COLLUSION Keeping Him From Debate Stage？ ｜ Robert F. Kennedy Jr. x Megyn Kelly - The FULL Interview
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Summary
Robby Kennedy Jr. files a complaint with the Federal Elections Commission, accusing President Biden, former President Trump, and CNN of colluding to keep him out of CNN s upcoming presidential debate. It has been over 30 years since an independent presidential candidate appeared in a general election debate, and RFKJ is vowing to make this stage.
Transcript
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Welcome to The Megyn Kelly Show, live on Sirius XM Channel 111 every weekday at New East.
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Robert F. Kennedy Jr. filing a complaint with the Federal Elections Commission,
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accusing President Biden, former President Trump, and CNN of colluding to keep him out of CNN's
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upcoming presidential debate. It has been over 30 years since an independent presidential
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candidate appeared in a general election debate, and RFKJ is vowing to make this stage.
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This is RFKJ's fifth time, fifth on our show. Back in March of 2022, we did a two-part in-depth
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series with Bobby that is a must-listen. We did two hours on vaccines, and then we did a full two
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hours on his amazing background, tackled it all. A lot on Anthony Fauci. It was just so good. Everybody
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loved these episodes. You will, too, if you want to check them out. They're numbers 282 and 283.
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Thank you, Megyn. And yeah, thanks for putting me on back in, what was it? Was it March of 2022?
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Yeah, because you were one of the first people to let me on at a time when it was, you know,
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very dangerous for other outlets to give me a platform. And I've always been very grateful to
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Oh, that was all so silly. And I'm thrilled to see you out there with your message and doing so well
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as you should be. That whole thing was so nonsensical. Okay, let me jump right back right
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into some of the issues. So this is interesting that you want into this debate. I would love to
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see you in this debate personally, but they're doing their level best to keep you out, both Trump
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Biden have said, the terms are the terms. It's a two man debate. That's it. And so what
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can the FEC do? You want them to, to bar CNN from holding it if they don't let you in?
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Well, the FEC rules say that, um, any that they've, that candidates can't collude, particularly
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with a network to exclude other candidates. Otherwise it becomes an illegal campaign contribution.
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So, um, what we know from the accounts, both from our conversations with CNN and also from the
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accounts in the Washington Post and other press outlets, plus that, and, and just to back up for
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a second, what the FEC rules require is that the, uh, that the, the rules for the debate be
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preexisting. In other words, the candidates have no input in them and also that they be objective.
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So they can't be designed to exclude somebody, but in the conversations that were reported by
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the Washington Post between the Biden administration, between the Biden White House, uh, President Trump's
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staff and CNN, uh, President Biden's staff was adamant that the rules needed to be designed to
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keep me off the platform. They said, if, if he's going to be on, we're not going to be on. He has to be
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off. President Biden said the same thing. Now, when we asked CNN, did you, after hearing that,
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did you then create the rules and CNN said, that's privileged, which of course it's not privilege.
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Right. It's the opposite of privilege. It should be very transparent and, you know,
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and available to the public. So, you know, if you do collude with them, it becomes, as I said,
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an illegal campaign contribution. And, um, you know, and we're, we filed a complaint with the FEC
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to, uh, address that, um, and to, you know, and to, and to make rules that allow me into the debate.
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The other thing is, Megan, that the rules that they came up with is ironic. There's two rules that
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are designed to exclude other candidates. One of those rules is that each candidate has to have
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polls from four separate firms that are on a list of 12 polling firms, an approved list of 12 polling
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firms, that four of those polls need to show me at 15% or more of the public. And I think CNN assumed
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that I did not have the polls, but we submitted five polls, including their own poll from last month,
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which shows me at 16%. And the other polls are all from the list. And since then, yet another poll has
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come out from that list that has me at 15%. The, the final rule that they, that they use to try to
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exclude me as a rule that says that you have to be on the ballot in enough states to get 270 electoral votes
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by June 20th. So we are now, we have enough, we're on the ballot in the seven states. We have enough
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signatures now as of today for 17 states. By June 20th, we will have enough signatures for 343 electoral
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votes. Today, we have, I think, 225. Um, but ironically, we are the only one who's on a ballot
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anywhere because president Trump, president Biden are not on any ballots anywhere. They are, you know,
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people presume they're going to be the nominees for the democratic Republican party, but that is not
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locked in yet. So I'm the only one who will qualify for that, uh, without requirement. And so CNN is kind of
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in a jam. And, you know, we think that if FEC acts that we will win this.
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They don't want you. ABC doesn't want you. Trump and Biden don't want you. And right now,
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given the bypassing of the commission on presidential debates, they're calling the shots. So this will be
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interesting to watch unfold. Um, I think you'd be a great addition up there. I think it'd be fascinating
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to watch them respond to you and, um, some of your issues, which are important. That's why you're
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polling. Well, with a certain segment of the population, let me ask you, Donald Trump quickly
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is on trial. Uh, the jury is deliberating the charges against him right now that we have read
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this week in Politico that president Biden, uh, intends to address the verdict when it comes down.
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We presume assuming it's guilty. I don't know if he's going to do anything if it's not guilty
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from the white house that he's going to comment on a criminal case from the white house. Do you think
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that's appropriate? You know, I, I try to stay away from commenting on these cases
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because I think it feeds into this, you know, national polarization. And I don't comment on
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president Trump's personal issues on a hundred Biden or, you know, any of the
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Biden administration's personal interviews. And I try to really talk about the economy,
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about the fact that we've got a $34 trillion debt. That's nobody's talking about.
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The fact that 60% of our kids are sick with chronic disease. The fact that 57% of Americans
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can't put their hands on a thousand dollars if they have an emergency, um, on the forever wars
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that both president Trump and president Biden support. And on this polarization that they both feed into,
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which is toxic and is more dangerous, I think, to our country than any time since the American civil
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war. But what I've tried to do, what I said when I declared a year ago is I'm going to stay away from
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the, you know, these, these little cultural war issues that are designed, are orchestrated to keep
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us all at each other's throats and to focus instead on the values that keep us together.
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And the issues that are critical to us, healing our country, both economically, spiritually,
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culturally, and healing the rift. Oh, I've been pretty disciplined about not commenting on the legal
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case. I don't. Well, this, this isn't an, an ask for that. This is a question about whether you think
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it's appropriate. You're running for president for the president of the United States to comment
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on an individual criminal matter, even one that involves a former president and not for nothing,
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his chief political rival. I don't think that I would comment if I were president,
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I don't think I would comment on this particular case. I think this is the weakest of the case
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against president Trump. Um, and it's, uh, it's not kind of an existential case. I mean,
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you know, maybe it's appropriate to, to comment if there, if, if the, if the case about the, you know,
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January 6, uh, election, if that came down, it may be appropriate to make a comment about it. I,
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if it were me, I would try to focus on making healing comments rather than comments that demonize,
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you know, the president Trump, who's, you know, likely to be the nominee in the Republican party,
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or that demonize people who vote for him and support him. I, I would really try to do something
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that was, that was going to heal our country rather than increase the division.
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It looks like it's going another way, but we'll see. First, we have to see what this jury does.
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And as I say, I'd be surprised to be said as anything, if Trump gets acquitted and hung jury,
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we'll, we'll find out, I guess we'll find out. Um, all right,
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so I've got to ask you a couple of questions. Last time we spoke, I asked you about your stance
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on legislation banning puberty blockers, cross sex hormones, and these gender reassignment
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procedures for minors. And you said that you would support a ban if the minor didn't have parental
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permission, but you weren't sure about an outright ban, even where there's parental
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permission. Have you given any more thought to this issue?
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Yeah, I have. My, my stance now is that I'm against them all together for people under 18.
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Against the procedure. I would ban them in, uh, kids under 18. Oh, I, you know, and I,
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I would say this, I think people who have, um, gender confusion that they need to be treated with
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compassion, uh, with kindness, with, uh, with utmost respect, and that any kind of bullying or,
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or, you know, vilification of, of people, um, who are struggling with those issues, uh,
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uh, should be, you know, is, is itself contemptible. But, um, there are a lot of, there's, you know,
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there's this recent study in Europe, particularly from the, the UK that, um, that throws water on a
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lot of the claims that were being made by the pharmaceutical industry and by the proponents of
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these gender blockers. Yeah. And, um, and I, you know, having looked at that report, the results
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of that report, um, with some horror, I became convinced that this is, you know, it's something
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that shouldn't happen. You know, we, we stop kids from driving. We stop, you know, we don't,
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don't allow children to drink until they're 18. Um, and these decisions are 18 or 25.
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My kids used to drive up to Montreal and I grew up in, you know, when it was,
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that's right. Way back when we were little. Yeah. That's right. So, so yeah, the 21. So,
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and the decision to do this, you know, these puberty blockers is, uh, is consequential and it has
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lifetime consequences. And a lot of people are remorseful about the result who make those
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decisions when they're young are later on remorseful about the results. So I, you know,
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my, my, uh, position is that we shouldn't allow them at all for kids under 18.
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Well, this makes perfect sense to me much more sense, uh, than before, because you,
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one of the things people love about you is how you are totally unafraid to call out the medical
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industrial complex. And that's why you were so vocal during the COVID lockdowns and about the
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vaccines and how we were being misled. And this to me seems like yet another area in which we could
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really use your honest voice. You touched on it in your answer there about how that same complex
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is making money hand over fist off of hurting children off of chopping off the body parts of 14
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year old kids. It's nuts. And it's completely backwards to what the Hippocratic oath requires
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of them. And yet we're seeing for ourselves now in this one example, some of the things you've been
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saying for years, which is they, they don't care about you. They care about themselves and their bottom
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line. Yeah. I mean, I would agree with that. I, you know, the last, what I always say to people is you
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can't convince me of anything by, you know, defaming me or calling me names, but if you show me facts,
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I'm going to, you know, that I will change my policies or my worldview. If I see facts that are
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not consistent with it. And, you know, since the last time I've talked to you, I've done more research
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and I, you know, like that, that report, um, had a, I would say transformative effect on me.
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And I guess, you know, the revulsion of just reading a couple of pages of it. Um, I think
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anybody who reads that is going to be, is going to, you know, come to the same conclusion that I did.
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All right. Um, what do you make of President Biden's changes to Title IX?
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Um, I don't really understand exactly what the implications are. Why don't you tell me? I,
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you know, I know that they have, um, that he's giving, uh, uh, more, he's opening it up to people
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who are transgender. You know, my position on that has been very, very clear. My uncle wrote Title IX,
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uh, Senator Ted Kennedy. Uh, he wrote it because women, um, women's sports were not being recognized
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or funded by the colleges and they're, you know, women had been fighting for years and years to get
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those rights. And he was very, very proud of that. We were all proud of, of that accomplishment.
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I have right now, Megan, I have a niece, um, Zoe Hines, who is one of the star softball players
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on the BC college team. She's on a full scholarship. When she was growing up, Cheryl and I would invite
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her and her twin brother, who's also an athlete to come skiing every year and to come to us at the
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Cape in the summer. And she really wanted to do it, but she would never do it because she was devoting
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her life to trying to get these scholarships so she could go to college. It would be really ironic and
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tragic in my view, if she could lose her place on that team to a boy who walks off of a, a boy softball
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field and just says, well, I'm a girl now and, uh, and knocks her out of competitive plays. I don't
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think that's a good result to the extent that president Biden's changes to title nine would
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allow a result like that. I would oppose it. I, you know, but I don't really know exactly how those,
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what those changes are. I'd love to hear from you if you have, if you have better knowledge than I.
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Well, I mean, this is a big issue for me and I think a lot of my audience, um, he's changed title
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nine with the, you know, the stroke of his pen with his administrative agency to redefined who's
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protected by it. It's no longer just girls and women. It's now trans girls and women who, which
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means men, men are now protected by title nine when title nine was a response to what had already been
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men's rights in the school setting, right. To create at the time equal sports and equal facilities and that
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kind of thing. But now because of his changes, men have the right to use women's locker rooms
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and women's bathrooms, girls bathrooms, K through college, K through college. And they can't say no.
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So if you have some hulking 275 pound man who last week ran as a male runner and he decides he's a girl
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now and he wants to run against the female runners, he can do it and he can use their restroom and he can
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do it, you know, full man, full, full genitalia, no hormone therapy, no dress, nothing. He can parade
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around. You know, I went to college when I was 17, a 17 year old girl's locker room in college or,
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or beneath that with impunity. And on top of that, at the college level of young man who gets accused,
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and I know you are related to Michael Skakel. And that's a case I have a lot of interest in because
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I am a true crime lover. Anyway, he isn't Kennedy who was accused of killing a young girl in a
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Connecticut neighborhood and anybody. And you had another family member who was accused down in
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Florida of a sexual sort of me too situation. In any event, my point in raising this is not to
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bring up the family tragedies, but these young men in college campuses, thanks to his changes,
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are no longer going to be afforded due process. Now they no longer have the right to counsel,
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the right to cross examine. They now have the hearings held their, their trials, their kangaroo
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courts by the same person who investigated them. So the prosecutor winds up being their judge. They
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have no right to demand evidence. So if this girl's been texting her roommates, uh, it was,
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I was totally into it. It was consensual. These guys will never know that all because of President
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Biden's stroke of the pen. Yeah. Um, um, just, uh, in defense of my cousin, Michael Skakel,
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I did do a book on that. Yeah. I read it on that. And I, and, uh, I was able to track down
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the people who actually were responsible for the murder, which was not my cousin. And he was then
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released from prison, um, because of that investigation. So I just want to say a word,
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word, word, word about questions linger to be fair. Go ahead. Yeah. Um, uh, so, um,
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yeah, I mean, I, I, I agree. I agree that, you know, what you're saying, if those are the results,
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they're not, they're not good results. And I, um, and I'm very, you know, like I said, I'm against,
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I'm against allowing males, biologically born males to participate in consequential
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female sports. Right. But this goes beyond that. We're talking about locker rooms and bathrooms
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now in the, in the school setting. Yeah, that probably doesn't make any sense either.
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Okay. Um, while we're on the topic of women's rights, let's talk about abortion. Um, that's
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that's another issue that you've sent some mixed signals on. And I want to ask you about your
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position. Last August, you were speaking to reporters at the Iowa state fair, and you said
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you'd sign a federal abortion ban after 15 weeks or 21 weeks. If you were elected and your campaign
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came out and said, you misunderstood the question and that your position on abortion is that quote,
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it is always the woman's right to choose. He does not support legislation banning abortion period.
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Then this month, you sat down with our pal Sage Steele, who has her own podcast. She just launched.
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And you said that women should have the right to an abortion, even if full term, which is,
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which lines up with your campaign's statement after your own spoken words at the Iowa state fair
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saying 15 or 21 week ban. They said, no, when you spoke to stage, you seem to be saying no bands.
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Woman should have the right to choose even if full term quote, we shouldn't have government involved,
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even if it's full term. Then there was outcry and you reverse yourself there saying in a tweet,
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once the baby's viable outside the womb, it should have rights. It deserves society's
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protection. So at this point in your campaign, isn't it fair to say you should have a firm position
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on this and be able to espouse it clearly and uniformly. Um, I suppose I should. I'll tell you what
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my own evolution was on this. I've been a medical freedom activist for my entire life. So my
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inclination is that government should stay out of medical procedures and that with abortions,
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that we should trust women. We should just trust the judgment of a mother. Um, my understanding
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was that, well, you know, the, my initial understanding when I gave that, uh, interview
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in Iowa was that, uh, was the same as Roe v. Wade, which, which protects mothers and the women's choice
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during the early pregnancy. But then later on in, in pregnancy after viability, that the state has an
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increasing interest in regulating and protecting that, that unborn child. Um, and that interest would
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increase up to the day of, you know, of pregnancy of, of, um, of birth. Um, I, you know, I got blowback
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on that position and particularly from my wife and her sisters are very close advisors to me. And one of
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the points that they made is that there's no woman who is, who wants to, uh, get pregnant and then
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carry that pregnancy till for nine months. And then at the last minute, abort it. That just doesn't
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happen. And indeed there's a lot of advocacy groups that say that that literally never happens,
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that the, the choices that are made at the end of pregnancy to abort or choice that are made on,
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usually on dire medical emergencies, um, that, uh, that involve either the health of the child
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or the health of the mother. And that's the, to me, it seemed like that's the last place
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that we want to bring in bureaucrats or government officials to make decisions. That's when you really
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want to leave the decision with a, to another. When I gave that decision on stage, when I gave that,
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uh, talked about that position on stage steals program, I got a lot of blowback from people
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and some data that indicated that actually there are a lot of, not a, not a dramatic number, but in the
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thousands of births each year that are elective abortions during the final month of, uh, of pregnancy.
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And in my view, those, those should not happen. And, um, and you know, I've seen the pictures that are
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very gruesome as I'm sure you have. So I changed my position again, you know, I'll change my position
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always based upon if I was wrong on the facts, I'm not going to dig in and defend a position where
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factually, I believe that I would, my initial position was wrong. So that's my, you know,
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my position now is basically the same position as in Roe v. Wade, that the government does have at the
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end of pregnancy after viability, that the government does have an interest in protecting the unborn child.
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So you say, uh, the final month of pregnancy, you saw gruesome photos, uh, about abortions there,
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which would be 36 weeks to 40 weeks, a pregnancy lasts 40 weeks. You're, are you saying that you
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would allow abortions all the way up to 36 weeks? Because viability happens a lot earlier, happens
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in the low twenties, depends on who you ask, but between the low twenties to 28 weeks.
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Yeah. What I would, I wouldn't pick a week, Megan. I would say that
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my policy would be the same as under Roe v. Wade, that the state after viability,
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the state has an interest in protecting the baby.
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Okay. So, cause under Roe v. Wade, that's where we did have
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third term abortions happening in some places because they, they would leave it in various
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states up to the woman. And there, while it's true that it's rare for babies to be aborted in
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the third trimester and that final month, it does happen. That's how we wound up with Kermit
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Gosnell in Pennsylvania. I mean, there are some brutal butchers out there and there are some
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negligent women who don't pay attention to their menstrual cycle and who will find themselves
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pregnant and who abort a perfectly healthy baby under the auspices of mental health, mental health.
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Well, as I said, I would get, I would leave it to the states during the,
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to make their determination about when viability happens and what kind of regulation. I'm not going
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to dictate to the states where, you know, exactly what kind of regulation. I think that should,
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That position you just espoused is currently Trump's position that it should be left to the
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states. It's a state's issue and it's the default constitutional provision post Dobbs,
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I think, I think president, I think president Trump would give no protection to, as I understand
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his position, to the women's right to choose even early on in pregnancy. And that's not
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He says it's a state's rights issue. He says it's a state's rights issue.
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Yeah, it's a state's rights issue. And I would say that the women should have
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federal protection up until viability, that it's a woman's right to choose up to that.
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So, because president Biden wants to codify Roe and Roe, I mean, you know, Roe is kind of loose,
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right? Like you could use Roe to say a woman has the right to choose all the way through the ninth
00:27:01.460
month if her health depends on it is how they use it. And when you think about, okay,
00:27:06.340
the mother's life, that's one thing. Of course, the life that's here and existing always gets
00:27:10.580
precedence over the unborn life. But what they do is they create health exceptions. And then a
00:27:16.660
mother, an irresponsible one, a person who doesn't care about her unborn fetus says it's my mental
00:27:22.180
health. And there are some ethical doctors who will perform abortion on a totally viable, healthy
00:27:26.420
baby as late as 38 weeks because of that. Like that doesn't seem to me like it should be allowed.
00:27:33.300
All right. I think we've, we've beaten that one. We got it. Let's talk about immigration
00:27:37.140
because that's another one that's very important to, I know, right leaning and now even left
00:27:41.700
leaning audiences and voters. More and more, this is the number one issue for Democrats, which is
00:27:47.940
really telling that I've never seen that so high up on the issue ranking for Democrat voters,
00:27:53.140
but it's there now. In October, you went to a rally and admitted that in the past,
00:27:59.060
you believed in an open border and that you felt that if a person was for sealing the border,
00:28:04.420
it meant you were probably a xenophobe or a racist. You admitted that that's how you used
00:28:08.980
to feel. Then you said you went to the border in Arizona and Yuma and you called that border
00:28:13.300
crisis. You saw unsustainable and said a person's not bigoted for wanting a secure border. But then
00:28:19.300
this month at a rally in Austin, you said the border issue is not an existential issue. Use that term
00:28:24.740
in our interview today. It's not an existential issue. So how can you say that when we're looking
00:28:29.700
at over 8 million illegal immigrants coming into this country under Joe Biden's presidency alone?
00:28:35.700
How is that not existential for life? Yeah, I don't think that that was my characterization.
00:28:46.260
And if it was, then, you know, I would not make that characterization. I think what I was doing
00:28:52.820
was talking about a number of cultural issues that generally are, like, you know, I said,
00:28:58.100
very important issues. That's right. Here, I'll play it. We have, we have this down,
00:29:01.700
but I'll play it so the audience knows what you're talking about. It's top 22.
00:29:04.580
We have two presidents who are running today. Two ex-presidents. One is the current president.
00:29:12.020
They both had four years in office. They couldn't be more different than each other.
00:29:17.780
But the issues that they're actually disputing on are a very narrow Overton window. It's what
00:29:24.820
Nicole was saying. It's guns. It's abortion. It's the border. It's trans rights. These issues
00:29:33.060
that are all important, but none of them are existential. None of them are the issues that
00:29:38.660
really matter to you, to me, to our children. The border.
00:29:46.900
Yeah, well, if I, you know, I was talking about another class of issues that are actually
00:29:53.460
existential. I would, I think arguably the border is existential and maybe more than arguably,
00:30:01.140
it just may be, you know, what I saw on the border was, uh, was cataclysmic.
00:30:08.180
And I never thought that people who oppose, and I never thought we should have an open border,
00:30:13.860
by the way, Megan. I thought that, um, I, I opposed for a time, President Trump's wall.
00:30:20.580
And I said, I was wrong about that. We do need a wall. We don't need a wall.
00:30:24.340
2,200 miles all the way from Brownsville, Texas to San Diego. But we do need a wall in the populated
00:30:32.020
places, um, that where immigrants can, undocumented immigrants can, can disappear very, very quickly.
00:30:40.900
I think it was a huge, not just a mistake, but a catastrophe that President Biden suspended
00:30:48.980
the construction on the wall when he first came into office and then also began tearing down a lot
00:30:55.060
of the infrastructure for making sure that didn't happen and essentially implemented an open border
00:31:02.420
policy. Although the President Biden's administration denies that everybody border knows that to be true.
00:31:09.140
And, but I, you know, I watched 300 immigrants come across the border at between 2 a.m. and 4 a.m.
00:31:16.580
The first time I was there, you know, I'd been back, et cetera. But, um, they were coming from all over
00:31:21.860
the world. They were coming on buses that were owned by the Sinaloa drug cartel, um, that was, uh, uh,
00:31:29.860
bringing them from the airport in Mexicali to, uh, to the border at, in Yuma and, uh, and then allowing
00:31:38.980
them a hundred and 110 or 105 people on each bus. The first two buses that came were West Africans.
00:31:46.500
There were only the whole, that whole evening. I only saw two Latin American, uh, families, one from
00:31:52.580
Colombia, one from Peru. The rest of the immigrants were coming from Asia, from Ukraine,
00:31:59.300
from China, from Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan, Nepal, Tibet, India, Bangladesh. And they were responding
00:32:07.540
to advertisements that the drug cartels put on TikTok and YouTube, where they offer immigrant,
00:32:15.380
immigration to the United States for $10,000 to $15,000 per person. And they all knew exactly what
00:32:23.060
was going to happen to them when they crossed the border. The border patrol had been reduced.
00:32:28.260
Instead of defending the border to processing all these new immigrants coming across,
00:32:33.380
they give them a, uh, fingerprint check to see if they have a criminal record. If they don't have
00:32:38.020
a criminal record, they bring them to the Yuma airport and put them on an airplane to any
00:32:42.340
destination in the United States with no, uh, uh, uh, with, uh, with a, with a, a court date in the asylum
00:32:51.060
court, seven years in the future. And, uh, 9 million, up to 9 million people have come across that way in
00:32:59.460
the past three and a half years. And yeah, I would say that is existential. There's no nation that can
00:33:06.340
survive if it doesn't protect its borders. So, uh, you know, my, my bad, um, okay. Let's talk about
00:33:15.540
an issue that's somewhat obscure, but, um, I, I think our audience is going to remember this.
00:33:20.580
So way back in where we just celebrated our 800th episode, but way back in episode 125 of the show,
00:33:27.540
before we'd even added video, uh, we had on a rancher, uh, she was from Wyoming and she was
00:33:35.460
objecting at the time to this, this bill, this law that president Biden had pushed through,
00:33:40.740
which sought to give black farmers federal financial assistance based solely on their race,
00:33:48.180
not on their financial condition, not on any suffering they may have had economically
00:33:53.940
based totally on their melanin. And the farmers didn't wind up getting the financial relief because
00:34:00.960
several lawsuits were filed claiming that's race discrimination. That's illegal under the
00:34:04.760
constitution. And so the program was frozen after an injunction. So I want to play you the soundbite of
00:34:09.780
this rancher who we interviewed. Take a listen. It's basically a slap in the face saying, Hey,
00:34:16.140
just because you're white, you can't apply. And you know, it's wrong. And you've been talking about
00:34:21.900
the USDA's past discrimination. Well, a big part of it is women like me have been discriminated against,
00:34:28.960
um, not me specifically, but women in the past, and they're completely overlooking that aspect of it.
00:34:36.120
And so being a white woman who's recognized as being socially disadvantaged, it does humiliate me
00:34:42.940
because I should be a part of that group. And then, you know, I look down at my neighbors who are
00:34:49.200
struggling, who are barely getting by, and I don't know if they're going to make it another year. And it's
00:34:54.340
humiliating to them because they don't feel like they deserve it enough either. And, you know, it's just
00:35:00.720
completely wrong. Okay. Now you were recently on a podcast with a black farmer and vowed to give black
00:35:09.580
farmers this money. Now I've just outlaid for you why it's so controversial. Do you stand by that pledge?
00:35:15.000
Yeah. And I think, um, the woman that you, uh, talk to does not have the whole story. Um, here,
00:35:24.760
here's what happened, Megan. There was a, you know, there's a, uh, there's a, uh, program within the
00:35:31.160
USDA and the Department of Agriculture that is designed to help small farmers across this country,
00:35:37.840
which was the reason that the USDA was launched in the first place. USDA now does the opposite of
00:35:46.560
that. It protects big, you know, agricultural, industrial agriculture production, and basically
00:35:53.460
enables a war against small farmers. But there is a program that still exists within USDA that's
00:36:00.440
designed to make, to give, uh, low interest loans and grants to small farmers. As it turns out, the,
00:36:08.720
the man who was running that program for many men for decades was a man who was intensely racist.
00:36:17.380
And there is a racist history within the group conceded, but I want to get to
00:36:22.620
because I will, I will, I will, I will. I've been letting you finish, but I just want to make sure
00:36:28.500
that we were on point here because under our U S constitution, it's unconstitutional to
00:36:32.860
discriminate on the basis of race. You can't do it to white, just like you can't do it to blacks.
00:36:37.340
Yeah. And if you let me finish what I'm saying, um, and I agree with you that you can't have,
00:36:44.660
you know, under the, uh, um, particularly under the Harvard decision that the Supreme court,
00:36:49.340
uh, judge Roberts just issued, there is no, you know, affirmative action or race based affirmative action
00:36:56.320
legal in this country, but that's not what this is. The black farmers association, this individual
00:37:03.680
within USDA simply cut off all grants to black people because of their skin color, but he gave
00:37:12.480
the money to whites and to white farmers. And I think most Americans would agree that that was wrong,
00:37:19.620
that you can't, of course you can't have race based benefits, but you also shouldn't suffer race
00:37:25.500
based deprivations of, of grants to which you're entitled to. And this, that this association,
00:37:33.940
the association of black farmers sued the USDA and they won in court. And the, the court quantified
00:37:43.020
exactly how much money that, that black farmers had been deprived of during that period, since this guy
00:37:52.300
started, uh, running the program. So it was a specific amount of money at a court and a jury
00:38:00.660
had decided on, and they awarded it to the black farmers. It was just a class action suit.
00:38:07.020
Well, because the suit is against the government, Congress has to appropriate that money. And although
00:38:15.420
the money was put in the presidential budget, Congress refused to appropriate it. So that's the
00:38:22.540
issue. Would you, you know, should that money be paid out to people to whom it is owed or should it not
00:38:29.580
be? This is not a race based benefit. Yes. Well, that's what you say. You know, what I would say is
00:38:38.060
we looked, we took a hard look at this bill at the time and you could get it irrespective of your
00:38:43.660
financial condition. Megan Markle could go out there and say, I just bought a rent Oprah. She has a ranch
00:38:50.780
in California. She could say, I am black and I want the assistance. And she could get it. It was
00:38:55.500
irrespective of financial condition. Yeah. Well, then you're talking about a different
00:39:01.140
instance than I was talking about because the instance I was talking about was specifically
00:39:05.620
related to this case. I know this case that happened 30 years ago. Uh, and typically the
00:39:10.820
remedy would be, you know, you, you sue for damages and then you try to get your damages and then you
00:39:15.240
don't take the money out of the taxpayers while it's 30 years later, who had nothing to do with what
00:39:19.540
happened. Well, except it was litig, it was litigation that they won 30 years ago. And that
00:39:25.620
simply was not, I don't know if it was 30 years ago. I mean, like there, there's a reason we have
00:39:30.460
those caps on what the federal government can pay because it's the taxpayer who winds up having to
00:39:34.180
pay these judgments. I'm not saying I don't have empathy for the black farmers. I'm just saying the
00:39:38.320
program that was shut down was not remedy for a judgment. The government never paid. It was a
00:39:46.260
giveaway to black farmers and ranchers. And when whites wanted to apply, they were told no.
00:39:52.460
And Megan, then you're talking about a different issue than I was talking about when I said that I
00:39:58.360
would make sure that that money was paid. The money I was talking about was the money that was owed to
00:40:05.160
black farmers. And a court had said it was owed to black farmers and there is no cap on federal
00:40:12.620
recoveries. There's a, there was just a refusal because Congress has to approve any appropriation,
00:40:19.880
including an appropriation or lawsuits that the federal government lost engaging in negligent or
00:40:29.660
reckless or, you know, or malicious behavior. Congress still has to appropriate it. Oh, and the person
00:40:37.360
who, who, who bought that lawsuit at the outset, who was a farmer, who was continually denied,
00:40:44.240
um, at grants and loans, that other farmer, he was, he was sitting in the office
00:40:51.120
for sometimes for days at a time. And white farmers were walking past him,
00:40:57.980
picking up their loans and leaving after six or eight minutes.
00:41:01.620
Got it. No, no one's defending that. I understand. No one's defending that.
00:41:11.500
I'm objecting to, I'm objecting to race based relief for farmers and ranchers in 2024.
00:41:19.820
It's illegal period. Okay. I got to take a break.
00:41:22.980
I wasn't defending that. We'll be right back. I know I got it. You're, you're suggesting I am
00:41:28.780
defending no relief to any farmers who have been aggrieved by the U S government that the way you
00:41:33.500
handle that as you file a lawsuit, the way they did, I understand they didn't get the relief they
00:41:37.340
wanted. It's unfortunate, but that doesn't necessarily mean 30 years later, you create an
00:41:42.320
unfair program to remedy these past wrongs to that in which white economically disadvantaged
00:41:47.500
ranchers get screwed. We've gone through it. We've spent far too much time on it. I've got to
00:41:51.440
take a break. I'll be right back. Stand by on the topic of Trump and Biden and where you fit in
00:41:57.000
is, you know, you got to take votes from both of those guys in order to make this happen.
00:42:02.040
You're starting to get the attention of the Trump campaign, which is probably a good sign for you.
00:42:06.580
And the Trump spokesperson, Steve Chung came out and said, the voter should not be deceived by you,
00:42:12.780
suggesting that this is a quote vanity project for you, for a liberal Kennedy looking to cash in on
00:42:18.960
his family's name. Now it is true, according to you, that you voted for Barack Obama in 2008 and you
00:42:26.360
voted for Hillary Clinton in, in 2016 and you voted for president Biden in 2020. So why shouldn't Republican
00:42:35.520
voters have some doubts about you? Well, you know, I, I, I mean, I would say, um, first of all, that,
00:42:48.620
you know, if you're, um, you know, my, my promise when I announced this was that I was going to
00:43:00.000
try to persuade Americans that they weren't Republicans or Democrats anymore and that they
00:43:07.740
were Americans and that they're Americans first. But what I would say to you is, you know, I'm not
00:43:14.560
going to characterize, characterize, characterize myself as a conservative or liberal. I'm neither a
00:43:22.460
Democrat or Republican, um, listen to the issues. And if you don't agree with my issues, then you
00:43:30.200
should vote for somebody else the way that I handle the issues. If you, if you have a candidate who
00:43:36.480
agrees with you more, who, who thinks it's okay to be at war in the Ukraine, um, who is okay with the
00:43:45.580
$34 trillion debt, who's okay with having 60% of American kids have chronic disease, um, and who's
00:43:55.940
okay with, uh, the, the, the regulatory agencies in our country being run by the, by the, uh, industries
00:44:06.120
they're supposed to regulate, um, and this, this corrupt merger of state and corporate power that
00:44:12.000
President Biden, President Trump have presided over, then if you're okay with all that, then you
00:44:17.360
should vote for one of them. If you, if you're tired of those things and want to do something
00:44:21.760
different, if you want to change, if I get elected president, all that's going to change. The government's
00:44:28.280
going to stop lying to you. Why? Because on my first day in office, I'm going to issue an executive
00:44:33.640
order saying that any federal employee who lies to the American public in conjunction with his job
00:44:40.920
will be fired. Um, I'm going to stop the CIA from propagandizing Americans and, and from censoring
00:44:49.300
Americans. I'm going to fire any federal employee who participates with the mainstream media or the
00:44:55.560
social media in censorship. I'm going to stop the chronic disease epidemic and save this country $4.3
00:45:03.120
trillion. We're now spending on chronic disease. When my uncle was president, 6% of Americans had chronic
00:45:09.320
disease. Today, it's 60% diabetes in this country. When I was a kid, a typical pediatrician would see
00:45:17.080
one diabetes case in his lifetime. Today, one out of every three kids who walks through his office door
00:45:23.840
is either pre-diabetic or diabetic, and it's costing us more than the defense budget to deal with
00:45:30.180
diabetes. President Trump have never mentioned that issue. They're never going to. They're never
00:45:37.160
going to fix the budget deficit. Why? Because they ran it up. President Trump in his four short years
00:45:42.980
ran up $8 trillion in debt, more than all the presidents combined from George Washington to George
00:45:49.100
W. Bush. And President Biden is trying to beat him on that. And neither of them are going to deal
00:45:55.900
with the existential issues that are actually threatening our country. So if you want to label
00:46:01.600
me as a conservative or as a liberal, I don't think it's accurate. I think I'm trying to have a common
00:46:08.620
sense solution to what's happening in this country. I promise to listen to people. It changed my mind
00:46:15.380
when I'm wrong on the facts, to not demonize and marginalize and vilify other Americans, but to try to
00:46:22.540
find the common ground that we all share in common, rather than, you know, focusing on the trials and the
00:46:31.160
culture war issue and the race issues that, you know, Republicans and Democrats are all trying to
00:46:38.140
get us to focus on. And it's like jangling the keys. Even the issues that you focus on today,
00:46:44.020
Megan, are all cultural issues. It's like- These are important. These are important too. I have a huge
00:46:49.460
audience, Bobby, as you know. I have a huge audience. And these- But listen, no, no, no. That's not fair.
00:46:54.760
Don't go there. I know the issues that interest my audience. And there's a reason this is one of the
00:47:00.000
top shows in the nation. So don't disparage what matters to them, okay? The issue about young women
00:47:06.700
and young girls and our rights and due process on college campuses and the right of the unborn
00:47:11.700
and the immigration issue and race baiting by our highest officials, those matter. Those matter.
00:47:19.900
Your issues matter too. I love what you just said. It was the best answer you gave the whole interview.
00:47:23.420
But don't diminish what matters to my audience, because that's also important. I'll give you the
00:47:28.140
last word. I blew my last commercial break for you. I'll give you the last 40 seconds.
00:47:30.740
Yeah. I say, you know, focusing on- There's certain issues that are allowed in the political
00:47:38.460
dialogue. And I didn't mean to disparage your issues. I'm just saying, those are the issues
00:47:44.940
that everybody talks about. And then you look around and you say, but, you know, there's all
00:47:50.780
these other issues like the, the continual wars and nobody's talking about. And those are the ones
00:47:58.160
that I'm trying to focus on. I got to cut you off because the computer's going to,
00:48:00.860
it's going to end us in 10 seconds. Those are important. And we've discussed those on some of
00:48:04.940
your earlier appearances. And I hope there'll be another one. You know, I admire you. Thank you
00:48:08.960
so much for being here. Bobby Kennedy, back tomorrow.
00:48:13.780
Thanks for listening to The Megyn Kelly Show. No BS, no agenda, and no fear.