The Megyn Kelly Show - CNN Host Cuts Trump Spokesperson's Mic, and Bombshell New Bryan Kohberger Reporting, with Howard Blum and Erick Erickson

00:00:00.600 Welcome to The Megyn Kelly Show, live on Sirius XM channel 111 every weekday at noon east.

00:00:11.840 Hey everyone, I'm Megyn Kelly. Welcome to The Megyn Kelly Show. We have two longtime authors

00:00:16.980 on today for their first digital interviews about their new books. I'm very excited for

00:00:22.640 what we're about to bring you. In just a bit, in our second hour, I'm going to be speaking

00:00:26.060 with my old pal Eric Erickson, and he's got some thoughts. Have you seen what happened

00:00:30.660 on CNN with this Casey Hunt? I don't know. I don't actually, I don't really know her. I mean,

00:00:36.880 I've seen her before, but she's a hot mess. And she embarrassed herself. I hate this word,

00:00:42.100 but sometimes it works. She beclowned herself. Scarborough is always using, she beclowned.

00:00:47.320 You know what she did? She beclowned herself. We'll talk about it in just a bit when a Trump

00:00:52.520 spokesperson came on CNN. But we begin with a story that we have been covering here on the

00:00:58.000 MK Show extensively. It's now been 590 days since four University of Idaho students were found

00:01:04.640 savagely murdered. 590 days and still no closure for the families of the young victims. There's not

00:01:11.580 even a trial date set at this point. How can that be? Bestselling author and journalist Howard Bloom

00:01:18.420 has been reporting on this tragedy since day one, like no other. I mean, if you read nothing about

00:01:24.040 this case, read anything Howard Bloom writes. He's been writing for Airmail, which is Graydon Carter's

00:01:29.540 new online publication. It's doing really well. Thanks in large part to Howard. You may remember

00:01:34.220 we featured Howard's reporting in our special series on the murders back in December. You can go back and

00:01:39.100 listen to all five parts, episodes 688 through 692. Howard has done more fantastic reporting on this case

00:01:46.500 for a new book just out today. It's called When the Night Comes Falling, A Requiem for the Idaho

00:01:54.500 Student Murders. Again, it's out today. You can get it right now. I've read it, both read it cover to

00:01:59.140 cover and I listened to the audio too. And it's already rising up the Amazon charts. It's going to

00:02:03.160 be number one, zero doubt in my mind. It'll be on the times bestseller list too. Welcome back to the

00:02:09.500 show, Howard Bloom. This is a great, great book. I'm so glad you wrote it. Nobody's been reporting like you.

00:02:15.360 So, so you put it all. Thank you for your time words. It's always easy to use. Look, it's not

00:02:19.580 like, um, it's not a doorstop book. So it's like manageable. You can read this at the beach

00:02:23.880 in a day or two. And I recommend it because you learn a ton about the case. Let's start with the

00:02:29.380 title. What do you mean a requiem for the Idaho student murders? What was in mind when you were

00:02:34.120 writing that? Well, something that's been lost in the whole coverage of this case and trying to get to

00:02:39.760 the bottom of a perplexing mystery is the lives that were lost. These four young kids, four young

00:02:46.980 children, as a father of three children, uh, your heart has to go out to them. And I wanted to honor

00:02:55.200 them. I wanted to honor the lives, uh, that they lived. Zanna Carnoodle, one of the young women who

00:03:02.300 was killed at her high school graduation, carried a mortar board with her. And it said on the

00:03:07.800 underside for the lives, I will change for the lives I will change. And that struck me all the

00:03:14.220 time. As I was writing this book, I even had it on a note above my desk. You know, these children

00:03:20.900 will never have the opportunity to change these lives. And that affected me. And I wanted to try to

00:03:27.480 do their memory justice. Oh, wow. That's, that's awful. When you think about it, I know just the

00:03:34.180 other day they celebrated, I guess a better word is marked, uh, Kayla Gonsalves is what would have

00:03:41.500 been her 23rd birthday. I'll show you the tape. Um, there was a balloon release by friends and family

00:03:46.740 of hers. This young girl's been dead now going on two years. She should be celebrating her post-college,

00:03:56.900 you know, first career and time with friends. And I was struck by what the family said when they did

00:04:02.520 the balloon release, talking about what, what they think of when they think of, uh, Kaylee J day,

00:04:08.820 which is what they're calling it, which is how she liked to enjoy lunch with a friend or family

00:04:12.680 member. They hope people will do things like this, planning vacations or holidays, trying out a new

00:04:17.320 recipe, treating oneself to mimosas and appetizers at a local restaurant, embarking on a new hiking

00:04:22.920 adventure, witnessing the sunrise, reconnecting with distant friends or family and spreading

00:04:27.880 kindness at a favorite drive through that jives completely Howard with what we know of, of this

00:04:34.060 young woman, how joyful she appeared in every picture, her tight, best friendship with another

00:04:40.260 victim, Maddie Mogan, and just, just how these girls were so young and had it all in front of them

00:04:45.920 when their lives were taken.

00:04:46.840 And you mentioned the families, how they're trying to come to terms with this, but there

00:04:52.380 really are no survivors in this story. This is a story about victims. And as you pointed out in

00:04:58.940 your introduction, you know, there still is no sense of closure for the, for these families.

00:05:04.120 The trial drags on and on and on, uh, the delays are cool, cool. It's a cruelty to the families.

00:05:13.700 It's amazing. I don't understand how you can be so into this case and still not even have a trial

00:05:19.180 date. There's going to be a hearing on June 27th where they're going to try to get one again. But

00:05:23.900 this defense attorney, whose name is Ann Taylor has been doing a very good job of convincing the judge

00:05:29.600 whose last name is judge. So he's judge judge to continue delaying. It's frustrating for those of

00:05:35.960 us who want to see justice, take its course. All right, let's get into, let's get into the substance

00:05:40.120 of the book because you've, I mean, we'll never be able to scratch the surface here because there's

00:05:44.780 a ton of new stuff in here. And just, just for what it's worth audience, the way Howard writes

00:05:49.200 is absolutely, it makes you feel delirious with interest because he just chooses the right adjective

00:05:56.820 and he's very transparent about where, where he's using his own opinion and where he's reporting

00:06:01.240 facts, but has a way of telling the story that is very illuminating. And I think that's one of my

00:06:08.160 things, the favorite things I love about the book, when the night comes falling by Howard Bloom, B L U M.

00:06:14.420 One of the, the big pieces that I learned in, in this, and I don't know how you got it and I won't ask

00:06:19.920 how you got it is you tell us about the conversation, the suspect who's under arrest,

00:06:27.340 Brian Kohlberger now for committing these four murders had with his father, Michael, who had

00:06:33.600 flown from the Poconos, Pennsylvania, all the way across country to Washington state to pick up his

00:06:37.980 son. Some, I don't know a month. It was a month right after the murders, the murders took place

00:06:43.900 November 13th, 2022. The dad flew out there about a month later to get the son and drive back cross

00:06:49.800 country to the Poconos with his kid, who was a teaching assistant at Wash U and also was getting

00:06:57.880 his PhD in criminology there. And you walk us through their exchange. What was on the dad's mind?

00:07:05.060 What was on the son's mind? Who's now in prison awaiting trial. So talk to us a little bit about

00:07:09.400 that. Well, here's this father who makes this trip. His father is 68 years old and he decides to go

00:07:17.100 out to Washington state to then two days later, turn around completely and drive across country with

00:07:23.780 his son. He does this because he's nervous. He's anxious. He is connecting the dots in his mind.

00:07:33.460 He knows his son is a disturbed young man. He knows his son has had problems. He knows his son also lives

00:07:41.940 about 10 miles away where three young women and one young man were killed. And he knows his son has a

00:07:52.080 white Hyundai Elantra. And that just happens to be the car, the model of the car the police are looking

00:07:57.860 for. So he goes out there, not sure what he's going to find. And immediately his son is in a mood and he's

00:08:06.320 seen Brian's moods before. And he knows to sort of go with the flow. He doesn't want to

00:08:12.820 anger him. But as he spends time with Brian, he's very, it is as if he's following footsteps and these

00:08:24.380 footsteps suddenly become bloody footsteps. And he realizes, oh my gosh, my son might very well be

00:08:31.680 involved in this. And yet he also refuses, refuses to make this leap as any parent might, they can't

00:08:39.540 put this on his son. So in a way, Michael Koberger, the father is a victim too. He's one of the

00:08:47.800 characters in this story. And I, I structure the book in many ways around this trip. It's sort of,

00:08:55.480 you know, like Homer's Odyssey, a long voyage, which is going to have a lot of traumatic events.

00:09:02.480 And here as the father's is coming, the fears are coming closer and closer into focus in the father's

00:09:09.580 mind. The car is stopped once by a state police, actually a sheriff's deputy in Indiana. And then

00:09:19.720 nine minutes later by another sheriff's deputy, a state trooper, and he, the father is now realizing

00:09:27.500 perhaps this is it. Perhaps everything I was thinking about is true and it becomes clearer and

00:09:34.220 clearer. And then when the car is stopped, what's the first thing the father blurts out

00:09:38.880 to the law enforcement people who are stopping the car? He talks about a shooting in the Washington

00:09:47.480 State University that happened earlier that day. It's what's on his mind. All this violence

00:09:53.480 out in the West is coming together and he feels something malevolent is happening. And he begins

00:10:00.000 to fear as they make this cross country journal journey. He begins to fear with greater certainty

00:10:05.880 that his son is involved in it and he doesn't quite know what to do.

00:10:10.540 Hmm. It's something to consider that the father to, of course, now in retrospect, when you think

00:10:17.960 about it, the father to was suspicious of his son. You know, we hear that all these facts,

00:10:24.120 knowing that Brian Kohlberger was later arrested for these crimes. And then you hear that his father

00:10:29.840 had gotten him at college, was driving him back home. The cops will not the cops, but the FBI,

00:10:34.300 this is one of the points you make in the book, was already on to him, um, was aware, was following.

00:10:39.820 But of course the father would have suspicions. Of course the father knew about the quadruple murder,

00:10:44.660 right? You know, 10 miles from where his son was a TA and getting his PhD. He's got to know the son is

00:10:51.060 weird to, to just put it very mildly. He's off, very off socially. And we heard the detail prior to the

00:11:01.140 book about how Brian, the son rerouted the trip home. They had something all set that the shortest

00:11:07.800 distance between two lines is a straight one, right? And two points is a straight line and how

00:11:12.280 Brian had changed it. Suddenly he wanted it to go a much more circuitous route home, but you really lay

00:11:17.700 some details in there about how angry he was about the dad pushing back on that at all and how the

00:11:25.540 father had to handle him so gingerly. He knew he was dealing with the powder keg of a man.

00:11:33.480 It's also interesting that this was not the father's first trip out, uh, with his son. He came out

00:11:40.560 when Brian registered at the beginning of the term, he made the cross country trip with him. Now the

00:11:45.560 father is 68 years old. The family has had financial problems. They've been bankrupt twice. They went into

00:11:51.900 bankruptcy proceedings. And yet he feels he still has to go with a 28 year old young man to be with him

00:11:59.980 on this trip. Even when he's registering, he doesn't want his son to be alone at the crossroads. And what

00:12:06.360 does his father do when he's out there? He goes to one of Brian's neighbors and says, you know, my son has a

00:12:12.180 hard time making friends. Can you help him out? And this neighbor invites Brian to a pool party, which I talk

00:12:19.040 about in the book. And that's really Brian's first trip to Moscow, Idaho. The, um, conversation they

00:12:27.280 have relating to and the revelations about Brian Kohlberger's problems in his TA position are

00:12:36.320 absolutely fascinating. So it was far worse for Brian Kohlberger in the weeks leading up to the murders

00:12:44.780 of these four university of Idaho students on November 13th. And also Brian's return to the

00:12:51.220 Poconos in early December with his dad. Then I knew until I read your book, he tell us about the

00:12:58.040 problems Brian was having in the TA role and about the fact that he revealed a lot of what he did know

00:13:04.360 to the dad. What you have to begin with, I think, to understand how dramatic this was for Brian

00:13:12.360 is where he came up from. He was an academic success story. He reinvented his life. He came from being a

00:13:19.140 heroin addict at a junior college, gets into a graduate from DeSalle, and then he gets into a first

00:13:27.660 great graduate program at a Washington State University. And he's on his way to be a doctorate. And then in the

00:13:36.340 course of his first term as a teaching assistant, the students start to complain. They don't like the

00:13:42.440 way he's treating them. They feel he's treating the women in a chauvinistic way. He always has to have

00:13:49.280 the last say. He's marking too strictly. And the professor who's handling his course, he's working

00:13:57.040 for Professor John Snyder, calls him in for a meeting. And what does Brian do? He blows his top.

00:14:05.200 He really doesn't want to discuss it, but he exacerbates matters. And the professor, who was a

00:14:11.980 lawyer before coming to teach at Washington State, starts making a paper trail, sending letters to the

00:14:19.160 administration, that we might have a problem here, whatever. Finally, on November 2nd, just 11 days

00:14:29.220 before the murders, he's given sort of an ultimatum by the authorities of Washington State, get your act

00:14:37.180 together or you're going to lose your teaching assistant job. Now, for Brian to lose this, it's not

00:14:43.080 just a job. It's the tuition that allows him to go to graduate school. It's the opportunity to reinvent

00:14:50.200 his life from the hard, scrabble life he was leading as a youth in the Poconos to become Professor Brian

00:14:58.740 Koberger, become a forensic psychologist. And this was a shock to his already tentative system. I mean,

00:15:10.500 Brian is always living every day on tender hooks, and now it becomes even worse. So while he's driving

00:15:19.280 across country with his father, he begins to reveal, and this was related to me by people who

00:15:25.680 have spoken with Brian's father, Michael Koberger, that he's in a bit of trouble. That's how he describes

00:15:31.300 it at the university. But Brian tells his father, I'm going to have the last laugh. You know, they can't

00:15:38.440 just get rid of me. I'm going to be able to have a disciplinary hearing, and I will make my case,

00:15:45.080 and I will be able to continue teaching. And I believe until the moment he's arrested,

00:15:50.600 he still believes that he's going to get away with things, and he's going to be back teaching in the

00:15:55.360 next semester at Washington State University. He believes that he still is the smartest person in

00:16:01.220 the room, and he can out-talk with these professors, because in his heart, he feels he's done nothing

00:16:06.520 wrong. He's always right. He's trying to spin it to his dad as if these are weak-kneed students who

00:16:16.180 just don't like tough grading, and, you know, they're basically just snowflakes. And I'm a tough grader,

00:16:23.740 and meanwhile, it looked like he was harassing a couple of the young female students. He had zero

00:16:31.820 tolerance for conflicting viewpoints. He was disdainful of these students. I mean, all the

00:16:37.080 things that you would expect if this guy really is a quadruple murderer, he wasn't perfectly normal

00:16:43.300 in the classroom. He was odd, to put it mildly. And these students actually spoke up en masse to

00:16:50.900 the professor, Snyder, saying, there's something wrong with this guy. And Snyder, when he started to

00:16:55.320 kick the tires, seems to have found, you're right. And that's just it. Brian's behavior did not go

00:17:01.600 unnoticed. And the students that he was teaching picked up on it. There was something really off,

00:17:09.640 something really wrong, and he couldn't hide it. And this is what he was living with. He wanted to be

00:17:16.800 something else. He wanted to fit in. He wanted to, he reinvented his life, and he wanted to live this

00:17:24.080 life he once had imagined. But he also was intelligent enough to realize that this was an

00:17:30.300 impossibility to him. He could not make this complete leap. And that was the tortured state

00:17:36.440 that he was living in. So most of us, if we were, if our tuition were getting paid by this school,

00:17:43.000 there at the school, liking us was the difference between us being able to get the PhD and not

00:17:47.800 because they can, can't cut your scholarship at any time, would shape up if we were sat down

00:17:54.700 by our professor, nevermind the department head, and said and told, shape up or we're going to ship

00:18:00.520 you out. He didn't do that. Professor Snyder called him in. And you write about how the Snyder,

00:18:06.000 he was astonished that Kohlberger started arguing with him as opposed to just saying, I'm sorry,

00:18:11.660 I'll do better. I'll resolve. The department head seems to have had a similar experience with him

00:18:15.780 where instead of being apologetic or falling on his sword, he was irascible. And then ultimately,

00:18:23.040 that when they reach sort of an accord, okay, he's going to try to do better and keep this position.

00:18:29.460 You write about his self-sabotage about how he couldn't do it.

00:18:34.580 He was just incapable of it at that point where he thought maybe he's fooled them that he can stay on

00:18:41.180 and then became more aggressive to some of the women in the class. And at one point,

00:18:46.780 one of the young women in his class said, related to the college authorities, that he followed her

00:18:53.260 to her car and he acted in, she said, quote, an aggressive, unquote, manner. And that was just the

00:19:01.420 straw that broke the administration back. They said, we've got to get rid of this guy.

00:19:07.120 And they sent him a letter. The problem is when the letter reached his home in Washington State

00:19:13.480 University, he was already on this car trip across America with his father. And he was lecturing his

00:19:19.660 father or hectoring his father, how he was going to ultimately be able to go back because he was

00:19:26.800 smarter than they were. And he would have a hearing and he would argue his case so successfully that they

00:19:32.140 would have to bow to his superior intelligence. In the midst of all of this, he allegedly committed

00:19:38.900 four murders. That's what's so fascinating about the book and the story in general. Again, the book's

00:19:44.200 called When the Night Comes Falling by Howard Bloom, B-L-U-M. He's going through all of this and you're

00:19:51.580 getting a real profile of who we believe is a killer and what he's going through in his private and

00:19:57.400 personal life. His slow downward spiral in his TA position, his inability to control his anger

00:20:04.320 and defensiveness, even to his own peril. Like he knows what's going to happen if he continues pissing

00:20:10.440 off his department chair and so on. They've made it very clear. He just can't stop himself.

00:20:16.100 As you, as you write, he, he unleashed the full force of his considerable fury. And that was ultimately

00:20:24.600 with the women and so on. When the department sent him that note, the department chair sent him an

00:20:29.020 email. You're, I'm reading from your book here, requesting that they meet. You write, this was

00:20:32.760 most likely a summons to the gallows. But before this execution could take place, Brian quite

00:20:38.460 effectively placed the noose around his own neck. Several of his female students reported to the

00:20:42.740 department that Brian was making them feel uncomfortable. In fact, the creepy TA had even

00:20:47.440 followed one woman to her car. Now there was nothing further to discuss. Brian's TA job was over.

00:20:53.320 Mr. Kohlberger, I am writing this letter to formally inform you of the termination of your teaching

00:20:58.580 assistantship with the department of criminal justice and criminology effective December 31st,

00:21:04.100 2022. But this, as you point out, was never received by him. He had already left the campus

00:21:10.940 and was driving back to Pennsylvania. But Howard, by the time she sent this, if the prosecution is

00:21:16.920 correct in this case, he had gone from having troubles in his TA job to murdering four students

00:21:23.440 in cold blood at the neighboring university to back in with his superintendent, his director,

00:21:29.040 on whether he could improve his behavior and then peaced out of there back to the Poconos.

00:21:34.300 I mean, you can imagine the chaos that was going on in his internal structure in his mind. And he was

00:21:40.840 always trying to become something better. And yet every time he succumbs to who he is, even on the nights

00:21:49.800 of the murders, I believe that Kohlberger was still not stalking the house, but he was trying to find the

00:21:58.640 will to cross over that threshold and to make the ideas in his mind become a reality. And he kept on fighting

00:22:06.500 against it. He would go up towards the murder house and then he would drive off, up to the murder house

00:22:11.720 and then he would drive off. It was a colossal battle of wills. And when he finally turns off the key in

00:22:17.120 his car and parks and makes up his mind, requires the strength of Hercules to do this. But he decided

00:22:24.660 at this point to give in to the demons. And I believe he grabs the knife sheath and parks on the top of the

00:22:32.140 hill above King Road and starts walking down on the cold, frosty ground and making his way towards

00:22:40.400 the kitchen door, back door of the house. So this is a new way of looking at the evidence. I thought

00:22:47.700 this was interesting, too. We knew, according to the police, that he had cased the house. That's

00:22:52.860 kind of how we saw it, that this white Hyundai Elantra, we believe was his, it still has to be proven,

00:22:58.040 had cased the joint three times or so before the actual moment of the murders, which the cops are

00:23:02.900 putting at around 4.02 a.m. And your theory, having studied this more than any outsider, you know,

00:23:11.480 outside of law enforcement that I know, is that it wasn't a casing. That he was, this was a man who,

00:23:20.200 other than his heroin addiction, had not led a life of violating the law and was in PhD studies

00:23:26.940 to, you know, work against criminals and try to understand them and help law enforcement,

00:23:33.560 figuring out whether he could cross it in a profound and before and after way.

00:23:38.160 If he were actually casing it, he would have noticed all the cars in the driveway, a house

00:23:45.380 full of people. He might have wondered if there were people he would have a physical confrontation

00:23:51.520 with that he couldn't overcome. He also would have noticed a DoorDash driver coming at 4 a.m.,

00:23:57.620 delivering food to Zana, and he would have known that she was probably still awake. I don't think

00:24:03.920 any of these more reasonable thoughts entered his mind. I think he was, it was an internal dialogue

00:24:10.640 between Brian and his demons, and that was driving him back and forth that night until he crosses that

00:24:17.540 threshold into complete mania. The other theory that you reveal in here made a lot of headlines

00:24:22.840 is that you believe that this actually was about one victim. This is something we've all wondered,

00:24:31.440 and I apologize to the audience. I should have just offered a few details about the crime at the top

00:24:34.600 of the hour. I just assumed familiarity because our, our viewers have heard us cover this so often,

00:24:39.280 but it was a murder of four young students at the University of Idaho. We believe by this TA

00:24:45.520 slash PhD student at a neighboring university. Um, and the four students were two best friends,

00:24:51.860 uh, Kaylee and Maddie, who are there on the left in the, uh, Maddie's up on the shoulders of Kaylee

00:24:58.120 there in this picture of all the roommates who live there. Zana Kernodal, who's over there on screen,

00:25:02.580 right with her boyfriend, Ethan's arm around her. Those two were killed. They were on the second floor.

00:25:07.700 The two blondes, Kaylee and Maddie were up on the third floor in a bed together. They were lifelong

00:25:12.920 best friends. And these two gals on the left and the right were surviving roommates when they were

00:25:18.400 surviving roommates in this. And the one Dylan who's on the left would be an eyewitness as well.

00:25:23.340 So you believe just for the viewing audience who's watching this with us on YouTube, that Maddie,

00:25:28.080 who was on the top of that, of show of Kaylee shoulders was the target of this attack. Why?

00:25:35.160 When Kohlberger went to the house, he had no idea. I believe that Kaylee was there. He goes in on the

00:25:44.340 second, because Kaylee wasn't living in the house really at that point. Uh, she was living up north

00:25:50.500 in Cordillen. Uh, she was just in for the weekend to show off her new car. Uh, he goes in on through

00:25:58.120 the second floor kitchen sliding door. If he was intent on just killing, he would have gone into

00:26:04.840 any of the two bedrooms on the second floor, but he is on a deliberate path. He makes his way upward

00:26:10.600 and goes into Maddie's bedroom. And he then finds that there are two young women there, two young blonde,

00:26:17.620 pretty women. And his only target originally was Maddie. Kaylee tries to back away. She fights back

00:26:27.320 and she becomes in a grim, gruesome way, collateral damage. I believe, you know, according to the

00:26:35.180 prosecution and defense, they both have stated categorically in the courtroom that there's no

00:26:40.980 evidence of Kohlberger having any interaction with any of the victims, either in person or on social

00:26:47.500 media, uh, prior to the killings. And that Kohlberger, who was a vegan, went to the Mad Greek restaurant,

00:26:55.200 which specialized in vegan food in Moscow. There weren't too many places to get it. And he met

00:27:00.500 Maddie, who was a waitress there. He didn't even have to speak with her. He was a man who lived by

00:27:05.900 obsessions. Look at his, his decision to become a heroin addict, then to break it, to become the best

00:27:11.840 criminologist. Uh, he did things with extremes and he became, for whatever reason, obsessed by her

00:27:19.500 beauty, her exuberance, her vibaciousness. And he focused on her. And I believe he went by the house on

00:27:26.900 sometimes, saw her. I believe the house was a party house. Uh, we've all seen the videos of the police

00:27:34.600 coming there and the kids interacting with them. And there's something, you know, full of poignancy in those

00:27:42.260 videos. The kids being kids, the cops being rough town cops, uh, sort of the dynamic, the dialectic of

00:27:49.140 how kids and cops interact on a college campus. But Kohlberger is outside of this. And it was a

00:27:56.700 constant rebuke. He had done everything possible, traveled, you know, millions of miles in his own

00:28:02.980 mental vision from this kid on the periphery of events in high school, becoming a heroin addict,

00:28:10.520 to now being a teaching assistant at a celebrated university and a celebrated department at that

00:28:17.880 university. And yet he still couldn't quite get into the thing of the swing of things. He still was

00:28:26.620 an outsider and his outsider. This was a constant insult to him. And that pushed him, I believe,

00:28:35.160 into what is a, can only be described as, uh, uh, a mania, uh, to, to want to, to want to feel that

00:28:44.460 he can't live in this world, that these constant rebukes, uh, to him are going to be living in it too.

00:28:51.180 Hmm. That, I mean, it's a stunning theory and it actually makes a lot of sense if you think about

00:28:55.320 it, because you're right. Kaylee wasn't even supposed to be there that night. Maddie did work

00:28:59.920 at this mad Greek restaurant. Zana did too. Uh, Zana Kornodal, who was another one of the victims,

00:29:05.140 she was there with her boyfriend, which, you know, I mean, they've been inseparable,

00:29:10.480 inseparable from what we heard. And he walked past Zana's bedroom. Did he not Howard to get to Maddie's

00:29:17.160 room? He just goes right by. And I also believe that if Ethan and Zana had not come out, I mean,

00:29:27.440 Ethan, after, after the murders, they hear the noise. Uh, Ethan goes out to confront Koberger and

00:29:34.120 before he can even say anything, Koberger slashes out, uh, with his knife and gets, uh, Ethan across

00:29:41.100 the neck. Ethan is 6'4", an athlete. And he, he was a wonderful young man, full of, uh, vitality,

00:29:49.600 full of vivaciousness, a sort of, uh, happy-go-lucky, uh, life of the party person. And Koberger snuffs him

00:29:57.120 out. Then Zana speaks up or starts crying. And Koberger, in one chilling moment, says to her,

00:30:05.460 don't worry, I'm not going to hurt you. And of course, he moves in and, and, and kills her. Uh,

00:30:13.200 she has a defensive wound on her hand. The, the knife penetrates her, her palm. Uh, she's trying,

00:30:20.100 uh, it's shoved so strongly, so savagely at her, uh, but she succumbs. And then after killing those two,

00:30:29.780 he walks out of, towards the second floor. He's heading towards the sliding door, trying to leave.

00:30:38.740 And there is, uh, Dylan, uh, Dylan sees him. And she can't speak. She's locked in a,

00:30:47.660 I believe, a, as she describes it in the police affidavit, I think a shock state of fright.

00:30:53.860 But at the same time, uh, Brian in his, is, is locked in his own sort of armory of hate.

00:31:04.580 And if she had spoken up, uh, she might've been, you know, penetrated, uh, this protective barrier

00:31:11.400 that he'd wrapped around himself, this, this narrow focused vision. Uh, and I think she would

00:31:16.740 have become a victim too. I think her silence saved her life. Oh, wow. The, I want to, and I'm going to

00:31:25.860 get back to the roommate in a second, but the timeline for the murders is so compressed. You know,

00:31:33.020 we know that they didn't happen before 4am because as you point out that the door dash driver was there

00:31:37.840 dropping off food to Zana. And so they believe it started at four Oh two when Zana and Ethan

00:31:44.380 presumably would have been awake and in their room eating the food delivery. And then I thought the

00:31:51.700 timeline was to four 18, which I think is when we see the Hyundai Elantra leaving there, but it,

00:31:57.840 it may be even more compressed than that down to like four 10, four Oh eight. You go ahead. You take

00:32:04.920 it. Yes. It's about four, four Oh two to four. Oh eight to four 12. They're not exactly sure,

00:32:11.800 but it's whatever it is. I mean, the point you're making is so accurate. It was such a short amount

00:32:17.520 of time. Uh, it was such, you know, and he wasn't a trained assassin. Uh, and yet he was,

00:32:24.240 one can only imagine if Kohlberger was the assailant filled with so much rage that he was able to

00:32:30.460 do this work with so much manic energy, so much manic vicious viciousness. Uh, it's a horrific crime.

00:32:40.120 You've got four victims potentially in the course of eight minutes. And you write in the book that

00:32:46.460 that would be two minutes per person to commit these murders, to, to take out these young promising

00:32:54.000 lives by a guy who, as far as we know, as far as we know, has never killed before the, um, you,

00:33:01.060 you spent some time as potentially a weakness of the prosecution's case on something we've talked

00:33:05.940 about before. And that is the difference in the coroner's descriptions of how at least three out of the

00:33:12.260 four were killed. And I wondered if you wanted to say anything about that here, you, you say, um,

00:33:19.860 okay, they, uh, they talk about the corner. It writes about how Kaylee and Maddie, uh, were killed

00:33:26.680 and suffered visible stab wounds quoting here from the corner, the cover suffered visible stab wounds.

00:33:32.760 I think we all can understand what those are yet on the floor below second floor,

00:33:38.540 Zana succumb to quote wounds caused by an edged weapon, which isn't the same thing as a visible

00:33:45.880 stab wound. It sounds to me like they maybe slit her throat. That's, I don't know. And then just to

00:33:51.680 finish it off, Ethan's wounds are described as quote caused by sharp focus injuries. I don't know what

00:33:58.540 that means. Caused by injuries caused by, but walk us through that, that, that those details.

00:34:02.660 I think, you know, you're, you're making, I think the defense is one of the defense's best case,

00:34:09.720 uh, that the coroner's report was so inexact. Uh, there were lots of screw-ups in this case.

00:34:19.000 And I think the coroner's inexactitude was one of them. I don't, you know, he lays the coroner,

00:34:26.580 or she actually, I think the coroner is she, she's a former nurse in town, uh, lays open the

00:34:31.500 possibility for the defense to raise that. Maybe there were other assassins involved,

00:34:36.400 maybe other weapons. Uh, but I don't think, I don't think that's the case. I think it's just

00:34:41.220 poor use of language. The point that you're making about the differences will be made by the defense

00:34:47.740 in court and they will try to drive it at home to raise doubts in the jury's mind.

00:34:53.400 Right. Like how could, how could one man have done this one, as far as we know,

00:34:57.420 not trained assassin who, you know, worked for the CIA for years, it's one 28 year old man.

00:35:03.160 And if he did do it, where were the, where were the injuries on him? Because there's evidence that

00:35:10.600 at least two of the victims fought. So where are the defensive wounds? Well, where are the,

00:35:16.560 the attack wounds on Brian Kohlberger? There are no scratches on Brian Kohlberger.

00:35:21.580 What the prosecution believes I've discovered is that prior to the murders, uh, Kohlberger had bought,

00:35:30.380 they contend a blue Dickies work suit, uh, which covers from your ankles, more or less up to your

00:35:38.120 neck. And he wore that work suit on the night of the murders. After the killings, that work suit was

00:35:45.020 probably drenched in blood. According to the prosecution and law enforcement's theory,

00:35:50.060 he took off that work suit, put it in a plastic garbage bag and on his circuitous route back to

00:35:56.840 his, uh, apartment in Washington, somewhere along the way, he dropped it off, threw it in this,

00:36:02.860 in a river. Uh, but they've never found that. And they've never found, uh, the murder weapon. I mean,

00:36:10.400 the prosecution is going to have, I believe, a difficult legal case to make. And, uh, I think

00:36:19.920 defense, they've left defense lots of avenues to pursue lots of avenues, not to raise facts,

00:36:26.840 but to raise doubts. Well, you point out in the book that, um, Kaylee's dad, Steve Gonsalves has been

00:36:35.120 working his own investigation into this case. And he apparently among others got his hands on a grand

00:36:42.360 juror, two of them, two of the grand jurors. And this may be how we know some of these facts,

00:36:47.620 like the Dickies uniform that Brian Kohlberger allegedly purchased and may have been wearing.

00:36:53.400 And like the fact that Brian Kohlberger bought a K bar knife, just like the one used in these murders

00:37:00.640 months before the murders. And interestingly, though, there are reportedly receipts for both

00:37:06.860 of those items and Brian's, you know, accounts, neither one has been found, which in some ways,

00:37:12.860 Howard is even more suspicious than actually finding them. Right. And you raised Steve Gonsalves,

00:37:19.880 uh, Kaylee's dad. I mean, he's a fascinating figure in this entire story. I mean, my, my heart goes out

00:37:27.080 to him. He, you know, as a father of three children, myself, how could you, your heart not break over

00:37:31.940 what he's been through? When, after the events first happened, uh, he says, you send your daughter

00:37:39.460 off to college and she comes back to you in an urn. That's one of the most poignant phrases I've ever

00:37:44.460 heard. And yet I admire him and respect him for the fact that he refuses to give into events. He's not

00:37:52.000 going to just sit back, uh, passively, uh, and let anyone else do it. This was his daughter and he's

00:37:58.300 determined as best he can to get to the bottom of things. And even now, uh, well, I think he believes

00:38:07.600 the suspect has been caught. He's still filled with a desire, not just for, for justice, but also for

00:38:15.980 retribution and vengeance. I mean, he, he and his family members, uh, support the Idaho law for a

00:38:23.060 firing squad, uh, for execution, uh, on a, a guilty verdict. If the chemicals needed for a chemical

00:38:29.620 execution cannot be found again, he is co-worker's father is, these are all victims of this story.

00:38:38.720 This is a story, uh, where there are, as I keep on saying, no survivors. Uh, everyone has been

00:38:45.420 victimized. An entire town has been victimized. For the record, Brian Kohlberger denies having

00:38:51.380 committed these crimes and has asserted in court that he has some sort of an alibi, something we've

00:38:57.080 discussed at length on the show. It seems incredibly flimsy, flimsy. He doesn't really have an alibi.

00:39:01.380 His lawyer saying, as far as I can glean, he just likes to drive around at night. And that's why

00:39:06.360 his car, when he wasn't at his apartment at the time, the murders were taking place. We'll learn more

00:39:11.880 if we ever actually see a trial on this never ending, uh, pre-trial motions, if they end in an

00:39:17.460 actual trial. Um, let's talk about Dylan because she's the eyewitness the police had in their back

00:39:23.540 pocket and eyewitness of sorts. She didn't see him commit murders, but she described a man who

00:39:29.540 matches Kohlberger's description with the bushy eyebrows and a COVID type mask in her apartment,

00:39:34.080 in her house on the night of the murders. We believe this was as he was leaving post murders.

00:39:38.840 And what I didn't fully understand the way this has been reported, but she and the other roommate

00:39:46.180 who was not an eyewitness, but was also there, was she also there? I don't know why I'm forgetting

00:39:52.260 this, but they were texting during the midst of the murders, Howard. Well, according to what I've

00:39:58.340 heard, I'm according to what was given to the grand jury. They were, they were concerned about the

00:40:05.680 noise. At the same time, you know, you're asking, I'm asking, the defense will ask all sorts of

00:40:14.360 reasonable, rational questions. You know, how could you not say anything? How, how could you not pick up

00:40:19.820 the phone and call 9-1-1? These are not rational moments. Uh, these are, uh, I, I, I believe,

00:40:28.700 you know, Dylan was, as she describes it in a state of shock, uh, and frozen, frozen state of shock and

00:40:44.180 fright. And she just couldn't respond. And her mind was not making sense of events. It's incredible

00:40:51.700 that she waited, you know, to the next morning to make a call. And she doesn't even call the police

00:40:57.120 even at that point, she still, she calls friends, uh, at one of the fraternities, uh, and they come

00:41:04.060 down and one of, uh, Ethan's friends makes the, uh, 9-1-1 call, uh, to the police. Uh, these are all

00:41:12.040 incredible events. It's one of the reasons why this entire story has, I think, captivated and perplexed

00:41:21.080 so many people because it's not nice and neat, but when you see things on a television movie,

00:41:27.580 for example, but there are a lot of things that really don't make sense because a night like that

00:41:33.960 doesn't make sense. And that's sort of why I called the book, when the night comes falling,

00:41:39.520 when the night came falling on, uh, that night and that morning on November 12th into the 13th,

00:41:45.940 chaos, madness, the old rain silence about this only makes sense to me. If she did not know what

00:41:54.660 was happening, if she didn't think that anybody was in danger, if she thought this was a guy visiting

00:41:59.400 one of the roommates, she's annoyed. She's texting with the other roommate. They're so loud.

00:42:04.160 They're annoying. That would make sense to me. That's how young people behave like, God, shut up.

00:42:09.040 It's four in the morning, having zero idea. They're being killed. And that then when she saw

00:42:17.060 Brian leaving, she thought this was an invited guest and not a killer. That would make perfect

00:42:22.320 sense to me. It doesn't line up with what's in the police affidavit, however.

00:42:27.480 No, I think the scenario that you are saying makes sense. I think her realization at the same time,

00:42:36.600 who's very much like Michael Coburg is in the sense that they have intimations of what's going,

00:42:43.200 but they refuse to make the leap because the leap is too horrific. It's too horrific for her

00:42:48.680 to make this leap that this guy is not just an, a party reveler who's leaving the house if they've

00:42:55.860 been whatever, pulling around upstairs. Uh, but he actually is a murderer and that sends her

00:43:02.520 trying to make that thought process into a complete detachment. It's the same sort of detachment

00:43:10.000 that Michael Kohlberger does, uh, when he realizes in his mind that, oh my gosh, my son might've been

00:43:16.700 involved in these murders. So instead of taking a step forward, they both take a step back.

00:43:21.880 Well, this leads me to one of the most interesting things in this book and it's Melissa. Melissa is

00:43:30.940 Brian Kohlberger's older sister. And much like Michael Kohlberger, who you write in the book,

00:43:38.180 seems to have had suspicions about his son from the start, long before the cops knew the name Brian

00:43:43.620 Kohlberger. Melissa too had reason to suspect him and spoke to the dad, Michael about it. Tell us about

00:43:53.080 her. Well, Melissa is a family psychologist and she's like we all were reading the papers. She knows

00:44:01.680 her brother who's had problems, who was a heroin addict, who has violent, uh, tempers, tantrums,

00:44:09.080 and he's just a little weird, is out there. He lives 10 miles from the, where the killings occurred.

00:44:17.780 And he happens to be driving a white Hyundai Elantra. And that just happens to be the car the

00:44:23.280 police are looking for. Uh, you know, she has her psychology degree. She's able to put the pieces

00:44:29.900 together. And when she finally comes back for the Christmas holiday and she sees her brother

00:44:35.700 meticulously cleaning his, his, his Hyundai, uh, seeing him. At one point she sees him taking his

00:44:42.780 back garbage and keeping it separate from the family. He's put it into plastic bags and, you know,

00:44:48.580 two and two make four. And she confronts the father. And the father is now has his daughter

00:44:54.940 articulated all the thoughts that were simmering, coming into realization in his own mind. And there

00:45:03.740 suddenly he's given them, someone is telling them that everything you've been thinking is true is in

00:45:10.360 fact true. And the only thing he can do when confronted with this is do what Dylan does. He

00:45:16.340 sort of walks back into his room. He walks off just the way she walks back into the room. They don't

00:45:22.600 want to deal with this overpowering reality. It is. How, how could process any of that, that your son

00:45:30.660 may have committed this kind of heinous crime you write in the book as follows about Melissa.

00:45:36.980 Then there was, okay, there he was in the kitchen late at night, sorting his day's personal detritus

00:45:42.200 into plastic Ziploc bags. And though she had not set out to spy and afterward wished she had never

00:45:48.920 seen it at all. There was her brother sneaking out after midnight, like a man on a mission. He walked

00:45:54.920 down the long drive in the starlit chill to deposit the family's trash bags in a next door neighbor's

00:46:01.060 bins. When she put a name and purpose to all she'd been witnessing, it left her shaking. At last though,

00:46:08.720 Melissa found the will to share her increasingly certain deduction with her father. Michael listened

00:46:14.280 and yet he could not respond. A long agonized silence filled the room until at last he turned his back

00:46:22.760 and walked away. And it would have had to have been within days of that, Howard, that they were all

00:46:29.900 woken up in the middle of the night by the police, guns drawn, arresting Brian Kohlberger.

00:46:37.820 Right. And there's an irony to that because it was Michael's DNA that the police had that connected

00:46:44.960 him to the knife sheet. So the father, in effect, his DNA caught his son. He was trying to escape from that.

00:46:52.440 And yet it was almost like a Greek tragedy. He couldn't. It was an exhilarating drawn to that, that he was

00:46:59.700 going to be the one to condemn his son.

00:47:02.660 Yes, because of genetic genealogy, which is another revelation in the book about how the FBI knew it was

00:47:08.100 Brian Kohlberger or suspected him. Thanks to genetic genealogy, there was a touch DNA on the knife sheath.

00:47:13.720 Thanks to genetic genealogy, they traced it to someone related to Michael Kohlberger, which led them to

00:47:19.440 Brian and they didn't share it with the local cops. There's all sorts of interesting details on why

00:47:26.620 and theories as well that you're going to want to read. Again, the book is called When the Night Comes

00:47:31.260 Falling, A Requiem for the Idaho Student Murders by Howard Bloom. Please check it out. It's available now

00:47:37.780 in whatever form you want. As I said, I already consumed it twice and recommend it to all. Howard, thank you.

00:47:43.580 Thank you. Pleasure talking with you, Megan. My gosh, such a horrific crime. And again, on 627, we'll find out,

00:47:51.060 we think, whether they're going to set a trial date anytime soon. Fingers crossed.

00:47:58.260 The first presidential debate, and, you know, honestly, possibly the only, we'll see whether they do the one

00:48:03.760 in September between Donald Trump and Joe Biden is just two days away. I'm psyched. I'm looking forward

00:48:10.660 to this. I can't wait. I can't believe they're actually doing it. And it's taking place in the

00:48:15.400 state of my next guest, who says the problems in America run deeper than politics. Isn't that the

00:48:21.740 truth? That we are in the midst of a spiritual crisis. Eric Erickson is the host of the Eric Erickson

00:48:28.020 Show and the author of the brand new book, You Shall Be As Gods, Pagans, Progressives,

00:48:35.180 and the Rise of the Woke Gnostic Left, which is out today. He joins me now. Eric, hi. Great to see you

00:48:40.720 again. You too. Thanks for having me. I'm glad one of us is excited about Grumpy Old Men Part 3.

00:48:46.600 Yeah, I want to see it. I want to see what happens between them. I'm so fascinated to see whether Joe Biden

00:48:52.080 actually... You like to watch train wrecks, don't you? Yes, of course. Everybody does. That's why the

00:48:56.400 traffic slows down because we want to see what's happening, what happened. Oh, I mean, the worst of

00:49:01.580 us comes out, right, where we're like, oh, that's it. And then you remember, no, no, I'm supposed to

00:49:04.420 be happy that that's it. That's OK. Check it. No, I want to see my main things are I want to see

00:49:10.820 whether Joe Biden can do it. I really do, because I don't I know the media has been in overdrive and

00:49:16.360 the campaign has to trying to convince us that he's had no senior moments, that these are, quote,

00:49:21.000 cheap fakes, according to Kareem Jean-Pierre. I that's a lie. It's not to say no one's ever taken

00:49:27.140 a Biden moment out of context, but there have been scores of Biden senior moments.

00:49:33.640 What I couldn't care less whether one or two are misrepresented. We know the man is having

00:49:37.980 some serious age related impairment. So I'm very interested in whether he can do it. This isn't like

00:49:44.840 a State of the Union where he just has to read. He has to be nimble. He has to fight. He has to

00:49:50.120 respond to Trump's attacks. No notes. Right. Exactly. And no help from your team,

00:49:55.420 even in the breaks. And I'm also interested to see whether Trump can do it. Trump has gotten a

00:50:01.820 little rambly in his older age. That is a fair criticism of him. He, too, forgets words here

00:50:07.040 and there, but it's nothing on the scale of what we've seen from Biden. But we saw him during his

00:50:11.000 first presidential debate in 2020 not be able to keep himself composed. You know, the the old joke

00:50:17.380 that, you know, your kids say, knock, knock, who's there interrupting? Moo. Right. Like,

00:50:22.280 like you, he wasn't able to hold himself together. He had to keep interrupting Biden. I realize they're

00:50:27.640 going to turn the mics off. That was a mistake by Joe Biden. He should have insisted that the mics

00:50:31.700 remain on because that hurt Trump. Trump being Trump and to interrupt. He hurts Trump. He should

00:50:37.480 have let him let him hurt himself, give him enough rope if that's what he wants to do. In any event,

00:50:42.220 I'd like to see whether Trump can contain himself and also whether he's good Trump or mean Trump or a

00:50:48.880 combination of both. Right. If he could be charming Trump, it would be such a huge win. But if Biden's

00:50:54.700 being a douchebag, then he needs to be a little douchey himself. Right. The crass analysis. Anyway,

00:51:00.520 those are all the reasons I'm excited. What do you think? Yeah, look, I agree with you. In fact,

00:51:05.300 I know Maggie Haberman from The New York Times has reported, but a bunch of others now have as well,

00:51:09.460 that Trump is actually mindful. He interrupted too much in the first debate. There's a big story

00:51:14.940 out of The New York Times today about the Biden prep, that it's kind of free form and they're

00:51:20.340 going over. It's amazing. But Biden is it's impossible to predict Donald Trump. It's hard

00:51:27.940 to game play against him where Biden's actually fairly predictable. And if Trump doesn't come off

00:51:34.760 like a brain biblical donkey, so to speak, on on stage and Biden has a senior moment, I think Trump

00:51:39.700 wins. Well, that's the other thing. It's like someone could emerge the winner and someone someone

00:51:46.740 could lose the debate. If somebody emerges the clear loser, that will make massive news. If Biden

00:51:53.160 freezes, I mean, every every campaign staffer will have an oh shit moment. You know, like we we had we

00:52:02.180 just ordered the cardiac, you know, resuscitators might be, you know, those I worry about heart

00:52:09.440 health. They're going to need those for every single one of his staffers. If he has a senior

00:52:13.360 moment at that stage. As an aside, I got to paint the scene here locally for us in Atlanta as well,

00:52:17.800 because while two presidents are at the CNN center debating or Turner broadcast debating just down

00:52:24.080 the street from them will be the U.S. Olympic soccer team in a debut match. So gridlock in the city,

00:52:30.060 nobody's going to be able to get in or out. In fact, CNN asked if I would come be on TV. It's

00:52:34.600 like, absolutely not. There's I don't want to be part of the Donner party getting stuck on the side

00:52:38.340 of the road, unable to escape. It's the whole thing is going to be a mess for those of us in

00:52:43.000 Atlanta. Eric Erickson, you should just done with what my brilliant brother Pete Kelly did. He lives in

00:52:48.940 Atlanta, too. And he arrives here with me. I'm at the beach now in New Jersey, where I go with my

00:52:52.940 family. He arrives here today. Get out of town. Yes, I'm an hour outside the city. I have no

00:52:59.380 desire to go anywhere near the city on Thursday. Yeah, I know. I'm going to watch it on TV,

00:53:04.280 but we're actually going to do live coverage of it for our audience right after. So please tune

00:53:07.340 in for that. YouTube dot com slash Megan Kelly. Let's talk about that New York Times article.

00:53:12.660 I think this is the one you're referring to inside Biden's Camp David debate prep by Katie Rogers.

00:53:17.940 It's so interesting. I have to say, like, good luck. I really feel for his his team. I do. I

00:53:26.800 I'm sure the stakes are very high, but here's a bit from the article. President Biden's aides are

00:53:32.080 working to position him as a campaign season fighter who can counterpunch on the fly and combat

00:53:39.440 voters concerns about his age at Camp David. A movie theater and an airplane hangar have been

00:53:46.040 outfitted with lights and production equipment to create a mock debate stage. At least 16 current and

00:53:52.840 former aides, someone from Washington and Wilmington whiz back and forth on golf carts to join President

00:53:58.640 Biden in strategy sessions. They're now entering the fifth day of preps, hoping he can shake off the

00:54:06.000 rust that often comes with being an incumbent on the defense. Now, as much as I want to mock this,

00:54:12.800 Eric, I can't help but say it's smart. Preparation helps. And I know Trump is saying he's not

00:54:21.460 preparing. I actually hope that that's not true. Look, I know Trump is preparing. He prepares in

00:54:30.120 different ways than Biden. Biden, being a standard predictable politician, he goes through these. But

00:54:34.720 you know, Donald Trump has had a series of meetings with different individuals. He's vetting for vice

00:54:38.900 president for policy reasons to discuss policies he may want to bring up, one liners he may want to

00:54:44.700 bring up. But he doesn't tend to stand and do these. Now, he did with Chris Christie in 2016 and

00:54:49.640 2020. But obviously, that's off the table now. Christie's not helping him. But I don't know.

00:54:54.680 And in his sense, apparently, he doesn't think that those sorts of stand up debates really helped

00:54:59.540 him as much as thinking about one liners, thinking about policies, thinking about responses with Biden,

00:55:05.500 though, he's kind of got to go through the rigors of this to build the stamina in addition to adjusting

00:55:09.940 his sleep schedule so that he can be awake from nine to 11 o'clock on Thursday night. In addition to

00:55:16.360 having his aides come in, remember, historically, every incumbent president has a bad first debate.

00:55:22.720 Jimmy Carter against Reagan, Reagan against Mondale, George H. W. Bush against Clinton,

00:55:28.460 Clinton against Dole. They all tend to have a first bad debate and then they rebound.

00:55:33.780 Biden's debates are so spread out. If he doesn't do a good first debate, it could be fatal to him

00:55:38.380 actually staying on the nomination. Yeah. The Obama first debate in, well, in 2012, right? It was in

00:55:46.640 2012 when he was running for a reelection, was a disaster against Mitt Romney to the point where

00:55:50.620 the papers were reporting about how he went backstage and a lot of his advisors were saying

00:55:54.900 that was not good and he didn't believe them. He was used to being told how wonderful he was his

00:55:59.640 whole life. And Michelle actually pulled him aside and said, you sucked out there tonight.

00:56:03.840 And she was the one who kicked him in the pants to where he had to turn it around and actually put

00:56:07.500 in the work to do better on the next debate. Yeah, it was remarkable. And of course, you know,

00:56:11.760 you had George W. Bush and his George H. W. Bush looking at his watch with in his debate. It's first

00:56:18.420 presidents in their first debates tend not to. Ronald Reagan very famously was the one where age

00:56:23.380 caught up with him and he had to come back in the second debate with his won't hold Walter Mondale's

00:56:28.340 youth and inexperience against him as a rebound. And it's tough because you are in the cloistered bubble.

00:56:33.840 Surrounded by yes men all the time. But to a degree, Donald Trump living in Mar-a-Lago has as well for

00:56:39.340 the last several years. So both men have rust to shake off, not just for age, but for they get

00:56:45.100 surrounded with so many people who always tell them they're infallible and here they're going to be

00:56:48.140 confronted not just with an opponent, but with someone who very viscerally hates his guts on both

00:56:53.340 sides. So Frank Luntz, you know, a mutual former colleague of our both yours and mine at Fox and

00:57:00.680 elsewhere. He does all this, uh, you know, actual polling of focus groups before these big events.

00:57:06.640 And he has an interesting op-ed out talking about how in all the years of him covering these debates

00:57:12.620 and reactions to them, one of his big takeaways is what matters is not so much who wins on the policy

00:57:18.300 exchanges, but who gets like a moment who, who is memorable. And, uh, he wrote about, for example,

00:57:25.600 Trump's line to Hillary. Um, she said something like, if I, if I become president and she said,

00:57:30.320 if Trump becomes president, something, something. And he said, if I become president, you'd be in jail.

00:57:34.940 And while the media class was horrified by it, you know, Oh, he's going to weaponize the justice

00:57:39.460 department against her. Hello. Um, the, he was pointing out that his focus group didn't have that

00:57:46.400 reaction. And that if, if you're just like the memorable one in a way that's something not like

00:57:52.060 interrupting cow, right. But like you have a zinger, you have something that made the people laugh.

00:57:57.980 You had just a moment that made you connect with them. And he was saying the thing about that moment

00:58:02.400 with Trump was it showed Frank's focus group. Here's this outsider. Who's not afraid to throw a

00:58:10.100 brass knuckled punch at this beloved establishment figure of the left. You know, he wasn't afraid to

00:58:18.100 punch below the belt and they, it wasn't so much that they liked crassness. It was just that they

00:58:24.120 liked something very different who would challenge authority for them. Yeah, he's right. And I'm,

00:58:30.740 I'm always impressed with how Frank does the focus groups. And you have that one moment where someone

00:58:35.400 connects, they come across as likable, maybe somewhat empathetic. Like Joe Biden did have a

00:58:40.940 moment in his debate with Trump where he came off as more empathetic. Uh, he showed the lie to that

00:58:45.080 after the evacuation of Afghanistan and never got it back. Can one of these men do that? The thing

00:58:50.080 with Donald Trump is he comes across in a way that a lot of people, he says publicly the things they say

00:58:56.120 privately and the media that reacts to it in such a hostile way, it actually amplifies what he said

00:59:03.380 and reinforces to people that he said something they liked because so many members of the media are

00:59:08.260 so hostile to him. When you have the positive reaction, when you watch the debate and you're like,

00:59:13.080 I can't believe he said that that's kind of funny. And the media is outraged by it. Well,

00:59:17.040 suddenly they're the jerks, not Trump. And you then become, have more affinity for Trump. It's

00:59:22.620 kind of been the secret to his success in these debates and his campaign style throughout is how

00:59:26.880 the media reacts to him more than how people react to him. That's true. And that if Frank Luntz is

00:59:33.640 right, I think he's got a very good point there that is about a moment. I mean, I've said that about

00:59:37.480 good TV, good TV really isn't necessarily about your hour long show. It's whether you've delivered

00:59:42.780 a moment that people remember and can hang on to. Um, so if that's true in this debate, then Trump

00:59:48.380 is perhaps on the right path, not to over-prepare, not to over-study for the test,

00:59:54.440 not to be too robotic when he gets up there, but to remember to rely on his own inherent and very good

01:00:01.000 sense of humor. You know, you and I both watched those debates and participated in some in 1516,

01:00:06.580 where like the, the one that I remember, it was great. I have to say. And at the time I was much

01:00:13.540 more kind of sympathetic towards Jeb Bush than I was towards Trump, but he remember he called him

01:00:19.120 low energy. And then the next debate, Joe, Jeb Bush came out and he was like ready to fight.

01:00:23.940 And Trump goes, Oh, more energy. I like that. And it just killed Jeb Bush. I was like, Oh my God,

01:00:30.560 he's so right. He did it for you. And now you're calling him out on it. That's the Trump who could

01:00:36.240 lay out Biden without any prep, just going off of instinct. Yeah. Yeah. You know, I'm glad you

01:00:42.440 said that because I, I tend to agree with the people who've said Trump's instincts and his

01:00:47.640 showmanship kind of overwhelmed the debate prep. Uh, he might as well go with his gut on the stuff.

01:00:52.580 As long as he himself and apparently is mindful, he interrupted too much in 2020 and he needs to let

01:00:59.180 Joe Biden talk to make his own gaffes that Trump can then amplify and play up the gaffes. I think

01:01:05.280 his instincts are right. Well, especially because the people who were turned off by the interrupting

01:01:10.580 cow version, um, not calling Trump a cow. That's my, my joke. Everyone's heard that joke with their

01:01:15.500 child. Um, are, were women, they were women, women reacted very negatively to Trump interrupting

01:01:22.320 Biden at every turn. They generally don't like candidates who run over the time limits either.

01:01:26.760 And so playing within those rules is somewhat important, not necessarily out of respect for

01:01:33.340 the CNN moderators or your opponent, but for those who are watching at home, who just like a sense of

01:01:38.720 order, you know, it's like, these are the things that you agreed to, and we all expect you to follow

01:01:43.760 them so we can follow along and, you know, be a polite human as you go through this process. So

01:01:49.060 we'll see whether he can do it, whether he wants to do it. Now, this leads me to

01:01:52.940 already some of the absurdities around the debate, this news anchor over on CNN, her name is Cassie

01:02:04.920 Hunt. And she had on a spokesperson for the Trump campaign, national press secretary, Caroline

01:02:13.020 Levitt. And Caroline was trying to in advance, uh, I don't know if it was working the refs or

01:02:20.520 criticizing the refs by taking a shot at the CNN moderators. Totally fine. This is literally done

01:02:27.160 in every debate where one side starts. I don't know about this moderate. I don't know about this.

01:02:32.220 Like, okay, this always happens. And for some reason throws what could only be described as a

01:02:37.720 hissy fit, uh, from the anchor chair, we've got the longer clip. There's a shorter one going around.

01:02:43.680 We've got the longer clip queued up for the audience. Take a listen.

01:02:46.880 President Trump is knowingly going into a hostile environment on this very network on CNN with debate

01:02:53.660 moderators who have made their opinions about him very well known over the past eight years and

01:02:57.360 their biased coverage of him. So president Trump is, is willing to bring his message to every corner

01:03:02.320 of this country. So I'll just say, uh, my colleagues, uh, Jake Tapper and Dan Abash have acquitted

01:03:06.460 themselves as, as professionals, uh, as they have covered campaigns and interviewed, uh, candidates

01:03:11.080 from all sides of the aisle. I'll also say that if you talk to analysts of debates, uh, previous that

01:03:17.520 if you're attacking the moderators, you're usually losing. So I really want to focus in on what these

01:03:23.280 two men are going to do. What do you expect from Joe Biden? Well, first of all, it's to, it takes

01:03:30.220 someone five minutes to Google Jake Tapper, Donald Trump to see that Jake Tapper has consistently

01:03:34.640 stop this interview. If you're going to keep attacking my colleagues, ma'am, I'm going to

01:03:38.440 stop this interview. If you continue to attack my colleagues, I would like to talk about Joe Biden

01:03:43.860 and Donald Trump, who you work for. Yes. If you are here to speak on his behalf, I will have this

01:03:48.240 conversation. I am stating facts that your colleagues have stated in the past. Now we're

01:03:54.480 going to come back out to the panel. Caroline, thank you very much for your time. You are welcome

01:03:58.220 to come back at any point. She is welcome to come back and speak about Donald Trump and Donald Trump

01:04:03.880 will have equal time to Joe Biden when they both join us now at next early, later this week in

01:04:10.920 Atlanta for this debate. Okay. She embarrassed herself. She embarrassed herself. She embarrassed

01:04:18.540 womankind. She embarrassed female journalists and she embarrassed CNN. That was a disgrace.

01:04:25.240 First of all, it was embarrassing because she was afraid and you could tell her timidity rang through

01:04:31.520 loud and clear. Her voice started shaking. She looked like she was shaking and her effort to play

01:04:37.420 the tough guy was immediately seen through by any audience member watching that. Second of all,

01:04:43.260 the moderators are 100% subject to criticism. And if she doesn't know that she's in the wrong business.

01:04:51.120 Sure. There are lines that can be crossed that you could argue are inappropriate.

01:04:55.000 Ben there. However, criticism that the moderator may be biased is not one of them. And it's completely

01:05:03.200 fair game for someone from the Trump camp to say, we've got concerns about CNN, which was

01:05:08.820 the worst offender. They were an active part of the resistance during all four years that Trump was

01:05:15.360 president. She could have easily handled this by saying, I understand. Nevertheless,

01:05:21.200 your boss thought this was an appropriate forum for a debate. So let's talk about that.

01:05:26.500 Maintain your cool, your dignity. And by the way, stop trying to look like princess valiant because

01:05:34.360 you embarrassed Jake Tapper too. And Dana bash who don't need your defense. They can take the slings and

01:05:41.580 arrows. I'm sure they would have been fine if you hadn't gone out there trying to, Oh, my smelling salts.

01:05:47.420 Where's my fainting couch with a criticism of the anchors. Meanwhile, all this woman was saying

01:05:52.320 was Google the remarks that the anchors have made about Donald Trump. They're not fair. The whole

01:05:58.300 thing was an embarrassment to Cassie Hunt and CNN. Try to do better, sweetheart. Try to do better.

01:06:05.280 What do you make of it, Eric?

01:06:06.780 Yeah. Yeah. You know, look, I understand her position. She's new to the network, came over from

01:06:11.060 MSNBC, NBC. She wants to defend her colleagues, but you're, you're right. She,

01:06:15.360 I think she made Dana and Jake, who are friends of mine, by the way, come across as, as, as

01:06:21.120 scared or, or on defense where they didn't need to be. I think the great response would

01:06:26.000 have been, so is Donald Trump going to bring these remarks up on stage on Thursday night?

01:06:30.520 Um, engage that way, blowing her off in the way she did. I understand she wanted to show

01:06:36.860 team loyalty, but I don't think that was the way to show team loyalty. Particularly you had

01:06:41.680 a newsworthy presentation there. And now Cassie Hunt's become the new story, not what the Trump

01:06:47.480 spokeswoman was saying. So yeah. And Jake Tapper and Dana, they can spin for themselves. They made

01:06:53.500 remarks that Trump wants to challenge. He wants to rough the refs. It's part of the game.

01:06:58.520 Yeah, of course. And I mean, I don't know this person. I didn't really know her on CNN, on MSNBC,

01:07:02.620 and I certainly don't watch her program on CNN, but I can see why she obviously failed. Um,

01:07:07.440 she's not good at what she's doing. Maybe she's good at softer interest focus. Maybe she doesn't

01:07:11.340 understand politics or the political arena or what it's like to moderate a debate,

01:07:14.600 but taking some sharp elbows is part of it. And I guarantee you, Dana Bash knows that.

01:07:19.320 And so does Jake Tapper. And she humiliated them by trying to act like they can't take it either.

01:07:24.220 The woman was not out of line. Levitt in making her, she was completely within bounds in criticizing

01:07:29.720 their prior comments. She wasn't saying Jake Tapper is a hack. She was saying,

01:07:35.600 do some Google searching to see what he said about Donald Trump. That's totally fair game.

01:07:40.940 And by the way, I'm sure Trump is well aware of those comments too, and nonetheless gave them the

01:07:44.960 debate that you don't have to waste time defending them. They're not private citizens who President

01:07:51.740 Trump just decided to go after. They're the debate moderators. They're in the arena. They are

01:07:56.880 throwing barbs and arrows at him all the time. Only is it Cassie Hunt? I don't know this person

01:08:03.980 seems to take, whatever, seems to take offense at how our jobs are done in modern day America.

01:08:12.240 I just, the whole thing upsets me because she looked like a weak, just, I don't know what the

01:08:19.520 word is, like a shaky legged little child out there. And I'd much rather see a strong woman who's

01:08:27.420 like, you know what? You threw, threw punches. Good for you. Let's keep going with the interview.

01:08:32.120 Good for you. And look, whatever, like she cut her off, Eric. Sorry, I'm going to make one more

01:08:35.960 point. She cut her off, which is indicative of another problem we see all over the left these

01:08:39.960 days, which is, I don't hear it. I cannot hear. I am not listening to you, Jeffrey, right? It's

01:08:46.280 ridiculous how they can't hear any opinions that challenge their own or that they find offensive.

01:08:51.160 Too damn bad.

01:08:52.760 Also, Trump's spokeswoman, was it Carolyn Levitt? I mean, look at the attention she's been able to

01:08:59.340 get one for herself and for a campaign and the number of people who probably did go Google the

01:09:03.600 remark. She, it's like a Streisand moment. Remember Barbara Streisand one time very famously

01:09:08.260 tried to get a guy blocked from showing a photo of her house from the beach. And by trying to block

01:09:13.880 it, gave it ample exposure. That's what's happened here by making that scene. Trump's spokeswoman,

01:09:19.140 I mean, she should get a bonus for having done that on CNN. It also does to your point show how

01:09:24.180 the press does not like to be challenged on the comments the press makes. And if Trump gets to

01:09:30.500 be challenged on the comments he makes, they get to be challenged on theirs. They should get used to

01:09:34.860 this. I just, it's so pathetic. Like I just, first of all, she should be true to who she is. She's

01:09:42.200 obviously not tough. She's obviously afraid of confrontation. That's okay. That's actually how most

01:09:46.940 people feel. You can, you can be that. Try to just lean into who you are as opposed to trying to act

01:09:53.600 like you're, you know, Joan of Arc out there because we all smelled the phony that you are.

01:09:58.420 And that's what made the clip not work as a news item, as a, as a presentation matter.

01:10:04.700 Now you won't be surprised to hear Eric, that the ladies over at the view had a very different

01:10:08.200 reaction to it. Here's what they said. That was so good. So good. This is how they tee up even things

01:10:20.840 they end up doing well at. They say, I'm going to lose just in case. Like this is problem just in

01:10:25.580 case. You know what it sounds to me? Sounds like the people who call folks snowflakes are snowflaking.

01:10:31.360 Sounds to me like somebody's running a little scared chicken, chicken, chicken.

01:10:35.440 She refused to get to the facts. She instead wanted to sort of, it was ad hominem, uh, attacks.

01:10:43.280 And when that happens, you cut the mic, you cut the mic and that's what she did.

01:10:50.200 Okay. Mike, this is the left today. We, we will not listen to you. You're, you're anti

01:10:56.320 abortion. We won't listen to you. You are pro Israel. We won't listen to you. Like your mic

01:11:03.420 gets cut because if you're this leftist committed to this worldview, it's offensive. Just hear it.

01:11:11.160 This is a, that show is indicative of the bubble. The left is in, you know, I, I had a member of the

01:11:16.580 press last night. I noted on social media that, uh, I would not be surprised at the number of Jews

01:11:22.240 who don't like Donald Trump, but decide they have to vote for him. Given what's happening in the

01:11:25.680 country, you got a president who's too busy doing debate prep to address the nation over the synagogue

01:11:30.220 attack in Los Angeles and the like. And this reporter says, you clearly don't know any Jews.

01:11:35.000 And I was like, actually, I know a lot. Uh, and they're all saying this. And, and the view is in

01:11:40.140 that sort of bubble where everyone in that show agrees with each other, agrees inside the bubble

01:11:45.660 that Casey hunt is in at CNN. And they don't understand how this actually plays with a lot

01:11:50.740 of people that, Oh, the anchors said things that were belittling to Donald Trump that seemed

01:11:55.960 to Republicans to be partisan. They get to be called out on it. Um, this rally around the flag

01:12:02.020 circle, the wagon sort of nonsense that the left wants to do on these things is why they have

01:12:06.160 started losing so often in these fights. She has her own history of bias. That's why she was shutting

01:12:13.420 down the criticisms. I believe because she shared in those opinions that were controversial enough

01:12:20.000 that Levitt felt she had to raise them. Cassie hunt tweeted out. I'm sorry. I don't, I'm sorry.

01:12:25.760 I can't get your name right. And I honestly don't really care. Um, we're not going to have an ongoing

01:12:29.400 relationship. Uh, but in any event, she tweeted out the following on, um, December 4th, 2020. Okay.

01:12:36.360 December 4th, 2020. This is after Joe Biden had won the election, but before inauguration,

01:12:40.640 Joe Biden wouldn't say if he's talked to Mitch McConnell, I'm just struck by the reality that

01:12:46.000 will now have a president who as a rule doesn't lie, even when it might be easier. Okay. This is,

01:12:54.360 it makes sense to me, Eric, she was coming from MSNBC. This is the same man she's talking about

01:12:58.760 who stood up there at the presidential debates, what two months earlier before her tweet saying

01:13:03.060 that the Hunter Biden laptop was Russian disinformation. I mean, that's the one who

01:13:06.920 doesn't lie. And she's just so thankful that we're going to have him. And by the way, here's the other

01:13:12.600 thing. Um, where is, do we have the, uh, her tweet as she doubles down on this nonsense? Hold on. I

01:13:19.340 might try to organize my paper. This was her tweet trying to defend herself. You come on my show.

01:13:24.900 You respect my colleagues period. I don't care what side of the aisle. This is my accent. This is my,

01:13:30.880 like, this is how the kids talk these days. I don't care what side of the aisle you stand on as my

01:13:36.020 track record clearly shows. It does not clearly show that I refer you back to this tweet and many others

01:13:41.920 in which she was critical of Trump and praising Biden. And even the banner on her Twitter now X

01:13:47.620 account is her sitting across from Joe Biden. I'm sure lovingly with the doe eyes, Eric.

01:13:53.980 Look, I think anyone who's come from the NBC MSNBC world should be careful about claiming to be

01:14:00.080 nonpartisan or non-biased and including Casey hunt that you, I mean the tweet in and of itself,

01:14:06.820 the, I can't believe we're going to have a president who's honest, uh, forget the Trump

01:14:11.440 Biden dichotomy and the hatred of Donald Trump. Joe Biden's a politician from Washington DC,

01:14:18.060 which definitely means he's a liar. And to, to think that he's honest is just out there. And,

01:14:24.480 and, and this defense of it that you've got to respect me. Yes. Uh, defend your colleagues.

01:14:29.360 That's fine. But you didn't really defend your colleagues there.

01:14:32.400 Oh my God. You could go like Victor Davis Hanson. He could come on and recite 50 lies

01:14:37.380 that Joe Biden has told off the top of his head, but go back and look at his overstatements of his

01:14:41.740 resume. He graduated the top of his class. In fact, he was down, down at the bottom. He might've

01:14:45.720 been at the plagiarism scandal, right? He stole people's work and represented as his own. It goes

01:14:51.560 on and on and on. This is not, this is all before he beat long before he became president. He lies

01:14:55.840 every other day. If his lips are moving, you're getting a lie that you're right. He was,

01:15:00.960 he was traumatized by his uncle getting eaten by cannibals.

01:15:04.720 It's a lie too. There was no, no, even the Pete, the locals were, he claimed they got,

01:15:10.740 the guy got eaten, came out and said, no.

01:15:14.380 Yeah. Corn pop ate him. Okay. Anyway, the list is long. She should do a little Google search

01:15:19.320 before she speaks. Um, I want to just talk about one other news story and then I want to get into

01:15:23.780 the book. You mentioned American Jews and I believe that they are the reason that Jamal Bowman

01:15:29.880 is now going to lose his seat. This first member of the squad certainly looks like he's going to,

01:15:34.720 I don't know for sure. Um, and I think, you know, what I hear is that all these Jewish voters in and

01:15:41.140 around the Bronx are saying, hell no, we're done. Like they're paying attention now. And amazingly,

01:15:46.720 I don't think those dissatisfied, unhappy voters who don't like this guy with his weird nine 11

01:15:53.760 conspiracy theories from his blog, um, are going to be persuaded by this performance from AOC

01:16:00.400 who decided to go to the Bronx and pretend she was Cardi B watch.

01:16:05.280 Yeah.

01:16:06.840 Yeah.

01:16:07.280 Yeah.

01:16:11.640 Yeah.

01:16:12.600 Yeah.

01:16:16.120 Yeah.

01:16:16.560 Yeah.

01:16:22.680 Yeah,

01:16:24.740 Yeah.

01:16:25.140 Let's go.

01:16:55.140 OK.

01:16:56.840 Yet another poser, right?

01:16:58.920 Like it wasn't in German.

01:17:00.720 She doesn't have it.

01:17:02.080 She doesn't have she's not exciting.

01:17:03.900 She can do social media.

01:17:05.240 I get it.

01:17:06.100 This was a fail.

01:17:07.580 She was trying to look like some, you know, boxer going into the arena in her weird little

01:17:11.800 khaki shorts and with taking hair down, which is a sex move.

01:17:16.520 That is not a fire you up for the debate move.

01:17:18.860 That's weird.

01:17:19.840 And it's called modulation.

01:17:21.720 Her voice was over modulated, screaming into the mic.

01:17:25.100 Madam does not work.

01:17:26.300 Doesn't work on a podcast set and a radio set.

01:17:28.620 Eric knows.

01:17:29.260 And it certainly doesn't work out on a stage in front of people in the Bronx.

01:17:32.880 You're not Cardi B.

01:17:34.160 You're not Muhammad Ali.

01:17:35.760 You're a congressional Kardashian.

01:17:38.100 That's what you want to be.

01:17:39.160 A social media star.

01:17:40.200 Just admit it.

01:17:41.020 And please stop trying to govern.

01:17:42.580 And God forbid, inspire us because you're equally bad at both of those things.

01:17:47.220 So what do you make of AOC?

01:17:48.720 And what do you make of the likelihood that in tonight's election, Jamal Bowman, first

01:17:52.840 member of the squad, is likely to go down?

01:17:56.320 First of all, I'm horrified.

01:17:57.920 I've had to watch that clip now.

01:17:59.360 This is the third time and it's going to give me nightmares.

01:18:02.760 Listen, they're posing as something and they want to be revolutionaries on the left.

01:18:09.560 What I found very interesting was how Politico in their playbook described this, that the

01:18:14.100 House Democratic Caucus wants them to have their comeuppance because of their pull on

01:18:18.320 the grassroots and because of their tactics.

01:18:20.860 Actually, believe it or not, the media may be where AOC is politically, but House Democrats

01:18:26.840 as a whole tend to be to her right.

01:18:28.680 They're still very liberal, but not that progressive.

01:18:31.580 And they're upset that the squad has tried to pull the Democrats in that direction.

01:18:36.360 And so Jamal Bowman is going to get his comeuppance because when you go in that direction on the

01:18:40.700 left, you turn into rabid anti-Semites, which he is.

01:18:44.040 The KKK, the stuff, I mean, rhetoric that he sees just like David Duke against Jews and

01:18:50.060 the 9-11 conspiracies.

01:18:52.800 He's going to be repudiated.

01:18:54.760 Ironically, he won in 2020 by going after the then House Foreign Affairs Committee chairman,

01:18:59.800 Elliot Engel, in a Democratic primary, saying Engel was two in the pocket of Netanyahu and

01:19:04.540 Israel, and he won the election.

01:19:06.700 So I think he interpreted that as he could double down on anti-Semitism.

01:19:10.000 And actually, it turns out those Bronx Jewish voters, they didn't like Netanyahu, but they

01:19:14.080 still like Israel and they don't like a guy who makes excuses for Hamas.

01:19:17.680 He deserves to lose.

01:19:19.200 And if he does lose, there's a playbook for people like Cori Bush and others to be taken

01:19:24.080 out who are deeply, deeply anti-Semitic.

01:19:28.120 Yeah, we'll see whether AOC's little routine worked.

01:19:31.180 This is also the guy who claimed he didn't understand the fire drill and wasn't actually

01:19:35.240 trying to stop the vote.

01:19:35.760 High school principal who doesn't know how to use a fire alarm.

01:19:38.080 Right.

01:19:38.320 He just genuinely got confused about the big thing saying fire alarm and door do not open.

01:19:43.880 All right.

01:19:44.340 We've got to take a quick break.

01:19:45.720 Then I really do want to get into the substance of this book because I think you're right.

01:19:49.760 And the more places I go and the more news stories I cover, Eric, the more I feel like

01:19:55.180 like in my core, the very thing that you're positing here, that the godlessness that's

01:20:00.580 overtaken our culture, put politics to the side.

01:20:04.320 We can talk about that for fun all day, every day.

01:20:06.920 But the godlessness is what's really eating at our souls.

01:20:11.380 And even if we got the politics right tomorrow, it wouldn't fix what's really ailing us.

01:20:16.720 So we'll pick it up right after this quick break.

01:20:18.260 Don't go away.

01:20:18.900 Eric Erickson stays with us.

01:20:20.540 And hold on a second, because I want to make sure that people have the book name.

01:20:24.340 You Shall Be As Gods by Eric Erickson.

01:20:27.860 Stand by.

01:20:28.820 I'm Megan Kelly, host of The Megan Kelly Show on Sirius XM.

01:20:32.680 It's your home for open, honest, and provocative conversations with the most interesting and

01:20:37.420 important political, legal, and cultural figures today.

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01:21:26.420 Let me give you a little bit from the book and we'll kick it off with this.

01:21:35.740 The bottom line is this.

01:21:37.700 Our country doesn't have a partisan problem, a political problem, a social problem, or an

01:21:42.400 economic problem.

01:21:43.560 We have a spiritual problem.

01:21:45.820 In the absence of God, Americans across partisan lines have turned to government and celebrity

01:21:51.560 for their gods.

01:21:52.600 They have gone off to worship idols.

01:21:55.380 At the core, they have reverted to the original mistake made in the Garden of Eden.

01:21:59.620 They choose to see themselves as gods, which explains the title, You Shall Be As Gods.

01:22:06.940 pretty darn well.

01:22:08.680 So put some meat on those bones for us, Eric.

01:22:11.600 We're seeing this on the left and the right with the increase in despair, the suicide rate,

01:22:16.280 depression, the rise of transgenderism, people believing they can make themselves as they

01:22:21.040 see fit.

01:22:22.280 It transcends partisanship to this deep underpinning of we as people have now lost our perspective

01:22:31.100 on who we are, why we're here, and what our purpose is.

01:22:34.720 We're called to something higher.

01:22:36.720 We're called to something eternal.

01:22:38.940 We're created in the image of God and have instead decided that this is the best we have

01:22:43.360 here and now.

01:22:44.060 And you see this manifest in politics, for example, with the left, where if your neighbor

01:22:48.700 drives a gas-guzzling SUV and has five kids and you've done everything right, your house

01:22:54.080 is on solar panels, you're a vegan, and you aborted your child, so it's just you and your

01:22:58.260 partner, you're still going to burn because of your neighbor, so your neighbor's got to

01:23:02.480 be punished.

01:23:03.240 So we've lost a sense of grace, we've lost a sense of eternal, and people are turning

01:23:07.980 to hopelessness, which is causing all sorts of tribalism and violence and despair.

01:23:13.580 I'm so interested in this because I see it everywhere in America, and the audience knows

01:23:19.400 I'm just fresh back from a trip to Scandinavia, where we got the same story in particular in

01:23:25.180 Sweden and I think in Norway and Denmark, trying to remember exactly the guides and the

01:23:29.980 information, but the central theme was we used to be Christians, and then we became Lutherans

01:23:36.880 or Protestants, and now we're nothing.

01:23:39.880 Now there's like one church, and overwhelmingly our countries are not believers at all.

01:23:46.240 And my family's traveling around, and we would have grace, and we'd say grace before our meals,

01:23:51.040 even if we're in a restaurant, people would stare, you know, like, what are they doing?

01:23:56.540 And you could feel like, I really love the visit, I don't mean to rip on these lovely people.

01:24:01.940 Wonderful people, beautiful countries.

01:24:03.780 They'd be absolutely right, but while they kept saying that they're that happiest people

01:24:08.860 or second happiest people on earth, I guess Finland ranks number one, and Denmark ranks number

01:24:14.260 two, and Sweden's up there as well.

01:24:15.500 Well, they also are either number one or number two on antidepressants.

01:24:20.180 And yes, in large part, I'm sure it has to do with the many hours of darkness for 10 months

01:24:25.060 of the year, you know, it's been 16 to 20 hours of darkness, but there's another form

01:24:29.780 of darkness in those countries as a result of what we're talking about, Eric.

01:24:33.280 And I do think the absence of God and an active belief and active faith in your life leads

01:24:38.700 to a different kind of listlessness that they may not even be aware they've lost.

01:24:43.160 Well, so not to get too deep theologically, but you know, if you go to the Old Testament,

01:24:48.580 there are all these commandments for the Israelites of you can't have tattoos or mixed fabric clothing

01:24:54.040 or eat certain foods.

01:24:55.880 And the reason was, we can extract from that, that the cultures around them were cultures

01:25:02.500 where those things happened.

01:25:03.620 Tattoos were very common.

01:25:04.840 Now, fast forward to today, my wife has tattoos.

01:25:08.260 It's hard to find a youth minister in a church in America who doesn't.

01:25:10.780 And it's our culture has kind of, the Christian culture has absorbed the culture around it

01:25:15.880 and we look like it.

01:25:16.860 And so what the New Testament says, the Old Testament was you behave differently, dress

01:25:21.760 differently, do differently.

01:25:23.440 And what the New Testament says is you've got to stand out in your community by loving your

01:25:28.120 neighbor and loving God.

01:25:29.560 And even in a lot of churches, we don't have that tendency anymore where a Christian is

01:25:35.140 supposed to be someone who stands out and acts a little weird to the culture around

01:25:39.700 them and seems to have a little joy.

01:25:41.480 The rest of the culture doesn't.

01:25:43.240 And that culture, it's losing the joy and it kind of is time for churches to stand up.

01:25:47.480 Politics isn't going to fix this.

01:25:49.460 It's the people who know there's an eternity we're called to who have the joy because they

01:25:54.260 know it.

01:25:54.640 I mean, look, as you know, Megan, my wife has this incurable form of lung cancer.

01:25:59.220 There's no cure for it.

01:26:00.940 And yet we live every day with this joy that if, if God forbid, the worst case scenario happens,

01:26:06.680 she's going on to eternity and we've got her now and we should live like that.

01:26:11.240 And the world, I think, has forgotten that there's so many people who think it's it's

01:26:15.020 here and now this is all we have.

01:26:16.900 And look at how bad it is, as opposed to just love your neighbor.

01:26:21.080 You're never going to fix Washington, D.C., but if you fix your town and be a part of

01:26:25.420 it and show you love your town, well, you're going to find your salvation there here on

01:26:29.900 earth.

01:26:31.200 You know, I, I mean, I, in principle, I agree with it.

01:26:34.780 But then when you get into the book and you talk about, you know, sort of the politics of

01:26:39.200 revenge and because you're critical of the left, of course, in the ways that we're discussing,

01:26:43.280 but also of what you call the new right and, and kind of where they're going.

01:26:49.620 But I wonder if we're on the same page on it, because we've been talking on the show

01:26:54.580 about the warfare, the lawfare against Trump.

01:26:56.640 And I'm, I've gotten to the point where I really feel like the only way the left is going

01:27:00.040 to stop doing this is if we do it to them.

01:27:01.780 That's just the only way it's not going to be pleasant.

01:27:04.000 It's not something I agree with, but I feel like the only way of stopping it is to give

01:27:09.300 them a taste of their own medicine, because until they have the same skin in the game,

01:27:12.500 they're going to keep doing it.

01:27:14.120 And we're talking about the presidency.

01:27:16.660 So is it, are, is that what you're talking about?

01:27:20.060 Because I, I, so there's an individual level.

01:27:23.820 So at an individual level, we got to love our neighbor.

01:27:26.680 And in fact, I, I occasionally preach in churches and this comes up and I tell them, you know,

01:27:31.680 you as a person of faith need to love your far left transgender progressive neighbor enough

01:27:37.460 that when they go on vacation, they want to leave a key with you to make sure their house

01:27:40.900 is safe where they're gone at a corporate level as American citizens.

01:27:44.400 Yeah, I do agree that we on the right have the means within the law to do to the left

01:27:50.300 and use the precedents the left has set so that they can say, maybe we should stop setting

01:27:55.580 these precedents.

01:27:56.460 I mean, for example, they're a great, great example is the president has used the civil rights

01:28:02.560 act to go after, uh, pro-lifers who are blocking access to abortion clinics.

01:28:08.300 We should be doing the same thing to pro Hamas supporters, blocking access to synagogues.

01:28:13.760 What's good for the goose is good for the gander.

01:28:15.420 There are ways where I think I draw the line though, is we should not be engaged so much

01:28:22.940 in revenge that we're willing to cross legal lines that then they cross.

01:28:28.840 Cause inevitably we see the cycle where each side makes precedent.

01:28:31.620 And at some point we've all lost concept of the law.

01:28:34.720 And those of us who are people of faith should be the ones who are saying, you know, maybe

01:28:39.860 we should go throw the ring back in the volcano and nobody have this power.

01:28:44.360 And I personally think my solution is the Republicans, when they get back to power, got the power.

01:28:50.860 So the left can't do these things to us.

01:28:52.520 We can't do it to them.

01:28:53.900 And that takes away the desire to everyone control Washington.

01:28:57.440 We made Washington too powerful and we need to go back to remembering that we have 50

01:29:01.840 sovereign states and let the power be diffused that way.

01:29:05.440 I agree with that.

01:29:06.460 I mean, I, I can't stand a strong federal government.

01:29:09.760 We need, that's not how this country was envisioned.

01:29:12.080 We've morphed into some weird Frankenstein version of what, you know, Madison and Jefferson

01:29:17.820 envisioned.

01:29:18.460 And now we're just, we've morphed into this bloated, disgusting mess that tries to govern

01:29:23.560 everybody in the way they live.

01:29:24.640 And it needs to shrink no matter who's in the oval office.

01:29:27.300 It needs to shrink dramatically.

01:29:28.620 I mean, honestly, the greatest revenge we could have on the left is to take back power

01:29:32.780 and get rid of the power so they can never use it again.

01:29:35.100 They can't seek the EPA on people.

01:29:36.880 They can't seek the national labor relations board on people, take away all their power.

01:29:40.540 All right.

01:29:42.120 But what about this absence of spirituality that's infecting us?

01:29:45.440 Because, you know, you, you have some good stats in the book and I, we've talked about

01:29:48.600 them on the show.

01:29:49.420 Um, in 2021 Pew research released the results of a survey that showed nearly 30% of Americans

01:29:54.620 considered themselves unaffiliated with any religion.

01:29:58.300 The percentage of nuns, N O N E S doubled in just over a decade.

01:30:05.360 In the same time period, self-identified Christians dropped from 75% to 63% of the population.

01:30:12.760 So why, why is that happening?

01:30:15.380 What's, what is it about us today?

01:30:17.860 The data's actually really interesting when you get into the subset, a lot of the nuns

01:30:21.860 and the unaffiliated people, they're still believers.

01:30:24.880 They're just kind of tired of going to church and hearing political sermons, or they're tired

01:30:29.060 of hearing preachers say something that they don't practice.

01:30:31.900 The fastest growing denominations in the country are actually the deeply evangelical denominations

01:30:36.980 that practice what they preach.

01:30:38.720 And I think for the conservative side of things, uh, so pulling back the curtain a little bit

01:30:43.940 while you and I are talking on your show, I'm pretending to do my show live as well.

01:30:47.840 And I can tell you what I'm talking about right now is that, uh, conservatives like to

01:30:52.100 build alternative institutions.

01:30:53.760 And then we're always surprised when the left eventually takes them over too, because we've

01:30:58.400 built it and we say, okay, we've done this.

01:31:00.060 We've done a good thing.

01:31:00.740 No, stay involved.

01:31:02.680 So I've got a friend of mine in Atlanta.

01:31:04.600 He, his kids go to public school and he's a preacher.

01:31:06.720 He's the head of the PTA.

01:31:08.120 His wife's the head of the, the, uh, talent show.

01:31:10.900 They've got all the other Christians in the school so involved that, uh, they've largely

01:31:15.260 taken over in a way that oftentimes you don't see in public schools.

01:31:18.500 We can't just build an institution and rest on our laurels.

01:31:21.620 We've got to stay engaged.

01:31:24.140 It's not a coincidence that most of the food banks and soup kitchens in the country run by

01:31:27.700 churches are run by theologically progressive churches.

01:31:31.040 Uh, conservatives can do these things too.

01:31:33.260 We, we should be doing these things.

01:31:35.540 But that's so much easier said than done.

01:31:37.500 I'm thinking about our own flight from our New York city private schools where it was abusive,

01:31:42.520 what they were doing to these kids, what they were teaching them and injecting the gender

01:31:47.340 question where it was not existent at all for third grade boys.

01:31:51.380 I just like the thought of I'll stay and I'll fight and I'll just let my children get abused

01:31:57.600 for the next five years.

01:31:59.540 No, I can't.

01:32:00.500 I'm saying, I, I think you've got to extract yourself from that.

01:32:03.240 I think it's when we go build the new institutions, we, we stand and fight there.

01:32:08.780 Uh, what happens is we conservatives a lot of times started private schools and then we

01:32:14.440 kind of rested on our laurels and other people came in and co-opted them and took them over.

01:32:18.020 My kids are in a private school where you have to be interviewed about your faith before

01:32:22.160 you're allowed to come.

01:32:23.520 Uh, so when you go start the new institution, don't abandon it once you've started it.

01:32:27.880 And to the extent you can be engaged in your existing institutions, be seen, but also be

01:32:33.340 seen as someone who actually is a kind person.

01:32:35.820 Uh, it's harder and harder for them to, to come for you at the left at the national level

01:32:40.460 wants to come for all the conservatives and all the pro-lifers.

01:32:43.240 Well, when your next door neighbor is a pro-abortion progressive, but you're the person who

01:32:47.460 checks their mail when they're out of town, they don't really want to come for you.

01:32:50.040 And it's not something we can do at an abstract national level.

01:32:53.100 This is neighbor by neighbor, block by block.

01:32:56.480 All of us have to actually be within our community.

01:32:59.000 I mean, just there is this part of scripture after the Jews are casted to exile in Babylon

01:33:03.460 where God sends them a note through Jeremiah and says, seek the welfare of the community

01:33:07.280 in which you live, plant gardens, have families, raise families, be a part of your community

01:33:11.480 because there you'll find your welfare.

01:33:13.020 Karen, we all get so worked up about Washington.

01:33:15.300 Well, what about my block, my apartment building, my, my local community?

01:33:19.560 We should be focused there instead of just angry at Washington.

01:33:23.540 I like that a lot.

01:33:24.560 So my mom, she still lives in upstate New York and she's got the best neighborhood, Eric.

01:33:30.040 Like this, her neighbors restore my faith and humanity there.

01:33:33.740 I don't know if they're, they're probably going to read your book and say, I, this is familiar

01:33:37.000 to me.

01:33:37.360 I, I, this resonates with me, but like, obviously I could happily get my mom a lawn mower, you

01:33:45.240 know, to make sure that her lawn state and all of that.

01:33:47.180 And I do help my mom in a number of ways, but I, there are certain things around her

01:33:51.060 home and house and property.

01:33:52.780 I don't have to do because Marty, the guy across the street comes over, he maintains

01:33:57.160 that lawn.

01:33:57.900 Like it's in a magazine competition and he's responsible for it.

01:34:01.700 Helmut who's across the way he comes over and helps my mom.

01:34:04.160 And if it's like a pipe break breaks or something, this whole community comes together to make

01:34:08.200 sure she's okay.

01:34:09.200 They'll come over without anybody asking and shovel her walk if it snows.

01:34:13.100 And it does a lot in upstate New York.

01:34:14.220 It's just, it does restore your faith in your fellow human beings, but you can't only receive,

01:34:20.900 right?

01:34:21.080 You've got to put yourself out there and give a little too.

01:34:23.900 Yeah.

01:34:23.980 And it's not always going to work.

01:34:25.120 You prepare to be disappointed, but one person at a time, it's a slow process, but I just,

01:34:30.060 I refuse to give up on him.

01:34:31.480 You know, Tim Keller, the theologian who died, he had a great saying that if we really are

01:34:35.580 all made in the image of God, as he believes in the scripture says, all of us have a little

01:34:40.380 bit of God that reflects back.

01:34:41.780 And even if we vehemently disagree with someone, we should try to find that little piece of

01:34:46.160 God reflecting back to us.

01:34:47.960 Yeah.

01:34:48.780 And not replace the actual God with false idols like social media and climate change.

01:34:56.240 And take your pick from the left's favorite causes from the Woketopia.

01:35:00.900 Great to see you.

01:35:01.820 The book is called You Shall Be As Gods.

01:35:04.360 It's by Eric Erickson.

01:35:05.680 It's available right now.

01:35:07.580 Pagans, progressives, and the rise of the Woknostic left.

01:35:11.000 Come back soon.

01:35:12.260 Thank you so much.

01:35:13.800 All right.

01:35:14.160 All the best and all the best to Christy too.

01:35:16.100 We're back tomorrow with Mike Rowe.

01:35:18.140 Looking forward to that.

01:35:19.100 He's got something exciting to promote.

01:35:21.080 I think you're going to enjoy it.

01:35:21.880 Thanks for listening to The Megyn Kelly Show.

01:35:26.520 No BS, no agenda, and no fear.

The Megyn Kelly Show - June 25, 2024

CNN Host Cuts Trump Spokesperson's Mic, and Bombshell New Bryan Kohberger Reporting, with Howard Blum and Erick Erickson ｜ Ep. 820

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