kind of like, ew, you're gross. Like, right. So it's like the younger
01:15:00.360
you get, the more that these things make them uncomfortable, especially from a teacher or a
01:15:05.200
parent. And I can't even imagine if it had been a sanitary pad, a tampon. What the hell is he
01:15:13.220
supposed to do with that? Um, I do want to talk to you about, I loved your tweet. I love all of
01:15:18.340
your tweets, but I really loved the one about LGBTQIA. We always cut off the end because it gets
01:15:23.700
so ridiculous. Justin Trudeau with his like two spirit, blah, blah, blah. He could go on forever,
01:15:27.920
but you picked up on something that really bothers me too, which is the A LGBTQIA. And what the hell is
01:15:35.220
the A you have figured it out and have feelings about it. And I share them completely. Can you tell us?
01:15:40.440
Yeah. So I was curious too. And the A stands for asexual, which means you're not having sex with
01:15:48.660
anyone. You're not attracted to anyone. You basically don't have a sexual orientation.
01:15:55.580
Um, you're probably a, a man or a woman, or maybe you're a, whatever, but, but why is a there?
01:16:04.260
You're not engaged in it. And the funniest thing is I was researching the book and researching all
01:16:08.500
these new gender identities. There's one I love called allosexual. And I am here to say that I'm
01:16:14.240
an allosexual. I'm sure you are too, Megan, because an allosexual is the opposite of asexual.
01:16:19.900
So it's to represent anyone who's ever experienced attraction to another person.
01:16:25.500
So congratulations. You get your own. So do I we're diverse. Yes.
01:16:29.420
But I like to call myself a husband sexual because I made up my own, my own gender identity. Okay.
01:16:37.360
Cause you can do that now. And a husband sexual is means that I'm only attracted to people who
01:16:42.360
identify as my husband. That works. I like that. It's a very healthy fetish you have. I,
01:16:48.160
I appreciate that. Share that, share that my own family. I don't say it's good to talk about some of
01:16:53.860
the insanity with people who see it for what it is. And I think most people, I think most people on
01:16:58.460
the left also see it for what it is. But then when you try to call it out, you get pieces written
01:17:02.860
about you in the Washington post calling out your, how, what a dangerous centrist white male you are
01:17:07.580
like Steve Krakauer was telling us about earlier. All right. So all of this leads you to ultimately
01:17:11.740
decide to, to write, to put pen to paper. And you're very clever, very funny. Your writing is,
01:17:16.720
it just jumps off the page. It was a rip roaring read. Um, so what is the point of the book? Like what,
01:17:21.880
why are you writing it and what is the message to people?
01:17:25.780
Well, there's basically two reasons why I wrote the book. I mean, the main reason is that, you know,
01:17:30.420
I am trying to build morale among people who are sort of already on our side, who are already sort of
01:17:35.300
quasi domestic extremists. People are trying to resist all this stuff. Um, normal people,
01:17:40.220
your viewers, my readers, it's a way to build morale and let the people know that you're not alone.
01:17:44.860
Like you're right. Like whatever you're doing, like keep doing it, like double down, lean into your,
01:17:49.640
you know, your extremely domestic instincts. Those are all good things. You know, you're not a bad
01:17:54.840
person. Like we're, we're right. We're on the, we're on the right and we're going to win. Um,
01:18:00.040
and, uh, but of course the other reason is, you know, we have a huge crisis, you know, marriage rates
01:18:04.720
are plummeting, birth rates are plummeting, rates of depression and loneliness are skyrocketing.
01:18:10.860
And I mean, honestly, I think that this is due to just the victory, the victories that feminism
01:18:15.660
has had and, um, progressive ideology has had it's convinced people to not start families that being
01:18:21.980
child-free, you know, you have, you can't have kids. It will hurt the environment and kids and
01:18:27.280
husband will, will slow you down with that will interfere with your career. So I am hoping to maybe
01:18:32.880
try to peel off some of those young women and young men before they get completely like caught up in it
01:18:38.480
and encourage them to be just a little more domestic. I know you, you, you say it's not enough
01:18:44.800
now given these culture wars to not be a feminist. You men and women must become anti-feminists. So
01:18:53.740
what do you mean by that? Yeah. I mean, you know, people say like, do you mean that women shouldn't
01:18:58.900
be able to work? Like shouldn't be able to vote? Like, of course not. I'm a working mother. I have
01:19:04.140
always supported myself. Um, I mean, I stayed home when I, when I started having kids, obviously,
01:19:08.720
but I believe in women's equality. I believe women should be able to vote and have a voice. I mean,
01:19:14.320
obviously here I am, here you are. Um, that's very important. But, um, what I think about anti-feminism
01:19:22.180
is that the, the, the new wave of feminism, the latest wave of feminism is just has sort of jumped
01:19:28.260
the shark. You know, it's no longer about equality. It's no longer about, you know, being able to do
01:19:34.100
what you want. Now it's about depriving you of your femininity, depriving you, you know,
01:19:39.920
forcing you to sort of reject the things that actually make you a woman and make you just
01:19:44.820
innately female, you know, work forever, freeze your eggs. Don't get married. I mean, this is what
01:19:51.300
feminism is telling young women to do get on Tinder, stay on Tinder for 10 years. You know, I wrote about
01:19:56.900
the Tinder app. It had its 10 year anniversary. And there are some women who downloaded the app the
01:20:02.540
day it came out and 10 years later are still on Tinder. And according to the feminism, feminist
01:20:07.700
today, that's totally fine. No, it's sad. It's sad. It is sad. I mean, no man is going to marry the
01:20:14.800
woman who's given it away to everybody. Nobody wants to go there. My God. I mean, that's not
01:20:18.820
attractive and men like to conquer the, and if you're just utterly conquerable with absolutely
01:20:23.260
no challenge, they're not going to be coming back for the second go round. I mean, you need to pay
01:20:27.420
attention. There's a way to land a husband and that ain't it. The giving it up for free on Tinder,
01:20:31.580
like, Hey, yeah, here I am again, ready to have you. If you did it with me, how many other guys
01:20:35.120
you do it with? That's how men think. And they're not wrong. Right. And you know, like women are now
01:20:40.940
even posting on Tik TOK about their body counts, you know, the, the very long lists of all of their
01:20:45.900
sexual partners. And it becomes like, it's like a game, like who can have the most? Cause that means
01:20:51.600
you're hot or you're desirable or whatever. And you know, that lady, no one is pushing. It means
01:20:57.260
you're a slut. That's what it means. You're a slut. And there's nothing good that comes from
01:21:01.540
being a slut. Talk to Bridget Phetasy. She wrote the definitive piece on it as right person in that
01:21:08.040
department. And she was very honest about how, what she was after when she was having promiscuous
01:21:12.320
sex and how empty and sad she would feel time after time. And the guys weren't calling and it was
01:21:18.680
pathetic. She felt pathetic and how she turned it around. But it's like, you're right. Because the line
01:21:24.420
from the feminists is it's empowering to go on Tinder and just be able to have sex, like the way
01:21:29.140
18 year old guys want to have sex just with everything that moves. And it's not, we're built
01:21:33.320
differently. It's what, what young, some young man in college might find empowering will not feel the
01:21:38.460
same to young women. They've been sold a bag of goods. Yeah, exactly. I love that essay. I talked
01:21:43.840
about it in the book, Bridget's essay. I regret being a slut. Um, you know, we all, I think have our own
01:21:48.820
degree of regrets. Um, I certainly do before I kind of had my change of heart and realized that my
01:21:54.020
vocation, my calling was really as a, as a devoted wife and mother. Um, but I think that the message
01:22:00.600
to little girl, to young women is to increase that there won't be any consequences to increasing their
01:22:05.940
body counts. And really there are consequences. Women are not, like you said, we're not built like
01:22:11.320
men. You know, you may not get pregnant from an encounter, but there are emotional scars. There are,
01:22:17.760
there's bitterness, there's heartbreak. And at the end of the day, if you've spent your twenties kind of
01:22:22.740
wasting your best years on a string of young men who don't, don't love you, they don't remember
01:22:27.600
your name the next morning. How are you going to be someone's wife? You know, how can you then
01:22:32.500
shift so dramatically to being monogamous? I think it makes all of that so much harder.
01:22:38.160
And you're making yourself less attractive. Like I want these women to go back, go back. I'd love it,
01:22:44.900
you know, to the younger me who, trust me, before I got to the Fox news hair and makeup department,
01:22:49.560
I did not look like this. So I was okay, but I was nothing to write home about. Trust me.
01:22:55.200
My parents used to say, she's going to be with us for a long time. And I was happy because I love
01:22:59.980
them. I wanted to be with them. But anyway, my point is, you know, Bridget and I had a long
01:23:05.180
discussion about this on this podcast we did. We'll get you the number because it's well worth
01:23:08.140
listening to. But I was honest with her about how I actually don't have any regrets about my,
01:23:13.160
my behavior in this sex department. And she had many, and we talked about how we both
01:23:19.560
And it wound up leading to, I had very different parents than she did. I had a very different
01:23:23.680
upbringing than she did. And I was just in a different mental space, but I am very happy
01:23:29.880
that even in my far less attractive shell, I never gave it up easily. Never. I, I always felt like
01:23:37.200
only a very few will deserve me and no one's getting it until they absolutely prove that they deserve me
01:23:44.820
and that I love this person. And this person loves me. And it's not some superficial,
01:23:48.540
like we've been together for a week and we feel really hot for each other. And I realize you can
01:23:51.780
make the case for that kind of sex. I get it. Um, I, at this point in my life, I'm very happy
01:23:57.020
that I approached it and I want young women to know this is an available lane for you too. You
01:24:01.540
don't, I realize waiting till marriage is an option. That's great. That's what my faith in
01:24:04.780
yours teaches. Wait, there's another lane where you can be very judicious in your selections and
01:24:10.560
keep it to people who, you know, you deeply care about or love. And I would suggest to you that will
01:24:15.160
only build self-esteem. It will only build your suitors. It will only make men want you more,
01:24:21.460
not less. And going the other route gives you exactly the opposite results of the ones you
01:24:26.880
most desire. Yeah. You know, I'm a victim of, um, the show sex in the city. Um, I remember telling
01:24:34.340
my mother, I'm moving to New York and she would, she herself said verbatim, it'll just, it'll be
01:24:38.840
just like sex in the city. You know, looking back like, wait, what, what, what was she expecting me
01:24:44.000
to do? Like live like Samantha, you know, maybe she's happy. Yeah. The shoes, the shoes were going
01:24:51.620
to be paved with Manolo Blahniks. Okay. That's what we all thought. Um, and luckily after I moved
01:24:56.120
to New York, I met my husband like literally a week later. So I was saved from that horrible fate.
01:25:01.700
But yeah, the message was when I was in college that you can, you know, hook up with whoever and
01:25:05.860
it won't matter. And I remember thinking like, maybe something's wrong with me because I don't
01:25:11.060
really have, I have no interest in doing that with someone who I know doesn't care about me,
01:25:15.700
who I maybe think is cute, but I know he doesn't like, he's not in love with me,
01:25:19.960
you know, and I was a romantic. I wanted someone to like fall in love with. And I thought something
01:25:24.980
was like deficient about me because I wasn't able to just sort of like, be like one of the guys and
01:25:30.240
just, you know, do whoever was around and there would be no, no problem. I didn't like that feeling.
01:25:35.400
And that's a very natural feeling. And that keeps us safe, actually, that feeling. And women have been
01:25:39.700
told to, to ignore that little voice inside their head. Yes. You're so right. It's so damaging.
01:25:45.620
Thanks to the feminists. So Steve Krakauer tells me that the original episode we do with Bridget,
01:25:51.520
which is very emotional. I have to say, I remember that one very vividly was episode 44,
01:25:56.300
right after we launched. She's another person I met via Twitter. And the episode in which we talk
01:26:01.040
about her, why I regret being a slut is episode 402. If you're taking a drive or something, those
01:26:07.040
recommend both of those to you. You'll, you'll love Bridget just as much as we do. More with Peachy
01:26:11.560
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01:26:47.340
One of the, I'm not going to say I cried, but it did hit a nerve in a, in a good way,
01:26:53.560
like in an important way was the, the piece about, um, motherhood in the crosshairs and about this,
01:27:02.340
the secret, the unmentionable secret about babies. They want to be with their mother,
01:27:07.440
like all the time. That's the truth. And I know, you know, as you say, you've been a working mom and
01:27:14.260
you, now you're home with your kids, but look, I defend working mothers. Of course I am one,
01:27:21.460
but I'd be lying if I didn't say I had moments, especially after the birth of my third child,
01:27:27.720
where I was under pressure to go right back because we were about to launch my primetime show,
01:27:31.660
that it was too soon and that he needed me. And I would just bring him a lot to work.
01:27:38.640
And I put his little body on this little couch in my office and he'd sleep. And I think
01:27:43.940
this is, this feels wrong. I, I would be lying if I didn't say I had many of those moments and it's
01:27:50.980
okay to talk about. It's not abandoning your, your chose, your choices in life, you know,
01:27:56.340
your commitment to work, whatever, but it's important because those babies do need their
01:28:00.840
mom. Yeah. And it's, it's funny, even though let's say you have to go back to work and you
01:28:07.320
have to leave your, your child just because you have to do it. Does it mean that it's the best way
01:28:12.080
to do it or that it's good for anyone? It's, it's a hard thing to do, but as a woman, you're not
01:28:17.300
allowed to talk about that because that makes it, you're kind of like betraying the sisterhood.
01:28:21.620
You're betraying the girl boss, you know, sisterhood. How, how dare you prioritize your,
01:28:28.640
your newborn over your job? And we fought so hard for the right to get back to work. Now you want to
01:28:34.320
give all that up. And so, you know, if you have to do it, at least we can start talking honestly
01:28:39.420
about what the effect of that is. I mean, yes, there's a cost to like, you know, taking off more
01:28:44.600
unpaid leave, but there's also a cost emotionally to a new mother and a baby.
01:28:49.600
Yes. I, I just, I just had this debate on line. Somebody had tweeted out something like it was a
01:28:56.300
guy. Uh, I think he's with, um, Babylon B, which I love. And he tweeted out something about how he
01:29:02.740
loves having a stay at home mom as his wife and how the house is great and people are really happy.
01:29:09.040
And like, it really does lead to good things. And it irked me slightly because there was in there,
01:29:15.400
I felt a bit of judgment on moms who make a different choice. Like moms like me, right.
01:29:19.460
Who work and have kids. And I, I tweeted out something in response, like I'm a working mom.
01:29:26.900
We're, we're doing effing great. Something like that, because this is where I object where there
01:29:32.560
is like a judgment that people who choose to do it a different way have done it wrong. You know,
01:29:37.120
cause I look at my own kids. I've been working since all of them were born. They're great. I mean,
01:29:42.060
anybody who backed me up on how well adjusted and happy my children are, how intact our family
01:29:45.880
relationships are, how tight we are. And there's a reason for that. Um, one is I've nurtured it,
01:29:53.300
you know, the relationships. And two is I did dial it back. You know, I didn't get too far into this
01:29:58.860
experiment without saying, Oh, holy shit, the balance is the wrong way. And I'm spending too much
01:30:03.060
time away from them. And that's not good enough for any of us. So I, you know, I also did make an
01:30:08.500
adjustment when I recognized I was too far on the other side when in doing the balance of work and
01:30:13.940
motherhood. I know that's true for a lot of women. Yeah. I mean, you know, I think that, you know,
01:30:21.280
liberals love to talk about being pro-choice and I think that women should get also get the choice
01:30:25.860
to spend more time with their children. Um, if they want to, I mean, I understand like we live in
01:30:31.380
the real world. People have to work. I earn a living. I get it, but we can all agree at least that,
01:30:36.960
you know, spending more time with a baby is better as a mother than spending less time.
01:30:42.600
And that's just, you know, that's just like stark biology. That's just like, you know,
01:30:46.280
that's just like, you know, trust the science that is the science and being able to acknowledge
01:30:50.780
that openly and really then respect the sacrifice that women who do work and who have to spend time
01:30:56.440
away from their children are making. I mean, they do not get that, that respect. And, um,
01:31:02.440
I don't want to judge working mothers. Like I said, I have always been a working mother,
01:31:06.280
a working woman. Since I had a bunch of kids, I worked from home. Um, when my then four-year-old
01:31:12.520
four-year-old was, um, in preschool, I got an offer to go back into the office at a very large
01:31:17.000
entertainment company. And, you know, I would get a little bit sad when women, young women would come
01:31:22.560
in after having a baby and they would drop their six week old off at a daycare and pump in these like
01:31:28.320
weird lactation rooms. And my sister was a lawyer and she had to pump milk in the bathroom stall at her
01:31:34.280
law firm, you know, and those things are not conducive to anyone's health.
01:31:38.920
I remember being out in Iowa for the Iowa caucuses with the breast pump. I was on the air for like
01:31:44.420
10 hours one night because they lost the ballots in some truck. I know Brett Barron, I never got off
01:31:50.040
the air and my breasts were like, they were, they were hurt. And I finally got out of there and, you
01:31:57.220
know, you had to use the breast pump and then poor Abby. I'm like, Abby, she's running around my
01:32:01.860
breast milk. She's had the weirdest resume of anybody in America. She had a planned birthday
01:32:05.980
party for a dog, carry the breast milk. I hope for everybody out there that you get an Abby in
01:32:10.320
your life. Cause it makes all life choices easy. I need one. Yeah. You do. Everyone needs one.
01:32:15.380
Um, but yeah, so, so you have a chapter part three. It's actually more than a chapter.
01:32:19.720
What winning looks like, what, what winning look, what does winning look like?
01:32:24.640
That's a great question. Everyone wants to know, you know, this is a practical guide to winning
01:32:28.300
the culture war. So like, how do we win and how soon can we win? And everybody wants this to be
01:32:33.180
one, you know, next Tuesday. And what I try to tell people is like, yes, I absolutely think we're
01:32:38.780
going to win. I think we're seeing a, a big counter revolution, a big pushback against the
01:32:44.280
left, just like, you know, accelerating all these things. People are finally having, having, have had
01:32:50.020
enough and they're finally standing up. Um, but winning will require a few more of us to, um,
01:32:57.040
kind of remove themselves from mainstream American culture and the sort of like mainstream
01:33:01.560
lifestyle. They want us to live, which are no longer mainstream. We're going to have to kind
01:33:06.640
of win over a few converts to our side and encourage people to yes, get married, like in your twenties,
01:33:14.060
literally like start a family a little bit younger, maybe don't stop at two kids, maybe at a third kid,
01:33:19.900
if you're able to have children, you know, just slowly by slowly by sure. And surely we will win.
01:33:25.140
It's just, they had a hundred year headstart on us and we're just really getting started now.
01:33:30.220
So it's going to be a long-term, a long-term battle, but yeah, I think we are going to win.
01:33:34.420
It's funny. Cause I was just talking to Doug, my husband about the gender madness. And, um,
01:33:39.980
the, there, there was, the doctor was basically saying, my kids are getting to that point where
01:33:44.300
the doctor wants to have like the solo comfort consultation with them. I had that. I think,
01:33:48.540
right. They, they want to find out if the kid's having sex or, you know,
01:33:51.440
on drugs without mom sitting there, which I get, that's fine. And Doug was saying to me,
01:33:55.640
well, what if, you know, what are they, what do they start to like ask him? Are you sure you're
01:33:58.820
a girl? Are you sure you're a boy? And I laugh with my husband, like, I'm pretty sure our kids
01:34:03.960
are perfectly inoculated against that particular drug. Um, they'll be good, but it does require
01:34:10.620
effort. Parents understanding that the school systems nine times out of 10 are against you.
01:34:15.200
And if you're not homeschooling, you got to start working on inoculating your kid,
01:34:19.120
not just against the trans madness, but the race shaming that they do. The, you know, my, my,
01:34:26.000
my kids at my old school in New York city, my boys were forced to write essays and why they're
01:34:30.520
feminists, which I know you understand is not good given what you write about feminism in the book,
01:34:36.100
in which we partially discussed, but you really have to keep them alert to all these things.
01:34:41.220
Yeah. I mean, you have to be careful. You have to tell your, your preschooler, your little boy,
01:34:44.900
you know, don't touch the paint crayons, you know, because they might, they're scouting,
01:34:48.880
they're looking for people for boys who might be a little bit feminine, you know,
01:34:52.360
don't draw a picture of a flower. I mean, it's gotten crazy, but like you said,
01:34:56.220
that actually happened to me at our pediatrician's office. It was my 16 year old son's checkup.
01:35:01.040
And he was literally like in his basketball uniform. He works out. It's very, very obvious
01:35:05.940
that he is a boy. Okay. And the pediatrician kicked me out of the room. This is before I knew
01:35:10.580
this, what happened. And now I don't let them do that anymore. She kicked me out of the room and
01:35:15.080
she asked him, are you comfortable with your gender? Oh my God. So it really did go there.
01:35:20.920
It really happened. I like, that was verbatim. And then she told him about safe sex.
01:35:27.560
All right. I'm a safe sex. I get like, that's okay. Maybe they don't want to talk,
01:35:31.100
but that's interesting. It really did happen with the gender thing. It was even when I was there,
01:35:34.860
some of the questions were, and my daughter's 12, you know, she's sweet. She's young, but
01:35:38.900
they were like, how many times in the last two weeks have you felt alone? And like, there's no
01:35:45.200
hope. And my daughter goes, what? She has no clue. I'm like, yards. She's trying to figure out
01:35:53.160
whether you're depressed. She's like, I'm not depressed. Okay. Move on. But they're very
01:35:57.280
probative. Now they wanted to know if we had a gun in the home. We've done stories about that, but
01:36:00.960
man, those pediatricians, they're all up in your business.
01:36:03.720
Yeah. It's very, I had a very interesting conversation the last time I was there because
01:36:08.420
the questionnaires have been getting more and more detailed. Like you said, these mental health
01:36:12.140
questionnaires, you know, there was like a dropdown list of different genders for my six-year-old
01:36:19.180
daughter to choose from intersex and, you know, everything. And like, they know she's a girl and
01:36:24.960
it does feel like they're kind of like probing for weak spots in a kid where they could offer you a
01:36:30.680
prescription for something. Maybe you're depressed. Maybe you need ADHD medication,
01:36:34.820
you know, and it's just this sort of feels like this process of chipping away
01:36:38.540
at the parents' common sense. It's important. It's, it's good. You're calling attention to this,
01:36:44.480
like all these issues, because some aspects of your life may have a red flag on them and
01:36:48.940
you don't know it. You need, you need somebody to alert you to the fact that this is,
01:36:54.000
this is an indoctrination thing to pay attention. And this is part of the prescription offered in
01:37:00.100
domestic extremists. The domestic, what's the subtitle again? I love the subtitle. Hold on.
01:37:04.900
A practical guide to winning the culture war. Yes, we all need that. Peachy, it's so nice to meet
01:37:11.600
you. I hope this is the first of many. Thank you so much, Megan. I'm a huge fan. Such a pleasure to be
01:37:16.760
here. Oh, thank you. All right. Don't forget by now, domestic extremists, a practical guide
01:37:22.240
to winning the culture war. Tomorrow. We have an interesting guest, Chadwick Moore,
01:37:26.460
the Tucker Carlson biographer, and we will have an update on what's happening with Tucker Carlson
01:37:31.820
and Fox news. So don't miss that. Chadwick Moore will be here tomorrow, which is Thursday. My God,
01:37:39.200
it's Wednesday already. Here we go. Thank you so much for listening.
01:37:45.440
Thanks for listening to the Megan Kelly show. No BS, no agenda, and no fear.
01:37:52.240
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